Saturday, 24 July 2010
As I write this, I’m sitting in the building where other Peace Corps trainees and I have our regular Saturday-night social (and most of our training classes). This weekend’s theme is “middle school dance party,” only the music that is from many stagiaires’ middle-school days was popular when I was in mid to late high school. Before I left the U.S., I thought I would want to be away from all things American all the time. After all, hadn’t I joined Peace Corps, in part, as a rebellion against a culture into which I didn’t feel I fit very well? I wanted to become as Cameroonian, as African as a pale-faced girl can. I still do. But I’ve come to be so grateful for these Saturday socials and any time that I get to spend with my fellow PCTs (we won’t become full-fledged “volunteers” (PCVs) until we’re officially sworn in after completing training).
While in Yaoundé, I was constantly delighted by the newness of my surroundings. Then we came to our training site where we received strips of paper listing the names of our host parents and the number of family members whose house we’d be sharing. As far as I know, everyone else had a simple, single digit on their slips. Mine said, “11 and more.” What? I soon learned: My host grandfather had died three weeks before, and tons of extended family had poured in from as far as Paris for the funeral and other celebrations. Except in Cameroon, there really is no distinction between nuclear and extended families. The first night, there were about 25 people sleeping in my 3-bedroom home-stay house. More came later. The number has since dwindled, but, still, there are consistently about 20 people in my house, including 11 or 12 children and two infants.
This was wonderfully fun for me at first and in many ways still is – I love the kids; they behave beautifully – and I spent as much time as I could with my host family. Then came the day of my late host grandfather’s funeral, which fell on the afternoon before the evening of one of our first trainee socials. Because the funeral was “au village” (outside of town), I hadn’t planned to attend the social because it was a day for family, and I’d be out the whole afternoon, anyway.
I’d learned a night or two before the funeral that my home-stay grandmother was just the second of her husband’s five (yes, five) wives. Oh. I asked the next morning during training if anyone else’s host family was polygamous. Not that anyone knew of, and the Peace Corps home-stay coordinator hadn’t even known that my family was. Despite its absence among other host families, polygamy is commonplace here. It’s as natural as monogamy.
So back to the funeral: Those closest to the decedent often wear white, not black, to show they’re in mourning. At the ceremony for my host grandfather, there was a separate tent for each wife’s offspring and descendents arrayed around (but at some distance from) the open casket. Behind the deceased was each of his five wives in elegant, bright white finery, seated in order, with the first wife farthest to the right.
A Christian pastor or priest gave a sermon over crackly loudspeaker before the burial. My host grandfather had his own house “au village” and each wife and her children have their own separate houses elsewhere. The service was held at the grandfather’s compound, and he was interred right next to his house. Burial often happens at home here, just as do the issues of life and death. (And why not? Why should our most important moments be spent in hospitals, as they are in the U.S.?)
No one wailed openly until the burial, but before that was even finished, traditional dancers began whooping and parading past guests to an intense drumbeat. Soon, one of them laid what appeared to be a cow bell at my feet. At first, I thought I was in his way and stepped aside. But the dancer laid the bell at my feet once more. I was at a loss. My host cousin from the coastal city of Douala told me I must take up the bell and join the dance. As I did so, my family cheered (and also mocked my poor sense of rhythm).
On the way home, we took a public bus. Twice the driver stopped before our destination and made us all get out, arguing with my family about why they planned to pay for only our relatives and not all the other passengers on the bus. Once, en route, the side door flew open, and the woman squeezed against it would have fallen out but for all the nearby arms that reached out to grab and steady her.
When we finally made it back to our house, it was feast time. A couple days before, my host cousin had offered that I could invite any friends I wanted to come see the pig slaughter at our house. Many PC trainees seemed eager to witness such an event, but only two showed up for the actual spectacle. The next night, we slaughtered a goat and gutted at least 250 fish.
Apparently, it’s tradition for a guest to serve her hosts, so there I stood the next afternoon at the head of the buffet table handing out plates to scores of guests, and suddenly, I felt overwhelmed by everything – the polygamy, the superstitions surrounding death, the mass of people, the drumbeats I could still feel in my gut, even the fact that we ran out of forks and goat meat before I would ever get any. I tried not to cry. Finally, it was my turn to eat, but by then, the flies were having their fill, too, and everything seemed a little less appetizing. I slouched awkwardly near the compound gate before one of my aunts from Douala offered to have me sit with her.
Then, although I had invited only one or two of them, I spied four or five fellow PCTs striding toward the food tent outside my house. That day, seeing that cluster of Americans in the distance felt like salvation. My family welcomed them and offered us our own place to sit apart from most of the rest of the guests. We shared a soda, and one PCT gladly ate the bulk of the food on my plate that I couldn’t finish (I had no problem eating all the pork, which turned out to be delicious).
