(May 23rd)
I just got home from a leisurely lunch over the South African border with a fellow teacher. Born 10 days apart, she is my partner in crime at the international school. Back in August, we were the two new American teachers moving into neighboring classrooms. Together, we pondered the unwarranted hostility of the school nurse (who eventually grew on us), the challenges of working with assistant teachers, the purpose of our powerless school board, and who the culprits in our collective classrooms are who would pee everywhere in our shared bathrooms except the toilets. Together, we navigated together through the Office of Labor for our work permits, tried yoga (followed by Indian food to be festive) for the first time and had a slumber party while watching Barack Obama get elected.
We ate slowly and talked incessantly for three hours in the garden over salads with gooseberries, and little quiches, the smell of her cappuccinos reminding me of convenience and home. After discussing with the waitress our various dessert options (wait, there are two choices with the word “truffle” in it? . . . which one is bigger?) we each got a massive slice of chocolate truffle layer cake topped with fresh raspberries and little pitchers of raspberry sauce on the side. Neither of us believes in mixing fruit with chocolate so we made divisions on our plates, cake to one side, produce to the other. It was like having two desserts.
Sitting there, my morning seemed years rather than hours away, spent in the dingy nursery of the orphanage where I volunteer. Chicken pox is going around, a disease I didn’t even know existed in Lesotho until this week. As usual, I started the morning by bathing the children one by one in a couple inches of warm water in a plastic basin. I wipe their noses with their dirty clothes to keep the mucus out of the water, and for the children in diapers there are always dirty bottoms to clean as the caregivers won’t change them in the mornings before their baths. Then I soap them up and scrub away at the crust around their eyes, ears and noses, a task that takes an increasing amount of time the colder it gets. Those without chicken pox got their usual smear of lotion before being dressed. Then the sick ones got their spots attended to, prescription antibiotic applied with rubber gloves for the HIV positive ones and calamine lotion with tissue for the others. None of the children, even those with compromised immune systems due to HIV/AIDS have particularly bad cases, still, I didn’t realize how much poxy children can turn my stomach. They weren’t even scratching very much, but somehow my skin just crawled for them.
I tried not to think of this in the café as the word “chicken” popped up again and again on the menu. I think at some point, a morning spent with sick, dirty and parentless babies followed by a luxurious meal would have left me feeling guilty or at least have a certain sense of disconnect. I think (and hope) it is not my compassion that is decreasing, but that my expectations have shifted to encompass such wide disparity in such narrow geography.
Even within the orphanage itself, my experiences and observations also gather along opposing poles. Whether it’s children stealing food from one another one minute and sharing the next, or my own conflicted feelings at the arrival of a new baby (joy at one more tiny creature to love, sadness at the probable circumstances that brought the baby, and if the baby was brought by a parent or family member for a “better life”, uncertainty about whether the orphanage can and will live up to that promise). On the rare occasion when a child leaves, collected by some family member or another, I know children are better off with families than in institutions, but I hate to see them go. My favorite caretaker in the baby’s room is having her last day tomorrow, leaving to do a correspondence course in English in the hopes that she will eventually attend bible college in South Africa. I feel the same way about her departure as I did about the round-faced and dimpled three-year old who went to live with her grandmother. Meanwhile, the cynic in me thinks another preacher is the last thing this country needs. And I wonder, through my nascent understanding of what this woman believes it means to be a good Christian, how she can get any closer to doing “God’s work” than the work she is doing at the orphanage.
My own view of the orphanage, if it is doing all that it can under the circumstances, and if the children really are better off there than they were wherever they came from or wherever else they could go, changes daily if not hourly. A few weeks ago, a 13 year-old girl, who ran away to the orphanage after living with an abusive uncle, was taken to the hospital with a sexually transmitted infection she contracted from being raped by a relative of the pastor who runs the orphanage. The opinion of the hospital social worker was, “Some girls like that and get paid for it.” Girls and young women at the orphanage get kicked out if they become pregnant although pregnant, unwed teens on the street are routinely taken in. Am I happy that Makhatatso did not get pregnant on top of everything else that has happened in her short life, or do I wish that she had so she could get away from this place?
