Letters from Hannah

Dear Mom and Dad,

I'm sitting, finally, on a vaguely Adirondack chair on my terrasse. It's maybe 3:30 and the heat of the day (which I slept through) is starting to dissipate. There's been a decent breeze and I hear thunder in the distance, so maybe it will rain. I hope so. I'd like to sit out here while water falls all around me. Lately it's been the kind of hot that leaves you forever wiping a film of sweat off your upper lip, and needing a shower after each foray into town.

I am extremely pleased with the terrace (though I've forgotten how to spell it). It's spacious and gets the breezes when they roll through, and now I am free to have students over without inviting them into the house (where they might get the idea to steal something! Mama Yvonne screeches). Two nights ago, for example, a group of kids came over for pointers on their AIDS exposée, for biology class. Another kid came by to say that he had a text to translate, and could he bring it for corrections when he was done? This was such a departure from the usual requests for help ("will you do my homework for me?") that I agreed. It's nice that the terrasse getting finished has coincided with a newfound trust and respect for the students. Turns out they're not such monsters after all.

I just finished Hamilton's Book of Ruth and Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, both of which are preoccupied with the natural wonders of small town/farming communities. So now I have butterflies and victory gardens on the brain, and a renewed desire to get out the zoom lens and start cataloguing birds, bugs, and lizards.

I recently got a bunch of mail that was sent in Sept.-October -- your 2 aerograms from Sept. 9 and two letters after that, as well as a note from Asako plus some Kanfer postcards (the harvest scene I put up in the kitchen, so I can see the comfortable flatness and primary colors [tractor, sky, corn] of home.) I liked Mom's observation that America loses its innocence over and over again - like a salamander growing back his tail after you chop it off. Our birthright, somehow -- this privilege of being able to be innocent despite the continuous terror and tragedy happening in the rest of the world.

I really like Ndende now -- I'm comfortable, my house and neighbors and work are great; I'm even starting to live with the ants, and be thankful that they are my only bug problem (no mousquitoes, no ants coming after food, no fourous (teeny gnats that bite at dawn and dusk), no spiders. Just the red ants and the slugs and the birds in the roof. Chikwang has been missing for 2-1/2 weeks now -- she's either killed or eaten by a boa or kidnapped. I wasn't a very good mom and this is my punishment. If she could, she'd have been back by now. Two and a half weeks is too long. Cheree's dog in TCH just had puppies but I don't think I want another dog. I learned my lesson.

What with all the Ebola folks going home, us that are left have been asking eachother questions along the lines of "what would you do if we got evacuated?" and "what will you do when you get out of here?" Silly stuff that I don't like thinking about. I told Jim I would probably despair for awhile if we had to leave -- I just don't know what direction I want to go in. (Jim said he'd join the army -- he's the kind that needs structure, and he's a little lost here.) But I got to thinking in Mayumba, on the beach, that one of the first places I'd want to go after getting home wold be the cottage. It would be slightly remote and away from busy American life, which I get chills just thinking about now. I could hole up and rent a whole bunch of videos, and transition. That was my original plan. Afterwards I thought it would be a great place to have PC reunions. And then, as I often have in recent years, I thought about how much the place means to me, and how highly it figures in my memories as an escape, a hideaway of utter calm, a beautiful setting, surrounded by nature, but not too far from ice cream and movies. I guess I have these idyllic childhood images of it -- floating on the lake, catching perch at the pier, biking to the horse farm, my first grape, oreos and milk and books and board games. I love the cottage. And when I think about coming back and where I'd want to live it says, "Come to Madison, come to Chicago -- stay in the Midwest (flat fields of corn and beans evoke similar emotions) and be close by." I don't know what Gma and Gpa want to do with it, or if Mom or Roger or Lynne want anything to do with it -- I know the place is a lot of work, not just opening and closing and keeping it up and cleaning, but property taxes and all that stuff I barely understand. Still, though -- it's our family place, and I, for one, think that's important. I guess I just wanted to make my feelings known.

