Saturday 1 October 2011

Fourth Week of September

The thing about Luviri is that although it can frustrate me to no end, it can also always cheer me up. Like someone that knows how to push your buttons but is impossible to stay mad at. Some days I’ll get myself all worked up because while breaking up reeds to start my morning fire I break into a nest of earwigs. Then maybe I’ll go to school and find myself unable to explain prepositions to the Form Ones; whether because of the language barrier or my ineptitude or both is impossible to say. I’ll be on my way to teach Literature to Form Three and realize there are only two books remaining of the original seven because students have “picked them” so I’ll have to teach over thirty students with two books. Coming home I might be exasperated, wanting nothing more than to hide in my room and read a book, just me and Friday. Then out of nowhere a swarm of children will descend upon my house, “Rebak! Raba! Labek! Odi? Odi!” When I go to the door they will shout for my bao board, or a ball, or paper, or Friday, or sweeties. If I give them Friday or bao they will start out nicely but will shortly be yelling, fighting over bao, or running screaming from Friday only to come back to do it again. The children who are not occupied with bao or the cat will stand in my doorway and at the window peering in, pointing at things, watching me read or write, asking for paper and sweets. Just then perhaps a student will arrive carrying a phone that someone has sent them to have me charge with my battery. At this point it would not be uncommon for a three or four inch spider to dart out from behind the door.
            But then maybe my friend Edward will come over and ask me to go to the garden. There my spinach has sprouted and Edward has spread manure over my small plot. I’ll spend an hour or two barefoot in the dirt helping Edward carry water, first to my plants, and then to his cabbages. As we walk back I might see a fellow teacher who will greet me and say I must be becoming an expert at gardening. If the children see me walking home they will return to my porch, noisier even than before. But another teacher will see them, and break from teaching open school (an afternoon school for adults that never finished high school) to come to my house and lecture them for ten minutes on being respectful to “the madam.” The penitent children will then quietly gather around me as I read them a story, occasionally supplying the words in Chitumbuka and correcting my pronunciation. Then they might invite me to play ball with them. Possibly I need water and as I am walking home with it hear a student laughingly call my name so she can take the bucket from my head and carry it the rest of the way for me.
            Sometimes I get frustrated or annoyed with the circumstances. But more often than not I am just in a state of increasing frazzlement. Though my nerves may be frayed there is rarely a reason to be truly angry or upset with anyone. The kids are annoying, but I think it’s a rule that children have to be irritating. Everything else is just a cultural difference and being as I came to experience another culture it seems a little counter-productive to get mad at my neighbors for coming to visit me, even if I am napping.

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