In a previous blog I mentioned the lesson on family roles, but didn’t explain it that well. But I think it would be worth explaining.
Basically, the school used to run on the Egyptian curriculum, with a view to possibly taking IGCSEs at the end of schooling life. However, last year it was becoming apparent that there were two problems with this: the first is that IGCSEs are prohibitively expensive for a school that can barely afford textbooks. The second is that IGCSEs are actually more limiting because in a Sudanese university they would not count because they have not followed the Sudanese curriculum. In the west, however, Sudanese qualifications are accepted as equivalent to the British and American ones if a supplementary test is taken.
So it seemed a fairly logical decision to switch to the Sudanese curriculum. One key downside to this was that the school year had to switch from the British September-July format to the Sudanese May-February format (the Sudanese method keeps exams out of the scorching summer). So the school year which started in September 2008 restarted in May 2009 but with the new curriculum.
This means that Sudanese course content obviously has to be taught, and the most significant impact of this is in science, where part of the course involves learning family roles, but even more significantly, and more difficult for the school to handle, is the prominent involvement of Allah in some science textbooks. One exam question actually asked something along the lines of: ‘If we want to understand how Allah has made the world so great, where do we look?’ Unfortunately, no mark scheme was provided, so no one actually knows, which isn’t that helpful.
Things are complicated by the fact that in fact the curriculum in Sudan offers two options – either a Muslim one or another Christian one. So every time a lesson has to cover content that features religion, classes will have to split into the Muslims and Christians so they can each be taught their respective beliefs. Previously religion was not allowed anywhere near the classroom because the Egyptian curriculum specified either Islam or nothing (or there would be trouble, which the school has plenty of without adding extra problems). Our school previously opted for the nothing option, although I did once find some kids colouring in pictures of Adam and Eve the first time I was here.
The last two days have been relatively boring at school – today, for example, I spent four hours invigilating. It felt bizarre having been the invigilatee (?) only a few weeks ago. A surfeit of volunteers meant that at one point there were four invigilators for about twenty kids. We had them covered! They had their English test this morning which unfortunately it seems they all duly flopped. This, the teacher blamed on them not studying, although I have seen huge pedagogical flaws in the teaching methods used for English grammar, about which I am powerless to change meaningfully (I may blog in more detail about this at some point).
Fundamentally though, the curriculum will probably have benefits – disadvantages like this are to be expected in the kind of context that this education is happening in. But the better pathway to meaningful qualifications is surely a positive, along with the fact that these won’t break the bank. I think money shouldn’t be an object to any qualification in the first place, and so in an opportunistic but mildly relevant sidenote, I will now slate tuition fees: we have to pay to be educated at university? That doesn’t make sense at any level, whether it’s a school for refugees in Egypt, or a university in the western world. Even if we can’t share the nature of the curriculum on many levels, I guess that’s something I can conclude that both do share. Education should be free. Boom! And that’s my parting shot.
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Sunday, 5 July 2009
McCairo
‘He went to the wrong McDonald’s.’
The fact that this sentence was said in Cairo can tell you a lot about the world we live in. It tells us something about just how ubiquitous it has become – a point of bright colours and American food/values which stands out against whatever background it is placed internationally, drawing customers eager to emulate Americans and the American way of life.
But before I elaborate, allow me to place this quote in context. On Saturday evening I had two choices – either go out with my American flatmate to an Independence Day party, or go to an authentic Sudanese meal with someone who I met back in 2007 during my first time in Cairo. I was put off the former partially because it seemed less culturally unique, but also when it was pointed out to me that as an Anglo-Japanese person, they would have two reasons to dislike me – the Revolution and Pearl Harbor. In fact, the only way it could be any worse is if I was a Muslim. So I think it’s fairly predictable for you to guess that I went to the Sudanese meal.
I was instructed to meet at 5pm outside McDonald’s, from where we would head to the Sudanese meal. If ever there was a stark contrast of Western and African food, this would be it. As I heard the instructions to meet there in my mind, I visualised it in my mind – I could see the Golden Arches set against that red backdrop, standing out against what is otherwise a relatively dull area. It seemed a good place to meet – very distinguishable at least. And so I dutifully made my way to stand outside that McDonald’s for 5pm. I hung around a bit, and no one else seemed to be there. Then, my mobile went off:
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m outside McDonald’s ...’
