C, F, L, R

Went to Bafoussam today to buy a ton of groceries and some housewares — specifically something to use with the non-stick frying pan that I bought, since I don’t want to scratch it up any worse — and wound up with a bleach explosion. This makes the second time since I got to country! Not a big deal, except that another shirt is now kitchen rags, and I have a bar of bleached baking chocolate. It’ll rinse off, right?

Also, I have spent almost all of this month’s allowance already (again). Big ticket items this month were a fût, a barrel or cask, although it’s really a garbage can that I’m going to use to store water, which cost 17,500 (I didn’t try to haggle; that seemed fair enough for me); a dishdrain (3000 CFA; similar); some cans of meat (beef pâté??) at a thousand CFA each; another bottle of peanuts for 2000 CFA (should have haggled this?); spices (paprika, garlic, and basil, at about 1000 CFA each); and a certain amount of caramel, which is a little like peanut brittle.

That’s mille franc of caramel, and it was good too, better quality than what you get in the village. Picture graciously taken by Christine.

Here are some other random pictures to provide context:

This is Judicael. He’s in the same family as Bonheur and Parfait. He’s in one of the troisieme classes that I don’t teach.

This is about half of their family. They took my camera with them to church one day and took a lot of pictures. From right to left: Judicael, Bonheur, Boris (my terminale student), and Maewa (who is in one of my 3e classes).

Chickens. Parfait half-covered the flash, I think, but it’s a pretty striking picture, isn’t it? They brought this home yesterday — their mom was in Bafoussam, I guess she got them there.

Close up of the chickies.

Today’s post is titled after the third and probably least significant part of the word Camfranglais, which was coined to describe the mélange of languages that one speaks here. ("Il va die", "he is going to die".) It happens to be the part I know best, which is why Parfait and Bonheur have been coming with a certain frequency to study English. My approach to teaching English at this level has been a little more fruitful than my approach to teaching computer science — I can correct pronounciation in English, which I don’t do in informatique. Mostly I think they just want to make sure they’re understanding correctly — English classes are taught only in English, so it’s easy for them to get lost, misunderstand a word, etc.

I also happened to use my langue maternelle today to chew out a couple of students. Losing your temper and blowing up in another language has a number of compelling advantages as composed with other techniques. One is that your students are not just culturally discouraged from responding, but completely and totally incapable of it. Another is that you can tell them exactly how you feel, not having to settle for what you know how to express. Anyhow, I felt a lot better afterwards. Highly recommended for any volunteers reading this.

The students in question were some of my 3m4 class who wouldn’t stop joueing, and after I had told them once (in French) to shut it off, that he knew the rules, I felt no qualms about shouting at him to get out of my class, especially the little annoying one who is always making noise. After they moved to go, and then hung out a while, I shouted "Do you think I’m stupid? Get out of my class! Get out! Get out! Get out!" And then when the little annoying one didn’t move fast enough, I took a few menacing steps towards him. It’s illegal to hit students, but the implied threat worked wonders. He still kept trying to sneak back in, though.

There’s an old story among my group back home about a teacher who flipped out at a class once and ranted something that started with "Fuck! Fuck! You putrid bastards!" Let’s say I understand him a lot better now. (Even if the story goes that he was actually a substance addict.)

But other than that classes have been fine, I’m feeling way more on top of things this week than I have in a while. Sure wish I had Internet, though..

Today I finally received a substantial part of my kitchen. Voila:

I "ordered" (commander) this table about two months ago. He said it would take a few weeks. Then there was some stuff about how he was sick, and then he was helping at the hospital doing vaccinations or something. But today he brought it to the market and I was able to hire a pousse-pousse to get it up the hill. Total cost: 9500 CFA.

This provides an opportunity to discuss my other cooking equipment.

This is my "plaque à gaz", which is only about a hand’s breadth high. It’s basically just two knobs and sparkers. There’s a marmite, "cooking pot", which has some water in it for pasta.

This is where the bouteille is. There’s a knob you turn to put gas on, or to turn gas off.

Posing with the new equipment.

[Edit: this post was once called Déconnecté, but that name was taken by a post on 2010-10-15. The new name, Éloigné, translates as "made distant", and corresponds to the fact that I’d left my Internet key in Bangangté.]