This week I've been trying to get through my AIDS exposées at the lycee -- I did 2 classes Saturday, 2 Monday, 2 Tuesday -- I was on a roll. Today, though, the students went on strike (something about a fee for the school they didn't want to pay, or that they had paid but had been bouffed -- stolen -- by the comission). They went back in the afternoon, so hopefully I can do 2 more classes tomorrow. The kids are pretty responsive -- they've heard about AIDS but are unsure about the specifics of transmission (especially the young kids) or have cockamamie ideas about infected condoms and biological warfare. I usually answer the same questions each time: origins, oral sex, anal sex, kissing, mosquitos, why bother living if you get it (a tough one -- I still need a snappy comeback), is there a cure, will there be a cure, can't we just take out someone's blood and replace it with good blood? The sixiemes -- 7th grade -- are all mixed up about how you get it -- if you live with someone? if you share a bed? if you wear their sweaty clothes? So I try to pound it into them -- only blood, semen, vaginal secretions. A lot of questions about the cycle, so that's next on my to do list.

I bought this radio/tape player in LBV, hoping it wouldn't be like every other crappy African appliance, but it conked out the day after I got home, and now burbles music like it's underwater. So, I am hereby requesting that you bring my cd-tape player boom box, with cds. I'd stick with the walkman but its speakers are pooping out too.

It's 6:30 now and I'm on the porch, watching the coming storm replace the light. Someone was burning today; smoke is drifting down the hill. Lightning flashes in front of me, and the wind blows the ashy remnants of grass in circles in the corner. It picks up, rustling the mango tree and disturbing a few bats, and knocking a butterfly into my hair. He steadies himself on the wall, orange underwings showing through transparent top wings. The power goes out -- I see now a plume of orange-red smoke rising up to the soouth, like Dorothy threw that bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West over on the road to Tchibanga. I go in, the sudden silence alerting me to mosquitos, and of course, as soon as I light a candle and the storm lamp, the power comes back on. A student carrying water back to his rented room laughts with me about it. "A chaque fois," I say, "dis que j'allume la lampe--" "La lumière revient," he finishes.

Dad--in one of these letters from September you mention the economics of vampire bats and this being studied in Thailand--can you tell me more about this? It sounds like the bats have some kind of working socialism, which seems dubious, especially given recent research in animal altruism--people don't really believe ants or foxes are as selfless as they appear. Then again, I'm not exactly up to date on the latest findings, nor was I ever. I'd like to hear about the bats, though. If you feel like sending the Sen book that'd be fine -- don't bring it with you. I'll be more likely to read it here than once I get home, but don't waste suitcase space with it. Bring me a couple jars of salsa instead. :)

Well, now it's 9:30 and it's finally raining. The power went out again, but I have candles (I'm not bothering with the storm lamp again tonight.)

Why is the it the days that I feel least like teaching end up being the most fun? I went to class on Tuesday halfway convinced I would go home 'sick' halfway through. I had prepared not very thoroughly, as usual -- an idea about reviewing past and future tenses with can and must, and a handful of phrases. Some old dialogues were backup, when we get done with tenses.

I called roll and started in on the phrases. (He must run 10 km) with a sort of I-could-care-less attitude that manifested as a semi-hip enthusiasm. I was not taking myself seriously. "Come on guys, listen: must exists only in the present. In the past we use had to. Future --". I swang my arms, Pete Townsend style,-- at the future sectin of the board -- "we use will have to." I continued to gesture broadly, profess mock dejection, and generally make what is known as a fool of myself, all because nothing mattered. If the kids get it, great. If they don't, no biggie. My bad acting got more and more grandiose as the hour went on as I realized this would make some kids laugh and that was better than dumb silence (itself better than fighting and yelling). At one point the kids were getting their had to's and have to's and will have to's all muddled up and I planted myself in front of the present section of phrases. "He has to!" I shouted. "He has to!" they chorused, having been programmed now for nine to twelve years to repeat, mindlessly -- I am often tempted to use this part of professorial power for nefarious ends -- I jumped/slid/scooted to my right. "He had to!" "He had to!" All the way to my left, in front of the future phrases. "He will have to!" He will have to!" The kids were grinning now. Back to the present. "I can!" "I can!" I jump to the future and assume an expectant posture. It comes, garbled -- "I will be able to!" Past. "I could!" I continue to slide between tenses, starting new phrases, things get a little frenzied, my smart girls are loving it, the boys-that-try-hard-but-don't-quite-get-it are laughing, and my best student, Mouembanza Sessila Gildas, is staring in a sort of shock, his mouth open slightly, wondering (presumably) if his prof has lost her proverbial marbles. I note his look with a mixture of satisfaction and trepidation -- this is a kid who has always been polite and mostly attentive but who raps in English and plays basketball and has what I would consider quarterback status, the kind of star student who gets the grades and the girls and the Ivy League sports recruiting. If I can impress him then I am doing pretty well. The other thing about the look is that it's sort of familiar, but I can't place it right then; I'm too busy jumping and gesticulating.

