intuitively over the magic hedge

the rain fell and my village cooled. for the first time in months, real relief was pouring from the sky. you could see it in the eyes of everyone at the market. refreshing pertains to cokes, rebirth applies to rain. a fitting end to the second semester of school and the beginning of spring break.

it was a semester of experimentation in learning. from daily exercises to extra points. i looked for motivation. the only true method i have found is continual creativity. what works today will work only until tomorrow. this is true of punishments as well. sticks and carrots, some say. well, i often change the stick and keep a variety of vegetables around to keep the class going. i feel like a lecturing market vendor.

the greatest question of this term was simply magic. in evening chats and the exchanging of stories, i came across a number of enlightening 'histories'. what can be cast off as the absurd back home, is reality here. where time and space have fixed quantities in western thought, here they are fluid rivers. what exists today can be manipulated and maybe is simply a yesterday for someone else. i found many examples of the mystical dangers that my kids adamantly warned me against.

first, never throw dirt from the ground of Rambo onto another person or this person will die. the ground is sacred and holds the essence of life which bears fruits (and vegetables). along side this is the common knowledge that those that know each other (biblical sense) on the open ground shall perish, as well.

never pick up money on the side of the road. witch doctors come and place money along routes to attract small children and thieves. when they take this money, they become large serpents that vomit money. if you are lucky, you can be changed back into a human being.

further, on the subject of animals regurgitating money. a man five kilometers away was, according to the kids, taken and arrested by police for having fed children to a crocodile. his reason: the croc would spit up money for each child it had eaten. (note: i have not seen or heard of crocodiles anywhere nearby, other than this particular story).

the lists go on. i shocked my kids by picking up cellphone credit that i found on the side of the road in a village. by all means, they swore in must have been a witch doctor and were concerned for me. when the credit did not work for my phone, they said the magic must have been used up by someone else.

how does a math teacher speak of these stories? i see such a strong sense of intuition in my students, then find them unable to make simple logical steps towards calculating a quantity. repetition is what the learn from school. intuition is what they receive from life. logic is my outsider's tongue. thus, i ask one simple question when i hear these stories, 'who here has witnessed it?'. i find no one has seen or even knows of the victims, perpetrators or even exact locations involved. then, i ask for numbers or formulas that the kids remember. they happily oblige their memories for the repeated information. i then set out to show them how i can come to the same information without knowing about those formulas or math. in essences, showing that math is verification, a quantification, of the world around us. i take one of anything, then another. suddenly, i have two. one plus one equals two. simple. the kids often still do not make the association, so i simply ask who can verify any of these magical stories. it soon comes to taking the idea on faith. to this, i say that one chooses where to put their faith, yet in math, one can never choose which is the right answer. the answer is right or wrong by its own nature.

i then go into myths and legends of our American lands. i often tell the story of Pecos Bill though and profoundly disappointed to find that my fellow volunteers know nothing of his legacy. (apparently Paul Bunyan is more important) i show how we've made up great stories to amusingly explain our country side and heritage but how they are only myths. we do not actually believe them to be true.

then comes the creative pieces. we make up my own stories. i caught the attention of my sixieme math students one day by telling them the following:

one a distant day in the past, a student decided to venture from her home in Rambo. she headed north, into an area much like Rambo with little in the way of scenery. there she found a village along that flat plain, much smaller than Rambo. the name of the village was Tikare. she was highly disappointed to have traveled far from home only to discover even less than her own village had. a waste she thought. just then, a genie appeared before her on the trail. he lambasted her for her mockery of his region and protected village. he challenged her ideas of Tikare to which she replied "it lacks any true beauty, has no market and surely no landmarks. if i were to improve it, i'd give it mountains." in reply, the genie made a bet with the girl, if she was to win a race against him, he would build mountains. if she was to lose, she must be his slave.

she rushed home, scared and alone, knowing she must race the genie. the next day at the market, she was so distraught that a vender noticed she was distracted and asked her what was wrong. she related the story. afterwards, the vender handed her two pairs of shoes. one set she could hardly lift and the other were light as air, even floating a little. he told her the heavy ones were hers and would win her the race and that she must be sure to let the genie know the others were his.

the next day, just beyond Rambo, the genie again appeared and demanded the race. the girl said she would race but only with shoes, as all proper races have shoed contestants. thus, she demanded the genie wear the pair of shoes the vender had given to her for him. the genie, worrying of the girl's trickery, said he would not take the shoes but would race with her shoes. she gladly handed over the heavier shoes, then wore the lighter, causing her to easily win the race. thus, the genie was forced to build the mountains that i so love to climb in Tikare.

