The Harmattan

The “Harmattan” is an annual trade wind that that blows massive amounts of sandy dust from the Sahara and dumps it on West Africa. Returning from my travels in East Africa, I stepped out onto the tarmac in Ghana and into a brown haze. The dust was stifling, and it was so thick you could stare directly into the afternoon sun! It has been like that all this month—they say these winds will pass soon, but I’m not holding my breath (although sometimes I think it would be healthier).

Thankfully, my new place in Ho is a nice respite from the dusty outdoors. A well-to-do community elder has offered me what is basically a two-room suite in his large compound, and I couldn’t have asked for a nicer get-up—it is incomparably more luxurious than my village abode. Don’t get me wrong—I loved the family I stayed with and the hominess of the place, but my room was the size of a prison cell, lit by a 15W car bulb, and had a foam “mattress” which permanently held the mold of my body. So when I saw the quality of this place, I was practically overwhelmed. In fact, I actually had reservations about giving up the one-with-the-people, I’m-in-Africa lifestyle, but I’ve promptly done away this notion as I sit here writing in my own living room. And don’t worry, I’ve maintained the basics like the bucket shower and brushing my teeth in the yard.

Ok, on to more substantive matter—the school. The school we are assisting here is a government school in a poor village just outside the city. My NGO funded the construction of a new building last year, which replaced the aluminum roof stuck on four rickety wooden beams that they were using before. In return, the government very publicly promised to support the school in other ways, from furnishing the interior to providing additional teachers. This may not surprise you, but they have done almost none of what they’ve promised. And the majority of the teachers that are there are apathetic and/or truant. On any given day, at least two classrooms full of students sit idly the whole day through. Anyway, so this is what I’m walking into. But then again, I don’t know if I’d feel at home anymore in a well-functioning school…

I spend about 40% of my time teaching. I am the junior high science teacher, and I love it. For one, it’s science, which is what I really wanted to teach all along. More importantly, although the kids are as behind as the ones I taught last year, the fact that they are older makes it easier to reason with them intellectually instead of focusing so much on classroom management. Of course, I think half of the kids don’t understand what I say for any given sentence, but I repeat everything three different ways and the better English speakers usually help out the weaker ones. Plus, now that I’ve learned the language a bit, I sometimes throw in a phrase in their own dialect to catch them off guard!

The other 60% of my time I will classify as building community, school, and government relations, discussing and investigating new project possibilities, and pressuring specific officials or contractors to complete the already-promised work (i.e., construction of library shelves, access to on-grid electricity, etc.). I have done a good job so far of tempering myself to not fall into the unsustainable role of acting headmaster or community organizer (think last year). I am trying to limit my role and work slow to get to know the situation in a more natural way (than last year). If there is a sustainable partnership our NGO can have with this particular school, I think it will take some time to truly hash that out. So I have accepted I won’t turn this school around in three months and simply go home, but I am hoping to gain some insights for the NGO’s long-term future work, support a few initiatives while I am here, and have a little fun with the kids. Oh, and stay indoors as much as possible.

My Return to Ghana

I have just returned to my village in Ghana after a three-week adventure with my sister that took me through Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Kenya. It was fun and fascinating, from black rhinos in the Ngorongoro Crater of Tanzania, to a two-day local wedding celebration in Uganda, to the remarkably progressive, cosmopolitan, and rather eerie city of Kigali, Rwanda. I have to say that, on the whole, I find East Africa to be a gentler, more easy going place than West Africa. People smile more, heckle you less, and seem to be more genuinely interested in knowing you as an individual (I have to disclaim that my being a tourist rather than a volunteer put me in a rather different scene that may have shaped this sentiment).

