Bourbon, Bananas and Excuses

So, I've been gone for awhile. This is largely due to the day on which I accidentally poured bourbon straight on my keyboard. This happened, believe it or not, while making banana bread. I can explain, really. I poured too much bourbon in the batter and tried to pour it back out into a cup. The cup was on my keyboard. Ok, that part, I can't explain. I had to sheepishly tell IT Guy that I got my keyboard wet and ruined a bunch of keys. I later admitted, that it was, in fact, a corn-based whisky demise. He said, "Thanks, it's best that I know exactly what I'm looking for." "Oh," I replied, "in that case, there is a little bit of banana in there too." Anyway, this made all non-essential typing a huge pain but my keyboard is back and better (and cleaner) than ever.

Hello, again.

Gotta Wash Down Those Mud Pies with Water

Friday Morning Score:

Congo: 1
Teacher: 0

After a blissful week of reading and loving Kinderclassic, Mrs. Wishy-Washy, I decided that Friday morning we would make our own lovely mud to go along with our final reading of the week of this tale of animals romping in the mud and scrubbed in the tub by the illustrious Mrs. Wishy-Washy before-you guessed it-bolting straight back to the mud again. Why make mud? The initial reason was fun but I knew there had to be a sounder pedagogical reason other than my love of dirt and water.

Here's what I came up with:

1. Sensorimotor Experience
2. Scientific Inquiry (What the heck is mud? How is it different than wet sand? Why do the roads in Kinshasa wash away in the rainy season?)
3. Become more familiar with the Botanical Gardens (Our campus has gorgeous botanical gardens which we are obligated to incorporate into classroom curriculum. What better source for our mud dirt than the botanical garden? None I should say!)

But Congo beat us to the mud-making when the rainy season began 4 weeks earlier than normal but mere hours after many locals had been predicting for some time. What do you do when the dirt you wanted to make into mud has already turned to mud and the gardens are squishy and swampy? Put on your game face, lay down a parachute to sit on and break out your fancy bag of loam soil. The campus gardeners crowded around our mud-making with bewildered interest. If furrowed brows could talk: Does this Mundele not realize that we have plenty of mud already? If tilted nods could reply: "Mundeles do not think our mud is good enough. They like their mud made of imported loam."

I could have dumped our mud after our jolly experiments but I thought I might as well bring it back to the classroom as an option during Free Play. I carefully ladled the mud into trays, but it nonetheless ended up on every available human and classroom surface. No sweat, says I, mud washes away with water.

Armed with paper towels and soap, buckets and a mop, we slip-slided our way to the sink. No water. For the next 12 hours.

Friday Afternoon Score:

Congo: 2
Teacher: 0

When the Drill Becomes the Procedure

My school has an extensive set of drills, named after rainbow colors, and designed to keep students and staff safe in the event of political unrest. Their frequency has steadily occurred as the elections approach in the not unreasonable concern that things may take a troubled turn, if only briefly. After all, this is DR Congo where 5 years ago the city went on lockdown and students slept at their teacher's houses for 3 nights and cried when "all clear" was called and their parents came to collect them. This is the city where the local college down the hill from my home rioted in response to cities failure to provide them power and water. This occurred specifically on the night when a senior invited her teachers/coaches/mentors out to dinner to celebrate her graduation. Our boss called to tell us to keep celebrating rather than drive home. We turned this into one last teachable moment for the graduate: how to do a tequila shot.

Chaos happens. So when the receptionist flung open my door and shouted "Code Yellow Emergency Drill!" 10 minutes before the dismissal bell rang I figured, "It's probably not a drill." And it wasn't. Today was a demonstration geared toward the upcoming elections, ambiguously titled, "The Peaceful Protest of Rage." It took a slightly violent turn and although the streets were cleared and quieted, "Intelligence sources,"  not to be confused with intelligent sources (though I don't find the two to be necessarily mutually exclusive), decided this was the calm before the storm. In reality, it was the calm before the regularly scheduled hustle and bustle of Kinshasa. Nonetheless, for 25 minutes I entertained the Kinderfolk with songs and rhymes whilst their parents waited outside my door. (This particular drill called for students returning to class and not being released until the streets are deemed safe, no matter if their parent is there and wants to take them the hell home).

In the end it was a little blip in my day and in the daily happenings of the city, but I don't doubt there are more blips on the way. Fingers crossed for small blips all the way.

