4 young muslim men talking about marriage

11/23/2002:
back from another long night at Buba's. we talked, prayed and talked again. the talking was about education again. girls' education. young muslim women in wum. why aren't they being educated? are their parents' perceptions of "western" education (post-primary) justified?

it turned into a far-ranging conversation on women and marriage. here are some of the questions/topics that came up:

• educated muslim women, are they too independent? is there such a thing? too opinionated? 
• what are the roles/responsibilities/rights of muslim women to their men? what of muslim men?
• how will we raise our daughters? do we want to raise our wives? [i.e. wives much younger than us]
• what kind of wives do we want? "educated" or "illiterate?" in what sense of each term, western or islamic literacy/education?

all really very interesting points that the two Bubas, Yusufu and i were discussing. each with a point of view leaning in a particular direction. me with probably the most liberal/western notion of who i want to marry and how i'd like her to be. one of the Bubas also more liberal than the other two. yet none of us saying anthing out of the norm in terms of 4 young muslim men talking about marriage.

we disagreed on most points except educating our daughters. a must. but in what sense?... some western, some islamic, and some both styles of education. again, i know that distinction is problematic. all of us understood that. 

i must say that having the conversation with these 3 other young muslim men was enlightening. as to their views on such topics and, in light of their views, my own. am i that liberal? is it the westerner in me? where is this influence from? my mother? my sisters? being around american women, muslim or otherwise?

a wide stance

11/21/2002:
some notes here. it's late. and my sleep has been off:

• had to salvage a sinking lesson, Chemistry of Life, with Year 1 at GTTC. it's tough to teach that class. only 3 students in it! i just said forget it... let me lecture. almost lost my patience. kept cool, though. some parts were tough. i had to answer my own questions. but we moved on... gotta adapt. be flexible.

• finally got my hands on that book in the Saudi fatwa series. the one with the section on the Tijani tariqa. those Wahhabis are merciless, i tell you! they seldom mention the tariqa by name without calling its people the staunchest of infidels, misguided polytheists (i.e. shirk). they say you cannot pray behind them, cannot marry from them, cannot pray on their departed, etc. while i can't deny that i still have some purist tendencies, leftover from ISA and especially on issues of shirk and the seal of prophecy, these fatwas are just too much. [see the following article, in French, on how this conflict plays out in Douala]. you can't just excommunicate people left and right. it takes much more حِلم [forbearance] than that... والله أعلم [and God knows best].

• just back from taraweeh [ramadan evening prayers] at Buba's. they got into another heated conversation after prayer. it was about this same topic / same book above. but to go back to a point from last week. i really enjoy conversing with and hearing these shabab [young men] converse. reminds me of myself and the fellas [shabab] back home. academic debates with influences from Shakespeare to Plato to the Prophet. a foot in the West, and the other in the East. a wide stance, indeed. and, these days, as these worlds seem to drift apart, it feels like we're being forced to choose which side we're on. to lift one foot off one of these worlds or risk being torn in two. but is that right? is that the only way to conceive of this?

• i had two points to make, based on these conversations with the shabab, in terms of education: 

1. come to terms with our ambivalence between "Western secular" education and "Islamic religious" studies. i feel like most educated young mulsim men our age, at one time of their lives or another, feel torn between the two. wanting both, but too often seeing them in conflict, and feeling forced to compromise one for the other. and it makes no sense. i've had friends both here and in the US tell me they want to leave "western/secular" schooling and go off to study religion... be it nigeria or saudi arabia. again, it makes no sense. what is "secular" education, anyway? which brings me to my 2nd point... 
2. come to terms with the fact that our faith does not ask us to choose between it and secular education. in fact, it questions the notion of "secular" knowledge and calls upon us to pursue knowledge in all fields. and so – for the sake of this "torn" generation, the generations to follow, and our faith itself – we need to find (or re-establish) a way to do both. to educate ourselves religiously, and for lack of a better word, "secularly." والله أعلم

let's hope we get a leader...

Note I posted on my door.

11/21/2002:
...long days. kata, cough and fasting are knocking me out in the evenings. haven't been writing much. at GPS [govt. primary school] today. observed some lessons. some students doing better. talked to the VP briefly.

we had a few teacher meetings at GPS. faculty teachers [the teaching staff at GTTC]. cooperating teachers [teaching staff at the practice schools]. student teachers [our GTTC students, the teachers in training]. basically, the VP laid down the law. told us/them how things should run. better late than never, even he admitted. so...

no more marking lesson notes at home. instead, at school on MWF. that should be fun! especially as faculty teachers barely show up. something like 4 out of 9 at the 3 schools today: nursery school, GPS I and II. and we have to mark lesson notes, observe and give feedback! right... we keep begging for more teachers. the admin says even the handful they sent out were like pulling teeth. 2-2000 cfa each.

i walked back towards town with the VP and Mr. Nsuh... talked about Auntie and what she's doing to our school. how it could/should be running. let's just hope that if/when she's replaced, we get a leader. in the true sense of the term. the VP shows occasional hints of it. professionally, at least. but what to say of him personally? really?...

this your education

10/31/2002:
na me dis o! Happy Halloween. maggie, manjou and me ate candy. gave some to the kids.

another long thursday. GHS EE Club and Moral Instruction went well. then i listened to Off the Shelf [?] up at school. on my shortwave. it's a BBC [radio] program. kinda like a book on tape. the last one was The Count of Monte Cristo. this one was The Devil that Danced on the Water, by Aminatta Forna. daughter of onetime Sierra Leonean dissident Mohamed Forna.

good book. the setting, i like. the story, i like. characters, i like. how she speaks/describes her father, i like. her voice – that it's her book and her voice on the radio – i like. makes me want to write a book. i will, insha'Allah.

i read more of The White Man of God up at school. leaving it there and reading bit-by-bit. also read about ecology. in a big red biology textbook from our school library. made me want to study science again. i find it fascinating.

also read about HIV. Bridget just asked a question about that in class today. about perinatal HIV transmission. what, if any, is the rate of transmission through the placenta? the big red bio book said 25-50%. i think it's much less. we'll see...

Buba asked a question in Moral Instruction about sneezing, and the etiquette around the blessing of a sneeze. what is the significance behind a sneeze? interesting. gotta look that up, too!

i love teaching. i'm good at it. hamdillah.

so... i finalized the EE SOW with my 3rd year students today. 8 weeks into the term! i may see them again for 2 or 3 more weeks/times. we laughed. at the futility of it all. we should've been crying. but i pray the exercise was/will be helpful. that exposure to developing topics and sequencing them [i.e. curriculum development] will benefit the students in the future.

we'll try to cover a couple of the important ones. Biodiversity and Conservation. Desertification? Urban Migration and Population. Lake Nyos? i made a plug for the EE Charts we have up at school. not just as teaching-learning aids, but as textbooks of a sort. and good references.

GLOBE is going well. i want to get 2nd year involved. this saturday, insha'Allah. gotta get school library keys.

i also want to have another general topic for the students to write about. like "why are you here?" justify the time, money and effort of this your education. in light of many things. like apathy, lack of motivation, assimilation [into civil service teaching posts] and opportunity. why are you here? why am i here?

"Honour and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honour lies."

...what M.S. Forna wrote in his daughter Aminatta's autograph book when she was young. it made sense to her only later.