Hot Flashes From The Desert… Sonia speaks… Graduation

Posted by Bill Shaw

September 17, 2008

There were neither caps and gowns nor an audience of admiring parents, but just as much joy was apparent on the faces of my ESL students as I saw on the countenance of any robed and tasseled senior at our daughter Bethany’s recent graduation from Northwest University.

During two brief ceremonies in April, certificates of completion were given to twenty-five students, twelve beginners and thirteen intermediate learners, ranging in age from seventeen to forty-one. Each student received a certificate of completion and a handshake of congratulations while a recording of “Pomp and Circumstance” played in the background. (Corny, I know, but I wanted them to get the full American graduation experience.) Several recipients were teachers, some were businessmen, a few were secretaries, and the rest were students in one of Moundou’s high schools.

For a variety of reasons, some of my students did not complete the necessary work to receive their certificates. There was illness—one of Africa’s constant circumstances—as well as a couple of deaths in the immediate families of my students. Some received new jobs or training opportunities requiring a move to another location. One of my beginning students, Percide—a young bride of just one year—had to drop out of class when she gave birth to twin boys, whom my husband and I were privileged to name, tiny Josué (Joshua) and Jean-Luc. (Denis, their daddy, was the salutatorian in the intermediate class.) Unfortunately, several beginning students were caught cheating on one of their last tests, and thus were not allowed to finish their course.

Class standing is very important in Chadian culture, so the valedictorian and salutatorian were recognized in each class. Nasson Bemba, who heads up our Bible school construction team, was the top intermediate student. He is a young man with a teaching degree from a Cameroonian university who is working on campus while waiting to be hired into the Chadian school system. Not only did he ace every test he took, but he speaks English so well that he was asked during a recent telephone conversation by another multilingual African if he had studied English in America. He closed the graduation with an impromptu speech thanking me on behalf of the class for the lessons they had learned and asking for continued classes, so that their language skills could be perfected.

The beginners had to play catch up, doing three lessons per week, in order to finish their studies on time. Unfortunately, the evening classes missed a couple of weeks of lessons due to the attempted coup d’état in February and the resulting curfew. The top two students in the beginning class were Béram, a teacher, and Véronique, a secretary at Moundou’s city hall.

Both classes celebrated the end of the course with generous servings of warm mulberry cobbler and Kool-Aid, definitely an American beverage. The berries grow on spindly trees right outside our kitchen door, and I can pick about a cup each day during the dry months from December till March.

The third class, which began several months later and is using a different curriculum, will finish their course this fall. New classes for continuing students are also scheduled to begin in October. Due to my time limitations, I will probably not be teaching another beginning class again until next January. English lessons at the Centre de Jeunesse (Youth Center) are so popular that I could teach several classes every day and never run out of students. Since that is physically impossible, I need to limit my classroom time to a few hours per week plus prep time. Other English teachers reading this article who are interested in teaching in a third world francophone nation would definitely be more than welcome in our home and in the Youth Center classroom. Hundreds of eager students are waiting! This is a viable ministry opportunity for you to pray about joining.