Iain will be writing to Somalilandpress.com about his experience in Somaliland and will be offering tips to anyone who may want to visit the unrecognized republic along the way – discover Somaliland from a Non-Somali perspective.
My students are hard workers. I have three classes at the moment with a fourth to be added soon. Two classes are working away at their Upper Intermediate work with enthusiasm and curiosity. Speaking of curiosity; the Science faculty decided that they wanted to switch class from 8am to 7am. In the first instance they just told the students. It should have occurred to me when I arrived at 7.55 to find a full class waiting. We were told later that day so the next day when I arrived dead on 7 there was no one in my class. They assumed that I had stuck with the old time. One student arrived at 7.30 and sat expectantly. I gave him one task to do then read a book. I didn’t want to waste a valuable lesson of material on one student. By 8 the others started to appear.
They keep complaining that I don’t know their names yet but none of them has remembered mine. They remember I am from Bolton though. My class of teachers is a group of twenty-six. Twelve of them are called Mohammed. It makes learning the names a little easier when you know you have an eighty percent chance of getting a guy’s name right. My students ask a lot of questions and so far I’ve always been able to give them answers. It really helps that I’ve started taking Somali classes; an understanding of their grammar is helping me to understand the mistakes they frequently make in English.
I’ve been out and about in Hargeisa a lot, finally taking some pictures of the town centre whilst I waited for DHL to find my parcel. The afternoon light was fading too fast to get any decent photographs but I tried all the same. I was standing beneath the MIG jet which had been downed back in the early nineties when a group of elderly gentlemen invited me to drink tea with them. They didn’t speak any English but kept repeating the offer in Somali. Unfortunately I didn’t have the language skills to tell them I was pressed for time. I will go back next week and have a drink with them. Whilst doing the weekly shopping down at the market I went to the stall from which I usually buy eggs to find that the vendor remembered my name. He offered to help me improve my Somali so I will start spending an hour a week drinking tea in the murky depths of Hargeisa market improving my language skills.
In Dumas’ The Three Musketeers all notions of mild intelligence result in high praise from amongst the Musketeers for whoever has helped their plan. “We are under attack, what should we do?” “Run away?” “Damn it D’Artagnan! That is an amazing idea.” It happens with an incredible frequency throughout the novel. This was how I felt when I was teaching my teachers just this week.
I had to break the bad news to them some time. There wouldn’t be an exam for this course. There wouldn’t even be a mid-term. They were going to have to write a one thousand word academic paper for me by the middle of February. “But teacher! One thousand words!” “Teacher, it is not possible!” “Tell us how we can manage this?” We went through the requirements of an academic paper; title, abstract, essay, bibliography and sources. I warned them about plagiarism and how easy it would be to spot.
“Can I write about anything I want?” Absolutely, unless you are comparing the positive attributes of goats and camels I don’t really mind what you are writing about. “Can I write about Somaliland?” That’s a good idea, you all know a lot about it so you will write with passion. “Teacher, is a word with a hyphen one word or two?” You will be doing your essay on the computer so let the computer tell you. I didn’t want to tell them it would be one in case I received reams of paper with one long hyphenated essay-word on it. We got on with the lesson; we would finish five minutes early so anyone who had any questions about the essay could stay behind and ask me. Make or Do? Take or Put? They went well. It was countable and uncountable nouns that brought up the problems.
“How much sugar in your tea?” Correct. “How many times have you been on a plane?” Correct. “How much sugars in your tea? Teacher that is the same as before.” No it isn’t, look carefully at the sentence. “What is the difference between sugar and sugars?” Well what do you think? “Teacher you cannot count sugar.” Am I counting sugar by writing sugars? When you go to a nice restaurant to they give you sugar in a shaker or in little packets. “Little packets.” And what do you call those? “Sugars.” So? “How much sugars in your tea?” Okay, think back. If I ask for three sugars in my tea. “Teacher?” Yes? “What if we have a pot of sugar and we count every single piece of sugar in there and then ask how many sugars do you want in your tea?” When you take every single piece of sugar individually out of a pot we will discuss what you can call it. Next one please. “How many time have you spent on a plane? Teacher it is the same as before…”
The lesson went remarkably quickly and about five students stayed behind to discuss the intricacies of the essay. “Teacher, it is too much.” “Teacher, how much is one thousand words anyway?” “It will be very hard.” What we are going to do is break it down into smaller pieces. Next week everyone will bring me their title to be approved. I want to see everyone’s abstracts the week after. Then, the week after, I want to see the introductory paragraphs. I will mark your work every week and give it back to you to continue. “Teacher, that just might work!” “Praise Allah, Teacher! This is a very good idea.” “Thank you, Teacher.” That one is always the nicest to hear.
“You are the best teacher we have ever had.” This is a common one from students. Whether it is sincere or otherwise it is usually worth ignoring. What a student thinks makes a good teacher or a bad teacher is usually detached from what actually makes a good teacher. What the student probably means is you are the nicest, funniest, or most lenient teacher we have ever had. But these weren’t attention seeking fourteen year olds. These were adults aged twenty-five to forty-five. They were teachers themselves and one was even the principal of a high school. They were including themselves in the analysis and they knew what they were talking about. Three of them said it to me separately as they waited to discuss their essay titles. Each was accompanied by a “Thank you for being our teacher.” And a handshake. It meant a lot to me.
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