On Being Sick

There are some questions that only have one possible answer. These include “does it taste good” or if you've been sick, “are you feeling better.” Any answer other than the acceptable one results in an explanation of the question and the repetition of said question until you breakdown and just tell them “yes it tastes good” or “yes I'm feeling better.”

The question about food doesn't bother me too much. Although I remember one night during training when it bothered me a lot. I was served pastel-colored rehydrated prawn chips which had the consistency of styrofoam. When they asked me if they tasted good, I said as politely as I could that I didn’t really like them. (Don't ask a question you are prepared to hear the answer to, right?) Well, their solution was to mix the styrofoam chips with mashed up hot peppers. After a few bites, they asked me if it tasted good and kept asking me until I finally through the tears, I choked out a yes.

Now when it comes to my health, I hate that I always have to lie and say that things are just peachy. Just last week, I had a fever coupled with the worst headache of my life and I was sprawled out on the floor because if I moved, shooting pains ravaged my head and would bring me to tears. My neighbor knocked on the door and I grunted out a hello and an I'm sick. “Oh. You are sick? But you are getting better, right?” No I'm not getting better I thought. Only you can't say there, you have to say yes, I'm getting better, thanks. This encounter happened hourly throughout the entire day. It must have been obvious to them I wasn't doing better, but they continued to ask, and I had to continue to lie. The last time I dared to respond in the negative, the following conversation took place.

Neighbor: Kadiatou, are you feeling better?

Me: No

Neighbor: Kadiatou, are you feeling better?

Me: No

Neighbor: EHHHHH...Kadiatou. You don't understand the question?

Me: No I understood, but...

Neighbor: No. You don't understand. I'm asking if you feel better. You respond yes to that question. You can't say no. Kadiatou, are you feeling better?

Me: Yes

Neighbor : Thanks be to God

So, like most conversations I have here, I have to lie to prevent a long-winded conversation that makes me look stupid.

This time instead of answering a query, I'm asking the question: why do they do this? Why can't you say that you aren't feeling better? It's gotta be great for doctors when their patients tell them everything is fine even when it's worse than before! If anyone has any light to shed on this issue, please let me know.  

Citizen Spotlight

Every Tuesday afternoon, I take my computer to the taxi station where I sit and charge it at one of the shacks there. This particular shack is run by one of the most interesting people I've met in Guinea. Don't get me wrong, he can be as annoying as the next guy, and sometimes even refuses to speak in French with me, but I've learned to overlook that and I would consider him to be one of my friends.

Camara Morlaye is his name and he has many games! He helps run the taxi station, he sells cellphone credit and SIM cards, he runs several plantations, and he plays a major role in the community. The other day we had a pretty serious discussion about something I cannot yet disclose, and I ended up crying in front of him. He handled my tears better than most grown men would and he soon had me laughing instead of crying. Once that was over, he voluntarily shared his life story with me. This man has visited every single prefecture in Guinea, of which there are over 30. This in incredible because I've talked to so many people here who have barely left their own prefecture, much less traveled around the country. After university, he got a job with Credit Rurale (Rural Credit), which is what it sounds like. He then spent at least two years in every region of the country working with Credit Rurale and became fluent in 5 different languages, four of them local to Guinea. He can therefore communicate with most Guineans, and really knows what is going on throughout the country.

Last week while at the aforementioned shack, a random stranger asked me to marry him so that he can get a visa to the United States. I replied that everyone wants to go to the United States and that at least one person a day asks me for a visa. Camara butted in to say that it isn't true that everyone wants to go to America, because he wants to stay in Guinea. This is not out of ignorance he explained, but because he wants to stay in his country and do what he can to help it develop. He knows he could have a better life elsewhere, but contrary to hundreds of Guineans who leave every year, he stays and works.

Camara also owns 2 plantations, one of which I visited just last week. He grows palm and cashew trees on his plantation, which is probably 5 times the size of the one I visited last month. In several years, the palm trees will be mature enough to start harvesting and he hopes to be able to run a fairly large operation. On his other plantation, he annually planted palm, orange and lemon trees only to have them destroyed by neighbors who burn their fields every year. He tried this three years in a row, but every year they got burned out. Less discouraged than I would be, he plans on only planting cashew trees this time around, because they are supposedly more fire resistant.

So that's my friend Camara Morlaye. I first noticed something different about him when Ebola struck Guinea. Before and after eating, he washed his hands with soap and bleach and made me do the same. Guineans almost never use soap to wash their hands, so I was blown away! I've also seen him reading a newspaper (not sure where he got that). This is a man who extremely is devoted to his country and who could very well become a key player in Guinea's history.  

