We have a lot of horses here in Lesotho. I thought it would make a good subject for a hands-on study and the children seemed to agree.
After some preliminary research on the children’s part (I love you school library), I took them to the Agricultural College for a field trip. My plan was to have them study horses in three different contexts of Basotho life: agriculture, law enforcement and recreation. My research was to scout out three appropriate field trip sites so one day the school bus driver took me to the Agricultural College and the Police Training College to set things up. (The third and impending field trip is to a pony riding center).
At the Agricultural College I was informed that they have no horses. How silly of me. Agricultural College have horses? This is Lesotho and that would make too much sense. As I was leaving disappointedly, the receptionist told me to check “livestock.” After further questioning, I deduced that there is an adjacent property to the Agricultural College that is in fact part of the Agricultural College, yet . . . See where I’m going here? Lesotho. Logic. Mutually exclusive.
I went to “Livestock.” I proposed the trip. They said, “We have one horse and camels.” I said, “Really? One horse? And camels?” I left. In the car the school bus driver who was chauffeuring me on these inquiries told me that the Agricultural College does have horses (plural) but that they are kept far away in a village. He said this place mainly does veterinary services. Vet! U turn! We went back. I asked if the vet would be able to talk to us. I was told to write a formal application on notebook paper with an official school stamp. The purpose of this piece of paper was to fill up a folder where it would be forgotten about to limit any possibility that the vet might be expecting us.
So began the first field trip of the academic year. I stared the indignant vet in the eye, told her my “application” was approved and between my steady, annoyed teacher gaze and the hopeful horse-loving eyes of the children, she agreed to talk to them about horse health.
My children asked great questions. Dr. Vet clearly is not used to talking to three-year-olds. Rebecca asked, “What happens if a horse falls down?” Dr. Vet said, “
What do you mean?” What do you mean what does she mean? She wants to know what happens when a horse falls down! I repeated Rebecca’s question, and somehow coming from an adult, she was able to respond. She started talking about plaster casts. Charlie raised his hand and said, “What if the horse needs four casts?” Dr. Vet said drew her finger across her throat. “We kill it.” (I’m all for honest answers, but could we tone down the gestures please?) Then Sean, with bodily functions perpetually on the brain asked, “Where does the horse pee and poo?” Dr. Vet and the animal caretaker stared blankly at each other until the caretaker pointed to a spot on the ground and said, “here.” He paused turned his head and pointed to another spot on the ground, “and here.” He continued scouting out droppings and urine puddles, “And here, and here, here, here, here. . .here. EVERYWHERE.” Sean was delighted.
Carefully watching where we stepped, we boarded the bus.
Take II. The Police Training College. At least they were expecting us here. We were assigned an officer and taken immediately to where they keep the horses. They let us into the paddock, locked the gate, and the officer disappeared into the stable. 28 horses bounded down the ramp into the paddock. I felt about a half dozen small hands reaching for mine. “Don’t worry I told them, they won’t come over here.” But they did, the officer nowhere in sight and the horses sniffing and nuzzling the children, nudging them with their noses and releasing their bladders much to Sean’s delight.
Not everyone was as pleased as Sean. About half of my 21 students immediately burst into tears and ran screaming to the gate, rattling the locked chains in hysteria. The rest of the children were all over the horses and loving it. I was trying to lure the criers back, even as the biggest horse of all breathed its hot sour breath in my face before chewing on my skirt. I was freaked out myself, but managed to lure all but two children back to the horses, including Tlotliso, who buried his snotty face in my hair and said, “I’m never coming back here again.” The horses are very well trained so the children were able to freely explore and when the officer reappeared he answered their questions with ease. We were up to our shins in mud and manure, which I consider a plus (for a preschool field trip, not in general). We gathered in the empty stable and learned among other horse facts, how to make bedding for a horse. It involves dried manure so Sean was of course ecstatic to learn about the process.
Then my scholarly little preschoolers scouted out places to sit and sketched their new equine friends with crayons. We finally said goodbye and thanked the officer with a rousing rendition of Yankee Doodle. He was perplexed but appreciative and really, who wouldn’t be?
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Three Weeks, Three Countries, Happy New Year
Sani Pass
Durban
Pretty little bird on a gigantic leaf
awesome bark
A lot of children, CiCi included, get lost at the beach on Christmas. A police officer saw us taking this photo and asked us if we think that's funny. I thought he was going to reprimand us, but then he started laughing and said, "yeah, it's pretty funny."
Nambia, Mostly Sand
desert beauty
ship wreck!
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The Gym
I said I would never join. I hate gyms. People who know that I run ask me if I run at the gym. The gym doesn’t even have a track. Only treadmills. And if you run on the roads you know that we say people who run on the treadmills are (gasp!) not real runners. Sure, they’re putting one foot in front of the other, and unlike in walking, there is a point in each stride where two feet are off the ground, but we generally think if you have legs and you’re not an astronaut in outer space, your running should happen on the pavement, grass, dirt or track, not some soulless, mechanized strip of rubber rotating round and round in front of a television or mirror or other miserable gym-goers doing the same thing and going nowhere.
