The Qatar Blog: The Moorman's Experiences in Qatar

Today's class was the most interesting to date. My first assignment for these students was to read children's books. As one of their projects, they were to find and practice reading one of their favorites, then read it aloud in class. As part of our conversations over the last two weeks we talked extensively about how in most Arabic families reading to children is uncommon. In its place, there is a strong story telling tradition.

So today, each student read an American or Western children's book aloud. They were great, animated and highly involved. The most interesting part for me however, came next. They took turns telling Arabic children's stories. These are rich cultural messages, and there is often a good deal of humor. Let me see if I can capture one of them. A common character in these tales in Jiha, who is sometimes a fool and sometimes clever; this depends on both the story and the country of origin (remember my students are from Syria, Sudan, Algeria and Qatar). In one tale, Jiha goes to his neighbor to borrow his donkey. The neighbor doesn't want to lend it to him, so he lies that he has lent it to someone else. As Jiha leaves his neighbor's house, he hears the donkey neighing. His response is "it's usually better to trust a donkey than your neighbor."

Next week we will start the next assignment; they will each write a simple children's story, using powerpoint and pictures they locate on the internet (thanks to Amy Williams for this idea). I'm looking forward to this one too. These are creative and highly motivated students, andI'm begging to get a better feel of their considerable sense of humor.