Haven’t had Internet for the last few days due to stupidly leaving my Camtel key someplace. Should be getting it back soon. I was talking to some other volunteers lately about how not having bought Internet has changed their experience, and how at first it’s tense but then it changes to feeling like you don’t have a pressure to keep up. I feel like I almost had a moment of that, but then it went away. Mostly I’ve been a little bored, feeling like there are lots of things I would love to be able to do this week, since I have a little bit of free time, but cannot because I’m déconnecté. This translates into: doing housework, going shopping (iron: 6000 CFA; frying pan: 4000 CFA), cooking a little bit, and helping Parfait and Bonheur with their English lessons. They come to me with notebooks full of notes on what happened in class, which was given entirely in English, and they try to make sense of it all while I watch.

This is my day off, but I was still dragged into school for two or three hours to help various administrative people with computer stuff. Somehow I still managed to scrape together exactly enough time to watch Serenity, which was long overdue. It made me feel a bit better, counteracted the looming feeling that my service here is going to be the foundation of shared experiences which makes me feel nonunderstood by the people I care about.

Still haven’t quit service. The Big Meeting with all the other people from my training is in a little over a month. You can do it, comp sci..

Here are some random pictures of Emily that I took at graduation. These weren’t staged or anything, just my typical "Surprise!" kind of shot.

Emily is lavishly and profusely photogenic.

I was struck for a moment by the feeling this weekend that although this country often presents itself like a wacky stereotype of itself, there’s a certain amount of darker shit that happens too. We’re never in any danger directly, but every now and then you hear something that makes you think hard about the problems here, which are more serious and threatening than the abstract "people are taking money they shouldn’t" and "not enough places to get drinking water". This isn’t just Abbot and Costello stuff, with a buffoonish Gendarme looking for a bribe. This is serious.

Anyhow, long story short, here’s more random crap I’ve bought lately.

Bottle of peanuts, and a wooden penis bottle opener.

Continuing to work on the backlog of stuff I want to do. Finished filling out report cards today, even the troublesome Premiere class. Here is my most recent edit to OpenStreetMap based on the traces I’ve been taking. Edits as they happen are here. Here is the thing I’m writing for the other teachers about teaching algorithms with Python. I finished the chapter on installation last night and wrote an incoherent email to everyone on the mailing list. Got 7 bounces pretty much immediately. I guess I can’t read Cameroonian.

I wonder if I’m trying to keep busy to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the difficulty of being a teacher.

No power tonight. Still haven’t finished downloading the Lubuntu ISO. Still need to calculate pass-rate statistics for all eight classes. Informatique club tomorrow (and I’m a little terrified).

Today’s title, "Edition", is the name given to the second menu in Microsoft products (what is, in English, called "Edit").

So hungry. But it’s kind of OK; I finally feel the balance swinging a little bit towards "catching up on things" instead of "falling further behind on things". Specifically:

1. Tests are all graded. Grades are all calculated, with one or two bizarre exceptions. All that remains is to fill in the bulletins, report cards. Each class takes me 30-60 minutes. I fucked up one in 3m4. Normally you should put white-out but I don’t have any and none was handy, so fuck it. P.S. Still have four classes worth of these fucking things to fill out.
2. Power is actually for-reals working in the computer lab again! This means we can actually do things on the computers!
3. Arranged an ordinater, using a Windows XP CD that I created myself thanks to a CD burner courtesy of Jen and Chiz. Thanks a ton, guys! Tried to arrange another one in putting Lubuntu on it, but the boot process is taking forever and I have no goddamned idea why. But I’ve ruled out software, so it’s gotta be hardware. Also checked out the computer of the librarian (P.S. our lycee has a library! Too bad all the books are in English..) and it seems to be working fine, as long as you boot the French Windows XP and not the English one.
4. Many emails between me and Gus lately due to an argument that seems to be sorted out now. This fight means a lot to me, because it marks a turning point where I stop being a jerk for laughs. Not sure exactly what I will be next, but I hope it is something that really listens. Let’s say a microphone.