We're done with tenses; I put a corny dialogue full of American slang up on the board ("Hey, how's it going?") -- it takes up 2-1/2 boards. I give them the necessary vocab -- cute, grow up, yeah, hey, awesome -- and tell them they are to translate it for Saturday. They stop groaning when I tell them it's "pure American slang." There's 10 minutes left, I'm out of ideas, they want me to sing, and I've already done the condom song and the National Anthem (Francis Scott Key is a sadist, that's all I have to say -- though I don't get embarrassed in front of the kids, again, because of my handy What the hell attitude, which makes everything a joke of varying bigness). So what's left? Mary had a little lamb? Michael row your boat ashort? The girl scout Friends song? Puh-lease. I am upholding an embargo on bad American songs. No, what comes into my mind is sparked by recent email contact with a long lost high school friend, with whom I took Russian. He is back from Peace Corps Uzbekistan and has (unwittingly) caused me to "laisser tomber" my residual resentment for slavic tongues and countries. (Due in part to adolescent rebellion/searching for my own identity -- Mom's a Russian historian -- and also seeing many of my high school Russian-classmates sucked into the Russian black hole and fearing the same fate, one of long lines and long winters and bad food -- you see now where it's gotten me, a place with no lines (just pushing), no winters, and bad food. Frying pan? Fire? Oy.)

Last vestiges of former resentment vanished into central African savannah, I now start singing Black Eyes, and find that the kids can't tell I've forgotten all the words. Ochi chernoe, ochi strastnoe? Och vi--- i prikrasnoe? Ia liubliu tebia, i ... sebia ... ochi ... ochi... Well, that won't do, they want to learn a song. So I teach them the alphabet song. No joke. Two of my good girls even come up afterwards and make sure they've written everything down correctly.

Before they leave I wow them with the Moscow subway-spiel, and wow myself by remembering hello and goodbye, and that I had once known a song about a sun and a field and blue sky. I'm in some kind of time warp, phrases coming back to me, verb pairs (razgovarivat'/govorit'? zhdat'/zhdivat'?/dat'/davat' -- whaddya call those?), words like otets that I can't remember whether it means grandfather or uncle, our Russian Monty Python sketch (nikto ne ozhidaet ispanskoi inkvizitsii!) -- the chalk dust is getting to me, maybe, and then it hits me. Where I know that look on Gilda's face from. Otkuda ia znaiu. A look often to be found, or at the very least the underlying sentiment, on my face during Russian class in high school. Where our prof was similarly kooky and taught us with a sort of exasperated Devil may care attitude, which we, quite frankly, loved her for.

Kids love kooky teachers! Or maybe we just mistake laughter for love. Either way, it was a fun class.

Now I'm about to run off and abandon them in order to take a fishing trip/safari with some COSing PCVs. This school system, man, things sure are different here. Last week, right after teaching Russian, we -- the profs -- had a meeting where it was decided the last day for grades would be May 18. I'd like to point out that classes are due to end June 15. And that everyone knows kids don't come to class if their grades are already in the books. So, fine. We had, at that point, 4 classes left to do tests and meaningful lessons. Now, however, the 3-e and Terminales are taking their practice exams (real thing is in July) and the 6e, 5e, and 4e classes have been barred from school so they won't disrupt things. For the whole week. So, 2 classes left. During which I will be on a boat, chasing bluefin tuna, or something. I had everything worked out, too -- test this week, collect and grade notebooks, that makes 3 grades for this term. But now everything is ruined. No one seems to care about the kids (uh, including me, I suppose). Mike pointed out that having to go to school every day and do homework and extracurriculars gives you valuable time-management and prioritizing and putting up with bullshit and study skills. But here it's like we're all playing school. "You go to class and a prof is saying something about X and Y and squares and so it's as if it's a math class. But you never actually learn anything." Critical thinking? No way. Herd mentality? Bien sur. No one takes education seriously. "Le school, ça gaze..." (school sucks).

Love,

Hannah