Why is Peace Corps so hard?

No matter how many times you pass an iron over the ideas, plans and projections that make up a project plan, it never ceases to come out with more wrinkles than the skin around my ‘Gasy grandmother’s eyes.  

 This past week proved just that way as finally it came time for my AIDs awareness and 50^th anniversary of Peace Corps celebration to come into fruition.  

It started out with a fixable problem.  As I was preparing my tiny hut for the eight incoming volunteers my best friend showed up, days later than I had been expecting her and claiming to be sick.  Because of her apparent illness, she told me, she would not be able to do the cooking that I had hired her to do for our guests.  Always understanding, I told her I’d find someone else and was able to spread our eating over more community members.  This was a good way to bring some money into my town, anyways.

First issue resolved, I go about cleaning up the yards to pitch tents, stopping by the homes of the community members who are taking part in the festival, basically making sure everything was set to go.  It seemed to be, so as my first guest rolled in I relaxed.  Vanessa and I got our final posters in order and went to “misangasangana” around town.  More friends show up, we enjoyed the company with a couple of THB’s and get to bed at a decent time hoping that the morning with run smoothly.  

We get up, have coffee and mokary (fried rice balls, or flour balls…okay they are pretty much just doughnuts) and go over to the school where we have space to work.  The festival is to start at two that afternoon and I am the only person who really knows what the game-plan is due to the inherent communication diffuclty amongst volunteers living deep in the bush.  

As we are going over skits, songs, and weather-proofing posters I notice a lot of the women from my town are coming in dressed up in their women’s group outfits, all green and white and wearing matching baseball caps.  This was the outfit they were all meant to wear that afternoon when they perform at the spectacle I have organized.  Two come over to the classroom and hailed me out.  I walked out cheerfully and asked them if they were ready for the afternoon’s events.  They smile and say yes, except that they want to start the event now (at eight in the morning) instead of the intended two o’clock start time.  You see, there was work to do later in the afternoon, and anyways they are all ready to go!  I sighed, and tried to explain to them that we couldn’t just change the time the day of the event.  PSI, other town counterparts, and a few more PCVs were still on their way and there was a purpose to the timing.  They got kind of mad and said that some of them would have to go home now. 

We move along through the day.  I shake how patronizing my town president is to me when he disbelievingly asks again “so your boss isn’t even coming?” and start assembling the market space, changing into a Peace Corps festival.  We have posters illustrating the history of Peace Corps, current and past projects going on across Madagascar, the Peace Corps goals.  A huge poster was set up with pictures of volunteers and their counterparts.  Apart from that, I had put together posters with information about all of the different sectors that we pasted up (with some difficulty) along the market’s walls.  We start up the music, pull out the red ribbons, and give out lottery tickets.

Of course, a festival with informational booths is not something people from the bush of Madagascar are used to.  People awkwardly stand outside the market looking in on the funny-looking white people.  I walked up to them and explained that if they get over their fear of the foreigners they could win prizes and ribbons, oh my! 

Eventually they do, and shyly they glimpse at the decorations up on the wall.  We try to get them excited, teach them the songs made up about using condoms, protecting yourself, abstinence; all those silly things that they don’t want to know about.  After a little while, I am again reminded that some people need to start walking towards their far-away villages so we start the show. 

It goes fine.  I start MCing and pull the women’s group up.  They do an adorable dance and song number that talks about working with Peace Corps and Americans.  The president of the town comes up to do a speech that makes him seem much more endearing than earlier.  Then we get to it!  I do my speech about the wonders of Peace Corps (which, despite the cynical tone of this blog post, I solidly believe in).  We do our skits, imposing the late volunteers to try to fake knowing the lines.  We sing songs, which luckily I had taught to the middle-school girls so they fill in the enthusiasm.  Games and speeches are gone through and if nothing else I think that the town saw a good side of Peace Corps volunteers.  I even heard some people asking for condoms.

The event ends after PSI shows a movie on their Cinemobile.  It’s a 40-minute film about “maro maso” (many eyes, an expression that means being interested in lots of women at once).  The town seems to really enjoy it, and the volunteers go off to dinner and for some celebratory beers feeling accomplished.

The next morning we are to bike to another town to do the whole thing again.  It is about a 30 km bike ride and mostly downhill, so we figure we will get it done within 2 hours.  But of course, after the first ten km we notice that a third of the group have fallen far behind.  So we stop and take a breather to wait.  Half an hour later, we see James running alongside his bike, Lily and Jonathan biking behind him.  Apparently he got a flat before he even got past my village’s road.  

