2005-11-11 - 6:54 p.m.

I’ve been planning these skits for weeks now, and have been anxiously awaiting their presentation. I had wanted to do them before Ramadan was over, but getting people to do work during Ramadan is like poking a dead cow with a red hot poker, push as hard as you want it still isn’t going anywhere. So Finally last week I traveled to Chinguetti for my second end of Ramadan celebration there. This week we reconvened and thanks be to God, the teachers were actually willing to do the sketches. We set the day for Thursday, and away everyone went...and then came a slight problem. The class assignments had changed and guess who is now in charge of the 6th year boys class that I had previously prepped the sketch with. That’s right, my good friend Mr. Nyoung. You may remember Nyoung from such episodes as: The time he refused to ever work with me the first week I arrived here, The time repeatedly stole my water can, The time he tried to get the rest of the teaching staff to stop working with me, The time he told the inspector I was overstepping my contract resulting in me temporarily losing my job. Remember now?

So what was I to do? In olden days, before my loss of power, the director would have let me have Nyoung’s Class on his off days and teach the kids the sketch then. Now, however, that power is gone. I am at the whim of whoever is in charge of a class. Touree, God bless his soul, suggested he might be able to convince Nyoung. I, skeptical, had all but given up. To my surprise Touree came back saying that Nyoung had agreed. I thought it must have been some kind of misunderstanding. He must have thought I wasn’t involved. As Thursday approached, I had my doubts. I checked in on Mariam (my counterpart) who was doing a skit with 6th grade girls in Arabic. No problems, they had practiced many times over. I asked Touree to check again on Nyoung, but got little to no response.
This morning I went to school hoping to meet with Touree to prep a lesson for next week. I checked in on Mariam.
“All ready for the skit before noon.”
“Before noon,” I asked. “The skit is at 5.”
“No I can’t”, she said. “In have an appointment.”
After some arguing I checked with the director to see if it would be possible to do it earlier. He agreed and I checked in on Touree to get stats on Nyoung’s process. Results: of course Nyoung hadn’t done anything. Touree suggested that we pull the boys involved out of class early to practice before the presentation. They had already studied it and might still be able to perform, only a question of fixing the loose ends. The next hour I flew like the wind through town picking up all of the necessary props for the two skits. At 11:20 I got back and pulled Touree out to get the boys. Soon after he returned with no boys. The Arabic teacher wasn’t informed of our plans and had started a test. The boys will come out when they’re done. It was at that point the director walked by and told Touree that he was going to the Phone Company to fix his phone bill. I hesitated a moment to get him back and he was gone. 11:30 came, no boys and no director 11:40 came, no boys and no director. 11:45, no boys and no director. I ripped Touree out of class.
“What the hell are we going to do?” He took charge and started telling the teachers to get their kids out and line them up. Nouha was there too, so she started getting things organized. I noticed Nyoung, who was with the 2nd years, wasn’t moving. After a while Touree stopped by his class to tell him the news. Ten more minutes passed and neither Nyoung’s class nor the 6th year Arabic class had moved. Then Nyoung got up and started letting his kids out of school. I’ve never been so close to punching him in the face before. Thank God, one of the other teachers stepped in and started rounding up the kids that were leaving. I finally moved my way over to the stage where the girls were already getting ready. I set up the props and they started to perform. It was wonderful. I almost started crying I was so happy. I was so afraid they were going to go up there and just recite what they had memorized like robots. They really got into their roles and realized everything I had written.
It was a peace crops moment to say the least. I thanked Mariam a 1000 times over for having done such a wonderful job. Sometimes things do workout.

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