Just to speak English with a few people, to know what was going on in the conversation around me sent a flood of relief through my veins. It was then that I knew I would ask my family if I could go to the Saturday PCT social – and that I would probably gratefully go to each one ever after.
I wrote to a friend back home recently that I love being around things foreign in my own country. It makes me feel connected to the world. But in the States, I experience whatever is new and exotic and strange in small pieces and from the context of my own culture and comfort zone. Here, I am the stranger swallowed up by strangeness. I'm still searching for which way is up so I can break the surface of this culture and gulp air into my American lungs to maintain my American insides. When I can breathe, then I can learn to tread these Cameroonian waters, to navigate through them, and eventually, to walk on land, dripping with Cameroonian culture on the outside, but still centered and American in my inward parts.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Yes, we're in Yaounde
4-6 June 2010
During the three nights our Peace Corps group spent in Yaoundé, I slept harder than I’d slept in the past year and a half. I budged not when my roommate came in late, when the music of the hotel night club blasted until 3:00 a.m., when there were violent storms during the night. I think I slept the sleep of one who has been relieved of a great responsibility. Although my tasks often were not many, I’d spent the better part of a year in my hometown developing a finely honed “mother’s ear” at my grandmother’s boarding house. Every stir Grandma made in the middle of the night, every footfall on the back stairwell where her mentally ill residents drifted in and out, roused me to attention. And I’d wait, poised to act if something seemed amiss. Sometimes I’d go right back to sleep when I felt all was clear, but usually I’d lie there brooding for awhile.
I knew Peace Corps would give me many more responsibilities than I’d had back in the States, but, in Yaoundé, I slept serenely, knowing that those responsibilities would be ones I had chosen. While I’m grateful for the shelter my grandma’s boarding home provided as I awaited a verdict from the DC PC office, the house and all it included was not where I’d ever envisioned myself as an adult.
Orientation in Cameroon’s capital was whirlwind of activity. The highlight was dinner at the PC country director’s house where I felt we tasted authentic Cameroonian food for the first time. At my table sat a former PC volunteer and retired diplomat who gave me hope for my future. He, too, had been a graduate school dropout. He’d gone back to school to avoid the draft and had studied political affairs, just as I had done. But he flunked out after barely a year. Then he joined the Peace Corps. Save for my three-year interlude working for a newspaper, this diplomat’s story sounded just like mine. He went to law school after PC (as I have thought so long of doing) and said it was a great background for what he did following that: join the Foreign Service. So someone who never finished his master’s degree still went on to do great things. And his trajectory is so much like the one I’ve imagined for myself.
I still have no idea what I will do after my PC service. But I’ve filed this man’s narrative in my memory bank to spur me on when I feel discouraged because of all I feel I have yet to accomplish. In the meantime, I was so grateful finally to be in Africa, to have been selected to serve my country – and the world – in this peaceful way, that it was hard not to get teary. Soon enough, however, I’d be overwhelmed by different feelings: bewilderment at our seriously intense training schedule and culture shock.
During the three nights our Peace Corps group spent in Yaoundé, I slept harder than I’d slept in the past year and a half. I budged not when my roommate came in late, when the music of the hotel night club blasted until 3:00 a.m., when there were violent storms during the night. I think I slept the sleep of one who has been relieved of a great responsibility. Although my tasks often were not many, I’d spent the better part of a year in my hometown developing a finely honed “mother’s ear” at my grandmother’s boarding house. Every stir Grandma made in the middle of the night, every footfall on the back stairwell where her mentally ill residents drifted in and out, roused me to attention. And I’d wait, poised to act if something seemed amiss. Sometimes I’d go right back to sleep when I felt all was clear, but usually I’d lie there brooding for awhile.
I knew Peace Corps would give me many more responsibilities than I’d had back in the States, but, in Yaoundé, I slept serenely, knowing that those responsibilities would be ones I had chosen. While I’m grateful for the shelter my grandma’s boarding home provided as I awaited a verdict from the DC PC office, the house and all it included was not where I’d ever envisioned myself as an adult.
Orientation in Cameroon’s capital was whirlwind of activity. The highlight was dinner at the PC country director’s house where I felt we tasted authentic Cameroonian food for the first time. At my table sat a former PC volunteer and retired diplomat who gave me hope for my future. He, too, had been a graduate school dropout. He’d gone back to school to avoid the draft and had studied political affairs, just as I had done. But he flunked out after barely a year. Then he joined the Peace Corps. Save for my three-year interlude working for a newspaper, this diplomat’s story sounded just like mine. He went to law school after PC (as I have thought so long of doing) and said it was a great background for what he did following that: join the Foreign Service. So someone who never finished his master’s degree still went on to do great things. And his trajectory is so much like the one I’ve imagined for myself.
