When my neighbor and colleague lost her chap-stick, she predicted her mind would be next. “Is it going to be like your box of tissues?” she asked turning her car into the school driveway. “Is my missing chap-stick going to be the thing that pushes me over the edge?”
At least I’m smart enough to laugh. I laughed then and I am laughing now as I sit here typing outside a shopping mall in Bloemfontein where Mother’s Day is being observed by young men in tuxedos handing out roses to every female who looks old enough to reproduce (a category which I apparently do not fall into) and a woman with a severe, Elvira look about her is serenading diners with the Afrikaans rendition of “Memories.”
A year ago at this time I was finishing my last grad school papers, and recently looking back through some of the writing I did, I have no idea what I was talking about. I can only vaguely recall when research meant more than typing, “play dough recipe” into Google, most things I read these days begin “once upon a time,” and if I happen to pick up a piece of text with no pictures, my eyes begin to glaze over. I graduated from Harvard and all I have to show for it is trigger finger from bending 100 coat hangers into bee’s wings for school play costumes.
Please don’t think I take myself seriously because I went to Harvard. I don’t. I generally avoid letting people here know that fact about me because then they want me to do math in my head and spell things for them. Or we have conversations like this:
New Acquaintance: What did you do before you came here?
Me: I was in school.
New Acquaintance: Where?
Me: Massachussetts
New Acquaintance: Where, though?
Me: Um, sort of near Boston.
New Acquaintance: No, I mean which school?
Me: Harvard
New Acquaintance: And you teach preschool?
Then there was the conversation I had with a middle-aged, Ugandan colleague after watching a screening of a Barack Obama documentary on election night. Commenting on Obama’s Kenyan father attending Harvard University, Norah said, “For an African at that time, he must have been very clever to get to Harvard.” I agreed that it was quite an accomplishment given the odds. She continued, “That is why I am afraid of you.” “Sorry?” “You must be so clever to go to Harvard so I am afraid of you.” By so clever, I don’t know if she was referring to the time I got lost on the way to work and ended up at the Chinese Embassy, or the time I went without electricity at home for 36 hours because I didn’t check the circuit breakers and see they were turned off, or the time I melted a piece of Tupperware to a burner on the school stove. I assured her I possess nothing that she doesn’t except for an expensive piece of paper and ten years worth of student loan payments to prove it.
My school does not take professional development seriously. My school does not take preschool seriously. On good days, (and most days are good), I tackle assignments I give myself and believe in the importance of the work that I do. Then there are less good
days . . .
It may be the fact that the expansion of the early childhood program I proposed sounded great to my boss a month ago, but now he’s rethinking it because if I take that on, who will assistant teach swimming (perhaps somebody who actually knows how to swim would be a start)? Or it may be my stress level has been heightened since my health insurance company shut down without bothering to inform me (at a time when I feel very compelled to see a dentist, an allergist, and after reading the rest of this post, some of you may suggest adding psychiatrist to the list). Or was it the teenage girl that knocked on my door looking for work cleaning and asked to speak to my parents? Or maybe it was the man who sold me electricity, who when I asked what to do with the pin number on my receipt said to me, “you bring it home and ask your husband.” Perhaps it is the fact that my boss is giving me a hard time about taking a few days off in June when I have not taken a single day off all year, that I taught while burning up with tick-bite fever, and when I had a stomach virus, excused myself from art class, regurgitated in an empty classroom and returned to finish the lesson. Perhaps it’s that I live in a place where the most stimulating evening I’ve had recently was spent getting dizzy off a turpentine bath following painting my coffee table. Even Bob, my 57 year-old neighbor and another teacher at the school, who spends most weekends in his classroom and most evenings stretched out in front of his gas heater reading historical fiction or thinking up new spam recipes, tells me I need to get out more.
