One year down

This might be a little long and tedious and lacking in a sense of humor. Apologies.

In early January I was elected "English department coordinator." I was flattered, but I suspect my ascent to departmental greatness had a lot more to do with no one wanting to do more work for no extra pay, than any actual qualifications I may possess. After accepting the offer, I asked the director and other teachers exactly what the job entails, to which they all similarly responded, "You coordinate the department if the department needs coordination." Right-o. Thus, I assume that the position was superfluous and just needed to exist in name - and that someone would tell me if I needed to do something.

About a week before the second trimester exams, the director walked into the secretary's office where I happened to be standing with another English teacher. He informed us that the exams were to be the same across each level (this was not the case for the first trimester exams), to which I asked how that was possible with only a week's notice. He seemed surprised at my concern that there was no way all of the students would be prepared for the same material, and the English teacher immediately moved to defensive mode, saying that there had been no coordination. I stood there stunned, but nothing really came of it. We did our own exams for each class, and I finally learned what was expected of me. Yeah, I know the title is pretty self-explanatory, but when I asked what was expected of me, I got blown off.

With about two months to go in the scholastic year, I hit my stride. I busted my ass to track down the elusive teachers (two of whom I had yet to meet) and arrange a meeting in which we would decide what would be on the final exam, essentially laying out the syllabus for the remainder of the year. As I sat on the cusp of finally finding a suitable time for a meeting that wouldn't conflict with anyone's schedules, my boss decided to come to NDB to see how everything was going. During the subsequent meeting I explained where we were, coordination-wise, to him and the director. In the presence of my superior - a white Moor who pulls quite a bit of weight in this country - the director suddenly gave a shit where previously there was not so much as a fart to be whiffed. Ignoring my work, he set our department meeting for the next day when every single one of us had a class to teach. I was annoyed.

The next day we spent almost two hours deciding what to teach for the rest of the year. In front of my boss the director was in top form, feeding us milk and bread, taking everyone's phone numbers for easier communication in the future, etc. By now my opinion of the guy was pretty low. I watched him prostrate himself, and was disgusted at how transparent and child-like he was. I realized that I hated this guy as a representation of everything wrong with the system. But I thought I hid the sentiment well enough.

Because the students are notorious cheaters, we decided to create multiple versions of each exam. I spent a few entire days putting them together and making sure they were of equal difficulty. Only Ousmane helped. Three days before the final, the secretary told Ousmane that the 4th level exams would be provided by the DREN (the state-level education ministry). I flipped my shit, and with Ousmane at my side, stormed the director's office. I had finally snapped on eight months of inconceivably shitty administration. First I asked how long he had known about the new exam. "Depuis longtemps." For a long time. The answer I expected, so I lit up like a firecracker, asking why, after sitting in our meeting, he had neglected to inform us that half of our (my) work was totally unnecessary. First, he blamed us for not coming to school (not true), then shifted the blame to the DREN, and finally settled it on the secretary. I asked why he hadn't called me and he denied having my number. The image of him writing it down was seared into my memory, probably in expectation of that exact situation. I called bullshit, and fed off the third English teacher writhing quietly in palpable discomfort directly to my left. The director told me to sit down, I yelled at him to listen. I consciously shifted all my addresses to him to the informal. And throughout it all, he continued to invite other people in to say "hi," punctuating our discourse with tacit periods of impotent rage. Ousmane then showed him all the versions of our test, and before he listened to our plan to curb cheating, denounced it as impossible. Ousmane diplomatically took over, and the director finally conceded. We would use our exams instead of the DREN's, and I would come in the morning of the final to collate and prepare everything. We were victorious.

The final began at 10:00. I arrived at 7:50 to prepare. I just needed the director to give me the photocopies so I could start. He told me to wait, and continued to leave me waiting until 9:15. Then he handed me a box of about 1,200 exams, and I began. By 10:00 I had run out of 5th level exams because administration had not made enough. Proctors trickled into the secretary's office to pick up the tests. I had finished three of twelve 4th year classes, and by 10:20 people were getting frantic. I kept my head down and collated while teachers who had praised the idea of multiple versions the day before called it a failure. At 10:30 the director entered and screamed that if we had done it his way, we wouldn't have this problem. I informed him rather loudly that we wouldn't have this problem if he hadn't made me wait for an hour and a half for no reason. I finished at 11:00, an hour after the official commencement of the final. There were not enough copies for all of the students.

