Lion Ryan Nolan Ryan

***I apologize for my long absence from the blogosphere. Exams, holiday in Uganda, and the hectic return of students for Term 2 has kept me busy. Today's posts are backlogged entries that required final edits. Enjoy!

Teaching English as a second language is an often peculiar and humorous job. Sometimes challenging and frustrating, but more likely just funny. I am constantly surprised by the aptitude, or lack thereof, amongst my students. What they know, what they don’t know. Partly this is a reflection of Rwanda’s education system. For example, the breadth of knowledge in my Senior 4 and Senior 5 classes is astounding since many newcomers are from Francophone backgrounds. In essence, they’ve spent their entire educational lives learning in French, and suddenly they arrive at a new school and are required to learn everything in English (including my English class). Partly this is just the nature of ESOL instruction.

My days are usually quite long, and I cling to anything amusing to help the hours past and stem the tide of organizational ridiculousness which seems perpetually at the door step. Little things, like truly advanced vocabulary questions (my Senior 6 students find very difficult words; they frequently have me running to the Oxford Concise English dictionary) or random sentences a student unexpectedly writes particularly well in a homework assignment (dormwork really, since almost all my students live here at school). Or better yet, the highly creative words some students can craft during a game of Scrabble. (Point of clarification: I have only lost to a student twice thus far in more than thirty games; the student in question, who has impeccable English as he is from Kampala, Uganda, somehow manages to snag the x, z, and q – and play them all). Words like zebra, quantity, and oxen.

Other times I am baffled by the apparent lack of English skills in the staff and student body. Basic words misspelled on official documents for teachers and other staff. Curious errors in simple grammar jumbled with advanced and somewhat obscure idioms during staff meetings. One of my favorites is a brief note from our new librarian stating the hours of operation for the library. It is signed simply, “Libraryan,” with an odd little space inserted ever so slightly between the “Libra” and “ryan.” Libra, I initially thought, meant lion, and it just so happens to rhyme with Ryan. I also recently read The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver’s excellent epic about a family of Baptist missionaries from south Georgia who move to the Belgian Congo in 1959, in which one of the characters with a brain defect speaks in anagrams (sometimes rhymed). At first glancing at the notice, I spontaneously and unaccountably blurted out Lion Ryan Nolan Ryan, just as the character was wont to do. The silly little things help keep you sane and lend much-needed perspective. Of course, we are often guilty of the same crimes we accuse others of: Libra, naturally, does not mean lion. Silly me.

All of these instances of startling proficiency or lackluster errors seem so anachronistic, but when you step back and examine the larger education system in Rwanda (and Uganda, too) I guess the picture becomes clearer. There are definitely systemic issues which predispose many people (if not most) in east Africa to very common grammatical and stylistic errors in English. I even suspect that a distinct English dialect has developed in some places like Kenya and Uganda where English colonial rule was long and pervasive. In any case, I’m torn between quietly enjoying the humorous if incorrect uses of language and stringently attempting to correct the errors so English proficiency increases. Striking a balance is the best option, and in the meantime, I hope the serendipitous two-seamers keep finding their way to me.

ciao, zach