‘You most certainly are not!’
It transpired that unfortunately I had had the wrong McDonald’s in mind – hence the above quote given in explanation when I had rushed to the right one sheepishly. And so once we had all made our way past Pizza Hut, KFC and Costa Coffee, we got to our host’s house and ate. The food was great, and refreshingly different.
But McDonald’s influence over my evening was not over yet! Our host’s young son (a delightful boy) had a bunch of cars of all different sizes and shapes. But one stood out to me. It was bright yellow and appeared to be being driven a clown. Ronald McDonald to be precise. Stacked in it were bright yellow chips, a hamburger, and a cup with the Golden Arches emblazoned on them. Even here there was no escape from that infamous yellow M.
Its omnipresence helped me to come up with a (definitely not academic) definition of developing countries after my first visit to Cairo. A developing country is one where it is more expensive to eat in McDonald’s than it is to eat local food, whereas in a developed country, McDonald’s is cheaper than local food. So whereas in England, McDonald’s is a cheap option, in Egypt, McDonald’s holds a status such that Egyptians will actually dress up to go there, a proud father perhaps, paying for his family to engage in what I suppose could be called an American Daydream. It’s hard for us to imagine dressing up smart for McDonald’s, but because of this it helps us see the cultural crevasse that can divide even a globalised world.
I don’t want to simply use McDonald’s as an easy target (since there are no end of other valid targets). But in the same way that its logo’s prominence almost defines its successful business model, it can also form the basis of its criticism. My Third World Law almost seems like a counter to Friedman’s Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention – the law (which was, I should emphasise, even tongue-in-cheek for him) that no two countries with McDonald’s in them have ever gone to war against each other. It’s not true by the way (for example, Israel’s war with Lebanon, 2006). But more importantly, whereas Friedman uses McDonald’s as a logo defining globalised business leading to globalised freedom and peace, I am using it as an example of globalised business leading to globalised divides between the developed and developing world.
You could start to defend McDonald’s and many of the Western companies in Egypt by pointing out that they go out of their way to over employ people so that wages can be spread around more, rather than being concentrated to a few lucky people. I don’t want to draw conclusions that are too swift or monotonous, but these are very significant and interesting issues! At the very least, it’s a lot of discussion for a simple geographical mistake. Food for thought I guess! I just hope it’s not fast food!
This blog will resume its normal intellectual vapidity as soon as possible.
The fact that this sentence was said in Cairo can tell you a lot about the world we live in. It tells us something about just how ubiquitous it has become – a point of bright colours and American food/values which stands out against whatever background it is placed internationally, drawing customers eager to emulate Americans and the American way of life.
But before I elaborate, allow me to place this quote in context. On Saturday evening I had two choices – either go out with my American flatmate to an Independence Day party, or go to an authentic Sudanese meal with someone who I met back in 2007 during my first time in Cairo. I was put off the former partially because it seemed less culturally unique, but also when it was pointed out to me that as an Anglo-Japanese person, they would have two reasons to dislike me – the Revolution and Pearl Harbor. In fact, the only way it could be any worse is if I was a Muslim. So I think it’s fairly predictable for you to guess that I went to the Sudanese meal.
I was instructed to meet at 5pm outside McDonald’s, from where we would head to the Sudanese meal. If ever there was a stark contrast of Western and African food, this would be it. As I heard the instructions to meet there in my mind, I visualised it in my mind – I could see the Golden Arches set against that red backdrop, standing out against what is otherwise a relatively dull area. It seemed a good place to meet – very distinguishable at least. And so I dutifully made my way to stand outside that McDonald’s for 5pm. I hung around a bit, and no one else seemed to be there. Then, my mobile went off:
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m outside McDonald’s ...’
‘You most certainly are not!’
It transpired that unfortunately I had had the wrong McDonald’s in mind – hence the above quote given in explanation when I had rushed to the right one sheepishly. And so once we had all made our way past Pizza Hut, KFC and Costa Coffee, we got to our host’s house and ate. The food was great, and refreshingly different.
But McDonald’s influence over my evening was not over yet! Our host’s young son (a delightful boy) had a bunch of cars of all different sizes and shapes. But one stood out to me. It was bright yellow and appeared to be being driven a clown. Ronald McDonald to be precise. Stacked in it were bright yellow chips, a hamburger, and a cup with the Golden Arches emblazoned on them. Even here there was no escape from that infamous yellow M.