Returning to my little village in Ghana was something like a dream—it was as before, but not quite. It was nighttime, and faces of people I couldn't see off the roadside yelled, “Teacher!” from the shadows. Outside the Catholic church, the choir was practicing a harmonious tune to the rhythm of four male drummers. One of my school boys ran up to hold my hand and said he and a friend had tried to call me during the holiday but didn’t have my number (nor did they have a phone, but he didn't seem to care about this fact). None of this was unusual, but it was the weight hanging over me that I had not really come back, truly—I am only here for a few days to gather my things and move to the new school—that made it strange, even uncomfortable. Of course, the parents, children, and community elders have been informed, but I still get the feeling that many people won’t quite get it until I am really gone. Outside of the people, I will most miss the peacefulness here…

This week I will move to the city of Ho, which is the regional capitol and two hours south from my village. My director and I have decided that I will go to work at the government primary school there, just outside the city. I will continue to teach, but this time it will likely be science as my principal subject. As for the big-picture NGO stuff, whereas in my village I was trying to establish and administer a new partnership with the primary school there, at Ho I will be assessing a preexisting partnership and seeing how we can move forward with it. There are many challenges here, but I will write more on the new site once I am set up there.

I wish you all a rewarding, successful, and happy 2011.

All the best, Nathan

p.s. Here are a selection of photos I promised from my time at the village here. As I mentioned, they were taken by Tony Hoare, a wonderful guy and professional adventure photographer that came to document our work in a series he’s doing on NGOs in Ghana (www.tonyhoare.com). He basically shadowed me for a few days—enjoy!

End Of A Chapter

December 14, 2010

It’s been a long time since I’ve written. I think writing is a useful exercise to process your experiences and gain understanding, but, especially when you are feeling overwhelmed, it’s often the last thing you want to do in those precious moments of leisure.

Hence, it’s been a long time—but I repeat myself. The school term ended, I turned in my exam grades yesterday, and now I write to you from a plane somewhere in the airspace over Nigeria or the Central African Republic, en route to Nairobi, Kenya. From there, I’ll take a 12-hour overnight bus to Kampala, Uganda, where I will meet my beloved sister who is working there for four months through the American Jewish World Service Program (Thankfully for my parents, our remaining, supremely rational brother had the wisdom to pass on the opportunity to complete the Lee Africa Trifecta). I look forward to spending the holidays with her, traveling through Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda. I will especially be interested to compare the cultures of West and East Africa, and my sister’s urban experience with my own rural one.

Speaking of which, my rural experience in the village came to a head in the last few weeks. When I last wrote, I said we were discussing with the chief the last-ditch effort to broker a deal in which the school would become a jointly-owned, community establishment rather than that of a private, effectively absentee landowner who doesn’t seem to have the interests of the students at heart. It had become clear that, otherwise, our NGO could not establish an effective partnership at the school and so would be leaving at the end of the school term.

This effort failed. The chief met with the school proprietor to try to draw out any interest in this scheme (we knew the proprietor had previously been interested in selling), but, now that the school is running well at a 120+ pupils, he is no longer interested. The chief made clear to him that this would mean our NGO would be leaving the village—a result which he would be unhappy with—and the proprietor responded that the chief should not worry because he’d continue a number of the policies we had put in place and that he would attract other “whites” in the future. In any event, we “whites” are leaving, and I hope any other ones will do their homework first.

Ultimately, as outsiders, we can’t force the issue. Only if we can support the school and community organically should we stay. There is a good chance, if the proprietor follows through on continuing the policies he has promised to maintain, the school will be okay. However, as you know by now, I seriously question his integrity and competence. As for the chief and other village elders I have spoken with, they  all believe the school will fail again once we leave; I truly hope they are wrong. Honestly, there is nothing that would make me feel better than to see the school that I have poured my heart into these past four months not need me or any other outsider.

Even once we made the decision not to have organizational presence at the school, I seriously considered staying on just as an individual teacher. After all, I have really grown attached to the village: the beautiful green mountains I wake up to outside my room, the market women’s indefatigable laughter (I think often at my expense), and, most of all, the children I teach and have, in doing so, come to know and love.

But, ultimately, I think the school will have to face certain realities, and my presence will just delay whatever those are. Moreover, by leaving now and seeing what unfolds, there is a chance that we could come back on better terms before my time here is through, should the proprietor change his mind (I promised the chief that I would check-in at least once a month during the next school term, but I admit this contingency plan is more a hope than anything else). Finally, I am committed to Pagus:Africa, and as the on-the-ground representative of this small NGO, it is important we choose the schools we support wisely. There are a LOT of village schools in this area that desperately need help, so we must choose those schools where there exist eager, focused, and capable Ghanaian partners whose visions we can support rather than trying to concoct one for them. I believe that the development world, on the whole, should temper itself in this way—bleeding hearts alone won’t help make systemic change.

