You Can't See Kansas from Here, Toto

I'm here to teach, not to tell folks how to live, so if the kids are well educated, it follows they will figure out the rest by themselves. As Maya Angelou says, folks who know better, do better. I am mindful of this as I go about my day, correcting pronunciation, introducing grammar concepts and generally failing to adequately explain our bizarre English spelling. I have yet to approach the six ways to pronounce ough, I just don't see it ending well.

Evening classes continue, folks coming and going as work and family life permit. Amon is one of my adult students, a sweet, gentle, hardworking guy who can't remember a pronoun to save his life. Our routine is to talk about our day, our families, just generally converse together, and here's what happened a few days ago.

Me: Hello Amon, how are you?
Amon: I'm fine teacher, and you?
Me: I'm fine. So, how was your day?
Amon: Ah, Teacher, today was bad.
Me: Why, what happened?
Amon: Today I beat my wife.
Me: Really? And why did you do that?
Amon: I came home and there was no food, so I beat she.
Me: You beat her. Was she sick?
Amon: No, she was not sick, so I must beat she.
Me: You must beat her. Did you beat her badly?
Amon: Teacher, I am making a story. I did not beat she.
Me: You did not beat her. So how was work?

Like I said, I'm just here to teach English. Other than the above, adult education moves along at a steady pace. The kids are a lot more exciting, and know their pronouns. 

What happened to the poor chicken who didn’t lay fast enough.

All of the kids are reading so well, easily above their grade levels, and they love picture books. The ones we get here are mainly of the Aesop's Fables genre, a story with a moral, and bright, pretty illustrations. We were reading about the chicken who laid golden eggs, geese not being common here. As the story unfolded, the farmer became greedy and decided that instead of waiting for the hen to lay, he would just cut the gold out of it's stomach. There followed a full page picture of the farmer and his wife, a boning knife dripping blood onto the floor, and one mortally wounded chicken on the kitchen table. I was taken aback, and even the kids went a little wide eyed.

Even more egregious than the pictures are the spelling and grammar errors. These books are published by Vika, a company out of India, and as I read to the kids I correct the spelling and grammar with my black pen. Every time. Without fail. 

And out comes my red pen, as well as my blue magic marker. Does anyone edit these things?

American books present their own problems, although not with grammar and spelling. They like the Sesame Street books, but Oscar lives in a garbage can and we are fresh out of them here. We actually never did have them, which accounts for the garbage strewn all over hell and half of Berega.

So nothing is perfect here, but we love our books, especially the ones about Africa. I found a bookshop in Dar specializing in English and Kiswahili versions of african themed stories, and I buy them up as fast as I can. They're all about village life, animals, and the kids' favorite, Kaka Sungura, which is Kiswahili  for Brother Rabbit. Kaka Sungura is a very bad rabbit, stealing maize and other crops from the hardworking zebras, monkeys, and lions. He gets into all kinds of trouble and is in constant conflict with the other wanyama. The kids read both the English and Kiswahili versions. I read only the Kiswahili, and I'm about at level 5 now. These are much loved books, and already re-stapled and now duct taped.

What can I say?

When a person grows up speaking a language it's easy not to see the gray areas. We know what to say, we know the right answers, we just don't think about it. The kids have made me aware of the many shades of gray in my mother tongue. We've been discussing opposites and I asked them the opposite of full. Dani said hungry. I was actually looking for empty, but here hungry works just as well. Dani is a very bright kid, but the opposite of buy is not don't buy, although it was a good try.

We were discussing rhyming words, and the word to rhyme was cat. Samweli said bat, Mbuli said fat, but Jenny was stumped. I tried to help her out so I said, "You put it on your head'" to which she said "a bucket". True, but not quite what I was looking for.

Two plus two is four, now and forever, the answer is the answer. Not so in cross cultural English. We were doing some fill in the blanks the other day and the sentence was "Amina has long black_____. " The correct answer, according to the book, is hair. Well here, nobody has hair and everyone is dark skinned except me so Susy got points for fingers. And she does have long black fingers. Long black legs and arms as well. She's a very tall girl. The answer to "We eat with____, " here in the village, is hands, or even fingers. Not one kid wrote fork or spoon. 

V is for Vika Publishing that can’t think of another word to use for V.

There has been good progress with r and l, although nobody except Std 2 can say ruler. Sometimes I ask Std 1 to say it, just for kicks. They think it's hilarious, and it's good to be able to laugh at ourselves. "Long Live Rock and Roll" is going to take some time, and if they concentrate, they can say sixty. I kind of miss the old sikisty though, but preschool is still mangling it pretty well for me. 

In the govt schools, kids who make a mistake can be beaten or humiliated by the teacher. We just laugh and correct. Nobody is safe, even the teachers. So the kids laugh at themselves and each other and the teachers (who can't say ruler either). I hope and pray that none of these kids ever transfers to a govt school, because we've ruined them for anything else.

What is strange about this picture is that most of our kids have never used a toilet with a seat.

There are still some uniform issues, mostly involving buttons and panties, or the lack thereof. Folks who wouldn't think of leaving their house without decent clothes will send their kid to school with a shirt that has one, and only one, button. Some of the girls come without underpants, which is a real problem in a country where girls wear dresses. We've collected a large bag full of chupi, (thanks Janet and Sarah), and have sold some, and will give away others. One of the teachers suggested we do like they did when she was in school, which is to line the girls up once a week and have them lift their skirts. I'm not easily shocked, and at first I thought it was a joke, but nope. All the teachers said this is just normal, and we need to check the boys as well. I had to laugh, just thinking about how fast an American teacher would be fired, or even jailed, for pulling a stunt like this. But then, here it's common for the headmaster of the upper grades to send the girls for pregnancy tests. This is done without consent from either the students or the parents.

This is where I live, where I chose to live. As I was correcting Amon's grammar it occurred to me that I was less concerned about him beating his wife than his total inability to to use the proper pronoun. Have I crossed over to some other universe? Probably not, but I guess it's like that AA prayer. Grant me the strength to change what I can…….And the brains to know the difference. Something like that. 

L