It's a hot summer day in November. Somewhere in the world, anyway. The clouds come and go, occasionally banding together in dark clusters with the possibility of rain. But it's not hot enough, not yet, and the storms dissipate before really dumping any water, leaving instead an uncomfortable blanket of humidity that you can never seem to evade, even more so during any attempt to sleep.
It's hard to love the heat, sometimes, most of the time, especially when passing under the sun's oppressive rays seems to rob you of vitality in an instant. Shade is your safe haven, but you must leave it eventually. It's not pleasant, not in a physical sense, perhaps because there is little reprieve like an air-conditioned office of convenience store or movie theater, but you find ways to persist here in the village, because what other choice do you have? I like to pretend it's a video game: moving from one shadow of a tree to the next, using a passing cloud as moving cover. Statistics of my remaining health and energy fluctuate at the bottom corner of my field of view. The cloud cover disappears, and the numbers plummet. Do you make a run for it? Wait, let's think this through. Check inventory. You forgot your hat at home. Idiot! What now? Use water bottle - 500mL. That will buy you some time, but it's not looking good. Where to go? You see a potential intermediate waypoint: a large rock in the middle of a maize field casts a shadow just big enough. Maybe there's a save point where you can refill your health and hydration bars. But in that moment the sandy soil around you begins to melt away into glassy lava flows. You clench your teeth, and your thoughts become dire. My god, it's hell on earth. You are no match for your foe, not even the final boss but just a miniature boss, very miniature, an invisible swarm of super charged particles, bouncing off each other, and off of you, taking the water from your body one drop of sweat at a time, surrounding you in the fiery heat of the afternoon sun. My god, this is it. Tell my mother I love her. This is the end!
Meanwhile a small child walks past you, wearing a bewildered look as to how so much liquid can be pouring from your face and arms and hands and legs and feet. You look like you've sprung a leak, they seem to say.
Heat is tough on all of us, sometimes. Although there are plenty of times when I want it: perhaps in the controlled and temporary environment of a steam room (which usually comes in tandem with delightfully cold water to dip into), or in the form of a fire on a cold night. But those things seem rather distant here in the village. It seems like it's getting hotter and hotter every day, and I imagine there are far hotter places in the world, but it's still rather distacting. Despite the discomfort and constant sticking together of skin (oh joyous flabbiness), there is something neat about how people endure what seems like being stuffed into a tumble dryer with dirty gym clothes. Everybody is sweating, and what could be all-consuming commiseration is more like the simple sharing of an experience. The boys pull their shirts up over their heads as they take the cows out to pasture, and the women take turns drawing water and resting in the shade of a nearby tree. For me, it feels like I'm going to lose consciousness any time I stand up, but all around me the people continue to labor away as though it's just another day. As for the smell, it may have been initially offputting, but now I am quite used to it. There is simply a tree that puts out a rather strong odor reminiscent of decaying flesh, but knowing it comes from a tree dampens any nauseating effect. The odor is so potent, however, that I couldn't even smell the carcass of a baby pig that recently died in front of my house. Rafiki was cleaning its ribs of any remaining meat, and while I wasn't eager to touch my dog any time soon, I did have to appreciate the sight of such a thing -- I was initially a bit horrified, but also curious. What's that smell? Recycling.
Anyway.
At about this time, the weather is typically getting cold and fall-ish and occasionally rainy back in California. Thanksgiving is approaching fast, the harbinger of the beloved and dreadful Holiday Season and all that it brings: togetherness, love, appreciation for any fortunate circumstances; and also decadence, consumerism, gluttony, and materialism to excess.
I recently told Masiku about Black Friday, a machination of retail outlets everywhere to create a such a fierce sense of desperation for things that people have been trampled on this day. Why is it called Black Friday? he asked. Even I can't remember why; was it called that before or after those people were killed? Are people still dying in consumer-related accidents? Is it weird that I'm no longer as appalled by it? At any rate it's a bizarre thing to explain to somebody, and Masiku's bewildered reaction was likely the same that I produced back then -- right before getting in line at Best Buy at 10 o' clock at night to hold out for a possibility of buying Nintendo Wii the following day.
Happy Holidays, indeed. Anyway.
Given my lack of religion, I might joke that the holidays only bring us together because it is so cold outside, so much that people named a virus after the temperature, as if somehow being cold makes you susceptible to illness or generates it out of thin air. Don't go outside in this weather or you'll catch a cold. Actually, you're less likely to contract a virus outside where there is fresh, circulating air and a smaller concentration of people. We should be telling people instead: avoid family reunions -- you'll catch something dreadful.
But here, in the warm, uncrowded village, what I think of as a holiday period is taking a much different form. No bustle, no clamoring for presents. I think I'm going to enjoy it in some way, though I'll definitely be missing out on Mom's apple pies. At least the heat has a way of inhibiting appetite, so at the moment I can't say I could really go for a slice. All I want right now is water, and to keep on typing before I pass out on my cement floor.
It's hard, however, not to think in circles, in an annual pattern, one that always brings me back to that fond expectation -- this is how I lived most of my life, and now I'm simply removed from it, unable to take part in the ritual of American Thanksgiving. Just knowing that Thanksgiving is near prompts me with memories of family reunions and feasting and, for a fair amount of my life, what signified an impending three to four weeks of vacation from school. In a week I'll be spending this American holiday with a new family, and it will be interesting to see how we combine our various ideas of togetherness when the very thought of being together in a room with fifty other people sounds like a huge mistake, what with already being surrounded by enough heat to shake a stick at. Hell, you could stir the heat with a stick, maybe if you had one large enough. (You should see the the enormous wooden spoons the women use when making a 10 gallon batch of nshima). Hmm, what would that look like, cooking up some Zambia soup? You might get some unappetizing dusty porridge from these ingredients blowing around, but maybe the flavor of mangoes would come through just enough to make it edible. (Well, dust is somewhat edible. I practically live off of it, now, seeing as my canine companions love to kick it up into my bedroom window while I sleep.)
Food aside, I suppose I've found that there is a sweetness in these slow, dripping days. Things may be unpleasant at times, on the surface of any situation, but you have some choice in the matter -- maybe not how you take it all in, but what you do with it after, how it all distills in your memory. If you can manage to have these moments of reverence while you're enduring an awful situation, then I think you've got magical witch powers and we'll promptly send a healer to your village to cleanse you of such unholy scourge.
I think this is my way of telling myself, you're gonna be fine, dude. It's just hot air.
Me, I like to complain, is what I usually say to my Zambian friends -- that it's very American to complain about things like weather or politics or a certain government institution that wants me to put disclaimers all over my writing so that I don't offend anybody with these little squiggles. But of course, much to my chagrin, everything I do here is American. It's funny, in some sense, that I'm the whacked out ambassador that defines what that means for a lot of these people who are meeting a white person for the first time. Then again, a lot of people seem to think I'm Swedish. Maybe I'll just pull out that card to save America from any more embarassment. Yes, we Swedes love to walk around with our shirts off and pretend we are cows. Observe this song I composed, titled the Moo-Moo Song.
So I might complain, I say, but I like to think of it as a way to persevere rather than succumb to whatever is clinging on to my mind. It seems that negativity, no matter how small, tends to hang on for dear life, and that may hurt and nag, but once you identify the source, you've practically eradicated it. Pettiness wants you to add more fuel to its flames so it can spread into disdain or avarice, to the point that all injustice in the world seems to jab into you and only you, and so on. But in some idle moments, you might come upon little realizations that make those damnable, consuming thoughts seem like ineffectual, desperate parasites. Once you know how these things work, to identify the patterns of their hold over you, it becomes easy to make your own medicine and move on. Hmm, maybe this is the beginning of a fruitful career as a witch doctor in Zambia.
(As for malaria, it seems to be doing just fine here. I mean this from the perspective of Plasmodium falciparum, not in our orchestrated attempts to eradicate it. Unfortunately the vice principal at the school already fell host to it; I know my time is coming, but I'm not too worried about it. I do what I can to prevent it -- prophylaxis, bed nets, and bug spray (though DEET isn't exactly a picnic, so I eschew this one as much as possible) -- and if I get it I'll take the appropriate treatment. It's only fatal if you ignore the symptoms.)