That being said, my decision to go has been painful. At the monthly PTA meeting last week, I had to get up and tell the parents I was leaving earlier than planned, and there was quite an uproar. Of course, I couldn’t tell them the truth about why I was leaving, because otherwise they would be even more likely to withdraw their children from the school—you see, there is such an irrational faith in the “white man” here (which has led to the burgeoning class sizes this term) and, as a result, my departure would inevitably lead to an irrational withdrawal as well. To compensate against that, I just said how unfortunate it was I had to go and how much faith I had in the school and its leadership. I felt conflicted about lying to them about the latter part, but I still believe it was the right thing to do: they can judge for themselves next school term and withdraw or continue accordingly, but they ought to at least give the proprietor a chance, no matter how stupid I think the man is.

More important was telling the kids, which was even harder. But I think they and I both will always remember these past few months with some warmth and excitement—I am sure they were highly unusual for us all.

Okay, that’s all for now. By the next time I write, I will know where I am going to be next term, but it will be in this same general region of Ghana. By now, I think we are in Democratic Republic of Congo airspace. Whoot! Oh, and don’t worry, Mom and grandmoms, that is AIR space. It’s safe up here.

p.s. A professional, adventure photographer came and stayed with me for a while so, as a result, I have some pretty awesome photos from this experience! I will post them in due time. 

Hello!

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile, but changes are afoot. Lots of news coming. Please check back in a week!

Nothing and Everything

About Nothing Of Importance (written 11/09)

I just felt like writing about my lunch today and wasn’t going to put it online, but I thought why not. I promised a few of you no effusive poetry about Africa and the world, but I never said I wouldn’t put up mundane descriptions of nothing in particular, so bare with me…

I exited the Immigration Office through a small parking lot and into a courtyard of gravel and unkempt grass. An array of cement-block government buildings, like the one I had just left, sat around the perimeter in no particular order, each 3-4 stories high with the typical cross-iron windows. They reminded me of cheap motels in Florida, but here they are the preeminent, modern buildings that house the district capitol offices for the Volta Region.

Like any open space in Ghana that has even the most minute chance of snaring a passer-by, several vendors had set up shop in the shade of the trees selling various snacks and trinkets. At one stand, a woman stood inside something reminiscent of a ticket booth serving food through a square opening. I decided I was hungry enough for lunch, and so I went to scout it out. I found her dishing beans and fried plantains out of a set of large pots and pans. There were a few benches set out in front to allow customers to dine in. I ordered the food in Ewe to practice/show off (Ewe is the language they speak in the Volta Region and I’m trying to, at least, get down the basics), and she laughed unashamedly out loud.

“Peppe?” She asked as she began scooping out a large helping. Her benign tone masked the grave danger of the word. Too much peppe sauce can disintegrate your insides before you can mouth the word “W-A-T-E-R.”

“Small, small.” I switched to English, given the importance of the question. Well, their English. I have quickly adapted their version. In their version, important words are often repeated twice.

“Gari?” She continued. (Ground cassava.)

“Plenty!” It really mixes well with the beans, adding a starch to offset the mush.

I sat down on a nearby bench with my bowl and a coke and took out a book. The attendant in the Immigration Office said the paperwork for my Visa extension would take 2-3 hours, so I anticipated 4-6. In any case, I certainly had time for a leisurely lunch.

After an hour of reading and intermittent chatting with the woman (we established we were both born on Monday, a very relevant fact given that friends and family here use nicknames for each other based on the day of the week they’re born), I paid my fee and even left a tip. Tips aren’t heard of around here, but, then again, I’m rich (comparatively), and the bill was roughly 70 cents. And, plus, it was a very pleasant lunch.

 About Everything of Importance (written 11/16)

Now for the real update...

