I recently welcomed a visitor from Dakar who led teacher workshops in Nouakchott throughout the week. It was a lot of fun to spend so much quality time with the English teachers in the area.
During one activity I led, I asked teachers to identify their favorite hobbies, an interesting place they visited, important person in their lives, and finally to choose which animal they would be. Then I instructed them to draw pictures of each on a piece of paper. I demonstrated how simple this can be by drawing my selections first.
When I drew a picture of a gorilla every one started laughing and hollering, exclaiming, "Why would you be a gorilla?!" I definitely had the attention of every teacher in the room. As I was explaining, people could not stop laughing. Apparently it is a big insult to call someone a gorilla here in Mauritania! I learned something new too and maybe next time I will not use the same example!
The workshops were a big success and now I am busy planning more workshops for the Spring.
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