a harsh reality.

Tomorrow I will have been in this country eight months, and yet I still feel so far away from achieving any kind of sustainable “progress”. The longer I’m here, the more I realize that two years is a drop in the bucket in terms of making lasting change, and the only thing certain to benefit from my two years here is me.

I should preface this by saying that my role here is not supposed to be a teacher. I am supposed to be helping teachers, and working with students in an environmental club, but right now I am still observing classes, so I can see how the teachers work and how I can start to help. Therefore, as you will see, this morning I was faced with a harsh reality as I stood in front of a CP (Classe Préparatoire) class of 80 kindergarten-aged kids. That’s right, eighty. In one class. After 45 minutes of not teaching them, as the teacher seemed to be more importantly occupied filling out paperwork reporting for the Department of Education, I asked the teacher if the kids didn’t have anything they were supposed to be doing. “No,” he replied, “And when they get out their slates it just makes so much noise.”

“They don’t have anything to work on?” I asked again. “Nothing to practice?” To which the teacher replied by going up to the big board, drawing two long horizontal lines across one section of it, and filled those in with short vertical lines all the way across, like train tracks. He then told the kids to copy that onto their chalkboards, after which time Ngoné (me), he said, would come check on their work.

After several minutes had gone by, and I could see about two-thirds of them had at least tried to draw something, I started walking around and looking, speaking to them in Wolof mostly because although they’re supposed to be learning French in school, at this age most of them don’t understand it yet. The only thing in French most of them seemed to understand well were “oui,” “non,” “bonjour,” “je me leve,” and “je m’assois.” I channeled my best teacher self and patrolled the room, trying to explain in a mixture of Wolof and French why one child’s drawing was lovely but that it didn’t match what the teacher had drawn on the board, because the teacher’s was straight across and the child’s went diagonally across her chalkboard. How do you say “diagonal” in French even?

Other students had drawn their train tracks across the top of their slates, whereas the teacher had drawn his in the middle of the board. I tried to explain how to leave space on top and underneath the tracks to some, while for others the issue was that they had drawn the slats of the tracks jutting out of either side of the rails. Really not as easy as I had first thought, as I walked around the room realizing that though I was able to translate for some kids into Wolof, there were also Sereres and Pulaars in the class, and they would just have to make do with my hand gestures, as I was having enough trouble not knowing the word in Wolof for “straight”. After I managed to get the kids to erase their boards and put them away, it became apparent to me that that this was not only a lesson in drawing, it was simultaneously a lesson in hand-eye coordination, listening comprehension, and French vocabulary. That’s a lot to handle at once for 5-year-olds.

Only shortly before this semi-forced temporary (I hope) substitute teacher role was given to me, I had been minding my own business, taking notes on the class and sitting quietly watching the students and teacher, recollecting what I remembered learning in kindergarten. I calculated that it was twenty years ago exactly when I myself was learning the colors, how to tie my shoes, counting using small plastic dinosaurs (color blue), and reading aloud “The Tale of Jemima Puddle Duck” to my class. I feel like my own kindergarten class was much better behaved than this one that I found myself in front of today, and certainly achieved more progress on a daily basis, but then again, my class was taught in our native language, we got nap time, and cinnamon toast on special occasions, and although we did have three Ashleys, our classroom didn’t have to contain more than 30 children.

A little bit of perspective there, then, as I walked out of the classroom at break time thinking about how in America there would be four teachers to handle the number of kids I had just left.

so this is what it feels like to be busy...

These days I don't know where time is going. It seems to be over 2 weeks since I posted last, and there is more to report than would conveniently fit into one post. I'll do a little catching up, then hope to be more frequent in the months to come.

The good news is that the reason I haven't posted recently is because work is really picking up, Alhamdulilah! School has begun officially for everyone here, meaning that my job as an environmental education volunteer has finally started in earnest. These days I’m going to the elementary school I’ve been assigned to work with almost every day, Monday to Friday, observing classes, getting a feel for teaching methods and styles, and talking with the teachers during class breaks about their expectations and frustrations. After a few weeks of observation, I want to start talking with the teachers about how to incorporate more environmentally related topics into their lessons, and in the meantime I’m also working with the teacher advisor to the student government to use the structure already in place as a launching pad for a separate environmental club.

The past three days I was invited to attend a seminar on waste management in Senegal, and yesterday I made it to my second meeting of a young journalists group, composed of middle and high school students, to whom I hope to serve as a kind of counselor/advisor. Their meeting was held at the CLAC, which stands for “Centre de Lecture et d’Animation Culturelle”, and which is, by all accounts, a library. Needless to say, if you know me, you know that I was thrilled to find that such an institution already exists here, and I have great hopes to work with the folks there as well, as time goes on.

And after over a month of feeling unfocused and somewhat directionless, my motivation got a much needed boost last week when my program supervisor came to visit me here at site. We talked about how things are going and what is expected of me, workwise. He expounded upon several projects that I could get involved in or start up myself, and reassured me that feeling like I had accomplished nothing thus far was absolutely normal. That afternoon we went to the school and he spoke to the director and teachers about my role at the school, what my job actually is, and what Peace Corps means by “environmental education.” The visit was affirming, as after I had spent the last few months only feeling like there is so much I cannot do, I was happily reminded of all there is that I can, in fact, do.

That's the basic gist of what has been happening here with me. On a side note, I have been constantly congratulated since Wednesday on Obama's win, as if it was personally due to my influence that all of America is celebrating. All of Senegal seemed to have been praying for it, and it has been very interesting to be here to see, as my friend Jen said, "the African reaction" to the election results. As for my personal reaction, this is my blog so I can say that since Wednesday morning, I have up to this point in my life never been prouder to call myself an American.

Best wishes to all in the States and beyond, and more posts to come soon, I hope, as I establish a semi-regular schedule for myself and try to make time for everything I want to be doing!