Youth and Futbol

This week's training theme was peer education and working with youth. Before joining PC, I knew for a fact that I didn’t want to be an education volunteer. I can't say my mind is completely changed, but I am not ruling out working with kids now. We went to a local primary school here in Pitoa to observe the classroom environment and practice teaching a lesson.

The differences in the education system here and in the States were apparent from the minute you walk in the school. The particular school that we went to had two floors, but the lower level was boarded up with cinder blocks for some reason. Upstairs was one long room that stretched the entire length of the building, about 50 yards. Within the room were three different classes, separated by thatched mats that were about 8 feet high. To get to the third 'room', one has to walk through the first two. Needless to say, the noise from the other two classes travels beyond the walls, making concentration difficult. Especially when the class next to ours was talking about the reproductive system and you could hear 'testicles' loud and clear.

There were about 60 kids in the 5th grade class that we observed, ranging in age from 10 to 16. The little ones in the front rows looked really young, especially next to the older ones in the back. The desks were wooden benches connected to a desk that would comfortably fit two people my size. Yes, i'm larger than most 14 year old Cameroonians, but they were squeezed in 4 to a bench, adding to the difficulties in paying attention.

The learning style here is very top-down. The teacher started the lesson by asking the kids some general questions about diseases and then went into a lesson on Palu. He asked them how it is contracted and how they can prevent it. They seemed to have the answers memorized, but whether they actually understand the details is another thing. After the teacher finished what seemed to be the entire lesson, he started over, this time writing some things on the board in outline format. Same questions, same answers, same students responding. Then, he erased the board and started the SAME lesson a third time. This time he got out the colored chalk and wrote the answers on the board in color-coded complete sentences the lesson. As soon as he began for the third time, all of the students simultaneously got out their notebooks and two colored pens and began copying exactly what he wrote. i assume most of them were not paying attention until this time, and I don't blame them, they didn't need to because he had everything written out for them.

Their notebooks are always so neat, no extra information only exactly what the teacher puts on the board. When I help my 18 year old brother with his math homework, I notice that its difficult for him to answer questions differently from how he was taught in class. Also, the kids in the class didn’t ask any questions the whole time. When we did our presentation, the kids seemed really into it, but they seemed to want to please us rather than actually learn. For example, before performing our two skits about hand washing after the latrine and before preparing/eating food, we asked them who washes their hands with soap after they use the bathroom. Every single one of them raised their hand, but I know for a fact that this isn’t true. In our family, and most other trainees families, people don’t use soap after using the bathroom. Most of the time there isn’t even water in our bathroom to rinse with. So the kids all raised their hands even though they don’t actually wash with soap.

Now I’m thinking that maybe it would be interseting to work with youth. Not necessarily in the classroom talking about poop, but maybe with some youth clubs where I do some work with self esteem or creative thinking. The girls group that I’ve been working with every Wednesday has been great. Last week we had an open ended discussion about things like family planning, pregnancy, marriage and periods. It seems that they don’t really get to talk openly about some things and they really enjoyed the opportunity to talk about these issues. It was also good for us because we learned what 16 and 17 year olds think about getting married and having kids. Hopefully I’ll be able to find some of these groups in Tibati.

In other news, today is the championship game between Garoua and some other country. Its not the Africa cup, its the best provincial teams from each country in a tournament. I think we're either playing Egypt or Zimabwe. We went to a game a few weeks back and we won 4-0. Today the city is bursting with energy, it should be an interesting day....