There are three language drawers in my brain. The first drawer has a bottom panel with many holes cut out of it. If I put a word in there, it quickly drops out. These are words I just heard and repeated ten times. A second drawer has words securely stashed away. In a third drawer, the bottom panel is warped, and though words drop out, I can retrieve them quickly. I cannot explain how words from these last two drawers are sorted and distributed, with one exception: words associated with a moment of extreme emotion.
After a month and a half in Tanzania, I went for yet another walk in the village and stopped at a fresh fruit and vegetable stand with a small crowd of about ten people. Both children and adults seemed to be passing the time visiting, and I interrupted by asking the woman behind the counter if she had any cookies, which was what I really wanted. I’m often surprised by what happens so I was willing to be surprised again. But no, they didn’t have any cookies. So I started asking the small crowd the names of the fruits and vegetables displayed.
Having people teach me Swahili words seems to be engaging – in two seconds I can have an entire room focused on teaching me every word they know. I cannot imagine Americans being this generous with a foreigner, but the Tanzanians have abundant generosity when it comes to teaching their language. I had actually been introduced to the names of the fruits and vegetables in front of me, but they’d all fallen out of the drawer with the holes in it. Having rejected the produce seller by asking for something she clearly didn’t have, I thought I’d at least make a gesture toward kindness or something like it. So I started reciting, once again, tomato (nyanya), carrot (caroti), cabbage (cabbagi), cucumbers (matango), and orange (chungwa).
Let me explain that I always get the word for “fruit” (matunda) and “orange” mixed up because at some critical point in my Swahili acquisition, whoever was teaching me at that moment used the word “fruit” for orange and I didn’t learn until later that “orange” was something else. From left to right on the shelf in front of me, I reviewed the carrot, cabbage, etc, and got to the orange. I fumbled around in my brain for an approximation of “matunda” which mysteriously shuffled with “matango” and came up with “matako.”
The group erupted in gales of laughter, and then I realized I’d given the word for “buttocks.” Faced with a group seizing with laughter, a group who knew I knew what I’d said because I can’t hide anything, I had no words in my head, all three drawers dumped out. So I shook my head and walked away, my face as red as the nyanya, and they were still laughing when I disappeared around the corner. And now I have a few more words added to the secure drawer.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
By the light of a full moon
I don’t think Tom Boyle, director of the library at Midland Lutheran College, had any idea that the two decks of playing cards he gave me as a parting gift would become a great gift to many others (or maybe he did). My first week here at SMMUCo (Stefano Moshi Memorial University College), I found those cards handy when the electricity went out almost every evening, the only thing I could see with candlelight and my cell phone flashlight strapped to the desk lamp.
When I played solitaire, I could look out my apartment window and see Johnny, the security guard, at his post by the entry gate. Besides visiting every villager and bus driver that passed by, Johnny had job duties to keep him occupied during the regular week – registering all campus visitors, watering flowers, putting up the flag of Tanzania, pushing the Land Cruiser out of the gate to start the engine, and so on.
However, Saturdays were slow. Both pedestrian and vehicular traffic almost vanished, especially from the campus side of the yellow gate, and Johnny patiently waited out the twelve-hour shift, sitting on a wooden desk, one leg swinging, one dreary endless stretch of nothing.
I thought of Johnny one night as I played solitaire by candlelight. If I didn’t have those cards at such times, I’d go nuts by myself with nothing to do. The next Saturday, I brought one shiny blue deck down to the entry gate with the idea that if I taught Johnny how to play solitaire, it would spell the long day. But the teaching was delayed. After I shuffled the cards, half the deck in each hand fanned through the thumb tips, Johnny spent some time laughing heartily. And then laughed again when I bent them back for the bridge, both making a shuffling, farting sound. For a while, I thought I’d never get around to teaching him anything because I had to shuffle ten more times. When his stomach hurt from laughing and he could no longer see through the tears in his eyes, I laid out the cards for solitaire, and by the second time round, someone else had come along who could translate much of what seemed a mystery for Johnny. However, translating was delayed—I was required to shuffle the deck for that person. After an hour, I left Johnny with the cards and wondered if he understood enough to play solitaire or whether he even wanted to. But it was a gift, no matter how Johnny would use Tom Boyle’s deck, and I only hoped it would ease the boredom of a Saturday.
While Johnny never did play solitaire, he played with everyone else that day. The cards magnetically brought people off the road, crowding around the wooden table on the platform. All day, players slapped cards on the table, winners shouted and leaped, losers pounded the table, accusing someone of cheating.
After several Saturdays, I remembered a game called Spoons. One sets spoons on the table, one less than the number of players, like musical chairs. The players pass cards to each other, one at a time, and the first player to get four of a kind, grabs a spoon. And like musical chairs, the others grab also. The person who doesn’t get the spoon is given an S. The next rounds occur the same way until one unfortunate player has lost enough rounds to spell out “Spoons.”
