First Day of School!

My bike is fixed so I rode it to school this morning. I got there around 6:45 since my proviseur said to arrive before the flag raising ceremony at 7am. Not a person in sight for about a half an hour. I was beginning to wonder if this was a big joke and school was going to start the next day. But then the vice principal turned up around 7:15 and by 7:30 most of the teachers were there. Classes were supposed to begin at 7:30, but there were no students at all. Then they rang the bell (banged on a huge rusty pot, that is wedged in a tree) and a bunch of kids materialized. So finally they got the flag up, sang the anthem and the proviseur gave a speech … but by this time it had started to rain. Fortunatly my first class was supposed to be two hours, since we ended up just starting an hour late I just had them for one hour instead but still got to meet with them.

All these stories about classes full of upwards of 100 students, I had 8 kids in my premiere class and 9 in my seconde. I just went through the program today, made class rules, discussed grading etc. The kids were absolutely delightful and definitely knew some English. I’m guessing that’s cause these are the 8 that took the time to show up, they’re probably the most interested. Apparently more and more kids will continue to show up each day as they return from vacation, so we’ll see.

Additionally, my curtains are up! Liz had extra stuff in her house that the previous volunteer had left so she gave me a rug, a mattress and a seat. I also moved my trunk into the living room so it could be a little table. So I’m much happier now that my house is becoming inhabitable. Let’s see, I had a pretty interesting weekend:

Saturday, I thought I was going on a walk with Agnes and Majoua at 9am. We ended up hiking up the side of a mountain, making and eating couscous and braiding my hair. I’m not really sure how all of this happened, I thought I was supposed to be working on my lesson plans. It poured rain all morning, so they turned up around 11. Then we followed this route, weaving in and out of yards/compounds etc. until we got to this mostly dried up river bank. There we somehow jumped across the puddles, trekked through a cornfield and then started legit rockclimbing. It didn’t look so big at first but it certainly tired me out. I guess I don’t have the energy of these fifteen year olds… made me feel kind of old. It was a really beautiful view from the top, I’m so mad I didn’t have my camera with me. Going down was borderline terrifying. Their strategy was to all hold hands, which I think they were doing to support me cause I was wobbling all around and I was in sneakers while they were wearing flip-flops, I don’t know how they did it.

After that they brought over some flour and were like let’s make couscous. Couscous and sauce is a traditional meal here. Before I would have said it was just water and flour, but now after having made it, I can definitely confirm that that is all it is. The sauce actually has lots of ingredients in it, tomatoes, onions, meat, piedmont, salt, ginger, garlic, a special ingredient that the importance was stressed but I forget the name of. Anyways it’s sort of an elaborate procedure to make this whole meal and the couscous is pretty much like glue so it sticks to the pot and it’s difficult to clean so somehow during this whole cleanup process the hairbraiding got started. They wanted me to keep it in for school starting but I took it out this morning cause it got kind of messed up after sleeping on it. Then Saturday night I broke fast with my Muslim neighbor by drinking booyay (this is definitely spelled wrong but that’s how it sounds). It’s sort of like hot milk with ground up rice meal and peanuts in it. It was really good.

The girls told me that church started at 7am on Sunday. I thought this was pretty early, but figured I wasn’t doing anything crazy Saturday night anyways. But then my neighbor said no it starts at 8am. So I went at 7am to check it out and there was nobody there so I went home. I returned at 8 and there were some kids chilling out in the seats. The church is actually outdoors , there’s all these stone stools that face a big stone wall that hides the sun and has the alter in front, its very beautiful. Finally around 8:30 a bell rang 3 times and then everyone turned up and processed together from the entry way to the “inside” of the church. It was really cool. They said the mass in French and translated it into at least 2 other languages during the service. There was a choir singing really nice songs. And everyone decked out in their best outfits or a Cameroonian football jersey. There’s a French couple who just arrived to teach at the grammar school in the mission and they brought their two little girls with them. I think they’re actually sort of my neighbors but I didn’t really get a chance to talk to them because all the teachers from the school found me right after the mass. Turns out, there isn’t really a start time, its just whenever the priest is ready, they ring the bell three times and then everyone comes. So, I’ll need to get used to this whole bell system.