Situations like that make me glad that I work mainly with the babies. Even though it is usually with the youngest children that the prolonged illnesses and the rare funerals occur, it is also the age where life and growth is most evident and there are first steps to celebrate and new teeth pushing up through soft gums to marvel at. Even among the youngest age group, “elders” emerge, and I once witnessed a four year old bite off a huge chunk of his apple and press it into the hand of a one year old and coo at her to eat. She only has a few teeth and doesn’t eat anything much harder than bread. Still, I let her clutch and suck as she was obviously delighted with the apple and I didn’t want to discourage a rare moment of sharing. I was worried she might choke so I kept her close to me, and it was probably this proximity that allowed her, once she had managed to bite off a piece of apple, take it out of her own mouth and put it in mine.
Most days I’m there, I witness fascinating and often disturbing encounters between children and food. Usually, there is no sharing, and when there is, it is calculating and based on alliances. One five year old will knock down a two year old who is eating while a second five year old will grab a handful of food from the two year olds bowl. The two five year olds run to the corner and gobble the food between them while the two year old wails and I try to wrestle it from them to return to the “rightful eater” before it is all gone. Usually everyone ends up in tears. There’s the stealing and there’s also hoarding. I watched preschoolers savor some candy bars recently, they drooled on and licked the wrappers for about an hour while the chocolate slowly melted. I’ve seen one child eat another’s vomit on more than one occasion. The same goes for children drinking out of the toilet. I don’t know how much of this behavior is physical hunger and thirst, and how much it is the body telling them they are malnourished or dehydrated (some children are malnourished at the orphanage but not most) and how much is it the association of food and drink with comfort and security. The children are simply never satisfied. There isn’t much variety in the food although it could be much worse (a standard meal is papa, a maize meal staple with a thin meat gravy and vegetables). The meals are also not served with any kind of routine. This is partly due to the Basotho concept of time (or lack of it), the countless mishaps that can happen when one person is preparing food for 130 people, and the general disregard for the importance of routines for children. And if a child has special dietary needs, he will sooner starve than be accommodated. An HIV positive boy arrived at the orphanage moderately malnourished and after three months is now severely malnourished. The nurse tried to fatten him up on Plumpy Nut, although he couldn’t stomach it and no one with any power to do so at the orphanage would make sure he had the amount of protein (more beans, more eggs, less maize meal) the doctor ordered. Even when the nurse buys him powdered protein drinks herself, the caretakers rarely see that he actually consumes it three times a day.
One of the hardest things at the orphanage for me is to have to confront my own incompetence in caring for a roomful of small, Basotho children. Having to learn how to change (cloth) diapers from a nine year old was a very humbling experience. I dress the children in the wrong clothes, and get their hands slapped by allowing them to put their filthy fingers in my hair. The children aren’t any safer or better nourished or less sick since I have started volunteering. There are many things I would like to do, like bring Thabo, the malnourished boy, protein-rich food from home, that would never be allowed, nor is it a sustainable solution. So in between the incompetence and the powerlessness, I often wonder what good I can do for a place that has taught me so much about this country and culture, about children and about how much my own heart can stretch and my own eyes and mind can open.
Well, the babies, smile when they see me and they put out their lips for me to kiss. With all their poxy, snotty faces it’s getting harder and harder to find a clean spot to kiss, but I kiss them anyway. The slang word for kiss is one of the first words I learned in Sesotho, followed soon after by the word for “again.” Kiss is “mba” (mmmm-ba) because of the sound you make when you do it. When I think about what value the work I’m doing at the orphanage really has, I think about things like that. I think about the children involuntarily absorbing moments of comfort and love and storing them in their bodies and minds. And I think these things stay with children permanently, regardless of whether they consciously remember the actual moments, and that experiences of trauma and neglect can outweigh these moments but not take them away.
