How do you use "shorty" in a sentence?

Last Saturday morning I went to Willy's English class. Willy is a 24 year old guy from Cibitoke suburb of Bujumbura who decided he wanted to learn English. He has an amazing mastery of the language that reflects someone who learned a lot but has obviously taught himself. For instance, he'll make small grammatical errors but will toss out vocabulary like “extemporaneously” and “whet my appetite.” He also decided he could teach others, so on Saturday mornings, about 50 Burundians from ages 15-30ish cram into a small school room and create an English class for themselves.

The entire lesson is made by the students: they bring in the vocabulary, the prepare the exposes, they find stories to read aloud to the class. Willy and a couple of his friends act as facilitators, but otherwise it’s completely collaborative. Which is impressive, first of all, but also incredibly amusing. For example, take some of the vocabulary of the day:

• Sex maniac: a man who wants to have sex all the time
• Gold-digger: a woman who uses the fact that she is attractive to get money
• Demoniac: stupid person (which dictionary.com defines as “of or relating to a demon” but I swear I’ve never heard)

If anyone has a question he will thoroughly discuss the word as if he was debating social policy – from the heartfelt explanation you would think pinpointing the difference between “hear” and “listen to” could save someone’s life. The facilitator for the day responded to good comments and the exposes by calling them “breathtaking” over and over again. Burundians take the things they say very seriously and these kids are passionate about learning, which is admirable but means there is a lot of exaggeration.

And then there was a whole religious part to it which I didn’t expect but you know, why not? Three guys got up to sing a worship song, one with a guitar, and if a little out-of-place for an English class, it was wicked cool. They had great voices and in the cloudy morning classroom set a beautiful scene. Best part was the second song they sang: they went to front of the class, one started beatboxing, the other shouts “You know we’re back! This is the remix!” and they rap (pretty well!) for a bit before busting into “Lord I lift your name on high.” I get the feeling they practice this for ten hours a week but it totally pays off. My face hurt from smiling at the end.