Its omnipresence helped me to come up with a (definitely not academic) definition of developing countries after my first visit to Cairo. A developing country is one where it is more expensive to eat in McDonald’s than it is to eat local food, whereas in a developed country, McDonald’s is cheaper than local food. So whereas in England, McDonald’s is a cheap option, in Egypt, McDonald’s holds a status such that Egyptians will actually dress up to go there, a proud father perhaps, paying for his family to engage in what I suppose could be called an American Daydream. It’s hard for us to imagine dressing up smart for McDonald’s, but because of this it helps us see the cultural crevasse that can divide even a globalised world.
I don’t want to simply use McDonald’s as an easy target (since there are no end of other valid targets). But in the same way that its logo’s prominence almost defines its successful business model, it can also form the basis of its criticism. My Third World Law almost seems like a counter to Friedman’s Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention – the law (which was, I should emphasise, even tongue-in-cheek for him) that no two countries with McDonald’s in them have ever gone to war against each other. It’s not true by the way (for example, Israel’s war with Lebanon, 2006). But more importantly, whereas Friedman uses McDonald’s as a logo defining globalised business leading to globalised freedom and peace, I am using it as an example of globalised business leading to globalised divides between the developed and developing world.
You could start to defend McDonald’s and many of the Western companies in Egypt by pointing out that they go out of their way to over employ people so that wages can be spread around more, rather than being concentrated to a few lucky people. I don’t want to draw conclusions that are too swift or monotonous, but these are very significant and interesting issues! At the very least, it’s a lot of discussion for a simple geographical mistake. Food for thought I guess! I just hope it’s not fast food!
This blog will resume its normal intellectual vapidity as soon as possible.
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Windows onto life ...
Today was a very stressful day, although for once it has nothing to do with the school (not that it is a pain to go to the school at all!). And the cause of all this stress?
My computer broke. And when I say broke, I mean seriously broke. Although it got better again.
In the morning it was fine, and as with yesterday I brought it in for the Lion King rehearsal (it’s effectively the technical desk, which will cause a problem when it is in England on the performance day, but I’m sure we’ll work our way around that somehow!).
Unfortunately, when I turned it on I was welcomed by a screen saying ‘Operating system could not be found’. Uh-oh. That’s not small fry – that’s the kind of ‘fry’ you get when you crack an egg in the desert! We couldn’t even get it into BIOS, which is the most basic of basic layers of a computer’s software (it stands for Basic Input Output System).
I decided that I must have accidentally bashed something out of place inside the computer, so proceeded to try and fix the problem by bashing it back, or as I’d prefer to say, using percussive maintenance. This did not work. Which is probably not surprising.
The alternative explanation I could come up with was that it might have something to do with the Egyptian USB stick that I plugged into my computer yesterday only for my anti-virus detected 140 viruses lurking in the dark depths of its data – although I cleansed it instantly of all these.
Anyway, I managed to get hold of the St Andrew’s computer whizz, and we took out the hard drive and managed to get my crucial data off onto his computer running Windows 7. ‘So much better than Vista,’ he noted, ‘but they stole some things from Mac.’
This at least meant that the hard drive itself was fine, so we dumped it back in for him to attempt to fix the computer again. ‘It might work now,’ he ventured. I pressed the On button. And it did! Oh mercy! Oh thank you God!! I was SO relieved I can barely express it in words.
Computers are both blissful and baneful things. The irony is, if I’d not been able to get it working again, I’d have ended up borrowing an old Mac which I had just updated the software on for someone else and used it instead. Just like at home. That particular Mac is years old and still going strong. St Andrew’s’ computer whizz, on the other hand, recommended I buy a new computer to replace this one. Perhaps, but my bank account will need to lose its depressingly dark red shading first ...
My computer broke. And when I say broke, I mean seriously broke. Although it got better again.
In the morning it was fine, and as with yesterday I brought it in for the Lion King rehearsal (it’s effectively the technical desk, which will cause a problem when it is in England on the performance day, but I’m sure we’ll work our way around that somehow!).
