|
The
workweek started off unusually – on a Monday! I don’t know that I will have
too much difficulty adjusting, but it seems that the Mauritanians will. In
fact on Monday while I was waiting with a group of people for a meeting to
begin, one of the participants told me, “People will find it hard to work
from 8 to 5.”
I reminded him that even before this change was made in the workweek that
8:00 was the beginning of official office hours, and that people didn’t
show up at that time anyway.
“And they didn’t stay until 4:00, either,” he added.
So I wanted to know, if they didn’t show up at 8:00 and didn’t
stay until 4:00, what difference would it make that the hours have been
increased to 5:00 in the afternoon? They’re still not staying – they’re
just not staying until a different time!
The next question
had to do with how people will deal with the fact that there used to be
work on Sunday, that Monday through Thursday remains the same, and now
there is half a day on Friday. How do you squeeze five workdays into four
and a half?
In asking around about this issue, I have found that in many cases, one of
two different solutions has been applied. In some instances, the Sunday
schedule becomes the Monday schedule, and everything ripples down through
the week. There are times, though, when Monday through Thursday schedules
remain intact and the Sunday schedule becomes the Friday schedule.
This still does not address the problem created by the fact that both
Sunday and Thursday used to be full days of work, whereas Friday is now
half a day. One person told me that at his school, the classes that used to
be held on Sunday afternoon are now held on Friday afternoon after 4:00.
Other people tell me that classes are just being fit in where they can.
The high school in Nouadhibou where one of our PC English teachers works
has a different – and puzzling – solution altogether. Up there, all classes
that used to be taught on Sunday are now taught on Saturday. Their
two days off a week now consist of Sunday and the afternoons of both Wednesday
and Friday.
How is all this going to affect me, teaching at three distinct institutions
that may have totally different approaches to making the shift?
As for NEC, they asked me to change my 5:00 – 7:00 Tuesday class to 6:00 –
8:00 on Wednesday, so it looks like they are taking the domino approach.
I was on my way to ISERI last Wednesday when I received a call from Bedine,
telling me not to come in because they were still doing some sort of
testing. He explained that my computer-based English class will resume next
week and he closed the conversation by saying, “See you next Wednesday.”
Later in the day I called him back to confirm the day. Yes, that class will
remain on Wednesdays.
My Thursday morning American Civilization class at ENS will shift to Friday
morning. The class last week was cancelled because there is a group of
American teachers visiting now. The class for this week will not
take place because of the holiday Id el-Mawlud el-Nebewi (described in the
post of 5.3.2004). That brings us to Friday the 29th, for the next session.
I did visit my students at ENS this week; I explain that later on in the
post.
*****
At noon on Monday I went to IGEN for our meeting of the Syllabi Re-Writing
Committee, to work on the final revision of the Integration and Remediation
Guide for the third year of teaching English. As the guide states, its goal
is: “At the end of the third year, the student will be able to produce a
text both in speech and writing, in a meaningful situation on some familiar
topics (talking about present, past, and future situations).” That sounds
sufficiently vague, don’t you think?
The director of the project is Aïchetou, and she gave me the only existing
copy of the thirty-page document that they have created so far. The cover
sheet listed the meetings that they have had since the sixteenth of January
on writing this syllabus. I could see from the schedule that this was now
the sixth and final week of the project.
I asked why they hadn’t told me that they had already held five weeks of
meetings on this; I could have attended some of the sessions. I also asked
if Kristen had attended, and Aïchetou replied, “Sometimes.” (Strictly
speaking, Kristen is posted to this agency, IGEN, while I am posted to IPN.
But we both work on the projects in both places.)
Aïchetou handed me the document. I noted that there is but one
document being shared, looked at, read from, corrected, and discussed among
five people working on it. I opined that it would be convenient if
each person had his own to refer to, which would eliminate the need to pass
around this single copy. “No paper,” said Aïchetou.
I commandeered the papers in order to do some proofreading. Most of the
work was done surprisingly well, and the only corrections I needed to make
were along the lines of British spellings (“colours,” “practising,”) and
terms (“fortnight,” “penfriend”). When I pointed out their phrase “subject/verb
accordance,” only one person had ever heard of it as “agreement” instead of
“accordance.”
I corrected “organise” and “capitalise” to put the “z” where the “s” had
been, causing one person to remark, “Oh, yes, the zed,” to which I
explained that we don’t say “zed,” but “zee.” He said, “Yes, Americans say
either “zed” or “zee,” and was quite surprised when I told him that no, we
do not say either “zed” or “zee” – just “zee.”
