Here comes the pun…
on Notes from Quite Far (Cameroon), 09/Sep/2009 21:46, 34 days ago
I have a game called Hunt the Mozzie, which I play just before dusk, wandering around the house with a can of Rad in one hand and a copy of“Teach Yourself Shorthand” in the other. I haven’t misspelled Raid. Rad is in fact a Chinese fly spray a lot like Raid, only possibly slightly more brutal. (Similarly Samsong is a Chinese company that makes phones and electrical equipment that tend to break.) Teach Yourself Shorthand is a bookI brought with me from England, thinking I might have time to learn shorthand while I’m here, and that it would be quite a cool thing to learn. I tend to find that if I squirt a bit of Rad into a corner of a room, it disturbs any mosquitoes hiding there. Some die, but many retaliate by flying around a bit. The Rad has a very fast-acting, powerful spray, so is good for shooting down these renegade mozzies mid-flight. Some escape, however, and find a bit of wall or furniture to settle on. Now, true to type, I’ve brought all these self-improvement books with me but haven’t got around to reading them, preferring to spend my free time watching the Bourne trilogy several times in a row in the vain hope of fathoming the plot. This being the case, I can’t actually tell you what is written on the front of my beginners’ shorthand book. I do know that there are a lot of squiggles and apicture of a pencil. I also know that the book is a good size and weight for hitting insects. As such, for those mozzies that I spot, whatever is written on the front of my shorthand book can be accurately translated as “You’re dead”. After a few trips round the room, squirting with spray andswatting with shorthand, the only breathable air can be found at the window, which is where the remaining mozzies tend to congregate. Unfortunately for them, the window is covered with wire gauze. The primary purpose of this gauze is to keep them out, rather than in. However, it also means that those who find their way indoors are easily cornered and I can shower them en masse with Rad. The majority of mosquitoes in my house die this way. There are those, however, who manage to hide and breathe at the same time. They emerge after I turn out the lights, and I hear them humming around my net asI doze off. I have no idea how they make it through the poisoning and the Pitman 2000. But somehow they outsmart me. (…I can feel a pun coming…) These are the remaining few. The survivors. (…Get ready for it…) They live on (…here it comes…) to bite another day.Aaaah, I feel better for that.I’m in Maroua. Again. Last week I was here to do some last-minute teacher training. It was highly enjoyable, in retrospect.The workshop was designed to provide ideas for games and activities that teachers can use in their classrooms. Some of the teachers saw it that way, while others just played the games and then went home, no doubt thinking“What was that about?”.The training lasted two days and finished the Friday before term started. So at the end of the two days, I gave each teacher a few stickers that they could give out during the first week to any student who impressed them with hard work or good manners. An hour after training, I passed several teachers at the market. I didn’t recognise them at first, but realised who they were when I spotted that the words “fantastique”, “tres bien” and “excellent” were stuck to their t-shirts. So I think we can be quite confident that the majority of stickers did not reach the classroom. Still, the sight of a gang of middle-aged men proudly displaying their “good work” badges was really rather touching, so I shan’t complain.I did briefly go back to Yagoua. I even went to work and everything. I said hello to my colleagues, drank a juice with the secretary, had a quick look in my office. I then sat on a chair in my office, although someone had taken my desk out over the holiday, so it was just me on a chair, which felt odd. So I wandered round for a bit and sat on a bench outside under a tree. I was joined by some other teacher trainers. We discussed the holidays, what we’d done and if we’d enjoyed it. The head of finance was there. He has a name, but I don’t know what it is. Everybody just calls him “Head of Finance”. Or Chef SAF. He is a very calm and contented man who smiles a lot. He is a pastor in the Evangelist church, which he finds infinitely moreinteresting than being Head of Finance. In the absence of the director and deputy director, he was the man in charge.Me: I sort of noticed that there aren’t many students around.Chef SAF: No, not yet. There are a few. They’ve come to clean up.Me: Are the others at a meeting or something?Chef SAF: No, no. Nothing like that. They’re just not here.Me: Right… So, erm. What is it I’m supposed to do?Chef SAF: There’s nothing in particular that you need to do today.Me: Nothing today. OK. So I’ll go home then.Chef SAF: No, no. You should stay. If students come, you can teach them.(Three hours pass)Me: Well, I think I might go home. Tomorrow will there be lessons?Chef SAF: Perhaps. We’ll see tomorrow.Tuesday was much the same as Monday except I turned up later and didn’t stay as long. Also the deputy director was there. He is the man who does the timetables. He hasn’t yet done the timetables.Tuesday was also the day I learned for certain that I have a new boss. There had been rumours, but on Tuesday they were confirmed. My director has been moved to Mokolo in the west, while the Mokolo director has been transferred over here. I was getting rather used to the old director so it will be strange working with a new one. Still, most people seem to think moving the directors about like that is a good move by the Powers That Be, and who am I to argue? I’m sure the new one will be very nice.I’m now in Maroua again for first-aid training. This time it’s me on the receiving end. If I were teaching the course, I would probably plan lots of activities with people practising on each other and the like. As a trainee, however, I hope for lots of sitting still, minimal interaction with other people, and minimal obligation to contribute anything at all to the course of the day. (I’m beginning to see where those teachers were coming from…)Will blog again if anything interesting happens in first aid. In the meantime, feel free to post mosquito-related puns in the comments section.