I still have no idea what I will do after my PC service. But I’ve filed this man’s narrative in my memory bank to spur me on when I feel discouraged because of all I feel I have yet to accomplish. In the meantime, I was so grateful finally to be in Africa, to have been selected to serve my country – and the world – in this peaceful way, that it was hard not to get teary. Soon enough, however, I’d be overwhelmed by different feelings: bewilderment at our seriously intense training schedule and culture shock.
Taking flight
Friday, 4 June 2010.
This is the day we arrived in Cameroon. Of course, I’m writing this long after that day, so what I felt then I don’t necessarily remember the same way now, but I’ll do my best to record my impressions accurately.
First, I just have to say how excited I get any time I fly over earth I’ve never before trod. I can’t say I’ve been to those places, but I can say I caught a glimpse. Flying over western Canada, southern Alaska, and the Bering Sea on my way to a study abroad in Japan was amazing. My friend Alex, who wanted to sleep, kindly gave up his window seat, so I could stare agog out the window for 12 hours. What a strange experience to fly west, following the sun so that night never falls.
My staying-awake powers were not so great on the trip to Cameroon. I’d slept only three hours before my 6:00 a.m. flight to Philadelphia for “stage,” where 42 other “stagiaires” and I had half a day of “This is Peace Corps” orientation and half of another early morning of waiting for our yellow fever shots. I managed to keep my eyes open most of the bus ride to New York where we would fly out of JFK to Brussels. I’d been to the city only once, when I was eight, so it was pretty cool to ride through the barrios of Brooklyn and catch sight of the Statue of Liberty between industrial buildings and skyscrapers.
I was sad I hadn’t gotten a chance to say good-bye to one of my favorite former students at the refugee center, but happily the morning of 3 June, I found a message on my phone from her. My co-worker must have given her my number. Once I’d eaten some au bon pain at the airport, I called my family, said my last “I love you” from the States, and then called this wonderful Iraqi woman who’d grown to love me more than I’d realized.
I didn’t dream it would be so, but it was sweet that the last person I spoke to before leaving my homeland was someone who’d reluctantly left hers so many months before. I said how I loved and would miss her and told her what I’d told my other ladies: that I was so grateful for what she had taught me about courage, about how to be a (nearly) perfect stranger in a strange land. Although she had never wanted to leave Iraq (or Jordan, where her family sojourned before coming to the U.S.), she had transitioned into American life with such grace.
I sat next to a Sierra Leonean and his white girlfriend on the way to Brussels, so I was far from the window seat I wanted. But we were flying east, so it was night sooner than it should have been, and we were mostly over ocean, anyway, so I wasn’t too sad. I think it was just barely dawn when we flew over part of Ireland and the U.K. It was also cloudy, so I don’t think I could have seen much of the start of Western Europe, even by the window. Morning was crystal clear over Belgium, however.
Oh, what gorgeous Belgian countryside and architecture I drank in as we descended for landing. What I saw is exactly what I picture when I think of Europe. Classic: rolling hills dotted with country manors, then something more akin to quaint row houses in lovely earth tones as we approached the city.
On the next flight – yippee – I had a window seat! It was a struggle to stay awake all the way south, and I succumbed to a couple minutes of shuteye here and there. (And “shuteye” is exactly the word: My eyes would just shut despite my best efforts to keep them open.) Still, I managed to see some picturesque villages nestled in the valleys between the snow-capped crags and aquamarine lakes of the Swiss Alps. In some ways flying over an area is better than visiting it. I didn’t see just one town or one peak but many, across an entire range of mountains.
Then it was on above more-populous northern Italy and finally over the edge of Europe itself, into the airspace above the Mediterranean. I’ve seen the Mediterranean! I did get confused at one point. Suddenly we were over land again, but I didn’t think it looked at all how I imagined North Africa. There was too much greenery (well, not that much, but too much to be Libya, over which the plane’s trajectory map showed we would spend a lot of time flying). Does anyone know what this could have been? One of Italy’s islands? We had been over water about 15 minutes when we came upon this land mass, and we passed over it for another 10 or 15 before reaching water again. Twenty minutes or so after that, finally, there was Africa, almost just how I pictured it.
I saw more brush than I expected, but it was sparse and grayish, and the land was visibly arid. I wish I could recall more details of the towns I saw. Some were rather large and dense. I remember a lot of white and drab beige construction against the pale-orange of the soil. This was surprising to me: Satellite photos I’d seen all show the semi-arid and Saharan parts of Africa to be yellow. What I saw from the plane appeared peachy, almost rosy in some places. It was so cool to see, too – I don’t know how to call them – salt-production ponds, maybe? I’d only seen those in documentaries. They are a series of progressively drier pools where saline water is corralled and left to evaporate, leaving the salt deposits behind.
It took longer than I thought, but the landscape eventually melted into the endless sands of the Sahara. Occasionally I could discern a windswept pattern on the ground, but mostly, this earth was as featureless and uninhabited as my weary mind. I let myself sleep.