For me and many others, writing is the medicine I take to treat these ailments of thought. I usually feel a bit better by the 'end' of whatever it is I want to say, sometimes managing to deflate some tension or ego or indifference. I've also taken bad medicine, and sometimes I keep doing it because I forget that it is really only a patch on an ever-spreading seam. In my case, that would be my rocky relationship with food as a source of sustenance versus pleasure, or in darker moments, something that quells the anxiety in my mind by matching it with equal measures of nausea. Fortunately I don't have much access to alcohol, as I fear it would be pretty easy to turn to as a quick fix to stave off boredom and discomfort.
I'd much rather have a medical card and an addiction to [redacted by the United States government], but for me my addiction is food. Sometimes it's a healthy addiction, but sometimes not.
And writing, I like to think. Oh yeah, that's some good stuff. Can you overdose on writing? I'm looking at you, Stephen King. Although he certainly did so with alcohol at one point. I'm glad he emerged from that battle on top, and I have hope to slowly make course corrections in my own life, or even more dramatic interventions if need be.
I mentioned the squiggles, and how they might inadvertently offend. It's easy to get careless with them. They come pouring out, written as words or passing through the air in waves (my squiggle descriptor still holds up! (barely)). Sometimes we say things we regret -- or worse, we say things we should regret but fail to recognize. These little squiggles have a remarkable power to change worlds -- if not the whole world then at least your world, and your world is probably the most pressing thing to affect-- as they are doing all the time when we produce or examine them. In some sense, my entering and adjusting them right now is a way to sculpt and channel the flow of my own life, or even just provide some relief, to make sense of the daily frustrations of being away from home, without burritos and best friends, attempting to make a positive impact on a part of the world that is often neglected, even by the people who live in it.
And I live here, too. I have to include myself in this camp of neglect, at least every now and then. Like I said, sometimes it's hard to love, and the relationship is just budding, though not in the same rosy way that any star-crossed romance begins. This one is different. They've mentioned an impending honeymoon phase, but I'm still wondering when that will be, or if it already occurred. Count me dubious. Zambia and I have been sharing many nights together, but when I wake up I don't feel smitten. I am fascinated, but not obsessed. Our relationship is pretty casual, I suppose. Actually, I kind of like it this way. We have time to grow together, and little expectation to get in the way. Then again, there are some pretty important expectations in terms of a certain work agreement. I did sign up for this not as an extended vacation, but to contribute something in the form of hours of calculated work and concerted effort, though there will surely be many endeavors that cannot be quantified so easily, their substance and value not so readily surmised.
A Peace Corps Volunteer sows seeds in a tumultuous garden (full of perilous lava flows), but if only a few ever sprout, even for a short time, that might be enough to inspire a positive impact. It has certainly kept the public's attention (and funding) for the last fifty something years, and I have reasons (many of which are TBD) to believe there is a profound benefit from such an undertaking. Depending on how you look at it, volunteer work can be a slow, lumbering process, like those cows going out to pasture, day in, day out, or like the farmers turning the soil every year to plant maize and tomatos and onions, hoping they receive enough food to carry on until the next harvest -- or I might consider my time here to be just the tiniest drop of water in a rough sea. You may not be able to see the ripples amidst so many others, and many will surely be absorbed or even counteracted. But some persist, and reach distant shores. I have some vision as to how this will all happen, but the vision changes every day. Sometimes the effect of my presence is small and fleeting, but with some luck it will resonate and continue to propagate.
It's hard, sure, but some days sweep over you with a sense of familiarity and belonging. I may never fully integrate into this community, I tell myself, but even some effort on my part gets recognized by those who are willing to see it. This is what essentially happens in any social circumstance. Think back to childhood, to high school, to the insular nature of our social circles, the barriers that constructed and upheld by us -- did you ever have those moments when you were excluded, or doing the excluding? I can say I've done both, but more importantly I can think of the time that shields were lowered and something sort of wonderful and transcendent would occur. That's inclusion, and there are people actively doing it for my benefit here in the village. They've invited Peace Corps to work in this place, so that's what I'm going to do.
In a sense, I'm asking the same thing of the people here. I can't always assume that my presence will be met with enthusiasm and a genuine interest in why I might be here. I can't assume that everybody I meet will collaborate with me and spread those Peace Corps goals. But there are people who have let me in, and I do what I can to reciprocate. We ask each other questions, and we build stories, of each other and our future together. Those are nice moments.
Thinking broadly, I can't say I ever gave much thought to underdeveloped nations before applying for Peace Corps, or before and even after visiting my sister in Honduras. Rudimentary living seemed temporary, only flashing across my mind for a brief time, perhaps in the form of camping trips, before I returned to my regular scheduled programming: abundant internet and running water and cold cokes and -- the list goes on. For some reason, I hesitate to use the word underdeveloped. While there may be an ostensible lack, by comparison, of technology, medicine, and educational resources, all of which are important, this sort of lumps every aspect of another culture into the idea that it is somehow lacking in whole, as inferior. In this label we fail to acknowledge the richness of a culture, a tradition of stories and unique mythologies and religious practices. Unfortunately a lot of these things have already been altered or supplanted by the British rule and Christianity, but even so these pasts are now intertwined with Zambia. Culture is fluid, after all. Regardless of the generalities, people gain their individuality when you take the moment to understand them on that level. Part of doing Peace Corps work is seeing past national constructs and to identify that elusive truth: that we are all simultaneously the same in our desires and different in our expression of life. Sometimes we see a people only through the lens of a camera, through television screens, through a long path of potentially fraught interpretation -- it's up to us to determine if there is consensus between what is taken and what is given.
(It's unfortunate to me when people see another culture as so complicated and even alien that they unknowingly fortify the walls of their thinking, snuffing out any desire to learn and find commonality in others. Would we have war without these walls? This reminds me a bit of philosophy I read which suggested that even most pacifists accept the inevitably of war. (Was that Slavoj Zizek? Help me out here, Edgar.) Well, better kill the idealist before he really gets going -- (though I suppose I feel that anger and confusion when I think of cultures whose constituents notoriously mistreat and oppress women and animals and whatnot. Part of me wants to just turn away and remain ignorant about such happenings. Hmm, was I speaking of America? It does fit the bill, though being born there offers some sense of familial obligation to continue to improve it. Why can't we make that sort of tacit oath to everybody in the world?))
As for rudimentary, this word sounds like a compliment to me. If somebody ever called me rudimentary, I would thank them. I love simplicity. It's deeply rewarding and satisfying when the most complicated of things become reduced into one tiny idea which still rings true. Even being presented with convoluted scientific principles can eventually have that delightful moment of the click, or when patterns unfold and you experience the simple joy of understanding. For many people they find this joy in God, and for that I am somewhat envious that I could never get there, though I have my own essential, rudimentary desires. For me, it is this -- connecting, expressing, sharing, and driving my curiosity to new territories. For me, it changes, and it drives me, and sometimes sweeps me away. Rudimentary is rad.
So let's change gears. (Side note: I like mechanical metaphors. I wonder what things we referred to commonly before the invention of modern marvels like airplanes and cars and computers. Behind all of these expressions I find something elemental and simple and alluring.)
Let's flip the hourglass. (Not quite the same effect, but I want to change the subject, or to change the pace of my thinking. Maybe this works, because it feels as though I'm going to start all over again, maybe doing this a little differently this time.)
It is November, as I mentioned. The date is the 18th, the 19th, and the 21st, not really ever one day, at least in the span of producing this, but many. This is something I pick up and put down again, which I might have whinged about in a previous post, so I wanted to make an amendment. True, starting and stopping is hard, but we also do it all the time unconsciously. If I think about it to much, writing becomes exalted with some expectation of what needs to occur, rather than simply beginning and finding out what happens -- the basis of all adventure. So I've decided to to think less about the starting and the stopping, and just enjoy the going when I've got it. The mood doesn't always strike, but when you manage to get a bull's eye you can't help but shout and hoot and holler. Yeehaw! Nailed it!
