The Stand-In

On Sunday I will be running in the Soweto Marathon. Amidst what has now become an annual scramble to find transport to and from the race, a place to stay, and a night-before pasta source, I was informed by another runner about a silent and stagnant protest that will occur on the starting line.

The following has been posted on various running websites: “All runners are advised of the Silent Protest schedules at the Soweto Marathon on 1 November. At the firing of the starter’s gun at 6am, runners will remain standing on the start line for 2 minutes in a show of athletic ubuntu.* The protest, done in the presence of national TV and leading South African media, is to remind the national federation and local organizing province that those two bodies have failed in their collective essence undermined the sporting code. Furthermore, the athletes wish to prompt and to urge all administrators to consider the hundreds and thousands of mainly recreation and some part time professional athletes in this country, that as elected officials; acting free of race, gender, religious or political conviction, they are accountable for their actions and that they must follow clear governance with good consciousness and restore the credibility of the sport. This we demand for the benefit of athletes, supporters, sponsors, all administrators and other athletic stakeholders in South Africa.”

My various thoughts upon reading this were:

1. Huh?
2. Really?
3. Sigh.

Huh? I had to read the thing a few times to wrap my head around what is actually being protested. First of all, it is impossibly vague. Second of all, the word “run” has no mention within the actual explanation of the protest and an Indian colleague had to remind me that in British English, “athletics” refers specifically to running and not, as it does in America, to all sports. After that, I realized the protest is probably in response to Caster Semenya, winner of the women’s 800 meter World Championships. The drastic improvement in her performance, the margin by which she won and Semenya’s physical appearance lead her sex (whether she was unknowingly intersex) to be called into question. Details that should have remained confidential about gender tests were made public and the International Association of Athletics Federation has been accused of racism, in addition to the more obvious disregard of her privacy. 

Really? So I think I get what the protest is about, and it seems compelling enough that some runners would want to organize and participate in the protest. But it seems unlikely to work (and by “work,” I mean for the vast majority of marathoners to participate, otherwise the start of the race will look no different from the start of any other race) for the following reasons:

-Elite runners have money and titles to win. Are they going to risk that when the gun goes off without knowing whether or not their opponents are going to take advantage of a two-minute head start?

-Many runners have times they are aiming to run for personal satisfaction or to qualify for other bigger and more competitive races that require qualifying times. Again, are they going to risk that for the protest?

-Some people are simply not going to want to take part in this protest or any protest.

-Not all runners are going to be aware of the protest unless they have stumbled across the above blurb on running websites.

Sigh: I fall into the category of people who would like to run certain times to stroke their egos and qualify for other races. I am not confident that I can spare two minutes to stand around in ubuntu, in addition to the time it would already take me to get to the starting line when I am seeded yards and yards behind it. If the protest is going to go better than I expect, I’m going to have a really irritable two minutes, getting worked up about the time I will no longer finish in, all with a lot of bumping, shoving, tripping, general chaos and anger that is not a good way to start 26.2 miles of warm and hilly running. Lastly, just as I am annoyed when someone tries to prevent me from protesting (ie: the police), I will be annoyed if someone tries to force me to protest (if the people in front of me don’t move, I can’t move).

There are going to be thousands of runners in this race and the starting line can only be as wide as the road, trail or path you are running on. Runners line up according to the time they are expected to run, which is based on previous races whenever applicable. The fastest runners are at the front and the slowest at the back. When the gun goes off, only those near the front start running and the rest of us run when those in front of us have started moving. This can take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes and in really big races you can’t even see the starting line until you are running across it. The race sponsors are not sponsoring the protest and I don’t know that any of the protest organizers will be timing the two minutes and alerting the protesters when it is time to begin. So I’ve decided that as I always do, I will start running a stride after the person in front of me, glance at my watch as my sneakers cross the starting line and struggle to make it to the finish. And maybe at the end of the race, or later on the news, I will find out if I protested or not.   