But it was the tissue box, the empty tissue box that really got to me. I had gone into school on a Saturday, to do a little pedagogical preparation, but mostly to tidy up the classroom. I straightened the blocks on the shelves, mended broken books, scrubbed paintbrushes and all those other little things implied in the job description of preschool teacher that there never seems enough time to do during my prep periods. I put Monday’s schedule on the wall, selected the story I would read, pushed all the chairs into the tables and made sure we were stocked up on paper and cups and tissues. Yes, tissues. Before I went home, I even stood in the doorway smiling at my perfect classroom. I remember the contentment well. On Monday, I arrived at school an hour early (an hour and 15 minutes before the bell rings) as usual. I filled up the water pitchers and turned on the electric space heaters. It gets chillier and chillier every morning. I have started this season’s perpetual winter sniffles. I reach for the tissues. Nothing but the cardboard bottom of the box. It was the missionaries. The goddamn missionaries. The goddamn Louisiana missionaries who pay rent to invade my classroom on Sundays with their obesity and saving and baptismal wading pool and tissue-stealing flock. (And since it’s Mother’s Day, I’m now going to apologize to my mom for writing “goddamn” because I know she doesn’t like it, and also for using “goddamn” and “missionary” together, as she is probably offended on their behalf even though she’s Jewish and they condemn her to hell every Sunday.)
So what did I do next? I threw the empty tissue box at the wall, and stomped around campus for next thirty minutes in a silent temper tantrum. I thought of this as Karen launched in the “i-lost-my-new-chap-stick-get-no-respect-from-the-boss-and-my-students-don’t-do-their-damn-homework” blues. The blues morphed into a rant that nothing ever changes here, and ranting loves company. I reminded her that when I first arrived, I was invited to a “single’s dinner” by an American diplomat. It was him and his wife, Bob, and a short-term intern from a college in DC. We ate soup and played with the cats, and for about two months, I thought we (not including, of course, the diplomat and his wife) were the entire single expatriate population of Lesotho. This was a year ago next month. Other than the fact that I have found quite a few more young foreigners (which isn’t really the reason I moved overseas), I reminded Karen that not much changed. In fact, I had spent the weekend simmering a pot of soup on the stove and scrubbing cat piss out of the spare room carpet. I don’t have a cat, but one’s urine was there none-the-less. “Soup and cats again. I’ve gone full circle.” Then Bob piped up from the back seat, “Full circle means you’ve gone somewhere. That’s not full circle. That’s staying in one place, not moving at all. . . You really need to get out more.” I laughed until I cried, and Karen said, “One day you’re going to think about this and only cry.”
She was right, except I already had cried. At the conclusion of my stolen-tissue foot stamping, I sobbed briefly and gracelessly into a roll of toilet paper, locked in the bathroom with another teacher. My choked out words were something along the lines of “Why did I come here?” My bathroom companion reminded me that we had this exact conversation six months ago, except she was the one crying and I was the one saying it wasn’t that bad. I have since come to the conclusion that living in Lesotho is a little like having a carbon monoxide leak; it slowly and stealthily suffocates you.
My yoga teacher tells me to breathe well, and I think this is good advice. He tends to say it when I am having trouble sitting still (standing still, lying still), which tends to be all the time. Yoga, which I am new to, is difficult for me for this reason. The class takes place in my room at the school and the instructor is the grandfather of one of my students. His wife is often the only other student besides me. She does yoga in her sari, he teaches in khaki pants and a polo shirt stretched over his potbelly. I wear whatever I taught in that day, and am glad there is no spandex involved in the situation. So I sit or stand or lie and fidget in pinstripe pants and a green tie-dye dress while Raj tells me to “breathe well.” He also lets me know that I am pretty bad at yoga. This doesn’t bother me. He says it as if, as a new student, there isn’t anything else I could or should be. I like this advice too.
Then there’s this advice, too, from my brother. “hows about you pick the antelope and ride it to the nearest bus, and take that to the nearest town and get to the nearest phone and call....someone who wants to hear you complain.” I like that also. I have to laugh, right?
Monday, May 11, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Cape Town
I flew into Cape Town on one of Mango's (a South African budget airline) neon orange planes. In my imagination, the plane had a crew dressed as mangoes and an in-flight meal of mangoes and eventually ended by crashing into the Atlantic Ocean. My fears about flying in an aircraft that is the namesake of a fruit proved, thankfully, to be unfounded and I even got a free pack of gum upon disembarkation.
I spent my first day in Cape Town on a wine tour led by a professor whose second job is playing piano in lounges and third job is apparently this. Besides the two of us, there was an Irish family of four led by a cricket-obsessed matriarch. The drinking age in South Africa is 18, and still, when we arrived at the winery for our first tasting, I was asked if I intended to drink, I believe, their polite way of asking if I am old enough to drink. We visited four wineries, and the tastings were surprisingly unpretentious and they didn’t make us spit. I wished there was somewhere spit out the brandy though; it was vile and turned the gentle alcohol-in-the-morning pulsing behind the eyebrows into a pounding headache which I quelled later with an enormous bowl of pea soup. Brandy should not be in the same sentence at 10 am. Ever. In between wineries, we had time to walk around Franschhoek, a vineyard town. It was there I stumbled upon a locally famous chocolate shop run by two coloured (not to be confused with the outdated American term for African Americans, these South Africans would perhaps be defined in America as bi or multi-racial of African and European descent) chocolatiers who were sponsored to learn the art of chocolate making in Belgium and now run their own very successful business. I sampled their creations in the form of truffles of the amarula, peppermint, coffee and honey and anise varieties.
