Hello again. I came back home last week and I have been in Lagos all week. My school had their half term break and Batch B corpers graduated on Thursday. Congratulations to all of them. I did bring back my continuous assessment test to grade while I was home but unfortunately, no one could find my JS1 Social Studies test. I really wonder what happened there. Anyway, I brought my SS1 Government test home and the nonsense that some of them wrote is really quite amazing. I honestly do not understand if some of them were attempting to write English or mid sentence, they switched to Yoruba and were just writing Engruba or Yorulish. Anyway, I was confused and I just had to put photographs up. Even though I have about 40 students in this class, there are like 6 different versions of what to expect. They all copied each other and they copied each other so dumbly that when a lot of them were writing the characteristics of socialism, most wrote, “Labour is not.” Anyone reading that will know that’s not a complete sentence but hey, I guess when you’re too busy copying other students, there is no time to read. My highest score was 9.5/15 and of course, the lowest was 0. Combined with their quiz, I have students that actually have 1/20. I know they can redeem themselves during the exam since it’s 70% of their grade but what is the likelihood of that happening? I think I have to change my teaching style to make the class a lot more fun so that hopefully, they can retain more information that way.

So the last time I was home, I bought sweets for my JS1 students and nothing for the SS1 because I thought they were old enough not to be bothered with sweets. Wrong! My friend, Toyosi told me that they will probably still be happy to receive them and she was right. I distributed the sweets in JS1 first and they were very well behaved. I moved to SS1 and they became a bunch of 5 year olds. I even had a couple of students from another class claiming to be my students so that they can get sweets. I honestly didn’t think it was that serious. I did buy biscuits for my top scorers in the test, hopefully, that will give the other students an incentive to work harder next time.

So this is a shorter post but I thought I should send out a warning. Do not watch Battleship, unless of course you want to waste your time and money. I saw it over the weekend with a friend and we both thought the movie was absolute crap. It builds up, and then builds up a little more to nothing. The preview actually makes the movie look good but trust me when I say that it was nonsense.

On the plus side, my younger brother graduated from secondary school on Friday. His graduation was actually the reason that I came home. Congratulations Rotimi J. The ceremony was really nice and when I looked at the students in his school in comparison to those in Otanile, the differences are really a lot.

Dunni and Rotimi

Rotimi and I at his graduation

Different versions of the test 

Anyway, thanks for reading and have a wonderful day. I got back to Osun today so I should have a new post at the end of the week.

I was in Lagos all of last week and I thought having unlimited internet access will mean I'll update everything but I was so busy.

Lagos was fun, my friend, Toyosi was home for a couple of weeks and we went out for her birthday.

On the downside, there was a plane crash from Abuja to Lagos and all 153 passengers died. I pray their family receive comfort and I also hope that our government does a proper investigation. My friend just told me that she read that the senior managers of Dana airlines have fled the country though. 

So I found a place, it's really small and it's not completely done but I have photographs below. At least I have my bathroom and toilet unlike the conditions I'll have been stuck with in Otanile. The students were very excited I was back which was surprising, they're always talking. I found out that they were having their continuous assessment tests this week and it's 30% of their final grade. I've barely taught my students anything, it's like setting them up to fail. Anyway, I revised with them, hopefully, they'll do well. I did write my test in Lagos, apparently, it was too much for these kids. Anyway, their final exam is 70% of their grade. It's really easy to really pass or really fail.

So I followed Sope to her local government today and I had a pretty interesting conversation with one of her people:

LG man: I cherish your this thing o
Me: You cherish my?
LG man: This your phone. But it looks like it cost.

What kind of conversation is that? Cherish my phone? Honey, wrong choice of words.

Anyway, we decided within our community that we want to start our own community development group and impact our villagers directly. Our LGI termed us as “travellers” that like to take off when it suits us so she teamed us with the CDS group that she is usually present at for basically all their meetings. Granted, it is a 5min drive from our village and it is even more convenient for me because I have to pass this town before I get to our village. But for the other corpers, I understand sitting at the garage and waiting for 6 people (excluding the driver) to fit into a hatch back golf car. Yes, they are usually small. Anyway, we came up with 3 proposals for our LGI. An educational programme working directly with the students. Now this was my idea so of course I’m going to amp it. I thought that we could work on non-academic programmes that will teach our students life lessons and give them a glimpse of life outside their village. Someone else suggested drug abuse and the last suggestion was road safety. Anyway, majority wins the vote and road safety became the topic. If you ask me, road safety? In Otanile? Are you kidding? The entire village is like 800m from one end to another, people hardly drive, most people walk. If there wasn’t an expressway passing through the village, I’m sure one wouldn’t even know it exists. I even joked that we can put a traffic light at the only intersection that this village has (the other intersections do not count) and they took me seriously. Honey, I will be the first person to run that light. There is no way I am stopping if it is red. The place is never EVER busy! They also suggested we fill up the potholes from Otanile to Ilare (another village 5mins away in a different direction from Obokun). Now this sounds great but I am not physically filling in potholes because I said I could not come up with another form of exercise. I will walk in Osogbo, that’s enough for me. If you ask me, I will say that the corpers were looking for the easiest project to do. I really hope none of my fellow corpers read this but hey, this is supposed to be what I think.

