Food and Faces

On Friday, I was invited to a teachers' social where guests consumed a dish called achu (made of cocoyam puree, palm oil "soup," some kind of meat, and "vegetable," as they described it to me) which is eaten without silverware.  Of course I'm not picky about manners or anything, and I was pretty pumped to try dipping my fingers into mashed cocoyam and then coat the puree in soup.  It was by far the most unique eating experience I have ever had, but it actually did get a little repulsive to me after a while.  Everyone was excited for me to "snap" them with my camera as they ate.

As always when I'm away from home, my mood and emotions ebb and flow.  While the prospect of coming up with even one more idea for the school makes me a little nervous, I keep reminding myself that everything will work out.  In an attempt to do some drawing exercise that resulted in everyone having something different, today was "self-portraits"-- although a lot of the kids took liberties, making themselves blonde, giving themselves extremely long and flowing hair, etc.  It was cute.

I know everyone is accustomed to copying exactly what the teaching writes or draws on the blackboard, but I really was not expecting so much confusion when I explained that for each step, there would be multiple choices.  The first thing I asked everyone to do was draw themselves a head-- I drew them a few different possible shapes (circular, oval, defined chin, etc.  I know, I am not actually an artist) and explained that it should be big so that they could fit all the parts of their face inside.  I got blank stares.  From 6th graders.  We moved on to eyes, eyebrows, nose, etc. and I would give them several examples and kids would draw all of them exactly as I did rather than choose one for themselves.  Eventually, though, I think everyone ended up excited by their finished product: colorful and personal.  At least it appeared that way...

...or maybe they were just enjoying getting "snapped!"