Overall, what I do at the orphanage varies with no predictable pattern. Some days, a caretaker reprimands me for “spoiling” one child or another, and other days when I walk in, one will nod to a crib saying, “you like this one,” an invitation for me to spoil away. Some days I rock babies for hours next to the propane heater and some days I scrub preschool uniforms in buckets until my knuckles bleed. Some days I stay doing one thing or another until dusk, then speed walk through the questionable part of town with my phone and money hidden in my bra, home to eat standing up and exhausted. Other days I leave while the sun is still shining, drive over the border and eat chocolate truffle cake.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
And Sometimes We Lose It
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?
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?
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.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Nursery University. . .
I recently heard about a documentary entitled Nursery University about the crazy and competitive process of enrolling a child in preschool in New York City, an ordeal exacerbated by the post- 9/11 baby boom.
When I first heard of the premise of the film, I spent a good hour trying to download a trailer of it, certain that I would see a parent or school I knew from my time living in New York City and working in two preschools there. Sure enough, I saw two shots of the first teacher I worked for. Also named Sarah, she was a burnt-out and flighty hippie who filled my closet with patchwork skirts and guazy blouses that no longer fit her. When I joined her class, she became Big Sarah and I became Little Sara and she was a wonderful person to have as a mentor.
I don't know if I would have found the trailer so amusing if I was not thousands of miles away from any place where this situation could possibly exist, but I laughed with tears running down my cheeks. And thankful to be here where the pressure and anxiety in this field is not nearly so high.
Check it out the website, go see the movie for me, and keep your eyes and ears open for the DVD.
www.nurseryuniversitythemovie.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aESkMeVksvs
When I first heard of the premise of the film, I spent a good hour trying to download a trailer of it, certain that I would see a parent or school I knew from my time living in New York City and working in two preschools there. Sure enough, I saw two shots of the first teacher I worked for. Also named Sarah, she was a burnt-out and flighty hippie who filled my closet with patchwork skirts and guazy blouses that no longer fit her. When I joined her class, she became Big Sarah and I became Little Sara and she was a wonderful person to have as a mentor.
I don't know if I would have found the trailer so amusing if I was not thousands of miles away from any place where this situation could possibly exist, but I laughed with tears running down my cheeks. And thankful to be here where the pressure and anxiety in this field is not nearly so high.
Check it out the website, go see the movie for me, and keep your eyes and ears open for the DVD.
www.nurseryuniversitythemovie.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aESkMeVksvs
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Oh. My.
The children went home four hours ago and I'm still here at school. I was immersed in a massive April cleaning when I had to stop to laugh for eight solid minutes after finding on my desk the following "current event" synopsis written by one a nine-year old student here.
"February 19, 2009
Shoe Thrown at George W. Bush
On Thursday at 14.00 pm someone threw a shoe at George bush because he killed the sandmen. That person is the sandmen's friend in Texas. The shoe was put up at the flags place.
By Thabo"
Still laughing. . .
"February 19, 2009
Shoe Thrown at George W. Bush
On Thursday at 14.00 pm someone threw a shoe at George bush because he killed the sandmen. That person is the sandmen's friend in Texas. The shoe was put up at the flags place.
By Thabo"
Still laughing. . .