One evening after supper, the moon was full and the evening was slow. Johnny had finished his daily chores, and instead of using spoons, I brought out blue caps from water bottles to Johnny, his friend Innocent, and another guy who came from I-don’t-know-where. I had brought notes of Swahili words and within about five minutes, we were playing the first round of Spoons. Once again, a howling success. First, there’s the thrill of being the one with the four-of-a-kind, grabbing that cap before anyone else. Then there’s the thrill of seeing that one person with a stunned look when they realize they have failed to notice the caps are gone. When I showed the group how to remove the cap slyly enough so that people passed the cards a good two minutes before noticing, that was even better!
So there we were, lit by the full moon and the orange globes on the security posts. On one round, the cap flew off the table and two people leaped up to scramble for it on the ground. Soon we were joined by a teenaged boy. The next night it was the same group plus Haji the driver, plus a friend of the teenage boy who clearly did not have as much adrenalin as the rest of us—he lost the first ten rounds.
In the process of playing cards, interesting benefits came from it. The first teenage boy—fascinated either by my white skin, age spots, or gray hair—had many opportunities to stare at me. Secondly, I could listen for any Swahili words I might recognize and use. And everyone feels compelled to teach me, especially the teenaged boys. Third, both boys have started to use more English and ask for more English. They’ve picked up “next” as in who is the next loser, and we all point to the person across the table. They’ve picked up “winner” and “loser,” and I’ve picked up “mshindi” (winner) and “mshindwa” (loser).
By now, Tom Boyle’s cards are black with grime around the edges, and at night, they are damp from the dewy air. I can’t shuffle them as well, and dealing them out one by one takes a little longer. But in the light of the full moon, they haven’t lost the magic of creating marvelous communal fun.
When I played solitaire, I could look out my apartment window and see Johnny, the security guard, at his post by the entry gate. Besides visiting every villager and bus driver that passed by, Johnny had job duties to keep him occupied during the regular week – registering all campus visitors, watering flowers, putting up the flag of Tanzania, pushing the Land Cruiser out of the gate to start the engine, and so on.
However, Saturdays were slow. Both pedestrian and vehicular traffic almost vanished, especially from the campus side of the yellow gate, and Johnny patiently waited out the twelve-hour shift, sitting on a wooden desk, one leg swinging, one dreary endless stretch of nothing.
I thought of Johnny one night as I played solitaire by candlelight. If I didn’t have those cards at such times, I’d go nuts by myself with nothing to do. The next Saturday, I brought one shiny blue deck down to the entry gate with the idea that if I taught Johnny how to play solitaire, it would spell the long day. But the teaching was delayed. After I shuffled the cards, half the deck in each hand fanned through the thumb tips, Johnny spent some time laughing heartily. And then laughed again when I bent them back for the bridge, both making a shuffling, farting sound. For a while, I thought I’d never get around to teaching him anything because I had to shuffle ten more times. When his stomach hurt from laughing and he could no longer see through the tears in his eyes, I laid out the cards for solitaire, and by the second time round, someone else had come along who could translate much of what seemed a mystery for Johnny. However, translating was delayed—I was required to shuffle the deck for that person. After an hour, I left Johnny with the cards and wondered if he understood enough to play solitaire or whether he even wanted to. But it was a gift, no matter how Johnny would use Tom Boyle’s deck, and I only hoped it would ease the boredom of a Saturday.
While Johnny never did play solitaire, he played with everyone else that day. The cards magnetically brought people off the road, crowding around the wooden table on the platform. All day, players slapped cards on the table, winners shouted and leaped, losers pounded the table, accusing someone of cheating.
After several Saturdays, I remembered a game called Spoons. One sets spoons on the table, one less than the number of players, like musical chairs. The players pass cards to each other, one at a time, and the first player to get four of a kind, grabs a spoon. And like musical chairs, the others grab also. The person who doesn’t get the spoon is given an S. The next rounds occur the same way until one unfortunate player has lost enough rounds to spell out “Spoons.”
One evening after supper, the moon was full and the evening was slow. Johnny had finished his daily chores, and instead of using spoons, I brought out blue caps from water bottles to Johnny, his friend Innocent, and another guy who came from I-don’t-know-where. I had brought notes of Swahili words and within about five minutes, we were playing the first round of Spoons. Once again, a howling success. First, there’s the thrill of being the one with the four-of-a-kind, grabbing that cap before anyone else. Then there’s the thrill of seeing that one person with a stunned look when they realize they have failed to notice the caps are gone. When I showed the group how to remove the cap slyly enough so that people passed the cards a good two minutes before noticing, that was even better!