But I signed up for the Comrades Marathon. At 89 kilometers (about 56 miles) it is an “ultra marathon,” more than twice the distance of a standard marathon (ex: New York, Boston or London marathons). It’s between Durban and Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. The race switches direction every year, which matters because it’s hilly. This year is a “down” run. What I’ve heard this means is that for at least a while you have no idea you’re running mostly down, because there seems to be quite a bit of uphill as well. Later on, when you have dozens of kilometers on your legs, and all the fatigue and lactic acid that come with it, you really start to go down which apparently “rips your legs apart.”
I’ve been told by Mike, the elusive running god of Maseru, going to the gym once or twice a week will . . . well I don’t think he made any exact promises but something about the race destroying me less. He’s run the Comrades about 20 times, and although I have yet to meet him, I do whatever he tells me. Although in this case, I had to get a few people to translate his e-mail which was written in gym-speak, a dialect of English I had never come across before. (And I later found out it indicated I should be lifting weights).
Two teachers smugly drove me over with them (smug because of all the times I refused their offers to join them saying that gyms in general and treadmills in particular embody everything wrong with the modern world.)
When I arrived at the gym, I asked reception something apparently very stupid, which was could I try the gym for a day and then sign up (pay)? In a way it was a silly request because I had already decided to join the gym and there is really only one gym in Maseru, but this is standard procedure in US (which I only know because of how many free trials I rejected over the years). Well, they were pretty dumbfounded that I wanted to enter the gym without paying, so I meekly insisted on at least a tour. Then when I tried to pay with a debit card they said they didn’t have the facilities to accept payment with a card. I asked them where the nearest ATM is and they told me to just pay another day (which was what I had asked to do in the first place- pay after my first day- but I didn’t remind them of that).
The gym is pristine and modern in a way that for a moment made me forget entirely that I am in Africa. This inspired a short-lived feeling of unbelievable relief followed by immediate guilt. The membership card was one of the aspects that most transported me back to America. It’s like a Charlie card (for those of you who frequent Boston public transportation), you don’t even have to swipe, just tap against the turnstile (without even removing it from your wallet). So when I enter the gym, at least I can pretend I’m descending into the Porter Square station with a bagel in hand (Massachusetts are stale, tasteless, ring-shaped rocks in comparison to New York, but at this point I’d take it gladly).
Once I got away without paying, they were displeased at my lack of lock (for the locker room) and sweat towel. My colleagues offered to share and then I was left with the task of tying up my long hair with no elastic or clip (and I couldn’t find anyone with a spare). I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal but I have a lot of hair and I ended up using a strapless bra (colleagues confirmed that worn in the hair, it no longer appears to be an undergarment). So I was off. They told me I couldn’t use the gym for my first three times without a trainer to show me how to use the machines. This was good because
My second trip back to the gym was rather unpleasant. I was first chastised by security for walking through the vehicle gate instead of the adjacent (and camouflaged) pedestrian gate, then by the receptionist for being five minutes late, and finally by the trainer for not remembering how to use the tricep machine. When I was finally on my own though, I couldn’t remember how to use most of the machines, or how to adjust them to my height. When I did figure out how to adjust them, I didn’t feel strong enough to actually pull out the pins and turn the screws, let alone use those machines to lift large amounts of weight. So I wandered around a bit aimlessly and picked out a guy who seemed to be doing the same stuff as me and watched him carefully so I could use the machines after him. Of course he was taller than me, so after he vacatred a machine, I tried to not forget what I was supposed to do as I struggled to compress the machines to their minimum size. At one point, I went to get a manager to help me adjust a machine and I noticed there were more working than usual and they were dressed in suits rather than the usual workout clothes. I started to approach one but he was so standoffish I turned around and headed to a foolproof machine I wouldn’t need help with. Later my neighbor told me that those “managers” were the king’s bodyguards, and that guy I was following around (or stalking as the bodyguards may have interpreted) was the King of Lesotho.
*Apparently this was really popular in the US about a year ago, but being here, I only ever heard of it a couple weeks ago.
But I signed up for the Comrades Marathon. At 89 kilometers (about 56 miles) it is an “ultra marathon,” more than twice the distance of a standard marathon (ex: New York, Boston or London marathons). It’s between Durban and Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. The race switches direction every year, which matters because it’s hilly. This year is a “down” run. What I’ve heard this means is that for at least a while you have no idea you’re running mostly down, because there seems to be quite a bit of uphill as well. Later on, when you have dozens of kilometers on your legs, and all the fatigue and lactic acid that come with it, you really start to go down which apparently “rips your legs apart.”