Reflections on Teaching (Year One)

Reflections on my first year of teaching

Well, it's June and that means that rainy season is now well underway! Very soon the rain will once again wash away the road and push my village into an isolation rarely seen in today's modern world. June also brings the long anticipated end of the school year, meaning I survived an entire year of teaching en brousse and in French. While I have done many an hour of tutoring both in-and-outside of classrooms in the United States, this was something completely different and much more difficult than anything I'd ever experienced. Every day offered a new challenge, and I tried my best to encourage my students to learn in new ways and to teach them how to think critically. Notably, I used Battleship to help them learn coordinate planes, used word problems to integrate malaria awareness and prevention into lessons, helped organize a school spelling bee, and had an open invitation to my house for impromptu math or english lessons. I like to think that I made a difference, but I guess you have to ask my students. Even though I didn't change the world like I had imagined I would, I guess it's all the small things people do that end up changing the world.

I vividly remember those first few days of school. Even with several months of training under my belt, I had no clue what to expect. I was nervous about teaching the gaggle of Guineans who would be seated at those desks. I was worried about teaching geometrical properties I'd never learned myself. I was worried about my French. In short, I was worried about a lot of things. Only much later did I find out that my students were just as worried as me. Foreign teachers have a reputation of being very strict, very mean, and very difficult and that is what they had all been expecting of me. The first couple weeks were actually the smoothest while the students were just as nervous as I was. They were trying to figure out how I operated and if I could control the classroom. Once they realized I wasn't as mean as I appeared and once they got used to being taught by a white person, classroom discipline quickly went out the window. Every single day I found students talking, sleeping, passing notes, texting, you name it. To control these hooligans, I had to be mean, strict, and I did a lot of yelling. I threw notebooks out the window and from time to time just had to walk out on them. While I accepted that this behavior, which we call “bavarding”, was deeply ingrained into them and that it would take years to change it, it could make teaching really discouraging.

Some of the biggest challenges I faced as a teacher this year were imparting my knowledge to my students, working within the established French-Guinean system and dealing with cheating. Upon arriving in this country, I spoke a passable amount of French, but I was nervous about using what I knew to teach kids at school. I soon found out that even by 10^th grade, the students at my school do not have a good grasp on French. To put this in perspective, kids start learning French once they enter elementary school. All teaching is done in French, and local languages are not supposed to be spoken on school grounds. However, at home and with their friends, students use local languages almost exclusively and therefore don't get the French practice they need. By the end of the year, I noticed that even a flawless explanation on my part still left students lost and confused. As to working in the French-Guinean system, students have become used to a single manner of teaching, one that focuses on rote memorization and one which leaves the “slower” kids behind. In my attempt to make sure students were understanding, I would ask several times during every class if they had any questions and more often than not I was greeted by a blank stare or a “no Madame.” One of the most frustrating things was the constant demand for examples. While examples can be great, and I give them frequently, I often gave them problems without any examples because I wanted them to think through it. Every time I did this the students would loudly complain and most wouldn't even try to solve the problem. Finally, when it came to cheating, I was constantly amazed at what students came up with and how they continued to justify their cheating. On the first day of class I discussed what I considered cheating, as well as the consequences for cheating. In addition, before every test, I would go over those rules until everyone told me they understood. However, I never had a single test in which I didn't give out at least one zero for cheating, and once I had to give out at least twenty zeros. One time I even gave a series of NON-GRADED questions to assess what they had learned, and they cheated on that. It's all part of this idea from their culture that you can't succeed if your brother is failing. Again, I knew this was behavior they had learned as a child and throughout the year, I was only able to prevent a small amount of it. After only a year of teaching, I have gained so much respect for those who make a career out of teaching. It might be one of the least appreciated, yet hardest and most important jobs out there.

Originally I was invited to come and teach Math in Guinea. But by the second week of school, I had volunteered to teach English as well. So, I ended up with 16 hours a week, 12 for Math and 4 for English, again teaching only 9^th and 10^th grade. While the math curriculum is well established, I had to wing all of my English classes. During training I was given a short outline of things they should learn by the end of the year, and a simple grammar guide, and with these two, I set out trying to teach my students yet another language to add to their repertoire. For me, English classes were a time to have fun and we often played games to keep things interesting and to test their skills. These included their favorite, Simon Says, along with Jeopardy, Bingo and Charades. We occasionally talked about famous singers like Rihanna, Chris Brown, 50 Cent and Justin Bieber. On a more serious note, we had many a discussion about America, including George Washington, the number of States in America (50 not 52), and how the current Guinean government is actually modeled on the American system. Once I tried explaining to them that America was also colonized by the Europeans, but they didn't want to believe me. One time after a math session involving malaria information, I taught them words like “mosquito”, “malaria”, “sleep under your net”, etc. Basically my English classes became a math, history, biology, civics, and language class all rolled into one. So even if my kids only came out of English classes with greetings and numbers down pat, they still learned a lot about about Guinea and the world around them.