So there we were, lit by the full moon and the orange globes on the security posts. On one round, the cap flew off the table and two people leaped up to scramble for it on the ground. Soon we were joined by a teenaged boy. The next night it was the same group plus Haji the driver, plus a friend of the teenage boy who clearly did not have as much adrenalin as the rest of us—he lost the first ten rounds.
In the process of playing cards, interesting benefits came from it. The first teenage boy—fascinated either by my white skin, age spots, or gray hair—had many opportunities to stare at me. Secondly, I could listen for any Swahili words I might recognize and use. And everyone feels compelled to teach me, especially the teenaged boys. Third, both boys have started to use more English and ask for more English. They’ve picked up “next” as in who is the next loser, and we all point to the person across the table. They’ve picked up “winner” and “loser,” and I’ve picked up “mshindi” (winner) and “mshindwa” (loser).
By now, Tom Boyle’s cards are black with grime around the edges, and at night, they are damp from the dewy air. I can’t shuffle them as well, and dealing them out one by one takes a little longer. But in the light of the full moon, they haven’t lost the magic of creating marvelous communal fun.
By the light of a full moon
I don’t think Tom Boyle, director of the library at Midland Lutheran College, had any idea that the two decks of playing cards he gave me as a parting gift would become a great gift to many others (or maybe he did). My first week here at SMMUCo (Stefano Moshi Memorial University College), I found those cards handy when the electricity went out almost every evening, the only thing I could see with candlelight and my cell phone flashlight strapped to the desk lamp.
When I played solitaire, I could look out my apartment window and see Johnny, the security guard, at his post by the entry gate. Besides visiting every villager and bus driver that passed by, Johnny had job duties to keep him occupied during the regular week – registering all campus visitors, watering flowers, putting up the flag of Tanzania, pushing the Land Cruiser out of the gate to start the engine, and so on.
However, Saturdays were slow. Both pedestrian and vehicular traffic almost vanished, especially from the campus side of the yellow gate, and Johnny patiently waited out the twelve-hour shift, sitting on a wooden desk, one leg swinging, one dreary endless stretch of nothing.
I thought of Johnny one night as I played solitaire by candlelight. If I didn’t have those cards at such times, I’d go nuts by myself with nothing to do. The next Saturday, I brought one shiny blue deck down to the entry gate with the idea that if I taught Johnny how to play solitaire, it would spell the long day. But the teaching was delayed. After I shuffled the cards, half the deck in each hand fanned through the thumb tips, Johnny spent some time laughing heartily. And then laughed again when I bent them back for the bridge, both making a shuffling, farting sound. For a while, I thought I’d never get around to teaching him anything because I had to shuffle ten more times. When his stomach hurt from laughing and he could no longer see through the tears in his eyes, I laid out the cards for solitaire, and by the second time round, someone else had come along who could translate much of what seemed a mystery for Johnny. However, translating was delayed—I was required to shuffle the deck for that person. After an hour, I left Johnny with the cards and wondered if he understood enough to play solitaire or whether he even wanted to. But it was a gift, no matter how Johnny would use Tom Boyle’s deck, and I only hoped it would ease the boredom of a Saturday.
While Johnny never did play solitaire, he played with everyone else that day. The cards magnetically brought people off the road, crowding around the wooden table on the platform. All day, players slapped cards on the table, winners shouted and leaped, losers pounded the table, accusing someone of cheating.
After several Saturdays, I remembered a game called Spoons. One sets spoons on the table, one less than the number of players, like musical chairs. The players pass cards to each other, one at a time, and the first player to get four of a kind, grabs a spoon. And like musical chairs, the others grab also. The person who doesn’t get the spoon is given an S. The next rounds occur the same way until one unfortunate player has lost enough rounds to spell out “Spoons.”
One evening after supper, the moon was full and the evening was slow. Johnny had finished his daily chores, and instead of using spoons, I brought out blue caps from water bottles to Johnny, his friend Innocent, and another guy who came from I-don’t-know-where. I had brought notes of Swahili words and within about five minutes, we were playing the first round of Spoons. Once again, a howling success. First, there’s the thrill of being the one with the four-of-a-kind, grabbing that cap before anyone else. Then there’s the thrill of seeing that one person with a stunned look when they realize they have failed to notice the caps are gone. When I showed the group how to remove the cap slyly enough so that people passed the cards a good two minutes before noticing, that was even better!
So there we were, lit by the full moon and the orange globes on the security posts. On one round, the cap flew off the table and two people leaped up to scramble for it on the ground. Soon we were joined by a teenaged boy. The next night it was the same group plus Haji the driver, plus a friend of the teenage boy who clearly did not have as much adrenalin as the rest of us—he lost the first ten rounds.
