"Pourquoi les blanc..."

(Part 2 of 2)

 

My post mate, who is a Small Enterprise Development (SED) PCV assigned to the local Lagdo bank, teaches English six hours a week at the lycée at the cinquième and sixième (5eme and 6eme from now on) levels, which is the rough equivalent of 8^th grade and 7^th grade, respectively.  For both of the classes, I'd say the ages of the students range from 12-17, and I might be being nice with the 17.

 

Anyway, on her invitation, I've started a 4-part HIV/AIDS course for one hour a week for each of the classes.  It's not much, but what else do I have going on?  The first week of the lessons was this last Monday and Tuesday, and overall, I have to say they were some of the rowdiest group of vagrants I've been around.  In Cameroon, if you spare the rod, and if you're as tranquil as my post mate, the children are literally crawling in and out of the windows.  I think they see her teaching as more of an oddity and also a rest from the beatdowns regularly given out by Cameroonian teachers.  Beatdowns or not, the students will still fail English.

 

This week's lesson was going over the different myths floating around Cameroon, and Africa in general, and the realities of HIV/AIDS in an activity cleverly entitled "The Realities and Myths of HIV/AIDS."  (Despite it being an English class, I'm doing the lessons in French because the students wouldn't be able to understand otherwise.)  In the activity, Vanessa (my post mate) and I read out different statements about HIV/AIDS, and the students had to decide if they were true or false; after the students decided on all of them, I went through and discussed them and made any changes that were necessary.  Here are some examples of common myths about HIV/AIDS that some Africans believe (pay attention, crackers):

 

·        Traditional healers have cured AIDS.

·        You can cure AIDS if you have sex with a virgin.

·        (Pay attention, crackers)  AIDS was invented by white people.

·        (Pay attention, crackers)  AIDS was invented by white people to diminish the African population.

·        Only white people get AIDS.  (Logic doesn't have to be involved with these myths.)

·        The reason why white people tell Africans to wear condoms is because white people put AIDS in the condoms.  Also, the condoms with AIDS were shipped to Douala, Cameroon's main port.  Just an fyi.

 

In addition to these examples, there were more myths, and in general, the kids seemed to know which of the different phrases were true and which were false… except the part about white people inventing AIDS.

 

Nearly all the questions the students asked, even after we discussed them and moved them to the correct side of the board, were about white people and the invention of AIDS.  Cameroonians really think we're devious, people.  When the question "Porquoi les blancs inventent le SIDA?" was asked, and I would respond, "If white people invented AIDS, why do white people have AIDS?" the next question would invariably be, "Who invented AIDS?"  After saying, "I'm not sure that it was invented.  God?"  (Leave the mysteries, or my ignorance really, to Jesus.), the kids would still ask about white people and inventing AIDS.  Of course, by the time the Q & A period began, there was so much noise in the classroom that the students couldn't hear each other or weren't paying attention anymore, so the same questions were repeated.  But it was uncanny that nearly every one of them started, "Porquoi les blancs…"