I have just returned from the house of the chief, or “Na-Na.” His house is made of cement and modest in size but towers over the mud huts and thatched roofs one passes to reach it. It is my third visit in a week—there is something of a crisis looming at the school in his village. The school director has made official, through a letter to my NGO director which he read to me as courtesy before sending it, that he refuses to effectively all the terms that were asked of him in return for our support (terms which he previously agreed to). He refuses to limit class size or prohibit corporal punishment. He cites as his reasons a long history of failed partnerships between foreign and African entities, but I know that his main reason is desire for all the money he has seen flow into the school now that we are here (As an aside, because I have studied the history of abusive Western organizations in Africa, I find it particularly offensive when he willfully misuses it to justify his own greed).  Of course, in concluding, he wrote that he encourages us to continue helping his school, so long as we can “compromise” with him.

My NGO director, Ellen, received the letter, and she, Myles (the other volunteer), and I talked things over. Understandably, Ellen doesn’t want to work with an obstinate partner when there are so many other schools in need. On the other hand, leaving aside the sentimental stuff, Myles and I don’t want to give up on this community. We have seen the warm welcome we have received here, the great need, and the potential for a prosperous partnership with the school. In fact, I did some calculations and, even with no financial support from the NGO, the school fees we are bringing in now would cover the all the necessary expenditures, including paying teachers and the headmaster higher wages than what they are taking now (this is big because the school has operated at a loss throughout most of its ten years in existence). The hitch is that the finances are only stable if the NGO maintains some type of presence to entice the parents to continue to enroll their children and if there is no director siphoning off money. The problem is that with the current director, neither condition can be met. The only way would be to buy him out.

Which is exactly what we are trying now, through some delicate politicking. Alas, this is the final attempt to salvage the situation and, if it fails (which is likely), I will most likely have to volunteer at a different school after Christmas break. Here is the basic premise: The chief and community fully support our NGO and don’t want us to leave. The teachers are unhappy with their very low wages and are threatening to quit if the director does not provide them their promised raises at the end of the month. Most parents will withdraw their children if we leave, and the director will go back to operating at a loss. Finally, the director has made clear in the past his interest in selling the school to save his pocket book.

 In other words, we have a lot of bargaining power. The basic idea would be to have some sort of board of directors, made up of village elders and in collaboration with myself and Ellen, buy the school back and run it as a community school with our support. There are a lot of details that I have been considering that would have to be worked out for proper accountability, but the basic principles we are banking on are (1) the school director recognizes his own desperate circumstances and is willing to sell at a reasonable price and (2) that the village elders would see the benefits to the community to having a well-run school amongst an otherwise completely failing local education system and therefore would willingly and honestly collaborate with us to get there. Over time, this relationship between our NGO and the community would bring more possibilities to help them prosper in a more organic and complete way than even the most successful partnerships the NGO has had at other schools.

But I am getting ahead myself. As I said, I just returned from meeting the chief. I found him sitting idly on a lawn chair in his portico dressed in a (disappointingly) unceremonious, checkered, button-down shirt. He greeted me warmly, and we went through the perfunctory introductions I have learned are not only customary, but necessary. Then, I told the chief that Ellen, my director, had sent the school director the letter refusing his “revised” conditions and informing him of our imminent departure (a bluff that may, unfortunately, become true). This is part of the plan, one which the chief and I devised in our last meeting (I find him to be remarkably cunning and understanding of NGO partnership intricacies). In the letter, Ellen would be mentioning that, in the interest of the community, she had given me the go ahead to inform the chief that our partnership would be ending. This was a calculated move so that, when the chief “invites”—commands—the director to come meet him to discuss why the NGO is leaving his community, the director wouldn’t feel it is a surprise attack, a coup d’état contrived by his foreign partners (which is partially what it is, although the chief and elders do genuinely want to find a way to keep us here… so it’s only that we have to present the initiative as led by them with our assistance, rather than the other way around).  I will be absent from their meeting so that the chief and the director can discuss more openly the opportunities to salvage the situation, and the hope would be that the director will raise the option of selling himself. Afterward, the chief will call on me and we will meet.  If he does show interest in selling, the chief and I would subsequently have to convince the community leaders to raise some money themselves for the purchase, since my NGO wants to assist them to do it rather than simply buy it for them.