all the children thought highly of my story. i made sure to make a point of how i had only made the story up right at the moment and yet it had an air of believe. after all, it fit common culture and explained why there are mountains in Tikare and not Rambo. the only problem, i made it up.

i am no one to deny these students their paradoxes. they can choose their own paths of belief and i will not demand anything differently. yet, through my time here, by the very nature of what i teach, i force them to hold at least two opposing ideas in their heads; we can verify all that is around us and magic exists. it is then their choice as to the extent they will allow those conflicting ideas affect their lives.

another lesson viewed in village, dealt with parenting. at times, i have noticed myself surrounded by kids for hours without ever seeing an adult. the ages range from two years old to sixteen. there are no inquiries, even when i've found students that have slept beneath my courtyard's thatched hangar. even on days when adults gathered around to grind millet and chat, the interaction amongst them and their children seem minimal, simply a set of chores and requirements needed to be fulfilled. it is often that responsibility goes to the next oldest. the hierarchy of the family is built on age. at one point, i was amazed to see that a fight break out and no reaction from the lingering adults. immediately, i pulled the two boys apart. their battle of words (in Moore, beyond my understanding) went unnoticed. only by marching them directly, hand on shoulder, to their respectful houses, could i clear the matter. the world continued.

thus parenting, is set of top down rules that mean to establish communal order. children are not the sole responsibility of the parents. they are raised as children of the compound with a set of understandings as to where in the line of succession they fit. in turn, by being the chief's son or the strongest kid, one can build himself as parental figure to younger kids, though one always must remember the person just above them. it seems there is a strong understanding that abuse of power can have major consequences. no one is ever the biggest fish in the pond. at least not amongst compound.

of course, i work beyond the parameters of such. i am a stranger and teacher. thus, i have very different relationship to my students, one that i am forced to define. thus, i must insist on rules and establish habits, predictable behavior. rewards are a part of that, as well as establishing the my worthiness of their respect. in all i do, i am watched. thus, i find myself explaining why continuously, though such helps raise their level of respect for my abilities and thus my person. a feat, i am sure i have not mastered but have gained ground on.

in that more fluid dynamic, i am also able to speak on the level of my students and have them speak, with trust, in turn. i find out their concerns and thoughts, what is fair and unfair. i have found them comfortable enough with me to say when i have done something they see as unjust and i then either explained or corrected the situation, showing them that their trust in me is just as valuable. a level of interactions they do not necessarily share with other adults.

for instances, i have a policy of no sleeping in my courtyard. students are to go home when i turn out the light for the night (though often it is on till midnight). i've wished to avoid having any of their parents complaining about their whereabouts and the idea that they spent the entire night somewhere else. well, recently the kids took me on a tour of the compound. they showed me a shared kids room of a piece of foam and a mat. they showed me the places where their parents slept (another building just beyond a small walled fence. one even showed me where he sleeps when his dad comes home and he is unable to sleep in his single room house. (one can expect this means his father would like to know his mother without the watchful eyes of children). the locations was the garden beyond my wall. thus, i took to asking questions, the answers to which have led me to amend my house rules. the children that are studying can spend the night but must sleep on a mat (i have five) and never on the ground. plus they must keep the courtyard door open so that anyone can see what is happening in the courtyard. and, as always, they are not to enter into my little two room hut. simple changes that would radically alarm student's parents back home. i'd have court orders resting on my door before sunrise.

so, there is much to be learned. while the adventure seems more to be in the stories than any actually craziness in village, i still find much to learn from.

to rap up this particularly long post, i wish only to mention that i now have a pet. at the end of semester/teacher's party, the children captured a hedgehog to eat. i convinced them that it was better for me to raise it, then for it to be eaten. thus, i now have a new rodent running around my house. luckily he eats bugs which has really ended up being a major plus. in a fit of unknown genius, i decided to call him Bruce. the simplest reason, the french word for bush (aka hedge) is brousse (pronounce bruce). plus, later on my evening bike ride, i listened to my most recent podcast of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. the guest star was Bruce Cambell, promoting his new dvd "My Name is Bruce". can one ask for a better sign? maybe it magically appeared to me. i don't know. it's either a coincidence or a faith issue. as i do with my students, i'll keep my full believes on that to myself and let you decide.