I awoke to more desert, only this time, there were a few wispies obscuring my view. I had this stereotype that the sun bares down all the time on the Sahara, but there was a sizable chunk of time when I could spot the orange sands only through keyholes in the clouds. It was pretty depressing flying over infinite barrenness, but I had Belgian airline ice cream to distract me there at the last, just when I needed it: as the desert sun baked my face through the window, and my top half broke a sweat.
I had always wondered how the Sahara ended. In satellite photos, the swath of yellow just seems magically to morph into a band of brilliant emerald. And it was so.
(I did follow the shining filament of a tributary for several minutes before it broadened to become a blinding blade of reflected light that sliced through the parched earth, but this was the only indication that perhaps the sandy tedium would soon end. To my chagrin, however, the river didn’t seem to flow anywhere; it just stopped, as abruptly as that golden line first appeared.) Just when I thought the desert may truly continue eternally, a rich garland of green materialized, and the sand was no more. Like in the space photos, there was no succession of landscapes – no desert to scrub land to grassland to forest. Nope. Just straight from sand to subtropics.
How happy I was to break the visual monotony and see my favorite color once again.
I had been a little worried because I read that parts of Cameroon were arid, even desert, but I was glad to see green, even in the north, that continued all the way to our touchdown in the capital city of Yaoundé. (I learned that during rainy season, even the dry regions bloom.)
The green was broken up, though, by patches of bare, red earth: redder than Georgia clay – deep burgundy in some places, I would learn later – but in Yaoundé, the soil was a rich, burnt-orange red. On the way in, I was awed that I was now witnessing what I had eyed only in National Geographic before: the sparsely populated landscape, the little villages, the tin and thatched roofs, the airport landing strip that seemed so spare compared with those in the West. I was about to set down in Aaaaahhhfrica, and I was thrilled – a teary, weary, wondering kind of thrilled.
I was not thrilled to note the time the sun went down: around 6:45, not long after we made it out of baggage claim. There’s no daylight savings time here, and besides, when you’re sitting so close to the equator, the days approach 12 hours all year round. Alas, no 9:30 sunsets or 15.5-hour summer days like in my home state. But n’importe – it didn’t matter – I was in Africa.
This is the day we arrived in Cameroon. Of course, I’m writing this long after that day, so what I felt then I don’t necessarily remember the same way now, but I’ll do my best to record my impressions accurately.
First, I just have to say how excited I get any time I fly over earth I’ve never before trod. I can’t say I’ve been to those places, but I can say I caught a glimpse. Flying over western Canada, southern Alaska, and the Bering Sea on my way to a study abroad in Japan was amazing. My friend Alex, who wanted to sleep, kindly gave up his window seat, so I could stare agog out the window for 12 hours. What a strange experience to fly west, following the sun so that night never falls.
My staying-awake powers were not so great on the trip to Cameroon. I’d slept only three hours before my 6:00 a.m. flight to Philadelphia for “stage,” where 42 other “stagiaires” and I had half a day of “This is Peace Corps” orientation and half of another early morning of waiting for our yellow fever shots. I managed to keep my eyes open most of the bus ride to New York where we would fly out of JFK to Brussels. I’d been to the city only once, when I was eight, so it was pretty cool to ride through the barrios of Brooklyn and catch sight of the Statue of Liberty between industrial buildings and skyscrapers.
I was sad I hadn’t gotten a chance to say good-bye to one of my favorite former students at the refugee center, but happily the morning of 3 June, I found a message on my phone from her. My co-worker must have given her my number. Once I’d eaten some au bon pain at the airport, I called my family, said my last “I love you” from the States, and then called this wonderful Iraqi woman who’d grown to love me more than I’d realized.
I didn’t dream it would be so, but it was sweet that the last person I spoke to before leaving my homeland was someone who’d reluctantly left hers so many months before. I said how I loved and would miss her and told her what I’d told my other ladies: that I was so grateful for what she had taught me about courage, about how to be a (nearly) perfect stranger in a strange land. Although she had never wanted to leave Iraq (or Jordan, where her family sojourned before coming to the U.S.), she had transitioned into American life with such grace.
I sat next to a Sierra Leonean and his white girlfriend on the way to Brussels, so I was far from the window seat I wanted. But we were flying east, so it was night sooner than it should have been, and we were mostly over ocean, anyway, so I wasn’t too sad. I think it was just barely dawn when we flew over part of Ireland and the U.K. It was also cloudy, so I don’t think I could have seen much of the start of Western Europe, even by the window. Morning was crystal clear over Belgium, however.
Oh, what gorgeous Belgian countryside and architecture I drank in as we descended for landing. What I saw is exactly what I picture when I think of Europe. Classic: rolling hills dotted with country manors, then something more akin to quaint row houses in lovely earth tones as we approached the city.