I send most of the group off, staying behind to help James find someone to fix the wheel.  It only sets us back 45 minutes and we head off after them, booking it to Vanessa’s village.  

The rest of the day goes fine, the event goes pretty well and the villager’s seem to respond to it.  Happy to be finished, we conga-line out of the festival.  It is a beautiful evening, and Vanessa’s site is a beautiful village.  Right on the beach in a small fishing village.  We decide to go for a sunset walk and glimpse the sunset.  It’s beautiful, and as I’m sitting curled up with Lily and Nicki I have one of those great Peace Corps moments and realize that this is something most people don’t experience.  And that I soon will not.

We walk back and it is already dark outside.  About half a k away from Vanessa’s hut I take a step that I thought would be sand, but turned out to be a sharp rock.  I tumble and fall face-first onto it’s brother rock.  My face fills with blood from the cuts surrounding my left eye, begins to swell up and I am led back to Vanassa’s hut where the health volunteers who smartly brought all of bandages and cleaning equipment wipe me down.  

And here I am three days later, finally back in my village, walking around with a big fat shiner and being gawked at by my community members.  The best line I’ve heard so far is “wow, injuries show much better on white people than on us”.  

(Disclaimer: The festival went great.  Both communities got excited about Peace Corps and perhaps even about safe sex…though that I’m not sure how to tell.  It was the biggest project I have put together and have had to see through the whole way, and I feel pretty good about how it went and how well it was received.  But seriously…why does Peace Corps have to be so hard?). 

playing

The silly evenings out are also worth remembering.  Sometimes when I come out of town and into the city for a “banking night” I feel a desperate desire for everything that is not ‘gasy.  Processed food, cold drinks, English speakers.  But those felt needs are becoming less and less I have found as I progress in my service. 

Yesterday, for example, I came into town to teach my weekly course at the university in Diego.  When I got back from teaching I was exhausted, having been up since 5 that morning to bike and taxi-brouse in, prepare the odd ends of my lesson, and then hold the class.  I was ready to relax and was therefore couchin’ it with my best girl, Nicki, trying to decide on evening plans.  Apparently, she had enlisted us for a company outing with her co-workers at PSI.  I sighed, wishing to not have to go through the charades of being the white girl, the puppet for excited ‘gasy men to twirl around, but she had promised so I told her I was in.  

We go to the pre-decided location and lounge for awhile, drinking brochettes and eating beers (wait, what?) and waiting for them to come.  It’s a bit late so I’m wondering if they have stood us up.  Around 9:15 we get a call and they ask where we are (to which we respond that we are just where we told them we would be).  Three minutes later a taxi pulls up and we are pulled from our benches into the laps of people already in it.  Confused, we laugh and talk on the way to somewhere.  Finally we arrive back in the middle of town, to a ramdom street corner with the entire staff of PSI is assembled and waiting for us.  Apparently by telling a few of them we might be up for something and meant that everyone must be informed and sent invitations to the whole staff to come play with the Peace Corps volunteers.  (Who can blame them?  We’ve got spunk!).  A bit overwhelmed, we shrug and follow them into a tiny bar with a raging bass system that is throwing out the notes of the live band playing at the center.  Drinking and merriment ensues including Macarena-ing, electic sliding, and we end all slow dancing like an eighth grade semiformal event to “Endless love”. 

It was a goofy and wonderful time by all and it is those moments when you are exchanging dance moves with a 45 year-old Malagasy dude that you realize Peace Corps is maybe not about getting overwhelmed and then needing to take a break from 'gasy culture, but more finding those parts of the culture that feel like home to you.  That bring out the giddiness that sometimes feels hard to find.  

Silly, sweet night.  It also involved a foam party…but perhaps that is a story for another day. 

Comfort foods (or, where there is no Big Macs)

Being stuck in the bush leaves one far away from the comfort of ready-made or microwavable food.  This is something we all expected coming into Peace Corps, and have all evolved different methods to overcoming it.  My friend Katie, for example, receives monthly packages from her mother which cost her a fortune just to receive at the post office.  However, once she “mandoa vola” (throws up her money) she is treated, and generally shares, treats we forgot existed.  

