Education [Saturday, July 28]
Never have I witnessed such a fury of bargaining. Mariam was ruthless. She knew what the prices were supposed to be - her aunt sells cloth - and had even tried a few neighboring shops first, testing the prices. The sellers saw our - Jyoti, Dabney, Mags and myself - white skin and the prices jumped - but Mariam shot them right back down, repeating endlessly "de scool peking" - they're school children. We ended up not buying anything, as Mariam couldn't get the prices low enough, so we decided to just come back next week when we could buy more things and bargain harder - many of the things we wanted were sold out today anyways.
I had woken up to the usual pounding on my door, but it started raining as I was lacing up my shoes. Osman doesn't like running in the rain - it's too cold for him and as clothes never actually dry in the rainy season, you avoid getting wet at all costs - so we sat on my bed, talking and waiting for the rains to stop.
After an hour of waiting, I told Osman I needed to get some work done, so he left my room, head heavy with disappointment. He looked so sad...
I wrote out lesson plans for my final two weeks. It's so easy on paper to schedule out the classes, but in practice, it's next to impossible to actually make them happen. I'm hoping to finish up the family and self portrait pictures these next few days, having the students write reflections on their pictures I printed out. We'll use that material for the exhibition, mounting their writings - we'll probably have to type them out to make them legible - and pictures on their own poster. That will probably take us through the rest of this week, hopefully finishing up by Friday. I was hoping to go upcountry to Port Loko for a few days next week to visit the Red Cross rehabilitation center, but it doesn't look like that will happen as it will take too long for my students to prepare everything for the exhibition on August 5. If all goes well (by Sierra Leonean standards), a few of the students will do the "dream" section of my lesson plan, but as all six of the original student cameras I brought have gone missing, it will be rather difficult. However, Mags brought two more with her from London, so maybe we'll be able to pull it off.
The rain continued all day, although most of the students showed up anyways at iEARN, although not all the staff made it in. I handed out the students pictures - I've never seen some of those kids so happy. We did some writing about the photographs, but most of them wanted to take them home to finish, so I let them do so - I had asked them to write quite a bit. A few trickled in a little later, so I had to teach the class a second time. While I'm teaching photography, I've probably done more work with them on writing than on photography. Most of them have excellent oral english, but written - it's a bit rough at times. I'll put a list of prompts on the board - describe your picture, what do the details reveal, what is outside the picture that is important, your feelings -and ask them to write for twenty minutes about the picture. I'm just looking for page of free writing, but I usually get very formal responses that treat the prompts as questions which must be answered. Creative expression is simply not valued in the educational system here...
Mags, Jyoti and I took a taxi through the rain to Crown Bakery to exchange money. Usually I just give Mohamed a $100 bill (larger denominations get better rates) to exchange, but as I needed to pay for July and August at the YMCA, I had to exchange quite a bit. You can exchange money on the street, but only the Lebanese-owned stores will give you the actual Le 3000 : $1 rate. We couldn't resist the aromas emanating from the ovens, so we all had a cup of tea and a few croissants.
I was bringing my hard plastic shell camera case - it's the size of a small carry-on piece of luggage - back from iEARN, as I had been using it to lock up the cameras, but with no cameras left, there was no need to have it at the center anymore. The taxi driver kept getting upset whenever the case tapped against the window - I guess he thought the window would shatter from the impact. Personally, I wouldn't have minded too much, as a broken window would have provided some much needed ventilation - the taxi drivers turn the heat all the way up on the cars and close the windows when it's raining, so conditions in the interior quickly approach sauna-like temperatures. The Sierra Leoneans shiver, bundled up in winter coats and wool caps, while I sweat to death, wearing a short-sleeved shirt.
After returning from Crown, we went shopping in Victoria Park and PZ with Mariam. Mariam is Moses older sister who has been helping Tamara with her research. After barely surviving the war, Mariam was able to scavenge enough money from working and from relatives to bribe the scholarship officials at Jallah - the second largest university in SL. While that sounds incredibly unethical to a Western mindset, that's simply how admissions work here in Salone - and if she hadn't done so, she never would have been able to go to university despite having near-perfect marks (grades) in secondary school. She finished up at Jalloh and is hoping to be able to go abroad to the UK for graduate study, as the British Council has a few scholarships for such study...although even such foreign scholarships are not immune to corruption. One of the three British scholarships this year went to theson of one of the government ministers, who certainly doesn't need it - ministers are some of the wealthiest people in the country, driving around the city in motorcades of brand new luxury SUV's.
I bought a few yards of cloth - it's about Le 3000 for one yard. I stopped by Mohamed's egg stall - he hadn't sold any eggs in the last two days as the rains had been too heavy. I bought a dozen from him and gave them to Mama, who scrambled them up into a fantastical egg and potato dish. So good. It was Tamara's last night at Mama's - she's leaving on Monday - and as going away present for Mama and Mariama she had made them CD of her native Australian music...Men at Work's "Land Down Under" was a fantastical escape from 8 weeks of Sierra Leonean hip-hop.
To celebrate Tamara's last night, we all went out to Lagoonda, which Lonely Planet describes as a "slick disco." I'll have an entire post about it, as Lagoonda simply cannot mesh with the Sierra Leone I know, but you'll have to wait until I have more time to write about it.