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
How Did I Get Myself Into This? OR Four Events of Note OR Maybe It Was Just the Rickettsia
ONE
One evening recently, I found myself on my hands and knees in a sandbox wearing a strapless dress, the toes of my silver shoes sinking into the sand and windblown grains sticking to my freshly applied make-up (well freshly applied lip balm anyway). I had arrived a bit early to the annual school international celebration/fundraiser to search for a missing painting from the student art sale that I had organized (because somehow I am an art teacher in addition to a preschool teacher). Parents and school administrators insisted the painting was lost somewhere at the school, and after about a dozen frantic yet monotonous searches on my part, it was discovered the painting had been left at the framing shop. Earlier that day I had made a pie for this dinner, during the process of which, I burned a temporary rectangle onto my face from leaning against the oven and super-glued my hand to a barrette in the pursuit of multi-tasking. I made up the recipe which resulted in a fragrant pie that was less structurally sound than a house of cards. The smell of the pie, the fact that it seemed rather volcanic in its quivering and dripping, its heat which made me sweat profusely, and the bright red rectangle on my face attracted more than the usual amount of white-person attention I would normally get on public transportation. The day before was slightly less eventful, although it did involve me hauling all of the furniture and a good deal of teaching materials out of my classroom so it could house the buffet. I was not in the most pleasant mood to be collecting tickets at the gate at this point, but it was supposedly my last task in this consuming event. Then one of the parent organizers, Paul, sought me out to inform me that he was out of empty wine bottles in which to place candlesticks. He had some metal canisters he thought he could fill with sand to do the job. “Could you direct me to the sandpit?” he asked. I walked him across campus, lifted the tarp off for him, and turned to walk back to the gate. But Paul had an even better idea. This idea was namely that I should climb into the filthy sandbox, dig in the wet sand with my bare hands (no shovels were outside because it was a Saturday) and fill the cans myself. I should have punched him. At some point he said something like, “sorry it’s a bit messy.” And I responded with something like, “I teach preschool and art. I’m used to it.” I should have punched myself. I’m going to start saying “no” tomorrow.
TWO
I have been illegal for ten months now. After finally getting my work permit, I went on the requisite quests for this documentation and that, the chest x-ray, the passport photos, the certified photocopies of every piece of paper I possess to finally legalize my residency. After an hour of sitting and waiting, the person with the ability to make my life infinitely easier appeared in the dirty window. I had spent much of this hour removing purple tempera paint from underneath my fingernails with a pen cap, and contemplating how nice it will be to not have to leave the country every thirty days. Note: this woman was not going to actually give me the residence permit. She was merely going to toss all of my documents onto a pile and tell me to come back in a month. Yet for some reason, my presence is required in this red tape circus act. She flipped through the contents of my envelope, “uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, fifty maloti please.” Then she pushed the stack of papers and candy-colored money back through the window. This was an ominous moment of the transaction, I had not been informed of a step in which everything you were told to bring is cast out of the room where against all bureaucratic odds, little pieces of paper are awarded to frazzled foreigners. “The woman who takes the money isn’t here.” Yes, apparently only one person in the entire Office of Immigration can count money and make change. The face behind the window politely inquired as to whether or not I would like to wait for an indefinite period of time with my thoughts and dirty fingernails for the money lady to return, but I declined. Defeated, I asked when I should come back and after all that, she said, oh you don’t have to come back, just send someone with your papers. Apparently, one’s presence is required on the first attempt to submit your paperwork, yet most people are rejected because the typist is out, or the electricity is out or the receptionist’s pen ran out of ink. Then, without making any note that the applicant made an appearance during attempt number one, the Office of Immigration waives the requirement of appearing in person for all subsequent attempts. I contemplated whether this was some sort of test, like they want to know how cooperative you are or if you ask too many questions or if you have the waiting room equivalent of road rage before they grant you permission to stay in their country, but really, it’s just Lesotho.
