The fourth and final quarter has begun at the American School of Douala. In the first two quarters, my class and I spent the first ten minutes of every class reading a book that was not assigned for class. The goal was to encourage reading outside of class, bring down higher energy levels after gym classes and get our minds focused on the tasks at hand. For the next two quarters, this practice has been replaced by ten minutes of writing. This practice will bring down energy levels and set our minds to task, but it is also an opportunity to experiment with our creative sides. Students are free to write about anything they want or interpret the prompt in any medium they wish – the prompts are only for those who need inspiration.
I write the same prompts with my students in all three of the classes we practice this activity – teachers should always be willing to do what they ask of students. Below are the prompts from this past week and my favorite of the three responses I wrote with my classes. All prompts were written by myself.
The picture at the top of this post was taken by our apartment’s pool this past weekend. It’s a hard life here in Cameroon.
***
Monday 31 January
Write about finding something that was lost.
It was dark – not lightless, airy dark, where there is a faint echo of light reverberating off the walls of a lightly-painted classroom, but dark-dark, where photons go to die, deep wet cave dark, dark like the inside of a chest kept in your grandparent’s attic for decades-dark. The air was full of dust and if there had been light then the dust would have surfed sunrays, but as it was, the dust only soured the smell of the dark, adding a sense of rot and decay to the soupy gloom. There was no breeze, no sign of movement whatsoever, and the stillness of the air gave the dark an even more material character. I am not in the dark. I wear dark. I am dark.
With the drama of a detonating bomb, a small window slid open – the rectangle was no larger than a box of tissue paper and yet from this small window poured in billions and billions of subatomic particles. They spread through this room – so it was a room, with corners, an above and a below – and brought waves of color, flooding my eyes in an instant.
And then the window closed.
***
Tuesday 1 February
Write a conversation between two friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time and still feel weird about why they stopped talking.
As he pulled into the parking garage, the heavy rain ceased to pound the roof of his car. The ceiling of the parking garage created a soundproof cement shield overhead that seemed to separate him from the rest of the world, as if he had entered a new dimension, a new plane of existence.
Her car was already parked, a red shadow in a tucked-away corner. A cigarette dropped from her hand and died under her heel.
Mechanical sounds – brake pads, unlocked doors, shift into park. An opened door, closed faster and louder than intended. The click of a lighter, the drag off another cigarette.
“We shouldn’t have met again.” She is unblinking.
He stared, pulled a drag, sighed it out. Smoke collected in the concrete hive.
“They found it. it washed ashore near the foundry last week. They’ve opened an investigation. I heard that it –“
“- he,” she interrupted,
“ – that he or it or whatever was underwater for so long that he’s almost impossible to identify. We have to be ready for anything.”
A click, a drag, a sigh. Rain poured.
“I am.”
“She opened the door of her car, got in, and drove off. Not even a look back. Nothing else to see here.
The rain grew thicker.
***
Wednesday 2 February
Write about someone who gets away with doing the wrong thing.
“How long has it been? Ten years, eleven? And no call, no text, no email, not even a damn smoke signal… something must be wrong, really wrong, or you wouldn’t have brought me here. I get that. But here? This place? What is this, a hit?” James laughs, short choppy sweaty laughs. Too much teeth.
The man sitting on the chair said nothing. A single lightbulb dangled far above, so that. cone of brilliance circled around the man like a helicopter search light, the shadows spinning around and periodically darkening the metal chair before the dim light once again glistened off it. Most of the tall windows in the warehouse were covered by a series of painter’s drop cloths, which picked up and sailed in the rough river wind, their corners frayed and in some places so tattered that silhouettes of shattered glass could be seen when the sail whipped back and ugly yellow streetlamp light cut through the darkness of the night, illuminating the chair and its silent occupant for a flash of a second.
Somewhere, water dripped.
“I mean it was a bad job. We knew that to begin with, you knew that to begin with. It needed finesse and Brady didn’t have any. The police knew where the drop was.” At the word “drop,” a strong gust whipped one of the window cloths hard against the aluminum siding, and the clash echoed rapaciously in the dark.
“Is that really why – you don’t think – I’ve been with you from the start! You told me to get lost, so I got lost! What more do you want from me? Whatever happened –“
This time the clash and her echo roared as the metal chair underneath the man flew across the floor, kicked hard by its owner. The sound of metal scraping cement mixed with the dripping of the ghostly pipe in a cacophony of danger. A dog barked and then yelped out a cry somewhere past the broken windows. It sounded near.
Drip, drip, drip, drip…
***
Thursday 3 February
Write a conversation between someone who is apologizing and someone who is not ready to forgive them.
He spent the better part of the conversation sitting on the surface of the desk, his spindly legs kicking boyishly and nervously like the pistons of an engine, his eyes wide. He defended his aggression from last week – he threatened a girl, a teacher physically moved him, and then he came to me crying abuse – as evidence that all adults, including me, were out to get him. He interrupted constantly, desperately, only remaining silent when the exam he cheated on was brought up. He doesn’t see far enough in the future to consider consequences, doesn’t see wide enough to understand the forces binding him to destructive patterns, doesn’t see close enough to notice the tears swelling in my eyes.
I’m losing him.
“What do you need from me, friend? All of our actions are strategies to satisfy an unmet need. What do you need?”
The engine slowed down. He thumbed the wad of birthday money in his pocket, brought to school to show off to his friends, the only material vestige of his parent’s existence.
“I need you to apologize.”
“What need does that meet?”
“I need to feel good.”
A crack of light.
“You feel bad, and you need to feel good, and an apology would help you meet that need.”
Blinking, thumbing his pocket. “Yes.”
This moment was critical. Were his eyes shaking? I pulled down my ask so that our language barrier would weaken, and I smiled, and I said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I made you feel alone. I’m sorry that any of my actions felt mean, or cruel, or targeted. I’m sorry that I made it harder for you to fulfill your needs. I’m sorry, friend.”
His hands formed a catcher’s mitt around his cheekbones, as if his face was raw and painful to the touch. He was no longer quickly speaking or trying to score points in a debate or trying to rebel against an overwhelming force – for the infinity of the briefest moment, he simply was, and he felt the world around himself lighten and cool.
The moment passed.
“I don’t want to keep seeing you anymore. I don’t like you. You’re mean.” His engine was roaring, his legs dinged against the hollow metal legs of the desk, his laces flailing like headless snakes, the plastic ends of his shoelaces tapping like a loose ball bearing. The engine was burning to push me away, as it always does, again and again.
He hopped down from the desk, sniffling. Tissue ripped out of a box, his tears darkening his facemask, and he ran out of the classroom. The engine is fed by the coals of a pain he can’t wrap his thin arms around.
Do I let him go?
***
Friday 4 February
Write a scene where someone accomplishes something they have worked very hard for.
Years of halogen lighting harms the eyes
Blue is better
Blue refracts through water goblets in royal violet,
Submerges pillows under the surface of the ocean,
and moves through my hair like current
Blue light
wraps around my calf and pulls me under waves and waves
It drowns me, but there is no resistance,
No flailing, only Falling,
and with a smile, wet,
my lungs fill up
And soften flotsam into seafoam,
rolling on blue waves.
***
certification 
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