Unfortunately, when I turned it on I was welcomed by a screen saying ‘Operating system could not be found’. Uh-oh. That’s not small fry – that’s the kind of ‘fry’ you get when you crack an egg in the desert! We couldn’t even get it into BIOS, which is the most basic of basic layers of a computer’s software (it stands for Basic Input Output System).
I decided that I must have accidentally bashed something out of place inside the computer, so proceeded to try and fix the problem by bashing it back, or as I’d prefer to say, using percussive maintenance. This did not work. Which is probably not surprising.
The alternative explanation I could come up with was that it might have something to do with the Egyptian USB stick that I plugged into my computer yesterday only for my anti-virus detected 140 viruses lurking in the dark depths of its data – although I cleansed it instantly of all these.
Anyway, I managed to get hold of the St Andrew’s computer whizz, and we took out the hard drive and managed to get my crucial data off onto his computer running Windows 7. ‘So much better than Vista,’ he noted, ‘but they stole some things from Mac.’
This at least meant that the hard drive itself was fine, so we dumped it back in for him to attempt to fix the computer again. ‘It might work now,’ he ventured. I pressed the On button. And it did! Oh mercy! Oh thank you God!! I was SO relieved I can barely express it in words.
Computers are both blissful and baneful things. The irony is, if I’d not been able to get it working again, I’d have ended up borrowing an old Mac which I had just updated the software on for someone else and used it instead. Just like at home. That particular Mac is years old and still going strong. St Andrew’s’ computer whizz, on the other hand, recommended I buy a new computer to replace this one. Perhaps, but my bank account will need to lose its depressingly dark red shading first ...
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Youkoso and ... Me? A Thief?
Today the Japanese Embassy came by the school. ‘To see you?’ someone asked me.
Unfortunately not. But never mind.
Actually it’s quite a mystery why they came. The school got an email a few days ago informing them that staff from the Embassy would be turning up and that was indeed the case. 45 minutes early (impressive even for the Japanese, incredible for the Egyptians!) a swish car pulled smoothly into the school, and the single Japanese staff member was whisked around the school, her head buried in a notebook, seemingly not saying anything the whole time.
I had been asked if I could use my Japanese semi-skills to teach the children to say something that would help persuade the Embassy to dole out donations (as that is the presumed motivation behind the visit).
Literally seconds before the ambassador came to hear the kids say something, I was still frantically running down the line of kids (who were annoyed to have been pulled out of their sports class) trying to make sure they said something comprehensible. The staff member stood in front of them expectedly, I crossed my fingers and ...
‘1, 2, 3!’
‘St. Andrew’s e youkoso!’ they all shouted. (Welcome to St. Andrew’s).
Not particularly flashy, but about as much as could be done with a high chance of success in the time available. Luckily the staff member understood and even clapped briefly, the most expressive she had been the whole time.
The weirdest things happen at this school.
Something else that happened today either makes one of the young students in my class a satirical genius, or she did something completely coincidentally amazing.
Just as she was instructed to start copying off the board in her copy book, she instead grabbed a tiny scrap of paper, intent on writing something on it. I tried to get it off her without success, and watched her scribble something quickly, wondering what was so important that she had to write on such a small piece of paper.
Having scribbled successfully, she resisted more when I tried to get it off her, and then finally I managed to snatch it away. I looked at what she had written – ‘Thief’! As in ME?
Either this was an ingenious paradoxically ironic joke – the note is accurate in calling me a ‘thief’ only BECAUSE she wrote the note prescribing me a thief – or it was just a complete coincidence. I actually want to believe the former however much I doubt it’s the case ...
Unfortunately not. But never mind.
Actually it’s quite a mystery why they came. The school got an email a few days ago informing them that staff from the Embassy would be turning up and that was indeed the case. 45 minutes early (impressive even for the Japanese, incredible for the Egyptians!) a swish car pulled smoothly into the school, and the single Japanese staff member was whisked around the school, her head buried in a notebook, seemingly not saying anything the whole time.
I had been asked if I could use my Japanese semi-skills to teach the children to say something that would help persuade the Embassy to dole out donations (as that is the presumed motivation behind the visit).
Literally seconds before the ambassador came to hear the kids say something, I was still frantically running down the line of kids (who were annoyed to have been pulled out of their sports class) trying to make sure they said something comprehensible. The staff member stood in front of them expectedly, I crossed my fingers and ...
‘1, 2, 3!’