Random other stuff going on at this particular moment in my brain: my netbook doesn’t suspend to disk due to the fact that it’s got an encrypted swap partition. I need to look into how to set this up right. Going to Bafoussam tomorrow to help another volunteer do computer shopping. My newest pair of tailored black pants fits really well, but I don’t have enough money to work on the next clothings. It rained a lot this weekend, which was great in that I could wash using rain water instead of dirty stream water, but was not great in that power was out. Currently downloading newest version of Lubuntu; apparently the whole Ubuntu family released in the last couple weeks. Cory Doctorow’s For the Win was great! I started some academic book called Open Source and it’s kind of OK, got some stuff I didn’t know and pointers to stuff I want to look at more.

Gonna whip up some starches now and work on the teach-yourself-Python-in-thirty-appalling-French-chapters. Ta!

Last Saturday I went to a deuil, which literally means "bereavement, mourning", but is probably best translated here as "wake".

First there was a church service under these tents.

Matching fabrics is a done thing here. I saw a few t-shirts that said "[Name of person], we will never forget you", but I don’t know if that was from another wake.

Fashions on display included one of my favorites, the short-sleeve suit jacket:

Wizard robes were also fairly well-represented:

Naturally, I had just purchased a new set of wizard robes the day before.

I am standing here with someone named Celestin, who is J-C’s nephew (wife’s sister’s son). His shirt says Re-Ject.

At events like this, there are these great big circular dances. Boris has told me that the function of these things is to say a final goodbye to the departed and to tell the departed that now everyone is going to forget them.

It is also traditional at these sort of events to shoot firearms. If you don’t have a firearm, you can buy a shot from vendors who brought their own. I have asked and nobody seems to know the significance of this tradition, if any.

The last dances were populated by people wearing masks and costumes, such as this:

Celestin explained to me that these were various "secret societies", "somewhat like your FBI and CIA". They serve the king of the tribe, and go on intelligence missions. The new king introduces a new secret society, but the old one lives on, and pays tribute to its dead members like this.

Because they are secret, they have to cover their faces in public appearances like this.

Here is a fruit that I want to know more about:

It grows in these little pockets, and you sort of pinch the pockets to make the things come out.

Inside it looks like this:

The locals call them "cerise" which means "cherry", but it seems to be acknowledged that there is another fruit that is really called "cerise" and the name just got appropriated for this fruit too.

It is sweet and spicy and delicious. How do you google a fruit?

[P.S. They are called "ground cherries". Thanks Gus!]

Connection has been shit over the last 36 hours, for reasons that I am pretty sure are not mine. I haven’t even really been able to get online to check mail or anything. So I’ve had to get creative to keep busy.

Here’s a slide rule I made out of cardboard to demonstrate the relevant principles to my Terminale and possibly my Seconde class. Only class ended at 10 AM today due to some stupid "orientation’ thing. I guess that’s good because it means I only have five tests to grade before Monday (instead of eight), but it’s a little annoying. I think S.O.P. is that the tests get moved to the next free hour that I have in common with the class, and I have to do this for each class. Awesome!

Grading has been as expected. One thing I’ve found eases the burden is to break them into piles of 10. You can grade a pile of 10 papers in about half an hour and it feels like you’ve actually made progress. Whereas you can hack away at a whole class for a couple hours and feel like you’re still overwhelmed.

Another prop has been useful in explaining Boolean algebra. Everything is super-clear when you hold up a blue pen and say "I’m holding a red pen" — there’s really only one useful concept in Boolean algebra, and it has to do with treating rationally the falsehoods that are around you. So I think 3e is going pretty well, actually, and fuck the scheme of work.

Speaking of technical difficulties, there’s been a problem with the power in the computer lab. Not exactly sure what happened; it could be "natural causes" (shitty wiring and an ugly power grid), or it could be a short-circuit in some equipment, or it could be that, despite the computer club’s enthusaism, the building is just not rated for 25 computers. Oh, did I mention we got more computers from the prestataire? Pentium 4 class machines. So I’m less interested in sabotaging him than I was, say, two weeks ago. Anyhow, no practical classes until that’s sorted out.

The secretary and her baby (reaching for the beer). On the left is the grizzly old gym teacher. The secretary is probably the only person in the school besides me who is qualified to operate a computer. Nevertheless, something bizarre happened to her machine this past week (possibly related to the failure in the computer lab?) and now the video output is vastly dimmer than it should be. No idea why, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a problem with the screen itself. Anyhow, this was on National Teacher’s Day.

More teachers than you can shake a stick at!