If my year in Tchad was a book, the events of this past month would definitely warrant a page turn. The biggest transition has been my move from living full-time with the director of Village Altonodji to spending the majority of my nights on campus. It is an opportunity that I had been excited about since before I flew to Tchad, and this month all of the details were ironed out and cleared, so life at school is my new reality!
My first evening here, I was scheduled to begin leading some English clubs. I came in time to arrange my bedroom and familiarize myself with my surroundings. I sat in my big living room in the guesthouse, of which I am the first guest in a long while, hearing the sounds of screaming, laughing children coming from all directions and I thought to myself, like a new kid in school, "Will I fit in here?" Up until now, I'd always loved being at work, and I'd spent quite a bit of afternoon time hanging around with the students, but now that I was here for good I wondered what there really was for a teacher to do among one-hundred rowdy children all the time. I wondered if I should anticipate overwhelming company at all times or, rather, isolation at being the one foreigner bolted up in this big guest house while all the others were living as a family on their side of campus.
I knew answers would come sooner or later, but the questions and slight jitters lingered as I grabbed my ukulele and some chalk and wandered over to the academic side of campus to begin my first English club. Consistent with the way I have seen a lot of things organized over my past few months here, English club was officially announced after I'd set up camp in an open classroom. Some older boys took the responsibility of combing the campus to inform the primary school students that there was a club. Within 15 minutes, the classroom was packed with boys and girls blinking and giggling at me anxiously. We introduced ourselves, sang songs together, and persevered through the chaos of being so numerous. One of the aforementioned older boys did his part by marching up and down the aisles with a tree branch, waving it in the faces of the noisier kids. This is something I want to have qualms with, but truthfully I was thankful to have a willing assistant to help me keep the order.
After my hour with the primary students, and then another with those in the older grades, I was met at the blackboard by half a dozen students who hadn't gotten enough. One girl, who knows Selena Gomez songs by heart and wants to marry Justin Bieber, proudly joined me in singing an encore performance of Lean On Me. Another boy named Caleb asked me to translate the words that he scrawled on the board: "God, I am sorry for your love." As is so often the case with requests such as this, I translated it for him but was unable to discern the source of this unusual phrase. Other students had requests for dialogues and discussions we could pursue in our club. The Activities Coordinator eventually had to shoo everyone out of the classroom and personally shut me in my house to ensure that I was left alone to eat dinner.
Shortly after eating, I heard a knock on the door. There were three or four girls from my English class who plopped themselves down on my couches and started chatting as teenaged girls do. Before too long, I heard another knock at the door and in came three Mamans- big gregarious women who greeted me with giant, tip-you-over bear hugs as if I was a long-lost daughter. And just like that, my fears about being an outsider here were dissipated. The mission of Village Altonodji is to provide educational and humanitarian support for orphans and widows. Not only are the students who live here children who have lost one or two parents, but all of the dozen women who live and serve as "Mamans" are women who have been widowed. Therefor, the community here is one that has been forged of individuals who have lost the people most important in their lives and have come to this place to be another kind of family. Through different and much less tragic circumstances I have also found myself in this space and I have been greeted with as much hospitality and care and instant status of "family" as I could dream of.
So, these three women strode into my abode, wrapped me in hugs, and then proceeded to raise their eyebrows challengingly at me and pump their shoulders in the beginning throes of what I've identified as the "Chicken Dance." It is a physical feat truly remarkable to witness and a fairly impossible to imitate after 22 years of non-exposure, but that doesn't stop people from inviting me to try on a daily basis. It involves shrugging one's shoulders up and down in a way that makes them appear detached from one's body, while subtly flapping one's elbows, popping the chest in and out, and taking little steps to the side and then back again that make one appear to be on a tiny broken escalator that moves you up one step and down another just as soon.
