Post date: Aug 9, 2014 8:57:32 PM
12 February 1964
I went to Enugu last weekend. The Doc said I had a virus, complicated with pleurisy. I also ended up with amoebic dysentery (not yet confirmed by lab test) for which I am taking pills. No wonder I had no appetite! I was exhausted after I arrived. I went up in Peugeot taxis—at 70 miles an hour. They are new station wagons, sometimes known as flying coffins. The only route to Enugu is thru Onitsha, 60 miles out of the way. Taxis don't travel the shorter road, as Onitsha is a very big trading center and the head of the road to the west. I returned by rail, which took 5 hours, altho I had the express train and the rail road is direct. Plus, of course, 2 hours by lorry to Arochuku. The train cars are open window varieties, and the engines burn coal, so the ride is very dirty with ash and cinders. I came second class, and there were only two in the compartment. 3rd class is cheaper than lorry, tho slower.
I take my chloroquine regularly. There have been no confirmed cases of malaria in patients who have taken chloroquine regularly.
By schedule this term is very good. I have no classes on Monday until 3 pm, so if I want, I can extend my weekend and return on Monday. I intend to do that very thing this weekend, if I feel better. The dysentery still gets me. I have only classes I want to teach: Mechanics, algebra, physics, and chem. Physics only with the smarter section of class four. And my last class on Friday is at 1:30 pm so I can leave early on the weekend.
I talked to the director in Enugu, and he discouraged me from transferring, unless I absolutely go nuts in this place. He says that other schools are just as corrupt or more so than this one. Just wait until he visits. So it looks like I will stay—and evacuate on weekends.
Occasionally when I go to Enugu I see a movie, but they are often so bad that it is worse that watching TV at home—you pay. The new hotel there has an air-conditioned theatre. The audiences are mostly ex-patriot in Enugu, as the sound is so bad the Nigerians can't understand the English. Indian films are bad.
The PC man does not come around every month like he said he would. He does come if I call, tho. I had a Gamma Globulin booster and left a stool for exam in Enugu. Doc listened carefully to my heart and chest.
We have lights now, and I added a second 20-watt fixture to my house, so now I can see. It runs from about 6:45 to l0:30 each night and again from 5:30 to 6:30 am, which is kind of annoying. I don't know if the water will ever come. [Not during my tenure!] We have to move all the plumbing in the chem lab.
Next weekend I want to go to Port Harcourt and to the rivers area—a long trip by bush road and bush path thru swamps. The other way is by motor launch and very slow. The week after is a party in Orlu, and I‘ll probably go to that. The car I borrowed from there burned out a motor which cost $300 to repair. Woe is me. But she won‘t let me pay for any of the cost.
I have a class in a few minutes—applied maths mechanics. Interesting trying to teach mechanics to kids who have never seen a pulley.
20 February 1964
Mick is trying to teach the first year primary students English by the direct method. He found that the teacher was drilling the students (wrong) between Mick’s classes so that they learned such as ‘a stick of cigarette'. Probably the funniest, altho by now it is becoming pathetic, is the strange use of adjectives. The kids learn big adjectives, without really learning the meanings, and pop them in whenever they feel like it. For instance we were on an excursion with the Science Club when one boy said ‘would you be proud if you came face to face with a tiger?‘ Abstract nouns and emotions really throw them. Another is the constant use of what I call the African present continuous. This is like the water supply that ‘is coming‘ and the school books which 'are coming‘, etc. The present continuous tense sort of personifies the African view of things. Especially change. The expression for pain or ache is peculiar, too. ‘My head is worrying me’ means I have a headache. My belly is worrying me—always present continuous tense.
The biggest problem in science class, and probably the root of the trouble, is that the students don't know how to ask a question. And they don't ask questions. A common form, if they are forced, is ‘I don’t know if you are traveling this weekend‘ for example. And of course they don't know how to answer questions, either. They are afraid of doing a homework assignment unless they are certain that they can do it right. I asked a boy what a disc stroboscope did (he had one in his hand and had just used it). He said ‘it is used for...‘ and ‘it looks like...‘ and other things for ten minutes, without ever saying what it did. Whereas American kids can't stop asking ’why’, the question of why never occurs to these children.
I think my chemistry programme [I was pretty stuck in British spelling] is a success. At least until we run out of the necessary chemicals and equipment to do the experiments. The Chem Study programme starts with five experiments on the first five days of class. That bases all their thought on immediate evidence. The Physics programme, to the contrary, bases its beginning on a lot of background which these kids just don't have. For instance, only half the class had ever seen a movie and only one had ever seen ice; and that at my house.
My health is much better now. Today for the first time in about three weeks I felt good, really good. I am still bothered by gas, but little else.
I dug a bit in this poor, hard ground to start a garden for some fresh vegetables. We had been stalling because of the problem of carrying water all during the dry season, but I solved it with a typical stroke of genius—the water from my bath and the laundry runs out a hole in the wall and onto the ground. There is a constant patch of green outside this hole. So I dug there, and the soil is better than at other places, and quite moist. Now if I can only dig a big enough plot to make it all worth while, we'll have some vegetables.
No water on the compound yet, but it ‘is coming‘. [Not before I left, however, and the Biafran Civil War intervened.]