The Ruins Of Palmyra

A Syriaously Awesome Eid Adventure (Part 1)

This past week marked the end of Ramadan, and consequently the celebration of Eid Al-Fitr, the three day holiday that marked the end to the month of fasting. For us this meant that we had the entire week off from classes and thus a prime opportunity to travel around and see a bit more of the Middle East. Most of the other students were making expensive plans to fly to Turkey over the break, but myself and two other budget minded explorers (Alex L and Alex A) decided to take our chances trying to get into Syria, which, if managed would provide a much less costly adventure for our week, as well as more crucial practice speaking (and negotiating) in Arabic. We knew that is was difficult for Americans to obtain Syrian Visas, in fact our guidebook dismissed the idea of getting one at the border, saying it was only possible in Washington (and for $130), but we had heard reports that for those willing to put in the time (over 6 hours for most people) it could be done, and for a fraction of the price getting one Stateside. So we resolved to give it our best shot, knowing if we succeeded we would have the adventure of a lifetime, and what an adventure it was…

We left straight after class Thursday afternoon, heading for Abdali bus station where supposedly service taxis to Damascus left regularly. Because of our visa situation we knew we wouldn’t be able to take a bus because it wouldn’t wait for our “situation” to be worked out so we had to negotiate for a car on the side of the road to bring us to the border, where after (insha allah) getting our visa we would have to find other transportation to Damascus. The man who drove us attempted to hand us off to some taxi driver friends of his close to the border, but we insisted he bring us as far as he could, which according to him was a police checkpoint a few miles away. Here we discovered that we had not quite made it to the border and needed a taxi to drive us the few miles to the Jordanian exit visa station, as we were not allowed to go by foot. Thankfully there was a friendly young Syrian cab driver nearby who agreed to drive us through for a fair price and as we crawled through the traffic and army out posts attempting to discuss Barak Obama’s relationship with Bashar Al Assad in our broken Arabic we knew we were in for quite an experience. After getting our exit visas we proceeded to the Syrian Visa building, a chaotic hall filled with shouting angry people and even less happy men in uniform behind the many windows. After queuing in the small line for foreign visitors we finally were able to hand our passports to the stressed man behind the counter, and in our most pleasant of voices offered him some of our bread as we knew it was close to Iftar and he would be very hungry. His response: American? Sit. You will wait. 2, 3, maybe 5 hours, maybe tomorrow! And with that we took our seats and began the waiting game. Approximately 5 and a half hours later a fax came from Damascus with the green light for us and after paying our $16 and with a hearty Shukran! we made our way out onto the road where a fleet of buses and cars were in a standstill waiting for their passengers to get permission to cross. At each bus we asked at we were turned down, given the signal for full with the fingers interlocked of both hands, feeling discouraged we were finally directed to a large dirty blue bus that had already made it across and was parked on the side, and whose drivers agreed to take us to Damascus for 300 Syrian Pounds (about 6 USD) Getting on we realized that the bus not only didn’t have any seats available, but there were about 10 other people sitting in the isle who also had no seat, leaving us room only to stand on top of our bags for the duration of the journey. Finally getting under way we stopped again after 10 minutes, ostensibly to stock up on snacks at a store roadside. Having had only bread and peanut butter all day we happily grabbed some chips and soda, only to look out to see the bus rolling away, leaving us with no alternative but to run after it and jump in through the open door, much to the amusement of the many passengers who witnessed this, mainly because the bus stopped a few hundred meters on to let on the remainder of the people who were getting food. Another hour of standing passed before the lights went out and the bus rolled to a silent stop along the side of the road, owing to the fact, we were to be calmly told, it had run out of gas. Another hour passed before a delivery of gas was made, and another after that as attempts were made to start back up the failing engine. Finally roaring to life we resumed our cramped crusade into Al Sham (Damascus) and a few hours later were dropped off along some random street, just in time for the Suhoor call to prayer at 4:30 AM. This was followed by a few hours spent walking before we relented and took a taxi to the city center, after which more time was spent fruitlessly searching for the hostels we listed in out travel guide. Finally finding a few of them (and waking up the owners) we were told they were either full or we would have to pay an extra night to arrive before noon, so we made our way back to a nearby park and napped for several hours on benches as the sun rose around ancient, crumbling, Damascus, giving us our first real look at the oldest continually inhabited city on earth. Around 9 AM we arose and found a hostel that had a room we could occupy immediately and as fast as we could climb the stairs and remove our shoes we were asleep, just as the rest of the city woke up around us. Around 4 that afternoon we awoke and decided to get some food and explore the city a bit, so we navigated through the hustle and bustle, passing the park we had taken refuge in earlier and noticing it was full of others resting and playing at this point, ducking through the thick canopy of hanging shoes at outdoor stalls and past the many sweet shops selling all number of syrupy nutty goodies in anticipation of the Eid until we reached the grand entrance to the Souq Al Hamidyya, a long enclosed network of streets bustling with families and foreigners, glittering with bright fabrics and numerous jewelry stores, ending in the Archway of a Roman ruin that framed one side of the grand Umayyad Mosque, one of the most spectacular and historic in the Islamic world. The Old City of Damascus was enigmatic, vibrant, and rife with more twists, turns and hidden gems than we could hope to explore in the few days we would be there. Needless to say we got lost a lot.

