12/05/10

Thanks to a helpful blog comment I now cut my daily garlic dose into pill-sized pieces and swallow them whole—MUCH better than chewing raw garlic.
Today the very confused guy who works in the secretary’s office at my school waved me over and asked if I knew an Emma. Turns out that the post office in Morrumbene, a town about 2 hours north of us (and whose name he couldn’t remember at first, making this whole exchange even more difficult), had called our school looking for Emma, a white teacher. He had answered the phone and didn’t know Emma, but figured that I would know who Emma, the white teacher, was. Emma had agreed to pick up any mail for the former volunteer in Morrumbene, so they were trying to get a hold of her to tell her that she had some mail.
Today I cornered my student who can’t read or write and asked him why he didn’t show up yesterday afternoon. He said he had gone but couldn’t find me, but I called him out on lying because I knew he hadn’t even shown up to P.E. in the afternoon. So we agreed to have a reading and writing lesson directly after classes. I have two of my colleagues, his Biology and Portuguese teachers, coming up to me repeatedly, telling me that something needs to be done about this, because he is in my homeroom. And talking to his mom last Saturday really made me feel like it’s up to me. His mom is concerned, but that’s it. And when your 8th grade son can’t read or write, being concerned isn’t enough. And coupled with the fact that she lives far away and he lives on his own here in town, I really think that if I don’t fix this problem, nobody is going to. So we had our first study session today. Aside from the terrible irony that I am teaching a language I just learned 8 months ago, I have absolutely no idea how to teach someone to read and write. Luckily a couple of the sisters are primary school teachers, so I have already talked to one about giving me lessons and activities to do with him. Today I had him write the alphabet, which he couldn’t do on his own but we worked through it. The concepts of upper and lowercase letters seem to be completely beyond him, but we have bigger issues to worry about. Then I had him write each consonant with each of the vowels (ex: ba, be, bi, bo, bu) so he could practice which sounds each letter makes. And that was all, but it was a whole lesson. I just keep thinking, fuck I wish this wasn’t my problem. But maybe this is a chance for me to actually do something concrete and good. And I know that if I don’t do it, nobody is going to.