Accidental Snack

You can judge how a parent will be for the entire year by their response to hearing that you facilitated their child eating the chemical inside of an ice pack. When this child originally asked me to open this plastic pouch filled with a semi-frozen blue substance, I told her it was an ice pack. When she insisted her mother told her she must drink it for snack I figured it was some kind of blue slushy. I snipped off the corner and she took a big swig which she spit out in disgust. Unsure if her gag reflex was caused by artificially flavored high fructose corn syrup or ice pack chemical, I ate a little myself. Definitely ice pack. The nurse told me the confused child would be fine so my only worry was figuring out how to draft an email to Mommy explaining exactly why her ice pack was coming home ruined. Luckily she was understanding for such an odd situation. This is only the second day of school- we have another 181 days of ingestional mishaps waiting to happen!

A Little Delay

I am supposed to be back in Congo by now. But, like the tens of thousands of dollars of school supplies that are sitting in customs waiting for a Congolese signature facilitated by a good mood, I am the victim of New York's own senseless and grumpy bureaucracy. How could I have possibly guessed that although I need to get my fingerprints cleared by the State Education Department and complete 200 practicum hours to get my special ed license, I need to get my fingerprints cleared by the City Department of Education to be allowed to student teach? It doesn't matter that the city department of ed is under the jurisdiction of the state department of ed or that there is only one FBI doing the fingerprints for both. That would make too much sense. "But can't the state department of ed send the city department of ed your fingerprints?" a naive young teacher might ask. "Of course, [idiot]!" the mole-studded HR personnel screams at you over the counter, hoisting her girth out of the way to pass you no less than 4 forms. "10 days!" she screams again, over the sobbing of countless broken-hearted teachers-to-be who have all had their immediate futures wrecked by this evil woman. My friend starting her fifth year banging her head against the wall of PS *** says she wishes she could tell me that it was a fluke, that things weren't like that all the time, but sister, they are that bad and worse and no amount of standing on your tiptoes and banging your little fist on the counter is going to change anything.

All that's to say is that by the time things took their own sweet time straightening out, the school where I was supposed to student teach had closed for the summer. I was reduced to cold calling dozens of summer and year-round schools trying to market my free labor. I found two placements, changed my flight so I would have time to accumulate enough hours and marvel at my own good fortune.

I have thus spent most of my summer vacation teaching for free. Actually, make that, paying to teach, since Touro College, aka, Disfunction U charges tuition for student teaching. I'm sure that's not uncommon, but that doesn't mean it's not annoying. So I have spent my days trying my hand at early intervention on the Upper East Side (the incredible, amazing birth-3 scheme that gives babies and toddlers with disabilities their best shot at either "catching up" or simply starting their formal education on the best possible foot). This often involved a two-year old with Down's Syndrome gurgling all over neck instead of putting shapes into the bucket, but who was I to deny him? Gooey times, we had. Sweet and gooey times.

My other site was an ABA school for children with autism. Did I mention it was an ultra-orthodox Jewish school? It was. I live in Congo. The culture shock of moving to Africa does not compare to working with teachers younger than me with marriages. And wigs. And children. Multiple, intentional children who need their mommies to pump breast milk whilst they try to have a casual conversation with me in the curriculum room. These conversations mainly consist of grilling me about why I don't live with my parents and what the heck a Congo is.
                   Congo? Where's that?
                   Congo? Can you be more specific?
                   Kinshasa.
                   I mean is it in South America?
                   Um, well that's a continent, so that would be less specific. Nevermind.
                   Are there blacks there?
                   Is that a real question?
                   How come you know how to speak English?
                   Oh dear.

The teacher dress code is good for: not having greasy men talk to you on the subway, not having college students with clipboards ask you if you have a minute for gay rights, planned parenthood or to save the children and also good for baffling you (stockings are allowed under skirts, leggings are not). The teacher dress code is bad for sitting on the floor and heat waves. OY!

ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) is THE autism buzzword. Mainly, I guess, because it works. Using data and formally observed behavior to plan student learning- sounds great! Problem is, this particular school's version of it really sucks the fun out of learning. Way too much sitting. Way too much treating kids like lab rats in a giant maze of literacy and math and social skills who will do anything you want for an Oreo. So I wouldn't say I learned a great deal about ABA, except how I wouldn't want to use it. I did get really good at spot the wig, a game I played out of the unlikely combination of boredom and fascination.

