Learning happens best in a reciprocal relationship, where the teacher and student both participate in both aspects of instruction. I had some great experiences of that relationship with a young woman named Annie this weekend that taught me "things I never knew I never knew."
Annie and her brother moved in to Rev. Dickson's house about a week and a half ago to spend time in Kakata for school. They are from Nimba county, and I don't know if they are actually blood-relatives or just more adopted children. Annie is in 10th grade at Model School, where us LR-4 trainees have been perfecting our teaching craft on volunteer summer school students from the Kakata area. On Saturday, Annie came to me after breakfast and asked me to "lecture small" on cells and their organelles, the subject of Friday's lesson in her biology class. I got some 'rough sheet' scratch paper and we went through the parts of a eukaryotic cell, the difference between rough and smooth endoplasmic reticulum (rough ER has ribosomes sitting on it, like stinging ants on a blade of grass), golgi bodies ("the post office of the cell" "..." "like, when you go to Red Light to get a car to the east, a transport center" "oh!"), etc. It was pretty enlightening for me in terms of literacy level and general mental perspective of Liberian students, and it was fun besides.
Annie is a perfect example of the average Liberian student. She recognizes the benefits of getting an education (especially for women) and is willing to work as hard as she can to get access to those benefits. Even in the face of non-existent resources, teachers with no knowledge of their subject matter and no concept of the craft of teaching, and all the challenges that come from being a woman in this country. Her academic work ethic would put the valedictorian of my high school class to shame and she has "the ganas, the desire," as Jaime Escalante would say. She also has a general work ethic that puts me to shame.
Women in Liberia work so hard- household chores and child-rearing fall almost entirely on them. And more and more women, encouraged by the example and under the influence of the Iron Lady of Liberia herself, Madam Sirleaf, have careers outside the home in addition. So on an average school day, Annie gets up somewhere around 5:30 am to haul water for the barrel in the bathroom, sweep the living room floor, and help with the children. She then walks about twenty-five minutes to get to school by the beginning of first period at 8 am. After school finishes at 12:30, she walks home and does laundry (by hand, with a washboard, involving yet more water hauling, ferocious upper-arm strength, and knuckles of steel), runs to the market for ingredients for dinner, helps with food prep and clean-up, and reviews and memorizes her notes from that day's class, all before the sun goes down at 6:30. I do less than half the work she does in a day, and I find myself longing for a post-lunch nap.
On Sunday morning I got the buckets, soap, and washboard together to do laundry (for the third time on my own, thank you very much!). On my way out to the front yard's dedicated cement laundry slab, Annie was instructed to help me. Despite my insistence that not only could I do it myself, but I already had done it myself, I was not allowed to haul up my own water from the well. Annie turned out to be very helpful, actually. She was able to impart the secret wisdom of washing underwire bras effectively, the true value of doing whites before denim, the proper length of time to let clothing soak, and how to tell that your 'clean' clothes are actually clean. She also solved the mystery of where people hang their underwear when putting clothes on the line: under a light blouse or t-shirt! It is apparently just fine to hang bras in the open, but no one should see the other unmentionables. I had been bringing them in to my room to dry in private, but the shirt thing works perfectly. That revelation led to a discussion of dress and comportment of young ladies in Liberia. It is totally ok to show leg from the knee down, and shoulders/arms are no problem. But any thigh at all is, as Annie says, "not good-good at all." The way a woman dresses is a signal of how much she respects herself, and the respect she demands of others in their dealings with her. Being tutored in hard work and self-respect by this amazing high school student prompted me to ask her more about her life.
Annie is the oldest girl in her family, though her brother Ozinga (spelling almost certainly NOT correct) who is living with us is older than she is, and I think she has another older brother too. She informed me that it was very important for her to do well in school so that she could help her younger sisters (academically, financially, and by example) to do so as well. She will be in 10th grade at Lango Lippaye High school here in Kakata starting in September, and she is 19 years old. She is smart and strong, and has a wicked sense of humor which was turned towards me quite frequently over the course of the weekend, especially at my attempts at plating hair- apparently what I know of as a french braid is actually a 'country plat' and thus pretty unrefined, at least on a Liberian head.
Annie and girls just like her are my future students, and the future hope of this country: flexible and funny and brilliant and beautiful and so hard-working. They face challenges that this middle-class white girl from Northern California couldn't imagine five years ago. After spending this weekend with her, I called on Princess, Comfort, Mercy, Bendu, and Hawa more than I called on Homphery, Timmothy, Muistafa, Arona, and Joseph for geometry answers in class today. How could I not do everything in my power to set these women on their immensely difficult and immensely important paths?
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