In the process of playing cards, interesting benefits came from it. The first teenage boy—fascinated either by my white skin, age spots, or gray hair—had many opportunities to stare at me. Secondly, I could listen for any Swahili words I might recognize and use. And everyone feels compelled to teach me, especially the teenaged boys. Third, both boys have started to use more English and ask for more English. They’ve picked up “next” as in who is the next loser, and we all point to the person across the table. They’ve picked up “winner” and “loser,” and I’ve picked up “mshindi” (winner) and “mshindwa” (loser).
By now, Tom Boyle’s cards are black with grime around the edges, and at night, they are damp from the dewy air. I can’t shuffle them as well, and dealing them out one by one takes a little longer. But in the light of the full moon, they haven’t lost the magic of creating marvelous communal fun.
When I played solitaire, I could look out my apartment window and see Johnny, the security guard, at his post by the entry gate. Besides visiting every villager and bus driver that passed by, Johnny had job duties to keep him occupied during the regular week – registering all campus visitors, watering flowers, putting up the flag of Tanzania, pushing the Land Cruiser out of the gate to start the engine, and so on.
However, Saturdays were slow. Both pedestrian and vehicular traffic almost vanished, especially from the campus side of the yellow gate, and Johnny patiently waited out the twelve-hour shift, sitting on a wooden desk, one leg swinging, one dreary endless stretch of nothing.
I thought of Johnny one night as I played solitaire by candlelight. If I didn’t have those cards at such times, I’d go nuts by myself with nothing to do. The next Saturday, I brought one shiny blue deck down to the entry gate with the idea that if I taught Johnny how to play solitaire, it would spell the long day. But the teaching was delayed. After I shuffled the cards, half the deck in each hand fanned through the thumb tips, Johnny spent some time laughing heartily. And then laughed again when I bent them back for the bridge, both making a shuffling, farting sound. For a while, I thought I’d never get around to teaching him anything because I had to shuffle ten more times. When his stomach hurt from laughing and he could no longer see through the tears in his eyes, I laid out the cards for solitaire, and by the second time round, someone else had come along who could translate much of what seemed a mystery for Johnny. However, translating was delayed—I was required to shuffle the deck for that person. After an hour, I left Johnny with the cards and wondered if he understood enough to play solitaire or whether he even wanted to. But it was a gift, no matter how Johnny would use Tom Boyle’s deck, and I only hoped it would ease the boredom of a Saturday.
While Johnny never did play solitaire, he played with everyone else that day. The cards magnetically brought people off the road, crowding around the wooden table on the platform. All day, players slapped cards on the table, winners shouted and leaped, losers pounded the table, accusing someone of cheating.
After several Saturdays, I remembered a game called Spoons. One sets spoons on the table, one less than the number of players, like musical chairs. The players pass cards to each other, one at a time, and the first player to get four of a kind, grabs a spoon. And like musical chairs, the others grab also. The person who doesn’t get the spoon is given an S. The next rounds occur the same way until one unfortunate player has lost enough rounds to spell out “Spoons.”
One evening after supper, the moon was full and the evening was slow. Johnny had finished his daily chores, and instead of using spoons, I brought out blue caps from water bottles to Johnny, his friend Innocent, and another guy who came from I-don’t-know-where. I had brought notes of Swahili words and within about five minutes, we were playing the first round of Spoons. Once again, a howling success. First, there’s the thrill of being the one with the four-of-a-kind, grabbing that cap before anyone else. Then there’s the thrill of seeing that one person with a stunned look when they realize they have failed to notice the caps are gone. When I showed the group how to remove the cap slyly enough so that people passed the cards a good two minutes before noticing, that was even better!
So there we were, lit by the full moon and the orange globes on the security posts. On one round, the cap flew off the table and two people leaped up to scramble for it on the ground. Soon we were joined by a teenaged boy. The next night it was the same group plus Haji the driver, plus a friend of the teenage boy who clearly did not have as much adrenalin as the rest of us—he lost the first ten rounds.
In the process of playing cards, interesting benefits came from it. The first teenage boy—fascinated either by my white skin, age spots, or gray hair—had many opportunities to stare at me. Secondly, I could listen for any Swahili words I might recognize and use. And everyone feels compelled to teach me, especially the teenaged boys. Third, both boys have started to use more English and ask for more English. They’ve picked up “next” as in who is the next loser, and we all point to the person across the table. They’ve picked up “winner” and “loser,” and I’ve picked up “mshindi” (winner) and “mshindwa” (loser).