It’s a good thing I knew that “inverted commas” referred to quotation
marks. Otherwise I’d have just thought that they were punctuation marks
with their tails up.
Almost every correction was a cause to begin a discussion and take a poll
to see not only (A) how many people knew that point or not but (B) whether
they should honor corrections suggested by this guy who has been speaking
English as a result of his one visit to the United States that lasted only
fifty-six years.
One of the lengthiest discussions was about a lesson that begins with this
scenario: “When visiting a site you come across an English speaking tourist
who is planning to visit Nouakchott.”
I wanted to know, What do you mean by “visiting a site”? They told
me that they meant a website. I explained to them that you do not
meet people at websites. I understand that they are trying to make the book
current and relevant, but it also has to be factually correct. I suggested
the possibility of “meeting” in a chat room. In the end, they decided to go
with obtaining an e-mail address from a friend.
Further along in this same example, the visitor comes to Mauritania and
asks for somebody who speaks English to take him to “the attractive sites
to visit in Nouakchott.”
In this case, the “sites” they were talking about were in the city.
Grammatically speaking, there is nothing wrong with the sentence, of
course, but I tried to be subtle and suggest that the word “attractive” be
substituted with another word. I offered “useful” as one possibility.
Aïchetou pushed the issue and wanted to know what was wrong with the word “attractive.”
I didn’t want to say it if I didn’t have to, but as long as she asked me I
wanted to know from her, What attractive sites are there in Nouakchott?
“Well…
hmmm....” Aïchetou pondered the question. “There is the museum.”
It’s a small and not-very-exciting museum, but, sure, why not concede that
Nouakchott has an attractive museum? No harm in that. What else?
“The market,” she said.
Aïchetou didn’t specify which market, but that doesn’t matter. The
markets here are filthy. Some of them may be less dirty than others,
but “attractive” doesn’t mean “less dirty,” does it? In the end, we changed
“attractive” to “interesting.”
It wasn’t until the next day, when I was relating this session to one of
the other volunteers, that she thought perhaps the original writers had
meant to write about the “attractions” in Nouakchott, which would make
sense! (Just this morning, I mentioned this possibility to the group. They
decided that, no, they didn’t mean “attractions.” What did ensue, however,
was a digression about how an attraction is not necessarily attractive.
If nothing else, they are fine-tuning their English vocabulary.)
After I had a chance to review the contents of the proposed third year
syllabus, I expressed some concern that I had with regard to the March
meeting at IPN with Gérard from Belgium, who said that the first-year book
was too ambitious, trying to pack in more information than the students
will be able to handle. That would undoubtedly have a ripple effect on the
second book, which would, in turn, have its impact on the third. So I
wanted them to be aware of what had transpired.
They told me not to worry – that the second book was less dense. Then they
offered me a little insight on how it came to be that Gérard arrived at his
conclusion that what we had done in the first book was too ambitious: he
had been working under the misconception that first-year English students
took two two-hour English classes per week for learning the material. It
only recently came to light that there is only one two-hour class
weekly during first year English!
At the end of the week of working together, Kristen’s counterpart “H”
turned to me and said, “You will remember and miss so much this dirty
country.”
In some ways, I am sure that he is correct.
Today we were to have a final meeting that never happened. Four of us
showed up, sat around for a while, talked, and then the meeting disbanded.
One of the members of the group, Diba, a high school English teacher,
offered to drive me home. On the way to his car he said to me, “This is so
difficult. People are not taking seriously their commitment to their job.”
He, too, is correct.
*****
On Monday I saw my APCD at the PC office and he told me that he was going
out of town on the first of two back-to-back missions the following
morning. He asked me to go to the ENS, arrange a meeting there with Toumbo,
my supervisor, and the directeur des études, and see what their
needs are concerning the possibility of a Peace Corps Volunteer to replace
me when I leave.
I thought it was a bit odd, asking me to do that, since he is the
administrator from the PC here, but went ahead and contacted my supervisor,
who works not only at ENS but also at NEC. (I found out just this weekend,
when I relayed this story to Jessica, that it is common to ask PCVs to be
involved in what they call site evaluations. The PCV doesn’t necessarily
have any authority in making assignments or changes to sites, but the PC
does consider what we have to say.)
While I had Toumbo on the phone to talk about arranging this meeting, he
told me that I would not be meeting with my class this coming Thursday
because there are some visiting American teachers in town (as explained
above) and they are having two weeks of classes with all the English
students at ENS.