I’ve been told by Mike, the elusive running god of Maseru, going to the gym once or twice a week will . . . well I don’t think he made any exact promises but something about the race destroying me less. He’s run the Comrades about 20 times, and although I have yet to meet him, I do whatever he tells me. Although in this case, I had to get a few people to translate his e-mail which was written in gym-speak, a dialect of English I had never come across before. (And I later found out it indicated I should be lifting weights).
Two teachers smugly drove me over with them (smug because of all the times I refused their offers to join them saying that gyms in general and treadmills in particular embody everything wrong with the modern world.)
When I arrived at the gym, I asked reception something apparently very stupid, which was could I try the gym for a day and then sign up (pay)? In a way it was a silly request because I had already decided to join the gym and there is really only one gym in Maseru, but this is standard procedure in US (which I only know because of how many free trials I rejected over the years). Well, they were pretty dumbfounded that I wanted to enter the gym without paying, so I meekly insisted on at least a tour. Then when I tried to pay with a debit card they said they didn’t have the facilities to accept payment with a card. I asked them where the nearest ATM is and they told me to just pay another day (which was what I had asked to do in the first place- pay after my first day- but I didn’t remind them of that).
The gym is pristine and modern in a way that for a moment made me forget entirely that I am in Africa. This inspired a short-lived feeling of unbelievable relief followed by immediate guilt. The membership card was one of the aspects that most transported me back to America. It’s like a Charlie card (for those of you who frequent Boston public transportation), you don’t even have to swipe, just tap against the turnstile (without even removing it from your wallet). So when I enter the gym, at least I can pretend I’m descending into the Porter Square station with a bagel in hand (Massachusetts are stale, tasteless, ring-shaped rocks in comparison to New York, but at this point I’d take it gladly).
Once I got away without paying, they were displeased at my lack of lock (for the locker room) and sweat towel. My colleagues offered to share and then I was left with the task of tying up my long hair with no elastic or clip (and I couldn’t find anyone with a spare). I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal but I have a lot of hair and I ended up using a strapless bra (colleagues confirmed that worn in the hair, it no longer appears to be an undergarment). So I was off. They told me I couldn’t use the gym for my first three times without a trainer to show me how to use the machines. This was good because
- All the machines look identical.
- Most of the machines resemble torture devices (the kind that crush you to death or tear your limbs apart) and I was naturally terrified.
- I couldn’t figure out what on earth to do with most of them despite the illustrated instructions.
- The leg press: you lie on your back with the weights attached to a platform you hold up with your toes directly over your face (with no safety catch, say a few inches above where your head is). I asked what happens if your feet slip off the far end of the platform and the trainer said, “Hospital!”
- Some chairs identical to the ones in my gynecologist’s office but with weights instead of speculums.
- Abdominal things (I’m pretty sure they are not machines because they have no moving parts) that I am obviously too short for and that left me dangling precariously upside down gripping on with the tips of my toes like a sloth.
- The scale. They scale is actually at the reception desk, not the locker room. In my experience (and my experience of gyms as you know is limited), weighing is something people generally like to do privately. So my gym machine tutorial awkwardly included the scale (because I don’t know my weight in kilograms which I was told I would have to enter on the bike). I don’t mind if people know what I weigh, I mind if they know that I care. (And I haven’t used the scale since my tutorial so I either really don’t care what I weigh or really mind that people think that I do and I can’t decide which).
My second trip back to the gym was rather unpleasant. I was first chastised by security for walking through the vehicle gate instead of the adjacent (and camouflaged) pedestrian gate, then by the receptionist for being five minutes late, and finally by the trainer for not remembering how to use the tricep machine. When I was finally on my own though, I couldn’t remember how to use most of the machines, or how to adjust them to my height. When I did figure out how to adjust them, I didn’t feel strong enough to actually pull out the pins and turn the screws, let alone use those machines to lift large amounts of weight. So I wandered around a bit aimlessly and picked out a guy who seemed to be doing the same stuff as me and watched him carefully so I could use the machines after him. Of course he was taller than me, so after he vacatred a machine, I tried to not forget what I was supposed to do as I struggled to compress the machines to their minimum size. At one point, I went to get a manager to help me adjust a machine and I noticed there were more working than usual and they were dressed in suits rather than the usual workout clothes. I started to approach one but he was so standoffish I turned around and headed to a foolproof machine I wouldn’t need help with. Later my neighbor told me that those “managers” were the king’s bodyguards, and that guy I was following around (or stalking as the bodyguards may have interpreted) was the King of Lesotho.
*Apparently this was really popular in the US about a year ago, but being here, I only ever heard of it a couple weeks ago.