The following day, which happened to be Easter, I spent in around the Cape of Good Hope. I watched seals frolic from a glass-bottom boat and penguins waddle in the most fantastic way on the beach in Simon’s Town. And I saw one penguin sitting on eggs! I get that’s what they are supposed to do, but I was still surprised somehow. Similarly, when the water splashed over the rails of the glass bottom boat and I tasted salt on my lips, I thought “weird” and then had to remind myself that I was on the ocean. I guess I’ve gotten used to being landlocked.
I was surprised and a little disappointed to find little open on Easter Monday, but I did get the opportunity to laze and sweat in the Long Street Baths. There was only one other person using the sauna, steam bath and plunge pool, and shortly after she left, when I thought I had maybe sweat out a little too much (my hair was dripping and plastered to my face although I hadn’t submerged my head under water), I decided to get out myself before I passed out alone. I showered and fell asleep in the bed provided in my changing stall. Then following the sage advice of the cleaner and various posters, I stumbled to a corner store to rehydrate with orange juice. I walked in slow motion (with the sidewalk seeming to swing up toward my face with every step) to a shopping mall at the waterfront to buy a book to take with me to the Botanical Gardens. After purchasing two books, I was on my way out the door when I was tempted by a movie theatre showing Slumdog Millionaire, and a restaurant with a glass case featuring several varieties of chocolate cake. I never did make it to the gardens but it was a blissful day.
I visited various museums while in Cape Town, and was most enamored with the National Gallery. The last time I was in an art museum, I was performing with a pan-African dance and music ensemble at a fundraiser at the Fogg in Cambridge, MA. The last time I was in a museum to look at art? I have a vague and fuzzy memory of wandering a Karen Walker exhibit with my friend Josh. I remember sitting outside and talking about what we saw and him telling me “good eye,” like a kind-hearted T-ball coach. I can’t really tell you about any of the exhibits I saw in the National Gallery; I was simply satisfied walking through rooms of art to the sound of my echoing footsteps. I also loved the District 6 Museum, a small but powerful museum documenting the black and coloured families who were displaced from the area of Cape Town known as District 6 during apartheid when the neighborhood was designated a whites only area.
I spent one morning on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and others were imprisoned during apartheid. Although the tour guides are all former inmates, I found the experience oddly stark and unemotional, and I couldn’t tell if I found the experience so compelling despite or because of that. Perhaps the moment that I most appreciated was when our guide said, “I didn’t decide to come back to the island and give tours because I want to talk about happened to me here everyday. I came because I needed a job.” Taking a taxi back to the hostel from the ferry, the driver, upon hearing that I live in Lesotho said he would never live there because “there are too many black people there.” That comment juxtaposed against a morning spent on Robben Island left me feeling strange all day and I was already in my room before I realized I was still thinking about how to respond to the driver and hadn’t said anything.
The next day I moved from my hostel to stay with friends. Zoey is in South Africa from NYU law school for a semester of study and an internship and Shingi, who assisted my pre-Soweto Marathon carbo-loading, temporarily relocated from Johannesburg to Cape Town to be with her. Although Zoey and I grew up minutes from each other in New Jersey and both went to NYU, we didn’t meet until we both studied in Ghana, so it seemed particularly fitting to meet up in Africa. She took me to a little specialty foods store to stock up on tofu, nuts and tahini, and a craft store that made me manic with the overwhelming variety of glues. Zoey made me stir fry and pancakes and introduced me to bunny chow, a South African specialty (from Durban in particular) that consists of a hollowed loaf of bread filled with curry. We bought some around the corner from her house, and ate it outside along with fancy chocolate leftover from Easter. Cheap curry followed by expensive chocolate- I love eating with Zoey! Mostly, I read on Zoey’s couch while she did schoolwork, or went through my Sesotho flashcards while Shingi studied his Zulu beside me and we compared languages. We went out one night to a movie theatre. Ok, not just any movie theatre, the Labia Movie Theatre, and the unintentional crude comments that emerged as we planned our outing to the Labia were far more entertaining than the movie itself, as was the fact that wine was on sale at the concession stand and the ticket-takers thought nothing of the fact that we brought a huge chocolate bunny with us.
