An Awfully Big Adventure

Today as part of our training we watched a documentary called Girl Rising, which uses the stories of 8 girls and young women from countries like Peru, Haiti, Ethiopia, Nepal, and Afghanistan to illustrate the point that educating girls is the single most effective thing any country can do to combat poverty. The issue of gender equality wasn't my greatest passion back home, but my presence here as a woman teaching math and standing up for myself is a revolution on a micro scale. Our PCVL came to watch us teach a while ago and brought my attention to the fact that for a review activity with fifteen questions I had only three girls come to answer. I hadn't thought at all about the way I dealt with gender in the classroom here (too busy keeping my head above water for first marking period), but after his comment I made a deliberate attempt to call on girls more often, and to make sure that they felt like my classroom was a safe space. In the last month I have noticed a significant increase in the number of girls who raise their hands to answer questions in class and fight for a chance to come to the board. It feels like a tiny victory in an immeasurable war.

The issue of gender in education in Liberia (or the world) is part of a broader question I have been asking myself lately. When I stand in the front of my classroom, chalk on my hands and mud on my shoes and sweat running down my back, I sometimes see huge possibility and potential. Other times I see the 2/3 of my class who only occasionally cheat on their quizzes, usually come to class, and seem to value the results of education, if not the process. They work harder than any honors student in America, because they have to fight economic obstacles associated with being orphans/parents/self-supported adults, societal pressures stemming from a decade and a half of actual collapse, and the ingrained restrictions of gender roles. My last two classes of the afternoon have the added challenge of literally racing the sun in the sky to be able to see the chalkboard and their notebooks as dusk falls and their dim classrooms become even darker. Sometimes it feels like a losing battle (and an inappropriate goal) to teach them to graph a line or balance a chemical equation. How could that be relevant to the immediate screaming needs of their lives? What else could I possibly be doing, if not this? Is there a better use of my time here, or a better perspective I could find from which to approach our primary project?

One of my fellow volunteers (who has her students call her Miss Frizzle, btw), teaches math and science in a tiny school in a minuscule village. I love the way she looks at the world, and the humor and color she brings to her stories. We had an amazing conversation about our purpose here and what our role really is in development in Liberia. Her 12th grade physics class has less than a dozen students, and she has decided that in addition to helping them master the basics of force, waves, and matter, she is going to explicitly model teaching techniques and ask her students to put them into practice with each other when they take turns as class leaders since one of the only job opportunities for high school graduates is teaching. She described a Peace Corps volunteer in their school as Wendy reading to the Lost Boys, showing them new ideas bigger than themselves.

I think that is our purpose here. Our students are the (not-so-distant) future teachers of Liberia. We need to teach them now to value integrity, hard work, and gender equality. We can show them that progress is possible, you just have to want it. It's not this generation we'll have the biggest impact on, but the next one. We've spent the last week at our inservice training, discussing challenges and successes and sharing solutions with other LR-4's. I've been so consistently impressed by the creativity of my fellow pcvs and their resilience in the face of chaos (150 kids in one room, nonexistent resources, radically different cultural context for the process and purpose of teaching and learning), blown away by how they find incredible victories and dedicate huge swaths of their time and energy and heart to a job that is never done in a country that feels further away than the second star to the right and stranger than any rabbit hole ever could. Sometimes it feels like this Neverland is more real than the California dream I left almost six months ago. Will the lost boys (and girls) be better off for our fairy tales and dreams? No system is too big to be changed, and the quiet revolution of expecting them to participate in and take ownership of their own lives is one I have not yet surrendered. To teach in Liberia is an awfully big adventure.

Celebrate Good Times

On October 31st, as I was writing the date on the blackboard in my first class, I decided to share a little bit of American culture with my students. So I added a "Happy Halloween" below, and after the warm-up I shared some of the traditions surrounding halloween from back home (the dressing up in costumes and trick-or-treating and watching horror movie traditions, not the more religious roots of the day). They really loved when I went all along the front row of desks knocking on each one and saying "trick or treat," and for the next week I was greeted with "Trick or treat, Ms. L" when I saw my students in the hall. I also gave them a quiz that day (Happy Halloween!) and if they finished early I had them write me a letter on the back about what their favorite holiday was and why. I got a lot of random answers, but there were many students who liked New Years Day because they were grateful to God for letting them see another year. There's not much to argue about that sentiment here in Liberia, I feel.

Sharing celebrations with my students was a great way to kick off the holiday season here in the tropics halfway around the world from my family, where I don't have crisp, cool fall weather to set the mood. I decided I would find my own ways to make the holidays special this year. So far, I'm off to a great start.

One of the LR-3 Peace Corps Leaders went home for a couple weeks around the same time (and brought me back a new iPhone, thank you so much to everyone involved with that!) and was really excited about, and I quote, "all the pumpkin-flavored things" including bread and pie and spiced lattes. I decided to bring autumn to West Africa. I got some canned pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice in Monrovia and set up my coal pot dutch oven to churn out some tasty pumpkin bread. I borrowed metal muffin tins from our neighbor Fatu and used laughing cow 'cheese' to make a maple cream cheese frosting. In case you are wondering, the experiment was a success.

In exchange for the use of the muffin tins, I carried some of my victory baking to Fatu, Ben, Winifred, and the kids. Heather and I had a great time explaining the harvest season traditions of America to them, including leaves changing color, jack-o-lanterns, American Thanksgiving, corn mazes, and giant pumpkin growing contests. Ben is a farmer, and he was really interested in the differences between Liberian pumpkin (green and squash-shaped) and their round orange American cousins. They also really enjoyed the pumpkin muffins. 

I stopped by the Peace Corps office recently to pick up some mail, and I had a postcard (thank you Stan) and an amazing package (thank you Carrie) full of gorgeous paper/ephemera and a Smithsonian magazine. The paper became another pop-up 'card' that I hung on the bulletin board in my room.

The Smithsonian magazine actually had a really good article and photos of how giant pumpkins have gotten bigger in the last century because of the pumpkin-growing contests. Heather had a package as well, and her parents had sent seed packets, including pumpkin seeds with a jack-o-lantern on the front. We got so excited about this, and carried them over to show the neighbors all the things we'd told them about. Ben was fascinated with his glimpse into American agriculture practices, especially the photo of a tractor hauling a huge pumpkin out of a field. He reached out a finger to trace the giant tire and commented that it was "a fine fine machine." We handed the seed packets into his experienced hands to try out the American varietals of tomatoes, bell peppers, pumpkins, and squash in exchange for part of the produce. 

Thanksgiving is in two days, and the volunteers have been invited by the US ambassador to the Embassy Thanksgiving potluck in Monrovia. So I will get to eat real pumpkin pie, turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing with my fellow LR-4's. It's nice to have family around, even if it's a new and different kind of family than I've had before. I am thankful for so much in my life right now, and the great support system I've found for myself here is at the top of the list.