The next day we spent the majority of the morning trying the find the US embassy in New City Damascus, which, although less compact and warren like, proven no less confusing and we wandered park to park, fountain to fountain until we finally spotted to high security walls topped by rolls of barbed wire behind which the Red White and Blue was just barely visible. After knocking on the unmarked entrance door we were greeted by a man who informed us the Embassy was closed for the Eid and we should come back next week. So much for that. Later that evening we enjoyed dinner in a courtyard restaurant buried between the streets of Old City, followed by an attempt to explore the Christian Quarter ending in tea and hummus on a café rooftop overlooking the elaborate Minarets of the Umayyad Mosque.

The following morning we hiked to the Pullman Bus station where Al-Kadmous bus company had been recommended to us by a British couple we had met at the hostel. This “luxury” bus service put us on an old Pullman bus to the ancient ruins of Palmyra for a mere $3 and we dozed for the 3 hour drive straight out into the desert. Arriving in Palmyra the next thing we noticed after the spectacular Roman ruins rising magnificently out of the desert was the great number of children in all parts of the modern town next to the ruins, hundreds of young girls and boys running up and down the streets shouting Hello! On closer inspection we discovered that these children were also armed to the teeth, each one with a plastic pellet gun in imitation of any range of real weapons from pistols to rifles and machine guns. For the most part these mini soldiers and gangsters fought turf battles against each other, but occasionally they would train their fire on the tourists, leading us to seek shelter quickly inside a nearby falafel shop. After dropping off our things at our hostel, we spent the evening exploring the ancient ruined city, climbing over the walls of the Temple of Bel (it being closed by the time we arrived) and talking our way into the remarkably well preserved Theater free of charge due to our surprising Arabic abilities. Feeling small and insignificant among all this eroded grandeur, and with miles of columns, temples and tombs still to explore, we resolved to wake up before dawn the next morning to experience the true glory of these monuments as they glowed pink in the rising sun. Before heading back to the modern town we found a passageway up into tower ruin that over looked the grand colonnade, and as we gazed out over the spectacle in the setting sun we imagined what these ruins must have looked like when they were a new city, at its height a truly impressive display of human art and achievement. Brought back from these imaginings to the present by drops of rain we noticed an approaching storm and decided to ride it out in the ancient monument which must have weathered a thousand similar events. As the rain grew harder the wind began to blow the sand in a stinging swirl and we were forced to don our sunglasses for protection and to hunker back into the staircase of the tower. As the rain lessened we resolved to make our way through the ruins as the light was rapidly fading and with the wind at our backs and dogs howling in the distance we picked our way past the columns and walls to where our bed waited our imminent rest in anticipation of our early rise.

A little run down of learning projects (skip if you just want the high flying action of other posts ;)