I shouldn't have lost my composure the way I did. After watching the director capriciously and ineptly run our school for a year, I lost it when his ego ran over mine. I focused a year's worth of frustration at all incompetent higher-ups (from the bank, from school, from my office building, from the police, from the government) into the explosion in his office, and he fucked me. No one advances based on merit. This place runs on nepotism, and suffers for it. And it isn't my fight. I graded my exams (incidentally, a practice deemed "a waste of time" by a disturbing number of other teachers), filled out report cards, and left for four months.

Next year ought to be fun. I suspect I'm going to leave the "coordination" up to some other sucker. I enjoyed the teaching, and will happily focus on that. My students did better than all others on their finals, and that was gratifying. But that doesn't seem to matter. This is a copy of this year's BAC (similar in significance to the SATs). You'll notice, aside from several copy-editing errors, that one of the first questions is literally impossible. And this BAC is one of the best I've seen.

I need a vacation. And some perspective.

The school.


One of my classrooms.


I didn't write that.


My 4th year Arab class. Unruly lot, but fun.

Jon says we "got cred"

http://theroughguidetowestafrica.blogspot.com/

Both of us are sitting atop the pile of linked blogs. I had several drinks with Roger Norum a few months ago at the ol' Chinese whorehouse, where he impressed everyone with a usable grasp of Chinese. He grilled the owners as to the contents of a bag that they seemed strangely excited about, and they were in turn very stingy with info. Weird.

Thank you Sonal

I hope anyone's natural reaction to getting shot with a laser gun would be fisting a shark.

Playlist du jour and one big question

1. Good listens in rotation.

• The Bronx - Heart Attack American
• Future Sound of London - Papua New Guinea (High Contrast Mix)
• Alan Braxe - At Night
• Cut Copy - Zap Zap
• Stereolab - Percolator
• TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
• Curtis Mayfield - Move On Up
• Cannibal Ox - Atom
• Ugly Casanova - Things I Don't Remember
• Tom Waits - Alice
• Palace Music - New Partner
• Thievery Corporation - Exploration
• Sufjan Stevens - For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti
• Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)

2. Back at the gym, and want to gain weight. Caro thought hearing about my attempts to become a fatty would be hilarious, but I don't even know where to begin. Somehow even though half of America seems to have mastered the technique, I have to ask, how do you gain weight? Seriously.

More points of note, and a mystery

1. There was an article on BBC a couple of weeks ago about a clandestine meteorite trade right here in NDB (if I find one, I'm buying, much to the chagrin of scientists everywhere). The article itself was of moderate interest, but the most interesting thing I noticed was that the writer called my fair city "lawless." I scoffed at the idea. I see police everywhere, though admittedly, a few of those times involved them demanding bribes from some unsuspecting immigrant. But that's standard operating procedure for Africa, and I shrugged it off as just part of having a police presence in the city.

Well I scoffed a bit too soon, because the latest buzz about town is talking about the plane that stopped at the airport 5 minutes from my apartment last Wednesday on a massive heroin run, with the consent of higher-ups in the police and several patron businessmen here in NDB. According to my reporter friend and the Moor guy that eats dinner at the same restaurant as me, a policeman came to the control tower and told them to allow the plane to land. The pilots waited for a contact at the airport for about half an hour, while someone else employed there thought that the plane had landed unannounced because there was some sort of emergency. So said random worker called the hospital, which sent a couple of ambulances. The sirens frightened the pilots, who promptly reboarded their aircraft and flew straight into the desert. They abandoned the plane, chock full of millions upon millions of dollars of heroin and disappeared into the ether. Supposedly the police are going to bring the drugs back to NDB and burn them, but all parties consulted seemed fairly certain that much of those drugs will disappear again. And to add to it all, the son of one of the presidential candidates was implicated in the whole matter. Excitement!