*means humanness or community, I think in Xhosa

Zambia, Again

My first time in Zambia, about 2 and a half years ago, I spent my time in South Luangwa National Park turning my head left and right, from elephant to lion to zebra, twitching from spending too many hours sitting inside a vehicle. Last year, I went to Zambia again, where I very memorably emptied the contents of my stomach on bus, car and canoe from the Malawian border to Victoria Falls to an island in the Zambezi River and allllll the way back to Lusaka, the capital.

I am back in Lusaka for the Association of International Schools in Africa conference, along with four other teachers and our new director. While my last visits were marked by (other than motion sickness) wildlife spottings of both the intentional and accidental variety, spottings of a disproportionate number of people with disfiguring facial growths and a personal bristling against Zambian aggression (which is apparently relative as coming from Malawi I definitely felt this the first two times, but coming from Lesotho, Zambians don't seem aggressive at all), this time around, I'm much more in conference-land than Zambia-land, with all the powerpoint presentations and over-cooked buffet food that implies.

I've had the chance to run a bit every morning before plenaries, institutes and workshops (which still does not seem to balance out all the sitting I'm being required to do) and I am completely and amazingly ignored by my fellow early-rising pedestrians. Unlike Maseru, it really smells like "Africa" here, which to me means blossoms on trees, burning trash, rotting fruit and fresh dirt. This is all the more noticeable in the early morning, before car exhaust competes with these other scents.

My neighbor and assistant teacher from last year asked me to do her a couple of favors while in Zambia, her country of birth, namely to deposit some money for her into her father's account and to pick up some mopane worms for her (dried caterpillars) to eat. I asked her where to deposit the money, and she said "any bank." Betty does not have a bank account herself and I had to explain to her that it would have to be deposited at the bank in which he has an account. She wrote down all the details for me, and luckily the receptionist at the hotel directed me to a nearby branch. When I asked the teller for a deposit slip, he gave me an eighth of a torn up piece of printer paper. I said, "oh, those, I already have one," and handed him the scrap of looseleaf Betty had given me. I felt a little shady handing over Betty's cash given the circumstances, but the receipt looked legitimate.

Hunting down mopane worms in the city market place was a tougher task. They seem to be out of season. I told Betty before I left that I might not be able to bring worms through customs, and she said, "if you can't bring me caterpillars, get kapenta." Kapenta is a small fish you can buy dried. I explained that if they confiscate caterpillars, I assume they would confiscate fish. My nose found the fish before my eyes did and I promptly decided that I would NOT be transporting them in my duffel bag, tote bag or pockets (sorry Betty!)

The conference itself is not as relevant to early childhood education as I would like, and so far has not been as stimulating and engaging as I found it to be last year. Yesterday morning there was a keynote address by the man who inspired the movie Fly Away Home. Who knows what this has to do with education, but at least the title of the talk did not have a colon in it (ie: Unpacking [Fill in Big Words Here]: The Implications of Big Word and Big Word on Big Word). I have my last workshop tomorrow and the presenter is a singer/storyteller. It lists "laughing" in the handout under what participants will do in the workshop, and you can't go wrong with that.

"You grow, you grow, you grow and then you die"

This is what 3 year old Charlie announced to the class during morning meeting after I explained to them why I keep drawings, photos, notes and observations about them in an obese binder (so they and I can see how much they are growing).

Meet My Students, Part III

Only a few more. . .
The Bulldozer enjoys any number of not so endearing past times including, drinking water that is blackened with paint from dirty brushes, throwing his body on other children or the table, throwing his body on the table and wriggling around until everything on the table is on the floor, and dumping everything on the floor which on one occassion most unfortunately included an 800 piece lego set. His aunt, who raises him, is truly an idiot. While discussing Refiloe's infantile speech (this child is seriously delayed) the aunt said "he doesn't know how to speak because I am too busy to talk to him." When I asked what this child spends most of the waking hours he is not in school doing, she said, "He watches wrestling on TV."

Roshina, from Pakistan, used to be inseparable from her denim hand bag and animal print sunglasses. Thankfully, I have weaned her to the point where these items can rest on her hook in the hallway without causing a major crisis.

