volunteering!

Hello again, sorry it’s taken me so long to repost. I’ve been trying to find a way to get decent wi-fi here but I’ve finally accepted that it’s just not a possibility. I was holding off trying to get a good connection so that I would be able to upload some pictures but I’ve exhausted all of my means of doing so and have officially given up. I’m sure I will lose many readers without cool pics but there’s nothing else I can do! I’ve also realized that now that I won’t be posting pictures online that I have many pictures that are fairly useless to me. For example I took pictures of some strange food that I eat here to show everyone at home, but the pictures are pointless now that I won’t post them because I eat these strange foods on a regular basis and doubt I will need or want photographical documentation of it.

Alright so back to Africa. I think I will spend most of this post talking about our volunteer placement. We work at school that in French is roughly translated as a center for the deaf and hard of hearing. It’s not really a center or an orphanage though, it’s simply a school. About 90% of the children in attendance are what the teachers at our school would call ‘normal’. They do not have any physical or mental disabilities and are simply attending school as any other child their age would. The remaining 10% of children are deaf or partially deaf, and a very small percentage of those kids also have some type of mental disability as well. The kids range in age from 3 to 12, and then there are also two classes of older deaf boys and girls who are learning specific skill sets so that they can earn a living after graduating. The boys are learning woodworking and make lots of different items, such as wooden trays and dressers. Right now their problem is finding a way to sell these items to the residents of Douala. The girls are learning how to sew and cook.

The school was founded by the current director, who I would say is probably in her 60s, although it is incredibly difficult to tell how old people are here because they age so well. The woman has a deaf daughter and had a lot of difficulty raising her and finding a school that would accommodate and work with her disability. This eventually inspired her to create the school, which has now grown to over 300 children, and is still run by her and her husband, with two of their daughters, including the deaf one, teaching at the school (among about 10 teachers total). The school building is not the greatest, but none of the buildings here are the greatest. It was donated by the government of Cameroon and there is also a small computer building with 5 desktop computers donated by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The reason the school has integrated deaf children with non-hearing impaired children is two-fold. For one, they found that if deaf children interacted only with each other, they tended to be much more aggressive. I can personally attest to this, as we see it in the classes that isolate deaf children in order to teach skills such as math that need to be taught in sign language. The children get very frustrated because they only have their hands to grab your attention. When we are in the class with them they are incredibly excited and want to tell us their name in sign, or ask us a question in sign. However one child will throw their hands up, and then another will swat their arms away so that their message will be the one that is focused on. This of course often results in hitting and yelling, so I can definitely understand why it’s good integrate the deaf children. The second reason for doing this is more practical. Deaf children do not live in a world filled with deaf people. If they spent their entire youth in school surrounded by other people that could sign and then were expected to function in a society that could not, they would struggle much more. By attending school with children that can hear properly, they learn how to read lips and even speak without hearing themselves (the deaf teacher, daughter of the founder, can now speak even though she is almost completely deaf).

In the week that we have worked at the center I’ve picked up a bit of sign language. I learned the sign alphabet sophomore year, forgot some of it but I was able to get it back pretty quickly after practicing. The first thing I learned was my name, and the kids LOVED it when they asked me my name (taking your index and middle finger together on each hand and tapping them together) and I could sign back my name. I’ve also learned ‘I’m hungry’ ‘I’m thirsty’ ‘I love you’ ‘How old are you’ ‘ball’ ‘thank you’ and ‘hello’. Sign language is not universal, which I think was a terrible idea if it was actually a conscious decision to not have one sign language for the whole world. There is an English sign language and a French one, and while there are similarities there are many differences.

We work at the school Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 1 PM. After visiting the school, we were asked to write a list of our skills to see what we could contribute and how we would interact with the children. I wrote down computer lessons, cooking, teaching English, math, and art projects. I also put down soccer just to show that I would be willing to take part in sports with them, most of my friends and family know I cannot play any land sports. They took our suggestions very literally, and these six activities are how we spend our days. Some of the activities are very difficult because I am not fluent in French. I am so thankful for our friend Harold from England who volunteers with us. He is fluent and is a huge help when we are trying to explain something to the children. All three of us do everything together, so its a huge relief that he is there. Teaching kids how to use Microsoft Word with limited French is very challenging for me, but I have gotten much better at it. I think my vocabulary is unevenly improving in the computer and technology area, but I’ll take what I can get.

When we do art projects with the little kids we draw something and they color it in. Things like butterflies, cars etc. For the older children we give them a theme and supervise them. We had our first cooking lesson on Friday and made crepes with nutella for them, which they loved. Later that day we had our first soccer day. The ‘field’ is not close, and walking 50 plus 8 year olds there is a little overwhelming. While we were walking a man around 25 or so snuck up behind me and punched the soccer ball out of my hands. It was not meant to be funny, since he was making not so friendly comments about white people before, and the only thing I could think to say as all the little kids looked at me was ‘Il n’est pas gentil!’. Which is he is not nice! They loved that (they are very excited to hear me speak french since i was severly struggling in the beginning) and started chanting to him that he wasn’t nice. I can’t think of better revenge than having the cutest kids in the world on your side telling your harasser that he is not nice!

So after the first week I would say it’s going very well. I love the kids, especially the little ones. They are so so so cute and so excited to us. They chant LISA LISA LISA everytime I walk by their classroom, and are always waving hello. I’m sure I will have more funny stories about them as time goes on and I can more easily understand what they are saying to me.

After finishing at 1 PM I have a French lesson everyday from 3PM to 5PM. This is helping me immensely and I think I will continue them throughout my stay. For the next post I will go into details about the wedding trip. There was actually a second wedding for the same couple yesterday that we went to, so it’s a long affair and Ill save the descriptions for next time. Au revoir!