Several months ago, Toumbo had told me that they would be coming, but he
was vague about the time of the visit and then never informed me when they
arrived. I decided to check out the scene on Thursday morning by trying to
see the directeur des études as well as finding out what these
teachers were up to.
When I told him why
we needed this meeting – to see about the needs for another possible PCV to
replace me when I leave this summer – he said to me, “You cannot be
leaving! We do not accept that!”
On Thursday morning, as I walked through the campus gate, I saw the directeur
des études talking with a group of people. I thought I would start
right there, as long as he was visible and not off-campus or in a meeting.
He was quick to reply that he would like to have a volunteer to teach
American Civilization again next year, as well as classes in literature and
linguistics.
That done, I was off to the classroom, where I found an energetic and
enthusiastic teacher in front of the large group of English students. There
are four women and one man, all retired teachers, who are here under the
auspices of an organization called Global Involvement Through Education.
The woman I spoke to said that twice a year she takes these two-week teaching
trips to developing countries. She has assembled an impressive manual and
other resources that she uses.
When I got back to the bureau later in the day, I sent an e-mail to my
APCD, explaining the possible need for a new PCV at ENS during the
2005-2006 academic year. After I recounted what the directeur des études
had told me, I couldn’t resist putting in my two ouguiya worth,
namely that I thought it would be a much more rewarding (not to mention much
less frustrating) position for a PCV to be at ENS than it would be to post
somebody to replace me at IPN. It has been a joy working with these
motivated students who will soon become English teachers all over the
country.
In the event that somebody is going to be needed as a native English
speaker to contribute to the work on the new English books as they
progress, why not simply make proofreading of the textbooks a secondary
project for this person? At least s/he will be engaged in more rewarding
work for a majority of the time.
I have no idea how my APCD will view this or even if he has the ability to
make such a change. I understand it takes quite a bit of work to make any
alterations to the way Volunteers are posted to their various government
agencies. This means that he may even agree with my suggestion but it may
take a year or more to get it to happen.
*****
I got a call from my bank in the middle of the week. An officer wanted to
know exactly what kind of problem I was having with the ATM. It took me a
while to figure out what he was talking about. I explained that there was
no problem, that the only problem I had was many months ago – maybe even as
long as a year ago..
He told me that he had seen a note that I had deposited in the suggestion
box inside the bank building. When I put it into the box, I was under the
erroneous impression that the contents of the box were emptied and read on
a regular basis.
I guess that doing something annually is a regular basis!
*****
Babah paid a visit on Saturday afternoon. He has been doing quite well
lately. After being jobless because he was overworked at the supermarket,
he found a job related to the French embassy. I could not work out if he is
at the embassy itself or working for people who work at the embassy.
In addition to that, he is taking computer classes in the afternoons after
work. He is learning how to type and navigate the computer for the first
time, as well as improving his French.
In any event, his job consists mostly of running errands and doing other
jobs as needed. One of his functions has to do with buying merchandise for
people. He told me that one couple had been quoted a price of 200,000 ouguiya
for a washing machine and that with his help they were able to buy it for
120,000. They had been originally told that a refrigerator would cost
120,000, but he got it for 70,000. He seems to be earning his keep that
way.
He has also been touring people around town and around the country as the
need shows itself. On a few such occasions, he has been able to engage the
services of his brother Taleb, who owns a car.
He still stays most of the time with his family in Toujounine, but his pay
includes a room provided at a house with a family and he can use it
whenever he wants to – even live there full-time. He gets all his meals and
he can use the family’s washing machine for his clothes.
He was vague about
exactly how much money he is earning, but he did say that it was the same
as the supermarket. The biggest improvement between that job and this, of
course, is that there are many fewer work hours on this one.
He and his siblings are making some progress in buying their share of the
family home from the older siblings who do not live in it but want their
portion of the inheritance. He has helped to raise the 1,600,000 ouguiya
that they have paid out so far, leaving a balance of 1,400,000.
*****
I got to meet my webmaster this morning. He is Brian, the father of PCV
Molly, who has just arrived for a two-week visit in Mauritania.
It’s possible that Brian will not be able to post for me while he is here,
so if you see that the website is not being updated as usual, that is the
reason. Please wait until he gets back to the USA in early May, and then
you will be able to catch up.
Alternatively, you could always send me an e-mail and ask me to send you my
latest post as an attachment.
|