Monday, December 14, 2009
A Different Kind of Culture Shock
Last week, I went for the first time to the school librarian’s house. She is a good colleague and friend. We share many of the same incompetencies (swimming, driving, whistling) and one great passion (books). And other than swapping book recommendations and bad day stories, our interactions generally revolve around her trying to feed me or find me a “suitable boy” (She even lent me a book by the title, followed by Born Confused about an Indian girl from Jersey who falls in love with an NYU boy- what she was suggesting, I have no idea . . .when her husband heard of her plans he made me a fictitious J Date profile which initially inspired my anger and then a good laugh). While the afternoon early childhood program (my baby) at the school gets off to a glacial start, I head into the library after lunch and assist her in her various duties. So I spend a lot of time with her. Her husband has frequently acted as a default chauffeur, a task he gladly undertakes for the pleasure of watching me (and capturing on film) struggle to open the sliding minivan door against the steep slope of my driveway. I also taught her niece, and frequently take yoga class with her father-in-law. I have been the recipient of many plastic containers of Indian food left over from family gatherings and Indian clothes that she thinks I’ll fit into. But oddly, I have never been inside her house, where she lives in addition to her husband and baby, her in-laws and the niece who spends so much time there she might as well live there.
Last week the niece moved with her mother to Malawi and I wanted to say goodbye to if not a favorite student, certainly one of my biggest fans. This happened to coincide with a night I was meeting her neighbor, to discuss plans to travel to Namibia later this month. I thought it would be fairly simple to pop in, say hello, say goodbye and head next door to pore over Lonely Planet guides.
It was dark and raining, there were no streetlights and the taxi had no headlights. My homemade map was fairly useless under these conditions, but once the driver realized that I figured out he had no clue where we were going and that he didn’t understand a word I was saying, he grabbed my map, and while steering the index finger of his left hand studied it upside down, nodding and swerving all over the road. I snatched my map back from him and he drove me to Leseli Flats, a compound inhabited mainly by expats. This was not my destination and I started saying “dirt road” over and over again. I pointed at the road we were on “good road, good road,” and “Please, I want a bad road. With dirt and rocks.” Miraculously we got there, and their dog didn’t eat me as I ran up the rain-soaked driveway.
I told them I could only stay about ten minutes, which was more than enough time to rile up the 2 year old daughter and 4 year old niece by doing absolutely nothing but being there. Of course, the first thing I was asked as I got in the door was if I ate dinner. It was about 9 o’ clock, so of course I had. I emphasized that this dinner was very big and recently consumed when I saw the food-pushing gleam in the eyes of the women of the house. “Good,” I was told as various cookies and crackers were shoved at me. When I gathered my things at the predetermined 10 minutes after arrival, I was told, “We are making you some vegetarian food. It will be ready in about 15 minutes.”
At this point, I was very late for my next meeting. And the women kept going back and forth to the kitchen doing something that looked elaborate. So I continued to rile up the children and fret about the time. The husband, sensing my White Rabbit of Wonderland anxiety, suggested we call the neighbor over to eat with me but the women stamped their feet and said there would not be enough food. He agreed and turned to me and said, “Don’t worry, he’s Indian, he’ll understand that we have to feed you before we let you go.” And before I knew what was happening, he had called him up and asked for my impending lateness to be excused. The phone was handed to me and a voice not at all amused on the other end asked how much longer I’d be. I posed this question to my captors and as a chorus of “15 minutes” rang out, I cupped the receiver and said, “Ten minutes. Max.” At last the tablecloth on the coffee table was changed, the table shoved toward me and bowls and pots and plates of food were carried out. There were dosas and chutneys, some bread that looked like Ethiopian injera, various vegetables and an entire melon. Twelve different dishes in all. They looked at me expectantly. As I waited for the others to sit down, they said, “Eat, eat!” “I’ll wait for you,” I told them. They shook their heads at me and cast identical looks my way that said, “Poor, dumb American.” “We have already eaten.”
Last week the niece moved with her mother to Malawi and I wanted to say goodbye to if not a favorite student, certainly one of my biggest fans. This happened to coincide with a night I was meeting her neighbor, to discuss plans to travel to Namibia later this month. I thought it would be fairly simple to pop in, say hello, say goodbye and head next door to pore over Lonely Planet guides.
It was dark and raining, there were no streetlights and the taxi had no headlights. My homemade map was fairly useless under these conditions, but once the driver realized that I figured out he had no clue where we were going and that he didn’t understand a word I was saying, he grabbed my map, and while steering the index finger of his left hand studied it upside down, nodding and swerving all over the road. I snatched my map back from him and he drove me to Leseli Flats, a compound inhabited mainly by expats. This was not my destination and I started saying “dirt road” over and over again. I pointed at the road we were on “good road, good road,” and “Please, I want a bad road. With dirt and rocks.” Miraculously we got there, and their dog didn’t eat me as I ran up the rain-soaked driveway.
