Marching On

It’s Martyr’s Day today, a national holiday. In other words, SCHOOL HOLIDAY!!!! I love my students, but I had come to the point where I needed a small break from school, and it came! So now I am sitting in my room, listening to some Rachmaninov piano concertos on my computer, and taking some deep breaths. 

It’s March 3. As I sit here, I can’t comprehend that it’s March already. Six months of my time here are already gone. It just seems so weird. I have only three months left here in this country with these people that I have come to love dearly.

I can’t even tell you how often my thoughts have drifted to going home and seeing my friends and family at home again; or wishing that I wouldn’t be paranoid about snakes, even though I’ve not seen any dangerous ones as of yet; or thinking about how nice it will be not to have to take anti-malarial medicine anymore (but really, it’s the simplest thing in the world and not a bother at all). But as I think about how soon those thoughts and hopes will become reality, I’m not completely excited. I like it here. Yes, I am dying to and excited to see my family and friends - I miss them dearly - but at the same time, I don’t want this adventure to end. I don’t want to leave my students to whomever comes after me. I don’t want to leave my elephant, zebra, and giraffe friends. I don’t want to leave my land of palm trees and other tropical-ness. I don’t merely like it here - I love it. And part of me doesn’t want to leave. Yet part of me wants to hug and laugh and talk with those I love at home. 

March. It’s like music to my ears, but I can’t decide if it’s the beautiful, harmonious kind, or the out-of-tune, hair-curling kind. Or maybe it’s a bit of both. Three months left; it scares me. But time keeps marching on.

Teacher Talea 2.0

I have always had a high respect for teachers. I didn’t think I could have any more respect for them, until this year. That respect has grown a lot.

Now the tables are turned, and I am the teacher - scary. I try my best to help my students learn and I try to explain the difficult concepts, but sometimes I have trouble. Sometimes my brain doesn’t know how to explain something because that’s just how it goes, that’s what that means, that’s just the subject of the sentence.

Our students are great kids, but for most of them, English is their second language, which makes learning in English more complicated and difficult.

8th & 9th graders, Year 3 student, and Laurel.

As I’m grading, I find myself willing the answers written to be correct, only to have my heart fall as I see wrong answers and see the red ink fly across the page, intensifying the incorrectness of the information. I frantically look for ways in which I can give them more points or offer them more opportunities to raise their grades. I find myself wanting to physically get into their brains and just plant the information inside. I find myself pushing a few day’s worth of material back to give more time to study for the test.

And it all seems to be for nothing. I try to help, I do what I can, but when I grade the work, quizzes, and tests it at times seems that my red pen does more work than their pencils did. I feel like they don’t learn anything from me, and if I’m not careful, I start asking, “What’s the point?” But I’m here to teach, and they need to learn. So day after day I try, and day after day I grade, asking myself all the while, “What could I do to improve things?”

Teaching is hard work. And it can be discouraging. But it can also be very rewarding. One of our students who struggles with spelling got 100% on his Spelling pretest, and I about danced for joy! Another student did really well on another test, and I wanted to throw a party. And that local kindergartener who didn’t speak any English? He’s learning, doing well, and knows his whole alphabet, without having to sing the song!! One of our students loves to bake, and when I gave her an extra credit assignment of turning a recipe into a science experiment by changing an ingredient and applying the scientific method, her face shone with pleasure and her excitement was more than evident. 

I caught Alyssa "reading" a book. She doesn't know how to read :)

Teaching is hard, but it’s worth it. Seeds of information are planted, though not as physically as I sometimes wish.  I can tell that when their questions move beyond the beginning stages of the subject to the more complicated ones, that the seed is growing into a plant. Watching the students grow in their knowledge, watching them do well, and getting them excited about learning is such a cool experience.

Juggling Groceries

My optimistic mother is always convinced that no shopping cart of any kind is needed when we take a quick trip inside a grocery store. Every single time (almost), my sisters and I end up juggling arm-fulls of cans, boxes, bags, and inevitably, something frozen. As we walk into the store, we eye the beautiful lines of shopping carts with desire as we faithfully plod after our mother into the depths of the store, a little bit worried as she reassures us that we won’t be buying that much. 