By now, Tom Boyle’s cards are black with grime around the edges, and at night, they are damp from the dewy air. I can’t shuffle them as well, and dealing them out one by one takes a little longer. But in the light of the full moon, they haven’t lost the magic of creating marvelous communal fun.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Bus Ride: A Royal Banquet
Varying levels of buses carry thousands and probably millions of Tanzanians every day. There isn’t a bus that doesn’t have pressed against its windows ten elbows, five hands, and heads. Here at Stefano Moshi Memorial University College (SMMUCo), there’s a bus stop just outside the gate. But you would never know it. A little wooden structure nearby, with banana leaf thatched on the roof, looks like a bus stop, but I discovered that if I sit in that little hut, the bus will roar on by. I have to stand on the road at the right unmarked spot and only that spot.
For me, taking the bus meant a little freedom, but it also required an attitude adjustment. As a Nebraskan, the sight of packed buses made me gulp. In a church pew, I scoot over for the next two or three persons, allowing them enough room for ten. I noticed I had this need for personal space on a trip to India. I was the first one to arrive at the baggage claim area in the Dehli airport. Soon crowds of Indians planted themselves next to me, and I gave way, allowing them the personal space I thought we all required. In a few minutes, I found myself thinking, how can it be that I was the first one here and the farthest from the baggage claim?
There’s a parable in the book of Matthew that portrays the shift that I needed in order to appreciate a bus ride. In it, the kingdom of heaven is likened to a wedding banquet. A king invites people, I suppose his aristocratic friends and relatives, and they all disregard the invitation as nothing worth going to. Or worse, they abuse and kill the wretched servant who delivered the wedding invitation. They are later murdered by the king’s troops. Having eliminated his guest pool, the king sends out another series of invitations to the regular folk, who appreciate the fine opportunity and appear. However, of those regular folk, one makes the mistake of wearing non-wedding clothes, and that fool is cast into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Since I’m unequipped to comprehend the kingdom of heaven, I think of education as a wedding banquet. Education raises humans to greater levels of confidence, dignity, and freedom. It allows them to become more human. An inspiring example comes from the Washington-Midland Connection, a program where Midland and Fremont community members tutor parents of students of Washington Elementary School. These parents come after long hard days at work and put their hearts and souls into learning. They come in their finest sequins and silk bow ties.
But too often students do not understand education as a wedding banquet. This is not true of all students, but in my experience, it’s true of too many of them. They come to class not having purchased a textbook, or they haven’t done the assignment, or they text-message someone else instead of paying attention to the class session. They come to my wedding banquet in acid-washed jeans! When it came to riding buses in Moshi, Tanzania, I was guilty of wearing my own threadbare jeans.
Mysteriously, my attitude shifted, and I’m not sure whether it happened before or during the trip to town and back, but I finally understood that a bus ride was one of the greatest adventures ever. First, when you’re standing at the bus stop, you never know what will stop and invite you in. This sounds dangerous. Don’t get in the little car with four energetic men yelling, “Mzungu, come join us!”
Today, when the pickup with ten people in the back honked and beckoned me to join them, I climbed on board. Bolted onto the pickup bed was a frame of metal bars that we all clung to, except the young mother who sat on the wheel well holding her baby. I planted my feet on either side of two large buckets and wrapped my upper arms and hands on the metal frame to keep my teeth from being knocked out. With occasional lurches, I was shoved into the guy in front of me who had offered to marry me moments ago. When we stopped to pick up others, we all shifted even closer and at one point, I was able to look around and see that a mountain of people had grown up behind me.
On the way back to the college, I climbed into a van that had the official markings and right destination painted on its front. (Also, the passenger in the front seat grabbed my wrist and said, “Where?”) Inside, I stood against a wall, hovering over the heads of seated passengers. The only thing I could grip was a ledge inside the van from a defunct ventilation system—the grip bar was already covered in hands. The man in the seat below me had his ear in my stomach. When we added more to the van, all of us against the wall shifted even more and now I had a nun’s shoulder. Her head bowed over the seat in front of her, either to pray or make room or both.
I’m not sure what maximum capacity is in these vans. I thought we’d reached maximum capacity until we stopped four more times. After counting 30, I stopped because I couldn’t see. And then the pressure inside was eased when two and then three people squeezed out. They were greatly helped by me, the only one along the wall willing to move out of the van to make way. That’s another part of the adventure – stepping off and getting back in before the van takes off without you. And I did it! Even better, the nun now patted the seat beside her, inviting me to join her. So one-fourth of my rump carried the load for the rest of the way, relieving what had carried the load earlier: my neck, knuckles and elbow.
In the parable of the wedding banquet, the banquet is an invitation. It is clearly up to those invited to choose how they will respond. For me on this day, perceiving this trip as a miserable crowding of people, of bad smells (someone had stepped in dog doo), of total discomfort and undignified positions, was to arrive at the wedding banquet in ordinary clothing. The outer darkness would be the misery that I could easily suffer and appreciate.