My parents live in Rwanda and Togo, so I have little expectations of them to send me goodies of which I might crave from home.  So I have been forced to develop my own comfort foods that I can enjoy right here in my hut.  It really started after one particularly bad day at my first site when I was frustrated with language and hadn’t eaten anything besides tomatoes and rice for a week.  I lay on the hut of my floor thinking about what I really wanted to eat.  Surprisingly the first thing that came to my head was not pizza or French fries but a food that is a staple of my diet in the states: a veggie burger.  The first problem, of course, was that the freezer section at the town grocer was out of order and so I could not pick up a packet of my favorite spicy black bean burgers (the sarcasm in that last sentence is clear right?).  But really, I am in the land of nothing pre-made so if I wanted a veggie burger, I was going to have to get creative.  I walked the 5 k to my closest market where I found the basic things that are always there: tomatoes, onions, beans, rice.  That day was a lucky day, as a truck had dropped off a rice-sack of flour.  

So I loaded up on all of these things and went hungrily back to my hut.  I pulled out the yeast I had bought back in the capitol before getting to site and set to making the buns.  Let the yeast soak for five minutes in warm water, throw some sugar in, salt, and enough flour to make a good dough, then leave it to rise.  Second step was the burgers.  Since my favorite veggie burgers in the states are of the black bean variety, I figured I could scrape something together with the beans I had brought back from the market.  They were white, but who am I to judge on color anyways?  So I set them to cooking, which takes at least an hour. 

This is the funny thing about having a food craving here and actually trying to ease it, it will generally take you so long to make the thing that by the time its finished you will be fine with rice and tomatoes again.  Alas, by now I had put in enough effort that I figured I’d finish it out.  The dough had risen so I set my “oven” to heat.  This oven is really just a huge pot with sand in the bottom of it.  I put it on a burner or over a fire and wait for it to get good and warm, then I throw a pan with the buns in it and the lid back on and it bakes!  There is of course no temperature gage, so it requires standing by, but still…it feels like a luxury here.  When the beans soften I poured out the liquid and mashed them up.  I then added chopped onions, a bit of sugar, some vinegar, some ginger powder I happened to have, and an egg that I had begged my neighbor to spare from her chicken.  I stirred it all together and made it more solid with flour and the crumbled up stale end from a baguette I had bought on my last market trip.  Finally, I made them into patties and fried them up as the buns finished baking.  Slice up the tomatoes and a pineapple I found on the walk over and assemble it all.  It was freakin’ delicious.

Since this episode I have ventured to make many different foods.  Some have turned out terrifically like the veggie burgers while others, like any Indian food I have attempted, just don’t quite taste right.  I have been amazed though how, with an ever-flowing amount of time, so many things can be made that I could never have imagined the process of before.  Bagels, English muffins, pretzels.  I made an entire Thanksgiving dinner for twenty on my tiny double-burner.  Fermented a pineapple trying to get a taste of wine.  Have you ever made fried chicken where the recipe included killing and plucking the chicken first?  If curiosity killed the cat then I guess it was the desperation of a PCV that killed the chicken.  

 I suppose it’s good that these things that have turned out so delicious are on the more time-consuming time or else I’d come back to the states looking much more American than I did when I left!  (Is being overweight still an American stereotype?  I don’t even know anymore…perhaps Michele Obama has straightened out today’s kids after all).  But once in awhile it’s nice to know that they are feasible.  

I wonder if when I go back to the states I will go back to buying buns, pre-made veggie burgers, and pasta.  It’s almost absurd to imagine it possible.  Will I dive into the conveniences of instant cooking or will my food habits forever be changed by knowing what food tastes like when it comes not from the glossy supermarket?

Where is the Line?

I came into the Peace Corps an already tainted ex-pat.  I remember in my first couple months I met up with a recently finished Peace Corps volunteer who had returned to Madagascar.  A wonderful woman and certainly someone who had been a tremendous volunteer, I enjoyed a nice lunch with her in my banking town.  During this lunch she told me about the many reasons she had returned to Madagascar.  One of the main ones was that she was paying for the education and health of a small child whom she even hoped to “adopt” and bring to the states in order to give him the better education (and life) offered there.   I remember thinking that this was sweet and awfully nice, but that it was a kind of dependent relationship I would never allow myself in while working overseas.  If you help one host country national so much, what are his/her neighbors going to say?  I thought back to a critique of the “starfish story” I read in my last year of university (you know: the one about the dude who is caught throwing one starfish after another, out of thousands who have beached themselves, back into the ocean and says something to the effect of “at least I am helping that one”).  This critique (a good, quick article if I could only find it) spoke about the success that is better achieved by working towards community progress; not just choosing the one sea-creature and sending it back to its home but trying to figure out how to prevent them from beaching themselves in the first place, or perhaps how to help them to return themselves.  (I guess what I’m also talking about reaches into the “dead babies floating down the river” story as well).

