2015, gave me the love and care I had waited to experience with my family.  I was able to show them the love and care I held in my heart for them, by spending time with them

DO NOT WORRY ABOUT TOMORROW
THE UNCERTAINTIES OF TOMORROW 

Graduated from the University of Bradford on 5th December 2014, I faced many uncertainties as I looked to the year 2015. How will I deal with leaving the friends I have made in my time in England? Will I find a job? What would my life be like? What would my friends and family think of me after all these years of schooling and nothing to show? Moreover, how will I explain to them that the man I had been in a relationship with ended it a broadly without an explanation?   These were essential questions, which had no answers at the beginning of the year 2015. These questions did not stop me from knowing God was in control. The first sermon of the year on January 4, focused on reflection of one’s heart and forgiveness of wrongs done to you in 2014. The simple task was for us to write down all the wrongs done in 2014, and lay them before God. When the task finished, I walked home a different person. When the door closed behind me, tears of pain flowed, as I sought to know what I had done wrong in my relationship, which ended 10 months earlier. I had thought I had forgiven him, but it turned out on that Sunday that I had not truly faced my fears. Once I gave that to God, he opened my eyes in a new way.

BLESSINGS
HE IS IN CONTROL

He set me free and beside me was a wonderful gentle man who had been a true friend and had wiped my tears on many occasions and listened patiently while I complained. He became one of the first blessings of the year for me. We both confronted our feelings for each other within the few days I had left in England.  Both of us had promised to let the other know how we felt, before we separated and none of us had knowledge of this solemn promise. To confirm God’s leading hand, I visited his parents in France over the summer and we are now waiting to welcome him in my motherland.
On this last day of the year 2015, I just want to thank God for taking away my tears.

Back in Cameroon and so much to do concerning work, I tutored at RFIS for 4 months and gained some teaching experience. Who would have known that God had been preparing me to be a teacher for a while? After my summer vacation, I got a part-time job as an English teacher with College Technique le Bon Berger. God was in control of this year, wiping away my worries of finding a job. I am now looking for a full time job.

Do not worry about tomorrow, for God is in control of it. Your blessings might not come the way you expect them.

I want to thank God for WhatsApp. It has maintained so many of my relationships with friends and kept us in contact. I give glory to the special offer Nextel has for WhatsApp, where I only pay 500 cfa for 7 days unlimited WhatsApp internet. It is a wonderful blessing.

I praise God for good health for my family members in Cameroon, Switzerland, and Kenya and around the world. He has been keen to our distance and has not laid stress on us to attempt to make trips beyond our means. I now look forward to 2016 with an open mind knowing God does not change

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 280 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

At 1 a.m in the morning of the 23^rd December 2015, my mom, sisters and I exchanged our feelings of my stepfather, who would be buried the next day. As I listened to them talk about him, I wondered if there had been something I missed out. This man was kind, loving, and caring. He had been there when my mother needed someone to pay her bills and to give her shelter. To this, I share everyone’s sentiments, and appreciate his kind gesture and love to take us in when my own father rejected us. Yet why am I so defiant towards the thought of owning him as my father?

Sometimes, we seem so sure of something or someone so much that we are convinced that they will never change. Yet life has a way of disappointing us in unexpected ways. When I received the news that my stepfather was dead, I was emotionless. I was void of feelings, until hours later when it hit me that my stepfather was dead. That is when the turmoil inside began. For so long, I thought I knew the man whose name I carry. My memory of the past tells a story of a man, who did not care whether I was fed or not. He seemed to care less whether I was hurting or not and above all, whether I went to school or not. “What do you want money for? Women are trained to cook, raise children and take care of the house. Go and ask your mother for money.” At the age of 9, I felt like my world was collapsing over 1,500 cfa, which was my school fees in class 1 or grade 1. That is when I concluded that this man did not care for me. For many years, I held unto that thought.

As we, four women talked and listened to each other’s feelings, we realized that there was a lot of regret for the better part. My mother saw a man who cared for her and fought against unseen forces that controlled him, thus leading him to neglect those he cared for. As an eyewitness, she testifies to his last few years, where they demonstrated his total control of his mind; revealing the man, he was truly inside. In his last few years, he sought to re-establish the relationship he once had with his children and grandchildren. He was sorry for the things he had done and not done. He had been a difficult man to live with, but he accepted the responsibility for children he did not create. He had taken care of them in his own level and been a man who desired to be good. My mother thus concluded that much of what he did was out of ignorance and at that moment, I truly felt sorry for her and the husband she had lost. My two sisters felt guilty for not reaching out to him sooner. They felt they had neglected him and only reached out to him when it was too late.

What about me? I do acknowledge and respect the fact that he paid my mother’s bride price back and the price on all her children’s head. Like I mentioned earlier, I felt lost in my emotions, as I wondered what my family would think of me. I did not want them to think of me as ungrateful. Yet I could not just fake feelings and accept him as my father. However, I felt guilty that I never knew him and I wished I had given him a chance to know me for the woman I am today. I felt out of place for not being able to claim him as my father. Before I left home, I was shy, timid and a loner. I always felt out of place and found it hard to belong. While sitting with my family and speaking about my stepfather, I felt like a total stranger to them. It has been about sixteen years, which I grew up outside of my own home and tradition. I have been exposed to so many different cultures, which have shaped and built the person I am, and it would be difficult to break away from that knowledge.

Yet, in all of this turmoil, I found something else. I found forgiveness towards the man I thought I knew and acceptance of the man I never knew. If he could live a few more years, I would take the chance to see past the hard man I thought I knew; to the man everyone seemed to know. In all, I was grateful that my heavenly father was there to take care of everything and execute his will in our moment of confusion.