I told them I could only stay about ten minutes, which was more than enough time to rile up the 2 year old daughter and 4 year old niece by doing absolutely nothing but being there. Of course, the first thing I was asked as I got in the door was if I ate dinner. It was about 9 o’ clock, so of course I had. I emphasized that this dinner was very big and recently consumed when I saw the food-pushing gleam in the eyes of the women of the house. “Good,” I was told as various cookies and crackers were shoved at me. When I gathered my things at the predetermined 10 minutes after arrival, I was told, “We are making you some vegetarian food. It will be ready in about 15 minutes.”
At this point, I was very late for my next meeting. And the women kept going back and forth to the kitchen doing something that looked elaborate. So I continued to rile up the children and fret about the time. The husband, sensing my White Rabbit of Wonderland anxiety, suggested we call the neighbor over to eat with me but the women stamped their feet and said there would not be enough food. He agreed and turned to me and said, “Don’t worry, he’s Indian, he’ll understand that we have to feed you before we let you go.” And before I knew what was happening, he had called him up and asked for my impending lateness to be excused. The phone was handed to me and a voice not at all amused on the other end asked how much longer I’d be. I posed this question to my captors and as a chorus of “15 minutes” rang out, I cupped the receiver and said, “Ten minutes. Max.” At last the tablecloth on the coffee table was changed, the table shoved toward me and bowls and pots and plates of food were carried out. There were dosas and chutneys, some bread that looked like Ethiopian injera, various vegetables and an entire melon. Twelve different dishes in all. They looked at me expectantly. As I waited for the others to sit down, they said, “Eat, eat!” “I’ll wait for you,” I told them. They shook their heads at me and cast identical looks my way that said, “Poor, dumb American.” “We have already eaten.”
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Up For Grabs
The first time my three-year-old neighbor Tamar grabbed my breast and said, “mine,” I thought it was just an extension of our typical conversations (she grabs hold of my necklace, glasses, headphones, etc and says, "mine.") But recently, she’s gotten a bit bolder, and recently managed to cram her chubby arm down the high, snug neck of my t-shirt. As I struggled to extract it without tearing my top or dislocating her shoulder, I said, “What are you doing in there?!” “Eat it!” she replied, “eat it!”
I assured Tamar that I am not a vending machine, a cow or her mother. “I have no milk,” I told her. “There is nothing in there for you.” She regarded me suspiciously. Betty, her mother assured me that she no longer breastfeeds, but then added that, “Sometimes Tamar sneaks it.” For goodness sakes, it’s not a cookie, it’s your flesh! How can someone sneakily suck fluid from your body? Well, breastfeeding here is not like being served in a restaurant, it’s more like a buffet and as soon as the babies are old enough to grasp, they help themselves.
Then Betty says, “I tell her, ‘Don’t drink that, you will get sick!’” “‘Sick?’ I asked her. “No, breast milk is good for children.” So Betty explains to me that since she doesn’t breast feed regularly, she's afraid the milk gets sour inside her body. Although I have no personal experience to draw from, I told her that sounds pretty impossible. But we were getting off topic so I just asked her to please reiterate to Tamar that I don’t have milk on tap.
Here is Lesotho, children breastfeed until a much older age than they do in the states. I think (for HIV negative mothers) this is a good thing. It’s free, nutritious and comforting. In Lesotho where formula is unaffordable for many, HIV positive mothers are recommended to breastfeed babies until they are 6 months old provided that they don’t give the babies any other food or drink. For some reason, exclusive breastfeeding is a much lower risk than breastfeeding along with giving other food and drink for HIV transmission.
When a mother no longer has milk, the nipple is employed as a sort of a pacifier. In fact, any woman’s nipples, mother or not, are fair game for this purpose. I learned this fairly early in my Lesotho teaching career. When Basotho students cried, I would pick them up and they would immediately go for it, their little white teeth shining like vampire fangs. Hence, “Don’t do that” was one of the first Sesotho phrases that I learned.
So one day, I’m walking around campus, the rest of my body preceded by my milkless communal pacifiers, and a girl in another class asked me if I would like a sticker. She had brought them to school to celebrate her 7th birthday. I said, “of course.” She then asked me if I would like two, and if she should put them on me. I regrettably answered in the affirmative to both questions. I should have known better. The precision and symmetry of her sticker placement could not have been more unfortunate, and the stickers themselves were starbursts emblazoned with the word, “PARTY!”
And I wore them the entire day.
I assured Tamar that I am not a vending machine, a cow or her mother. “I have no milk,” I told her. “There is nothing in there for you.” She regarded me suspiciously. Betty, her mother assured me that she no longer breastfeeds, but then added that, “Sometimes Tamar sneaks it.” For goodness sakes, it’s not a cookie, it’s your flesh! How can someone sneakily suck fluid from your body? Well, breastfeeding here is not like being served in a restaurant, it’s more like a buffet and as soon as the babies are old enough to grasp, they help themselves.