Okay so where was I?  Right: I was an already-disillusioned, already lived-too-long-in-developing-countries-and-can’t understand-why-someone-would-put-so-much-effort-towards-just-one-person grump.  I’d hear these stories of volunteers developing strong relationships with individuals in country and continuing them in a financial way afterwards and I thought “that’s very nice, but I will never cross that line”. 

But then a strange thing happened: I fell in love.  It was quick, within three months of moving to my new site.  I admit it: I am a sucker for a good laugh, a striking set of brown eyes, and a solid afro.  Each morning I would get myself out of bed excited to see the apple of my eye with whom I’d spend all my free time.  We’d cuddle and teach each other things from each of our cultures and it filled me with lots of joy and after time I found in me this strange desire to protect and take care of….her. 

Oh yeah, I suppose it is important to mention that I have not taken a host country “sipa” (boyfriend).  The new love of my life is a little girl named Shiela.  Here she is

A couple of months after Shiela and I became buddies, her health began to disintegrate.  Energy-wise, you wouldn’t notice a thing.  She was still the chipper young lass who was so excited to wake up every morning that she’d forget to put on underwear as she ran over to play with her friends.  (Often her mom sees me in the morning and throws a pair of knickers at me, telling me to find Shiela and make her put them on).  But Sheila’s appetite began to increase absurdly, her stomach bloated up, attached with bad stomach-aches and diarrhea.  She developed some sort of infection in her eyes, causing her to loose all her eyelashes.  She is sprite as ever, but physically falling apart.  Her parents took some methods towards healing her eyelashes, but her stomach issues (which is clearly worms) have not been addressed, and they have no plans of taking her to a clinic about them. 

I find myself in this very strange position now.  I have always told myself that it was inefficient as a development agent to help out just one person.  But now there is this other part of me that feels a kinship to someone and wonderfully, I have it in my ability to help her out.  It would take very little out of me to get her back in good health.  Perhaps just a deworming pill!  But not only is this against my former principals, it is against Peace Corps rules; we as volunteers are not supposed to give out medication.  If you give it to one person, then everyone will ask. 

But I love her!

Where is the line between being a good, supportive community volunteer and intervening too far?  This is just one example out of so many that have come at me in my two years since being here.  I believe so much in the Peace Corps experience especially in that it is based around building inter-cultural relationships.  But once you have those relationships, how can you watch the people you come to love suffer? 

oh the things we do

If you are looking to go through the most humbling experience a human being can actively choose to do, Peace Corps is a good place to start.  There is this great David Sedaris story about his venture to learn French as a middle-aged man.  He explains that although in body you are an already grown, formed adult person but the way you speak is like a four-year-old kid.  

I'd hoped the language might come on its own, the way it comes to babies, but people don't talk to foreigners the way they talk to babies. They don't hypnotize you with bright objects and repeat the same words over and over, handing out little treats when you finally say "potty" or "wawa." It got to the point where I'd see a baby in the bakery or grocery store and instinctively ball up my fists, jealous over how easy he had it. I wanted to lie in a French crib and start from scratch, learning the language from the ground floor up. I wanted to be a baby, but instead, I was an adult who talked like one, a spooky man-child demanding more than his fair share of attention.(David Sedaris.  Me Talk Pretty One Day)

Its hilarious and right on to how I felt coming to my village.  Except language wasn’t the only way that I performed like a toddler.  Tossed into a world where everything from language to clothes-washing is foreign and confusing, one must be ready to see themselves as a newborn baby learning everything from scratch. 

Although at first, I must admit, it was quite irritating to be constantly told that I was “tsi mahai”.  Everything I did from washing my dishes to getting dressed in the morning to reading Malagasy was apparently wrong.  Because of this, I was the endless source of humour, since there is nothing so funny in the eyes of a Malagasy as someone making mistakes.  

In fact, I suppose I am still the endless source of humour, but now that I’ve lived in this setting for two years, I guess I simply don’t mind as much.  And this is what I mean by how humbling an experience the Peace Corps can be for a person.  Once you get used to the fact that you likely are going to do things a bit different, and that you will undoubtedly be called out for said difference, you can learn to laugh at yourself.  Once you stop taking yourself serious, you become a much better PCV.  

So I am far along on my track of finding myself and all trhe world I live in utterly ridiculous (as well as wonderful!).  I now go into each project, each classroom, each training that I do with a readiness to do absolutely anything in order to get my point across.  By now my ‘gasy is decent enough, but there are still plenty of moments where I don’t know a particular word.  I have become quite good at talking around a word, and even better at cherades.  I have no problem with appearing a complete fool in front of a room of strangers.  Ask my best friend in town and I promise she would agree.  