So that happened, there in my living room, but it was just the beginning. Then we progressed to the next stage of the evening. We stood up and I followed the group outside. I was taken by the hand and led across the dark campus to the children's lodging, to the growing sounds of drums and shouts. We came upon an open space in front of the buildings where children and mamans alike were dancing like their lives depended on it. A line of little children perched on the porch, banging at buckets and pans with the finesse of professionals. In the dark, I found myself being tapped and yanked from all angles as children and mamans alike gave me dances to imitate. As soon as I would try anything, it was met with screams of delight and often hugs. Then they would take pity on me and tell me to sit down for a while. During one break, as I dangled my feet off the porch, sandwiched between two tiny pupils who were flapping their arms at me, I took a little inventory of all the things around me. There were the stars above me, winking happily. There was the welcome cool air that arrives after the sun departs, and the lovely smells of nighttime. There were people young and old dancing and ululating and laughing and clapping. There was a huge, beautiful makeshift family with people who lived with and looked after each other. Not one of them, no matter how young, had been spared significant hardship in their lives, but here they were delighting in the evening and in the company of others. I got a little choked up as I realized without a doubt that this is why I flew halfway around the world into the unknown. This is what I had been hoping to find.
Eventually I realized my presence was keeping the kids from going to bed, so I left with a little posse showing me the way. Flushed, I asked the girl next to me if this was something I should expect every night and she laughed and said, "No. We are just happy that you're here with us!" Again that night, my heart skipped a beat for my new home.
That was just the first day. There have been weeks' worth of delightful days since, and my enthusiasm has not diminished. As I've become wrapped up in countless activities and blossoming friendships with people young and old here at Altonodji and around Moundou, I've experienced a kind of satiation that I can't attribute to only one thing. It's a cocktail of things that are filling me in so many ways. I am busy with meaningful work that offers constant challenges and rewards. I am met every single day with hundreds of warm smiles and people who greet me by name. A day doesn't go by that I don't meet someone new, go somewhere new, try something new, or learn something new. And as much as I am resisting being cliché, I can't deny that there is something magical about being with so many children.
I'm so easily and deeply charmed by their uninhibited enthusiasm, curiosity, and affection. Indeed, Village Altonodji is a special place, and a wonderful setting for a new chapter!
Monday, December 22, 2014
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
A Holiday Weekend
So, Turkey Day has come and gone. We Moundou SALTers were treated to our own marvelous Thanksgiving Day celebration, held in the home of Pastor Sem, and in the company of other MCC workers who were visiting Moundou for the weekend. We had a lovely evening chowing down on chicken, couscous, plantains, stewed carrots, rice and beans, French fries, and more. All were festively displayed on a red, white, and blue table cloth brought from Texas. As we ate and shared stories- people that I had known for a range of three months to one hour- I experienced that wonderful phenomenon of being at home away from home. I'm thankful this year that family can be found almost anywhere.
The holiday did not stop here. In fact, in Chad, the following days contained two big national holidays. Friday was Independence Day, and today, December 1st, was Presidents Day. Both were celebrated in Moundou with parades in front of the Mayor's office. Friday was more understated. I watched while a small military group put on a display involving kicking up their feet and turning sharp angles, and a marching band played the occasional anthem.
Monday was the big show. I arrived at 7:30, with hours before the excitement on the street. I was fascinated just to sit on the curb and watch people mill around me. Chad is an extremely diverse country, and while I sometimes feel like I live in a small, well-off, evangelical Christian bubble, I delighted in seeing others who live in Moundou. There were as many people of Arab descent as there were people from the South of the country. I heard as much Arabic as French. I saw young women prancing around in skinny jeans while others revealed only their eyes from beneath their sheer fabric dress. I saw children carrying large buckets on their heads, and others carrying around boxes of shoe-shining supplies and a tiny bench that they used to plop down and work. I saw men who looked as if they could have been walking to an office job in the States, while others wore long white robes and caps, held hands, and squatted impossibly low to the ground as they chatted.
Unfortunately, I have been on an impossible quest to find functioning batteries here in Moundou, and was not able to take a single picture. Again and again I regretted this, especially as the parade went underway and I had the amazing opportunity to see all of Moundou proudly march past me, carrying signs that clearly labeled who they were and what they represented. And wow, there are so many groups that I never suspected existed here in this city! I took this as a challenge to take as many vivid mental photos as possible.