Imogene is one half of the German, Chinese, Malaysian twins. She is trilingual (German, English and Cantonese) with scarily advanced fine motor skills.

Ellen is Imogene's partner in crime and is discernible from her sister by the unrulier hair and mischievous grin.

If Toloana wasn't such a happy, oblivious child, I might find her rather annoying sometimes. Whenever I sit next to her, I end up with bruises on my thigh the exact size and shape of her small, pointy elbows. She also begins every sentence with "I want my. . ." so "May I go to the bathroom" becomes "I want my toilet" and so on.

Tlotliso is all but silent, although his parents tell me he is a chatterbox at home and gets into all kinds of trouble. I've seen the latter but I'm still waiting for the former. The only occasion in which I heard a steady stream of words come out of his mouth was when I gave him a simple direction in Sesotho (take this chair) but I couldn't catch a word of his response.

Katleho is so quiet and sweet and easy that half of the time, I forget he exists. And whenever I am writing about the children or need to recall a list of their names in my head, I always get up to 20, then search my brain before I remember "Katleho!" Sorry buddy, you're last again but I still love you.



Random Funny Stories:

The other day Sean was sitting on my lap and my hands were resting on his lap. His shorts felt disconcertingly damp, but then again, we had just been drinking water and he isn't all that coordinated. I pointed and said, "What's that?" He looked down and said, "Um, that's my penis." Oh child, I was asking what's on your pants, not in them. . . at least no one entered the room halfway through the exchange.

Chinzera brought a yellow plastic gun to school one morning and amused himself by pointing it at his friends and whispering gun shot noises. Charlie, of the pseudo neo-hippie parents, glanced at the gun and said, "Hey, I like your leaf blower." This very same leaf blower fan had a major accident on the playground (which was during my planning period). He romoved the soiled clothing, trod in his feces and proceeded to continue playing, while trailing his excrement around campus. I spotted him from the window wearing nothing but a yellow rain slicker!

Meet My Students, Part II

I introduced you to some of my students in my last post, and thought I should get around to the next batch. I’ll start with the students I had last year. (And no, they did not fail preschool. Because the roster wasn’t full in August, the school admitted newly-turned three year olds in January. Now they are three-and-a-half and so not yet old enough for the next class).

Some of you may remember Sean, the main character of a gross anecdote I e-mailed upon request, its contents too graphic for me to post on the blog. Thank goodness he is now fully toilet trained. Sean is like a puppy, a golden-haired, yappy, giggly, nuzzly puppy boy. Today he told me, "Ms. Sawa, I was dwiving to kindermusik and I saw you wunning. You were wunning on the on the woad. You should wun on the gwass!" So busted.

I wouldn’t know if Janelle is a night owl, but her morning time grumpiness is more fitting for a teenager than a three year old. She is blindly affectionate and encounters with her often leave me feeling border-line violated. Physically she is the epitome of a Dutch girl stereotype and her father is so tall that on family reading night, while reading the book Actual Size by Steven Jenkins (a non-fiction picture book of size superlatives in the animal kingdom), I had him stand on his toes with his arms over his head to depict the approximate height of an Alaskan brown bear.

Esther is actually just old enough to move to the next class but since her family is moving to Tanzania today
:( and she would only be in the class a month, her mother preferred she stay with me. I spent a good portion of last year holding this crying, mopey child. This year she was far more independent and I kind of missed the snuggling (and her constant German babbling before she sucked it up and tried speaking in English).

Jenna is South African by birth and has the lovliest New Zealand accent she picked up from her adoptive mother. She is just about the happiest, easiest, squishiest child, and it's just my luck that I only have her in my class a short time while her mother is working here temporarily from South Africa.

Palesa is the baby of the school and she knows it. She’s the youngest, tiniest, most awkwardly running person on campus. No one can resist scooping her up, especially when she cries . . .and especially the particularly heartbreaking variety of weeping in which tears roll soundlessly down her cheeks.

