Spelling a-n-e-c-d-o-t-e

Spelling bees are my students’ favorite English Club activity. Most probably because chocolate is involved. When I say, “widideer” (competition), you should see their faces. You really should.

We have bees about 4-5 times each school year. I come to class with the spelling list, and they have one to two weeks to study the words. On the day of the bee, they come back as experts, dictionaries. My students are transformed to geniuses as they’re spelling “precious” or “transportation” in their third language.

And I’m always impressed. I get a kick out of Adahanum’s antics—the nervous crossing of himself before he receives his word. Tekle Gebrealife’s determined concentration as he feverishly summons his word.

They memorize their 50 words beautifully. Most often, especially at Maria Luisa School for the Blind (home to my most excellent, aspiring spellers), I have to go through the list at least twice, eventually resorting to words off the top of my head—because nothing can shake them. They know the list by heart. We’ve had several two-man standoffs at Maria Luisa, often between my girls Merhawit and Medhin. Medhin is a rock.

Distributing the word list to my Maria Luisa students usually takes a full class period. They each have their Braille tablet, and I dictate each word, spelling them aloud several times. Yesterday our class was interrupted by a howling thunderstorm. (Rainy season arrived in all her glory last week, and we are loving every minute.) In an American classroom, the students can hear the teacher over the rain. But our classrooms are single rooms in outdoor compounds; to get to your next class, you have to go out in the yard. Tin roofs, mud walls, and you can’t hear a thing over Mama Nature’s drumming. So, dictating the new words in the way a mother would shout over her teenage son’s music, I hovered over my students, yelling the spellings over them, over the rain.

This year, to end my service right—in a way that my fourth-grade finalist self would be proud—I’m organizing a town-wide spelling bee.

Round One. I gave my three English Clubs at my schools in town the list of 50 words. They had only one week to learn them: we’re in a time-crunch, thanks to the month of Miyaziya (April)’s 800 holidays that kept canceling at least one of my clubs per week. Time-crunch be damned, they memorized those words.

Tekle is a third-grade boy, living far from his family and village so that he can attend a boarding school designed for students like him, students with visual impairments. Tekle is one of my most enthusiastic students. After a three-week break when they went home to their villages for Easter, I returned for English Club. When I said, “Grab your Braille, we’re going to have a widideer,” Tekle Woooooooooooo!ed and ran all the way to his dorm room. He always escorts me to the gate after class, to talk about the weather, ask about my family, and tell me how much he loved the lesson, how much he loves the song Father Abraham and will we sing it again next week?

Tuesday was Adwa Town Spelling Bee Round One: Adwa School.

Wednesday was ATSBee Round One: Soloda School.

Thursday (yesterday) was ATSBee Round One: Maria Luisa School.

The three winning students from each school moved on to Round Two, where they received 50 new words—making a total of 100 words to study for the main bee two weeks from now. Nine students will gather on Soloda School’s outdoor stage on the last Saturday in May (God-and-Principals-willing) to compete in front of parents and friends. I’m already working on the special certificates.

We pause for a definition of God-and-Principals-willing: An in-depth program will be supported from day one. Nods, yeses, of courses, Why not?s. But two days before the program you’ve worked so hard to organize, the person you’ve been planning with will say, Oh no, we can’t do it that day. Not possible. There’s another program, or a holiday we didn’t mention, or a need for 500 birr to provide coffee and fried bread to all the guests. This is the story of so many Peace Corps Ethiopia volunteers’ service—and it makes quality work an incredible challenge. It is often culturally inappropriate to deny someone’s request, so that no feelings are hurt, no dreams are crushed. Instead, you say yes, yes, yes, but you don’t show up, or you don’t do what you agreed to do. It’s just a slower, more complicated and delayed (and for the American, crueler and more aggravating) way of saying no. I didn’t want this issue to keep me from planning the spelling bee extraordinaire, though. So each time I advertise the competition, or tell my participants the date and time, I say, Maybe. Maybe it won’t work, but maybe it will.

But the maybes shouldn’t matter to Medhin, Merhawit, or Tekle. They’re learning several words for the competition, and they’re killing it.

Which brings us to our a-n-e-c-d-o-t-e.

Yesterday, during Round One of our bee, I gave Tekle the word “thirty.” Below is what followed:

TEKLE:  Thirty? Number thirty?

DANAYT (me): Yes, thirty. Thir-ty.

TEKLE:  Okay, teacher. Number thirty. O-x-y-g...

STUDENTS: (giggle)

DANAYT: (in shock, lots of hesitating) Wait. Tekle. Oxygen? Why...Um. Was oxygen number thirty on the list?

STUDENTS: (giggle, nod)

TEKLE: Yes, my teacher.

DANAYT: Number thirty? You mean...you mean you memorized where the words were on the list? The words and their numbers?

TEKLE: Yes, teacher. Excuse me. Thirty. T-H-I-R-T-Y.

DANAYT:  Tekle, I think you are a genius.

And we moved on to give Abrehat the word “opposite.”

After the storm, I sloshed home in tan puddles to get Round One’s list. Part of me didn’t want to check, in case he was wrong. But there it was.

30. oxygen