THREE
This is also Lesotho. Last week, while riding home in the “taxi” (what in America would be something the size of a van with more seats squeezed in), I opened the little wicker container where I keep my change, and did probably the worst thing I could have done on crowded public transportation. I dropped nearly 100 coins on an otherwise silent taxi. Everyone turned to stare at me. I was squished against the window and I made a few graceless attempts to squeeze my arm between the seat and the wall, but accomplished nothing except to elbow the woman beside me. There was also no space between the rows to squat down in and retrieve the money. So people started poking me from all sides saying, “your money is there, your money is there.” And I shrugged and pointed at the spaces large enough for several dozen coins to fall through but not my arm. What did they expect me to do, when surely they could see that other than unloading the already-moving, entire taxi, there was no way I was getting my money back? All of the other passengers were turned to face me and they began an impassioned conversation in Sesotho that I could not follow. I was pretty sure they were saying, “These white people are so rich that they can just drop their money on the floor and are too lazy to bend down and pick it up.” After several minutes the conversation died down and I was nearing my neighborhood. I called out my stop and once I hopped off, with bright red face (neck, chest) probably glowing, I rushed to cross the street despite cars speeding in both directions. The woman who had been sitting beside me grabbed my arm when I was halfway across, and said “Wait, this abuti [brother] is helping you.” I turned and saw that the rest of the passengers had climbed off behind me and a teenager in a pristine school uniform was shimmying on the filthy, oily floor picking up my coins one by one. It took about five minutes passing painfully slowly, in which I added gratitude and awe to my current embarrassment. The young man finally handed me the change. Nearly all of the coins were 5 lisente ones, which, all added together, were about 50 cents in USD, barely more than the price of the ride (and they don’t even usually take such low value coins for fare). For my fellow passengers, office workers and students making their way home at rush hour, comfortable enough to afford to take public transportation, the loss of this amount of money would be an annoyance, but hardly dire. Yet they all prolonged their already long days even more and conspired to return every last coin to me.
FOUR
Last month during midterm break, my neighbor and colleague, Bob, and I decided to head in the same direction and went up to the lovely South African town of Clarens with a Florida missionary. Besides delicious restaurants, art galleries and homemade chocolates, Clarens has a spa. I’d never been to a spa before, but decided to try. Bob even decided to go along as well and we made consecutive appointments for hot stone massages. Claire, the missionary, headed to the spa with us to read in the lobby, while the receptionist informed Bob and I that the room for our “couples massage” would be ready in five minutes. I choked on my own saliva. It did happen to be Valentine’s Day but Bob is 55 years old. From our combined nervous laughter, and the fact that Claire was in hysterics, the receptionist gathered that we were not a couple, said “no problem,” and we were brought to the changing room. The massage therapist directed us to our respective robe and terrycloth tube dress and then to our rooms. No, make that room. We resumed with our nervous laughter and reiterated that we were not supposed to share a room, whereupon she apologized for the misunderstanding but told us that was all they had. She said, “I’ll cover your eyes with towels.” We looked at each other, shrugged and said, “why not?” We were already there, and Valentine’s weekend was a busy one so we knew we wouldn’t be able to make another booking. While we were having our massages, the receptionist went to Claire and apologized about the room situation again. They started chatting and Claire mentioned how Bob and I teach at the same school. “She’s a teacher,?!” the receptionist said shocked, “I thought she was 15 years old! I thought they were father and daughter!” Claire, said, “No, none of us are related or together in any way.” “So you’re not the wife?!” “Um, no.” They essentially thought that Bob and I were having a little Valentine’s Day father-daughter massage, and Claire was the mom/wife who just isn’t into spas. Or as I understand their version of the scenario, Bob was the pedophile, I was the abused adolescent and Claire was the enabler. Either way, Bob fell asleep during the massage and snored the ENTIRE time.