Anywho, let's talk more about the Corps, the unarmed forces. So -- when am I? -- in this 27 month period that always seems to tik and tok in the back of my mind? Now I'm just getting into some informational details about the job. I'm going to pretend somebody asked me, "So, how's work?" In which case, here's a truckload of stuff. I'm going to take a fat, Peace Corps dump, right on this page.
I'm nearing the end of the period dubbed Community Entry, or by some: Community Challenge. No matter what you call it, there's definitely a community involved. A tightly knit one, at that, where many people have typically lived their whole lives, and where they will most likely end up in old age. The families are large, and I've met countless people who have lost several brothers and sisters to illness -- but despite that they typically remain with five to seven siblings. Some have managed to scatter these days, growing restless with the village life. But those who stay seem rather content to be rooted here. They sink their feet into the soil, tend the cattle, the gardens, and slowly build new houses and expand on what they've got.
(My friend Masiku recently built a circular hut for storage/kitchen/dining, bringing the total number of rooms of his compound to two. Now his sleeping area is much less cluttered, though one room for four isn't what most Americans would call ideal. We like space, and even here I've got plenty of it. Two whole rooms with high ceilings for my own enjoyment! Oh my!)
What I have been doing these last three months is hard to qualify, and in some sense my job here depends on me writing just that: a Community Entry Assessment Report. I'll work on that later, closer to the due date, but for now I think it would be best to write here the things I wouldn't write on that report, or at least in a way that I wouldn't write them. Informally and spastically, and maybe with a bit of venom.
The school. Let's start with the school. Matambazi Primary is where I will be spending most of my days, teaching English to eager pupils who seem to have an insatiable desire for learning almost as much as they enjoy talking and having a social life. I'm currently sitting in on Grade 5 lessons, but as their primary teacher has been out for the past few weeks, this scene typically unfolds as me, the befuddled teacher trying to teach as many subjects as he can manage to in a few hours. I usually start with English, as I've been trained to do so, but after that lesson the students demand things like Social Studies and Science and Mathematics. Social Studies consists of crushing blocks of dull text, in English, and would necessitate a certain level of translation to make any sense to the kids. This subject would also need a touch of insanity to be taught in any interesting way, but I like to think I can rise to that occasion if need be. Even in English, however, the content of these books is suspect. I gave up trying to teach the kids about discipline and punishment as outlined by the textbook. Did you know that withholding food from a child is considered a form of physical punishment? What's troubling about the textbook is that it was very difficult to discern whether or not these sorts of things were encouraged, and I'm honestly not any clearer on the matter myself. I suppose I don't have much experience in the way of constructive discipline, but something tells me that these books are not the sources we should be looking to for answers.
In short, I have a bit of a problem with the resources. They're not always helpful, often priming students with irrelevant information that isn't even used in the accompanying exercises. But they're all they've got at the moment. They have many books at the school, but they are dilapidated and falling apart, the shelves warped and sagging over the years. It's hard to see this sight and not think holy hell, but this is the reality of it. I've taken it upon myself to comb through the dusty stacks of textbooks to see what might be salvageable and useful, but it will be another matter to create a sense of ownership over the maintenance of books in general. I've been talking about getting a simple library system going, but I suppose I'm not selling it well enough to get the teachers to band together for this cause, crying out in unison, FOR THE PUPILS!
What else about the school?
It's hard to figure out what's going on, pretty much all the time. I often wonder if the principal feels this way, too. Maybe she's very tired, and it's hard to rise to the occasion when nobody is cooperating. Most of my interactions with her consist of conversations about when I'm bringing computers from America, and whether I can type up her thesis paper for the university program she's attending. She wears me out a bit, and unfortunately I feel a wave of relief when I find out that she has gone to town for the day, which is fairly common. This isn't how I want to start any work relationship, so I've got to try to patch things up there.
Schedules aren't followed and teachers are often absent, which means that the children just have free reign to play around without supervision. I suppose this would be my dream at that age, to be able to have fun and dick around and then go home to my parents and say that I was at school all day long. What did you learn, they might ask. And I would recite the subjects: math, science, social studies, and English -- or as many as it takes until they are appeased.
But what's fascinating to me is, despite the disorganization of it all, the students really want to be there to learn. Even if it's clear that no teaching will happen for the rest of the day due to lack of instructors, they wait out the minutes for that 12:40 departure bell (which is a big piece of scrap metal struck with a steel rod). And anytime I walk into a class without a teacher, the students ask me to teach a subject by very politely shouting, SIR! MATHS! TEACH MATHS! I'm getting used to being in a constant state of unpreparedness. Perhaps I should just plan a backup lesson for every subject for every grade level, even though I should really be focusing on English proficiency.
So what's difficult now, moving forward, is to actually create some momentum with some sense of purpose. There's a strong culture within the teacher circle that these village kids are not serious about their studies, though they themselves oscillate from occasional days of patient, methodical teaching to absolute DGAF status. I worry that some of the older teachers have completely checked out. Sometimes they are engaged and the kids are laughing and enjoying themselves. But then there are the times when they look somewhat defeated, ignoring the children while they try to read aloud. Perhaps this sort of psychological technique was employed with some success before; maybe they're trying to motivate the kids by expressing disappointment. I'm not sure what to make of it. Surely they must care to some extent to show disappointment, but I'm struggling to see a silver lining.
These little things add up and weigh on me palpably, and sometimes they manage to make me feel a little less connected to the success of the school. There always seems to be some prevailing bureaucratic farce to divert energy which should be spent teaching the kids, like a drawn out blame game between the PTA and the teachers. Even the teacher who showed up drunk for class still rides around the schoolyard on his motorcycle while intoxicated. He was supposed to be the first grade teacher, but someone else has to stand in for him. They're trying to reprimand him, somehow, probably in the form of penalizing his salary, but strangely while all of these conversations are happening people are failing to notice that the kids are running around the classroom, bored out of their minds, waiting for a teacher to offer some small piece of stimulation.
These things all make me sigh heavily, and tune out. It's also easy to tune out when the conversations are in Nyanja. Occasionally they point at me and say my name, and I'm honestly not sure how I fit into the conversation of drunk teaching or the PTA, but I have a feeling they're just using me as a meat shield.
I'll admit, some days it's really hard to care. Meetings don't help me care. Lack of direction, confusion, frustration, whatever -- they all just make me wish I didn't have to endure it. They make me wish I were home.
But here's the thing: some days I feel like I am at home, and that's kind of a neat realization. I may not know how I'm going to help beyond teaching English in a classroom, at least within the framework of the rural education project, but what's cool is to know that I'm helping a little bit by just being a part of the community, by living here in the village, by being a friend and Uncle Paul to my host brothers. Then I realize, I care a lot. As a volunteer in a new environment, I'm just a little clueless as to how to seize such open ended possibilities and help along the ideological backbone of the Peace Corps, especially when I just want to seize a few people by the collar and shake the living crap out of them. But there are many who want to see us all succeed. They want to work together, and to continue to build and improve. Things are coming together, slowly, and I remind myself that the point of this whole line of work is exactly to experience these frustrations, to feel them like the people here might be feeling them, and to work together to find a way through it.
So, now that we've torched the fields, let's pray for rain, and the other good stuff. Things that help me care:
-- Teaching. Just teaching, and not sitting through meetings. It's really fun, and the kids are good at learning. Sometimes they can't understand me, and sometimes I can't explain things that I assumed they knew, like how to solve a crossword puzzle. But they get it eventually. Even if I accidentally confuse them with unnecessary information and they do their exercises wrong, we find a way to correct it and move forward. It's really a nice moment, at least for me, when I can walk out of that class while their heads are buried in exercise books, eager to get some marks on their assignments. Some of the moments with the kids really bring me back to YMCA camp, and of course I try to bring a little bit of Wainui life to the classroom. Maybe I shouldn't have taught them the banana song so soon, but I didn't realize how great a tool it was to teach simple action verbs. Though even the song has some tricky parts. Peel and chop and throw banana all make perfect sense, but go bananas? At least I'm exposing them to idioms.
On another personal level, it's kind of refreshing to be in front of fifty kids and feel totally comfortable. Trying to communicate a message across not only a conceptual barrier (as all teachers do -- students simply may not have the knowledge you are teaching, not just yet) but a language barrier as well presents a pretty awesome challenge for me, and at the end of that hour when I ease out of Teacher Mode, I come to realize just how amazingly fun this challenge is. Teaching is an art, and I'm not very good at it yet, but the small successes are great. It's going to be tough to reach the kids who are struggling, but we've got time.