‘St. Andrew’s e youkoso!’ they all shouted. (Welcome to St. Andrew’s).
Not particularly flashy, but about as much as could be done with a high chance of success in the time available. Luckily the staff member understood and even clapped briefly, the most expressive she had been the whole time.
The weirdest things happen at this school.
Something else that happened today either makes one of the young students in my class a satirical genius, or she did something completely coincidentally amazing.
Just as she was instructed to start copying off the board in her copy book, she instead grabbed a tiny scrap of paper, intent on writing something on it. I tried to get it off her without success, and watched her scribble something quickly, wondering what was so important that she had to write on such a small piece of paper.
Having scribbled successfully, she resisted more when I tried to get it off her, and then finally I managed to snatch it away. I looked at what she had written – ‘Thief’! As in ME?
Either this was an ingenious paradoxically ironic joke – the note is accurate in calling me a ‘thief’ only BECAUSE she wrote the note prescribing me a thief – or it was just a complete coincidence. I actually want to believe the former however much I doubt it’s the case ...
'I love Uzbekistan'
My second day at St Andrew’s and yet more fun and frolics to blog about for the online world to devour. Well, probably not the online world. Just a tiny, miniscule fragment of it. But hopefully enough people for this byte-sized blog to be worth writing anyway.
Notable events today. Well, there was the bizarre science lesson. Trust me – this is truly weird. The school has recently switched to the Sudanese curriculum which on the one hand makes everything a whole lot more structured than it was before, but on the negative side ... well, the negative side is best illustrated by using this lesson as an example.
It was called ‘Our Dwellings’ and involved a substantial discussion of Family Roles. That’s right – in a science lesson. So, the teacher asked, ‘What is the role of the father?’
Hands shot up from all over the classroom: ‘Miss! Miss!’ ‘Pick me teacher!’
Various people were chosen, and the results, for your educational needs, were as follows:
- To protect the family
- To earn money
- To make decisions
The mother meanwhile, has the following jobs:
- Going to the market
- Looking after the children
- Cooking
The main responsibility of children is to obey their parents. Of course.
Me and another volunteer sat slightly bewildered during this lesson. I couldn’t resist smiling and one student picked up on it:
‘Why are you smiling teacher?’
I scrabbled around for an answer: ‘Because ... it’s interesting!’
It seemed to work.
But that’s not the funniest thing that happened today. Oh no – that happened when two volunteers did a creative writing class with the children. The main part involved creating an acrostic poem – where the kids would write their names along the side of a page and then come up with a word or a phrase which began with that letter.
Most kids came up with fairly typical words and phrases, but some were ... well, we had to wait until after the lesson to burst into laughter. Here are the best:
- I love Uzbekistan (1)
- I like traffic signs
- NATO is my friend (2)
- Tables.
Yes that’s right. Just ‘tables’. Apparently that child’s world revolves around them ...
Finally, my maths came under severe strain today when I had to help a class revise how to multiply, divide, add and subtract fractions. I couldn’t remember how to do any of this (I’ve never needed to either!) and so had to be subtly taught by the main teacher of the class whilst he showed them. At one point, therefore, I was standing at the board, with the main teacher giving what seemed to them to be simply verbal instructions for them, but were in fact codified such that I could do it properly ... it was slightly tense.
Having re-learnt it, I then had to authoritatively go around and help show them how. Luckily the masquerade seemed to work. But this part of maths they find very difficult (although at least they are being taught – apparently maths is the weakest point for most teachers so they stay away from it).
1 So, it seems, did Blair and Brown – very unfortunate given the regime’s treatment of political opponents
2 Unfortunately (and I almost didn’t post this because it ruins the joke), it turns out that one of the new students in the class is called Nato.
Notable events today. Well, there was the bizarre science lesson. Trust me – this is truly weird. The school has recently switched to the Sudanese curriculum which on the one hand makes everything a whole lot more structured than it was before, but on the negative side ... well, the negative side is best illustrated by using this lesson as an example.
It was called ‘Our Dwellings’ and involved a substantial discussion of Family Roles. That’s right – in a science lesson. So, the teacher asked, ‘What is the role of the father?’
Hands shot up from all over the classroom: ‘Miss! Miss!’ ‘Pick me teacher!’