The other day, I realized that I do the exact same thing. I walked into a small store to buy some cooking oil and milk. Because that’s all I needed, naturally, I did not grab one of the hand-carts. Four minutes later I walk across the small store to grab my oil, noodles and soap dancing in my arms, threatening to fall to their doom. Why didn’t I just grab a shopping cart? I grab the oil with the tips of my fingers one hand, dreading how I’m going to pull off carrying the milk as well. I turned to go find the milk when I saw a man coming towards me with an empty shopping basket, a huge smile decorating his face.

People here are really nice. If they notice that you need help, they help without being asked to. We were in Namibia on our Christmas vacation road trip and got a flat tire on our rental car. Within five minutes of pulling over, three cars had stopped and one man immediately changed our tire for us. We didn’t ask him to do that. And though all five of us were girls, we were not incompetent of changing a tire. But the man saw a need, fulfilled it, and asked for nothing in return, though he did receive nothing short of a million heart-felt thank-yous.

This is exactly what God wants each of us to do, wherever we are. Whether it be in Blantyre or Tri-Cities, we are here to help others and not focus on ourselves. I was reading The Messiah by Jerry D. Thomas, and came across this great quote:

“Every moment is a treasure to be spent making someone’s life better and heaven more real.”

p. 60

Sometimes I have a hard time with this, especially if I’m focused on getting something done or meeting deadlines, but every single time I stop to help somebody, they feel better, and I feel better - as if life really does matter. And when somebody stops to help me, it lifts my spirits, even if it was a very small, simple thing. 

Never underestimate the power of your actions and words.

Solo

"I want paper."
"What, Gift?” I can’t understand him through his mumbling.
"I want paper!" Still mumbling, but the more emphatic tone helped the decibel level of his voice.
“What do you say?” Seriously, he should know this by now…
"Paper please.”
“Okay,” I reply, pointing to the stack of paper on a different desk, “you can have a piece.”
“Paper please!” Now Gift is frustrated.
“Yes Gift, you can have a piece of paper, it’s over there.” Didn't I just tell him that he could have one? My patience is tired, and I’m getting frustrated.
“I want paper!!”
“Gift, the paper is over there, you can have a piece.”  My patience is now disappearing.
“No! I want paper!”

Patience: Gone. I let him stand there until he decided he could get the paper that I said he could have.  And the day had only started. Hello Thursday.

Later that day Alyssa came up to me. “Gift told me that I won’t go to heaven.” I looked into a pair of very sad six-year-old eyes.  Obviously, Gift did not get the “Be nice” message I had given him not too many minutes before.

Life with this child is 90% frustration. If he doesn’t get his way, on a good day he pouts. On a bad day? He will fake cry (loudly or more softly), knock his chair around, shove things off the other students’ desks, throw his textbooks around, glare, and do everything he can to get attention. 

And thus went my week. Laurel got a parasite which was causing problems and the medicine for it made her sick (yes, she's fine, no, it's not Ebola), so all week it was my solo time, with an audience of eight students, each with his or her own different needs needing to be fulfilled. Everything went fine, and I resorted to having the older kids help the younger kids, even if their work for the day wasn’t done yet. Even so, handling the lessons for the grades that I normally don’t and explaining everything to everybody, mixed in with the usual concentration problems, made the week rather hectic and long.

Julian (6th grade) and Claudio (5th grade)

“Excuse me?!” I sternly demanded, “I’ve told you ten times already to be quiet and work on your Bible assignment…. No, you don’t need to talk to each other to write a paragraph about what you think heaven is going to be like.”

And dealing with Gift didn’t help. Not wanting to sit and do something like everybody else is makes life hard, especially when he starts being noisy and distracting. My patience was wearing thin, I was tired, and ready for the week to be over, but we still had Friday to look forward to.

And Friday came.

The day started off with Gift refusing to sit in his chair during worship. Then it so happened, that I could not understand what the kindergarteners were trying to tell me, even if they were speaking English. When Gift still would not be quiet after being asked multiple times, I put him in time-out, sitting in his chair at his desk. A little while later, I found him next to my desk.

