PAJ

First, I just realized I didn't have a permanent link to Phil's blog, a college friend in Kazakhstan in Peach Corps as an English teacher. (I just spelled "Kazakhstan" correctly without spell check for the first time ever, by the way.)  So, click the link and read it if you have the chance, and I'll put the permanent link on the right side of your computer screen sometime soon so you can have constant access to the glory that is Phil's broken collarbone.  Back to Cameroon…

 

PAJ

 

A lot of details have been clarified for the girls' education project, so full steam ahead.  It's going to be the major work-related thing I do through early September, with a three week vacation/COS conference thrown in there.  (I'll talk about my congé and COS Conference in future entries.)  It's going to entail a lot of running around and talking to grands and a lot of unnecessary worrying on my part, but it'll turn out fine.  If only I could get my hands on the Peace Corps Partnership link so y'all could finance it for me.  (And Passive Aggressive Jay has made his first appearance of the entry.  Will PAJ show his face again?)

 

I had an annoying conversation with a teacher at the local lycée in front of Yotti's boutique the other day.  There was another teacher there as well, but the one that got under my skin was well dressed and tall and talking out of his ass.  He wasn't making me mad, but he had an attitude of "whatever I say is true, and my lack of interest in anything you tell me is going to be shown through an alligator smile."  That's my move, buddy.  My move.

 

When I first got to Yotti's, I was only listening to the guy talk, whose subject was America and what America was like.  I could tell right away by the way he spoke and carried himself that he was educated and thought he was hot shit, and eventually I found out that he was a Spanish teacher at the high school.  At another point he said he wanted me to help him go to Canada.  Spanish teacher in Cameroon and half-jokingly asking to be taken to the West.  Two strikes, mon ami.  We'll tackle Canada first, damn Canadians.

 

The whole "wanting to go to <insert America, any Western European country or other rich, white country here>" thing I get every week or two, and I usually just brush it off because it's a Cameroonian's way of asking what America or the feasibility of an immigrant experience is like.  I told this guy my usual response:  Give me $10,000 for your plane ticket and to set you up for a month or two then be sure to have at least another $2,000 per month ad infinitum to be able to survive, although even then, you'll be the poorest of the poor.  And don't even think of getting a job.  You won't be able to.  It's a little harsh, and the whole thing is done in jest, but I hate hearing Cameroonians say that they want to leave for a mythological country that doesn't exist.  Don't believe the hype.  Americans struggle just like Cameroonians, it's just a different grind.

 

(I should also add that he wanted to go to Canada to study sociology for a couple years, so not only does he want to go a random place, he wants to study fluff...  I majored in a social science, too, so let's be real for a second about this.)

 

When I found out he was a Spanish teacher, and only taught Spanish, a thought flashed before my eyes, a tempting thought given that I didn't like the guy.  The thought is this:  Spanish in Cameroon is simply pointless.  Students can't even speak the official languages of the country correctly, French and especially English, and they're given the opportunity to learn Spanish and German, too?  Why, oh why, when nearly all the students are farmers and the only opportunity to speak Spanish in Cameroon is to walk down to Equatorial Guinea, a place in shambles, or to get on a boat in Morocco and hope to make it across the Mediterranean?

 

So, at some point, I just asked him, most likely out of boredom, "How can you justify teaching Spanish when students can't even speak the official languages of the country?"  I knew what his response was going to be, his livelihood is based on teaching Spanish after all, but I couldn't resist.  PAJ.

 

The conversation was all over the place, with Noam Chomsky and American independence making appearances (I think this was his way of trying to prove how smart he was.), but concerning the educational system, we were at polar opposites.  As a teacher, he blames students for their poor attendance and poor performance.  He even thinks that the system functions well.  On the other hand, I see the bureaucrats and administrators within the system as the basis for the state of Cameroonian public education.

 

(I don't understand how anyone with knowledge of how poorly the Lagdo lycée is run can say with a straight face that the common knowledge that the school's principal steals money that's allocated for students' extracurricular activities and even has dipped into teachers' pay doesn't have something to do with students not giving a shit.)

 

Also, Yotti and others of his generation have told me that educational standards have gotten worse in Cameroon since they were students in the early 1980s.  He says that he was better educated after not finishing high school than current students who have received their diplomas.

 

Another point of his is that he simply likes speaking Spanish and Latin American culture.  I'm not dismissing that, it's nice and rare in Cameroon to see someone who has been able to turn their interest into a paying job, it's just that on a general level, the practicality of a language besides French and English in Cameroon is nil if the vast majority of students never leave their village. 

 

Furthermore, A common thread in his monologues was the way capitalism and the Western system of governance has been forced upon Cameroon and poor countries in general.  True, 100% agree with you.  However, Cameroon's educational system, which you champion, is just the French system.  In the Anglophone provinces, they cut-and-pasted the British system, as well.  Basically, Cameroon has two colonial educational systems in the same country despite 45 years of independence.

 

He responded by saying it wasn't the French system because it wasn't in France… Umm, it's the exact system, same numbering system and everything, that they use. 

 

After I just refused to respond to anything he would say because he wouldn't let me finish any thought – PAJ – he just kept on spouting off random facts about this and that.  He was obviously smart, but he was a smarmy know-it-all, and I recommend to the Canadians that they should figure out why someone who's proud of his Spanish-speaking and never grasped English (even though the system works…) wants to go to an Anglophone country before they let him in.  (He didn't know that French was spoken there.)