First we were passed by dozens of primary and secondary schools. All private schools have uniforms, and so each group was clearly distinguished by a different set of clothes and a song that was all their own. The children marched past, feet in step with the songs that soared from their mouths. I saw Franco-English schools, Koranic schools, schools for the Deaf, Arabic schools, a nursing school, a technical school (where all of the participants yielded wrenches, hammers, pliers over their heads) and even my dear Village Altonodji walk by.
Then we saw businesses and organizations. There were the Scouts of Moundou, dressed in familiar Boy Scouts-style uniforms. There was the Moundou Tai kwondo Academy, with children of all ages carrying themselves with great dignity in their robes. They were followed immediately by a tai-chi school. There was a Young Democrats group, an art school, a soccer team, a women's union. Past me marched a troupe of local comedians represented by three individuals who looked like something out of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. One man had painted whiskers, a short stumpy tail coming out of his pants, and stuffing in his clothes that gave him an ample belly and derrière.
There were representatives from each quartier, or neighborhood. The most fun to watch were those people who dressed in what I assume were traditional costumes. Some boys wore nothing but long colorful necklaces on their chests, and grass skirts. They wore headdresses and covered their faces with long veils of dried grasses and danced to traditional instruments that I had never seen before. Another man was dressed as a bull, with large horns sticking out of his head. He was tied up and his friends pretended to lead him with a short rope. Suddenly, as he passed me, he went out of control and launched himself at the unsuspecting crowd, a hair's width away from ramming them with his sharp horns! People screamed, scattered, and then came back delighted and laughing.
I saw dozens of businesses. There were men from the Mondou cigarette manufacturing company and workers from the brewery, wearing outfits made of fabric that was a collage of pictures of Castle Beer. Assala, the well-known local bakery came by on a truck, yielding huge pastries and occasionally throwing a baguette at the crowd. There was a single man carrying a sign that said, in hand-written letters, "homme d'affaires" (businessman). People thought that was uproarious. Then it was our turn to join. Oh, did I forget to mention that I pretended to be an employee of Mama Kiri's work? She works for Sotel Chad, a telephone company, and I was here today because her boss had laughingly suggested that I dress up with them and march in the parade. So here I was, donning a matching wrap skirt, oversized t-shirt with the Sotel Chad logo, a baseball cap, and my own rotary phone. There were ten of us, and when our turn came we jumped right into the middle of the parade. As well-camouflaged as I thought I was, it wasn't enough to prevent people from immediately noticing that one of the people in this parade looked a little different from the thousands of others. I tried to march seriously, carrying my phone with dignity and earnestly answering it from time to time, but it was difficult with people calling NASSARA! (white person) and reaching out to touch me. Things got more out of control when some unseen hand grabbed the hat from off my head, and my fellow "colleagues" turned around to chastise them. I was almost knocked in the head by the sign that my neighbor was carrying as she swung around to shout at the person. By the end, many of us were collapsing into giggles and clutching our belongings dearly. I realized that I was also holding a big piece of cotton, which someone had managed to give me without my noticing as a souvenir from the workers of Coton Chad.
We arrived back at Mama Kiri's work and relaxed with sodas and grilled beef. (And one of the aforementioned baguettes.) The rest of the day was reserved for visiting and lounging. And I needed the time to process all that I had seen! What I really loved about the parade was the chance to see Moundou in all of its diversity coming together to celebrate what it is comprised of. Even in a country ravaged with poverty, insecurity, and mistrust, people take joy in many activities and memberships, and it was a lovely chance to see these things on display.
The holiday did not stop here. In fact, in Chad, the following days contained two big national holidays. Friday was Independence Day, and today, December 1st, was Presidents Day. Both were celebrated in Moundou with parades in front of the Mayor's office. Friday was more understated. I watched while a small military group put on a display involving kicking up their feet and turning sharp angles, and a marching band played the occasional anthem.
Monday was the big show. I arrived at 7:30, with hours before the excitement on the street. I was fascinated just to sit on the curb and watch people mill around me. Chad is an extremely diverse country, and while I sometimes feel like I live in a small, well-off, evangelical Christian bubble, I delighted in seeing others who live in Moundou. There were as many people of Arab descent as there were people from the South of the country. I heard as much Arabic as French. I saw young women prancing around in skinny jeans while others revealed only their eyes from beneath their sheer fabric dress. I saw children carrying large buckets on their heads, and others carrying around boxes of shoe-shining supplies and a tiny bench that they used to plop down and work. I saw men who looked as if they could have been walking to an office job in the States, while others wore long white robes and caps, held hands, and squatted impossibly low to the ground as they chatted.