It’s a bold move, but we are all out of options. At least, I hope I can sleep well knowing that I have done all I could. I am very tired of this saga. Whatever happens, whether I stay here or go to another school, I hope I can just focus on teaching next term. I didn’t think I would get so caught up in politics here, but I must say it has truly been an extraordinary experience: maneuvering through this system—one governed by traditional age-grade politics, a confusing spoils system that at once seems hopelessly  corrupt yet efficient and even acceptable, and a strong sense of propriety that often means what is said is not what is meant to be heard—is  a challenge, to say the least.

 Alright, that’s enough for now. Thank you for the encouraging words you have sent. I’m sure that the next time I write, I will know which way the wind is blowing, and whether I’ll be sailing or not. I’m not sure what I personally want anymore, although I do know I am very tired and this instant coffee is just not cutting it…

Two Months in Africa--What Have I Actually Been Doing??

I can’t report any huge developments on the school since I have last written, so I’d like to use this entry to talk about some other things about which I have yet to write. However, first, I think I ought to give those of you who care a coherent summary (something I realized I have yet to do) of what I actually do here, what my organization is trying to accomplish at the school, and where we stand now. This is coming mostly in response to a couple of friends who wrote me recently and said they still have no idea what I’ve been doing for two months in Africa! For the rest of you, feel free to skip the next seven paragraphs….

Okay. So halfway through my senior year at Penn last year, I decided I want to volunteer as a teacher in Africa. I found Pagus, this small NGO that effectively consists of one woman, named Ellen,  in Philadelphia, and a small, intermittent supply of volunteers. Ellen has spent the last four years supporting the development of a boarding school in rural Ghana through a scholarship for the impoverished students, infrastructure development, and short-term volunteer trips (Having visited the school, I must say she and the school director have done a fantastic job). Now that this partnership has matured and the school is, more or less, independent, Ellen decided to launch another effort with a new school. The director of a dying school in a very poor village, called Likpe Bakua, had been courting her for years to help, and she recently agreed. Around the same time, she accepted me as her first long-term volunteer, and I agreed to go to this village as a volunteer teacher and a sort of Pagus representative.

The school was created ten years ago to provide a better alternative to the government schools in this deprived region of Ghana, and it runs from daycare to 6^th grade. From what I can gather, the founder managed to maintain some stability in the school but eventually gave it up and sold it to the current director, Francis. Francis, who is a regional pastor and “big-man” of the area (he owns a car, goats, second house in Accra) decided to buy it up  because he either saw it as a business opportunity or because he has a big heart and wanted to save the children (I am now putting it at about a 70/30 mixture of the two, respectively). Francis enjoyed a brief period of seeming success (up to 180 students in his first year) and then suffered an abrupt dive into depopulation, bankruptcy, and disarray. In actuality, he operated at a loss for all the three years he has owned the place, and no more than half the student population was ever really paying. The abrupt collapse came when the school bus driver quit because he wasn’t receiving his money, and, without him, the greater part of the student population which was attending from outside villages suddenly had no way of getting to school. The rest of the school floundered, the headmaster and several teachers quit, and many parents withdrew their children because they thought the remaining teachers to be irresponsible or incompetent (I know this doesn’t paint the current management we are dealing with in a positive light, but in all fairness, I must say this community is also extremely difficult when it comes to education of their children. Many don't see the point and refuse to pay promptly or fully. As a result, the school can’t afford quality teachers and so the education became as worthless as they already felt it was. Classic chicken and egg).

I don’t believe Ellen had any idea the extent to which this school was rotting when she decided to sign on, and I obviously had no clue. I thought I would be spending my time adapting to the culture, trying my hand at teaching for the first time (to which I felt very unqualified but very excited), and just learning from the kids. I thought that to be plenty for the year. But when I arrived, I saw a school that lacked toilets or drinking water, textbooks or qualified teachers. Its roof leaked and the window panes were spoiled. There was no semblance of class structure, no clear authority figure, and no committed leadership. Most of all, there were almost no kids. Needless to say, I didn’t really think I had time to just focus on adapting to the culture.

