Girl's Day

On Friday, March 8, I made a special trip to my school to celebrate International Women's Day with the girls at the Lycee. I usually don't teach on Fridays, so first I made a stop at the gas station for cookies and then the roadside juice baggie sellers for jinjam and bissap. There are 20 girls in my school of approximately 150 students. My plan was to congratulate them on making it to high school, pass out snacks, pass out cadeaux, and then make a sign celebrating their identities as female Guinean high school students.

For the seniors, I used pens that my parents brought with them. They have pretty swirly designs on the outside, and the seven of them were really excited to get them. I still see them using them every day in school! And all the boys are sooo jealous. For the rest of the girls, I just gave them regular pens, which isn't that great of a present in my way of thinking, but they seemed happy and it was a school-related gift, after all. Plus, even though 500 francs is just monopoly money to me, it's not negligeable to them.

Once everyone had their presents and were happily eating the sugar-blasted snacks I brought, I told them we were going to make a sign that said "Nous travaillons pour nos futurs. Nous sommes:" (We are working for our futures. We are:) and then list the characteristics that they believe best describe them. This is where the whole thing could have flopped. I could just imagine them looking at me with confusion or boredom. But instead, when I gave them a few examples of what I was looking for, they took off! In no time at all, we had made a draft on the board of what we wanted to write.

It was especially fun to write the feminine plural form of all of the adjectives. In French, if there's so much as one male involved in a group, all of the conjugations in plural remain male. So for their entire lives at school, when students are being described, the male version is always used. It made me really happy to use those girly words! French is a sexist language, I swear.

I asked the girls who wanted to write on the big sheet of paper I brought, but they all told me I should write. I was OK with that because, well, my students can sometimes take forever trying to make everything just right. They picked the colors of sharpies I used though, and directed me in the placement of the words.

At this point the boys came back from break and made us change classrooms because of their whining. So we did, and I had the girls sign the paper. Then we took pictures!