Thank You Note to Maasai Mara, Kenya

Hey there, savannah, thanks for magnificent open spaces. After years of my field of vision being molested by the mountains, skyscrapers, jungles and split levels, plains are a valium for the eyes. Infinity is good.

Hiya rain. Thanks for lying on the windshield in psychedelic patterns, cleansing the dust from the air and quenching the thirst of brown grass. Good job.

Hey mama and baby cheetah, thanks for posing on that gray rock just there. Judging from the way your chests are heaving, I know you had to run really fast to make that photo shoot.

Giraffes, your walk rivals the open plains as a treat for the eyes. Please show emaciated supermodels that your strut is all the more magnificent with a big round belly.


Oh big buffalo, with your swooped up curly horns, you look like you should be 19th century judges. Oh baby buffalo, you are a delicious lion meal. I feel a little bad but it's the way of the food web.

Wow mama lions, crunching on them bones like they're string beans. And baby cubs, how do you manage to look so darling, even with your face smeared with blood? And thanks papa lions for having that nice sandy mane and yawning and stretching and sleeping again until I am lulled into a nap myself.

Wildebeasts, you are a little ugly (to be generous), but who am I to judge? Keep sprouting beards in weird places and keep being you. I'm sorry some of you got swept away by the river during your great migration. Evolution makes tasty snacks for the storks.

Mongoose (mongooses? mongeese?), thanks for eating snakes. Better you than me.

Swanky zebra, your whites are so dazzling I want to ask you for laundry tips.

Thanks dik-dik for revealing yourself to me. Ever since a pony-tailed peace corps volunteer in Mali told me I looked like "that fast and friendly big-eyed midget gazelle," I've wondered what you look like. I suppose I see the resemblance.

Thanks, shy children in open doorways. You are the cutest kind of child.

Maasai men and women, with your long legs, red cloth and braided earlobes (how the heck do you do that?), thanks for showing me around.

Love,
Sara


P.S. No thanks, bedbugs in my mattress at the Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi. The way you bit up my thighs is rather unholy.

P.P.S. I know I'm missing some pictures. . .I don't like taking pictures all that much since it's a waste of a beautiful view to spend it staring through a hole in the camera and you can find a better picture on google anyway.

The Itch

I should be working. Actually, I should be sleeping, but am forgoing it at the moment to get ahead on my online courses so I don't have to lug my textbooks to Kenya, where I will attend a conference next week.

Instead I am scratching my ankles. Even yes, while typing, I am rubbing my ankles against the legs of my chair.

Two nights ago, I passed out on my bed with King Leopold's Ghost on my face. I was REM cycling when I should have been pulling my mosquito net down and tucking it in tight to sleep peacefully under a halo of permethrin impregnated gauze. Instead I woke up to rows of flaming mosquito bites punctuated by smaller and itchier black fly bites. The little bastards are probably passed out bloated somewhere in a post Thanksgiving-eque coma. Although no longer feasting on my blood they continue to drive me out of my f***ing mind.

For the past 48 hours I have felt no emotion or sensation other than extreme itch. I am slathered in hydrocortisone and still I itch, even my throat, my eyelashes, my blood (which may or may not now be coursing with malaria) itches without pause for relief. Mark my words, I WILL drink DEET to make my entire body poisonous. And if I live to tell the tale I will say, "I showed YOU, evil insects!" Until then, I try to kill them as they land on my touch sensor lamp, but the the light flashes on and off with every swat until my eyeballs buzz.

I did find that hand sanitizer provides momentary but genuine relief from itching. This discovery came yesterday when two kindergarteners had major accidents involving upset tummies and far away toilets. In the post-disaster clean-up, I hand-sanitized up to my armpits and made my assistant do the same. No one gets sick before Kenya!

A First

I can no longer say that I have never bribed the police. It's a fact of life on this continent where police are corrupt and poor (here they haven't been paid in 2 months) and bureaucracy is impossible. Part of my reason for actually never giving a bribe is utter cluelessness. Before I got a residence permit in Lesotho, I was given constant trouble at the border trying to get another 30 days by leaving the country for five minutes and crossing back over on the other side. Sometimes an official would ask for "help." "Help with what?" I would ask. They would never ask for money outright and they would eventually give up in exasperation. On another occasion, one of the border police kept complaining how hot he was while gripping onto my passport. It was really code for "Give me money for a cold drink," but I just suggested he take off his jacket and get out of the sun. It was really months before I caught on. Who knows how many bribes I avoided paying by being completely stupid.

In Congo they are more up front. Last weekend while driving to a 20k run in the bush a friend tried to move some cones at a construction to site to squeeze by. A police officer shouted at him, "Don't you know this is Congo?! You can't just do whatever you want without a coke!" So he gave him a couple hundred Congolese francs, the cop moved the cones and the runners were on the road again.