Kevin’s crying is a little more resistible. He prefers an ear-splitting screech to using words. His language development is quite delayed so it’s understandable, and he’s obviously used to having his screeches responded to at home. When he’s not screeching, he has the smiliest face. . . and some pretty cool robot-esque dance moves.

Kabelo: Class Biter.

Back to Maseru: Shaving the Proverbial Armpits

There is no painless way to return to the 9-5 (by which  I mean 7-3) life in a dusty city after two months mucking around barefoot, off the grid and drunk on sunshine. But a quick way to switch gears is to invite a little panic into that window in which you've already unpacked but haven't put anything away. And for me that was to look at my class roster.

TWENTY-ONE THREE YEAR OLDS.

TWENTY-ONE THREE YEAR OLDS SPEAKING 12 LANGUAGES.

Do you have any idea of the volume of separation anxiety tears 21 children can produce? Do you have any idea the gallons of nervous pee just waiting to flood tights, jeans and floor? (The number of accidents are, for obvious reasons, far greater at the beginning of the school year, and I swear I can see the evidence on the mottled brown carpet like rings on a tree). Do you have any idea how much confusion can ensue when you put 21 children who have never been to school before in one room? And the way the confusion multiplies when there is .5 different languages per capita and I speak fluently a grand total of one?

Although my neighbor and colleague teaches fifth grade, she understood enough to buy me a back to school gift of a botle of Amarula (a South African liqueur). This after I asked her, "screwdrivers are part of a balanced breakfast, right?"

Dressed in polka dots and red maryjanes, I hung name tags around my students' necks like leis at a Hawaiian airport. I shook dozens of parental hands and collected their dutiful offerings of lunchboxes, spare changes of clothing and epipens. Then I smiled them out of the room and met my new students.

Charlie is the obvious product of having two cool parents and three years of overhearing conversations peppered with SAT words. One of his classic moves is to start immediately screaming my name at any given point he can't see me. Then when he spots me, he runs over, head butts me in the crotch and says, "Pop! I'm right here!" He is more than a little dramatic, and the day after his best friend went away, he threw himself on the dusty ground of the playground, clawing at the earth and bellowing her name, "BELLA! BELLA!," in what ammounted to an unintentional farce of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Rebecca is a tiny Kenyan who is fiesty as hell. She hits, spits and giggles as if her life depends on it. She even cries with gusto and after vigorous weeping sessions she is known to vomit, a quirk made all the more memorable to her teachers by the vibrantly colored yogurt drinks she consumes each day at snack time.

Assefa comes from Ethiopia and her striking beauty is made that much more startling by her faint unibrow. Her English is unintelligible and she doesn't understand a damn word I say, but the way she enthusiastically responds "ok!" to everything nonetheless has a irresistable appeal amidst the general preschooler rebellion.

Alpa is . . . well, I pulled the mother aside one day and asked, seriously and without exaggeration, if her child ever sits down. . .

Isabella's manly Italian accent is shockingly inconguous to the sweet, blond pigtails. She was fine the first day until her 8 year old brother stomped over to my class midway through the morning to check up on her. In his uncannily identical voice he told her, "You are a big girl, you must be brave," followed by an affectionate shove that sent her sprawling, and the rest of the day wailing and calling for him despite the fact that he knocked her flat. These days she is my faithful shadow. The first time she got picked up from school by a family friend, she refused to go with him, clinging to me, crying, "I don't want to go. I don't want to go. AHHHHHHHHHHH! I love you! I want to go with you!" I had to carry her kicking and screaming to the neighboring UN where he works, rushing past the guard as I didn't have the requisite passport on me, and place her apologetically in his car. Now she is more compliant thanks to a chocolatey bribe (from him, not me).

Chenzira is significantly quieter than the others. He likes to limit his vocal exertion by whispering, remaining silent, or contriving other ways to reduce his need to speak. Raised eyebrows, I've learned, means "yes."