“Chair not nice.”
Excuse me? Chairs aren’t nice? Okay…. “Who’s not nice, Gift?” I asked him, wondering if I heard him correctly.
“Chair not nice.”  Yup, I heard correctly. If anybody had been focusing on their work, they definitely weren’t now. This was just too good to ignore.
“No Gift, chairs are very nice!”   Everybody is successfully distracted.
“NO! Chair not nice.”
“Yes Gift, chairs are nice. They don’t hit you or anything!”
“Chair not nice.”
“Chairs are nice Gift.” And round and round it went as the other students tried not to laugh out loud.
“Jesus nice, chair not nice.” He emphatically tried to convince me.
“Yes Gift! Jesus is nice! And so are chairs!”
“No! Chair not nice.”
I took Gift back to his desk and gave him something to do. And of course, I had to physically put him in his chair. As I’m getting him settled, another student pipes up, “Moral of the story is: Don’t have kids!”

Later that day, he was upset for some reason I don’t remember. Then his fingers were accidentally smashed in the door. More crying, more tears, but at least for a reason we could actually deal with this time. Even so, this Friday felt like it was going to last forever.

I oftentimes feel like the most impatient person in the world. Patience doesn’t seem to be one of my virtues. In the same way, I feel like I have no business being a teacher to my students here.  I wouldn’t say I have no clue what I’m doing in the classroom still, but there are times when I wonder…
But, today I am thankful for a God who can enable me to smile at my students at the end of the day and still love them, no matter how the day went. I am thankful for the joy that He gives me through my students. And I am thankful that God is capable of doing so much more than I am, so much more efficiently. He is Good.

And the week wasn’t all bad…

Alyssa has an alphabet dot-to-dot coloring book, and needed help connecting the dots. So we sang the song.  By the end of the song, the whole class was singing, “Now I know my ABCs, next time won’t you sing with me.”

“Can you write, ‘I love my teacher Talea?’”
I happily wrote it down on the paper Alyssa supplied for me. Anytime sweetheart, anytime! A moment later, she provided the same paper, asking me to write “I love my teacher Laurel” this time. Then she wanted me to write for her, “Laurel get better.”
Later that day, guess what she gave me :) This girl is SO SWEET!!!

Last Sabbath, we received a note from another very sweet student, Lillee. “To the best teachers ever! Happy Sabbath!”

Please excuse me as I go mop up my melted heart….

All our students, ready to go to the pool for swimming class.

My impatience can be displayed in the pictures that I really don't want to draw. One very fat elephant.

Gift was thrilled with it. Whew!

On Being Small

Lillee (year 3) and Alyssa (kindergarten).

The kindergartener’s sobs grew steadily louder, and nothing would comfort her, let alone coax the reason for the tears out of her. From what I saw, nothing happened physically, and I didn’t hear anything. What on earth could it be? Finally, she calmed down enough to communicate, through deep sobs and monstrous crocodile tears, that the other kindergartener had called her small. I closed my eyes and sighed. Seriously?!  We had already lived through tears of stuff being taken by the other kindergartener, having to share the crayons, being tagged while playing tag, and a handful of other small incidents. Granted, it was all over a good period of time, but by this time I was tired of tears over such “simple matters,” and this in particular was not something I wanted to deal with. 

But wait a minute… How many times did I go home from school in tears because the other kids made fun of my height? How many times was I hurt and upset when random people in the grocery store thought I was five years younger than I actually was?

Too many times to count. What made this any different? Absolutely nothing. I could definitely understand her heartbreak and pain over what had been said. I took a deep breath, appreciated my parents all the more for their patience with me, and asked God to grant me some of that same patience. We calmed our distressed student down and assured her that no, she was not small, and the day went on.

Too cute not to share :)

This whole experience was during the first month of school.  The tears have become pretty much extinct now, though the accusations of being small haven’t quite disappeared. Just the other day as we were sitting down to story time, the same kindergartener sadly and very offendedly informed me that the other child had called her small.

“Gift, did you call Alyssa small?” I asked him, a stern expression on my face.
“Uh-huh!” he very gleefully replied, his face FULL of excitement, obviously very proud of what he had done.
“No Gift, that’s not nice.” I then impulsively added, “You’re small.”
“Me small, Alyssa big?” A look of complete shock replaced his previously excited expression, as if he could not possibly believe that he was small.
“Yes.”
He pouted and sat lower in his chair.