From Valentine’s Day up until now, the end of March, it seems like my life has been populated by one weird situation after the other. Two weeks ago, I got a high and prolonged fever and blinding headache and convinced myself that I not only had malaria, but that it’s been churning in my body since returning from Mali, and all of my odd daily encounters were actually quasi-hallucinations. I went to the best clinic in Maseru (where a month prior while getting the physical for my residence permit the doctor wrote down a number for my blood pressure I have since been told is impossible) to request a malaria test. The doctor said, “You know, there is not a high prevalence of malaria in Lesotho.” No shit. There is no malaria in Lesotho, but I calmly explained that I have traveled in several malarial areas. He proceeded to tell me my temperature was normal despite the fact that I was shaking, soaked with sweat and hot to the touch. Then he said he can’t give me a malaria test but he can give me the malaria treatment. He said if I don’t feel better in two days then we know it was not malaria. “So what will I do then?” I asked him. “Come back for a malaria test.” “But if this medication will make me better if I actually have malaria, and it doesn’t make me better, why would you test me for malaria?” “Well we can test you for other things.” “Like what?” “Bacterial infections and viral infections.” I gave him a piece of paper and said, “Write them down.” I couldn’t read a single thing he wrote. He gave me prescriptions for the malaria treatment, and two different medications for the fever I supposedly didn’t have, one for daytime and one for nighttime. I went back to school to make sure everything was arranged for the students for the rest of the day so I could go home. I also looked up the medications on-line and found that the malaria treatment isn’t even supposed to be given in areas where it is not endemic, and that it’s been banned in several countries for causing heart problems. And the “fever” medication for nighttime was actually Valium. Great.
After a few more days of delirious teaching, the headache that wouldn’t go away was starting to make me nervous. I used to have a roommate paranoid about getting meningitis and any time she got a symptom, would run through a checklist of all the other symptoms. So in addition to all of the neurosis I was born with and those I inherited from the family worrywarts, I had visions of Alexandra bending her neck to test for stiffness, and convinced myself my brain was swelling. So I did something I try never to do and that is cross the border because things are better on the other side. I made an appointment with a South African doctor, and as I rushed there from parent-teacher conferences I started to worry I’m going to be diagnosed with hypochondria or hysteria. But lo and behold, I’m diagnosed with a UTI and tick bite fever. You would think that in Africa, I’d manage something a little more exotic than one infection in my bladder and another from not tucking my pants into my socks, but I guess it’s a different Africa way up here in the sky.
One evening recently, I found myself on my hands and knees in a sandbox wearing a strapless dress, the toes of my silver shoes sinking into the sand and windblown grains sticking to my freshly applied make-up (well freshly applied lip balm anyway). I had arrived a bit early to the annual school international celebration/fundraiser to search for a missing painting from the student art sale that I had organized (because somehow I am an art teacher in addition to a preschool teacher). Parents and school administrators insisted the painting was lost somewhere at the school, and after about a dozen frantic yet monotonous searches on my part, it was discovered the painting had been left at the framing shop. Earlier that day I had made a pie for this dinner, during the process of which, I burned a temporary rectangle onto my face from leaning against the oven and super-glued my hand to a barrette in the pursuit of multi-tasking. I made up the recipe which resulted in a fragrant pie that was less structurally sound than a house of cards. The smell of the pie, the fact that it seemed rather volcanic in its quivering and dripping, its heat which made me sweat profusely, and the bright red rectangle on my face attracted more than the usual amount of white-person attention I would normally get on public transportation. The day before was slightly less eventful, although it did involve me hauling all of the furniture and a good deal of teaching materials out of my classroom so it could house the buffet. I was not in the most pleasant mood to be collecting tickets at the gate at this point, but it was supposedly my last task in this consuming event. Then one of the parent organizers, Paul, sought me out to inform me that he was out of empty wine bottles in which to place candlesticks. He had some metal canisters he thought he could fill with sand to do the job. “Could you direct me to the sandpit?” he asked. I walked him across campus, lifted the tarp off for him, and turned to walk back to the gate. But Paul had an even better idea. This idea was namely that I should climb into the filthy sandbox, dig in the wet sand with my bare hands (no shovels were outside because it was a Saturday) and fill the cans myself. I should have punched him. At some point he said something like, “sorry it’s a bit messy.” And I responded with something like, “I teach preschool and art. I’m used to it.” I should have punched myself. I’m going to start saying “no” tomorrow.