It is Maria's personal philosophy that a kiss (or several) cures everything. One day after several disruptions during a book I was reading, I put the book on my lap and informed her that I was upset that she was not listening and disturbing the story for other children. Her eyes widened. "You are upset? Ms. Sara is upset, guys." She got up and walked toward me stepping on (inviting cries of pain) and stumbling over several children on the way, kissed my hand elaborately about a dozen times and said, "You're better, ok?" She sort of missed the point but how could I stay upset after that?

And that's  just a third of my students, not including the bulldozer who was suspended until a second assistant teacher could be hired. . .

Here's to nine more months of tears, kisses, giggles, pink vomit and happy (hopefully) chaos!

Jamboree

Moments after the farm owner picked me up from the bus station she said, “I have a shit load of watermelon that is going to go off pretty soon so you’ll probably be making a lot of jam.” Watermelon is my favorite food so the only thing better to me than an organic and freshly picked one is a shit load of them, and I hoped I would get to graze to satisfaction before jam-ifying them. Upon arriving at the farm I saw that indeed there was a shit load of watermelon, but there was an even bigger shit load of a larger melons, lighter and more monotone in color, and those were what would soon relocate to shelves of sanitized recycled jars. “These are the makatons,” Janet told me. “Makaton jam on toast is lekker.”



I asked her how to spell makaton and she shrugged saying, “I don’t know because they’re really called kafirlemoen (kaffir watermelon in English), but we’re not supposed to say that anymore. Makaton must be some Boer word but I don’t have a cookin’ clue what it means, fucking Boers.” Kaffir, if you are unaware is a derogatory South African term for a black person. And Boers, if you are unaware are the South African settlers of Dutch descent. Janet, white and of British descent, had pretty much something derogatory to say about every race, ethnic and cultural group in the country, including her own. It struck me as a bit incongruous to the crunchy organic lifestyle, but then again I could never figure out if she really hated everyone or if she just had a bizarre way of showing affection. And if you find the term “kaffir watermelon” nonsensical in addition to offensive, I learned that makaton is indigenous to the Karoo and was (maybe still is) traditionally grown as cow fodder. It is unbelievable tasteless; if you could turn water to a solid at room temperature, it would taste like makaton. So at the time the most sense I could make of the moniker is that at its christening, the melon was considered to be fit only for consumption by animals or black people. Although while googling around trying to find the correct spelling of makaton, I came across this blog posting which explains how (and somewhat why) there are several South African plants and animals whose names begin with “kaffir” and that it may be an (outdated) geographical description.

http://bornagainredneck.blogspot.com/2006/09/we-are-all-kafirs-now.html



Makatons are hard as rocks. Preparing them for their two day soak in a slaked lime solution was like being asked to remove the outer layer of a boulder with a vegetable peeler, hack it into attractive cubes and stab repeatedly with a fork (for maximum slaked lime penetration). The lime is meant to soften the melon and does so to no discernible degree. Perhaps makaton’s most amazing property is that despite the fact that I couldn’t taste a drop of sweetness in any granite-esque chunk I sampled, it managed to leave an unbelievably sticky residue on my hands, hair, clothes, the counter and the kitchen floor, which I tracked onto other floors via my sticky-squeaking sneakers.



Two days later I made makaton jam for eleven hours. Janet met me in the morning and instructed me to rinse the melons and use the lime solution to water the grass. Then she explained how to make the syrup I would cook the melon in. And with the sugar: water: ginger: melon ration in my head, a kitchen scale and a pen and scrap paper, I set to dealing with bucket after bucket of melon. It seemed simple enough; boil the sugar, water and ginger, then simmer the melon in it. When the melon chunks get soft, cool in steel bowls and dump the next batch went into the syrup pot.