We embarked on and completed a number of learning projects during our deployment, the majority of which were geared toward introducing or increasing the knowledge of specific programs or skills and they were set up so that each learning project built on the skills gained from the previous lesson as well as always leaving room for the students own creative voice to be heard. The learning projects that we began with differed according to the age level of the class, for the younger classes we started with basic lessons on using the keyboard, mouse, and other features of the XO. For Holiday classes 5 and 6 the students were asked to practice writing sentences in Write about their class, taking care to use proper punctuation and spelling. For Holiday classes 3 and 4 the lessons began as basic as moving the mouse pointer in a circle around the home screen and then typing the letters of the alphabet in upper and lower case in Write. These classes gradually moved toward exploring other activities such as Record and Paint, and here they started with simply drawing a flower or a house, or taking a picture of themselves and moved on to changing the colors of their painted objects and importing pictures into Write so that they could be described. The majority of learning projects occurred within our morning XO specific classes where we taught the 100 students who had signed up to be a part of our summer program. These classes were divided into two age groups, 7-10 and 11-13. I will describe what learning projects we progressed through in the older class as this class moved into completing learning projects 1st and generally the younger class followed with similar learning projects, just at a slower pace. One of the first projects asked the students to come up with their own superhero that would possess a certain superpower they would like to have themselves. The students first drew their superhero in Paint and then imported the image into Write where they wrote the background history about their superhero's life and how he or she gained their superpowers. Day 2 of this learning project had the students picking a heading in the offline Wikipedia that would most likely encompass the superpowers they had written about. They then skimmed the articles for a suitable definition and copy and pasted this from Wikipedia into their Superhero Profile under a section called "Facts".This was meant to show the connection between the fantastic powers they came up with and the foundation these powers had in science and nature as well as give them the skills of copy and pasting between different programs. A few following learning projects involved taking a picture of themselves, pasting it into Paint, making it the center of the page and them using various tools to draw lines out from their pictures to create a family tree where they used the text tool to type the names of their different family members in relation to each other on the tree. They were then encouraged to decorate their diagrams like real trees by adding color and leaves around the names they had typed. Another project involved the creation of a Memorize game that compared words and phrases in the Pidgin dialect the majority of the students spoke amongst themselves and at home to phrases in standard English that they were required to speak in school. This was meant to demonstrate the potential of Memorize and demonstrate similarities in phrasing, but also to delineate a clear demarcation between the two (somewhat) similar languages that acknowledged an appropriate context for each. One of the next major learning projects we did involved a more advanced use of Write as well as a transition into the use of more complex programs such as Scratch. In this project I chose animal sprites from the Scratch Activity and listed them on the board alongside a list of themes in literature. We spent the first half of class discussing the components of a story (plot, characters, theme, setting, conclusion etc.) after which the students were asked to come up with a story of their own, choosing several of the animals from the list and one of the themes. They were asked to have a creative title as well as distinct paragraphs for setting, plot and conclusion that demonstrated their understanding of how a story was typically formatted. After working on their stories they were encouraged to illustrate them either by drawing pictures themselves in Paint or taking pictures around the school that would fit in. The next day we had an introduction to Scratch that involved us acting out the action from an example story and working with a giant Scratch screen drawn on the board, after which the students were asked to bring a scene of their story to life using Scratch. Among the several other learning projects we completed there are two other larger ones I will mention. The first began with a discussion of vocabulary related to the idea of business and commerce. Students defined terms such as product, company, advertisement, goods and services. Afterwards they were told to come up with their own product to market. They were to draw their product in Paint and then answer several questions about it such as what it was made of, who would buy it and what it was used for. The next day the assignment was to create an advertisement for their product using either Paint, Record, or Scratch in an attempt to convince others to buy what they had created. The intention after this (though we didn't get a chance to implement it) was to show the advertisements and have students with similar products combine to form Companies, they would then come up with a business plan of operations and we would have a "classroom marketplace" where they would all attempt to sell their products and the company that made the most profit would win. The second project began with a discussion of what was special about their country. The students then looked at the Tourism web sites for other countries and discussed what the purpose of tourism was and how other countries tried to encourage it. We then talked about the problems that they saw in their own country and what things they would change if they were the leaders of their own country. They were then assigned to write about their own "perfect country" and to pick several of the headings from Wikipedia about other countries (economy, geography, climate, language, government) to fill in for their own countries. They then made tourism brochures in Paint about their countries so that others would come and visit. In addition to these and other learning activities something we did with the students as a review of the skills they had been learning was to create contests where they took down a list of actions that had to take in a certain order that included things like taking a picture and labeling it or making a scratch presentation with certain criteria and the first students to successfully complete everything on the list received a prize.