2. When I lived in Paris and people would ask where I'm from, I'd get this little ball of awkward shame in the back of my throat as I feebly said "the U.S." and immediately followed with an apology. All but one time it didn't really generate a negative reaction, and in retrospect, I'm slightly annoyed that I felt so timid about my origin. It's not my fault the administration follows each terrible idea with something inconceivably worse, and actually, I'm kind of happy to be from the States. It beats being from 97% of the rest of the world. But French people still shit all over Sarkozy because he envisions a decent relationship with the States. I say, he may actually do you some good.

3. So now, when I'm eating dinner, and the nice Moor guy next to me starts telling me about how much he doesn't like any English speakers, I smile until I taste bile. And when he tells me that he supports bin Laden (though the September thing was terrible), because Bush responded by murdering far more people than "the terrorists" ever could, I actually empathize a bit. But then he checks my empathy by making blanket claims that all Americans only care about money, that we're withholding a cure for AIDS from Africa because we want to see people die, and that we hate Islam, and I refrain from saying, "You know, that sounds an awful lot like me telling you that all Muslims are terrorists." But the fact of the matter remains, there is a ridiculous number of people in the world that hate us, and those numbers are in direct correlation to the foreign policy of the Bush administration. So somehow, I come out feeling proud and defensive of my country, and hating the people in power with a previously unknown passion, because their actions are indefensible.

4. We got animals. Tons of them. Everywhere. Goats, donkeys, cats, children, dogs, mice, chickens, cows. I can't leave my apartment without seeing some pathetic procession of creatures down my street, chewing on whatever plastic bags they can find. And I've been witness to some miracles of mother nature (have you ever sat and watched a goat give birth? 'cause I have, and it's disgusting), and I've seen her savage cruelty. I've seen cute baby animals playing with each other, and I've seen them lying dead on the side of the road. I've seen a dog eat a kitten. But what I've never seen, and at this point it's such a mystery that I'm hyperaware of the situation wherever I go, is a baby donkey. They're all exactly the same size, and they all look haggard. Maybe they just kind of sprout, full-sized, out of the ubiquitous mounds of donkey poop, or maybe all the animals got together and agreed to stop breeding because their lives were just so miserable, but whatever it is, baby donkeys elude me and everyone I know. Figure that one out.

Third world product reviews - The Closet of Narnia

This being the third world, occasionally we here in NDB find ourselves yearning for items that aren't readily available. English reading material, for example, or VHS cassettes of film classics such as "Smoke Signals" and "Elizabethtown." Sometimes our cravings become more exotic, and we find ourselves jonesin' for a 1986 economics textbook and a pair of used, red swimshorts. Back in the dawn of our time here, when Erin and Sam occupied the room that now belongs to Ousmane, it was not at all uncommon to find the three of us sitting, staring at each other, silently confounded that no one could find a 5-year-old printer box filled with suspicious, off-brand condoms and a stapler. They were hard times.

But lo, the sun has risen and shed its light unto the dark ages through which we wandered. Upon moving into their new apartment, which has passed through the hands of several volunteers, Sam and Erin became the unwitting guardians of an 8x4x2 ft. portal to a world of magic and intrigue.

Sam recalls, "I remember seeing the closet and thinking, 'Great, somewhere to put my many, many pairs of shoes.' Then I opened the thing, and the disappointment was excruciating."

"Sam just started tossing junk out of the closet," Erin explains. "But it never stopped. Crap streamed from the open door like a clown at a children's birthday party, pulling a never-ending handkerchief out of its sick, fat mouth."

Eventually, her husband disappeared into the depths of the closet, and Erin called me, frantic. When I arrived, she was standing in the middle of the room, knee-deep in satellite receiver boxes and copies of Newsweek dating back to 2003, which, judging by the sheer numbers, must have had around 63 months. It was a bizarre, worrisome scene, and I could only think of one thing to say. I looked at the girl, staring into the black expanse as if it was the edge of the universe. "Let's get something to eat."