Gift (kindergarten), with his adorable
smile through missing teeth :)

Gift is our child who is just now learning English. I know that he knows the meanings of yes, no, time-out, and “what do you say (i.e. please, thank you)?” especially since he decided it was cool to tell me “no” when I asked him to do something. He is learning English fairly well, and sometimes I’m amazed at what he says and uses appropriately, but I’m not sure at times how much he really is understanding. So, to make my golden-rule “if you don’t like being called small, you shouldn’t call other people small” point, I turned it on him instead of trying to explain it to him in words I didn’t know would process correctly - I knew he would understand the few words that would make him feel just like he had just made Alyssa feel.

But was that the right thing to do? Was that even Christian of me? Did he understand it? Was it effective? Is that what Jesus would have done?  Was that being patient and loving? Would a simple time-out have been a better option?

I have no clue. No clue at all. I pray that I didn’t just ruin the boy’s life, and that he actually understood what I was trying to get across to him. 

Language barriers are difficult things and can be quite stressful, but thank goodness that God is bigger than every barrier and can defeat them for us.

Swimming class. Sitting on the sidelines because these two were sick
and couldn't swim that day....

20 Hours

Christmas break came, and Laurel and I decided it was time to go on a little journey, to help rejuvenate ourselves, in the splendor of God’s African nature and wilderness…

I sat in my seat on the already crowded bus and waited for the rest of the passengers to board. The seats were too small, and the aisle even smaller. Somebody who had just gotten to their seat in the middle of the bus turned around to get off, with all her luggage. Nobody moved out of the way. As the lady worked her way past people in the narrow aisle, the passengers waiting to get to their seats were squished this way and that, into other seats, into other people. A purse was suddenly occupying the same space as my face, and then a body moved into that same space. I leaned over into Laurel’s space, hoping to get away from a little bit of the squishiness. It didn’t work. Finally the people were seated and the bus roared on down the road. The air was stale. The bus was stuffy. The atmosphere was hot. I was cramped. And I was about to go crazy.

Buses that we didn't take.

Waiting for our 20 hour bus ride.

Personal space does not exist in Africa. People are not afraid to push in a queue. They aren’t afraid to rub shoulders in the market. They aren’t afraid to touch your arm, because they want to know what a white person’s skin feels like. They aren’t afraid to take up your seat space on the bus as well as theirs. 
I don’t like it. But that’s their culture. 

When I am around people I don’t know, my personal bubble is a decent size, so after three days of crowded buses, and twenty hours to endure on this bus ride, I wanted to scream. This bus felt more like a prison than transportation to adventure. I hadn’t realized it before, but I missed my personal bubble fiercely. I didn’t want to be squished or touched anymore. How was I going to survive all twenty hours of this bus? I closed my eyes and turned up the music on my iPod, hoping to drown out the bus’s music with The Canadian Brass. I tried to relax and not think about what I wanted - my comfort zone.

But, as I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t come to Africa to be in my comfort zone. I didn’t sign up to be a student missionary to be comfortable. Though some aspects of life here are comfortable now, there are things that definitely are not comfortable yet, and I don’t think they ever will be. But that’s life everywhere, for everybody, isn’t it? There will always be things in life that we like, and there will always be things in life that we don’t like. The key is figure out how to enjoy life through even the things that we dislike.

Needless to say, I survived that twenty-hour bus ride. Without screaming. And the adventure after the bus was well worth it.

Sossusvlei, Namibia

This is what the Atlantic Ocean looks like from Namibia!!

Swakopmund, Namibia

This pretty much sums up our friendship :)
Yay for Intercape (aka, nicer) buses!!

Namibian Sunset

Victoria Falls, Zambia

I Love Elephants

When elephants cross a river, they don't swim; they walk along the bottom of the river. When the water gets too deep, they simply raise their trunks above the surface of the water and keep on going. This works really well, unless you are a little baby elephant. Though baby elephants are big compared to other animals, they are not big enough to complete this task. 

So what do they do?

The mommy elephant walks in front of the baby elephant, and another elephant follows behind. The baby elephant holds onto the mommy's tail, and the elephant behind holds onto the baby's tail and pushes it along. Without this method, the baby would not be able to cross the river and stay with it’s mother.


This is just one beautiful example of the wonderful design in God’s creation, and also a wonderful lesson in teamwork.

Disclaimer: No, I unfortunately did not get to watch this happen - the tour guide told us about it.