Last Days in Planet Cameroon

The last week was a hectic storm of activity, broken only by the occasional glimpse of sunlight through the perpetual clouds of Buea. This final week of class was highlighted by the progress all of our students were showing, now able to accomplish any number of complex tasks on their XO's as well as explore on their own. (to the great amusement or their teachers, I remember the first time I let them bring their XOs home the next day they were incredibly eager to show me all the pictures of ancient Mayan sports games and copies of the Declaration of Independence that they had found in the collection of world images available offline in the Browse activity). As our students gained skills we were able to create learning projects that tested their abilities and challenged them to explore new areas that they would never have touched on in a normal classroom. The many projects we did require some explanation and are treated in more detail in a separate blog entry. Beside the ends in out of class we had other tasks to accomplish before we could sit back on the airplane leaving Douala and feel confident enough to say that we had done all that we could to ensure our project would continue and could successfully sustain itself through the upcoming school year. To this end we decided it was necessary to put together a Handbook or guide to using the XOs in the classroom, something that would include examples of learning projects and suggestions for the teachers whose responsibility it would be to introduce these laptops into their classes at Jamadianle come September. For the most part we felt fairly confident that the teachers who had gone through our training sessions as well as those who had the opportunity to use the XOs during their Summer Holiday classes would have little problem successfully integrating the XOs into their daily lessons to great effect. However we wanted to be sure that these teachers, as well as those who would be coming back fom spending their summer holidays elsewhere, would have an comprehensive resource available that they could reference for inspiration as well as for assistance in technical matters including troubleshooting any problems that might arise during a typical day in the classroom. As we scrambled for time to write this guide in the UAC Cyber, we also made sure to collect contact information from the many teachers and other UAC staff we had worked with so we could make updates to this document as well as check up on how classes were progressing in the fall, as of course, just to stay in touch as several of them had become friends. As Friday drew nearer Brittney and I found ourselves spending longer than usual hanging out at the Orock's house, savoring these last days with the family we had been so warmly welcomed into. This of course and the fact that we bid our most of our fellow volunteers goodbye on Wednesday morning as they were leaving for a vacation in Kribi and would not be returning until after our flight, so we were feeling a little lonely back in the volunteer house. The night before they left we had our sendoff ceremony, a tradition with the UAC where whenever a volunteer was leaving we would all share a common meal of our request from Madame Amelia. During this ceremony Mr. Orock was absent as he had missed his train coming back from the far north but the rest of us volunteers and UAC members celebrated in style with our favorite Beans and Rice, Chicken and French Fries in special tomato sauce. We also had the opportunity to make short speeches about our experience working with the UAC this summer and perhaps there were more than a few people with some moistness in their eyes, or it could have just been the reflection of Hannah Montana coming from the TV.
Friday arrived early and as we stepped out onto the mud path to head to the UAC Compound for our last day of class we were greeted by a few rays of sun, the first in weeks, surely a sign that today would be a fitting finale to our summer's work. Without a doubt we would be doing Harambee today (as long as the weather held, you never know) and it was going to be sooo HYPE!
When we arrived at the compound the kids were as usual milling around in chaos, but there was an extra element of activity, which we were to soon find out was the presence of some 100 candidates who were applying for teaching positions in the Jamadianle School. Evidently the 100 percent success rate on their final exams made the school a popular choice and there were many applicants for a fairly limited number of positions, not a bad situation to be in. It was somewhat awkward when I went to ask the Head Nursery teacher Madam Ada if t wouldn't be too disturbing to throw down a massive Harambee circle in the middle of all this, at which point she took me around to each of the rooms where the hopeful teachers to be were waiting for their interviews and made those stand up who professed to be "computer literate". The number proved awkwardly small and more awkward still was their obvious struggle between an honest assessment of their abilities and their desire to be considered for the job. After which Madam Ada assured me that they would only be hiring new teachers who had skills in ITC so as to adequately support the new OLPC aspect of their classes, progress, i guess. We did manage to secure permission to Harambee and after a rousing (and somewhat sweaty) run through of our favorite cheers and chants we all packed into the main hall for our final class. In this class the students were asked to make a presentation about what they had learned over the summer, and in this they could use any combination of their favorite programs to make it as multimedia and informative as possible. Many of the students stuck with the professional format of writing up a numbered list of their achievements and these I read to much excitement as they very succinctly included most of the goals we had set out to accomplish at the start of our program. Other students used Scratch presentations or Record to make full motion presentations demonstrating the many things they had learned and each of these deserved to be recorded and saved as they really made it clear how far these students had come over the course of the summer. After taking in all these projects it was time to take up the XOs and say goodbye, and as hard as this was we did it knowing the XOs would go on to benefit more children during the school year and that those who had been through our program had enjoyed a really wonderful experience. Besides which several of them had created email accounts and would be keeping in touch with their teachers form America.
At this point it was time for Brittney and I to go back and finish packing, after which we decided to go to Bonokanda for Caravan one final time. In Bonokando we only had a short while before we needed to leave for the airport but in this time we managed to have a rousing jump-rope competition, spurred on my the packet of glittery stickers that I found in my pocket. As the inevitable rain began to fall again we headed back to the UAC to pick up Epeye who evidently needed to bring a bunch of plantains down the road on our way and after several more random people piled into the van (as always trips to Douala were strangely popular) we finally left. After enduring the incredibly horrible road (if it can be called that) that marked the Boniberi entrance to Douala we had just enough time to use the remainder of our CFAs up at the Zepol bakery were the most delicious pastries could be had for impossible to beat prices (!). From this point we made our way to the airport and after a short but meaningful farewell to Barclay and Monique and our faithful Germans Leah and Jannick, Brittney and I checked in, paid our exit tax and finally relaxed in our seats, I personally anticipating the In Flight meal on our journey to London that was Air France's forte. It had been am incredible summer and we were committed to spending all the time we could find over the next year to staying in touch with the people we had met and supporting the program we had founded with the UAC in Buea, Cameroon.