Then Betty says, “I tell her, ‘Don’t drink that, you will get sick!’” “‘Sick?’ I asked her. “No, breast milk is good for children.” So Betty explains to me that since she doesn’t breast feed regularly, she's afraid the milk gets sour inside her body. Although I have no personal experience to draw from, I told her that sounds pretty impossible. But we were getting off topic so I just asked her to please reiterate to Tamar that I don’t have milk on tap.
Here is Lesotho, children breastfeed until a much older age than they do in the states. I think (for HIV negative mothers) this is a good thing. It’s free, nutritious and comforting. In Lesotho where formula is unaffordable for many, HIV positive mothers are recommended to breastfeed babies until they are 6 months old provided that they don’t give the babies any other food or drink. For some reason, exclusive breastfeeding is a much lower risk than breastfeeding along with giving other food and drink for HIV transmission.
When a mother no longer has milk, the nipple is employed as a sort of a pacifier. In fact, any woman’s nipples, mother or not, are fair game for this purpose. I learned this fairly early in my Lesotho teaching career. When Basotho students cried, I would pick them up and they would immediately go for it, their little white teeth shining like vampire fangs. Hence, “Don’t do that” was one of the first Sesotho phrases that I learned.
So one day, I’m walking around campus, the rest of my body preceded by my milkless communal pacifiers, and a girl in another class asked me if I would like a sticker. She had brought them to school to celebrate her 7th birthday. I said, “of course.” She then asked me if I would like two, and if she should put them on me. I regrettably answered in the affirmative to both questions. I should have known better. The precision and symmetry of her sticker placement could not have been more unfortunate, and the stickers themselves were starbursts emblazoned with the word, “PARTY!”
And I wore them the entire day.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
There's Something On Your Floor
Last night the yogi (who holds free sessions in my classroom) walked in and said, "There's something on your floor." He said it like some pieces of trash fell on the floor and randomly arranged themselves into geometrical figures. Nope, I'm just trying to address one of our math learning targets with good ole masking tape. I believe we are only responsible for teaching circle (the one shape I failed to create with tape), square and triangle, but I figured we might as well throw down a rectangle, diamond, trapezoid and hexagon since these shapes routinely crop up in our toys.
Anyway, I say "I believe" that is the learning target because when I arrived at the school, my curriculum was about three lines long that contained bullet points so random that more cohesion could have been achieved had the entries been picked out of a hat.
This was fine with me, since I don't like cookie-cutter themes (pumpkins in October, snowflakes in January). I mean, I don't like them anyway, but especially when we use northern hemisphere guides in Southern Africa (if it's gonna snow, it certainly won't snow in January). I don't like drilling animal sounds into kids' heads (Do pigs really say oink?! Really?!). Who decides three-year olds need to memorize made-up sounds of farm animals?
So last year, we did class projects on topics the children were interested in: insects, cars, ocean life, gardening and construction. And the literacy and math and motor skills fit in in the contexts of these explorations and the normal routine.
Then the Middle States Association scrutinized our school for accreditation and decided that we needed to rewrite the curriculum. So in a blur of head aches and more salt water than I'd like to admit, my colleagues and I pumped out a cumbersome, hurried document. And for the most part, it has been totally useless to me.
Now, in a more reflective and methodical way, we are rewriting the curriculum again, to make it something we (gasp!) actuall use! In fact, the students are going home early today to give us some more time for writing in the afternoon.
But for now, here's what we've been up to. After the children settled in, we did Around the World with Preschool, which involved jumping in paint and leaving our footprints on our home countries on the class map, Basotho dancing, Dutch Christmas cookies, Indian sweets, Chinese spring rolls, German songs and fairytales, Maori music, learning Swahili words, singing Woody Guthrie, making lots of flags and, as always, reading lots of books. We concluded by reading How to Make and Apple Pie and See the World, and of course made our own pie. After that, we focused on feelings and emotions and I learned many interesting facts about my students, like Charlie gets sad when a dinosaur bites him and Isabella is happy when she smells cake. This sort of fizzled out, or rather became an on-going project and we are now becoming storytellers and puppeteers. In between donning sock and paper bag puppets on our hands and performing many an Eric Carle tale on a make-shift stage, we have been experimenting with color-mixing. I first tried to do this by dying water and oil (ex: making red water and blue oil). I figured when shaken together in a jar, the new color would form, and then the colors would separate out again so the children could repeatedly see how the primary colors combine to make other colors. This didn't work out so well because dyes that are soluble in water are not in oil. I tried several times, but all I succeeded in doing was coating my skin in yellow food coloring which made me look jaundiced. I settled for dealing only with colored water and have resigned myself to the fact that I will be mixing batch after batch of colored water until my little scientists get bored.
This, is necessary preparation for the annual tie-dye project, the day (when after a week of rubber-banding t-shirts) children squat around vats of steaming dye in their underwear, dipping in their white shirts to create hippie-esque materpieces and go home with their skin stained all the colors of the rainbow.
