holidays are not nearly as big a deal here as they are at home. this is the second day now that i've showed up to school only to find out that it is a holiday and there are apparently no classes. both times, the registrar of the school finds this out only minutes before i do and makes the executive decision to send everybody home. not that i'm complaining- its always a good suprise.
to celebrate, i decided to come into accra to use the highspeed internet and get course stuff sorted out. sadly, ive had absolutely no luck accessing the courses for this fall, and have spent most of my time creeping around on facebook and sending emails. the airconditioning and flush toilets are nice though... on a day where it feels like its a billion degrees out, this isnt too bad of a spot to be.
i just finished a really good week at school (even if it was a short one). we did a couple different teaching strategies this week to see if the kids would get more into the projects. the biggest hit was our trip to the CBW library, where they each got to pick out a book for the next week that they'd do a project on. they really never do stuff like this because they don't have textbooks and like i said, the major teaching strategy is drills and repetition. they were all super excited to get a book to read, and after they'd found one, they sat down in litte groups and read with each other. i've never seen them so quiet and focused. kind of cute...
the rest of the week i would assign different projects for their books (write the title, author, main characters and describe them etc). up until today, by recess the kids are normally so antsy and insane that i just let them go. this time, they worked PAST the recess bell. two of my boys asked if they could stay in and work and read some more. after recess, they kept asking to keep reading instead of doing environmental studies (normally a big hit). it was the greatest- i'm hoping that they don't loose interest in this project before the week with the books are up and that i dont run out of activities to do wth the books. its kind of mindblowing that nobody has done this with them before.. when i wrote a list of things i wanted them to find for me on the board, they all asked what title and character meant. Like everything here, its hard to know what is normal for grade 3s and what isn’t... i don’t know if its even fair to say that an idea of normal for them can even exist because they all come from such different backgrounds and have such different coping mechanisms, strengths and weaknesses
this week we also did a bit more work with their free writing (another thing they never do which completely blows me away). I have them do biography type projects, mainly for my own interest because it’s a cool way to get to know them a little bit. I’ve found that most of these guys are between 10-12 years old, meaning that if they were born in Liberia, they left the country when they were really young and don’t remember much of it at all. A couple of them were born in cote d’ivoire, missing Liberia all together (it was a transition country for a lot of people here). They will none the less go back to Liberia soon as Liberian citizens. I’ve got one kid leaving in the next few days.. hard to know when though because the UNHCR keeps making the process go faster and faster. They all say they’re pretty excited, but it still gives me such an uneasy feeling. As far as trauma type events go for these kids, I think luckily, they’re too young to remember the most awful stuff. We were watching the Patriot the other night with some kids peering through the window, and that got all this on my mind. Some of my neighbours who I’ve become pretty close with (a couple 14 – 16 year old boys) I think have seen a lot more than they let on…
I think my kids have to deal mostly with the repercussions of war and the family divides it has created. Its really common to hear about families where one parent is here, and the other is in either Liberia - because they didn’t make it out initially, or have already repatriated – or somewhere in the West. I guess because seeking refuge status is so hard, people just take what they can get. One of my girls is being raised by her siblings while her parents work in the US, sending remittances through Western Union and what not. Another guy, who works with CBW, hasn’t seen his wife in years because she managed to get refugee status in Australia. All of this obviously isn’t nearly as traumatizing as war, but I think it, and the effects it has on kids, flies under the radar at times.
Anyway. I should try to accomplish at least something productive today, so I’m going to work on uploading pictures.
On another note – I’m looking at doing this school funding thing soon. I’ve been talking with CBW (the $10 program) and I don’t know that its worth giving them money right now. It’s a wicked cause, its just that theyre winding down right now and preparing to move to Liberia and wont have a school there yet for at least a year. I’m now pushing the Hope Foundation.. it’s the one that sends people to computer college and other advanced programs fo $50- really beneficial for the people who get into it… It sets them up with a lot of job opportunities that pay pretty well back in Liberia. If people are interested, let me know maybe within the next few days so that I can start giving numbers to William, the guy who leads Hope. I’m sorry to people who have emailed me and I haven’t emailed back… internet time just seems to go by really quickly and by the time my hour is up, I always have so much more to do.
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