Various people were chosen, and the results, for your educational needs, were as follows:
- To protect the family
- To earn money
- To make decisions
The mother meanwhile, has the following jobs:
- Going to the market
- Looking after the children
- Cooking
The main responsibility of children is to obey their parents. Of course.
Me and another volunteer sat slightly bewildered during this lesson. I couldn’t resist smiling and one student picked up on it:
‘Why are you smiling teacher?’
I scrabbled around for an answer: ‘Because ... it’s interesting!’
It seemed to work.
But that’s not the funniest thing that happened today. Oh no – that happened when two volunteers did a creative writing class with the children. The main part involved creating an acrostic poem – where the kids would write their names along the side of a page and then come up with a word or a phrase which began with that letter.
Most kids came up with fairly typical words and phrases, but some were ... well, we had to wait until after the lesson to burst into laughter. Here are the best:
- I love Uzbekistan (1)
- I like traffic signs
- NATO is my friend (2)
- Tables.
Yes that’s right. Just ‘tables’. Apparently that child’s world revolves around them ...
Finally, my maths came under severe strain today when I had to help a class revise how to multiply, divide, add and subtract fractions. I couldn’t remember how to do any of this (I’ve never needed to either!) and so had to be subtly taught by the main teacher of the class whilst he showed them. At one point, therefore, I was standing at the board, with the main teacher giving what seemed to them to be simply verbal instructions for them, but were in fact codified such that I could do it properly ... it was slightly tense.
Having re-learnt it, I then had to authoritatively go around and help show them how. Luckily the masquerade seemed to work. But this part of maths they find very difficult (although at least they are being taught – apparently maths is the weakest point for most teachers so they stay away from it).
1 So, it seems, did Blair and Brown – very unfortunate given the regime’s treatment of political opponents
2 Unfortunately (and I almost didn’t post this because it ruins the joke), it turns out that one of the new students in the class is called Nato.
Monday, 29 June 2009
How was school?
It’s weird returning to a place to which you are so familiar and yet have been so distant from. Coming back to school for the first time today and even though things look a bit different, it’s all fundamentally the same. The kids are crazy but great, the lessons are challenging but rewarding and everything gives off the same sense of chaos holding together just enough.
Today I walked in and saw Teacher Fatima who I worked with for the first three months I came to Egypt in September-December 2007 standing in one of the caravan-like rooms that is used as a classroom. Many kids from that class also saw me, and I got a warm reception back. In the morning I will be a teaching assistant for her class, and in the afternoon for another class. At first there were three other volunteers in the classroom, although two of them quickly realised they were in the wrong one. That’s probably a good thing – not because they wouldn’t have been helpful, but because having four people trying to be teaching assistants has tended to be counter-productive in the class.
The first class, slightly surprisingly, was a science class about the ‘chest cage’ and its contents. Something about it didn’t quite fit – especially since it was taught in English, which to me makes it an English lesson no matter how scientific it is. But that’s what it was, and we duly had all the kids repeating the important words like ‘chest cage’ and ‘vertebral column’. Some of it seemed a bit too advanced for kids of that age ... I was handed the Red Pen of Power, and went around checking what they had written and marking it. The power!! Most did quite well, although there is a sense that it’s all in the now, and not really committed to long-term memory.
The next lesson was about English ‘irrigular’ past simple verbs. You have to keep quiet really if the teacher makes a mistake on the board as you don’t want to undermine their authority. That is the general wisdom. The kids kept attempting to find some logic in how the English words went from ‘write’ to ‘wrote’, ‘find’ to ‘found’ and ‘read’ to ‘read’ but unfortunately, of course, there is none. It must be deadly frustrating ...
Classes then switched around and I took part in a maths revision class – covering mean, median, mode and range. I had to have a bit of a refresh myself, but once again revelled in the might that resides in the Red Pen of Power. A multiplication test ended the lesson (unless the kids performed to a certain level , no sport for them). Most performed very well, although one kid managed to miss out two of the questions completely.
So, sport. Well football is not my forte, but I gave it a good shot. Sandals and the heat did not help but never mind. Didn’t really keep track of scores but someone won most of the time. I think that’s how it works ...
One day down, no crazy incidents so far ...