As for the kids, they've all got heaps of personality. Some days they are rowdy assholes to each other, but in the middle of all of it is a really earnest desire to learn. It's hard to be committed when there's such a fluctuation of commitment on the administrative end, but none of that bothers me when I get to interact with them. They like to sing and dance, and show off anytime I pull out my camera to snap a photo. I tried to teach them Charades recently, and this had the nice effect of getting the interest of some of the more quiet pupils. One of the girls who sits in the back, Rosemary, was volunteering to act out a clue every time. Also, I mistakenly gave the word "chair" to one of my older boys with comic effect. The first guess was, of course, kukunya -- pooping. He looked a little embarrassed; even I was laughing. But afterward he moved from his usual seat in the back to the very front of the classroom
-- Running. Running is probably when I do most of my thinking, but more importantly it offers a sense of temperance and awareness that seems to diminish the edge of those compounding frustrations. When it feels like I beat my head against a wall all week, running is there to dampen the blows, and afterward nothing seems all that bad. Running is also great because I get to meet tons of people. I run to school sometimes to look back and see twenty kids running after me. I say good morning to everybody, and they laugh and comment on the prolific chiwe pouring from my face, and at least in this way people can get a kick out of seeing a muzungu waste precious energy on something that could otherwise be spent doing something important, like tending the crops.
-- My home. Sitting on my porch, or being in my home. As I mentioned, some complete strangers built this house for me from nothing. I don't know how to explain it, but I still remember the first time I came back from a long day in town and my house didn't just look like a house, but it was home. That's a weird and pleasant distinction built into the English language. There is no literal difference in Nyanja. Nyumba is nyumba. House is house. But surely there are other ways to express what it means to move from that gap of just a house to a place of comfort and familiarity.
Here are some cool things about my home:
There are trees out front, and on the really hot nights I string up my hammock outside. I like to pretend that the scorpion spiders are indifferent to hammocks, instead preferring to crawl on the walls with the other bugs. Mosquitos? More like No-squitos!: I fabricated some really technologically advanced hook-jiggity apparatus to rig up my mosquito net above my hammock! Let me just say how fantastic it is to sleep outside when your house is essentially built like a pressure cooker or an autoclave. Even at 6am it retains a preposterous amount of heat. Surely this will be nice in the cold season. Right?
As I said, there's a porch. I sit here often, and enjoy the little parade of passersby. Well, many of them don't just pass by, but instead sit on my porch and watch me do the most mundane things. Surely the way I wash clothing is a source of limitless entertainment. Look at how this weirdo washes his underwear, they might be thinking. Maybe I'll start wearing the underwear on my head. Silly Americans, they'll think.
Of course, the home extends as far as you want it to. For me, home is also the trails I run on, and even better: it's also quickly becoming the ridiculous number of mango trees spanning for miles in every direction in and around the village. Yes, my friends, I am happy to report that it is the beginning of mango season here in Eastern Province. There are no words to describe this, primarily because my mouth is full of sugary ecstasy and my fingers are glazed with the pulpy drippings of eviscerated mango pits. This variety of mango is not like one I've ever encountered (I write this way to emphasize the exoticism of my environment; you guys haven't ever seen such wonderments as these!), and rather than being the hulking, pale yellow variety found in southeast Asia, these are the sort that get stuck in your teeth and really make you work to get that sweetness inside of you. It is such a pleasure to eat a mango, to get sticky stuff all over my face and beard and hands. Sexy, kinda. It's hard to imagine ever being tired of them, though it will surely happen when they begin to fall to the ground into a mass grave of sickly sweet rotten fruit. Mango season, I can say with a wistful sigh, is going to be fun. Can we have mango fights?! I hope so!
My house also seems to serve as an unofficial classroom for the kids who live in my village. Every now and then a student will show up with a book and a few questions and we simply take it from there. There is one boy, Samson, who is still struggling with basic literacy, but we seem to be making a little progress as the weeks go by. He is sixteen years old, and he is noticeably larger than many of the other kids in the classroom. His attendance record is one of the best in the class, but it's hard to identify what exactly is holding him back. Maybe he started school too late? Or maybe he has a mild disability that I don't know how to identify? It's hard to know, but at this point it can't hurt to keep trying, and trying new things.
My host brother, Gift, also seems to be struggling. He's in a similar situation as Samson, being in the second grade at age 12. I should mention that it's not uncommon for children to start school as late as this, for reasons that are hard not to dismiss as completely ignorant and foolish. The fact is that children are given familial responsibilities very early in life, and this leaves little time for things like education or a childhood we're familiar with. Boys in particular are often tasked with tending to cattle, a seemingly boring but necessary chore which prevents them from attending school. Girls, too, have problems of attendance, but not because they're running the household (and they run the shit out of it), instead sometimes due to becoming pregnant. They might stop school as a result, and after that it's very difficult to go back. One of the teachers claims there is no stigma against it, that the girls are free to return to school, but I suspect it's not that easy.
I suspect a lot, and assume a lot, but I am quick to dismiss these thoughts when I get new evidence to fill in the gaps of my own ignorance about this place and the people. It's easy and automatic to make these sorts of judgments, but what's important is not to fixate on problems but instead be open to new things. To put things in a different view, I'd say village life takes its toll in many ways (I'll kindly exempt myself from this; I'm a paid government employee, after all). It's not easy for the people here, but you might be surprised to find so much happiness. There's the fair share of drunkards and unfair gender standards, but people move along at a speed we might struggle to fully understand. It's the sort of speed that says, I'm not going anywhere, and there's no hurry for anything. There are sad things, like disease and illiteracy, but there are also happy things, like dancing and rain and harvesting crops and selling them in town and having enough left over to buy a roof to keep the rain out. There's also nshima. Praise be to nshima.
I can also suspect good things. I suspect that people always have and will continue to help each other, even when they seem to forget how to do it every now and then. I suspect that I'll get busy with work, and for every defeat I'll uncover two new ways to circumvent it the next time. I suspect that the heat will abate, as it usually seems to do every year, but until then, I will continue to suspect that we all notice the small breeze that picks up now and then.
I made mention of my friend Masiku, and I'd like to close out by introducing him a little bit better. Masiku is one of the few (but hopefully many) who have approached me with a sense of curiosity that I can easily reciprocate. He is practically my estranged African brother from another world in space and time. He is thirty years old, married to Margaret, and with two children, Samson and Vanessa. Like most of the farmers here he would say he is unemployed, though he goes to tend his crops almost every day, teaches adults in his village how to read and write five days a week, and performs secretarial duties in his farming cooperative. He is patient, sensitive, intelligent, and gentle. He has a genuine thirst for knowledge, and I must admit it is one of the most delightful things to be able to spoil him with the abundance of multimedia I brought with me spanning various hard drives (iPod, phone, computer) as well as in the form of books. He is now reading some memoir by Bill Bryson, and he tells me he thoroughly enjoyed The Alchemist. He said it changed his perspective. As for The Little Prince, Masiku's lasting impression was not like the inspiring affirmation of curiosity and individuality that I felt, but simply that the author was very keen on condemning adults. I tried to defend it, but also realized the futility in this. And then I realized that it was sort of funny -- that I was glad that he was interpreting all of these texts without the bias of my expectations. It makes perfect sense that things which resonate with my life would fail to strike a note in this very different life. But despite all of that, there is still an abundance of things to bond over. We spend most Saturdays parked on my porch, enduring the heat, reading books and magazines. These days with Masiku (whose name translates to days) have become a sort of sanctuary -- to find somebody with which to spend the quiet, protracted moments, immersed in our own worlds and occasionally each others. I already look back on those hot afternoons with a sort of wistful fondness, a deep appreciation for the bastion that we've made together without really trying.
It's romantic in its simplicity, and as perfect as you want it to be. Maybe this is the honeymoon phase, after all, the way I never knew I wanted it -- not an overwhelming wave of emotion, but the slow process of settling into a new life, with new friends to ease the transition.