This past Sunday was Madagascar’s Independence day and so, of course, a grand fety was to be had.  My youth women’s group decided that they wanted to do some type of skit or dance or song for the event.  Thinking that I, the American that I am, must be full of cool dance moves (which I am!), they asked me to teach them some American dances.  Now, I fancy myself something of a dancer, but I haven’t been to a dance class since I was 5 years old and in bright pink tights and a Mickey Mouse headdress.  But if they ask, I must deliver (I don’t know where I got that moto) and so I taught them the first dances that came to my head: the Cupid Shuffle and the Macerena.  

Well of course they loved it and decided we needed to do both of these dances on the day of the fety and I sheepishly agreed, wishing maybe that I hadn’t been so eager to please their demands for dance moves.  I figured I’d just stand on the sidelines and watch them do them.  But the day comes and of course none of them has practiced but still want to do the dances anyway.  So I am pushed to the front of the group and, with Shakira’s “Waka Waka” blasting,  we Cupid Shuffled in front of the mayor, town president, police force, all the town elders, and well, the entire rest of the town.  Than we Macarena’d to Jerry Marcos’s “Zaho tsy kivy” (an awesome ‘gasy song if your interested).  

Looking back on this now, I suppose I should be completely embarrassed.  But *shrugs shoulders* I’m not at all.  Though I will hear about it for the rest of the year, and surely my replacement will hear about it during his/her service, and likely the one afterwards too, I have come to a place where it is very hard to embarrass me.  

My friend Chris, who recently COS’ed and might even be back in the states by now (*gasp*) used to talk about this phenomenon of being unshakeable.  I remember him telling stories and always ended with a indignant “go ahead! Just try and make me feel shame!  You can’t: there’s nothing left!”.  So I guess that’s just how it goes for us PCVers.  We fall into a place of not caring and just enjoying the silliness that is tossed our way, whether or not we created it.  It’s actually quite ‘gasy of us.  

I feel I must end this by saying that it might not be all PCV’s who end up feeling this way.  There’s this silly quote that floats around facebook sometimes that goes like this:

‘If you go to Latin America, you’ll come back fomenting revolution; If you go to Asia, you’ll come back spiritually enlightened; And if you go to Africa, you’ll come back laughing”

And I guess this pretty much sums it up. 

Things that are normal now... Part I

1.  Not having any days that feel like the weekend.  Everyday is a workday in the bush!  You try to take a day off to do "just relax" and three hours later you're bored and wondering where everyone is.  Inevitably they are doing something you were trying to avoid like weeding the fields or a four-hour church service. 

2.  Being peed on by babies.  I admit that I always feel lucky when I am passed a baby.  Not only are they all super cute but it also means that the mother trusts you enough to not drop him/her on his head (a trust that most American mothers would likely not lend to me either).  Since I've been a volunteer the kids have been the best part of any day and those little, crying nuggets are no different.  However, diapers are not a luxury enjoyed by the babies of the bush.  This does not, as one might hope, speed up the potty-training process.  Instead it means that you will often be transformed from being the trusted momentary caregiver of the little tyke into the depository for its daily milk intake.  I'm surprisingly used to it now.  I carry around an extra lamba. 

3.  Getting laughed at whenever you talk to someone new.  Perhaps it is out of surprise, but whenever I meet someone here or even if someone simply overhears you they are overcome with laughter at the fact that I am a white person speaking 'gasy.  I know its not a bad thing, but I continue to feel a little confused whenever I saw "good morning" and someone cracks up. 

(...more to come)

unteaching

I find myself the center of the room, though eyes are far from all on me.  The classroom is filled with 27 students packed into tight rows and sweating.  A few at the front avidly pay attention, yelling out answers whenever I question the class.  The rest talk amongst themselves waiting, perhaps, to be told to be quiet.  But even once the request comes their conversations halt for mere seconds until the faces turn back to their friends.  I’ve been told the best way to get attention is to bring out the bamboo stick.  Alas, I’ve yet to come to such aggravation. 

I have put into my job title the teaching of middle school and elementary school students in my town.  For the last sixth months I have taught an environment course at the EPP (elementary school), started up a lifeskills course with the middleschool women, and helped the English teacher with his beginner English course, something I feel slightly obligated to do as he cannot carry a conversation in the tongue.  If I have no other skill, I do speak English. 