Today I walked in and saw Teacher Fatima who I worked with for the first three months I came to Egypt in September-December 2007 standing in one of the caravan-like rooms that is used as a classroom. Many kids from that class also saw me, and I got a warm reception back. In the morning I will be a teaching assistant for her class, and in the afternoon for another class. At first there were three other volunteers in the classroom, although two of them quickly realised they were in the wrong one. That’s probably a good thing – not because they wouldn’t have been helpful, but because having four people trying to be teaching assistants has tended to be counter-productive in the class.
The first class, slightly surprisingly, was a science class about the ‘chest cage’ and its contents. Something about it didn’t quite fit – especially since it was taught in English, which to me makes it an English lesson no matter how scientific it is. But that’s what it was, and we duly had all the kids repeating the important words like ‘chest cage’ and ‘vertebral column’. Some of it seemed a bit too advanced for kids of that age ... I was handed the Red Pen of Power, and went around checking what they had written and marking it. The power!! Most did quite well, although there is a sense that it’s all in the now, and not really committed to long-term memory.
The next lesson was about English ‘irrigular’ past simple verbs. You have to keep quiet really if the teacher makes a mistake on the board as you don’t want to undermine their authority. That is the general wisdom. The kids kept attempting to find some logic in how the English words went from ‘write’ to ‘wrote’, ‘find’ to ‘found’ and ‘read’ to ‘read’ but unfortunately, of course, there is none. It must be deadly frustrating ...
Classes then switched around and I took part in a maths revision class – covering mean, median, mode and range. I had to have a bit of a refresh myself, but once again revelled in the might that resides in the Red Pen of Power. A multiplication test ended the lesson (unless the kids performed to a certain level , no sport for them). Most performed very well, although one kid managed to miss out two of the questions completely.
So, sport. Well football is not my forte, but I gave it a good shot. Sandals and the heat did not help but never mind. Didn’t really keep track of scores but someone won most of the time. I think that’s how it works ...
One day down, no crazy incidents so far ...
Saturday, 27 June 2009
Four hours in Cairo ...
Coming to Cairo there is always the feeling that anything can happen at any time. Last time I was here, for example, on the first day of attempting to cook a meal for the refugees of the school I am volunteering at we attempted to blend something, and were rewarded by the blender duly exploding because of the intense heat. We never got a replacement, and cooking became significantly tougher! This year, well I haven’t started at the school yet, so who knows what could happen there, but I can say that within four hours of arriving in Cairo I ended up having a conversation at the British Council with an eight-year-old about a video game he played in which the aim is to shoot everyone dead, whilst playing Frisbee with him.
That’s right. He decided this was exciting secret information to share with me – that the particular shoot out he played was triggered by a man’s chopped-off head being presented to a couple at a restaurant. I asked what the video game was called, but he couldn’t remember.
The same boy also asked me if I knew who his favourite dancer is. ‘His surname’s Jackson,’ he told me. I thought, ‘Shit! Please don’t say his first name is Michael, and leave it to me to tell him that his favourite dancer has just died’. I decided that I’d proceed with caution and do my best not to put my foot in it – ‘What’s his first name?’ I asked. ‘Michael,’ came the reply, ‘haven’t you heard of him?’
I controlled my response: ‘Yes, I have.’
‘He’s died because there was a problem with his heart,’ the boy explained, ‘It’s very sad.’ He then told me a story about how he had been trying to find his favourite channel Extreme Sports but had ended up on a news channel where he found out the news. So this is the Information Age!
Perhaps I’d better backtrack a bit – how did I end up at the British Council within a few hours of arriving? Well, the family friends I know out there were going to a staff party – a ‘suitable for all the family’ thing. So we went down there and there were tonnes of staff (as you’d expect) but also some kids. After we all took part in the treasure hunt – which consisted of about four clues, most of which one team stole so others couldn’t read it – my family friends’ son was hanging about and I was standing nearby and someone gave us a Frisbee. ‘Aah!’ I hear you think. It’s starting to come together. As for the eight-year-old boy, well he was another staff member’s kid.
I was actually quite pleased with my Frisbee-catching skills, although throwing wasn’t quite so up to scratch. I wasn’t helped by a strong intermittent wind. Another adult joined in, and we took the more ambitious throws. The young boy was still under the impression that spinning around on the spot makes your throw go much further. Ah well.
This on the day I arrive. And again, I haven’t even started back at the school yet. That’s on Monday – I anticipate further chaos and randomness!
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