So that's that. For now. I thank you for reading what is far and few between, but I like to think it's for a good reason. Until next time, folks. That is, if these keys haven't been glued in place from mango juice.
It's hard to love the heat, sometimes, most of the time, especially when passing under the sun's oppressive rays seems to rob you of vitality in an instant. Shade is your safe haven, but you must leave it eventually. It's not pleasant, not in a physical sense, perhaps because there is little reprieve like an air-conditioned office of convenience store or movie theater, but you find ways to persist here in the village, because what other choice do you have? I like to pretend it's a video game: moving from one shadow of a tree to the next, using a passing cloud as moving cover. Statistics of my remaining health and energy fluctuate at the bottom corner of my field of view. The cloud cover disappears, and the numbers plummet. Do you make a run for it? Wait, let's think this through. Check inventory. You forgot your hat at home. Idiot! What now? Use water bottle - 500mL. That will buy you some time, but it's not looking good. Where to go? You see a potential intermediate waypoint: a large rock in the middle of a maize field casts a shadow just big enough. Maybe there's a save point where you can refill your health and hydration bars. But in that moment the sandy soil around you begins to melt away into glassy lava flows. You clench your teeth, and your thoughts become dire. My god, it's hell on earth. You are no match for your foe, not even the final boss but just a miniature boss, very miniature, an invisible swarm of super charged particles, bouncing off each other, and off of you, taking the water from your body one drop of sweat at a time, surrounding you in the fiery heat of the afternoon sun. My god, this is it. Tell my mother I love her. This is the end!
Meanwhile a small child walks past you, wearing a bewildered look as to how so much liquid can be pouring from your face and arms and hands and legs and feet. You look like you've sprung a leak, they seem to say.
Heat is tough on all of us, sometimes. Although there are plenty of times when I want it: perhaps in the controlled and temporary environment of a steam room (which usually comes in tandem with delightfully cold water to dip into), or in the form of a fire on a cold night. But those things seem rather distant here in the village. It seems like it's getting hotter and hotter every day, and I imagine there are far hotter places in the world, but it's still rather distacting. Despite the discomfort and constant sticking together of skin (oh joyous flabbiness), there is something neat about how people endure what seems like being stuffed into a tumble dryer with dirty gym clothes. Everybody is sweating, and what could be all-consuming commiseration is more like the simple sharing of an experience. The boys pull their shirts up over their heads as they take the cows out to pasture, and the women take turns drawing water and resting in the shade of a nearby tree. For me, it feels like I'm going to lose consciousness any time I stand up, but all around me the people continue to labor away as though it's just another day. As for the smell, it may have been initially offputting, but now I am quite used to it. There is simply a tree that puts out a rather strong odor reminiscent of decaying flesh, but knowing it comes from a tree dampens any nauseating effect. The odor is so potent, however, that I couldn't even smell the carcass of a baby pig that recently died in front of my house. Rafiki was cleaning its ribs of any remaining meat, and while I wasn't eager to touch my dog any time soon, I did have to appreciate the sight of such a thing -- I was initially a bit horrified, but also curious. What's that smell? Recycling.
Anyway.
At about this time, the weather is typically getting cold and fall-ish and occasionally rainy back in California. Thanksgiving is approaching fast, the harbinger of the beloved and dreadful Holiday Season and all that it brings: togetherness, love, appreciation for any fortunate circumstances; and also decadence, consumerism, gluttony, and materialism to excess.
I recently told Masiku about Black Friday, a machination of retail outlets everywhere to create a such a fierce sense of desperation for things that people have been trampled on this day. Why is it called Black Friday? he asked. Even I can't remember why; was it called that before or after those people were killed? Are people still dying in consumer-related accidents? Is it weird that I'm no longer as appalled by it? At any rate it's a bizarre thing to explain to somebody, and Masiku's bewildered reaction was likely the same that I produced back then -- right before getting in line at Best Buy at 10 o' clock at night to hold out for a possibility of buying Nintendo Wii the following day.
Happy Holidays, indeed. Anyway.
Given my lack of religion, I might joke that the holidays only bring us together because it is so cold outside, so much that people named a virus after the temperature, as if somehow being cold makes you susceptible to illness or generates it out of thin air. Don't go outside in this weather or you'll catch a cold. Actually, you're less likely to contract a virus outside where there is fresh, circulating air and a smaller concentration of people. We should be telling people instead: avoid family reunions -- you'll catch something dreadful.
But here, in the warm, uncrowded village, what I think of as a holiday period is taking a much different form. No bustle, no clamoring for presents. I think I'm going to enjoy it in some way, though I'll definitely be missing out on Mom's apple pies. At least the heat has a way of inhibiting appetite, so at the moment I can't say I could really go for a slice. All I want right now is water, and to keep on typing before I pass out on my cement floor.
It's hard, however, not to think in circles, in an annual pattern, one that always brings me back to that fond expectation -- this is how I lived most of my life, and now I'm simply removed from it, unable to take part in the ritual of American Thanksgiving. Just knowing that Thanksgiving is near prompts me with memories of family reunions and feasting and, for a fair amount of my life, what signified an impending three to four weeks of vacation from school. In a week I'll be spending this American holiday with a new family, and it will be interesting to see how we combine our various ideas of togetherness when the very thought of being together in a room with fifty other people sounds like a huge mistake, what with already being surrounded by enough heat to shake a stick at. Hell, you could stir the heat with a stick, maybe if you had one large enough. (You should see the the enormous wooden spoons the women use when making a 10 gallon batch of nshima). Hmm, what would that look like, cooking up some Zambia soup? You might get some unappetizing dusty porridge from these ingredients blowing around, but maybe the flavor of mangoes would come through just enough to make it edible. (Well, dust is somewhat edible. I practically live off of it, now, seeing as my canine companions love to kick it up into my bedroom window while I sleep.)
Food aside, I suppose I've found that there is a sweetness in these slow, dripping days. Things may be unpleasant at times, on the surface of any situation, but you have some choice in the matter -- maybe not how you take it all in, but what you do with it after, how it all distills in your memory. If you can manage to have these moments of reverence while you're enduring an awful situation, then I think you've got magical witch powers and we'll promptly send a healer to your village to cleanse you of such unholy scourge.
I think this is my way of telling myself, you're gonna be fine, dude. It's just hot air.
Me, I like to complain, is what I usually say to my Zambian friends -- that it's very American to complain about things like weather or politics or a certain government institution that wants me to put disclaimers all over my writing so that I don't offend anybody with these little squiggles. But of course, much to my chagrin, everything I do here is American. It's funny, in some sense, that I'm the whacked out ambassador that defines what that means for a lot of these people who are meeting a white person for the first time. Then again, a lot of people seem to think I'm Swedish. Maybe I'll just pull out that card to save America from any more embarassment. Yes, we Swedes love to walk around with our shirts off and pretend we are cows. Observe this song I composed, titled the Moo-Moo Song.
So I might complain, I say, but I like to think of it as a way to persevere rather than succumb to whatever is clinging on to my mind. It seems that negativity, no matter how small, tends to hang on for dear life, and that may hurt and nag, but once you identify the source, you've practically eradicated it. Pettiness wants you to add more fuel to its flames so it can spread into disdain or avarice, to the point that all injustice in the world seems to jab into you and only you, and so on. But in some idle moments, you might come upon little realizations that make those damnable, consuming thoughts seem like ineffectual, desperate parasites. Once you know how these things work, to identify the patterns of their hold over you, it becomes easy to make your own medicine and move on. Hmm, maybe this is the beginning of a fruitful career as a witch doctor in Zambia.
(As for malaria, it seems to be doing just fine here. I mean this from the perspective of Plasmodium falciparum, not in our orchestrated attempts to eradicate it. Unfortunately the vice principal at the school already fell host to it; I know my time is coming, but I'm not too worried about it. I do what I can to prevent it -- prophylaxis, bed nets, and bug spray (though DEET isn't exactly a picnic, so I eschew this one as much as possible) -- and if I get it I'll take the appropriate treatment. It's only fatal if you ignore the symptoms.)