On Being Thankful, and Then a Little Less Thankful
This was my first African Thanksgiving. I don’t count last year, because I did nothing remotely Thanksgiving-y. No orange vegetables or pie or Turkey Trot or seeing people you haven’t seen in a while or a parade of any sort. This year, I was invited to a small dinner at the U.S. ambassador’s house: he and his wife, their daughter (my colleague), the ambassador’s brother (who happens to be the ambassador to Botswana), his wife, and two single diplomats.
I had my first feast of the day at a café over the border with the school librarian and her family (including her niece, my former student). I had a huge glass of a fuchsia berry juice and a delicious breakfast of warm bread and good-smelling things and green things and then the five of us crowded around a fat slice of chocolate truffle cake. I bought my own loaf of bread on the way out the door, which I tore off chunks of throughout the afternoon, while baking a sugar-dusted nectarine tart and goopy brownies (spraying powdered sugar and liquid chocolate on shirts I changed in quick succession after ruining for the night, three in total).
I was unprepared how very weird it is to have Thanksgiving with someone else’s family. No matter how wonderful they are, everything they do just seems wrong. (What is this cranberry sauce that appears to contain actual whole cranberries? Why isn't it a gelatinous cylinder that maintans this perfect shape after sliding out of the can? Where are all the noisy children and sullen teenagers and uncles who drop things and old ladies who down handfuls fo pills with sparkling grape juice? How can you have a white tablecloth? You should settle for a more practical and pessimestic burgundy to anticipate red wine spills. Why isn't anyone fighting? And where is my dad's yams with technicolor marshamallows depicting pilgrim scenes and my mom's laugh rattling the dishes in the china closet? It was wonderful, but not the same as being home.
The post-meal food coma was at least the same. I had a nice refresher at the bathroom sink though, when I turned on the faucet, and unprepared for the splendid water pressure at diplomatic residences, thoroughly doused my chest. The water splotches were so dramatic that when I arrived back at the table I felt compelled to interrupt the conversation and explain my appearance, which was quickly one-upped by an embassy security person enthralling us with tales of assisting autopsies, being bombed, her new taser and vivid descriptions of executions. Direct Thanksgiving Table Quote: “What you couldn’t see on the televised version was that they actually shot him before they beheaded him. So, like, he was already dead when they started to cut the head off. And that gurgling sound you could hear--”
She was cut-off at this point by a more weak-stomached dinner guest and the topic of conversation changed abruptly (to gallstones, if you’re interested), much like I’m going to do right now.
I spent the majority of the next three days in the Chinese internet café. I had planned to hole myself up in my classroom for the break, to tackle pages of to-do lists full of stressful entries, things related to grad school, licensure, jobs, and words like transcript, Praxis, International Baccalaureate, Krakow and Kampala were crashing around in my head, when I realized the entire school had no internet.
And so, I ambled to the internet café, stopping en route to purchase some chocolate. I am not a fan of this establishment, namely because of the hostility of everyone working there. Secondly, I don’t like how the computers put weird things on my flash drive. Don’t ask me what these things are. And if you know, please don’t tell me. Thirdly, I don’t like paying for things that come free with my job; they can’t give us health care, but they sure don’t mind if we want to work weekends! I don’t even like computers to begin with and I especially don’t like a room full of them and stressed out people tapping away on them.
Day two I was there, a Mosotho couple was seated at the monitor next to me. Their baby was at another computer nearby, sliding a mouse back and forth across the table, hypnotizing herself with the psychedelic swirls the cursor made across the Facebook homepage. Her parents were doing something else, or not doing something else, much to their frustration. They called over one of the men who works there and the following conversation, which eventually escalated to shouting ensued.
Computer Confused Man: Can you help me [fill in the blank, I sort of missed this part].
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: No, you should know how to use a computer.
Computer Confused Man: Yeah, but can you please show me how to [fill in the blank]
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: No I’m busy!
Computer Confused Man: You are too busy to run your business?!
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: IT’S NOT MY JOB TO HELP YOU!!!
Computer Confused Man’s wife started begging the guy to help her husband, which he eventually conceded to do with a great deal of audible sighing and banging on the keyboard and mouse.
At least my eavesdropping prepared me for a quieter but equally unhelpful experience I was about to have.
Me: What are your hours tomorrow?
Girl at the Desk: Today or yesterday?
Me: No, tomorrow.
Girl at the Desk: TO-DAY or YES-TER-DAY?
Me: Um . . .
Girl at the Desk: Today?
Me: No.
Girl at the Desk: Yesterday?
Me: Sure.
[A long conversation in Chinese ensues between Girl at the Desk and another woman across the room].
Girl at the Desk: 8-6:30.
Me: Great, thanks.
I arrived the next day shortly after noon and asked for two hours on a computer.
Different Girl at the Desk: No.
Me: . . .
Different Girl at the Desk: We close at 1:00. You can have 45 minutes.