Things seemed to go smoothly at first. The air in the kitchen turned cloying and steamy; the melon chunks were rectangular and browning. But then something strange started happening. The fruit turned brittle and the syrup began to bubble like a swamp in a 1950s horror movie. Attempts to stir the fruit with a ladle created boiling strings of sugar lava oozing all over the counter. Blobs fell off the ladle and solidified mid-drop, then snapped like icicles. I was fascinated and slightly wary as hot sugar causes the most horrific burns, worse than grease, worse than probably anything but steam. The syrup was no longer glossy and clear and the whole thing started to resemble a cesspool that froze over trapping animal dung mid-float. But, oh my, it was delicious! The melon chunks appeared fossilized but had a delightful caramelized crunch. The syrup, now toffee, was amber-like in its ability to capture pieces of ginger as it hardened. It was accidental home-made candy and I was in heaven.



BUT. It was not jam. It was the least jammy substance I could have possibly concocted with the given ingredients. Janet was out and she wouldn’t pick up her cell phone. I left the pot sitting to further congeal while waiting for her to appear before finally realizing she may not return anytime soon, so tried to extract the melon remains, toss them in a bowl, soak the pot and whip up a new patch of syrup. When Janet finally did come home she was aghast, yet bemused. She said the problem was water evaporating out of the syrup making the sugar content too high and causing it to crystallize. The problem was obvious enough as was the solution of adding more water after a certain period of cooking. On the other hand, I had been told to follow the ratios exactly and the subtext of “don’t fuck with it,” seem to bar the much needed replacement of water. Janet told me to chill. She salvaged what was salvageable and told me to chuck the rest (although I pocketed a few pieces of the “ruined” melon) and she started another pot on the stove.



As she measured a kilo of fruit, she noticed a white powder clinging to the melon. “Is this melon in lime or water she asked?” I told her it was lime and she cursed and started rinsing. Apparently this was not good. She put the melon in bowls of fresh water and my heart started pounding. Apparently this was what I was supposed to have done to the five kilograms of fruit I had already cooked (not including the one kilogram we had just thrown away). And apparently Janet didn’t know that I skipped this step. Janet is a mite volatile and I still had a few weeks left on the farm so for several long moments it seemed wise to keep my mouth shut. One kilo of ruined fruit was clearly forgivable but I doubted another five would be. Then I started to worry that the lime was poisonous, or that it would make the jam go bad inside the jars.



“Janet.” I tried to not let my voice wobble. “Why’s that melon soaking in water?” “To rinse the lime,” was her expected reply. “Ummm. I didn’t rinse the lime from any of the other melon.” My voice got quieter and more wobbly. “I didn’t know it needed to be rinsed.” Her voice was scarily calm. She said, “I know.” The only response I could come up with was “oh.” Then she said, “It was the first thing I told you to do.” It certainly wasn’t. I became more confident. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t know. Or maybe I didn’t hear you correctly. But what will happen to the jam?” She shrugged and told me consuming a large amount of lime isn’t healthy but this wouldn’t be enough to do anything bad to the jam or the people consuming it. I hadn’t breathed for about a minute. I exhaled and apologized and she told me not to worry about it. She told me I could rinse the rest of the melon and then dump the lime solution on the grass outside. When I picked up the bucket and started hauling it outside I remembered. She had told me to rinse the lime off the melon. It was the first thing she told me. “Shit,” I said. “I remember now.” I started to profusely apologize for my second jam screw up of the day and she laughed. When I returned from lime disposal feeling sufficiently foolish, Janet left me with the rest of the jam to finish.



As my first batch post-disaster softened in the late afternoon, I brought a sample to Janet. She was on the phone so I silently held it out to her and she pressed it with a finger. She smiled and mouthed “yes.” A little happy noise escaped from her throat. She must have startled the person on the other end of the line because she said, “No, it’s the WWOOFer lady. She had a dismal morning making kaffir watermelon jam. . .” It was well past dark by the time the sterilized jars had been packed with jam, de-bubbled, sealed and wiped down, and the sugar-encrusted pots and ladles were soaking in hot soapy water. The thought of standing at the stove one more minute seemed unnecessarily abusive so I ate a baked potato from the microwave and a persimmon for dinner. And, lucky for me, there was one linty piece of accidental melon candy in my pocket for dessert. It was delicious.