Good Morning Auntie

I finally have Internet!!! I have only been without it for about a week and half, but when you are used to having it everywhere you go it is quite a change.

We I arrived in Enugu, Nigeria almost two weeks ago.  In Enugu the sisters run a primary, secondary, and nursery school. Kaitlin is working in the secondary school and I have been placed in the primary and nursery school.  The school is only about ten yards from our home, so it’s a short walk every day. The first day we arrived at school we were greeted by hundreds of excited children.  The primary and nursery school have over a thousand children, so it was a bit overwhelming. Nigeria has little to no diversity, so the children very rarely see a white person. Children screaming “Good Morning Auntie” greeted us, as this is what they call their teachers. Many children wanted to touch us. They want to know what skin that is a different color feels like. Needless to say this was a very overwhelming. Some of the younger children just stare and almost look a little scared. Now that I have just finished the second week of school, I am still greeted all day long anywhere I go by children screaming “Good Morning Auntie” while they touch my arms or try to grab my hair. I don’t find it quite as overwhelming as I did in the beginning, but I look forward to the day when I can walk around without being followed by a small mob of children.

The language barrier has been much harder in the school than I expected. Everyone speaks English, but we have very different accents.  The sisters say that the more I speak the easier it will get for the children and the teachers to understand me.  I am sure this true, but I never expected this to be an issue.  I will be spending a lot of the school day in Nursery 3, which is equivalent to Kindergarten in the States.  There are four Nursery 3 classrooms with 30 to 40 students in each.  I spent the last two days teaching some games and get to know you type activities mostly so the children could get used to hearing my voice.  When the next trimester starts in May, as this one will end next week, I will be teaching lessons in each of theses rooms.  The sisters seem to be interested in bringing some more hands-on lessons into the classroom, since most lessons are taught with notes and memorization as early as pre-k. I have looked at the curriculum for next semester and picked out topics that I can create interactive lessons for. I really like this idea and hope the children will be able to understand me.

I couldn’t write about the school without talking about discipline. It has by far been one of the hardest things about this experience so far. In Nigeria the most common for of punishment is to hit a child with a wooden cane or have them kneel in the dirt. I have seen this everyday multiple times a day since I’ve been here. I have seen a whole class hit with the cane and I have seen children kneeling over bad grades. I know it is part of the culture and something I cannot change, but I don’t think it will ever get easy to see.