We came back two hours later to find Sam lying barely conscious at the door, pants torn and a sizable patch of hair missing from the left side of his head. He kept muttering something about a lion, so I gave him some french fries. He couldn't really chew, so we dipped them in ketchup and just kind of laid them on his cheek.

Eventually, after watching ketchup drip into Sam's eye with no noticeable reaction, Erin and I realized the gravity of the situation and sprung into action. For weeks we nursed him back to coherence. Erin really proved the strength of their marriage vows, giving him daily sponge baths and regularly fixing an edible puree to feed him until he relearned how to feed himself. It was sort of like a fish and carrot milkshake. For my part, I spent a lot of time with Sam at the parallel bars as he took his first baby steps for the second time. We also read "Green Eggs & Ham," and he inched his way towards literacy. But for some reason, every time I brought out "The Cat in the Hat," he would cry softly to himself. It took a while to figure out why.

We kept Whitney Houston on constant, 24-hour rotation to give the whole thing a montage-esque quality. I don't think Sam even knew what was going on, but at the very least, I found it inspiring. And after three months - three long months of blood, sweat, and tears - he bounced back. It was an emotional time for everyone, and I think we all became a little bit closer.

During all of that time, those whole three months and then some, the door of the room with the Closet remained closed. Shut to the world, until one day, I asked Erin for a hammer. Without even thinking, she replied, "Why don't you check the Closet of Narnia?" So I did. And you know what? I found that hammer. And I found a light bulb, and some hot sauce, and some porn. We discovered that the Closet held just about everything we never knew we needed, and as long as you didn't venture too deep, it was relatively safe. Which seems like a shitty metaphor for life.

So I give our Closet of Narnia a 4 out of 10. I mean, sure it's a repository for all things known to mankind, but I'm using C. S. Lewis' version as a point of reference. We've got around 50 movies in there, but they're in friggin' VHS, and we don't even have a VCR. I'm pretty sure Lewis' would have had DVDs. Our Closet also loses points because Lewis' version (again, relatively speaking) of the magical world didn't have a giant, obnoxious lion that used weak, liberal sex-crimes legislation as an excuse to do unspeakable things to whoever wandered too far in. If it had happened to me, this thing totally would have been docked another point.

I Phantom (someone better comment)

I've been a bit bipolar for the last two and a half weeks. Starting when several good friends came to visit, I realized just how jaded I was getting with the grind. We then moved the party to Atar, where I promptly drained my precious endorphin supply until I was running on fumes, and finally, about a week ago, I returned to Nouadhibou.

Waiting for me were my students' second trimester exams, which only proved that either I'm a shit teacher or I'm teaching to blocks of concrete. It was a real low point, including repeated musings about what the hell exactly I'm doing here. I came knowing it wouldn't be Dangerous Minds, but that didn't really matter. I suppose I was a bit naive to think that even though these kids entered their 4th and 5th years barely able to string together a 4-word sentence (no exaggeration), I could somehow catch them up to the point the syllabus claims they should be at, and continue to aid them in their path towards fluency. Yeah. I know. Duh.

Anyway, I woke up a couple days ago and finally recognized the end of this leg trudging through the slough of despond. Actually, I'm pretty pumped about nothing in specific. And I want to hear from people, so this is a formal call for comments. I'm asking you to roll it out on this one, because otherwise, this is going to seem really, really pathetic. Remind other people. NYC, and specifically Brooklyn, I'm looking in your direction. 'Illadelph and Beantown, I'm looking in your direction. To the people grinding it out in the District's political, law, and liquor store machines, I'm looking in your direction. Chi-town, Bay Area, Portland and L.A., I'm looking in your direction. Paramaribo, London, Lahore, and everywhere in between, this means you. Hell, I don't even have to know you.

It takes about 30 seconds. Want a higher purpose? Consider it an apolitical way to show your support for a generation coming into power during a particularly crappy time in history. Prove the value of fruitless labor for the sake of the Good. Take the soapbox, or just say "yo." And if nothing else, answer the following question: It's 4:00 PM. Do you know where your moms' is at?