TWO
I have been illegal for ten months now. After finally getting my work permit, I went on the requisite quests for this documentation and that, the chest x-ray, the passport photos, the certified photocopies of every piece of paper I possess to finally legalize my residency. After an hour of sitting and waiting, the person with the ability to make my life infinitely easier appeared in the dirty window. I had spent much of this hour removing purple tempera paint from underneath my fingernails with a pen cap, and contemplating how nice it will be to not have to leave the country every thirty days. Note: this woman was not going to actually give me the residence permit. She was merely going to toss all of my documents onto a pile and tell me to come back in a month. Yet for some reason, my presence is required in this red tape circus act. She flipped through the contents of my envelope, “uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, fifty maloti please.” Then she pushed the stack of papers and candy-colored money back through the window. This was an ominous moment of the transaction, I had not been informed of a step in which everything you were told to bring is cast out of the room where against all bureaucratic odds, little pieces of paper are awarded to frazzled foreigners. “The woman who takes the money isn’t here.” Yes, apparently only one person in the entire Office of Immigration can count money and make change. The face behind the window politely inquired as to whether or not I would like to wait for an indefinite period of time with my thoughts and dirty fingernails for the money lady to return, but I declined. Defeated, I asked when I should come back and after all that, she said, oh you don’t have to come back, just send someone with your papers. Apparently, one’s presence is required on the first attempt to submit your paperwork, yet most people are rejected because the typist is out, or the electricity is out or the receptionist’s pen ran out of ink. Then, without making any note that the applicant made an appearance during attempt number one, the Office of Immigration waives the requirement of appearing in person for all subsequent attempts. I contemplated whether this was some sort of test, like they want to know how cooperative you are or if you ask too many questions or if you have the waiting room equivalent of road rage before they grant you permission to stay in their country, but really, it’s just Lesotho.
THREE
This is also Lesotho. Last week, while riding home in the “taxi” (what in America would be something the size of a van with more seats squeezed in), I opened the little wicker container where I keep my change, and did probably the worst thing I could have done on crowded public transportation. I dropped nearly 100 coins on an otherwise silent taxi. Everyone turned to stare at me. I was squished against the window and I made a few graceless attempts to squeeze my arm between the seat and the wall, but accomplished nothing except to elbow the woman beside me. There was also no space between the rows to squat down in and retrieve the money. So people started poking me from all sides saying, “your money is there, your money is there.” And I shrugged and pointed at the spaces large enough for several dozen coins to fall through but not my arm. What did they expect me to do, when surely they could see that other than unloading the already-moving, entire taxi, there was no way I was getting my money back? All of the other passengers were turned to face me and they began an impassioned conversation in Sesotho that I could not follow. I was pretty sure they were saying, “These white people are so rich that they can just drop their money on the floor and are too lazy to bend down and pick it up.” After several minutes the conversation died down and I was nearing my neighborhood. I called out my stop and once I hopped off, with bright red face (neck, chest) probably glowing, I rushed to cross the street despite cars speeding in both directions. The woman who had been sitting beside me grabbed my arm when I was halfway across, and said “Wait, this abuti [brother] is helping you.” I turned and saw that the rest of the passengers had climbed off behind me and a teenager in a pristine school uniform was shimmying on the filthy, oily floor picking up my coins one by one. It took about five minutes passing painfully slowly, in which I added gratitude and awe to my current embarrassment. The young man finally handed me the change. Nearly all of the coins were 5 lisente ones, which, all added together, were about 50 cents in USD, barely more than the price of the ride (and they don’t even usually take such low value coins for fare). For my fellow passengers, office workers and students making their way home at rush hour, comfortable enough to afford to take public transportation, the loss of this amount of money would be an annoyance, but hardly dire. Yet they all prolonged their already long days even more and conspired to return every last coin to me.