Our community development this week was pretty uneventful. The Batch B corpers are graduating next week, lucky ones. But hey, they were once where I am. Also, they’re rotating our LGI (Local Government Inspector) and ALGI (Assistant Local Government Inspector). They’re moving to “they don’t know where” and we’re getting “we don’t know who” as our new inspectors. Apparently, they do rotations pretty often. This LGI was only in Obokun local government for like 6 months. Hopefully, we get someone “mellow.” A Batch B corper wished me luck with that and said he hopes we don’t get an Idi Amin or Adolf Hitler. Thanks mate! I hope not either. But this also meant that we couldn't submit our proposal because there's nothing that our LGI can do about it at this point. We have to wait for the next person.

Anyway, the light situation in Osogbo is getting worse. Plus I just realised that my window is so small so it means that there is hardly any ventilation in my room. And now I think their light fluctuation (the light is never stable) just blew up my fan. This is getting too much. I was told to invest in those "I beta pas my neighbour generator." They're really small, that's why they have that name.I'll have to look into that because Lord knows that this place is hot. Anyway, thanks for reading :)

Toyosi on her birthday :)

My new place, it's not completed yet. I need a bed and a small cupboard so that I'm not living out of my suitcase

Everything is basically on the floor but I bought the "rubber carpet" so I know it's clean.

The kitchen which I share with another tenant. Honestly, this is a space I'll hardly be using. I plan to bring frozen food from Lagos regularly so I'll get a microwave

Shope at her local government

This is what they drink at her local govt, Lolly Kay

The cool rock behind her local govt

That's part of my CDS group during one of our "illicit drug use" rallies. Honestly, I don't know if we taught the villagers anything but it was termed a success. We know that success is subjective.

Here’s my fourth week that should have come up last week. I was in Lagos last week so I was much busier than I expected.

 I have been MIA for a while with my blog and I just uploaded a post that should have gone up a while back. Although I just started teaching, the process is already becoming quite frustrating. It is as if I am barely making progress with the students and the language barrier continues to be a problem. Yoruba is just about the first language of all these students and some of them are not confident communicating in English. I have decided that most words over 2 or 3 syllables are a problem for them. An SS1 student asked what “motive” meant and they have a difficult time pronouncing words like “legitimacy” and “individuals.” I also told my government students that I will be giving them weekly quizzes and I was very disappointed with the scores of the first quiz. My highest score was 4 out of 10. All 10 questions were multiple choice and they’ve learnt everything that I gave them. It’s definitely going to be a lot of work with those students. On the upside, I divided my class into two groups for a debate. One team for socialism and the other team for capitalism. Even though I had the same 5 students talking, I was pretty impressed because those students definitely went out of their comfort zones and explained as best as they could to the class.

I realised that I have never described my school well enough and the photographs might not be as descriptive as I like. As a public village school, there are no toilets for the students or staff. The toilet is the bush behind us which means I can never go when I am in school. Also, I have learnt that this rainy season is not too good for the students. The classes get so wet and there are several leaks from the roof. I saw this first hand when I was teaching JS1 and my poor students had to move their desks to half the space. I do have photographs of that below even though it isn’t very clear. The classrooms have no windows which I found out was broken during a Christian/Muslim conflict some years ago. People, keep your conflicts outside of the schools and have mercy on the students. Damaging their property means that you’re leaving your children in a worse environment to learn. Seeing as the community is poor, they don’t have the money to repair their damages. However, I did find out from a teacher that the government doesn’t even want the community to repair anything because they believe that it’s their responsibility and they’ll handle it. Now, that sounds great on paper but so far, it looks like nothing is happening and the school is going to remain in the same condition. Apparently, Osun state government wants to build 750 new schools so hey, they want to do something. My problem with that is why don’t you focus on revamping the schools that you currently have before building new ones? A school like mine is enough for a village like Otanile, the government should focus on redeveloping such schools.

The wet classroom. Most of these shots are not the best 

My students got distracted when it started raining so they wanted to take photographs

Right outside of the classroom. That's another junior block. The lighting wasn't so great so I couldn't get clear shots and the students kept moving around.

The same students in quieter times

This is random but I have several sets of twins in my classes. In JS1, I only have 2 but in SS1, I actually have 5. I heard that they did research on twins and apparently, Yoruba people somewhere in Osun state have the highest number of twins in the world. And they call all of them Taiwo and Kehinde, they definitely don’t play around with their names. Anyway, I will upload another post soon.