Being Green

What an amazing and very funny session this morning. I was grouped with Robert, Henry and Cyprien - all very cheeky, and all had very good spoken and written English, so we stormed through the tasks. We talked about recycling, Henry has four bins at home and meticulously recycles - even though, when he lived in Nigeria, they had one single bin for everything (apparently the rubbish is serperated at a later date). Robert however is more of an occasional recycler, and we had a discussion about how I'm the same and we should both do better! Cyprien told us all that a plastic bag takes 150 years to decompose, so there are companies which take these bags and turn them into cups/more bags - these guys are pioneers of green living. When we got onto extinct animals, it said that a polar bear was as tall as an ELEPHANT when standing up, we were all so surprised! "King Robert", as he likes to be known as, described a time when he saw an elephant in Zimbabwe whilst having his lunch; that day, he was crossing the border(he worked as a truck driver, so waiting in long border queues was a normality for him) apparently the elephants are able to rip through the netting which surrounds the soya/fruit which he was transporting and one of them munched its way through as much as it fancied. He told us of another time which a monkey "broke into his van", by opening the door while he was down the road, and stole the orange juice from right in front of his sleeping mate! What really interested me about these stories were how expressive Robert was when telling them, his theatricality in his storytelling was really engaging - and he did these amazing impressions of the monkey stealing the juice, which we all found hilarious. It was this moment that stuck with me the most out of the session, his words were much more alive; language barriers are so easily destroyed by the other ways which we can use to express our stories - be it through funny impressions, or the impassioned tones of voice, or gesturing/ many more things. I feel that being locked to a pen and paper limits these extremely valid and useful modes of expression, and blocks some of these golden moments.