For me and many others, writing is the medicine I take to treat these ailments of thought. I usually feel a bit better by the 'end' of whatever it is I want to say, sometimes managing to deflate some tension or ego or indifference. I've also taken bad medicine, and sometimes I keep doing it because I forget that it is really only a patch on an ever-spreading seam. In my case, that would be my rocky relationship with food as a source of sustenance versus pleasure, or in darker moments, something that quells the anxiety in my mind by matching it with equal measures of nausea. Fortunately I don't have much access to alcohol, as I fear it would be pretty easy to turn to as a quick fix to stave off boredom and discomfort.
I'd much rather have a medical card and an addiction to [redacted by the United States government], but for me my addiction is food. Sometimes it's a healthy addiction, but sometimes not.
And writing, I like to think. Oh yeah, that's some good stuff. Can you overdose on writing? I'm looking at you, Stephen King. Although he certainly did so with alcohol at one point. I'm glad he emerged from that battle on top, and I have hope to slowly make course corrections in my own life, or even more dramatic interventions if need be.
I mentioned the squiggles, and how they might inadvertently offend. It's easy to get careless with them. They come pouring out, written as words or passing through the air in waves (my squiggle descriptor still holds up! (barely)). Sometimes we say things we regret -- or worse, we say things we should regret but fail to recognize. These little squiggles have a remarkable power to change worlds -- if not the whole world then at least your world, and your world is probably the most pressing thing to affect-- as they are doing all the time when we produce or examine them. In some sense, my entering and adjusting them right now is a way to sculpt and channel the flow of my own life, or even just provide some relief, to make sense of the daily frustrations of being away from home, without burritos and best friends, attempting to make a positive impact on a part of the world that is often neglected, even by the people who live in it.
And I live here, too. I have to include myself in this camp of neglect, at least every now and then. Like I said, sometimes it's hard to love, and the relationship is just budding, though not in the same rosy way that any star-crossed romance begins. This one is different. They've mentioned an impending honeymoon phase, but I'm still wondering when that will be, or if it already occurred. Count me dubious. Zambia and I have been sharing many nights together, but when I wake up I don't feel smitten. I am fascinated, but not obsessed. Our relationship is pretty casual, I suppose. Actually, I kind of like it this way. We have time to grow together, and little expectation to get in the way. Then again, there are some pretty important expectations in terms of a certain work agreement. I did sign up for this not as an extended vacation, but to contribute something in the form of hours of calculated work and concerted effort, though there will surely be many endeavors that cannot be quantified so easily, their substance and value not so readily surmised.
A Peace Corps Volunteer sows seeds in a tumultuous garden (full of perilous lava flows), but if only a few ever sprout, even for a short time, that might be enough to inspire a positive impact. It has certainly kept the public's attention (and funding) for the last fifty something years, and I have reasons (many of which are TBD) to believe there is a profound benefit from such an undertaking. Depending on how you look at it, volunteer work can be a slow, lumbering process, like those cows going out to pasture, day in, day out, or like the farmers turning the soil every year to plant maize and tomatos and onions, hoping they receive enough food to carry on until the next harvest -- or I might consider my time here to be just the tiniest drop of water in a rough sea. You may not be able to see the ripples amidst so many others, and many will surely be absorbed or even counteracted. But some persist, and reach distant shores. I have some vision as to how this will all happen, but the vision changes every day. Sometimes the effect of my presence is small and fleeting, but with some luck it will resonate and continue to propagate.
It's hard, sure, but some days sweep over you with a sense of familiarity and belonging. I may never fully integrate into this community, I tell myself, but even some effort on my part gets recognized by those who are willing to see it. This is what essentially happens in any social circumstance. Think back to childhood, to high school, to the insular nature of our social circles, the barriers that constructed and upheld by us -- did you ever have those moments when you were excluded, or doing the excluding? I can say I've done both, but more importantly I can think of the time that shields were lowered and something sort of wonderful and transcendent would occur. That's inclusion, and there are people actively doing it for my benefit here in the village. They've invited Peace Corps to work in this place, so that's what I'm going to do.
In a sense, I'm asking the same thing of the people here. I can't always assume that my presence will be met with enthusiasm and a genuine interest in why I might be here. I can't assume that everybody I meet will collaborate with me and spread those Peace Corps goals. But there are people who have let me in, and I do what I can to reciprocate. We ask each other questions, and we build stories, of each other and our future together. Those are nice moments.
Thinking broadly, I can't say I ever gave much thought to underdeveloped nations before applying for Peace Corps, or before and even after visiting my sister in Honduras. Rudimentary living seemed temporary, only flashing across my mind for a brief time, perhaps in the form of camping trips, before I returned to my regular scheduled programming: abundant internet and running water and cold cokes and -- the list goes on. For some reason, I hesitate to use the word underdeveloped. While there may be an ostensible lack, by comparison, of technology, medicine, and educational resources, all of which are important, this sort of lumps every aspect of another culture into the idea that it is somehow lacking in whole, as inferior. In this label we fail to acknowledge the richness of a culture, a tradition of stories and unique mythologies and religious practices. Unfortunately a lot of these things have already been altered or supplanted by the British rule and Christianity, but even so these pasts are now intertwined with Zambia. Culture is fluid, after all. Regardless of the generalities, people gain their individuality when you take the moment to understand them on that level. Part of doing Peace Corps work is seeing past national constructs and to identify that elusive truth: that we are all simultaneously the same in our desires and different in our expression of life. Sometimes we see a people only through the lens of a camera, through television screens, through a long path of potentially fraught interpretation -- it's up to us to determine if there is consensus between what is taken and what is given.
(It's unfortunate to me when people see another culture as so complicated and even alien that they unknowingly fortify the walls of their thinking, snuffing out any desire to learn and find commonality in others. Would we have war without these walls? This reminds me a bit of philosophy I read which suggested that even most pacifists accept the inevitably of war. (Was that Slavoj Zizek? Help me out here, Edgar.) Well, better kill the idealist before he really gets going -- (though I suppose I feel that anger and confusion when I think of cultures whose constituents notoriously mistreat and oppress women and animals and whatnot. Part of me wants to just turn away and remain ignorant about such happenings. Hmm, was I speaking of America? It does fit the bill, though being born there offers some sense of familial obligation to continue to improve it. Why can't we make that sort of tacit oath to everybody in the world?))
As for rudimentary, this word sounds like a compliment to me. If somebody ever called me rudimentary, I would thank them. I love simplicity. It's deeply rewarding and satisfying when the most complicated of things become reduced into one tiny idea which still rings true. Even being presented with convoluted scientific principles can eventually have that delightful moment of the click, or when patterns unfold and you experience the simple joy of understanding. For many people they find this joy in God, and for that I am somewhat envious that I could never get there, though I have my own essential, rudimentary desires. For me, it is this -- connecting, expressing, sharing, and driving my curiosity to new territories. For me, it changes, and it drives me, and sometimes sweeps me away. Rudimentary is rad.
So let's change gears. (Side note: I like mechanical metaphors. I wonder what things we referred to commonly before the invention of modern marvels like airplanes and cars and computers. Behind all of these expressions I find something elemental and simple and alluring.)
Let's flip the hourglass. (Not quite the same effect, but I want to change the subject, or to change the pace of my thinking. Maybe this works, because it feels as though I'm going to start all over again, maybe doing this a little differently this time.)
It is November, as I mentioned. The date is the 18th, the 19th, and the 21st, not really ever one day, at least in the span of producing this, but many. This is something I pick up and put down again, which I might have whinged about in a previous post, so I wanted to make an amendment. True, starting and stopping is hard, but we also do it all the time unconsciously. If I think about it to much, writing becomes exalted with some expectation of what needs to occur, rather than simply beginning and finding out what happens -- the basis of all adventure. So I've decided to to think less about the starting and the stopping, and just enjoy the going when I've got it. The mood doesn't always strike, but when you manage to get a bull's eye you can't help but shout and hoot and holler. Yeehaw! Nailed it!
Anywho, let's talk more about the Corps, the unarmed forces. So -- when am I? -- in this 27 month period that always seems to tik and tok in the back of my mind? Now I'm just getting into some informational details about the job. I'm going to pretend somebody asked me, "So, how's work?" In which case, here's a truckload of stuff. I'm going to take a fat, Peace Corps dump, right on this page.
