Teaching English
Soon after arriving, John, Charlotte, and I set up a biweekly English class for village middle schoolers. Because it was during the summer, it was completely optional for the students. English is taught in the middle school, so our class served as a supplement for those wanting to review what they already knew or for those wanting to get a head start for next year.
During the first few weeks, the classes worked well. Attendance was high, with the number of students being between 15 and 20. With each following week, however, attendance dropped. Eventually, there were only 5 students, and in the final couple of weeks, we didn't have class at all.
Why the decline? I would blame it on several things. First and foremost, this was the year of Waa, an initiation ceremony that happens only once every 5 years. Most students had siblings being initiated and so would have been too busy with their families to make it to class.
Some blame certainly rests on us, the teachers, as well. English is the language of opportunity, so the initial idea of English classes taught by Americans must have been absolutely enchanting for village middle schoolers - hence why there were 25 students at the first class. Upon arriving, however, students got a glimpse of reality: even though we're Americans who speak fluent English, we weren't capable of transforming them into fluent English speakers by the end of the summer. It was our job, as the teachers, to maintain an inspiring and encouraging environment despite this discouraging reality check, and I’m not sure that we succeeded in doing that. Some ideas about how to better encourage the students: we could have set up a reward system - for instance, a piece of candy for whoever correctly answers a question. We could have planned out all of the classes in advance rather than go just one class at a time with no final destination in mind. If we had had a final destination (for instance, mastery of salutations and basic getting-to-know-you conversations), we could have set up well-defined check points to make the students better feel like they were making progress.
Another problem was the lack of necessary materials. Nobody except us, the teachers, had French-English dictionaries. We didn't have simple texts for English language learners. Charlotte noticed while the students were copying down vocabulary words that many had completely full notebooks and were squishing our information into whatever margins they could find. Thus, I would suggest that the Duke in Togo students next year, should they decide to teach English too, bring cheap notebooks, writing utensils, some extra French-English dictionaries, and some old children's books from home to serve as English learning texts.
Sometimes what we lacked was the classroom itself. It was a school official who kept the key, and if the school official could not be located, we had no access to the classroom. When we did have the classroom, we lacked decent lighting. The chalkboard was old and dirty, making it hard to read. Therefore, needs include access to the key, lights (via solar panels), and white boards to replace the old chalk boards.
Studying Traditional Medicine
John and I spent time learning about the traditional medicines of Farendé. We did this by talking to a variety of guérisseurs (the French word for healers). All guérisseurs used plant-based treatments. For any given sickness, the treatment would involve collecting one or many plants and then preparing them in some way - either to be eaten, drunk, or absorbed in a sauna-like steam bath. All guérisseurs relied to some extent on the supernatural realm; for some, that was the Christian god, and for others, the spirits of ancestors. Some guérisseurs treated a variety of sicknesses, while some specialized only on one or two.
One of our objectives was to collect information. The challenges we faced in collecting information involved obtaining the names of plants. In many cases, we were only able to obtain the name in Kabiye. We had a book on the woody plants of West Africa, so we found the French and scientific names for most tree species, but we had no comparable book for herbs. However, the necessity of common names and scientific names is questionable, depending on for what purpose we use the information we collect. If the information stays only in the hands of the community, then Kabiye names are sufficient.
Our second objective was to create a better relationship between the guérisseurs and the village clinic. To do this, we organized a meeting toward the end of the trip between the guérisseurs, the chiefs, and the clinic workers to discuss how the two systems of medicine could better collaborate. This was... an interesting task. First of all, it was difficult to get a date and time set in stone. We started by going to the village chief. When we went to chief of the canton, he changed the time. We went back to the village chief, who then changed it again. It was back and forth like this for a while, with the clock ticking. Finally, a time was set, so we went around and informed our guérisseurs of the where and when. When the hectic day came (hectic because it was also the day of our goodbye ceremony), the guérisseurs who showed up were not the guérisseurs to whom we had talked. We still had a good discussion and it was still an effective first step in creating collaboration, but it would have been better with a higher attendance and with the guérisseurs whom we had interviewed. We should have set the date and time earlier, and we should have mentioned that there would be sorghum beer - then everybody would have shown!
Seeing how difficult it was to mobilize people for a rendez-vous, I would like to advise the students of next year to focus on the individual. John and I had several interviews with individual guérisseurs. If I had known that a certain guérisseur would not be at the final meeting, I would have milked that interview for all it was worth by devoting some time to exchanging ideas about collaboration between him and the clinic, rather than just discussing what sicknesses he treats and how. In other words, when you have a chance to discuss something one-on-one, don't pass it up just because a similar discussion is scheduled to occur later. Scheduling is a dubious thing in Togo, so use the instant with the individual whenever it's in front of you.