My last night in Cape Town, the three of us went to see a performance of Cinderella by the Cape Town City ballet at my reqeust. Given a variety of dance performance options, I normally wouldn’t choose a ballet, especially a classical ballet, especially Cinderella. But, there weren’t choices, and like art museums, a dance performance is something I haven’t experienced in awhile. The sets were beautiful as were the costumes, and the diversity of the cast and the fact that the women weren’t emaciated was very refreshing. But the dancing was awful. The women wobbled in their pointe shoes, and I held my breath on every lift waiting for the men to drop their partners. By the first pas de deux, I was telepathically and profusely apologizing to my companions. At intermission, Zoey and I exchanged a look of mutual disappointment, while Shingi tried to keep an open mind about his first ballet experience and commented on the strength of the women’s toes, the prominence of the male genitalia in tights and wondered whether or not the ballerina playing “Winter,” was actually a man. I was wondering the same thing myself but, sadly, we never found out because the theatre charged for programs, a fact we found more ridiculous than the dance-off between the ugly stepsisters.
The morning my flight took off, I had a great run in a downpour. Running at sea level was a treat after all these months in the mountains. I ran once or twice very day I was in Cape Town, and I had to move my legs so fast to get out of breath I thought I was going to trip over my own feet. All week, despite enjoying the clear skies, I thought the only thing that would make for a more perfect run was a mile or two of teeming rain. Well, I got it, and one moment, I was wringing out my sopping wet t-shirt so I could pack it and the next I was waiting in line to get stamped at the border with my neighbor commiserating that school holidays are never, ever long enough.
I spent my first day in Cape Town on a wine tour led by a professor whose second job is playing piano in lounges and third job is apparently this. Besides the two of us, there was an Irish family of four led by a cricket-obsessed matriarch. The drinking age in South Africa is 18, and still, when we arrived at the winery for our first tasting, I was asked if I intended to drink, I believe, their polite way of asking if I am old enough to drink. We visited four wineries, and the tastings were surprisingly unpretentious and they didn’t make us spit. I wished there was somewhere spit out the brandy though; it was vile and turned the gentle alcohol-in-the-morning pulsing behind the eyebrows into a pounding headache which I quelled later with an enormous bowl of pea soup. Brandy should not be in the same sentence at 10 am. Ever. In between wineries, we had time to walk around Franschhoek, a vineyard town. It was there I stumbled upon a locally famous chocolate shop run by two coloured (not to be confused with the outdated American term for African Americans, these South Africans would perhaps be defined in America as bi or multi-racial of African and European descent) chocolatiers who were sponsored to learn the art of chocolate making in Belgium and now run their own very successful business. I sampled their creations in the form of truffles of the amarula, peppermint, coffee and honey and anise varieties.
The following day, which happened to be Easter, I spent in around the Cape of Good Hope. I watched seals frolic from a glass-bottom boat and penguins waddle in the most fantastic way on the beach in Simon’s Town. And I saw one penguin sitting on eggs! I get that’s what they are supposed to do, but I was still surprised somehow. Similarly, when the water splashed over the rails of the glass bottom boat and I tasted salt on my lips, I thought “weird” and then had to remind myself that I was on the ocean. I guess I’ve gotten used to being landlocked.
I was surprised and a little disappointed to find little open on Easter Monday, but I did get the opportunity to laze and sweat in the Long Street Baths. There was only one other person using the sauna, steam bath and plunge pool, and shortly after she left, when I thought I had maybe sweat out a little too much (my hair was dripping and plastered to my face although I hadn’t submerged my head under water), I decided to get out myself before I passed out alone. I showered and fell asleep in the bed provided in my changing stall. Then following the sage advice of the cleaner and various posters, I stumbled to a corner store to rehydrate with orange juice. I walked in slow motion (with the sidewalk seeming to swing up toward my face with every step) to a shopping mall at the waterfront to buy a book to take with me to the Botanical Gardens. After purchasing two books, I was on my way out the door when I was tempted by a movie theatre showing Slumdog Millionaire, and a restaurant with a glass case featuring several varieties of chocolate cake. I never did make it to the gardens but it was a blissful day.