On the next flight – yippee – I had a window seat! It was a struggle to stay awake all the way south, and I succumbed to a couple minutes of shuteye here and there. (And “shuteye” is exactly the word: My eyes would just shut despite my best efforts to keep them open.) Still, I managed to see some picturesque villages nestled in the valleys between the snow-capped crags and aquamarine lakes of the Swiss Alps. In some ways flying over an area is better than visiting it. I didn’t see just one town or one peak but many, across an entire range of mountains.
Then it was on above more-populous northern Italy and finally over the edge of Europe itself, into the airspace above the Mediterranean. I’ve seen the Mediterranean! I did get confused at one point. Suddenly we were over land again, but I didn’t think it looked at all how I imagined North Africa. There was too much greenery (well, not that much, but too much to be Libya, over which the plane’s trajectory map showed we would spend a lot of time flying). Does anyone know what this could have been? One of Italy’s islands? We had been over water about 15 minutes when we came upon this land mass, and we passed over it for another 10 or 15 before reaching water again. Twenty minutes or so after that, finally, there was Africa, almost just how I pictured it.
I saw more brush than I expected, but it was sparse and grayish, and the land was visibly arid. I wish I could recall more details of the towns I saw. Some were rather large and dense. I remember a lot of white and drab beige construction against the pale-orange of the soil. This was surprising to me: Satellite photos I’d seen all show the semi-arid and Saharan parts of Africa to be yellow. What I saw from the plane appeared peachy, almost rosy in some places. It was so cool to see, too – I don’t know how to call them – salt-production ponds, maybe? I’d only seen those in documentaries. They are a series of progressively drier pools where saline water is corralled and left to evaporate, leaving the salt deposits behind.
It took longer than I thought, but the landscape eventually melted into the endless sands of the Sahara. Occasionally I could discern a windswept pattern on the ground, but mostly, this earth was as featureless and uninhabited as my weary mind. I let myself sleep.
I awoke to more desert, only this time, there were a few wispies obscuring my view. I had this stereotype that the sun bares down all the time on the Sahara, but there was a sizable chunk of time when I could spot the orange sands only through keyholes in the clouds. It was pretty depressing flying over infinite barrenness, but I had Belgian airline ice cream to distract me there at the last, just when I needed it: as the desert sun baked my face through the window, and my top half broke a sweat.
I had always wondered how the Sahara ended. In satellite photos, the swath of yellow just seems magically to morph into a band of brilliant emerald. And it was so.
(I did follow the shining filament of a tributary for several minutes before it broadened to become a blinding blade of reflected light that sliced through the parched earth, but this was the only indication that perhaps the sandy tedium would soon end. To my chagrin, however, the river didn’t seem to flow anywhere; it just stopped, as abruptly as that golden line first appeared.) Just when I thought the desert may truly continue eternally, a rich garland of green materialized, and the sand was no more. Like in the space photos, there was no succession of landscapes – no desert to scrub land to grassland to forest. Nope. Just straight from sand to subtropics.
How happy I was to break the visual monotony and see my favorite color once again.
I had been a little worried because I read that parts of Cameroon were arid, even desert, but I was glad to see green, even in the north, that continued all the way to our touchdown in the capital city of Yaoundé. (I learned that during rainy season, even the dry regions bloom.)
The green was broken up, though, by patches of bare, red earth: redder than Georgia clay – deep burgundy in some places, I would learn later – but in Yaoundé, the soil was a rich, burnt-orange red. On the way in, I was awed that I was now witnessing what I had eyed only in National Geographic before: the sparsely populated landscape, the little villages, the tin and thatched roofs, the airport landing strip that seemed so spare compared with those in the West. I was about to set down in Aaaaahhhfrica, and I was thrilled – a teary, weary, wondering kind of thrilled.
I was not thrilled to note the time the sun went down: around 6:45, not long after we made it out of baggage claim. There’s no daylight savings time here, and besides, when you’re sitting so close to the equator, the days approach 12 hours all year round. Alas, no 9:30 sunsets or 15.5-hour summer days like in my home state. But n’importe – it didn’t matter – I was in Africa.
Last day at the Family Center
Thursday, 27 May 2010
I continued work with my refugee students up until May 27, five days before I left for Peace Corps Cameroon. These mothers I taught were amazing – often frustratingly chatty, but amazing, nonetheless. I always thought the Family Center was good for them. I hoped they could learn at least a little useful English from me there, but mostly, I just thought it was good for them to have to get out of the house and come be social with each other – with those of their own language group and those from the other far corners of the globe.
I knew most of them liked coming to class, at least for the social aspect, but I never realized until my last day just how much of an anchor and a comfort my co-teacher and I were to them. I knew I would cry, and I expected a few tears from the moms, too. But I didn’t anticipate the shuddering sobs.
