Last Day of Class Realizations
Tuesday July 5th was our last official day of class. We arrived at the Domasi Government School to a crowd of toothy smiles chanting "Azungu". However, today was different because our hearts were filled with mixed emotions as we embraced the African children that had won over our hearts. In class, Bebe and I had the learners (a term that Gertrude, our standard six teacher refers to her students as) write letters to us. We had been working with the standard six learners on English, countries, animals, basic human anatomy, and creative arts. The letters were a great review of the English concepts and many of them wrote about how they enjoyed the other learning topics we had covered. As we observed the letters being written the language barrier become even more apparent. The learners really struggled to create coherent sentences, spelling words correctly and not phonetically. We are so lucky in America that every student in school has a textbook they can reference and are not forced to memorize or minimally write down some ideas from a lesson. The students write the same as how the words sound when they speak. An example from one of our top students in class, "the dog chees the theefs awae" which should correctly be written (or spelled) "the dog chases the theifs away" it does sound right but as one can see is spelled incorrectly. After reading some of their writing I realized the long journey needed to help many of our students succeed. As our teaching time has now ended I know that our students enjoyed our interaction with them and hopefully picked up some skills along the way. To make children smile while simultaneously hoping they retain some information is all I could ask for despite the true English aid I wish I could offer.
Even though English is taught in starting in Standard One and eventually the exams the learners take are written in English the language is often not learned well enough to be able to pass a written exam. Walking around town one can communicate in English but if I knew Chichewa or Yao I would be able to get much more out my experience in Malawi. The language gap has really made me appreciate how lucky I am to speak a language that is used all over the world and is used for business. Since I am not bilingual or multilingual I am so blessed to speak such a universal language. Also coming to Malawi has shown me the beauty of diversity America . I love living in a melting pot of cultures, languages, backgrounds, and outlooks on life.
Alison Reynolds