After the first three classes I finally fell into a routine. I wasn’t nervous going to each class anymore, and I became more confident running it and using my French. Prepping for each class got easier too, as I learned how much time activities I plan would really take and got used to deciphering difficult handwriting when editing student work. Unfortunately, I still wasn’t getting as many notebooks to look over as I expected. I knew there would be students who wouldn’t do the homework. But honestly that didn’t bother me as much as knowing there were kids who did the work but just didn’t turn it in. I couldn’t help them with their writing or know if more than a few students were applying what they learned in class if they didn’t hand their work in.
For the most part, I was very pleased with the notebooks I saw. The younger students in the class really struggled with grammar and didn’t always understand the prompt, but considering how new they were to French I was impressed by the effort they put into it. What really surprised me were the novels the students were writing. Before the fourth class, I collected the novel notebooks for the first time and I was blown away.
I half expected to see them writing huge to fill up pages quickly, writing one word over and over, or even skipping pages entirely to get their page count done, but I saw none of that. I saw well-formatted dialogue, chapter titles, and evidence of plot structure. One, called “Une vie despote” (A Despotic Life) read like a hundred year old fable. The author, Théo, had an incredibly assured and yet unobtrusive voice in his writing. I had a sense he was confident he knew where his story was going, which is an impressive feat for someone writing so quickly.
The fourth class was also when I started to see a lag in the pace of the novelist’s writing. Only Diko and Théo had reached the required page amount by then, and some students hadn’t written anything since the last class. I tried not to be disappointed. Even if some of them only finished with 10 or 20 pages, I reminded myself, it would still be an incredible feat. Plus, I knew from experience that getting past the initial few chapters is always tough (known in NaNoWriMo as the second week slump).
In class we discussed how to describe characters, and read handouts form the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Harry Potter et l’école des sorciers) and Mr. Ibrahim and the Flower of the Koran (Mr Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran). They really enjoyed the readings, and I let a few of the students borrow the copies of the books that I had.
We continued our discussion about characters during the next class. Several students still lagged behind on their page count, but they had at least written a little more since the previous class. I reminded them that they shouldn’t worry about the novel being perfect; they just need to get it written. If they needed to jump around in time, change perspective, or add unlikely plot twists, they could. For homework I gave the students who weren’t doing the novel (and those who were, if they wanted extra practice) an assignment I was really excited about. I handed out photos of people from all over the world and told them to chose a person in the photo and describe them, to make up a history about them, to use their imaginations to make them a character. They all seemed really interested in it, and fought over the pictures they wanted to use.
Once again I didn’t get as many notebooks as I’d hoped before the next class. But when I went into class I saw that most people had completed the assignment and were eager to share—they just hadn’t had time to turn in their notebook somewhere I could pick it up. They happily shared what hey had written, and we had a good laugh when we realized that one guy had written a fantastic description and backstory about Dorathea Langea’s Migrant Mother thinking that the woman in the photo was a man. I told them that thist was the beauty of using their imagination in writing. What they write doesn’t have to be true!
By the next class, a few of the novelists had caught up in their page counts and it looked like I would have at least three out of ten finish their 100 pages. We discussed perspective in writing, and we read Zeina Abirached’s short graphic novel Catharsis. I tried to explain in French what I love about writing: Through imagining new perpectives, we can learn about the lives of others we will never know and feel something of what they feel. I think I just ended up bastardizing JK Rowling’s quote that inspired my sentiment with my flawed French:
“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and, therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”
Our last class, when I asked the students to add the pages they’d written since we last met on the board, I was shocked and nearly moved to tears. Two had already finished (when they didn’t even need to until when we met on Saturday for our party) and two more were in the nineties. They’d written so much since when we last met, I could hardly believe it. We played a review game, and I was happy with how much they had remembered from earlier in the summer and how enthusiastic they were about participating in the game. We had so much fun; I didn’t want the class to end. I couldn’t believe it was already our last one!
To celebrate the students’ work for the summer, we threw a little party (and called it the literary salon) where students could share their work in front of the their friends and community. We made a ceremony out the finishing of the novels, and each student that had been working on a book came up and added their pages (finished or not) and got a round of applause from the group. In the end, five out of ten finished. Even out of those who fell short, most were over 50 pages. I really did start crying then. It was more than I could have ever hoped for.
The kids seemed to have a great time at the party, and everyone enjoyed the poems and novel excerpts that a few of the students shared. After they had all read, Jesper told the group a village fable and we had juice and cookies. Soon it turned into a dance party, DJed by Elie, and we hung out together into the night.
I was a bit of an emotional wreck. I couldn’t have been happier, but I was unspeakably sad knowing that the class was over and that I’d be leaving in two days. I didn’t want to go.
At the beginning of the summer, I myself wasn’t convinced that a group of writers in rural Togo should be a priority for a volunteer group. But after my experience with this group of kids, seeing how passionate, talented, and hardworking they are, it would break my heart if somehow it didn’t continue next year. I’m so proud of them.
Check out our website, meet the writers, and read their work!
http://ecrivainsdefarende.wix.com/cljf-2014