I dove in from day one, organizing a sign-in rotation system for the oldest students to fetch river water for the school, buying clocks and pencil sharpeners, re-testing some of the children who were clearly above or below their assigned grade, revamping the class schedule, and so on. I was emboldened because the headmaster and teachers were very receptive and welcomed all the new ideas; I tried to make it a collaborative process but the state of the school was so dire that, when they seemed unwilling or unable to actually contribute, I temporarily accepted promoting dependency for the sake of salvaging the school. All the while, I was teaching approximately four hours of class a day, primarily Math and English for the 3^rd-5^th graders, along with shorter classes in Information and Communication Technology and Creative Art (I hope Mrs. Mattingly, my elementary school art teacher, is not reading this). In the evenings, I would meet with the school owner/director to hammer out the details of our NGO-school partnership or even the chief of the village to find out about how the community viewed the school. (I need to mention, at this point, that a couple weeks in, another volunteer named Myles arrived to stay for three months with me in the village. Fresh out of high school, I was skeptical about having him around, but Myles has turned out to be extremely effective, mature, and a fine partner.)

Anyway, over these past two months, I’ve learned that running a mile a minute can’t take you backwards in time. It is easy to forget the bounds of your role when you see obvious problems that can so easily be fixed, and no one else seems to be trying to fix them. But I really should have known better than to think we could turn the school around on a dime. After all, you are tampering with issues that transcend the school; they run deep into the culture, community, and history. Nonetheless, I can’t say we didn’t make progress. With the subsidized fees and the presence of foreigners, the student population ballooned. With the improvements in structure and infrastructure, it began to function like a proper school. We were even able to hire two new teachers—both infinitely more qualified than the previous staff.

But it is this rapid progress that allowed my delusion to carry on for so long and made the realization that I wrote about in my last entry that much harder to bare (For those of you who don’t want to read back, I reached a breaking point in the “negotiations” with the school director because he didn’t want to agree to the terms of the agreement my NGO director had made with him via phone/email prior to my arrival—there were some serious misunderstandings about what those terms were, of course). Just as I magnified, in my own mind, the significance of the immediate progress of the school, I magnified this failure into a true crisis: I questioned the whole experience here, my purpose, blah, blah, blah. I was spreading myself so thin I couldn’t see the intrinsic value of the experience or the real impact on some of the kids.

But, as I wrote before, ultimately this event served to temper my expectations, my demands, and my disappointments. I have now decided that, if the partnership fails, I’ll stay on as a teacher for the year (after all, that’s all I wanted to be in the first place). Of course, it won’t be easy for me if the school reverts back to its former state, but I think I now have the experience in hand that I’ll avoid another existential crisis and accept the impact I can make in the realm I can make it. Before, I hadn’t truly convinced myself (even if I told myself I had) that no matter what happens, it’s not a waste. I’m 80% sure I’ve convinced myself now. If I can get the other 20% there, I’m invincible.

Okay, summary finished. Sorry that took so long. What about the rest of my experience here? Let’s see….I love the village I am living in. It is nestled in the foothills of the mountains that separate Ghana from Togo. It is very, very green. It has a few shops in the town center and vans that pass through that stuff people like sardines for the 30 minute trip to the nearby town of Hohoe where the market is. I would guess the village consists of one to two thousand people, comprised of seven clans (which are indistinguishable to an outsider) led by seven family heads who report to the chief. The people are very kind and, after two months, some of them have even begun to stop gawking at me! Only a few of them have passable English. I have begun to learn their language, but it’s slow coming.

I stay at an informal guesthouse here run by one of the wealthier townsmen and his wife. They rent out six rooms that extend from their own house, each furnished with an uncomfortable bed and a ceiling fan (yes, there’s electricity, although frequent blackouts). The bathroom is communal, but the toilet flushes and there’s a real shower (I was almost disappointed when I saw the shower head; I had been mentally preparing myself to shower with a bucket for a year). Needles to say, no hot water, but I rarely miss it. Besides a “guard” dog, a puppy, a cat, and two kittens, the couple lives alone with their 11-year-old grandson, Denis. I love having Denis around, who is also one of my students, and he is finally getting over his shyness toward me—he even followed me (barefoot) on my evening jog tonight.

As far as food and water go, I have a gas cooker and a refrigerator, so I make a lot of my own food and boil my own water. Tonight, I tried to recreate my Mom’s tuna casserole (it was more like milk-pasta pudding, but it was tolerable). The madam of the house has adopted Myles and me as her own and sometimes makes us very tasty local dishes for dinner as well. The variety of food here is extremely lacking, but I’m making due. On the whole, I’m pretty comfortable with life here. If nothing else, there are so much fewer distractions here than back home that, for the first time in my life, I feel like I have time to actually read!

