Last year when I left for Tanzania, I thought it would be cool to take along a toy to photograph—a “flat Stanley” type of thing to send photos to the grandsons on my travels. It was a blessing in disguise, because it clued me in Detroit that my camera chip would not work in my camera. When I arrived, it proved to be a great source of fun in the household, because Lusajo’s first sight of it was such a shock! We continued to torment him with it for the next two months. I used it as a prop to teach prepositions, slowly withdrawing it from a bag the first time—once again to gasps from each student.
Imagine my pleasure that the ‘gator was still in the house when I returned. Today it was to be part of the vocabulary to teach “This is a…” or “That is a…” Yeah, that was MY intent, but when Penina, our translator/teacher, caught sight of it, she snatched it immediately and hid it under her shawl— mischief was brewing. Penina was one of my students a year ago; she was so such a dedicated student and so articulate that Monika employed her soon after she finished her semester as a student. She had been in the classes where I had used the ‘gator as my prop. Today she strolled nonchalantly to the back of the room and suddenly tossed it onto the table (our students sit on benches at tables). The uproar was instantaneous—students recoiled, shrieking (which causes our next-door class to be disturbed) and then erupting into laughter. Hassan trembled, then laughed, then cried, all the while sweating like a dog! It was good fun until someone later put it in front of a student who’d been in the restroom at the time of the crime—she fainted! You can never predict the turns these things take—‘gators can cause a lot of trouble! Guess he’ll lie on the shelf until prepositions need some help.
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