My colleague had the wise idea to say a few parting words to our group privately, before administration from the main office of our organization arrived for an official send-off. She told our women how much she loved them, how much she had enjoyed being their teacher, and how much she had learned from them: how to be strong, how to keep moving forward, how to be brave. Her words encompassed how I felt, too, and I added that I was grateful for how our ladies had taught me how to be a stranger. Here they had been forced to flee their homes and had had no say in where they were sent in this unknown American land, and they adapted. They cared for their husbands and children, coped with a brand new culture and language, and still managed to share smiles and laughter whenever they came to class.
And here I was about to become one of them. I was about to be the alien, to be the one who stuck out, who didn’t speak the language, the one for whom everything was strange and unfamiliar. When I became the foreigner, I hoped to express half as much grace as they had. For the poise they had shown and the affection and joy they had maintained during a difficult transition, I thanked them. And I cried. So did they.
We collected ourselves when the executive director showed up to say farewell and present us with mementos and cake, and I thought that was the end of our being emotional. But after I finished eating, I began the rounds, kneeling in front of each student’s chair to give one last hug to every one. Then came the real tears. Almost without exception, each woman buried her face in my neck and shook with sobs. In turn, I stroked the mothers’ hair and held them as I also wept, and when I could manage, I told each how strong she was, how we would both be OK, how much she would like and be cared for by her new teacher.
My words can’t capture the depth of affection and emotion that poured out of us that day. After everyone left, and we were still trying to stanch the last trickle of our tears, my co-teacher, in a quavering voice, got out something like, “Don’t you just want to go home and cry the rest of the day?” Yes. I was spent.
My childhood friend, who had just moved back to town a few days before, wanted to see me teach before I left the country. She came to school this day and was so glad. She was let in to the inner sanctum of what the Family Center meant to all of us, students and teachers. She was happy to see that I was so loved – and perhaps that I loved so much.
By the end of the day, my eyes burned and my head was full and heavy from too much crying. But I was happy. It was my time to be at the Family Center the year I was there, to touch students’ lives and be touched by them. And it was just the right and appropriate time for me to leave for new journeys.
My students will continue to progress and so will I. And when I think of them, I’ll remember the way the sun shone that day through the stained-glass window of the cross and the dove. I’ll remember how the room glowed with love more than with that light. I’ll remember holding each of my girls in turn, knowing that they were, at least for a time, my girls and that in them, I was – and am – well pleased.
I continued work with my refugee students up until May 27, five days before I left for Peace Corps Cameroon. These mothers I taught were amazing – often frustratingly chatty, but amazing, nonetheless. I always thought the Family Center was good for them. I hoped they could learn at least a little useful English from me there, but mostly, I just thought it was good for them to have to get out of the house and come be social with each other – with those of their own language group and those from the other far corners of the globe.
I knew most of them liked coming to class, at least for the social aspect, but I never realized until my last day just how much of an anchor and a comfort my co-teacher and I were to them. I knew I would cry, and I expected a few tears from the moms, too. But I didn’t anticipate the shuddering sobs.
My colleague had the wise idea to say a few parting words to our group privately, before administration from the main office of our organization arrived for an official send-off. She told our women how much she loved them, how much she had enjoyed being their teacher, and how much she had learned from them: how to be strong, how to keep moving forward, how to be brave. Her words encompassed how I felt, too, and I added that I was grateful for how our ladies had taught me how to be a stranger. Here they had been forced to flee their homes and had had no say in where they were sent in this unknown American land, and they adapted. They cared for their husbands and children, coped with a brand new culture and language, and still managed to share smiles and laughter whenever they came to class.
And here I was about to become one of them. I was about to be the alien, to be the one who stuck out, who didn’t speak the language, the one for whom everything was strange and unfamiliar. When I became the foreigner, I hoped to express half as much grace as they had. For the poise they had shown and the affection and joy they had maintained during a difficult transition, I thanked them. And I cried. So did they.
We collected ourselves when the executive director showed up to say farewell and present us with mementos and cake, and I thought that was the end of our being emotional. But after I finished eating, I began the rounds, kneeling in front of each student’s chair to give one last hug to every one. Then came the real tears. Almost without exception, each woman buried her face in my neck and shook with sobs. In turn, I stroked the mothers’ hair and held them as I also wept, and when I could manage, I told each how strong she was, how we would both be OK, how much she would like and be cared for by her new teacher.
My words can’t capture the depth of affection and emotion that poured out of us that day. After everyone left, and we were still trying to stanch the last trickle of our tears, my co-teacher, in a quavering voice, got out something like, “Don’t you just want to go home and cry the rest of the day?” Yes. I was spent.
My childhood friend, who had just moved back to town a few days before, wanted to see me teach before I left the country. She came to school this day and was so glad. She was let in to the inner sanctum of what the Family Center meant to all of us, students and teachers. She was happy to see that I was so loved – and perhaps that I loved so much.
By the end of the day, my eyes burned and my head was full and heavy from too much crying. But I was happy. It was my time to be at the Family Center the year I was there, to touch students’ lives and be touched by them. And it was just the right and appropriate time for me to leave for new journeys.