I apologize for falling behind in my posts, life has been rather hectic the last few days, preparing for the exhibition this weekend and elections the next…will catch up eventually.
I had woken up to the usual pounding on my door, but it started raining as I was lacing up my shoes. Osman doesn't like running in the rain - it's too cold for him and as clothes never actually dry in the rainy season, you avoid getting wet at all costs - so we sat on my bed, talking and waiting for the rains to stop.
After an hour of waiting, I told Osman I needed to get some work done, so he left my room, head heavy with disappointment. He looked so sad...
I wrote out lesson plans for my final two weeks. It's so easy on paper to schedule out the classes, but in practice, it's next to impossible to actually make them happen. I'm hoping to finish up the family and self portrait pictures these next few days, having the students write reflections on their pictures I printed out. We'll use that material for the exhibition, mounting their writings - we'll probably have to type them out to make them legible - and pictures on their own poster. That will probably take us through the rest of this week, hopefully finishing up by Friday. I was hoping to go upcountry to Port Loko for a few days next week to visit the Red Cross rehabilitation center, but it doesn't look like that will happen as it will take too long for my students to prepare everything for the exhibition on August 5. If all goes well (by Sierra Leonean standards), a few of the students will do the "dream" section of my lesson plan, but as all six of the original student cameras I brought have gone missing, it will be rather difficult. However, Mags brought two more with her from London, so maybe we'll be able to pull it off.
The rain continued all day, although most of the students showed up anyways at iEARN, although not all the staff made it in. I handed out the students pictures - I've never seen some of those kids so happy. We did some writing about the photographs, but most of them wanted to take them home to finish, so I let them do so - I had asked them to write quite a bit. A few trickled in a little later, so I had to teach the class a second time. While I'm teaching photography, I've probably done more work with them on writing than on photography. Most of them have excellent oral english, but written - it's a bit rough at times. I'll put a list of prompts on the board - describe your picture, what do the details reveal, what is outside the picture that is important, your feelings -and ask them to write for twenty minutes about the picture. I'm just looking for page of free writing, but I usually get very formal responses that treat the prompts as questions which must be answered. Creative expression is simply not valued in the educational system here...
Mags, Jyoti and I took a taxi through the rain to Crown Bakery to exchange money. Usually I just give Mohamed a $100 bill (larger denominations get better rates) to exchange, but as I needed to pay for July and August at the YMCA, I had to exchange quite a bit. You can exchange money on the street, but only the Lebanese-owned stores will give you the actual Le 3000 : $1 rate. We couldn't resist the aromas emanating from the ovens, so we all had a cup of tea and a few croissants.
I was bringing my hard plastic shell camera case - it's the size of a small carry-on piece of luggage - back from iEARN, as I had been using it to lock up the cameras, but with no cameras left, there was no need to have it at the center anymore. The taxi driver kept getting upset whenever the case tapped against the window - I guess he thought the window would shatter from the impact. Personally, I wouldn't have minded too much, as a broken window would have provided some much needed ventilation - the taxi drivers turn the heat all the way up on the cars and close the windows when it's raining, so conditions in the interior quickly approach sauna-like temperatures. The Sierra Leoneans shiver, bundled up in winter coats and wool caps, while I sweat to death, wearing a short-sleeved shirt.
After returning from Crown, we went shopping in Victoria Park and PZ with Mariam. Mariam is Moses older sister who has been helping Tamara with her research. After barely surviving the war, Mariam was able to scavenge enough money from working and from relatives to bribe the scholarship officials at Jallah - the second largest university in SL. While that sounds incredibly unethical to a Western mindset, that's simply how admissions work here in Salone - and if she hadn't done so, she never would have been able to go to university despite having near-perfect marks (grades) in secondary school. She finished up at Jalloh and is hoping to be able to go abroad to the UK for graduate study, as the British Council has a few scholarships for such study...although even such foreign scholarships are not immune to corruption. One of the three British scholarships this year went to theson of one of the government ministers, who certainly doesn't need it - ministers are some of the wealthiest people in the country, driving around the city in motorcades of brand new luxury SUV's.
I bought a few yards of cloth - it's about Le 3000 for one yard. I stopped by Mohamed's egg stall - he hadn't sold any eggs in the last two days as the rains had been too heavy. I bought a dozen from him and gave them to Mama, who scrambled them up into a fantastical egg and potato dish. So good. It was Tamara's last night at Mama's - she's leaving on Monday - and as going away present for Mama and Mariama she had made them CD of her native Australian music...Men at Work's "Land Down Under" was a fantastical escape from 8 weeks of Sierra Leonean hip-hop.
To celebrate Tamara's last night, we all went out to Lagoonda, which Lonely Planet describes as a "slick disco." I'll have an entire post about it, as Lagoonda simply cannot mesh with the Sierra Leone I know, but you'll have to wait until I have more time to write about it.
I apologize for falling behind in my posts, life has been rather hectic the last few days, preparing for the exhibition this weekend and elections the next…will catch up eventually.
posted by Paul at
11:41 AM
1 Comments:
time don don & sad to be gon
g'luck with the exhibition
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