Africa, part 1

That frequent call to check your privilege certainly has a place here. If you want a reality check, come to Africa. Subsistent level farming, extreme poverty, hard-scrabble existence hard against significant signs of prosperity, great wealth and enormous privilege. Wow. Grad School Friend (hereafter GSF) and I are constantly, achingly aware of our pure luck in being born in the 'right' part of the world.

We've been visiting schools - so far only primary and secondary schools. They use a British style system here, as they are a former British colony. Primary 1-6, Secondary 1-4 gets them to the O level, Secondary 5-6 to the A level. After that, if they are incredibly lucky and can scrape the money together, they're off to university. The classrooms are rudimentary and packed - huge classes. Enormous. Equipment? It is to laugh. They usually have a blackboard painted no the wall; if not, it's a board, battered and with large pieces of the middle missing. No matter, they use it assiduously. The students have precious books we'd find in a trash can behind the dollar store. Pencils that seem impossible to use are carefully held and precious. The buildings are ... depressing, dark. Few have glass in the windows (not much need, given the climate) - so far, there's been precisely ONE with a ceiling - and that's a new building funded by the World Bank.

The students? Amazing. Intent. Creative, intelligent, sharp - on. They hang on your words, be they from their regular teachers or weird American visitors. GSF usually teaches university seniors and grad students, so she's really finding a way to approach younger kids. She gets questions like 'what are better ways to trade?' and 'how do we approach issues of corruption?' One class listed problems of development - corruption, unemployment, profligacy. PROFLIGACY. That's the level of vocabulary for the A level kids. My students at Unnamed University (hereafter UU) would never use that kind of vocabulary and most likely wouldn't know the meaning of the word. She gets profligacy. And yes, they defined it clearly and correctly. And used it comfortably in conversation.

I generally take the younger ones, and we have a lovely time. I tell them what I do, and ask them to ask me questions. Many are very shy, so they send questions up front on scraps of paper. Everything from 'how many children do you have?' to 'how did the USA consolidate power after independence?' Heart-rending pleas for bursaries - yesterday I had a student ask to go home with me, as she has no family and is very poor. Astonishing questions on if the Chinese are witch doctors, if all US musicians are devil worshippers, how do the Illuminati operate, is it good to promote homosexuality in the world, why did the US stop aid because of Uganda's anti-homosexuality laws, what is homosexuality, what is archaeology - astonishingly varied. What are contours? What is your faith? What is the deepest lake in the world? I love this, as it addresses the kinds of things they are thinking about, studying.

We leave the schools excited, energized, amazed. We went to sit in on a debate the other day - Students should determine performance (grades) not the school (teachers). There must have been nearly 200 students in attendance - and when the call came for other speakers, there was a steady line of students going up, all carefully following procedure, making their statements, being scored by other students. And when I'd asked the kinds of things students liked - what subjects, etc. - perhaps half said 'debating.' Far more than football/soccer or the World Cup. Those debates - run by their peers and open to all - are a favorite activity.

I'm getting an amazing education here. So far, even on our weekend excision into the country side, I've seen the following wildlife: perhaps a dozen kinds of birds, four monkeys (a family group), three river otters, and some spiders. I have to count the spiders, or the list is even more pathetic. We saw the source of the Nile at Jinja. Went up Mt Elgon. Saw Mbale. This weekend, we've been promised Murchison Falls. I'll believe it when I see it.