I couldn't end a post about teaching without talking about the Brevet, or what I've referred to many times as the high school entrance exam. This takes place after 10^th grade and determines whether or not the student can enter high school. It lasts 4 days and consists of History, Geography, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Math, Civics and Ethics, and French which is split into dictation and writing. The topics for each subject can be anything they have covered in middle school and often involve obscure questions that students don't know the answer to. For the practice exam that took place at the end of April, the questions were surprisingly open-ended and simple, yet not a single student managed to average a passing grade. Overall, approximately 50% of those who take the Brevet end up passing it. If they don't pass, the students have the option to drop out of school or to repeat 10^th grade and try the exam again the next year. In reality, the chance at a successful future is seriously diminished for those who don't make it to high school. Women often become stay-at-home moms, and men become mechanics, chauffeurs, street merchants, or work on plantations. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but for the most part, passing the Brevet is one of the first steps to securing a better future.

This past year was marked with tears and with smiles, sometimes even in the same class. Dealing with the large classes, the noise, the cheating, the lack of French, the lack of materials, and the lack of basic math skills only served to make a hard job even harder. It made me really appreciate the veteran teachers at my school, including my principal, who have stuck with it year after year. It has become really obvious to me that they have a passion for students and want to help them succeed, something which isn't seen very often. Sadly a lot of men end up in teaching because they can't find the job they want and so they are bitter and don't care about the students. The Director of Studies thanks me everyday for the work I've done and then proceeds to ask me to stay in Guinea for the rest of my life. The dedication of my fellow teachers and the fact that I have a few students eager to learn, who come to my house every day and work through problems, or are learning English have made my first year of teaching an incredible experience, and one I'll never forget. 

The Spoon and the Cellphone

I would like to dedicate this post to my N'toroma Kelly Barb, aka Kadiatou Camara.

As a volunteer, I have a lot of free time on my hands. Time to read, to think, to nap, and even time to write ridiculous blog posts dedicated to questions people have asked me. One day, a fellow volunteer posed the doozy: Why did Guineans so quickly adopt the cellphone yet still consider spoons to be taboo? It was a good question. Guinea hasn't adopted many modern technologies, but in less than 10 years, cell phones have become ubiquitous. Yet spoons, which have been around hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, are something that have not been universally adopted! The question was there and while I had some theories, I quickly forgot about it. Several weeks later, I came across a similar question in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. The book studies the question “why was it that Europeans who conquered the world and not any other group of people?” Nestled inside its 400+ pages was a discussion about why or why not a society might accept new technology.

When something new is invented, no matter what and no matter where, society has to be persuaded to use it. Will the invention drastically change their lives? Will it save them time? Will it make them money? Obviously some societies are more open to change than others, but no matter the society, Diamond gives 4 criteria for the successful integration of new technology

1. relative economic advantage compared with existing technology
2. social value and prestige
3. compatibility with vested interests
4. ease with which their advantage can be observed

Now I realize this is getting a little deep, but stick with me.

I'll start with cellphones. This clever little gadget suddenly connected a country that never had widespread phone lines, or even paved roads. Suddenly, people were connected with those who were a 24 hour drive away! It allowed someone to talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime. It made life easier and (this is key) was immediately recognized and therefore became more likely to be adopted by society. The cellphone hits 4/4 of Diamond's prerequisites (#2 – The wealthier you are, the cooler your phone is) and most people would agree adopting the cellphone was the obvious answer. So why not the spoon?

What are the benefits of a spoon? It keeps your hands clean, and it helps prevent the spread of germs. Here we find our first problem. You can't see germs, and even to this day people will laugh at you if you tell them germs make you sick. Secondly, spoons don't offer an economic advantage over your hands, which are already free and available 24/7. Introducing the spoon introduced another cost to those who probably couldn't afford it. 1 or 2 spoons wasn't enough. What about the myriad of children, relatives and friends? Finally, spoons mean more dishes to wash and who needs that? Water is scarce enough as it is, even with modern pumps and wells. In my opinion, those who first tried spoons couldn't tell that it made any positive, immediate, or noticeable impacts, or if it did, it wasn't worth the price. Therefore, I argue that Guineans weren't receptive to spoons because it was an unwelcome technology whose advantage to this day has yet to be realized. In contrast, cellphones solved a huge problem and were adopted with relative ease.

So that is my answer. Whether or not you find it acceptable or insane is for you to decide. Hopefully, I didn't make it worse! And don't worry. Even though I can understand their side, I am 100% PRO SPOON.