Other challenges

After finishing my last post just hours ago, I have continued to think about some of the more challenging aspects of my life here. The first one that comes to mind is language.

In the US we live in an almost exclusively English speaking world, especially the non-urban areas where i have lived my entire life. For most of us, school is taught in our first and only language. TV is always in the language we understand (you would actually have to pay more to get a channel that wasn't English only), we can flip on the radio and understand everything that is being said or sung.

Here, it is quite the opposite. I am constantly listening to, speaking and even sometimes thinking in 4 languages here. I hope i can say that French is currently first on that list, but there are definitely days where my long standing relationship with English beats out my newly founded, often fledgling, relationship with French. The next two on the list are the local African languages of Bwamu and Jula (sometimes spelled Dioula). Those two languages are barely acquaintances of mine at this point in time, but i'm surrounded by them. While i can clearly identify each of them while being spoken, i can't always tell WHO speaks each. Meaning, that as i'm greeting someone, i'll often start with a greeting in one language, and they with respond in another. And those are the days when i try local language at all...

But it isn't just talking that's a challenge. As i said before, it's all aspects of life that are now in another language. When i turn on the radio, it's French or Jula or even another local language, Moore. When i turn on the TV (one of the profs here has a TV that runs on a car battery charged by solar panels), it's French (in both French and African accents), Moore, or African-accented English. It's not really the lack of comprehension that becomes so frustrating, it's the variety i have to sift through! We live in a monotone (or rather mono-phone) society, and now this sudden explosion of variety of stimulation is coming at me all the time! I rather feel it is something like the overwhelming feeling Peace Corps volunteers often describe their first time at an American grocery store after two years in developing countries, too much variety! And it's not that Americans aren't used stimulation, it's that this is a new kind of stimulation.

And i have to admit, at this point in time, instead of taking all of this stimulation in and becoming some sort of super-lingual awesome person, i do what most Americans do to, i tune it out. When listening to French news broadcasts, i am able to take in information for about 10, maybe 15 minutes before i lose track of what they are talking about. The same happens in conversations as well, unfortunately. After a certain amount of time, or certain number of languages switches, i just can't keep track anymore, and i'm done. Then randomly, they'll ask me my opinion on something, and i'll have no idea what's going on. At the same time though, if i'm zoned out, but a random English word happens to come out, i catch it immediately. It's like when you're half listening to a conversation, but then someone says a dirty word and now you're all ears (don't deny it, we all do it). So for now, English has become those dirty words that suddenly make you much more interested in what's going on. Or sometimes the random French word thrown into the Jula mix will have the same affect. I'm just trying to grab onto something, anything, i can understand!

And what i really want to know is how well do others understand each other? I mean, i know that i feel lost all the time, but does anyone who lives here ever feel that way? I know that within my village alone there is the possibility of four local languages (the three above plus Dafing) and that there are people who know a little of each, while there are also people who only know their language. Are they just better at faking it? Or does it really get easier after a lifetime?

Long Weekend!

Well, hello old friends. It has most definitely been a while :) I personally think this because i don't really do anything worth writing about, but i'll let you be the judge :P

School: So this trimester i definitely do feel a little more at ease with the French and the content (we're finally done with electrical physics!), but i'm still running into challenges. I don't like to write tests until i've taught the material, meaning that i'm typically giving tests a week later than i should. For example, I am giving a test in each subject this coming week, and then next week they have there cumulative exams. Really, tests a week apart don't really help anyone, but here we are.

Something that has actually really bothered me these past two weeks is how mechanical physics is taught. I'm not going to bore you too much with the details, but it's kind of ass-backwards. In the US we learn that gravity is an acceleration and that falling bodies ('bodies' used in the scientific sense, not a literal human body falling) fall at a rate of 9.8 m/s/s. So their speed increases by about 10 meters every second. Here, they are taught that gravity is simply a proportion between weight and mass (weight=mass*gravity). They never hear the word acceleration, the never learn about any other sort of acceleration, although they do learn about forces (the formula for a force is F=mass*acceleration). So, i can't even teach the formula for what they supposed to be learning. All of this frustration might be coming solely because this is one my favorite parts of physics (and quite honestly, is the basis of everything to come), but when i think about it, i think it's more that i'm being asked to do a job and i'm not doing it well. I know as i'm teaching the students that what i'm saying i don't believe to be true (no, gravity does not equal 10N/kg. that unit doesn't even make sense!) But to do it the 'right way' would take too much time, and we have a lot of other material to cover that doesn't necessarily build on this.

When i asked another prof if they ever learn the material more indepth, he said yes, a couple years from now. I then asked him, why bother teaching it the wrong now, only to teach it again later. His response was that the students are just to dumb to learn it now (very typical teacher response by the way, i really should write a blog about attitude toward education here). I know there are probably examples of this in the US curriculum, but i can't think of any at the moment... So, for the benefit of the big picture of the moment, i'll skim through things hope the kids understand the basics. But i won't like it.

Math is going a little better, but not perfect. We are learning vectors right now, which isn't easy for anyone at the debut. I have to admit i did get frustrated with them the other day, because i thought they were doing ok because they didn't have too many questions. But really they didn't have questions because they were too lost to know what to ask. I know that happens to all of us, but it felt like even more of a blow because i thought things were going well in that class compared to physics. And now this week we lost two school days all of a sudden, so we have less time before there last test and final (which, as stated before, are too close together...) So, i guess this is just a lot of the 'end of the term' craziness of trying to get everything done!