And, because I am trying to make this entry a catch-all, and it is already interminably long, let me conclude with a bullet point list of things I miss about home (besides my family and friends):

·         Whole wheat bread

·         Gym

·         Meritocracy

·         Salads

·         Muffins

·         Real Coffee

·         Unbelievable efficiency

·         Complete disinterest in your existence when walking down a street

Reality

These past two weeks were the toughest for me yet. A real dose of reality. I came into this thinking I was better than the rosy-eyed Westerner wannabe-hero because I knew some history on the country as well as some history of “development” gone sour, and that my expectations were tempered with this knowledge. But between the ballooning population of this once dying school, my 4^th-grade students begging me for more math homework, and a hundred kids dancing and laughing in complete bliss during Friday games, I really forgot all of it. I forgot the history, the politics, the skepticism. I began to believe the headmaster, inept but good-natured, was beginning to hold his own. I began to believe that the teachers were starting to show a little more commitment to their work. I really felt as if this school would begin to transform like a dream, slowly at first but then with decisive strides.

About two weeks ago, the cold, mundane reality began to dampen this dream. It’s the petty things, you know. Sometimes things so petty that you don’t even put them on the list of things to remember not to take for granted—like a photocopy error or an ill-timed rain over a leaking roof. And then there’s those larger obstacles that seem at once insurmountable yet equally petty, able to suffocate the dream without even commanding a solid presence themselves….

The principal obstacle of this kind was the school owner’s refusal to be fully financially transparent with us because of some rather contrived fear about his personal freedoms. No matter how hard I tried to explain to him that, by providing this very relevant and harmless financial information, we would be able to invest the money that would take his school out of bankruptcy, begin to turn him profit, and, not to mention, markedly improve the quality of education for the kids he claims to care so much about, he wouldn’t budge. We spent hours each day going in circles about this, he insisting on coming to an agreement about profit-sharing before releasing the rest of the school finances while I insisting on the reverse order. Ultimately, we were getting nowhere, except that I was going to bed drained and waking up frustrated: Almost 120 eager children, and one man’s irrational demands threatening to derail the whole thing! Without this financial information, we wouldn’t be able to ethically fund the scholarship or any other investments in the school, and my tenure as a teacher there would have to end with the partnership.

 It was really hard for me. I thought, could I have tried so hard for these children only to fail so fast? Would this be the first time in my life I would have to accept my determination was not sufficient?  What would happen to the children?

This would be a nice time to say the owner has come around and we have turned a corner, but I can’t say that (yet). What I can say is that I’m going to bed tonight without too much soul-searching. I spent the weekend sitting in the shade on a lawn chair at the guesthouse, reading an outdated Newsweek and sipping coke from a glass bottle, recuperating after a grueling week. Between pages, I spoke with another guest passing through, an itinerant Hungarian man who has spent the last ten years traveling Africa as a self-professed “moth-er,” a moth hunter and scientist (He has discovered and named several new species himself). He also runs his own ecotourism NGO to try to promote forest conservation in a continent that has less than 10% of its original forests left.

While we were sitting there, we heard a chainsaw rev up and attack a nearby tree—a common sound around here as cocoa farmers push further into the forest. He says every time he hears the sound, he suffers inside, and I believe it when I see his face. He says he knows he can’t win this fight for the trees and biodiversity, and soon it will all be gone. And yet, he has been doing it for ten years, and his resolve is unwavering.

 I’m not sure what meeting him did for me, but it somehow quelled my anguish. He is fighting on an infinite slope with no measurable goals, yet he is somehow content, in an odd way, because he is fighting. He says the things you see on this continent make you a humbler, more patient, more balanced individual back home, even if he may never go home.

I don’t know if it was him or the Coke, but I regained my composure this weekend. I remember the history that had tempered me before, now mixed with the experience of my six weeks here so far and the insights people like the Hungarian moth-er are helping me develop. I remember now that there can be no complete “success” here, but neither is there failure, because I really am learning something either way.