The second week in the village

Friday October 13

Thursdays are market days, but I have to teach chemistry to 37 7th graders first.

The day before was a frustrating 7th grade class of 2 hours of talking and laughing while they were suppose to be listening and copying down their physics lesson on the states of matter. I had to get stern with a loud, unsmiling, "Taisez-vous."

I got to spend half a day at the primary school today (Friday) observing the type of classroom atmospheres my secondary students experienced from 1st-6 th grade.

In the first grade class, a girl of 8 or 9 with a stern voice would say, "Du silence," and then proceed to whack kids with a 1/2 inch thick rubber strap. When peanut shells were thrown out the window, the teacher came in with switches cut from a tree. The kids react with a certain rebellion, a certain hardness, a certain attitude of you are not going to scare me into doing what you want. I will not be beat into submission.

My stern "Taisez-vous" is not the answer to discipline issues. I don't know why I forgot the 3 weeks of practice school and the lessons I learned there. They thankfully came back to me and I changed my teaching strategy for the Thursday 7th grade chemistry class. I lectured, wrote on the board, and got the kids to tell me about farming in the village and what materials are needed to build a house as we learned about chemistry in every day life. Then for the next 40 minutes, I had the kids write examples of chemistry in their lives and find examples of chemistry in pictures of old Newsweeks. (Thanks to the previous volunteer who left them.) It was a much better, more fun class than the previous day.

Thursdays are market days, so after the 7th grade chemistry class, I changed out of my African clothes into pants and a skirt for a 5 km bike ride. I bought 6 dollars worth of supplies, a 25 lb sac that was strapped to the back of my bike, a sac filled with oranges, 5 lbs of peanut butter, soap, a towel, eggplant, onions, okra, tomatoes, 3 different types of white bread, candles, and freshly made fish meatballs. I gave them tot he kids in my concession because I didn't like them.

The market was fun. I am not scared of leaving my house like last week. Well this seems to be the case at least for this week. At the market, I sat on an office porch people watching while talking to the kids who gathered around me, kids with dreams of going to the US to make money, kids who thought we could drive a car to the US, taking them along with me.

Fridays are my day off form teaching, but not my day off from being a Peace Corps Volunteer. I went to the primary school bright and early to meet the program officer for West African Francophone Girls' Education, an AED (Academy for Educational Development, Washington DC) program. The program in this village provides school supplies as well as a push to tutor primary school girls in the evenings with the hopes of having a higher retention rate of girls in school. In the lower grades it is a 1:! ratio of boys to girls. By sixth grade, it is 5 boys for every 3 girls, by 7th grade it is 3 boys to 1 girls and by 10th grade the ratio is 11 boys to 2 girls.

Friday was a good community building day. I sat with the gathered men and women of the community practicing my Pular, observing primary school classes, talking to the teachers as we waited for 3 hours for the arrival of the committee from America. Then I went to the Mosque and sat there for another 3 hours observing, being a silent but seen presence. It was a long day of community building and I retired from social interactions to my home to rest, to read, and to cook.

5 lbs of peanut butter is a lot of peanut butter. It filled my Nalgene bottle and there is still a lot in a plastic sac, way too much for peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Tonight I tired my first African dish, a peanut sauce dedicated to Andre who always said he would make me some but never did.

I never liked the heavy sauce you could get slathered over rice and spinach at Thai restaurants. I preferred the light spicy noodle soup. But in this meat deprived diet, a peanut sauce is a very healthy, tasty yummy substitute.

The ingredients are oil, onion, eggplant, sliced okra, potatoes, salt, a bullion cube, 2 cups of peanut butter, 2 cups of water, and piment (Guinean chili pepper). In a pot fry up the onions in oil, add some water and cook the potatoes and eggplant. Remove the soften eggplant and pound with piment and an onion. Add the pounded mixture along with all the other ingredients to the cooking potatoes. Simmer until the peanut butter smell goes away and a layer of oil forms (1 hour or so). Stir often because it sticks to the bottom of the pot. If the sauce is too thick add water.

I still haven't learned how to cook for one. My first attempt was pretty good, awesome in fact and I felt confident enough to give half the sauce to the family in my concession. It probably could have been spicier, but it was tasty over my pasta. I still haven't bought rice. It would have been better over rice.

My second week in the village, a week of teaching, cooking, and community building has left me well, happy, and peaceful.