In honor of the holiday that no one in Africa understands, my friends and I decided to get away for the weekend. On Friday, I headed into Thies and caught a car with 6 other friends to Mbour, a city south of where I live on the coast. We returned to one of my new favorite places in Senegal - the Warang Distillery - where I had made a trip back in August. After spending the afternoon indulging in (free!) tastes of several local liqueurs, we grabbed another car and headed to Dakar. Thinking we would make it to Dakar early enough to have an extravagant Mexican fiesta at the regional house, it turned out we were too tired after spending almost 3 hours in traffic and smog.
We did however decide that beef taco salad is a perfectly appropriate breakfast so we stuffed our faces full of delicious Mexican things (courtesy of Mrs. Titche!) Saturday morning. After that it was off to softball were we continued the American indulgence with beer and nachos because really...how do you pass that up? Although we lost the game, fun was had by all - and I managed to hit the ball once. Huzzah. Saturday night we celebrated Halloween at our friends' apartment downtown and the fun continued until the wee hours.
Sunday we awoke to Halloween goodie bags (courtesy of Mrs. Titche again!). After almost going into a sugar coma, we had a delicious brunch downtown and then caught a car back to Pout/Thies. For some reason my immune system hates me lately, and I came down with a wicked sore throat almost immediately upon walking into my front door. Although I feel basically fine, I sound like a 82 year old chain smoker. It's lovely.
On to the point of this post: crazy donuts. This is how I would describe my class yesterday. Since Monday was All Saints' Day and Senegal feels the need to celebrate every Catholic holiday even though 95% of the population is Muslim, my Junior Achievement class was moved to yesterday. My Senegalese mom randomly asked me if she could come to the class and I was really excited that she was coming along...mostly because she's a strong Senegalese woman and can scare students into behaving (or at least I hoped that). I knew the regular 5th grade teacher had other obligations so I was a bit nervous about handling the class by myself. So, we showed up and everything appeared to be going smoothly. The class even stood up when we entered the room and said in unison "Good Afternoon Madame Khady." That was just weird and reminded me of my terrible Catholic school days in Texas.
The beginning of the lesson went well: we talked about the meaning of production and a product and the difference between unit production and assembly line production. Then I explained that we would be making "fake donuts" (i.e. little white circles of paper) in order to understand these concepts. I split up the class into 4 teams of 5 with the additional students being "inspectors". During the first round, the teams practiced the idea of unit production; each team member "made" the donut themselves by writing "flour", "egg", "sugar", and "milk" on one side of the white circle while coloring in brown (chocolate) or yellow (vanilla) on the other side of the circle. All 5 people on each team would work individually and try to make as many donuts as they could in 2 minutes and the inspectors would check their work at the end.
This led to utter chaos. The students definitely understood the goal of the assignment, but HOLY COW can they cheat! I was amazed at how completely complaisant they are to blatantly cheat right in front of me. I was literally running around the room grabbing markers out of hands and white circles off of desks because they would not stop after the 2 minutes were up. Then they would start cutting out circles from their own paper and try to make donuts under the desks or steal donuts from other teams. I mean, really. All the while my poor Senegalese mom is trying to command obedience and random neighborhood kids are throwing things in through the windows.
Round 2 was supposed to be a lesson on assembly line production. Instead of each student making an entire donut, each team of 5 would work together to make the donuts. The first person would write "flour", the second "sugar", the third "egg", the fourth "milk" and the last person on each team would color the opposite side. It took quite a while for them to understand that you have to pass the pieces of paper (I saw one girl trying to write "flour" as many times as she could on one side of one circle...it was cute). But...again. Utter chaos. Kids started erasing the numbers I had written down on the board keeping track of donut counts when my back was turned and I saw one kid try to write on somebody's face in brown marker. Crazy donuts!
By the end I was so hoarse from trying to talk over everyone with a sore throat I could barely speak at an audible level. When everyone had finally calmed down and I had erased all of the "production" numbers off the board so no one could accuse anyone else of cheating, I attempted to lay the smack down. I basically said that I would cancel the class if they continued to misbehave and completely disregard my authority. That seemed to quiet them down. There is no way I am holding another class next week without the teacher present.
On the flip side, I held the second weekly class today and it went much, much better. I learned from my mistakes and the class's atrocious behavior yesterday and told the class up front that I would not tolerate cheating or bad behavior (ugh...I just reminded myself of all those elementary and middle school teachers that used to seem so mean). There was still rampant cheating, but since today's class is a smaller group, it was manageable.
All I have to say is that I have so much respect for teachers, especially here in Senegal. I talked with the French professor that I live with and explained my astonishment at the level of cheating and she said it is one of the things that aggravates her the most. She said that Senegalese children are just brought up that way and that cheating is (sadly) very prevalent, especially in school. Not only do I not understand why this is, it is shocking to me that is so widely accepted. I won't even begin to try to figure that one out, but I certainly hope it changes for the better!
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