Hey Katrinah, here's the world, would you just hold it on your shoulders for a minute?

I want to tell you about my students.
I teach two classes.  One in the morning, and one in the afternoon.
Today, I want to tell you about my morning class.
They are a group of older kids, about nine and ten years old.
Right now they are on their break. Here, they have their summer break in December.
It is their summer break, and every day, they walk to school, which is relatively far from home, to come and take classes from a native English speaking teacher.
I never wanted to go to school on a weekday during the school year.
They want so badly to learn.
It amazes me every day.
These kids learn English from teachers who do not speak English.
The teachers teach out of books that they do not understand.
One of the most common methods of teaching is to write sentences on the black board and just have the kids repeat it over and over and over sometimes for an hour or two straight.
When I first entered the classroom, I was so impressed by how much the kids knew. They can recite anything.
I walk into the class everyday (which is a loose way of speaking, as I teach outside in the mornings because there is no room for my students) and the kids stand up and say in unison, "good morning blessed teacher. How are you?" If I fail to say "fine, how are you?", then they wait about thirty seconds and say "we are fine"
They have been taught to be almost robotic.
The other day, I asked them to write a story for me. To make one up.
I thought they would be excited, but they were confused.
"are you wanting us to copy it from the board?"
"no, make it up on your own"
"copy from the book?"
"no, be creative, write about whatever you want."
"teacha, what do you want it to be about?"
I told them to just make up anything, and I still got a bunch of well-known African fairytales and stories from the book.
This would be a challenge.
Not only do I have to teach them English and Math and Science, I have to teach them to think.
I said, "guys, this doesn't have to be perfect, I just want you to be able to think for yourselves, so try again and just think of whatever."
"teacha, what do you want us to think of?"
I could have cried.
This goes beyond lack of education.
One thing at a time, Katrinah.
My students are brilliant. But they are bound.
By poverty, yes.
By the repercussions of war, yes.
Often by the loss of one or both parents, yes.
By old, old, spiritual lies, yes.
But there is another great bondage here.
Emotional bondage.
The teachers don't know how to show these kids how to think for themselves, because the teachers are still doing what they were taught by teachers who didn't know how to teach.
It can probably be traced back hundreds of years.
I am no one great.
I don't say that to be self-deprecating.
I say it because it's true.
I can't reverse hundreds of years of enslaved thinking.
I can only take it one by one.
Day by day.
Minute by minute.
I do not know if or what I am teaching my students.
But that is what they are teaching me.