students – Page 3

pop culture

On the bus home from my office, ten young teenage girls came onto the bus. They were all wearing the same brands (TNA, Talula, Wilfred), and were heavily clad with makeup, expensive purses, and smelled of perfume. I guess they were from rich families. They got on, giggling half- drunkenly, and squealed and gossiped like the characters on Gossip Girl. I think if they read this they would think it was a compliment. They were the stereotypical “popular girls” of high school, and seeing them I realize how shallow (worthless, pointless) that label is. But they were nice girls, probably; I shouldn’t judge.

At the mall earlier in the day, I overheard two eight-year-old girls holding poster tubes, begging their daddy, “please, please buy me these Justin Bieber posters,” to which he responded (exasperated), “you girls, driving me crazy with your Fever Bieber fever (SDFDFDSFHGHGHJLKLDRKER, mentally in his head)”. I couldn’t help but laugh, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. or a purely amused laugh. It was a little disconcerting, actually. What’s the deal with celebrity crushes?

I stayed a little later at the Academy tonight, marking my students’ tests. There are two other classes that run at night; one of them was a little boy (5 or 6) who came in for a class every week (newly immigrant parents want to expose their children to English ASAP). My boss asked the little boy, “do you miss your mom, when is she coming back from Taiwan??” to which he said, “I’m okay.” Then, she teases the little boy, “did you miss me???”, which he honestly replied, “not really….”. So she asks, “who do you miss the most right now, at this moment??” “Lady Gaga.”

Another boy (14 or 15) walked by and retorted, “little boy, you’re like 2 years old. Do you think you have a chance at her?”, all the while implying that he did.

Friday fun

June 17, an eventful day

On our way back from lunch, we noticed a big crowd of people gathered around two men. It turned out to be a fist fight between two men, apparently fighting over a cheating wife. There were people from the town gathered, as well as children from the primary school beside where they were fighting, plus some high school students who had the day off. It was a great big show, and everyone was shouting their comments, heckling, laughing, and others were trying to pull the two men off each other. Even the woman was there, with her baby strapped to her back as women do here. The men were told to move their fight elsewhere, and the crowd kept following them. Almost 50 people would follow them as they moved the fight from place to place. I wonder if the husband was trying to gather the crowd, to shame his wife and also the man with whom she had extra marital relations with.

After the fun and frenzy moved far away, we headed back to the library. All day, the school across our workplace had loud music blaring. Apparently it was a celebration dance welcoming the new S1 and S5 students (start of junior and senior high). We were curious to see what a high school dance looked like, so we gathered around the windows to peek. We should’ve known that the students would drag us into the dance, seeing a chance to party with the muzungus.

The dance hall was really just a plain, bare classroom, with leaves decorating the window panes. We were ushered into the room, where catchy African tunes had everyone dancing and having fun. Dancing (and clubbing) here is not as awkward as it is back home, in my opinion… people here are a lot more natural when it comes to breaking out their dance moves, probably because children are brought up to learn and perform the traditional dances. When we got onto the dance floor, all the boys danced their way to surround us, cheering us on, and dancing away. It was great fun. We snapped some pictures, then darted back out because it was so hot and humid inside. On our way out, I noticed that there were several explicit drawings of men and women on the blackboard, but I didn’t ask about it. For a society where religious studies is a major part of the school curriculum, it surprised me to see sex pictures explicitly drawn onto a high school blackboard.

We had dinner plans with the town doctor, who is also an amazing cook. We arrived promptly at 6pm, as arranged, but he was stuck in theatre (operating room) as he was last time we were here. We waited around but he didn’t arrive until close to 8pm. He must’ve had a really long day, he looked quite exhausted but he was still rather chatty at that. He proceeded to ask his cousin to go out to buy some vegetables, then began to prepare the food. Being busy all the time doesn’t allow him much time for socializing, so he took the chance to chat with us as he prepared dinner. By 9:30pm, the vegetables were still being chopped, but we had learned most of his dating history. We didn’t get to eat until an hour or so later. He was an animated story teller, for sure. When we had finished, he called on a driver from the hospital to help him escort us home, which was a treat because the cheaper alternative would’ve been to ride a motorcycle home in the dark. We got home, and all fell asleep soon afterwards as it had been a long, eventful day.