FOUR
Last month during midterm break, my neighbor and colleague, Bob, and I decided to head in the same direction and went up to the lovely South African town of Clarens with a Florida missionary. Besides delicious restaurants, art galleries and homemade chocolates, Clarens has a spa. I’d never been to a spa before, but decided to try. Bob even decided to go along as well and we made consecutive appointments for hot stone massages. Claire, the missionary, headed to the spa with us to read in the lobby, while the receptionist informed Bob and I that the room for our “couples massage” would be ready in five minutes. I choked on my own saliva. It did happen to be Valentine’s Day but Bob is 55 years old. From our combined nervous laughter, and the fact that Claire was in hysterics, the receptionist gathered that we were not a couple, said “no problem,” and we were brought to the changing room. The massage therapist directed us to our respective robe and terrycloth tube dress and then to our rooms. No, make that room. We resumed with our nervous laughter and reiterated that we were not supposed to share a room, whereupon she apologized for the misunderstanding but told us that was all they had. She said, “I’ll cover your eyes with towels.” We looked at each other, shrugged and said, “why not?” We were already there, and Valentine’s weekend was a busy one so we knew we wouldn’t be able to make another booking. While we were having our massages, the receptionist went to Claire and apologized about the room situation again. They started chatting and Claire mentioned how Bob and I teach at the same school. “She’s a teacher,?!” the receptionist said shocked, “I thought she was 15 years old! I thought they were father and daughter!” Claire, said, “No, none of us are related or together in any way.” “So you’re not the wife?!” “Um, no.” They essentially thought that Bob and I were having a little Valentine’s Day father-daughter massage, and Claire was the mom/wife who just isn’t into spas. Or as I understand their version of the scenario, Bob was the pedophile, I was the abused adolescent and Claire was the enabler. Either way, Bob fell asleep during the massage and snored the ENTIRE time.
From Valentine’s Day up until now, the end of March, it seems like my life has been populated by one weird situation after the other. Two weeks ago, I got a high and prolonged fever and blinding headache and convinced myself that I not only had malaria, but that it’s been churning in my body since returning from Mali, and all of my odd daily encounters were actually quasi-hallucinations. I went to the best clinic in Maseru (where a month prior while getting the physical for my residence permit the doctor wrote down a number for my blood pressure I have since been told is impossible) to request a malaria test. The doctor said, “You know, there is not a high prevalence of malaria in Lesotho.” No shit. There is no malaria in Lesotho, but I calmly explained that I have traveled in several malarial areas. He proceeded to tell me my temperature was normal despite the fact that I was shaking, soaked with sweat and hot to the touch. Then he said he can’t give me a malaria test but he can give me the malaria treatment. He said if I don’t feel better in two days then we know it was not malaria. “So what will I do then?” I asked him. “Come back for a malaria test.” “But if this medication will make me better if I actually have malaria, and it doesn’t make me better, why would you test me for malaria?” “Well we can test you for other things.” “Like what?” “Bacterial infections and viral infections.” I gave him a piece of paper and said, “Write them down.” I couldn’t read a single thing he wrote. He gave me prescriptions for the malaria treatment, and two different medications for the fever I supposedly didn’t have, one for daytime and one for nighttime. I went back to school to make sure everything was arranged for the students for the rest of the day so I could go home. I also looked up the medications on-line and found that the malaria treatment isn’t even supposed to be given in areas where it is not endemic, and that it’s been banned in several countries for causing heart problems. And the “fever” medication for nighttime was actually Valium. Great.
After a few more days of delirious teaching, the headache that wouldn’t go away was starting to make me nervous. I used to have a roommate paranoid about getting meningitis and any time she got a symptom, would run through a checklist of all the other symptoms. So in addition to all of the neurosis I was born with and those I inherited from the family worrywarts, I had visions of Alexandra bending her neck to test for stiffness, and convinced myself my brain was swelling. So I did something I try never to do and that is cross the border because things are better on the other side. I made an appointment with a South African doctor, and as I rushed there from parent-teacher conferences I started to worry I’m going to be diagnosed with hypochondria or hysteria. But lo and behold, I’m diagnosed with a UTI and tick bite fever. You would think that in Africa, I’d manage something a little more exotic than one infection in my bladder and another from not tucking my pants into my socks, but I guess it’s a different Africa way up here in the sky.
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