Grains of Golden Sand: Cows and Chickens

In the Peace Corps, learning a foreign language at the age of thirty was incredibly difficult, but what was more difficult was having to teach high school vet students in my labored French. From Grains of Golden Sand:

"No matter how I tried, I could not make myself understood. I struggled with lesson planning each night, spelling out by candlelight the next day’s lessons in phonetic longhand. I cheated by using the blackboard to outline the lesson with pictograms of stick cows and chickens and fences and connecting arrows. It was of little use; I was the laughing-stock of the entire school. I was nearing despair. At the rate I was progressing, my French would become decipherable just as I was finishing my Peace Corps tour.

Three weeks into the first semester, two things happened to change all that. I was struggling, red-faced, at the blackboard. It had been a morning of frustration. The torrent of rain clanging on the metal roof was so loud it was impossible to hold class. I was stuck in the dimness of the mud-walled room and chill of the tropical downpour, while the kids went wild in their boredom—there was not a scrap of reading material among them. They were not picking on me personally; that was just the way it was, but I was exasperated beyond expression. The downpour soon ended, but the distraction had thrown me. At that moment, I hated the school, my job, and the kids.

Laughter. Then twittering and chirping. From my position, I could see a gaggle of elementary-school boys in their blue and white uniforms hanging around outside the windows. They were giggling and pointing and egging on my students in Otetella, the local dialect. Discipline, in a school system known for its rigid and rough punishment of even minor infractions (for instance, Otetella was strictly forbidden in school) had reached a seemingly incurable low in my classroom.

Against the wall, just in front of where I stood, was a mound of crushed rock. It had been stored in the room—for some construction project, I supposed—for as long as I’d been teaching there. (Later, I was told that the classroom, locked at night, prevented theft of the valuable commodity.) I strode over, scooped up a double-handful of gravel, sneaked back, and hurled it out the window at the loiterers; stinging their legs and making them run for cover. I yelled, shaking my fist, “You! Get back in your classrooms where you belong!”

My own students broke into guffaws. I laughed with them to see the children, many of whom were little brothers, run off chastised.

“And you, too, listen up now!” to my students. Immediately, my classroom quieted. The young men gravely lifted their eyes to see what was coming next.

In slow, tortured French, I said, “I-am-your-teacher. All-of-you, not-me, must-take-the-state-exams.” I strung together the words, “If-you-want-to-pass, you-will-excuse-my-bad-French.”

That was the beginning of a new understanding. I continued to struggle with the language barrier and to draw pictures on the blackboard, but at least I had begun to win their respect."