The day I arrived back to Gbartala was the schools queen competition. This is all a huge ploy to get money for the school, but all the students and everyone get into it. Each grade at Feju nominates one girl to be the class queen. The senior high is so small that we decided to nominate one girl to represent the senior high in whole, her name is Josephine and she is an 11th grade student. The kids go around in the weeks prior to the event to ask their community/friends to support their queen, and people give small money to show support. After a couple weeks we have a queen showdown. It’s held at the school and all the queens line up in order of grade with a box in front of them. The competition consists of 3 rounds, each round lasting about 2 songs. Each round you put money In the box, the money the kids collected from friends/community go in the box, the idea is the last round will have the largest amount of cash in it, start small, end big. People put any extra money they have inside as well, on top of what was collected. After each round the teachers go to count each amount, it gets written down, and announced. After the 3 rounds the sponsor for each grade gets a chance to put the last amount of money in the box to close out the competition. It gets totaled for all 3 rounds and they announce the new queen. I think I spent about 700LD on our senior high queen alone, we still lost! The 9th grade queen beat us by about 670LD, Josephine took second. The queen keeps her crown for a year and gets a 2-year scholarship for the school and HUGE bluffing/bragging rights, the runner up gets a 1-year scholarship. The entire event was a lot of fun, all the students were dancing, chatting and it was cool o see them all come together in a competitive situation without any real issues (day of) arising. It was funny to me how everyone would rub money all over the queens before they dropped it in the box, as if rubbing it on them made the offering better. There was some drama (as to be expected) after the queen competition, one of my 10th grade students heard that the senior high sponsor, Mr. Dolo, gave like 4,000LD to Mr. Copper (9th grade sponsor) as a loan because he didn’t have it on him and that is why the 9th grade queen won. This made the kids vex baaawayyy (angry). I’m not entirely sure the truth on this but there are like five 10th/11th grade students who believed it.
A week after the queen competition was Gala Day. I’m still a little unsure what the purpose or where the Gala day came from, other volunteers said that Gala day was Founder’s Day, but if that was true at Feju they didn’t make it clear, making me think it is just a celebration for the kids. Gala day consisted of inviting a high school, specifically Suakoko Central High School, to come play us in kickball/ football, the students of Feju march/ parade around town, all ending with a school dance/food. This marching business was realllll... the entire week leading to Gala day was spent on the field drilling/practicing for the parade. This of course meant no school, how could we ever think that the kids could come to school the 2 hours in the morning that I teach, when in the afternoon they must be on the field to practice marching. There were like 10 different marching groups, all with different marches/costumes, this wasn’t something they played around with, this was serious business, and kids spent serious money-making costumes for this event just to parade up and down the streets of Gbartala. The day started with a program at the church, all the students came, and they had a DJ, speakers, and we did the turning over of the crown. This means the girl last year who won came all dressed up and the principle took the crown for her and officially crowned our new queen. The school had called all the surrounding schools/ officials to come speak at the podium and basically forced everyone to give a donation, this part was so uncomfortable. It was like thanks for coming, now give us money. The person who got it the worst was our guest speaker, some representative for Bong, and somehow, they convinced this guy to give us $50USD. I just kept thinking if they awkward call me up and expect me to give a donation I was going to be like... I gave you 2 years of my life... that’s priceless ha-ha. Thankfully they never called me up. I did hear stories however on how they called up some Ma (idk who), was like where is our donation, the woman gave 50LD and the entire place laughed at her, I mean how embarrassing! I didn’t see that one happen because I had left the program to go meet Rachel, Charles, and Grey on the road. We had agreed that they would come hang out for the day, watch the game between our schools, and make pumpkin soup. The transition to my new community/house wasn’t easy for me, so Charles told Rachel that he had a plan to help me relax, that they would all come to Gbartala and make pumpkin soup, while I watched a show ha. By the time we all got back to the school the program had finished and everyone was getting ready to drill on the field.
Everyone lined up and yelled lots of things/did mini marching around the field, they even lined up the teachers and made us do a loop. It was hilarious to watch the students march because they leaned so far back. I mean their backs were almost parallel to the ground, I’m not sure what show they all saw that told them to march this way, but it was hilarious! After about an hour of drilling on the field they were all preparing to go out to the road and do the official parade loop. Just as they were wrapping up the drilling section of the day tons of commotion started, we asked one of the Mas what happened, and she said an accident had just occurred. We were told that there was a Ma who was hit by a taxi and died, literally moments before the school was about to let 100+ students parade on that same road. The next few min was filled with Mas from the community yelling at our administration to have the kids stay on the field, the administration running around, and Mas going to each marching group telling them what happened. What the school decided to do was to allow the kids to parade on the dusty road (dirt road). If it were up to me they would have just stayed on the field and paraded there, but the kids were hellbent they wanted to go parade around the community. As they left to parade, Rachel, Gray, Charles and I went back to my house to start our pumpkin soup. At the house Charles started cooking while Rachel, Grey and I chatted on the porch. After all the cooking business finished we went back to the house to watch the football match.
