First Class

Note: I’m taking a break from writing this evening and, instead, sharing another writing that came from the very first prompt I gave to my memoir writing class. I hope you enjoy my reminiscence.

I parked the car, hopped over the sewage ditch, threaded my way through the poles holding up the barbed wire fence, crossed the quad, and headed toward the farthest lecture hall. 9:00 in the morning, my first class in Survey of American Literature at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso.

 I was the teacher, but had no idea what to expect. Before I could reach the door, four young men were dogging my steps, begging to help me with my book bag. I handed it over, rather fearfully, thinking I might not see it again because the crowd was growing large and, to my inexperienced eyes, rather unruly. But the young man who had won the right to carry the bag, stuck right by my side and guided me to the platform. Behind me was a ceiling-high two-tiered chalkboard that another young man was washing with a huge yellow sponge, soaked with water in an old plastic bucket. In front of me the tiered rows of desks, with squeaky wooden seats, were quickly filling with my students.

I had no roll to call the names, but, really, calling the roll would have been impossible in the chaotic atmosphere. How to begin? Shouting to get the students’ attention, I strode to the board, writing my name and the course name. My first class as a Fulbright scholar had begun.

What a lot I had to learn. For one thing, the students hushed immediately—it wasn’t their noise that made me shout—it was the terrible acoustics in a room that would seat about 300. Also, the ceiling fans whirled in lazy circles, creating noise but not cooling the air. Even the florescent lights hummed a background song that had to be overcome.

Two hours later, clothes and hair plastered to my sweaty body, I finished my first lecture. On what, I could not tell you, but I do know I was “hooked” on the idea of teaching these wonderful students who were so attentive, who asked all kinds of questions, who constantly asked me to slow the speed of my speech so that they could understand my American English accent. These wonderful students who had never gotten to read literature from a book—who only understood a literature course to mean that the professor summarized the great literature before interpreting it for them—these were my students!

I would give them what they had never had before, I thought, plotting ways to spread the 25 anthologies throughout the class that started with 125 enrollees, but grew to 450 before the semester ended. I created groups with captains, each captain having one anthology. As people joined the class, they also enrolled in a captain’s group so that they could pass that one precious book around, reading the material ahead of time, as any student would know to do in the States. In the States, too many students wait till the last minute, possibly only skimming the material; in Burkina, all of the students wanted to read everything that was in the book, greedy for the real words of the authors they had only heard about.

That first class on that first day was the beginning of a wonderful adventure. More challenging than any other teaching I have ever done, it was also more rewarding than anything I had ever done before. I was positioned to prepare a new generation of Burkinabes to serve their country well through education. Many of them would find themselves in classrooms, teaching English to students without books, some, perhaps, without desks, none with air conditioning, and many without electricity. Nevertheless, my goal was that their first classes would be better because of my first class.