In Tanzania, many, most, or all who ride those buses have no choice. For those who are weary or sick, can a bus ride be an invitation? And for those who need to get somewhere urgently, is a sense of adventure possible? I have to accept the fact that I had an invitation for adventure while many others did and do not. Also, I do not know if I’ll have a right spirit about the bus ride after the tenth or fiftieth trip to town.
It appears, then, that the kingdom of heaven, as far as I can tell with mortal dim eyes, comes as a momentary glimpse, one light beam cast through a window into a dark house. And of the glimpse that I got, here is what I saw: riding public transportation in Moshi, Tanzania, is to discover who will stop for you. It’s to discover how many of you will fit together. It’s to discover how you can hang on. It’s to discover who will help whom. It’s to discover how humanity folds together and to join in the communal act of folding.
For me, taking the bus meant a little freedom, but it also required an attitude adjustment. As a Nebraskan, the sight of packed buses made me gulp. In a church pew, I scoot over for the next two or three persons, allowing them enough room for ten. I noticed I had this need for personal space on a trip to India. I was the first one to arrive at the baggage claim area in the Dehli airport. Soon crowds of Indians planted themselves next to me, and I gave way, allowing them the personal space I thought we all required. In a few minutes, I found myself thinking, how can it be that I was the first one here and the farthest from the baggage claim?
There’s a parable in the book of Matthew that portrays the shift that I needed in order to appreciate a bus ride. In it, the kingdom of heaven is likened to a wedding banquet. A king invites people, I suppose his aristocratic friends and relatives, and they all disregard the invitation as nothing worth going to. Or worse, they abuse and kill the wretched servant who delivered the wedding invitation. They are later murdered by the king’s troops. Having eliminated his guest pool, the king sends out another series of invitations to the regular folk, who appreciate the fine opportunity and appear. However, of those regular folk, one makes the mistake of wearing non-wedding clothes, and that fool is cast into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Since I’m unequipped to comprehend the kingdom of heaven, I think of education as a wedding banquet. Education raises humans to greater levels of confidence, dignity, and freedom. It allows them to become more human. An inspiring example comes from the Washington-Midland Connection, a program where Midland and Fremont community members tutor parents of students of Washington Elementary School. These parents come after long hard days at work and put their hearts and souls into learning. They come in their finest sequins and silk bow ties.
But too often students do not understand education as a wedding banquet. This is not true of all students, but in my experience, it’s true of too many of them. They come to class not having purchased a textbook, or they haven’t done the assignment, or they text-message someone else instead of paying attention to the class session. They come to my wedding banquet in acid-washed jeans! When it came to riding buses in Moshi, Tanzania, I was guilty of wearing my own threadbare jeans.
Mysteriously, my attitude shifted, and I’m not sure whether it happened before or during the trip to town and back, but I finally understood that a bus ride was one of the greatest adventures ever. First, when you’re standing at the bus stop, you never know what will stop and invite you in. This sounds dangerous. Don’t get in the little car with four energetic men yelling, “Mzungu, come join us!”
Today, when the pickup with ten people in the back honked and beckoned me to join them, I climbed on board. Bolted onto the pickup bed was a frame of metal bars that we all clung to, except the young mother who sat on the wheel well holding her baby. I planted my feet on either side of two large buckets and wrapped my upper arms and hands on the metal frame to keep my teeth from being knocked out. With occasional lurches, I was shoved into the guy in front of me who had offered to marry me moments ago. When we stopped to pick up others, we all shifted even closer and at one point, I was able to look around and see that a mountain of people had grown up behind me.
On the way back to the college, I climbed into a van that had the official markings and right destination painted on its front. (Also, the passenger in the front seat grabbed my wrist and said, “Where?”) Inside, I stood against a wall, hovering over the heads of seated passengers. The only thing I could grip was a ledge inside the van from a defunct ventilation system—the grip bar was already covered in hands. The man in the seat below me had his ear in my stomach. When we added more to the van, all of us against the wall shifted even more and now I had a nun’s shoulder. Her head bowed over the seat in front of her, either to pray or make room or both.
I’m not sure what maximum capacity is in these vans. I thought we’d reached maximum capacity until we stopped four more times. After counting 30, I stopped because I couldn’t see. And then the pressure inside was eased when two and then three people squeezed out. They were greatly helped by me, the only one along the wall willing to move out of the van to make way. That’s another part of the adventure – stepping off and getting back in before the van takes off without you. And I did it! Even better, the nun now patted the seat beside her, inviting me to join her. So one-fourth of my rump carried the load for the rest of the way, relieving what had carried the load earlier: my neck, knuckles and elbow.
