Day 6

This afternoon I had my 2^nd French lesson with my tutor. We talked about what I did over the weekend; what I would do/be if I was a Senegalese woman; what I thought my tutor would do/be if he was American; I told him what I was going to do that day, and then I got to describe Daniel. I feel like I improved from the first class—this time he didn’t have to help me quite as much as the first day. I was very encouraged!

From 4-6:15 Kari and I went to the community center, Teen Bi (ten-bee). The center divides the kids into 4 groups: younger boys, younger girls, older boys, and older girls. My first class was coloring with the younger boys. About 10-15 of them sat around a table and each boy was given his own coloring book. It was interesting watching them interact with each other in Wolof. Their coloring books were in English and had pictures that any American kid would recognize but some of the boys had no idea what they were coloring.

After the coloring class I taught the older girls dance. I brought some Furman cheerleading music with me to share with them some of my culture and the type of dancing we do. First I went through the whole dance just so they could get an idea of what they would be learning. Some of them just started laughing because it’s a different style of dance than they’re used to. I started teaching it to them in pieces, and they seemed to learn it fairly quickly. The hardest part of teaching was the language barrier because most of them only speak Wolof. Some of them spoke French, but with the French vocabulary I know, I didn’t know how to tell them to stand in rows or explain the type of dance I was teaching them.

After the dance class I sat in on Kari’s French class with the older girls. First she reviewed with them what they learned the week before—articles of clothing. She would hold up a piece of clothing and they would say what it was. She asked a few of the girls if they would stand and tell the rest of the class what they were wearing. After the review the new topic for the day was bathroom objects: a towel, Kleenexes, a mirror, lotion, perfume, and soap. I was impressed with how quickly they learned. At the end of the class Kari gave a “quiz” where she would hold up an article of clothing or a bathroom object, and they would tell her what it was. I think all of them got everything right. Smart girls! 

 Watching the little boys color

Teaching the older girls cheerleading dances