Today in horrendous rush hour traffic, I set off grocery shopping for a camping trip with a couple of other teachers. We almost missed the turn, when a traffic cop started giving us wild, conflicting gestures. We stuttered for a bit trying to figure out what to do, and then decided to just keep driving straight. Although not illegal, it pissed the cop off. We stupidly made a u-turn and tried to enter the street from the other direction while the cop was probably shouting to all her colleagues, blue car full of white people! blue car full of white people! Two police stepped in front of us and stopped us. Police stop cars all the time. They don't need a reason to stop cars and they generally don't have a good one. They're bored and disgruntled and probably hungry. And since they are used in lieu of traffic lights, there are a lot of them. The rules of thumb for foreigners are leave windows up and doors locked. Show your license through the window glass. Don't speak French. Act like you understand nothing. If all else fails call your boss, call the Regional Security Officer of the US Embassy, call Post One US Marines.

We said "English" over and over again through a crack in the window and held the registration up to the glass. She asked for the driver's license and the guy driving said, "Shit, I changed my pants." This was bad. Pulled over by police and your driver's license is in the pocket of a pair of jeans crumpled on the floor. He shrugged in despair. We were told to roll down the window, we said "no." We were told to come to the police station, we said "hell no," and called our boss.

She concurred it was bad. She told us she would have to make phone calls.

We stared straight ahead in a moronic deadlock, waiting, waiting, waiting. Finally one of the cops approached the window smiled, and rubbed his fingers together. It was a universal sign that even I could not miss. It was not a hard decision. When I was deemed to have the lowest denomination that would not be laughed at, I passed a twenty forward. The officer smiled wider. The driver accelerated wiping his sweaty palms on his "Peace is Cheaper" t-shirt. Nothing but relief.

You Know Your Librarian's a Missionary When...

She orders the following books:

Dinosaurs by Design
Dinosaurs of Eden
Dinosaurs Unleashed: The True Story of Dinosaurs and Humans
The True Story of Noah's Ark
A is for Adam: The Gospel from Genesis
Life before birth: a book for Christian families and others (ha!) who teach the dignity of life before birth

In retaliation I requested Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution (Steve Jenkins) and It's Not the Stork (Robie Harrison).

It's on!

(And I miss you, reasonable, Hindu, previous librarian)

Welcome to the Congo

It's been almost two months and I don't think I've really said much at all about the Congo. I'll try to give a taste under some categories that are prominent my life.

FOOD: Like in most of Africa, the Congolese have a starchy staple in the form of a bowling-ball dense lump of doughy matter. In Malawi it's nsima, in Lesotho it's papa, in east Africa, ugali. Sometimes it's maize, sometimes cassava, sometimes yucca. Here it's fufu (also called fufu in Ghana) and it is made from cassava flour. I can eat it without gagging but it's tasteless and not nutritious. It's best quality is that it fills you up, but since I'm not starving, that is not a selling point. There are countless types of fish from the river and I've sampled a few. Rice and beans are another staple. There are several types of greens that are specific to the region as well as all the typical vegetables that grow in the great garden state. Plantains, bananas, pineapple, papaya, starfruit and mango grow in abundance. Plus there are an array of fruits I have never seen before. You can drink the tap water if you want hepatitis.

ROADS: Just awful. The only paved ones are simply not wide enough to accommodate all the cars. The rest are dirt and potholes. Instead of traffic lights a police officer on a step stool directs cars. There are apparently laws of the road, but they change on a seemingly daily basis based on the opposite of whatever a police officer thirsty for a coke notices you doing.

CRITTERS:
1. Bonobos, human's closest relatives are only found in the Congo.
2. Radioactive-size cockroaches routinely emerge from my walls, stagger to the middle of the floor and die.
3. Orange and blue lizards that do push ups (the elementary school mascot). Little tiny lizards that run across my feet in my house. Little tiny lizards in my classroom. The first time I found one, I showed the janitor to share in my delight. He misunderstood my wide eyes and proceeded to spray it with what he probably thought was bug spray, but which was actually air freshener. I didn't know enough French to say, "That won't kill it, it will just make it smell nice."
4. Snakes. I am usually lucky enough not to cross paths with them but one very long one that used to live near my classroom. I didn't have the patience to investigate it's poisonous status so I just asked a janitor to kindly smash it's skull with a stick.
5. Mosquitos. Because of malaria, they are far more dangerous than snakes, but they just don't strike up the same fear in my heart.
6. Mango worms. The reason to iron your underwear. They burrow into wet clothes, and when you put them on, lay eggs in your flesh. They can be avoided by machine drying or ironing. I line-dry no more.