So I am at the tail end of my extra week in the city. I have been taking advantage of warm, fresh bagels, pizza slices on the corner and mint chocolate chip gelato. In my summer time neighborhood, Astoria Park has become my second home with a track where people put their babies in the long jump pit while they run intervals and women in burqas play ultimate frisbee. And since I teach in Manhattan and Brooklyn I have made sure to get my last fixes of Central Park and Union Square, Brooklyn Lager and the Brooklyn Bridge.

48 more hours. Congo here I come!

Sophia and Memory

Quite out of nowhere Kindergartener Sophia said to me, "You know, the first time I went in my mom's car, I cried." "Why is that?" I asked this child, Zambian by birth and adopted by a Dutch couple at the age of four and a half. "Because," she told me, "I thought I would never see memory again." Taken aback I asked her "What do you mean you won't see memory again?" and she said, "that is my friend in Zambia and I thought I wouldn't see her again." Realizing that memory was in fact Memory, another orphan, I asked her about her old playmate. Sophia told me, "We are still friends but I can't talk to her anymore because I forgot how to speak Nyanja."

This was a pretty heavy conversation we were having on the playground and as I talked with Sophia I tried to wrap my head around it all: the sad beauty of losing a friend named Memory, the just plain sadness of losing a language, and whether the loss of language eventually comes with the cost of losing Memory... and memory (memory begins with acquiring language after all). Adoption, usually thought about in terms of what an orphan child and her new family gains, is also about loss. Sophia had a life in Zambia. I don't argue that it is better than the life she has now with two parents, her own bedroom, medical care and healthy food, but it was a life-her life- all the same.

Tell Them to Change that Sentence

Eastern Congo is not a popular or particularly recommended travel destination, but neither is Kinshasa a popular or particularly recommended expatriation destination. And once you have already moved to the latter, visiting the former seems to be no big deal.  Despite the fact that in Congo bribing the traffic cops just to let you drive down the street is a standard precursor to grocery shopping, or that the wealth below the soil has brought more terror than prosperity, or that everything from the crazy drivers to the sharp and allergen infused elephant grass to second-degree burn inducing acid bugs seems like it's aimed to kill you (or at the very least cause considerable discomfort), Congo is a one-of-a-kind-in-a-good-way place. You won't find bonobos or okapis anywhere else in the world. The raging Congo River, 700 hundred meters deep in some places, flows so incredibly strongly that it spins out species after new species of fish, each evolving in tiny sections of river isolated by the currents. DRC is also one of the few places you will find a lava lake and mountain gorillas, and that, along with a ferry ride to Bukavu was what I had in mind for the Easter vacation. So while my friends back home were packing for Mexico or Europe and most of my colleagues here headed for Cape Town, I was flying from Congo to Kenya to Burundi to Rwanda just to reenter this gigantic country overland from the other side. 

Eastern Congo is known for a lot of things: a refuge for Rwandan genocidaires, rebel war, rape as a weapon and continuous conflict fueled by the coltan, diamonds and other minerals below the soil.

This is what it should be known for... 

...We drove here past the airport displaying rusty carcasses of airplanes and the remnants of a dilapidated Red Cross camp, the 4WD jeep spitting out black chunks of hardened lava from below the wheels. Mount Nyiragongo last erupted in 2002, devastating much of Goma. 

But the volatile nature of volcanos in a country where scientists' efforts to predict the next eruption are thwarted by rebel activity was the least of my worries. The week before we were due to climb, a park ranger was shot and killed on one of the trails and the mountain was subsequently closed for the investigation. We were unsure whether our plans would go ahead but the night before we were scheduled to hike my three colleagues and I were informed we would have the dubious honor of being the first to hike the volcano since it reopened. The bearer of this news was Daniel, our 60 year old tour guide, prone to random fits of hysterical laughter and dressing like a boy scout. He gave a reenactment of the murder in a failed attempt to assuage any possible mountain-anxiety and then began his proselytizing. "Lonely Planet says 'Don't go to Congo. It's not safe.' Tell them to change that sentence. Tomorrow you will climb a volcano!!!!!'"

We hiked with a massive entourage of park rangers armed to the teeth with AK47s and RPGs. Daniel called what they were doing with these alphabet letters "educating the rebels." Forever a teacher, I conjured an image of rangers and rebels reading picture books under a tree with their Kalashnikovs leaned against the trunk. It was however explained to me that the rangers were "educating" the rebels on the serious and comprehensive nature of security on the mountain. Why anti-tank weapons were necessary in this particular location, barely passable by humans, was not entirely clear, nor was I entirely decided on whether big guns and cartoonish-looking rocket propelled grenades made me feel safe. But to be honest, I was more preoccupied with staying warm and dry in the pouring rain and on the freezing summit than any of the other issues. I was also more preoccupied with the view below...

