As long as I have been here, I have seen children pushing broken parts of strollers, bicycles, roller skates, or anything else with a wheel around in front of them. Neither I nor my fellow students could figure out what that was about. I think I’ve figured it out, I think they are just emulating the hordes of teenagers pushing wheelbarrows all over the place. Every little kid wants to be like the big kids, I’m surprised it took me this long to notice…
I also had a student tell me something that really rang true and I think helps explain a lot here. I told her that she was doing well but that she needs to practice her reading skills. She told me that she hated to read. I figured she hated it because it was difficult, but she told me that she really doesn’t like to read in Arabic either. Of course! What, exactly, are they going to read? There are no libraries like we know here. Almost all of the books I have seen in Arabic are either religious or some other type of nonfiction. She could try to read the Koran, and maybe a newspaper, but there’s really not a lot here for kids or adolescents. You can imagine the consequences of entire generations, even the educated, not wanting to read.
It also helps explain why everyone I’ve met emphasizes learning to speak Arabic. I try to explain to them that no one speaks it in the US. In my mind, it’s a lot like learning Latin or Sanskrit, there is stuff to read, but no one uses it in a conversation. But they insist, “How else are you going to talk to people here?” Well, first off, I have never had any actual plans of living here for an extended period, and second, the people here do not speak Arabic, they speak a dialect of it. Once again, I have tried to explain that my effort needs to be in the direction that will allow me to read the things that I want, but they really don’t understand. I have a feeling it’s because they themselves don’t read.