Summer School Week 2

July 28th, 2011

Summer School Week 2

Just some highlights on this week of teaching:

• New kids showed up on Monday... “Um, Hi. You have missed a week and we have a week left, so there is no chance you can get a good grade. Where were you last week?” The excuses blew my mind:
• “Getting cold wata, Ma.”
• “I hurt my finga, Miss Kenna.”
• “I don’t know.”

Some of my JSS 3 kids

• I walked into the second session of my JSS 1 class to find a small boy (8-9), Augustine, balling. “What’s wrong,” I asked, and he could barely speak. I took him outside the room and had Dan take my time slot so I could figure out what happened. Here was our conversation:

“Alright, settle down so you can tell me what the matter is. Take some deep breaths.”

“They are going to flog me afta class, Ma. At break they molested my knee (he meant to say kick, I had him demonstrate) and hit me here and here,” he keeps crying and trying to catch his breath.

“Why are they trying to hurt you?”

“They think I say tha The Church of God is useful!” and he starts crying even harder and I am trying not to crack a smile.

“Ok, well do you think that The Church of God is useless? Is that true?”

“Ohhh NOOO, Miss Kenna. I GO to The Church of God. I neva say dat. Neva! Dey lie dey lie!”

“Ok well let’s tell these people this so there is no misunderstanding. What does this kid look like, and I will pull him out of class so we can all figure things out.” He was settling down down.

“She’s black,” he said to me with the straightest face, totally expecting me to go and get the right girl from my class of 90 kids.

“Ok, well that eliminates Mr. Keller and Mr. Lee,” I said expecting him to get the humor, but it ended up being a joke for myself.

In the end I found the girl from the class, and it was a misunderstanding.

Aymahhida, the Muslim school where I am teaching for these two weeks. Take note this school is about 100 times nicer than the school in my village.

• Another volunteer, who is teaching SSS level, higher than JSS 3, so like high school, told me that during class, a girl lifted her top and rested it above her boobs, and was just chillin there (it is really hot during the day, and that’s most likely the reason she was doing that). No one else seemed to even notice or care and he felt very awkward and finally told her to “Please pull your top back down,” and the other kids started laughing. Can you even imagine some one doing that in the States?!

The view opposite the school, Mena Hill