By mashod93
As part of our “Reflection Week”, my fellow students of Amideast and I have been writing pieces on our times here in the forms of blogs, videos accompanied with text and opinion editorials. At the beginning of the semester, I had no idea what I would write about as my final reflection piece. I thought I would focus on my language skills and gauging whether they had improved and if so, what I could attribute to this progress. ...continue reading "Awareness of the Issue"
By mashod93
As I am getting to know the students at the Oromo Center more, I am becoming more and more aware of their everyday lives (what they do and why). This considered when I think about what kind of vocab I should teach first in order for the conversations to be relevant to what they are doing. At first, everyone was new and there were never a guaranteed number of students that would show up each class, which made it hard to recognize any sort of pattern in each individual's lifestyle. I noticed they all play soccer every day at around the same time (timeliness is not hugely valued here culturally) and usually with the same people. It used to bother me that I did not know what each student did with his or her day and it bothered me that no one was conversational enough to explain what their lives were like to me. And that was the issue exactly. No one could communicate with me. And more importantly, they couldn't communicate with other refugees, even some from their own country. ...continue reading "Ethiopian refugees in Cairo…why English?"
By mashod93
Teaching at the Oromo center the past couple of weeks has posed some challenges for my fellow volunteer and I. We have been having a hard time dealing not only with the language barrier of the people of the Oromo region and us but also with the cultural differences. As we learned in our first week through our inter-cultural learning course, the western and eastern worlds hold very different values. Being from the west and leading a more monochronic lifestyle (very linear, valuing timeliness and order) than in the east, timeliness is something I am used to being able to depend on. The refugees at the Oromo center come from a very collectivist culture and lead a more polychronic lifestyle, which makes timeliness not a priority for them. While I try to respect our cultural differences and allow for everyday interferences in our schedule for the center, lateness is very frustrating when I already can only afford six hours a week. They are motivated students, but without work or families to keep them busy, I can imagine it is hard to pass up social time with friends. Being on time and making class a greater priority than football practice everyday is something the students and I are trying to work on. ...continue reading "Pragmatism is key"
By mashod93
I recently received my placement of volunteer, which is working at an Oromo center in Old Maadi, Cairo, and I couldn't be happier!! I have been working with Oromo refugees that have been kicked out of Ethiopia and, most of them, smuggled across the boarders of Sudan. All of them forced to leave their families and sense of home behind, it has been amazing to see how willing and excited they are to learn English.
There is a very mixed group as far as levels of comprehension and vocabulary go so... ...continue reading "Meeting and learning to greet :)"