Second Best Line Ever

Orkeeswa Secondary School is an English-medium school, as all other secondary schools are in Tanzania. Except Orkeeswa actually enforces it. In the classroom, there’s only English from both the volunteer teachers and the local teachers. During tea and lunch time, the students are expected to only speak English. On the playing fields and courts, there’s only English. Myself and other teachers sometimes find ourselves telling the students to, “Speak English.”

Yesterday, the form twos were on the volleyball court playing a series of games and I overheard Edward saying to one of his classmates, “Laugh in English.”

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The ultimate best line ever from a student (and really, there are so many) is from Lalahe. He was in my newspaper club from two quarters. In the second quarter, he was working on the ‘Say What?!’ section of the paper, where he would have to think of one question and ask five to six students the same question; something akin to a ‘man on the street type’ thing.

During one club meeting he was trying to tell me who he was planning on interviewing. One of the girls he listed off was Grace, a form one student. I said, “You can’t interview Grace. She was in our last paper for ‘Say What?!’”

Lalahe replied, “No, no, not Grace. I can’t think of her name. You know, the black one.”