Mali Mail |
VOL. 8, No. 1, 109-111
Teaching, even at a distance, can be a bloody pain and bore. When you hear people rhapsodizing about the joys of teaching, ask them about the pains of teaching - the constant setting and marking of exams and essays, some indifferent students who whine more than they produce, the deadlines for marks, the complaints about marks, the endless preparations.
But, but, but you protest. Profs never talk like that. It isn't the party line, which is supposed to stress only the endless joys. Well, now you have heard something of the other side.
Of course the above comments are, in part, a rhetorical ploy to set you up for what follows: an account of one of the most joyous experiences I have ever had as a teacher. About 10 years ago a student enrolled in my distance education course in Shakespeare. Her papers and exams were sent from Florida.
Usually, if students are that distant, they can't enrol in the program because it is difficult to get materials back and forth across international boundaries while meeting our deadlines. But Lynette, as I came to know her, was a Canadian citizen, and the program accommodates citizens if the logistics can be worked out.
Her husband had some connection with the U.S. State Department, and yes, he was a Canadian citizen too. But if materials were mailed to Washington, D.C., they were quickly forwarded to Lynette, so that problem was solved.
Lynette proved to be the ideal distant education student. She was one of the best I have ever had in my classes, both distant and up close. Lynette's essays were stunning. I will always remember the one she wrote on Othello, with all sorts of ideas I had never thought of and that I had never run across in the literature on the play. Before so much feminist theory was circulating, she wrote clearly and with great passion - an unbeatable combination - about Desdemona's plight and did not blame everything on Othello.
And then one day the phone rang, and it was Lynette from Florida. She and her husband were about to be reassigned to Djibouti, Africa, just at the southern tip of the Red Sea. She wanted to continue with her University of Waterloo correspondence courses, and could we still accommodate her? I checked with the associate director of the program, Bruce Lumsden, who seems to be able to solve any problem connected with the program and to maintain his sunny good nature at the same time.
Yes, it would be possible. We could continue using the same address in Washington, D.C. In Djibouti, Lynette and her husband lived in the U.S. Embassy compound, the only place available for them, and Lynette had little freedom in venturing beyond its walls.
While she was there Ronnie decided it would be interesting to bomb Libya. All the women in the compound were loaded onto buses, ready to flee. Lynette wrote that people were preparing for a general war in the area. That fear was shared by many around the world. But, fortunately, nothing came of the raid.
Sometimes Lynette and her husband took visits to England where they had relatives and friends or to New Hampshire where they had more. The next I heard they were back in Africa, this time in Sudan.
And then one afternoon, the phone rang. Again it was Lynette calling, this time from England. She and her husband had been having dinner one evening in a hotel in Khartoum when a bomb went off only a few feet from their table. It had been a terrifying experience, and her husband's hearing had been severely and, I think, permanently damaged by the explosion. They had to be flown to England for medical attention.
But they were soon back in Africa, and Lynette's most recent letters and telephone calls come from Mali. I had to check the map for Djibouti. It's so small you might miss it. But I also had to check the map for Mali, which is very large, mostly desert country, in North Africa. It just doesn't seem to be as well known as Algeria to the north and Mauritania to the west. The famed city of Timbuctu (spelled any number of ways) is located within its borders.
Her husband is now connected with a United Nations agency, perhaps he always was despite the forwarding service provided by the U.S. State Department. Were it not for such forwarding facilities, Lynette would not have been able to keep up with her correspondence studies at Waterloo. But she did keep up, and last October she took her B.A. degree, albeit in abstenia. (Mali is a bit beyond commuting distance.)
I am sure that Lynette's instructors at Waterloo (I know she has had more than one course with me as well with Prof. Alvin Dust, now retired, of English, and Prof. Robert Fowler, of Classics), shared my elation at her distant accomplishments, distant from Waterloo but not, however, so distant from Florida, Djibouti, Sudan, and Mali.
In part I write this column (with Lynette's permission), to pay tribute to an unusual student who earned her degree, like so many of our adult students, under difficult circumstances. And I have another purpose. I write to thank Lynette publicly for all she has taught me and for running such enormous long distance telephone bills so she could talk to her instructors and friends at the University of Waterloo.
Lynette has taught me a great deal about Africa. She is a woman of great compassion and geography, and it is clear from the lengthy letters she writes (30 pages on legal paper, both sides) that she knows and sympathizes with the people of Africa, especially the women and children, and the hardships they face.
Recently she sent some photographs she had taken in Mali, and I was impressed by the variety of the sights and the geography - lakes, desert, mountains - and temples built out of mud and rising from apparently nowhere. I have told her that I think she ought to write a series of articles about her experiences in Africa, assuming they would fascinate other read-ers as much as they fascinate me.
Lynette is in the midst of many of the political events of our era. The Saddam war didn't get that close to her. Still, she is there on the scene or close to the scene of viewpoints that don't filter back to Canada. She is Waterloo's correspondent in Mali and Sudan and Djibouti. How about it Lynette? Why not write your long letters to all of us? And when are you coming to Waterloo so I can meet you face to face? Or should I pop over to Mali?
Jack Gray was a Professor of English at the University of Waterloo and Director of Part-Time Studies and Continuing Education from 1982–1986. Following his retirement until 1992, Jack contributed to the University of Waterloo Correspondent under the pen name "The Old Curmudgeon."