Everyone kept talking about how Feju’s football team was good, and how they practiced all the time. Not one time..not once, have I ever heard of a football team at the school practicing or anything even close to practicing together. I think what they meant was individually all the boys were capable /played separately on occasion, hence making them “good”. I honestly thought Suakoko would kill us in football, but we held our own and tied with them, they did however beat us in kickball. After the game all the kids went to the front section of the school to boogie the night away and Rachel, Charles, and Grey headed home. Before I headed home I found our principle and asked him if we would have school the following day. He assured me we would still have school/ the students would show up. I questioned him saying that after dancing all the night there was no way the kids would come, he again assured me the music would be cut off at 8 pm and they would come. I said okay and walked home. I heard music from the school at my house until at least 10:30 pm and when I arrived at school the next morning I didn’t have a single student show… shocking I know ha-ha.
A week after the queen competition was Gala Day. I’m still a little unsure what the purpose or where the Gala day came from, other volunteers said that Gala day was Founder’s Day, but if that was true at Feju they didn’t make it clear, making me think it is just a celebration for the kids. Gala day consisted of inviting a high school, specifically Suakoko Central High School, to come play us in kickball/ football, the students of Feju march/ parade around town, all ending with a school dance/food. This marching business was realllll... the entire week leading to Gala day was spent on the field drilling/practicing for the parade. This of course meant no school, how could we ever think that the kids could come to school the 2 hours in the morning that I teach, when in the afternoon they must be on the field to practice marching. There were like 10 different marching groups, all with different marches/costumes, this wasn’t something they played around with, this was serious business, and kids spent serious money-making costumes for this event just to parade up and down the streets of Gbartala. The day started with a program at the church, all the students came, and they had a DJ, speakers, and we did the turning over of the crown. This means the girl last year who won came all dressed up and the principle took the crown for her and officially crowned our new queen. The school had called all the surrounding schools/ officials to come speak at the podium and basically forced everyone to give a donation, this part was so uncomfortable. It was like thanks for coming, now give us money. The person who got it the worst was our guest speaker, some representative for Bong, and somehow, they convinced this guy to give us $50USD. I just kept thinking if they awkward call me up and expect me to give a donation I was going to be like... I gave you 2 years of my life... that’s priceless ha-ha. Thankfully they never called me up. I did hear stories however on how they called up some Ma (idk who), was like where is our donation, the woman gave 50LD and the entire place laughed at her, I mean how embarrassing! I didn’t see that one happen because I had left the program to go meet Rachel, Charles, and Grey on the road. We had agreed that they would come hang out for the day, watch the game between our schools, and make pumpkin soup. The transition to my new community/house wasn’t easy for me, so Charles told Rachel that he had a plan to help me relax, that they would all come to Gbartala and make pumpkin soup, while I watched a show ha. By the time we all got back to the school the program had finished and everyone was getting ready to drill on the field.
Everyone lined up and yelled lots of things/did mini marching around the field, they even lined up the teachers and made us do a loop. It was hilarious to watch the students march because they leaned so far back. I mean their backs were almost parallel to the ground, I’m not sure what show they all saw that told them to march this way, but it was hilarious! After about an hour of drilling on the field they were all preparing to go out to the road and do the official parade loop. Just as they were wrapping up the drilling section of the day tons of commotion started, we asked one of the Mas what happened, and she said an accident had just occurred. We were told that there was a Ma who was hit by a taxi and died, literally moments before the school was about to let 100+ students parade on that same road. The next few min was filled with Mas from the community yelling at our administration to have the kids stay on the field, the administration running around, and Mas going to each marching group telling them what happened. What the school decided to do was to allow the kids to parade on the dusty road (dirt road). If it were up to me they would have just stayed on the field and paraded there, but the kids were hellbent they wanted to go parade around the community. As they left to parade, Rachel, Gray, Charles and I went back to my house to start our pumpkin soup. At the house Charles started cooking while Rachel, Grey and I chatted on the porch. After all the cooking business finished we went back to the house to watch the football match.
Everyone kept talking about how Feju’s football team was good, and how they practiced all the time. Not one time..not once, have I ever heard of a football team at the school practicing or anything even close to practicing together. I think what they meant was individually all the boys were capable /played separately on occasion, hence making them “good”. I honestly thought Suakoko would kill us in football, but we held our own and tied with them, they did however beat us in kickball. After the game all the kids went to the front section of the school to boogie the night away and Rachel, Charles, and Grey headed home. Before I headed home I found our principle and asked him if we would have school the following day. He assured me we would still have school/ the students would show up. I questioned him saying that after dancing all the night there was no way the kids would come, he again assured me the music would be cut off at 8 pm and they would come. I said okay and walked home. I heard music from the school at my house until at least 10:30 pm and when I arrived at school the next morning I didn’t have a single student show… shocking I know ha-ha.