"You, you and you." I transformed them all into doctors with a wave of my hand. "Go out and find an office." I indicated the desks and tables arranged around the classroom. My English students were studying words for the body and sickness. Half of them were to be the doctors who would set up shop and wait for their patients to arrive. The pairs were then instructed to practice lessons from the past by introducing themselves and giving some background information before explaining their symptoms.
As I circulated the room overhearing conversations and stopping to answer questions and make small corrections, I saw creativity and humor- colored in Congolese culture of course. One woman assured me her doctor was a witch. He had prescribed 5 different medicines along with some suspicious herbs to drink in a tea. All she had asked for was something to stop her diarrhea. I was impressed with the level of questioning about symptoms from her "doctor," though agreed the final recommendations seemed like overkill. She could always get a second opinion- an opportune moment to introduce this phrase. As they began to discuss the price, I moved on to another couple.
This doctor had suggested the patient see an ear, nose and throat specialist (oh, the English words I could never imagine bringing into the conversation. It's always so much more rich when they get to role play naturally.) However, the patient had only been experiencing nasal congestion for one day. I recommended a second opinion again, before paying such an enormous sum to an ENT. I'm not sure if the patients had insurance.
We moved to the round table to end our session with a final whole group discussion. I also wanted to take this time to introduce some idioms and phrases. We had decided we would look at one each session- particularly to improve the more advanced students English. I had found a few phrases relating to health. The particular page I had printed was full of color idioms ("in the pink" "feeling blue" "green with envy" etc.) I'd only intended to look at the few phrases dealing with health, but with their usual enthusiasm and insistence we ended up discussing all of the phrases.
This brought us to "black and white" as in certain issues are said to be black and white. Or more precisely, I counseled, most often this phrase is used to suggest an issue is not just black and white. I searched for an appropriate example.
"Stealing. Wrong or right?" I queried. Everyone seemed to readily agree that stealing was unacceptable. "But what if you are only 6 years old and live on the street with no one to help you. You're hungry and have no possibility to eat. Would it be ok to steal....?" I'd meant to add 'some bread or some small fruit' just to distinguish between mugging someone, but I was interrupted.
"Shegue," one of the women said. And with that word she seemed to close the subject. She wasn't seeing a child, her child, alone, cold, hungry, scared. That one word descended like a mask covering any sweet innocence with malicious intention. I simply don't believe it is there, even when they are giving me the finger and rocking my car until I think it might turn over. I don't yet have fear of them. Because I sense it is frustration and desperation that drive them. The shegue. What are they to do? How long can they endure the suffering of trying to survive every moment of every day?
"But if you had a family, hungry children at home and no way to feed them..." I tried to continue. Some others began to enter the debate and things got sticky. This is an excellent group for riling up. Our exchange is based on the fact that they are members of La Jeunesse pour Une Nouvelle Societe but they certainly seem to have a variety of views about how that society might function.
"So you see," I concluded trying to end the session, always a challenging task at best, " it's not black and white. It's a complicated issue...." They continued to discuss and murmur as they made their way into the night.