In the parable of the wedding banquet, the banquet is an invitation. It is clearly up to those invited to choose how they will respond. For me on this day, perceiving this trip as a miserable crowding of people, of bad smells (someone had stepped in dog doo), of total discomfort and undignified positions, was to arrive at the wedding banquet in ordinary clothing. The outer darkness would be the misery that I could easily suffer and appreciate.
In Tanzania, many, most, or all who ride those buses have no choice. For those who are weary or sick, can a bus ride be an invitation? And for those who need to get somewhere urgently, is a sense of adventure possible? I have to accept the fact that I had an invitation for adventure while many others did and do not. Also, I do not know if I’ll have a right spirit about the bus ride after the tenth or fiftieth trip to town.
It appears, then, that the kingdom of heaven, as far as I can tell with mortal dim eyes, comes as a momentary glimpse, one light beam cast through a window into a dark house. And of the glimpse that I got, here is what I saw: riding public transportation in Moshi, Tanzania, is to discover who will stop for you. It’s to discover how many of you will fit together. It’s to discover how you can hang on. It’s to discover who will help whom. It’s to discover how humanity folds together and to join in the communal act of folding.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Hanging on to the rope
In the midst of learning greetings, I’ve watched how Tanzanians communicate physically. Whenever I make a joke, someone not only throws back their head with laughter, but they also raise their hand to slap mine. The raised hand seems to mean that the person laughing acknowledges that the joke was a good one, and the joker receives the appreciation by putting out the palm, and the whole thing becomes a physical exchange. It looks like a horizontal high-five, so I figured out the response quickly. It was either that or have some other part of me slapped.
This week I happened upon a colleague named Ebenezer who was standing in front of the administration building waiting for the electricity to return. We exchanged pleasantries, and I don’t remember Ebenezer’s joke, but I laughed heartily and suddenly my hand was slapping Ebenezer’s. It startled me, finding Ebenezer’s hand under mine and then realizing that I must’ve done that raise-the-hand thing without thinking.
Unlike the hand thing, the verbal part of learning to communicate has been tedious. First, let me say I only know one language fluently (English). I took a year of German in high school, a year of Spanish in college, and promptly forgot 99% of what I had learned through no fault of my teachers. Once again, I’m starting from scratch with Kiswahili, acquiring basic greetings and responses, and as many nouns and a few adjectives that my brain will take. But the basic greetings still feel like a stylized dance. If someone offers “How are you?” I can respond with “I’m fine.” On my walks down the road, I mentally rehearse “How are you this morning?” or “How are you today?” or “How are you za guaco?” I still don’t know what “za guaco” means, but when I tack it onto a sentence, people say they’re fine.
I remember certain words out of necessity. The word “wait” came in handy this past week as I’ve been proctoring semester exams. I needed the word “wait” when a student tried to exit to the bathroom without signing out. Students had to wait before they could begin taking the exam. I also witnessed a young boy yell to a driver to wait—Subiri! Subiri!—so that a car passenger who had just disembarked could retrieve something from the car.
This initial stage of language acquisition reminds me of learning to water ski, way back in time when my body was elastic. In the cold Minnesota lake water, I strained to control two long skis bobbing on the ends of my legs and at the same time untangle my head or arm out of the rope. Meanwhile, some grown-up was holding me up by my life jacket far enough out of the water so that I didn’t have to think about how I would breathe underwater as well. Usually the grownup gave advice—“Relax your knees! Keep your head up! Bend your legs! Lean back! Not too far! Don’t pull too hard on the rope!”
There was no way I was going to hang on to that advice. After I yelled “hit it!” through chattering teeth to the boat driver, I hung on to the rope. If I was lucky, I could manage an excruciating 35 degree angle for a while and then crash. One time I forgot to let go of the rope and found my nostrils thoroughly irrigated. Eventually I actually emerged from the water to a vertical position, defying all likelihood that it would ever happen.
For 3 ½ weeks, I’ve been dreading the likelihood that I’ll never get beyond, “How are you za guaco?” But at the last part of this week, something happened that seemed to shift me a little more out of the water and closer to a 45 degree angle. I, along with about nine other college personnel, took a trip to town in the College’s Land Cruiser, driven by Haji. Haji had made the first stop, two people leapt off, and the vehicle began to roll away with the back door swinging wide open. Mr. Priva, who is no spring chicken, sat on the end, and I dreaded watching him try to retrieve the door in a vehicle bouncing down a road paved with boulders. Without thinking, I yelled, “Wait! Wait! Subiri!” There it was, that moment I emerged a little from the water, defying all odds. Even better, the group recognized the miracle and applauded—they too are tired of “How are you za guaco?”