My students will continue to progress and so will I. And when I think of them, I’ll remember the way the sun shone that day through the stained-glass window of the cross and the dove. I’ll remember how the room glowed with love more than with that light. I’ll remember holding each of my girls in turn, knowing that they were, at least for a time, my girls and that in them, I was – and am – well pleased.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Mother's Day 2010
Monday, 10 May 2010
Before I begin recording my escapades in Cameroon, I want to put on “paper” two experiences I had just before I left the U.S. Here is the first:
It was the day after Mother’s Day, at the refugee-resettlement organization where I worked teaching English. For those who don’t know already, for a whole year, I was privileged to work with a richly diverse and ever-changing group of women from (I just have to list the countries): Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine (yes, I recognize the Occupied Territories as a political state), Nepal, Bhutan, India, Burma (no, I don’t recognize the military junta’s “Myanmar”), Thailand, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Burundi, Sudan, and Somalia.
The students I co-taught with a colleague and friend were all mothers of children under five. At the Family Center, these ladies could bring their youngsters who weren’t yet in school and leave them in the care of other resettlement workers while they learned the language of their new home country. When all the mothers showed up, we had a class of 22 to 24. On this day, our art therapist was scheduled to come get creative with our ladies. She usually spent the first half of our 3-hour class with the moms and the other half with the kids.
So by 9:45, our moms were making tissue-paper and pipe-cleaner flowers meant to honor themselves as mothers. I hadn’t been much for art therapy up to this point. I mean, most of these women couldn’t understand English, much less grasp such a linguistically complicated concept as using art to help them process the trauma they’d been through as refugees. Our sessions were usually just a fun break for all of us from my boring phonics and grammar lessons.
This Monday meeting was no different at first (except for the fact that we had a new male volunteer, and so far, none of the women had balked at his presence). We all chatted and smiled while we arranged blooms in our little aluminum buckets. Then, it was time to share. The art therapist asked each mom to talk about what it meant to her to be a mother.
Let me stop here and mention how important mothers are to my former students. These women ranged in age from 18 to around 45. Some had family who’d also been resettled in Kentucky, but most had left everything they’d known, including their mothers, to escape to a presumably safer life in America or to follow husbands who insisted the U.S. would be better than the families’ previous host countries. Some could contact their mothers regularly; many could not. A few had no way of knowing whether their mothers even still lived in the refugee camps they’d left behind. Has anyone ever heard of the children’s book, “I’ll Love You Forever”? There were always many misty eyes whenever we read this to the ladies during our daily story time.
So here were our students who were supposed to talk about themselves as mothers, and instead, each one spoke only as a child with a mother of her own somewhere far away. My turn was toward the beginning, and after me came the male volunteer. Then a mom from Cuba. She got a little choked up talking about what she cherished about her mother, but she did great, despite the din from across the table where the Arabic speakers were rudely chattering, as usual.
Next was one of our newest arrivals and our youngest, an 18-year-old Karen mother of two from Burma. She got out maybe one sentence about her mother, and that was it; she lost it. My co-teacher was sitting next to her and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Often our students tried to wipe their eyes, sniff back the snot, and carry on when they cried, but how gratifying to see this girl accept my friend’s comfort: At first touch, she buried her face in the shoulder of a woman who’d only offered a hand. The Arabic speakers were silent.
We were out of Kleenexes, so I went to the nursery to grab a few, and by the time I came back, everyone (including me) was in tears. As we continued around the room, the only sounds were the occasional sniffle and the dulcet tones of whichever mom was giving voice to the child-love that beat within her.
Now I get it. This is what art therapy is all about. What catharsis. What a good thing for each of our women to be given the opportunity to talk about the person who is perhaps most precious to her. What a salutary thing for each to have taken the opportunity to cry. What strengthening thing for us to have been bound by this shared experience. What a comforting thing for all of us to know that the same love flows within those of all cultures and creeds.
Our art therapist really earned her keep that day. Rather than going upstairs to the kids after break, she stayed with us to facilitate a more light-hearted conclusion our creative session. This time, the moms spoke as moms. Their kids drive them crazy. But two-year-olds slurping from the toilet notwithstanding, the same deep love that flooded from each woman for her own mother poured out for her children also.
I ran into another new volunteer at the optometrist later that day, a prim, middle-aged woman with a heart for service. She remarked what an amazing morning we’d had. After seeing those mothers share like that, cry like that, she just had such a deeper respect for what these women had been through. Didn’t we all? It’s not often that volunteers (or any of us) are privileged to witness what moves so deeply within the hearts of our refugee clients. But that day, these women of strength, grace, composure let us see the love and sorrow that makes them also fragile – that makes us all human and binds us together for good.
Post script: Now that I am in a foreign land, I understand on a whole new level why mothers are so important to my former students. My mother now represents the comfort of all that is familiar. When I feel overwhelmed by strangeness, she is the one I think of, the one I want and need. As I strive to adapt and assimilate, to change and grow here, she knows who I have always been and always will be. She knows the core of who I am – that part of me that will never change. She is the earthly keeper of my identity.