We spent the night in the crisp, freezing sky, breathing in sulphury gusts in the freaky red glow before descending the following day to get ready for mountain gorilla trekking. 

We drove (by which I mean careened, swerved and tilted at impossible angles), racing with UN tanks into Virunga National Park. I made a concerted effort to not vomit, while Daniel's response to the violent road and resulting vibrations was shouting, "Free Massage! Free Massage! Lonely Planet says 'Don't go to Congo. It's not safe.' Tell them to change that sentence. Today you will see go-REEEEE-las!!!!!'"

And so we tucked our pants into our socks and meandered through villages which were occupied until 2007 by guerillas (not gorillas, although they wandered in every now and again to nibble on the crops). After passing countless farms we reached THE BUSH.

Imagine a jungle, dense, thick, hot. Now imagine the minute spaces between trees and brush were clogged with more trees and brush. That is the Congolese forrest. I can't say we walked- it was more like stumbling and wading through an ocean of leaves, squeezing in tiny spaces carved out by the hacking machetes of our guides. The minutes stretched on and on, the silence full of cracking branches and our guides making gorilla calls. The white noise was broken by an instruction to don our surgical masks (required to protect gorillas from our germs). I took two steps and my heart hurdled into my throat as I stared into the face of this massive creature.

A member of the Himba family of gorillas we watched this terrifying guy breathe and laze before looking for the rest of his relations.

Mama and juvenile

Lady in a tree

Juvenile in a tree

Mama with a baby on back

Silverback snacking

Who needs a jungle gym when you have a jungle?

While trailing behind one of the females, the silverback in his alpha question of "what are you doing following my woman?" decided share our 2 foot wide path. So what do you when a massive silverback gorilla who doesn't know the 7 meter distance park regulation tries to share your already too-small lane? You get the hell out of the way. But, with nowhere to go, all we could do was turn sideways, stand on our toes and lean back into the brush as he passed. I gripped the shoulder of my gun-wielding guide while my vision and olfactory senses were assaulted with gorilla. His breathing filled my ears and the flies on my face were the same as the ones on his.

SILVER.BACK.

Upon returning back to the park headquarters Daniel shoved a visitors book at us, bouncing up and down shouting "Lonely Planet says 'Don't go to Congo. It's not safe.' Tell them to change that sentence. Today you came here and saw a silverBACK!!!!!'" One of the teachers asked if he could use "bad language" in the visitors book. Daniel said, "Yes. Be honest. If the road was bad, you write 'the road was bad.'" My friend clarified, "Can I write, 'I was a foot away from a f***ing silverback?'" "Oh YES!," was Daniel's enthusiastic reply, "You speak like an insider American and if you write that, more Americans will come here."

Back in Goma we decided to check out the ferries to Bukavu.  A ferry sank overloaded in Lake Kivu killing 30 people earlier that week so we had our eyes peeled for a sturdy looking boat. Everything looked nice but when it came time to head to the ticket counter, we realized that we were tired and satisfied with staying in Goma, which although not the cleanest place, at least tries (note incongruence between signage and litter below)...

So we stayed in Goma. We met up with a former teacher from our school who took us to eat local food, told us about her work in the East and pointed out the gas station where people wheel and deal coltan behind the petrol pumps. We took long walks along the lake and through the dust choked town, eating pizza and swapping stories into the night. 

When we said goodbye to Daniel his parting words were, of course, "Lonely Planet says 'Don't go to Congo. It's not safe.' Tell them to change that sentence!" I don't know if I will say that to Lonely Planet but I will say this: Congo's not perfect, but it was the perfect adventure. I hiked an active volcano and spent the night on the bubbling edge of its lake of lava, getting impromptu French lessons from guys with rocket launchers in their backpacks. I went deep into the jungle and saw gorillas, not guerillas. I gazed out over the beautiful lake and didn't cross, not because I was afraid of drowning, but because I was happy where I was. Goma might be a mess, but people still find a reason to smile, to say please and thank you and to help lost travelers find their way to a long-abandoned, bombed-out book store. 

My final night I took this photo at a delicious pizza restaurant. I asked the guard there if the sign is really necessary, if people bringing weapons inside is a problem. He said "yes" than "no" and the limits of language left it at that.

He did insist though, that I take a picture of their other sign. And I did. It was only fair.