I visited various museums while in Cape Town, and was most enamored with the National Gallery. The last time I was in an art museum, I was performing with a pan-African dance and music ensemble at a fundraiser at the Fogg in Cambridge, MA. The last time I was in a museum to look at art? I have a vague and fuzzy memory of wandering a Karen Walker exhibit with my friend Josh. I remember sitting outside and talking about what we saw and him telling me “good eye,” like a kind-hearted T-ball coach. I can’t really tell you about any of the exhibits I saw in the National Gallery; I was simply satisfied walking through rooms of art to the sound of my echoing footsteps. I also loved the District 6 Museum, a small but powerful museum documenting the black and coloured families who were displaced from the area of Cape Town known as District 6 during apartheid when the neighborhood was designated a whites only area.
I spent one morning on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and others were imprisoned during apartheid. Although the tour guides are all former inmates, I found the experience oddly stark and unemotional, and I couldn’t tell if I found the experience so compelling despite or because of that. Perhaps the moment that I most appreciated was when our guide said, “I didn’t decide to come back to the island and give tours because I want to talk about happened to me here everyday. I came because I needed a job.” Taking a taxi back to the hostel from the ferry, the driver, upon hearing that I live in Lesotho said he would never live there because “there are too many black people there.” That comment juxtaposed against a morning spent on Robben Island left me feeling strange all day and I was already in my room before I realized I was still thinking about how to respond to the driver and hadn’t said anything.
The next day I moved from my hostel to stay with friends. Zoey is in South Africa from NYU law school for a semester of study and an internship and Shingi, who assisted my pre-Soweto Marathon carbo-loading, temporarily relocated from Johannesburg to Cape Town to be with her. Although Zoey and I grew up minutes from each other in New Jersey and both went to NYU, we didn’t meet until we both studied in Ghana, so it seemed particularly fitting to meet up in Africa. She took me to a little specialty foods store to stock up on tofu, nuts and tahini, and a craft store that made me manic with the overwhelming variety of glues. Zoey made me stir fry and pancakes and introduced me to bunny chow, a South African specialty (from Durban in particular) that consists of a hollowed loaf of bread filled with curry. We bought some around the corner from her house, and ate it outside along with fancy chocolate leftover from Easter. Cheap curry followed by expensive chocolate- I love eating with Zoey! Mostly, I read on Zoey’s couch while she did schoolwork, or went through my Sesotho flashcards while Shingi studied his Zulu beside me and we compared languages. We went out one night to a movie theatre. Ok, not just any movie theatre, the Labia Movie Theatre, and the unintentional crude comments that emerged as we planned our outing to the Labia were far more entertaining than the movie itself, as was the fact that wine was on sale at the concession stand and the ticket-takers thought nothing of the fact that we brought a huge chocolate bunny with us.
My last night in Cape Town, the three of us went to see a performance of Cinderella by the Cape Town City ballet at my reqeust. Given a variety of dance performance options, I normally wouldn’t choose a ballet, especially a classical ballet, especially Cinderella. But, there weren’t choices, and like art museums, a dance performance is something I haven’t experienced in awhile. The sets were beautiful as were the costumes, and the diversity of the cast and the fact that the women weren’t emaciated was very refreshing. But the dancing was awful. The women wobbled in their pointe shoes, and I held my breath on every lift waiting for the men to drop their partners. By the first pas de deux, I was telepathically and profusely apologizing to my companions. At intermission, Zoey and I exchanged a look of mutual disappointment, while Shingi tried to keep an open mind about his first ballet experience and commented on the strength of the women’s toes, the prominence of the male genitalia in tights and wondered whether or not the ballerina playing “Winter,” was actually a man. I was wondering the same thing myself but, sadly, we never found out because the theatre charged for programs, a fact we found more ridiculous than the dance-off between the ugly stepsisters.
The morning my flight took off, I had a great run in a downpour. Running at sea level was a treat after all these months in the mountains. I ran once or twice very day I was in Cape Town, and I had to move my legs so fast to get out of breath I thought I was going to trip over my own feet. All week, despite enjoying the clear skies, I thought the only thing that would make for a more perfect run was a mile or two of teeming rain. Well, I got it, and one moment, I was wringing out my sopping wet t-shirt so I could pack it and the next I was waiting in line to get stamped at the border with my neighbor commiserating that school holidays are never, ever long enough.
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