Margerine tubs and essays

We have now completed our first training period for villagers.  We had them for two days, and by the end they were reeling.  It is not easy if you are illiterate to sit for two whole days in semi-darkness while people project PowerPoint slides you cannot read.  Of course, many of them dozed through many of the sessions – the history of the Rights of the Child which even managed to include Eglantine Jebb, for heaven’s sake - that was perhaps a high point for dozers-off.  It is clear that my training course on presenting PowerPoint (not just a Word document on a screen, but actual condensed bullet points, if you please!) and on offering training to illiterates (not so much with the text in French when we are having to translate in any event, a bit more with the participative, visual stuff thank you very much) will have to get written and delivered ASAP.  The French approach to training is sort of University-lecture based;  they cannot seem to keep away from it.  I thought a perfect example of that for me was a slide which included both ‘socio-economic’ and ‘deontological’ – what was he thinking? The one exception to this is VARENA’s one-woman human dynamo, Kadi, and she knows how to get a room full of villagers rocking.  This shows in the rather poor attached pic.  See more below on French education.

 

One of my sudden insights was had on Thursday morning.  All the women in the training group turned up carrying large margarine tubs.  I had noticed the tubs around and about in the market, but had not quite so clearly identified them with villagers as I did finally on the first morning of the training.  The large margarine tub is (1) a handbag and holds your dosh (2) a tote and holds your spare pagne for putting over your head at midday and your calabash for when you want a drink (3) it is totally waterproof and (4) your seat when you turn up somewhere and may have to wait for a while, or have to eat your lunch without tables and chairs.  Nifty, eh?  In the final bit of the training session we did an evaluation, and one of the men commented that the women had not spoken up much in the plenary sessions.  It took all my patience not to snap back – ‘Well after millennia of oppression and exhausted childbearing, what do you expect, male bastard?’  Having said that, there were a couple of lively young women who were very active.

 

Another ritual mini-dispute with my French teacher last night.  I had to write an essay about a journey which went wrong, and I did not finish it with the obligatory sentence;  there is what is called a récit (formula for a written account) and this means you have to put a final remark which winds up the narrative – example – ‘It had been the worst journey of my life’ or ‘Finally we reached our hotel and my nightmare trip was over’.  I hold that this makes every essay look as though it was written by a 10-year-old.  I have explained that the classic in English is ‘… and then I woke up’.  Very primary school.  We differ.  I am not trying to get my BVC or Bac so consider myself off the hook.  He is more purist and wants the full Monty.  I cannot bear to write the winding-up sentence, he cannot bear for it not to be there.  So very French to have analysed, written and rendered essential the récit in the first place.  There are things to be said for our weak and feeble education system.