Linguistic note ONLY to English teachers and grammar tsars: I realize the second sentence in this post violates the pronoun-antecedent agreement rule. One of the most valuable things I learned from a graduate course in linguistics is that the prescriptive rules of language are arbitrary. Second, the rules of language constantly change. Back in the day, we would’ve said, “…someone not only throws back his head with laughter, but he also raises…” Gradually custom has changed so that girls and women are no longer excluded in sentences with singular pronouns. I heartily support that. However, sentences with clunky she/he constructions drive me nuts. I could’ve avoided the clunky she/he by using the plural, as in “people not only throw their head back with laughter…” but I wanted to emphasize the one-to-one exchange in the hand slap. Therefore, I have purposefully used the singular “someone” with the plural “their,” hoping that the rules will change. They will change, not by any announcement (at least, not that I know of), but by frequent use. Perhaps I can convince you to keep it up.
This week I happened upon a colleague named Ebenezer who was standing in front of the administration building waiting for the electricity to return. We exchanged pleasantries, and I don’t remember Ebenezer’s joke, but I laughed heartily and suddenly my hand was slapping Ebenezer’s. It startled me, finding Ebenezer’s hand under mine and then realizing that I must’ve done that raise-the-hand thing without thinking.
Unlike the hand thing, the verbal part of learning to communicate has been tedious. First, let me say I only know one language fluently (English). I took a year of German in high school, a year of Spanish in college, and promptly forgot 99% of what I had learned through no fault of my teachers. Once again, I’m starting from scratch with Kiswahili, acquiring basic greetings and responses, and as many nouns and a few adjectives that my brain will take. But the basic greetings still feel like a stylized dance. If someone offers “How are you?” I can respond with “I’m fine.” On my walks down the road, I mentally rehearse “How are you this morning?” or “How are you today?” or “How are you za guaco?” I still don’t know what “za guaco” means, but when I tack it onto a sentence, people say they’re fine.
I remember certain words out of necessity. The word “wait” came in handy this past week as I’ve been proctoring semester exams. I needed the word “wait” when a student tried to exit to the bathroom without signing out. Students had to wait before they could begin taking the exam. I also witnessed a young boy yell to a driver to wait—Subiri! Subiri!—so that a car passenger who had just disembarked could retrieve something from the car.
This initial stage of language acquisition reminds me of learning to water ski, way back in time when my body was elastic. In the cold Minnesota lake water, I strained to control two long skis bobbing on the ends of my legs and at the same time untangle my head or arm out of the rope. Meanwhile, some grown-up was holding me up by my life jacket far enough out of the water so that I didn’t have to think about how I would breathe underwater as well. Usually the grownup gave advice—“Relax your knees! Keep your head up! Bend your legs! Lean back! Not too far! Don’t pull too hard on the rope!”
There was no way I was going to hang on to that advice. After I yelled “hit it!” through chattering teeth to the boat driver, I hung on to the rope. If I was lucky, I could manage an excruciating 35 degree angle for a while and then crash. One time I forgot to let go of the rope and found my nostrils thoroughly irrigated. Eventually I actually emerged from the water to a vertical position, defying all likelihood that it would ever happen.
For 3 ½ weeks, I’ve been dreading the likelihood that I’ll never get beyond, “How are you za guaco?” But at the last part of this week, something happened that seemed to shift me a little more out of the water and closer to a 45 degree angle. I, along with about nine other college personnel, took a trip to town in the College’s Land Cruiser, driven by Haji. Haji had made the first stop, two people leapt off, and the vehicle began to roll away with the back door swinging wide open. Mr. Priva, who is no spring chicken, sat on the end, and I dreaded watching him try to retrieve the door in a vehicle bouncing down a road paved with boulders. Without thinking, I yelled, “Wait! Wait! Subiri!” There it was, that moment I emerged a little from the water, defying all odds. Even better, the group recognized the miracle and applauded—they too are tired of “How are you za guaco?”
Linguistic note ONLY to English teachers and grammar tsars: I realize the second sentence in this post violates the pronoun-antecedent agreement rule. One of the most valuable things I learned from a graduate course in linguistics is that the prescriptive rules of language are arbitrary. Second, the rules of language constantly change. Back in the day, we would’ve said, “…someone not only throws back his head with laughter, but he also raises…” Gradually custom has changed so that girls and women are no longer excluded in sentences with singular pronouns. I heartily support that. However, sentences with clunky she/he constructions drive me nuts. I could’ve avoided the clunky she/he by using the plural, as in “people not only throw their head back with laughter…” but I wanted to emphasize the one-to-one exchange in the hand slap. Therefore, I have purposefully used the singular “someone” with the plural “their,” hoping that the rules will change. They will change, not by any announcement (at least, not that I know of), but by frequent use. Perhaps I can convince you to keep it up.
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