Who Needs Geography?  page 1

Word Bank

awesome  balderdash  cackle  cliche  commotion   conform   consent  crest   dawdle devotion ditto droll  exhausted   flabbergasted  gloom   Hansel and Gretel Haogy Carmichael  jiffy  lull  macabre  reignite   summon   pathetic  predicition   revision  Weird Sisters

Poor old Mr. Jones.  He tried to teach us geography but would any of us listen?   The first couple of days, we listened listlessly.  After that we did listen.  Soon we were listening intently.  Our new teacher told the most awesome blood-curdling stories about places most of us had never even heard about. Take the country of Chad.  Does Emi Koussi mean anything to anyone of you?

I thought not.  If you had been privileged to be in a class taught by Mr. Jones, you might know something about Emi Koussi, a 3415 metre shield volcano in northern Chad not that far from the Libyan border.  Some years back, before Mr. Jones walked with a cane, he had climbed Emi Koussi with a party of Tuaregs and spent considerable time showing us his slides.  The next thing you are going to ask is who are the Tuaregs?  Spare me.

If you really must know, Tuaregs were a loosely knit clan of sorts that guided travellers across the Sahara.  They have recently been replaced by paved roads and most them are now urban residents.  However back in the days when Mr. Jones was one tough son of a gun, he lived for a time with the Tuaregs and believe me it was no picnic.  He has the slides to prove it.  I suppose some of you think that this is a load of balderdash, well think again.  Mr. Jones speaks Arabic fluently and can curse in Arabic with the best of them. 

The view from the top of Emi Koussi is awesome.   He took most of his pictures right at dawn before the shimmering heat waves off the desert sand distorted the scenery.  Most of us in the class, thought we knew something about the Sahara.  We knew nothing, we were soon to learn but learn we did.  In our new teacher's class, there was no dawdling.   We went flat out from the time class began and often ran past the bell so that we were frequently late for our next class. The truth was we would have willingly stayed for another hour, if only we'd been allowed to.

Mr. Jones could explain and make sense of the commotion that went on below the Earth's crust.  One of his expeditions was as a guide for sheiks bent on finding oil in the Empty Quarter.  I suppose I have to tell you where the Empty Quarter is located.  The aRub' al Khali takes up a considerable portion of Saudi Arabia.  The Sand dune partially in shadow is a barchan dune and the long skinny dunes are longitudinal dunes.  The three camel scene illustrates why this is known as the Empty Quarter.  Based on seismic surveys, some geologists have made predictions that there could be considerable oil in the Empty Quarter.  Time will tell.

One day an inspector came to our class.  He was devoted to boring teaching methods and did not look favourably on the methods that Mr. Jones used.  There was talk of suspending him and perhaps doing without his services entirely.   The powers that be were in for the shock of their lives.  Mr. Jones was replaced by a young woman who was a tyrant at discipline.  We had been learning about Gandhi's method of passive resistance used in fighting for Indian Independence.  We adopted a similar strategy. 

The next day, the Geography class was empty.  Poor Miss What's-her-name was somewhat upset.  We had taken a sabbatical and had gone on an hour's hike to study the effects of erosion on a newly created road adjacent to the school.  Let me tell you!  When we straggled in something hit the fan with a bang.  The lot of us were sent home for the day.  The next day, our poor geography teacher sat alone again.  What a pathetic situation.  The education department sent out one of their top guns.  We figured that we would all be expelled but were willing to risk it.

We were ordered back to geography class.  We refused and were suspended.  Our parents were not amused but most of them understood our position and were willing to give us some sort of support. Let me tell you there was going to be fireworks we were sure when all of us were summoned to a meeting in the gymnasium called by the provincial Minister of Education.