Ayako writes:

"I talked with two people, one was from Madagascar and the other was from Cameroon.

First, I talked with a woman from Madagascar who teaches Mathematics at a junior high school there. She told me something about the school as well as the geography of Madagascar. About 14 or 15 students study in each class there, so she said classes in Japan are so big. Students in Madagascar don't study so many subjects like Japan, they study about 5 subjects. Students have various dreams in the future. If people want to be a teacher, they should study for three years at university. If they want to be a doctor, they should study for eight years at university.

She also told me something about geography and herself. The capital of the country is Antananarivo, which is in the center of Madagascar. She teaches at a school which is in the north of Madagascar, so it takes three days to get to Antananarivo by car. The north part of the country's climate is like Japan; it's not so hot, but the south part of the country is a little bit cold. Although she has never visited any other African countries, she has visited France and Japan (this time). She stayed at a Japanese family and she thought Japanese were very nice and she was comfortable to stay in Japan.

Second, I talked with a woman from Cameroon who teaches Chemistry at school. She was very energetic and friendly. She introduced herself at first. She is married and she has three children, so she lives with her family. She teaches Chemistry at an elementary school. She is very busy because she teaches seven classes which have 70 students, and she has to teach 26 hours of lessons a week. Most of the girls in Cameroon don't like to go to school because they want to get married, she said. Average age of Madagascar is 18, it is so young, so the girls want to get married from younger age.

She also told me about the flag of Cameroon. It has three colors, green, red, and yellow and has a yellow star in the center of the flag. Green means grass; it has much nature such as forests, yellow means hopes of the people, red means blood; many people were killed through various wars, and star means unit; many ethnic groups gathered there.

Finally, she talked about the GNP per person. GNP per person of Cameroon is 1800 US dollars. GNP per person of Japan is 28000 US dollars, so Japan's GNP is about 15 times as big as that of Cameroon. She said people in Cameroon think Japan is like a God and that Cameroon can't reach Japan.

Today's conversations were very interesting for me because I don't usually have any chances to talk with people from African countries. I could hear African English, too. I really thought that English is very useful because we can talk with many, various people in the world. I very much enjoyed meeting and talking with guests.