Me: [arrrrrrgggggggg]
So the Girl at the Desk really was telling me the hours for the day before, but I didn’t think she could possibly believe that someone would actually ask, “What are your hours yesterday?”
Back at work now, where the internet is obviously working again.
I had my first feast of the day at a café over the border with the school librarian and her family (including her niece, my former student). I had a huge glass of a fuchsia berry juice and a delicious breakfast of warm bread and good-smelling things and green things and then the five of us crowded around a fat slice of chocolate truffle cake. I bought my own loaf of bread on the way out the door, which I tore off chunks of throughout the afternoon, while baking a sugar-dusted nectarine tart and goopy brownies (spraying powdered sugar and liquid chocolate on shirts I changed in quick succession after ruining for the night, three in total).
I was unprepared how very weird it is to have Thanksgiving with someone else’s family. No matter how wonderful they are, everything they do just seems wrong. (What is this cranberry sauce that appears to contain actual whole cranberries? Why isn't it a gelatinous cylinder that maintans this perfect shape after sliding out of the can? Where are all the noisy children and sullen teenagers and uncles who drop things and old ladies who down handfuls fo pills with sparkling grape juice? How can you have a white tablecloth? You should settle for a more practical and pessimestic burgundy to anticipate red wine spills. Why isn't anyone fighting? And where is my dad's yams with technicolor marshamallows depicting pilgrim scenes and my mom's laugh rattling the dishes in the china closet? It was wonderful, but not the same as being home.
The post-meal food coma was at least the same. I had a nice refresher at the bathroom sink though, when I turned on the faucet, and unprepared for the splendid water pressure at diplomatic residences, thoroughly doused my chest. The water splotches were so dramatic that when I arrived back at the table I felt compelled to interrupt the conversation and explain my appearance, which was quickly one-upped by an embassy security person enthralling us with tales of assisting autopsies, being bombed, her new taser and vivid descriptions of executions. Direct Thanksgiving Table Quote: “What you couldn’t see on the televised version was that they actually shot him before they beheaded him. So, like, he was already dead when they started to cut the head off. And that gurgling sound you could hear--”
She was cut-off at this point by a more weak-stomached dinner guest and the topic of conversation changed abruptly (to gallstones, if you’re interested), much like I’m going to do right now.
I spent the majority of the next three days in the Chinese internet café. I had planned to hole myself up in my classroom for the break, to tackle pages of to-do lists full of stressful entries, things related to grad school, licensure, jobs, and words like transcript, Praxis, International Baccalaureate, Krakow and Kampala were crashing around in my head, when I realized the entire school had no internet.
And so, I ambled to the internet café, stopping en route to purchase some chocolate. I am not a fan of this establishment, namely because of the hostility of everyone working there. Secondly, I don’t like how the computers put weird things on my flash drive. Don’t ask me what these things are. And if you know, please don’t tell me. Thirdly, I don’t like paying for things that come free with my job; they can’t give us health care, but they sure don’t mind if we want to work weekends! I don’t even like computers to begin with and I especially don’t like a room full of them and stressed out people tapping away on them.
Day two I was there, a Mosotho couple was seated at the monitor next to me. Their baby was at another computer nearby, sliding a mouse back and forth across the table, hypnotizing herself with the psychedelic swirls the cursor made across the Facebook homepage. Her parents were doing something else, or not doing something else, much to their frustration. They called over one of the men who works there and the following conversation, which eventually escalated to shouting ensued.
Computer Confused Man: Can you help me [fill in the blank, I sort of missed this part].
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: No, you should know how to use a computer.
Computer Confused Man: Yeah, but can you please show me how to [fill in the blank]
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: No I’m busy!
Computer Confused Man: You are too busy to run your business?!
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: IT’S NOT MY JOB TO HELP YOU!!!
Computer Confused Man’s wife started begging the guy to help her husband, which he eventually conceded to do with a great deal of audible sighing and banging on the keyboard and mouse.
At least my eavesdropping prepared me for a quieter but equally unhelpful experience I was about to have.
Me: What are your hours tomorrow?
Girl at the Desk: Today or yesterday?
Me: No, tomorrow.
Girl at the Desk: TO-DAY or YES-TER-DAY?
Me: Um . . .
Girl at the Desk: Today?
Me: No.
Girl at the Desk: Yesterday?
Me: Sure.
[A long conversation in Chinese ensues between Girl at the Desk and another woman across the room].
Girl at the Desk: 8-6:30.
Me: Great, thanks.
I arrived the next day shortly after noon and asked for two hours on a computer.
Different Girl at the Desk: No.
Me: . . .
Different Girl at the Desk: We close at 1:00. You can have 45 minutes.
Me: [arrrrrrgggggggg]
So the Girl at the Desk really was telling me the hours for the day before, but I didn’t think she could possibly believe that someone would actually ask, “What are your hours yesterday?”
Back at work now, where the internet is obviously working again.
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