Teachers receive less recognition than they deserve. Few people would willingly enter overcrowded classrooms marked by rudeness, disruption, and, at times, near physical confrontation, or begin a job without training or orientation while still being expected to meet every obligation. Yet despite these challenges, the need to pass on knowledge remains.

Based on the brochure I received with information about the school, I understood that College Technique le Bon Berger (CEBER) worked with street children, orphans, sex workers, unemployed youth, underprivileged children, and others who had dropped out of school. Before discussing my role as a teacher, it is important to note that I went to CEBER seeking to serve as a guidance counsellor for the students, while also networking with other partners to help these children benefit fully from our social system. However, things did not go as planned. I was asked to teach the students and observe them at the same time—easier said than done.

Teaching at CEBER has been both rewarding and challenging. It has been a privilege to teach English as a Second Language to Francophone children, and the experience has strengthened my creativity, anger management, classroom management, and humility.

Challenges

Teaching Francophone adolescents has been difficult at times. Some openly express their dislike through words, gestures, and facial expressions, speak their native language during lessons, and make jokes that disrupt the class. Discipline is also a challenge, as some refuse instructions and argue when corrected. These behaviours create a difficult learning environment.

With such attitudes, one begins to wonder whether education is truly what some of these children need most at this stage. This situation has unsettled my neutrality because, as a teacher, I am expected to administer discipline, while as an observer, I am not. These two roles are in constant tension, creating a significant gap.

The lack of teaching materials has been another obstacle in teaching these young men and women. The students do not have textbooks, and there are no dictionaries in the library; as a result, the prescribed textbook cannot be used effectively. It does not help that many of them lack the foundations in English, yet teachers are still expected to cover a demanding syllabus.

Over the past few months, the discipline masters have also posed a challenge to my authority as a teacher. One stopped during the second month, but another continued to carry out his duties during lessons, which undermined my authority and encouraged the students to disregard it in the classroom.

Teaching time is also frequently lost. At times, students are absent because they have been sent to clean the chapel, while others arrive late because previous classes run over. As a result, 30 to 45 minutes of a lesson may be lost, leaving very little time for meaningful instruction.

Observations and responses

The students

Many international laws identify a lack of education as one of the factors that can lead children to join armed forces. Countries are therefore encouraged to address children’s educational deprivation during rehabilitation and reintegration. “7.78 Educational activities should take into account the children’s lost educational opportunities, their age and stage of development, their experiences with armed forces or armed groups, and the potential to promote psychosocial well-being, including a sense of self-worth. Children with disabilities should be included in educational activities with their peers” (The Paris Principles, 2007).

The past few months suggest that our focus may not always match the students’ needs. Some skip classes even when the teacher is present, leave after attendance, or seek to be sent out of class. Others show little interest in studying, despite efforts to connect lessons to practice. Group work has helped some students participate more actively, and in the second sequence, many in the higher classes showed encouraging progress.

Some students value the opportunity to study, while others seem forced into it. This dual role of educator and observer has highlighted the complex needs of students in urban settings, especially those whose families make sacrifices that the students may not fully appreciate. This raises important questions about what they still lack and how best to respond.

It is easy to describe a child as lazy or disengaged, but after three months of teaching, it appears that many are struggling with identity and personal circumstances. In one difficult lesson, it became clear that some girls came from unstable homes and felt ashamed of their family situations. Their anger and defensiveness often seemed to mask fear and embarrassment. This points to the need for deeper support beyond classroom discipline.

Resources

Given the limited resources, it has been more effective to let students use the vocabulary they already know, work in groups, and take an active role in lessons. Pictures and handouts have been especially useful in capturing attention, encouraging discussion, and helping students form sentences in the grammar tense being taught.

Discipline masters

Students have developed a habit of arriving late for class and blaming their tardiness on the discipline masters. After observing both the students and the discipline masters for three months, the matter was referred to the Senior Discipline Master. He explained that students are not allowed into class if they are late unless they present a Billet D’entrée. Regarding the discipline masters, they have no right to enter classrooms and carry out their duties unless the teacher permits them to do so. No one is supposed to interrupt a lesson for any reason. The teacher in the classroom has authority over that class, and students are not to leave until the lesson is over.

Rewards

The Cameroonian system measures performance largely through test results, and cheating remains a serious concern. Some students who had cheated were upset by the zeros they received in their second-sequence exams. One moment stood out, however: a student refused to claim his mark because he knew he had received help during the exam. His honesty was both striking and encouraging.

This was significant because the overall results were unexpectedly high compared with the students’ classroom performance, suggesting that cheating had been widespread. The students were reminded that dishonest success offers no real achievement. After hearing this, the student came forward, appreciated the message, and promised to work hard in the future.

A few days ago, some students said they wished they had someone they could trust and confide in. Their experiences of betrayal by friends and family confirmed the purpose that first drew me to this work: many of these students are hurting and need someone who will listen and, when appropriate, help address these problems with their families.

Although the experience has been challenging, getting to know the students and helping them improve in English has deepened my commitment to them. If even one student chooses hard work over cheating, then the effort is worthwhile. Teaching is not easy, but over time, it becomes a passion that turns obstacles into valuable lessons.

Another encouraging development was the Pedagogic Capacity-Building workshop training we undertook in November. It aligned with the principle of transforming students’ knowledge into action, which is also one of the objectives of human resource development. The focus was on developing creative and innovative students rather than simply filling them with theory. Teachers were encouraged to devise activities that created opportunities for students to think creatively. To achieve this, teachers themselves were encouraged to be spontaneous, innovative, and open-minded.