I'm nearing the end of the period dubbed Community Entry, or by some: Community Challenge. No matter what you call it, there's definitely a community involved. A tightly knit one, at that, where many people have typically lived their whole lives, and where they will most likely end up in old age. The families are large, and I've met countless people who have lost several brothers and sisters to illness -- but despite that they typically remain with five to seven siblings. Some have managed to scatter these days, growing restless with the village life. But those who stay seem rather content to be rooted here. They sink their feet into the soil, tend the cattle, the gardens, and slowly build new houses and expand on what they've got.
(My friend Masiku recently built a circular hut for storage/kitchen/dining, bringing the total number of rooms of his compound to two. Now his sleeping area is much less cluttered, though one room for four isn't what most Americans would call ideal. We like space, and even here I've got plenty of it. Two whole rooms with high ceilings for my own enjoyment! Oh my!)
What I have been doing these last three months is hard to qualify, and in some sense my job here depends on me writing just that: a Community Entry Assessment Report. I'll work on that later, closer to the due date, but for now I think it would be best to write here the things I wouldn't write on that report, or at least in a way that I wouldn't write them. Informally and spastically, and maybe with a bit of venom.
The school. Let's start with the school. Matambazi Primary is where I will be spending most of my days, teaching English to eager pupils who seem to have an insatiable desire for learning almost as much as they enjoy talking and having a social life. I'm currently sitting in on Grade 5 lessons, but as their primary teacher has been out for the past few weeks, this scene typically unfolds as me, the befuddled teacher trying to teach as many subjects as he can manage to in a few hours. I usually start with English, as I've been trained to do so, but after that lesson the students demand things like Social Studies and Science and Mathematics. Social Studies consists of crushing blocks of dull text, in English, and would necessitate a certain level of translation to make any sense to the kids. This subject would also need a touch of insanity to be taught in any interesting way, but I like to think I can rise to that occasion if need be. Even in English, however, the content of these books is suspect. I gave up trying to teach the kids about discipline and punishment as outlined by the textbook. Did you know that withholding food from a child is considered a form of physical punishment? What's troubling about the textbook is that it was very difficult to discern whether or not these sorts of things were encouraged, and I'm honestly not any clearer on the matter myself. I suppose I don't have much experience in the way of constructive discipline, but something tells me that these books are not the sources we should be looking to for answers.
In short, I have a bit of a problem with the resources. They're not always helpful, often priming students with irrelevant information that isn't even used in the accompanying exercises. But they're all they've got at the moment. They have many books at the school, but they are dilapidated and falling apart, the shelves warped and sagging over the years. It's hard to see this sight and not think holy hell, but this is the reality of it. I've taken it upon myself to comb through the dusty stacks of textbooks to see what might be salvageable and useful, but it will be another matter to create a sense of ownership over the maintenance of books in general. I've been talking about getting a simple library system going, but I suppose I'm not selling it well enough to get the teachers to band together for this cause, crying out in unison, FOR THE PUPILS!
What else about the school?
It's hard to figure out what's going on, pretty much all the time. I often wonder if the principal feels this way, too. Maybe she's very tired, and it's hard to rise to the occasion when nobody is cooperating. Most of my interactions with her consist of conversations about when I'm bringing computers from America, and whether I can type up her thesis paper for the university program she's attending. She wears me out a bit, and unfortunately I feel a wave of relief when I find out that she has gone to town for the day, which is fairly common. This isn't how I want to start any work relationship, so I've got to try to patch things up there.
Schedules aren't followed and teachers are often absent, which means that the children just have free reign to play around without supervision. I suppose this would be my dream at that age, to be able to have fun and dick around and then go home to my parents and say that I was at school all day long. What did you learn, they might ask. And I would recite the subjects: math, science, social studies, and English -- or as many as it takes until they are appeased.
But what's fascinating to me is, despite the disorganization of it all, the students really want to be there to learn. Even if it's clear that no teaching will happen for the rest of the day due to lack of instructors, they wait out the minutes for that 12:40 departure bell (which is a big piece of scrap metal struck with a steel rod). And anytime I walk into a class without a teacher, the students ask me to teach a subject by very politely shouting, SIR! MATHS! TEACH MATHS! I'm getting used to being in a constant state of unpreparedness. Perhaps I should just plan a backup lesson for every subject for every grade level, even though I should really be focusing on English proficiency.
So what's difficult now, moving forward, is to actually create some momentum with some sense of purpose. There's a strong culture within the teacher circle that these village kids are not serious about their studies, though they themselves oscillate from occasional days of patient, methodical teaching to absolute DGAF status. I worry that some of the older teachers have completely checked out. Sometimes they are engaged and the kids are laughing and enjoying themselves. But then there are the times when they look somewhat defeated, ignoring the children while they try to read aloud. Perhaps this sort of psychological technique was employed with some success before; maybe they're trying to motivate the kids by expressing disappointment. I'm not sure what to make of it. Surely they must care to some extent to show disappointment, but I'm struggling to see a silver lining.
These little things add up and weigh on me palpably, and sometimes they manage to make me feel a little less connected to the success of the school. There always seems to be some prevailing bureaucratic farce to divert energy which should be spent teaching the kids, like a drawn out blame game between the PTA and the teachers. Even the teacher who showed up drunk for class still rides around the schoolyard on his motorcycle while intoxicated. He was supposed to be the first grade teacher, but someone else has to stand in for him. They're trying to reprimand him, somehow, probably in the form of penalizing his salary, but strangely while all of these conversations are happening people are failing to notice that the kids are running around the classroom, bored out of their minds, waiting for a teacher to offer some small piece of stimulation.
These things all make me sigh heavily, and tune out. It's also easy to tune out when the conversations are in Nyanja. Occasionally they point at me and say my name, and I'm honestly not sure how I fit into the conversation of drunk teaching or the PTA, but I have a feeling they're just using me as a meat shield.
I'll admit, some days it's really hard to care. Meetings don't help me care. Lack of direction, confusion, frustration, whatever -- they all just make me wish I didn't have to endure it. They make me wish I were home.
But here's the thing: some days I feel like I am at home, and that's kind of a neat realization. I may not know how I'm going to help beyond teaching English in a classroom, at least within the framework of the rural education project, but what's cool is to know that I'm helping a little bit by just being a part of the community, by living here in the village, by being a friend and Uncle Paul to my host brothers. Then I realize, I care a lot. As a volunteer in a new environment, I'm just a little clueless as to how to seize such open ended possibilities and help along the ideological backbone of the Peace Corps, especially when I just want to seize a few people by the collar and shake the living crap out of them. But there are many who want to see us all succeed. They want to work together, and to continue to build and improve. Things are coming together, slowly, and I remind myself that the point of this whole line of work is exactly to experience these frustrations, to feel them like the people here might be feeling them, and to work together to find a way through it.
So, now that we've torched the fields, let's pray for rain, and the other good stuff. Things that help me care:
-- Teaching. Just teaching, and not sitting through meetings. It's really fun, and the kids are good at learning. Sometimes they can't understand me, and sometimes I can't explain things that I assumed they knew, like how to solve a crossword puzzle. But they get it eventually. Even if I accidentally confuse them with unnecessary information and they do their exercises wrong, we find a way to correct it and move forward. It's really a nice moment, at least for me, when I can walk out of that class while their heads are buried in exercise books, eager to get some marks on their assignments. Some of the moments with the kids really bring me back to YMCA camp, and of course I try to bring a little bit of Wainui life to the classroom. Maybe I shouldn't have taught them the banana song so soon, but I didn't realize how great a tool it was to teach simple action verbs. Though even the song has some tricky parts. Peel and chop and throw banana all make perfect sense, but go bananas? At least I'm exposing them to idioms.
On another personal level, it's kind of refreshing to be in front of fifty kids and feel totally comfortable. Trying to communicate a message across not only a conceptual barrier (as all teachers do -- students simply may not have the knowledge you are teaching, not just yet) but a language barrier as well presents a pretty awesome challenge for me, and at the end of that hour when I ease out of Teacher Mode, I come to realize just how amazingly fun this challenge is. Teaching is an art, and I'm not very good at it yet, but the small successes are great. It's going to be tough to reach the kids who are struggling, but we've got time.