I enjoy both of these classes.  I’ve always liked working with kids and since joining Peace Corps have certainly found them easiest to work with of any community members.  Ever enthusiastic, not as likely to laugh at me maliciously when I shovel a hole differently.  In general, they seem to like having me around.  And both courses has led to other work such as parents who learn about their kids making composts.

But at times I find the work outstandingly frustrating.  Take for example my environment class yesterday.  These kids are all 9 to 10 years old, have been in school for 5 years now so have grown accustomed to the idea of learning (something that if you walk into the youngest kids’ classroom is surely not comprehended; it’s an absolute zoo of youngsters fighting over oranges or bananas…whatever was brought for snack by someone else).  So I go into my class, having lesson-planned for a couple hours during the week in order to make sense out of this environment material that they haven’t, in the last few months, seemed to receive very well.  It is utter gibberish to them.  So I always bear myself with a game, a participatory model, a field trip, or some activity to make it more fun and gain their attention.  This is a kind of learning that they are completely unused to, of course.  They are comfortable with a teacher writing paragraphs upon paragraphs in French (a language they do not speak nor understand) on the board, and then copying it down).  But still I am convinced that this is the way to make it happen!  To get through to them!  To make a point! 

Anyways, yesterday.  I have come bearing two games.  One is a sort of musical chairs that represents the affects of deforestation on the lemurs.  It goes reasonably well, as I play myself, the big bad human who needs to cut down the trees for realistic reason such as cooking, building homes, and of course, building churches.  As the music stops and one of the students, or “lemurs” is left without a spot I tell him that his tree has been cut down and so he has died because he had nowhere to sleep and a predator ate him.  This goes pretty well and is pretty solidly understood, though its clear the only thing they are interested are the jams leaking out of my ipod. 

The second game is meant to portray erosion.  I’m trying to show them why trees, and their roots, are needed in order to stop water from pulling tons of dirt and sand into the ocean, destroying the land.  So I set up a relay race and make two teams.  I tell the team members that they are all water.  I also set up six kids in front of one of the teams as stones and trees that they need to crawl under (between their legs) or over (leap-frog style).  The other team has no obstacles at all.  In my head this will show them how fast water will move if it doesn’t have obstacles such as tree roots to block it, just a clear path.  Because clearly the team with no obstacles is going to win, right?  Of course not Kelly.  Instead what will happen is the team with the obstacles will do their best to kick each of the students posing as trees or “not quite” lean down far enough to crawl through legs so I end up with five students bruised and the other side hasn’t even begun running.  Point not proven. 

I do not know how to prevent the chaos that happens whenever we do something fun.  Today we (my environment class) planted our pepiniere (tree nursery) and I couldn’t believe how egotistical and undisciplined they behaved.  All trying to steal seeds from each other and me, all jumping in front of the other.  Where does this behavior come from?  Is sharing really something that is taught rather than something instinctually understood?  Sometimes I think it is a reaction to the way they are treated at home since there they are of the age that receives the least benefits and the most chores.  The babies get disgustingly pampered, the papa’s alternatively are able to take the most for themselves and the mama, who is the cook and handler of all things worth wanting in the home, does a good job of keeping herself fed and happy alongside the days chores.  It is these middle kids who get shirked, they receive the least protein or side dish (though plenty of rice) and the most trips to the water pump.  In the classroom they are treated much the same: the teachers are always ordering them around to weed the school ground, sweep the floors, or even fetch the water for the laundry they have decided to bring to work that day.  My nine-year-olds get yelled at, smacked upside the head, and put to work everyday.  So perhaps they see me, who always acts more like a buddy than a disciplinarian, and feel that they are let out of that environment.  They never neglect to take the opportunity to go nuts. 

                It might sound like I am being a pushover.  However, my ability to stay relaxed and kind to misbehaving kids is practiced and purposeful.  I think kids should have the freedom to create their own dynamics.  So often adults interfere within the play of children because they see that they find something distasteful.  I can relate to that; I always feel irked when I see kids engaged in physical fighting.  But plenty of people would prove that this is natural.  And who doesn’t like a good wrestling match among friends (my buddies and I used to play “street fight”…)?  When I see it, I try not to react to my bias and overanalyzed thought that these kids are showing violent behaviors.

                But it is still hard to see kids act selfishly and thoughtlessly towards each other.  I don’t know how to teach them the value of respect, besides showing it to them.  This method, as of now, has not worked.  Yet I still resist the seemingly midevil practices that the other teachers use to gain it.