Before I begin recording my escapades in Cameroon, I want to put on “paper” two experiences I had just before I left the U.S. Here is the first:
It was the day after Mother’s Day, at the refugee-resettlement organization where I worked teaching English. For those who don’t know already, for a whole year, I was privileged to work with a richly diverse and ever-changing group of women from (I just have to list the countries): Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine (yes, I recognize the Occupied Territories as a political state), Nepal, Bhutan, India, Burma (no, I don’t recognize the military junta’s “Myanmar”), Thailand, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Burundi, Sudan, and Somalia.
The students I co-taught with a colleague and friend were all mothers of children under five. At the Family Center, these ladies could bring their youngsters who weren’t yet in school and leave them in the care of other resettlement workers while they learned the language of their new home country. When all the mothers showed up, we had a class of 22 to 24. On this day, our art therapist was scheduled to come get creative with our ladies. She usually spent the first half of our 3-hour class with the moms and the other half with the kids.
So by 9:45, our moms were making tissue-paper and pipe-cleaner flowers meant to honor themselves as mothers. I hadn’t been much for art therapy up to this point. I mean, most of these women couldn’t understand English, much less grasp such a linguistically complicated concept as using art to help them process the trauma they’d been through as refugees. Our sessions were usually just a fun break for all of us from my boring phonics and grammar lessons.
This Monday meeting was no different at first (except for the fact that we had a new male volunteer, and so far, none of the women had balked at his presence). We all chatted and smiled while we arranged blooms in our little aluminum buckets. Then, it was time to share. The art therapist asked each mom to talk about what it meant to her to be a mother.
Let me stop here and mention how important mothers are to my former students. These women ranged in age from 18 to around 45. Some had family who’d also been resettled in Kentucky, but most had left everything they’d known, including their mothers, to escape to a presumably safer life in America or to follow husbands who insisted the U.S. would be better than the families’ previous host countries. Some could contact their mothers regularly; many could not. A few had no way of knowing whether their mothers even still lived in the refugee camps they’d left behind. Has anyone ever heard of the children’s book, “I’ll Love You Forever”? There were always many misty eyes whenever we read this to the ladies during our daily story time.
So here were our students who were supposed to talk about themselves as mothers, and instead, each one spoke only as a child with a mother of her own somewhere far away. My turn was toward the beginning, and after me came the male volunteer. Then a mom from Cuba. She got a little choked up talking about what she cherished about her mother, but she did great, despite the din from across the table where the Arabic speakers were rudely chattering, as usual.
Next was one of our newest arrivals and our youngest, an 18-year-old Karen mother of two from Burma. She got out maybe one sentence about her mother, and that was it; she lost it. My co-teacher was sitting next to her and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Often our students tried to wipe their eyes, sniff back the snot, and carry on when they cried, but how gratifying to see this girl accept my friend’s comfort: At first touch, she buried her face in the shoulder of a woman who’d only offered a hand. The Arabic speakers were silent.
We were out of Kleenexes, so I went to the nursery to grab a few, and by the time I came back, everyone (including me) was in tears. As we continued around the room, the only sounds were the occasional sniffle and the dulcet tones of whichever mom was giving voice to the child-love that beat within her.
Now I get it. This is what art therapy is all about. What catharsis. What a good thing for each of our women to be given the opportunity to talk about the person who is perhaps most precious to her. What a salutary thing for each to have taken the opportunity to cry. What strengthening thing for us to have been bound by this shared experience. What a comforting thing for all of us to know that the same love flows within those of all cultures and creeds.
Our art therapist really earned her keep that day. Rather than going upstairs to the kids after break, she stayed with us to facilitate a more light-hearted conclusion our creative session. This time, the moms spoke as moms. Their kids drive them crazy. But two-year-olds slurping from the toilet notwithstanding, the same deep love that flooded from each woman for her own mother poured out for her children also.
I ran into another new volunteer at the optometrist later that day, a prim, middle-aged woman with a heart for service. She remarked what an amazing morning we’d had. After seeing those mothers share like that, cry like that, she just had such a deeper respect for what these women had been through. Didn’t we all? It’s not often that volunteers (or any of us) are privileged to witness what moves so deeply within the hearts of our refugee clients. But that day, these women of strength, grace, composure let us see the love and sorrow that makes them also fragile – that makes us all human and binds us together for good.
Post script: Now that I am in a foreign land, I understand on a whole new level why mothers are so important to my former students. My mother now represents the comfort of all that is familiar. When I feel overwhelmed by strangeness, she is the one I think of, the one I want and need. As I strive to adapt and assimilate, to change and grow here, she knows who I have always been and always will be. She knows the core of who I am – that part of me that will never change. She is the earthly keeper of my identity.
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