As for the kids, they've all got heaps of personality. Some days they are rowdy assholes to each other, but in the middle of all of it is a really earnest desire to learn. It's hard to be committed when there's such a fluctuation of commitment on the administrative end, but none of that bothers me when I get to interact with them. They like to sing and dance, and show off anytime I pull out my camera to snap a photo. I tried to teach them Charades recently, and this had the nice effect of getting the interest of some of the more quiet pupils. One of the girls who sits in the back, Rosemary, was volunteering to act out a clue every time. Also, I mistakenly gave the word "chair" to one of my older boys with comic effect. The first guess was, of course, kukunya -- pooping. He looked a little embarrassed; even I was laughing. But afterward he moved from his usual seat in the back to the very front of the classroom
-- Running. Running is probably when I do most of my thinking, but more importantly it offers a sense of temperance and awareness that seems to diminish the edge of those compounding frustrations. When it feels like I beat my head against a wall all week, running is there to dampen the blows, and afterward nothing seems all that bad. Running is also great because I get to meet tons of people. I run to school sometimes to look back and see twenty kids running after me. I say good morning to everybody, and they laugh and comment on the prolific chiwe pouring from my face, and at least in this way people can get a kick out of seeing a muzungu waste precious energy on something that could otherwise be spent doing something important, like tending the crops.
-- My home. Sitting on my porch, or being in my home. As I mentioned, some complete strangers built this house for me from nothing. I don't know how to explain it, but I still remember the first time I came back from a long day in town and my house didn't just look like a house, but it was home. That's a weird and pleasant distinction built into the English language. There is no literal difference in Nyanja. Nyumba is nyumba. House is house. But surely there are other ways to express what it means to move from that gap of just a house to a place of comfort and familiarity.
Here are some cool things about my home:
There are trees out front, and on the really hot nights I string up my hammock outside. I like to pretend that the scorpion spiders are indifferent to hammocks, instead preferring to crawl on the walls with the other bugs. Mosquitos? More like No-squitos!: I fabricated some really technologically advanced hook-jiggity apparatus to rig up my mosquito net above my hammock! Let me just say how fantastic it is to sleep outside when your house is essentially built like a pressure cooker or an autoclave. Even at 6am it retains a preposterous amount of heat. Surely this will be nice in the cold season. Right?
As I said, there's a porch. I sit here often, and enjoy the little parade of passersby. Well, many of them don't just pass by, but instead sit on my porch and watch me do the most mundane things. Surely the way I wash clothing is a source of limitless entertainment. Look at how this weirdo washes his underwear, they might be thinking. Maybe I'll start wearing the underwear on my head. Silly Americans, they'll think.
Of course, the home extends as far as you want it to. For me, home is also the trails I run on, and even better: it's also quickly becoming the ridiculous number of mango trees spanning for miles in every direction in and around the village. Yes, my friends, I am happy to report that it is the beginning of mango season here in Eastern Province. There are no words to describe this, primarily because my mouth is full of sugary ecstasy and my fingers are glazed with the pulpy drippings of eviscerated mango pits. This variety of mango is not like one I've ever encountered (I write this way to emphasize the exoticism of my environment; you guys haven't ever seen such wonderments as these!), and rather than being the hulking, pale yellow variety found in southeast Asia, these are the sort that get stuck in your teeth and really make you work to get that sweetness inside of you. It is such a pleasure to eat a mango, to get sticky stuff all over my face and beard and hands. Sexy, kinda. It's hard to imagine ever being tired of them, though it will surely happen when they begin to fall to the ground into a mass grave of sickly sweet rotten fruit. Mango season, I can say with a wistful sigh, is going to be fun. Can we have mango fights?! I hope so!
My house also seems to serve as an unofficial classroom for the kids who live in my village. Every now and then a student will show up with a book and a few questions and we simply take it from there. There is one boy, Samson, who is still struggling with basic literacy, but we seem to be making a little progress as the weeks go by. He is sixteen years old, and he is noticeably larger than many of the other kids in the classroom. His attendance record is one of the best in the class, but it's hard to identify what exactly is holding him back. Maybe he started school too late? Or maybe he has a mild disability that I don't know how to identify? It's hard to know, but at this point it can't hurt to keep trying, and trying new things.
My host brother, Gift, also seems to be struggling. He's in a similar situation as Samson, being in the second grade at age 12. I should mention that it's not uncommon for children to start school as late as this, for reasons that are hard not to dismiss as completely ignorant and foolish. The fact is that children are given familial responsibilities very early in life, and this leaves little time for things like education or a childhood we're familiar with. Boys in particular are often tasked with tending to cattle, a seemingly boring but necessary chore which prevents them from attending school. Girls, too, have problems of attendance, but not because they're running the household (and they run the shit out of it), instead sometimes due to becoming pregnant. They might stop school as a result, and after that it's very difficult to go back. One of the teachers claims there is no stigma against it, that the girls are free to return to school, but I suspect it's not that easy.
I suspect a lot, and assume a lot, but I am quick to dismiss these thoughts when I get new evidence to fill in the gaps of my own ignorance about this place and the people. It's easy and automatic to make these sorts of judgments, but what's important is not to fixate on problems but instead be open to new things. To put things in a different view, I'd say village life takes its toll in many ways (I'll kindly exempt myself from this; I'm a paid government employee, after all). It's not easy for the people here, but you might be surprised to find so much happiness. There's the fair share of drunkards and unfair gender standards, but people move along at a speed we might struggle to fully understand. It's the sort of speed that says, I'm not going anywhere, and there's no hurry for anything. There are sad things, like disease and illiteracy, but there are also happy things, like dancing and rain and harvesting crops and selling them in town and having enough left over to buy a roof to keep the rain out. There's also nshima. Praise be to nshima.
I can also suspect good things. I suspect that people always have and will continue to help each other, even when they seem to forget how to do it every now and then. I suspect that I'll get busy with work, and for every defeat I'll uncover two new ways to circumvent it the next time. I suspect that the heat will abate, as it usually seems to do every year, but until then, I will continue to suspect that we all notice the small breeze that picks up now and then.
I made mention of my friend Masiku, and I'd like to close out by introducing him a little bit better. Masiku is one of the few (but hopefully many) who have approached me with a sense of curiosity that I can easily reciprocate. He is practically my estranged African brother from another world in space and time. He is thirty years old, married to Margaret, and with two children, Samson and Vanessa. Like most of the farmers here he would say he is unemployed, though he goes to tend his crops almost every day, teaches adults in his village how to read and write five days a week, and performs secretarial duties in his farming cooperative. He is patient, sensitive, intelligent, and gentle. He has a genuine thirst for knowledge, and I must admit it is one of the most delightful things to be able to spoil him with the abundance of multimedia I brought with me spanning various hard drives (iPod, phone, computer) as well as in the form of books. He is now reading some memoir by Bill Bryson, and he tells me he thoroughly enjoyed The Alchemist. He said it changed his perspective. As for The Little Prince, Masiku's lasting impression was not like the inspiring affirmation of curiosity and individuality that I felt, but simply that the author was very keen on condemning adults. I tried to defend it, but also realized the futility in this. And then I realized that it was sort of funny -- that I was glad that he was interpreting all of these texts without the bias of my expectations. It makes perfect sense that things which resonate with my life would fail to strike a note in this very different life. But despite all of that, there is still an abundance of things to bond over. We spend most Saturdays parked on my porch, enduring the heat, reading books and magazines. These days with Masiku (whose name translates to days) have become a sort of sanctuary -- to find somebody with which to spend the quiet, protracted moments, immersed in our own worlds and occasionally each others. I already look back on those hot afternoons with a sort of wistful fondness, a deep appreciation for the bastion that we've made together without really trying.
It's romantic in its simplicity, and as perfect as you want it to be. Maybe this is the honeymoon phase, after all, the way I never knew I wanted it -- not an overwhelming wave of emotion, but the slow process of settling into a new life, with new friends to ease the transition.
So that's that. For now. I thank you for reading what is far and few between, but I like to think it's for a good reason. Until next time, folks. That is, if these keys haven't been glued in place from mango juice.
