Bakar del Sallah and Writing with the left

This is the sentence I heard very often on Friday the 10th as the end of Ramadan was celebrated here in Kumbo.
The feast had been delayed one day as the moon was covered by clouds the day before. So in Cameroon Sallah was celebrated on Friday.
As I did not have nursery school on this day ( I have finally started) I went in front of the musk near Bamkikai Junction. Here people were building up microphones and rolling out their prayer mats in direction of Mecca.
I got into a conversation with the Imam who is also the director of the Islamic High School here in Kumbo. We talked about Islam, Kuwait where my father lived for a while and Arabic which he wants to teach me. (We are getting better in Lamnso by the way)
At about 9:30 am the Arabic music which had been playing was switched off and the Imam started calling Allah Akbar which made all Muslims run to the field where they listened to the Imam. One man next to me rushed in washing himself according to the five pillars of Islam and then joined the other men praying at the front. The women are not allowed to pray with the men , they were sitting about 20 meters behind them.
The actual prayers consisted out of two rakas: first putting your arms on your chest, then bending down building a rectangle and then going down on your knees and kissing the floor.
After their prayers I first greeted some women I helped picking njama njama then I joined all the Muslims going down to the Fon palace where they gave the money they had collected on that morning to the Fon.
A lot of men in white clothing and caps or Palestinian scarves or woman in beautiful African clothing and head scarves ( the clothing rules for Muslim women in Cameroon is not that strict) , men on decorated horses ( of course without saddle) came galloping down the dusty runway followed by racing motorbikes and huge cars where rich Muslim families were sitting in.
After this interesting morning we were invited to two Salla feasts where we ate waterfufu and ero ( waterfufu is made out of manioc and does not taste nice) and at the other family fufu and njama njama . Both families offered us also popcorn and a biscuit similar to shortbread. The second family we went to are friends to Demian who if he and we have time shows us around the grassland area. As his friend has been to Mecca his name is Ala Hajji. I was quite surprised that Cameroonian muslims have gone all their way to Mekka. Anyway-
As it is already September I have finally started working in nursery school.
So every day at about quarter past six I get up and after my daily banana and sweet bread with tartina peanut butter - cocoa spread I walk down to my school. The way down I always enjoy as you can see Kumbo covered with clouds of mists as well as the mountains behind my town Kumbo. Sometimes I just have to stand for a moment and take in the scenery. After about 15 minutes of walking and various *Erani yas* and *asa akas* I finally reach Bamkikay where my school, at the moment my kids are being taught in two bare rooms, is situated. The rooms are painted pale blue and are next to the church, the ceiling of the rooms is partly broken so that in some places the rain is coming through. The rooms have about 10 benches with tables in miniature seize and a blackboard.
Nursery school here means something completely different as kindergarden in Germany.
After having the possibility to play with plastic toys until every child has arrived or better nearly every child, the seventy children have to stand in two lines – one line for nursery one and one line for nursery two-. Then they have to pray, this is the moment I always pretend of having something important to do so that I do not have to pray with them. After this they have to stand straight and sing the national anthem. Having finished the standard programme the children then usually tell if they have any news (nearly all the time they say that their mother has bought shoes for them) and then they sing songs, the part where I step in. One song for example is the wheels on the bus go round and round or Kelamba Kelamba where they all have to jump and of course scream.
Sometimes I play with them running through the jungle to search for a seldom animal, where they have to stamp their feet, bend down, pretend they are climbing and so on. This they always enjoy which promotes them jumping on me, which after a while really gets on your nerves, especially if a child shows no respect and starts hitting you as it knows you will not hit back, since here an authoritarian teaching style is common.
The children are between 2 and 5 years old and partly do not speak English at all so they sometimes do not understand you.
After having pied in the grass every child is supposed to sit down to learn and to be a good child as they often say and sing. Nursery one and Nursery two both have a teacher and beyond there is the so called auntie who prepares water to clean dirty pants or for drinking and tidies up the place.
For me it is often very difficult to handle the fact that the children here are screamed at, have to sit down all the time, sleep on their tables and are woken up again and are threatened to be beaten if they do not listen –children at the age of two or three are just far to young to sit down and should learn by playing but the educational system does not foresee this here. They mainly *learn* by repetition here, so if the teacher says this is a blue toy, she will repeat it twenty times until they are able to say the new word. Yet this does not mean that they have understood the concept of blue.
I am trying to give the children the opportunity to draw more often, they really love drawing, but here another problem evolves. My colleges want them to be able to draw perfectly right away and they forbid the children to use their left hand. This is the reason I have started whenever I am supposed to draw something on the blackboard to draw with my left hand so that Edith and Mary ( the other teachers) see that there is no problem with writing with the left.
Talking about teachers – next week on the 5th of October I will have to march in my African Teachers dress as there is International Teachers day , which I have never heard of before and marching is not really
But Edith and Mary are lovely people and beyond the facts I have mentioned I love to work with them and especially with the children who are a load of fun.
Right at the moment I am sitting outside as the weather has started to become drier – for us this means the period of dust will begin and there will not be running water in our house. That is why we are going to buy water canisters today so that we can transport the water from a nearby tap to our house.
By the way cooked groundnuts ( peanuts) are far better than roasted ones.


M du yun shingwan e Mbveh.
A berne
bri