Exams and Vacation

Since my last post, two very different but I'd say equally amusing things have happened: I gave my end-of-trimester exams and I traveled out of Selibaby for the first time. Neither of those sounds particularly interesting now, but read on!

I gave each exams during the class period last week, which means I could write a two hour exam. Well, kind of. I had to figure in the time it takes for me to write the exam on the board and for them to copy it down (again, no printers or photocopiers). The tricky part is that some of my kids can hardly write, and take a really long time to painstakingly copy each word. I also have some kids who finished the whole exam in 20 minutes, but there's no way I could make it take longer because it doesn't seem fair for some not to finish just because they couldn't write it down in time. So that was challenge #1.

Challenge #2 is the insane amount of cheating that takes place in Mauritanian classrooms. Some teachers out there must be saying, "well, sure, there's cheating everywhere!" but let me tell you, I have never seen anything like this before. And the best (or worst?) part about it is that they are so, so bad at cheating. It didn't even bother me that much because it was way too funny. They would do things like look up at me, open a book next to them, look back at me and write something down. I caught one girl with 3 cheat sheets in her lap, and she said she hadn't looked at them. Yeah, OK. One boy handed in his text with the cheat sheet still in it. Nice one. The school policy with cheating is to take the student's paper away and let them start again (if there's any time left--I caught some with about 10 minutes to go. Bummer).

I caught about 15-20 kids cheating in some way in my first class, and only about 5-7 total in my other two (my first class is always more trouble, no idea why). I'd say overall I did a good job catching them--I spent the whole two hours wandering the room watching them, and let's face it, they make it pretty easy to catch them--but there are a lot of obstacles to doing so. The desks they write on are in really bad shape, so they write with their paper on top of their little copybooks. I tried to say they couldn't, but it makes it really hard to write. I checked the copybooks as best I could and took anything with English away, but it's easy to miss something. The other big problem has to do with not letting them whisper to each other. Normally, when a kid's mouth is moving and noise is coming out during a test, you can be pretty sure that they're either cheating or cursing your soul for giving them an exam in the first place. But many of my students are barely literate, and what do beginning readers do when they read and write? They mouth or whisper the words to themselves. I figured out pretty quickly who was doing that versus talking to their buddy, but it's impossible to tell them to stop because it's the only way they can get the test done, which just made my job harder.

So that was last Tuesday and Thursday, and after my last exam I told the director I would hand in my grades when I got back (from what I've looked at so far, they range from 1/20 to 19.5/20) and left Friday morning for 3 weeks of vacation. This is the first time I've left site since getting to Selibaby at the end of August. Now, how exactly does one get out of Selibaby? Good question. You take a taxi brusse ("bush taxi"), which in my case is a pick-up truck (only bigger cars can really get in and out of Selibaby). And I’m not talking the big fancy man-trucks they advertise on TV during the Superbowl, I’m talking your run of the mill, small truck. First, they pile it high with stuff so that the truck bed is filled to the brim or over. Then, they tie a net over that. Then, we climb on. Some people pay double to actually sit in the car, but not PCVs. So I climb on the truck with 6 men and 1 other woman, and the driver was really nice and made sure I got a “good spot.” This means my back was up against the car part of the truck and my knees were bent to my chest. The only bad part was that I had nothing to hold on to. It’s kind of like a roller coaster in that you always feel like you’re going to fall off even though you aren’t. So I tucked one hand under my legs and held the rope under me. And the whole time, I’m wearing a skirt. Fun.

I got to Mbout without any major problems, so it only took about 3 hours. I spent 2 nights at John’s house and finally got to see where he lives. Then this morning we waited for an hour or two for a car to Kaedi, John’s regional capital. This time there were up to 11 adults, 1 child and 2 babies on the back, more or less as people got off or on in the towns we passed. I got my back against the car again, but this time was on the edge because one of the two giant Moor women refused to move out of the middle and there was another one between her and me. Swell. John was next to me with his feet hanging over the edge, but when I tried to sit like that (which would have been more comfortable), one of the men told me I couldn’t. So it was knees to chest again for the first 2 hours, by which point the large Moor woman next to me was sitting on me. Seriously. So when we stopped, I swung my legs over the side (the man was gone). It was better except that the large Moor woman decided to lean on me, which nearly pushed me out of the truck because she was about 3 times my size. Good thing I get an upper body workout carrying my host sibling around or I wouldn’t have been able to hold on!

So about 15 minutes outside of Kaedi, we get a flat tire. They change it, and when they’re done my seat (which used to be on top of a bag) had turned into a rice sack, which is pretty slippery. I climb on, and only the upper half of my thighs are actually on the car. John put his arm in front of me to brace me from the large Moor woman, and we rode the rest of the way. I was really glad to get off that truck!

I’ll be here in Kaedi for a day, then we head to Aleg—that whole trip is on paved road, unlike the entire trip getting here, so I’m excited. If I don’t post before then, I hope everyone has a great holiday! And for those of you up north until a ton of snow, just remember that I’ll be spending New Year’s on a beach in Senegal. Ha, finally you’re all jealous of where I am!! :)

PS Laura, Taco (really spelled Tako) is a common Soninke name for women and guy is her father's name, often given as a middle name. And the white kitten has a body, or did when I left Selibaby! We have 5 new puppies now, so who knows what'll happen while we're gone...