STUFF I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO DO
1. ride public transportation
2. take photos anywhere in the capital
3. let on that I understand police officers when they speak to me in French
4. speak to police in French
5. walk around in the dark

SHOPPING: The best part is that instead of price stickers on the food, they put random letters and numbers. You then have to look up the code associated with the price in another part of the store. If you're gonna put a sticker, it might as well be the price sticker, right? I accidentally bought a $9 chocolate bar in the confusion. It was delicious. But it was also $9.

HELP AROUND THE HOUSE: I am the sheepish employer of a gardener. One day a random man started talking to me. His French was good but fast and I wasn't getting anywhere, so I just nodded and nodded and nodded until I realized that I had given him a job. He did plant vegetables though. Not the ones I thought I asked for, but I'll just learn to like zucchini I guess. I guess I'll learn to speak French better too. I am an even more sheepish employer of a cleaner. It is the standard procedure for teachers to have someone clean and another person garden one day a week. I nearly created history and gave myself a big headache in the process of insisting that I didn't want someone to clean. I based this on the fact that I thought I knew how to clean and that I had time to do it. Well as it turns out I live on a giant pile of brown dust. Actually, as it turns out, all of Congo is a giant pile of brown dust, until the rainy season when it becomes a mud pit. So as it turns out I do not have time to undo what it does to my house and my stuff on a regular basis. After a month and a half of trodding on filth, I found someone who can do battle with dust and cook a mean pot of kidney beans.

Stay tuned for... metallic upholstery, my godawful French, running in the bush and what the heck we do all day

kinderfolk

I learned a lot in my first two years in international education. I can say pee pee in Amharic, poo poo in Portuguese and cuddle in Dutch. I can sing about "All My Little Ducklings" in German and the Sesotho version of Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes (roughly translated to "Oh, child, your mother is suffering, burning in her body parts. Head, shoulders, nose, mouth, chest, waist, knees and toes.") I taught a child with the last name Mofo and a Buddhist named Tyranny (phonetical spelling). I ate a lot of international food in the name of research- thumbs up for spuculaas.

I am now in my 3rd year of international teaching (6th year in Early Childhood Education) and am faced with a new school, new country and new grade.

Meet the Kinderfolk (well, most of them)...

The Bride: She's not happy unless she's getting married in the dress-up corner or talking while I'm talking.

The UN Interpreter: She's only 4, but her stellar translation skills (English, German, French) prevent many a misunderstanding in my class.


Frick and Frack stumble confusedly around my class causing an annoying but quiet stream of chaos.


The Cowboy: Known as such for his favorite hat, during a discussion of words we agree not to say in Kindergarten (stupid, shut up, go away, you're not my friend) The Cowboy suggested adding "fuck it" to the list. Great Idea.

Precocious: She has a tendency to sprinkle words like "massive" in conversation (keep in mind she's only five). And being half Scottish, she taught me what the word "titchy" means.

Fidget: His name says it all. In fact, I suspect he's a little autistic. Then again, he could just have a touch of inherited weirdness (a parent told me he is not allowed to have rice and beans in the cafeteria because of his ears).

Pear Blossom: I learned in the elementary school library that this is the name of the Korean Cinderella. This child is spends the majority of her free time twirling with a piece of fabric trailing behind her.

Baby Gap: This child belongs on a baby gap ad. With a Polish mother and Congolese father he is one of the half of my class who have one African parent and one European or American parent. My class is full of tan, curly haired, multi-lingual babies.

Rattinger: He got his blog alias because he told me this was his name on the first day of school. His name is nothing even close to this.

Saying Goodbye to a Mosotho Hero

It was a sad weekend for Lesotho and for the American expat community in particular. In addition to the widely mourned and publicized murder of a Peace Corps volunteer on Friday, we lost a second victim to gunshot wounds the following night in an attempted hijacking.

Ntate Pohleili was one of the superstar dads at the American school. This was obvious to anyone who knows his two incredible children. But he became a true hero my class when he allowed us to visit his bread factory during our study of baking. It might not seem like much but a viewing of trucks unloading massive sacks of flour, a perilous walk through a maze of conveyer belts and a peek through a gargantuan room-sized oven can be unforgettable to a four-year-old.

For me that trip marked the end of a string of ridiculous, hilarious, often disastrous field trips in my two years teaching there. It was certainly the most dangerous. Ntate Pohleili was extremely wary about 21 3 and 4 year olds touring all manner of hot, sharp and limb stealing machinery but we arranged to go with his 5th grade daughter's class and we assigned each big kid a little guy. Those 5th graders took their jobs seriously, not simply holding their buddy's hand, but holding both. Nonetheless, I remember thinking that this would never be allowed back home, probably for good reason, and only weeks before my departure, it made me sad about leaving.

Sending love and thoughts from the Congo to Lesotho to the Peace Corps Community, the American school and the Pohleili family.