I go to class...?

Just so you know, I actually am taking courses in a classroom this semester (it doesn’t seem like it according to my other blogs, but I digress…) The three classes I am taking at UNGE (National University of Equatorial Guinea) are Society and the Environment, Natural Resource Economics, and African Literature and Spanish Culture. I’ve only had a couple weeks of classes so far, but I’m pretty sure how the next couple weeks of the semester are going to fair.

Society and the Environment

Before coming to Equatorial Guinea I had a feeling that this was going to be my favorite class. Learning about how society views and interacts with the environment is one of my favorite things to learn about. This class is shorter than the other classes, mainly because our professor leaves early. (We are trying to correct this, but it happens) Most of what we are learning is the presentations we compose ourselves, which is pretty interesting. Some of the chapters are a tad redundant, but the basic we learn is interesting. We also have to write journals about certain topics like recycling, hunting, and creating policy. This class is extremely easy, I wish we did more in it, see as how it’s the class that applies to my major the most out of the three we are taking at UNGE.



Natural Resource Economics

I was a bit nervous about this class, but I wasn’t too worried since I took Macro a couple of semesters ago. I find this class to be very interesting and informative, but writing a 10 page paper about water scarcity was a bit challenging. I think its good, but we’ll see when I get my grade. I’m glad we were able to write about something we were interested in, or that paper would have destroyed me. After writing a 60 page paper with Cait about acid rain, a 10 page paper wasn’t so bad. I like this class a lot because I am able to apply the things I learned in Macro here. Our teacher understands that some of us have taken some econ classes, but doesn’t expect us all to be economists, which leads me to my next class.


African Literature and Spanish Culture

I knew before I came to EG that this class was going to destroy my brain. And I was right. We met with our professor before classes started and we all thought we are on the same level concerning our proficiency, but the first day of class mentally destroyed us. Since our classes started after our time in Moka, our teacher was pretty sure we would be all speaking rather fluently… yea right. We had a couple of classes at the US Embassy, but now we are back at UNGE. Cait, Sarah and Tristan are all pretty good, but my mental block always freezes my foreign language skills up. I’m not fabulous at speaking Spanish, but I’m not horrible. And I’m sorry, I’m from Philly and I’m a chronic mumbler, of course my pronunciation is going to be a tad off. Saying ‘aprender’ 50 times isn’t going to change how I say it, sorry. It has gotten a little better, but depending on the day it can be pretty cool or horrible.



All in all, my classes aren’t bad, and I’m learning a lot. The experiences outside the classroom, however, will stay with me longer and give me a greater understanding about my life and life in EG.

Global Education

Education is our most important resource we, as the human race, choose to continue to progress and evolve. Without a thirst for knowledge and understanding… what would make us human? Without education, how do we advance? I feel that education is one of the beautiful institutions that reminds us and shows us the hypocrisy when we manipulate its beauty for profit and greed. It shows us how in many places in the world, it is not taken for granted, often cherished, and highly respected.
Education is sometimes our only tool to combat hate and fight poverty. Why should those with wealth and power be able to distribute education? When students around the world are craving for an education, fighting against all odds to learn, why do we as Americans take our education for granted? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that every American kid in the United States takes their education for granted. And I know the education system in the U.S. is broken. Many public schools are beyond understaffed and undersupplied at best. My complaint is with the kids, who are given almost every resource imaginable; who act like it’s a burden to receive an education. It’s not ‘cool’ to be smart, so slack and goof off. It doesn’t matter, you’ll learn what you learn, make your way through school, that’s good enough right?
Every Tuesday and Thursday, for probably an hour and half, Cait, Sarah and I are going to go to a school to teach the kids English and sing some songs with them. We have only gone once so far, but I want to share my experience of this school. When we first arrived at the school, we thought that we were just going to help out the teachers with their lessons, but the teachers wanted us to sing some songs with the kids in each class. When you think of classroom full of kids, how many do you think of? 20? 30? Try about 50 in each of the three classrooms. One teacher for each of the classrooms. So three teachers (one who was the principal) for about 150 kids ranging from 3 to 8. This younger group of kids goes to school from 8-12, and the older kids, from ages 8 to 12 go to school after siesta. There is no room for all of the ages to be at school at once.
I have read about many places around the world where there aren’t even buildings to house classrooms, so I know that they were lucky at least in that aspect. They had a building, they had chalkboards, they had uniforms, and desks. But could a school ever exist like that in the United States or Europe? If that was the school your child had to go to everyday, would you find that acceptable? Or is it only acceptable because it is in Equatorial Guinea?
The thing that struck me the most was the openness of all of the kids. Here were three white girls who speak very limited Spanish, standing in front of a classroom. We were singing “Row, row row your boat” and the “Hokey Pokey” in Spanish that Cait and I wrote for a dialogue in Spanish 202. Every single kid participated, every single kid showed us respect, and every kid was excited for us to be there. My favorite part was when they sang and danced their own version of the Hokey Pokey while we tried our best to follow the dance. We did 3 times. It took 30 minutes to go through the three classrooms. We were so blown away by all of the friendliness and hospitality that we forgot to introduce ourselves, but there is next Tuesday for that. I am beyond excited to continue to visit the school, play games, teach things like animals and body parts in English, and just to have a great time with the kids.
You could tell how appreciative of us they where, even though I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be getting a lot more out of this than what I can possibly give to the kids. It was so refreshing and joy-filled to see the kids so happy and eager to learn. In spite of all the setbacks these kids face, they still want to go to school, they still want to learn. I have found that education is never taken for granted when you don’t know how much of an education you are going to receive.
Without education, what are we? By withholding education for those who desperately crave it, what does that make us? How can we honestly look around the world, see the horrible state of education in many countries, and accept it for what it is? We have the power to change the world through education. We have an almost unlimited amount of resources as Americans. When used properly, our money can have so much impact throughout many places in the world. If everyone read “Three Cups of Tea” and decided to take action, the world would be a better and more educated place.
It is our duty to spread the power of education. Education is an inherent right for anyone born on earth; it is not something to be withheld because of poverty or geography.


Without an education for all peoples, there is no way that peace can exist in our world.