Unfortunately, I have been on an impossible quest to find functioning batteries here in Moundou, and was not able to take a single picture. Again and again I regretted this, especially as the parade went underway and I had the amazing opportunity to see all of Moundou proudly march past me, carrying signs that clearly labeled who they were and what they represented. And wow, there are so many groups that I never suspected existed here in this city! I took this as a challenge to take as many vivid mental photos as possible.
First we were passed by dozens of primary and secondary schools. All private schools have uniforms, and so each group was clearly distinguished by a different set of clothes and a song that was all their own. The children marched past, feet in step with the songs that soared from their mouths. I saw Franco-English schools, Koranic schools, schools for the Deaf, Arabic schools, a nursing school, a technical school (where all of the participants yielded wrenches, hammers, pliers over their heads) and even my dear Village Altonodji walk by.
Then we saw businesses and organizations. There were the Scouts of Moundou, dressed in familiar Boy Scouts-style uniforms. There was the Moundou Tai kwondo Academy, with children of all ages carrying themselves with great dignity in their robes. They were followed immediately by a tai-chi school. There was a Young Democrats group, an art school, a soccer team, a women's union. Past me marched a troupe of local comedians represented by three individuals who looked like something out of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. One man had painted whiskers, a short stumpy tail coming out of his pants, and stuffing in his clothes that gave him an ample belly and derrière.
There were representatives from each quartier, or neighborhood. The most fun to watch were those people who dressed in what I assume were traditional costumes. Some boys wore nothing but long colorful necklaces on their chests, and grass skirts. They wore headdresses and covered their faces with long veils of dried grasses and danced to traditional instruments that I had never seen before. Another man was dressed as a bull, with large horns sticking out of his head. He was tied up and his friends pretended to lead him with a short rope. Suddenly, as he passed me, he went out of control and launched himself at the unsuspecting crowd, a hair's width away from ramming them with his sharp horns! People screamed, scattered, and then came back delighted and laughing.
I saw dozens of businesses. There were men from the Mondou cigarette manufacturing company and workers from the brewery, wearing outfits made of fabric that was a collage of pictures of Castle Beer. Assala, the well-known local bakery came by on a truck, yielding huge pastries and occasionally throwing a baguette at the crowd. There was a single man carrying a sign that said, in hand-written letters, "homme d'affaires" (businessman). People thought that was uproarious. Then it was our turn to join. Oh, did I forget to mention that I pretended to be an employee of Mama Kiri's work? She works for Sotel Chad, a telephone company, and I was here today because her boss had laughingly suggested that I dress up with them and march in the parade. So here I was, donning a matching wrap skirt, oversized t-shirt with the Sotel Chad logo, a baseball cap, and my own rotary phone. There were ten of us, and when our turn came we jumped right into the middle of the parade. As well-camouflaged as I thought I was, it wasn't enough to prevent people from immediately noticing that one of the people in this parade looked a little different from the thousands of others. I tried to march seriously, carrying my phone with dignity and earnestly answering it from time to time, but it was difficult with people calling NASSARA! (white person) and reaching out to touch me. Things got more out of control when some unseen hand grabbed the hat from off my head, and my fellow "colleagues" turned around to chastise them. I was almost knocked in the head by the sign that my neighbor was carrying as she swung around to shout at the person. By the end, many of us were collapsing into giggles and clutching our belongings dearly. I realized that I was also holding a big piece of cotton, which someone had managed to give me without my noticing as a souvenir from the workers of Coton Chad.
We arrived back at Mama Kiri's work and relaxed with sodas and grilled beef. (And one of the aforementioned baguettes.) The rest of the day was reserved for visiting and lounging. And I needed the time to process all that I had seen! What I really loved about the parade was the chance to see Moundou in all of its diversity coming together to celebrate what it is comprised of. Even in a country ravaged with poverty, insecurity, and mistrust, people take joy in many activities and memberships, and it was a lovely chance to see these things on display.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)