There are some things I never expected to write on the chalkboard. Or hear myself say to my students, for that matter. Yet on Friday the 5th of September I, the teacher, wrote a certain four letter word on the board which would have gotten my kicked out of some American schools - perhaps especially Catholic ones! Why was I stooping to such slanderous levels? English day at St. Rodrigue high School had struck.
English day, like Sesotho day, is supposed to be a day of celebration of English speaking and "English culture." It was founded to encourage students to practice their English and learn things that might help them to speak it well, like poems or debates. What it was was a complex mosaic of the teacher's concepts of "English" or "Westerness," the students' love of certain Western things, and the leftovers of Basotho culture.
For weeks prior we'd been rehearsing. As I know most people here love to sing, and as I share that love, I'd been working with students on English songs. The songs I chose have great personal meaning. One was a gospel tune I'd been constantly humming since my arrival in Lesotho during the months of violent thunderstorms. It's called "The Storm is Passing Over." I didn't figure it would be too difficult: there aren't very many words and its religious theme would go over well in a Catholic school, I thought. Of course, I hadn't remembered the tricky rhythm or reckoned with my imperfect grasp of the multiple voice parts. When I first explained the song to them, they loved the concept - my boiled down interpretation of the language struck a chord in at least a few - but as time wound on the cries of "it's difficult!" increased. We also never could perfectly master the stepping and clapping that would spice up the five repetitions of the same theme at the song's finale. So, without consulting me, they omitted them and just sang through the words five times. Fortunately this kind of repetition is not unusual in Basotho songs, so I don't guess the audience minded.
The second song was the ballad of the American civil rights movement: "We Shall Overcome." Try as I might to instill in them some of the deep meaning of this song, for our first few rehearsals they sang it like a funeral dirge and never could quite reach the peak of the correct pitch on "someday." But although we struggled, they ended up teaching me quite a bit about the music I was supposed to be teaching them.
For one thing, although I'm quite a lover of old-school American gospel, I'd never liked it when the editors write in slang pronunciations of words. Perhaps because it always sounds dumb when my predominantly white choir says "de leg bone's connected to de ankle bone." My overall experience has been so white dominated that I have always had trouble envisioning how that accent could sound anything but sublimely stilted. So wasn't I surprised when my African students naturally amended "The storm ees passing over" to "De storm is passing over!" When I first picked up on the change, my directorial instincts leapt up to correct it. Fortunately I quickly realized that what they were producing was a much more natural and traditional sound than I could ever have taught them deliberately. So I let them amend the words as they chose, only correctly words when they became entirely unintelligible.
I also remember vividly the day I finally got the meaning through. We'd been diligent in our rehearsals, in part because I'm absent much less than other teachers who were leading other activities, so a few days before show time we went through the songs quickly and decided to calls it quits. The girls begged me to sing to them and the song that jumped into my head with "Amazing Grace." After I sang through the first verse, they were in the kind of hush that only such music can create and I offered to tell them the story of that song. This time I guess I did it right, beginning from Africa and describing to some degree the horrors both of slave ships and the segregation of the 1950's and 60's in America. When I told them that "We Shall Overcome" was sung by blacks seeking to prove their strength, and led by a "father" (the best way, it seemed, to make them understand Dr. King's religious affiliation), something really did seem to click for a minute. From then on at least a few faces showed something other than painful concentration as they sang.
They performed well on the day, although our entrance was late because some of my singers were reluctant to stop watching the earlier acts, and I was able to capture them on my digital voice recorder, which I hope can be a meaningful reminder for me of the Basotho interpretation of American songs - songs themselves based in a culture of forcibly transplanted Africans. But if Gospel music is one manifestation of the link between modern African culture and African - American culture, another such link dominated English day: Hip-hop.
The acts which indisputably drew the most attention were those called "miming." By miming here I don't mean silently acting as if you're trapped in a box. Instead we might call such acts lip synching or impressions. In these acts, students would dress up like pop artists and lip synch to their music, while performing some kind of music video like dance or tableau on stage. The songs chosen included "Weakness in me" and "Sexy Love," and the costumes and actions were anything but what you'd expect from Catholic schoolgirls. The most vivid piece in my mind was "Sexy Love," in which one of my favorite form B students acted the title part, wearing as little as girls in music videos usually do. Another student cross-dressed in baggy pants, bling, and a sports jersey as she lip synched along. She was effective enough that it was easy to forget her femininity, and I was paralyzed in my chair by the daring of these two girls, dancing not just at school, but in front of elderly nuns. Some of the dances in other such acts were really skillful, but most of them would have been thrown out of my neighborhood Catholic girls school for language, dress, or both.
Which brings us to why I was writing F---- on the chalkboard. Throughout the day the students, especially in the upper forms, showed a laudable command of American slang, mainly drawn from music as far as I can tell. This included the MC's invitation to the student body to "Holla my n-----s" after a particularly impressive piece of miming, and the form E's drama script which included charming tidbits like: "I just want to F--- her," and "B---es are crazy."
But I did wonder if they always knew exactly what the words meant, and more importantly if they understood that "B---" isn't simply a word meaning woman, but a generally derogatory term or insult. So when, the day after English day, I found myself with 10 free minutes in B1 English language class, I tried to explain. While it wasn't my most potentially embarrassing teaching moment, it came quite close. I'm not sure how much I got through, although they did translate "the N word" as "foreigner" due to its use in a short story about racism in Britain which they are require to read, and I was at least able to correct that misinterpretation. Only one student had any concept of the 'F' word's usage, and to her it was just "something you say when you're angry."
But in spite of awkward moments like that, there were truly rewarding aspects to the English day process. One of my singers is a student of mediocre caliber who's been in my class since January. She never seems to improve her writing, but she's always cheerful and nice to have around. What I learned in our work for English day is that in addition to this she's a passionate singer. She was always the first to rehearsal and learned the words almost instantly, which is quite a feat when the words are not in your native tongue. I could count on her to lead my other voices to the right pitch and to sing the songs while walking home, to school, or through the hallways. It's refreshing to be able to think of her as doing something at which she truly shines, rather than just as a struggling student.
Ultimately English day 2008 was a great success. The day began in true Basotho fashion, which is to say about two hours late, and the audience acted in the true African participatory style: making a ton of noise during all the acts - especially when they particularly liked something, eating during the show, and coming and going indiscriminately. The opening speeches underwhelmed us with their proscription that this was not a day of entertainment, but for English learning. This came hard on the heels of Sr. Lucia's admonition to dress and act like "proper western ladies," the day before. But in spite of all this we did have fun, did enjoy the show and maybe, just maybe, did learn a thing or two about English expression - if only of a very certain kind.
