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You could be so many people

February 7, 2012   ·   2647352 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fsomalilandpress.com%2Fyou-could-be-so-many-people-26473You+could+be+so+many+people2012-02-07+08%3A03%3A50Hassan+Alihttp%3A%2F%2Fsomalilandpress.com%2F%3Fp%3D26473

I was resting in the shade of the portico when I felt an insect land on my arm. I swatted at the air only to see that it wasn’t a fly. It was my bracelet finally breaking its tubular bond with my wrist after an on-going battle with the threads of patience. It fell to the ground beside me, a forgotten reminder of a life which seems oh so long ago. I picked up the bracelet and climbed onto the roof of the University. I leant as far out as I dared and tied the bracelet off to a piece of protruding metal. A part of me would always remain at the University of Hargeisa.

I was given the bracelet by a girl; I can’t even remember her face now so much time has passed. It was in the last week of summer and the final days before coming to Hargeisa. I was hobbling around the United Kingdom on crutches wondering if I would be able to walk without them before the time to fly to Addis came about. It was a sign that something new was going to begin and a sign that something good was about to end. It was supposed to make sure I didn’t forget her; I can’t even remember her face now.

So it seemed somewhat fitting that when the end of the era, which that bracelet started, came about that the bracelet should disintegrate and be buried with the place in the past that the University of Hargeisa now plays in my life. Officially, I have left by mutual consent. It feels like the sort of mutual consent whereby one party consents slightly more than another because, despite all of the difficulties inherent in working in a young University in the developing world, I was enjoying myself.

I wasn’t particularly enjoying the red tape, enough to stretch around the globe two or three times. I wasn’t particularly enjoying politics or subterfuges. But I loved my students dearly. We had exams this weekend gone and I’ve just finished marking my students’ papers. I’ve described in earlier blogs the difficulties in guiding students to exhibit tangible progress in the language, I couldn’t be more proud at the results they produced for me.

One young lady was the only girl in my class. She was very shy for the first couple of months and it was a struggle to give her the attention she deserved in such a male dominated environment. Her mid-term was pleasing; she scraped a pass. I started to up the tempo with the class as a whole and focused mostly on their writing skills and in just two months she became one of the better students in the class. Her final exam grade is astounding. I walked past her this morning after the exam and she called me over and coyly gave me an envelope. It contained a laminated certificate which she had made for me saying I was the best teacher in the world. If I am the best teacher, she is the best student.

One interesting trend within the grades is how closely attendance and final mark are correlated. There are obvious exceptions where very talented students cannot be bothered to come to English class, although I don’t see the logic in this as there is a dearth of native speakers around Somaliland to have a conversation with. I had students arriving at the exam today who I had never seen before in class. Their grades were pretty poor. The students who attended 85% of my lessons were getting by far the best grades in the class; I must have been doing something right!

I was given a class of superstars. It struck me as an enormous piece of mismanagement as more experienced teachers should be paired with weaker classes to maximise improvement in a limited time. It proved enormously difficult to motivate the class to anything but writing. And then I was given a pet project. Another young lady from a different faculty was moved into the class because she wanted to take English, despite being of a University stage where students are usually finished with English. She had only just passed Pre-Intermediate and was being placed into an extremely competitive Intermediate class.

In just three months her writing improved so dramatically that I didn’t recognise her style as I marked the exam papers anonymously this evening. In three months she went from being a weak Pre-Intermediate student to a solid Intermediate student. It would take another three months of consolidation before she could move on to studying a more advanced level but I couldn’t be more proud of her improvement. Teaching is never so enjoyable as when you see a clear increase in your students’ capabilities.

I was surprised to see a lot of strong male performances as well with some students reaping the benefit of my rather too kind policy of allowing homework re-writes. Some students were handing in additional two or three pieces of writing a week which I was marking and advising them on. My class hit an average of 85% in the exam, given that I was probably the harshest marker in the University they should be really pleased with their achievements.

All-in-all I was totally satisfied with the way things were going with the students and I was developing some interesting new courses to run at UOH including public speaking, teacher training, English literature and I even submitted a proposal to run a short course on Somaliland’s place in International Law (my University background is in International Law). I hope these projects will get off the ground without me, the students would benefit greatly from the extra exposure to the language.

All-in-all I was totally satisfied, and then came the break-up. I will be the first to admit that I committed the most heinous crime possible. Or maybe I am being hyperbolic? There’s a fine line in Somaliland between law and morality. I would go so far as to say that a large proportion of people don’t truly understand either. From the shouts of gaal (infidel) on the street from adults as well as children to the almost daily mis-aim of stones in our direction it does seem that some percentage of the population has absolutely no idea what Islam stands for. But what I did was much worse than attempt to injure someone just for having a different colour skin or religion. I took my best thirty students out for tea and cakes at my own expense. In broad daylight. With three other teachers in attendance.

My thirty best students were all girls. I can’t deny that “best students” is a totally subjective term but there is a huge disparity in the amount of effort exuded between the genders here. A casual observation tends to conclude that girls work harder than boys here because in a traditional patriarchal society jobs for women tend to be restricted and therefore far more competitive. Those students of mine who never show up are probably already working in the family business. Moot point, I’m the teacher and I can say who my top thirty hardest workers are. Sure there are some guys amongst them but it opens a huge can of worms to mix genders in Somaliland. It’s better to drop those two guys who work hard and just invite the two girls who don’t.

We had a good time anyway, thirty of us in a nice hotel drinking tea and eating cakes. The girls spent most of the time teasing me for being bad at Somali. I should have teased them about their English. I got some pretty cool presents too, probably the only reason I became a teacher in the first place was to get gifts twice a year when semesters ended!

By Iain Bisset

Hargeisa, Somaliland

February 7, 2012

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By Hassan Ali

Tags: Education Links, English, Ethiopia, Somaliland, University of Hargeisa