The hunt

This afternoon, for the first time in three months, my neighbor’s kids were in my house. Almost immediately, Mariana sat herself down on the concrete floor in front of my bookcase and pulled out the first pamphlet she found. It seemed that her desire to go through anything and everything that was in my house had not diminished in the past three months.

I half watched her and half read my Bill Bryson collection from my couch on the other side of the room. She moved meticulously through the bottom shelf. Working from left to right, she pulled each book off the shelf, flipped through it (I assume looking for pictures)  and then haphazardly threw it to side when she was finished. I cringed at every plop of a book on the floor, thinking only of how I would have to pick them all up again when she left.

As I watched her slowly displace everything on the bookcase, I thought about what I used to do when I was her age. The more I thought about it, the more I remembered doing exactly what Mariana was doing when I was younger. Whenever there was a large stack or shelf of items that were in front of me that appeared to have not been gone through in a while, I took it upon myself to go through the papers, one by one. I don’t know if I was searching for a treasure map, some family secrets or just a piece of paper on which I could color, but I remember thinking there had to be something good in there, if I just looked hard enough.

I guess it’s different, now, when its my treasure maps and my secrets that someone else if going through. 

An excerpt from my student’s English Valentine’s Day cards

Being a few hours away from break didn’t exactly serve as a catalyst for me to come up with a different idea for my English club this week other than making valentines in English, despite being a week after the holiday.

But, I was impressed with my 8^th grade students’ abilities to string together English phrases for their messages of love after giving them certain vocabulary.

From Isaak:

“Oo, my valentine, I love you everyday. When I see you, I am over the moon always because you are beautiful and I love you. I love you and I will love for always.”

If you can joke about it

I was sitting with my work partner when another one of our colleagues, Martin, came up. Kande and I had been talking about the field trip we were planning for the school, and how much each student and teacher was expected to pay to participate.

“You’ll pay for me won’t you?” Martin asked.

I paused before responding, thinking about the recent situation I had dealt with at my house: discovering that money for my community health project had disappeared. Martin and Kande were two of the five people who had helped me try to recover it initially.

“I have no money left,” I responded. “All my money has disappeared.”

He and Kande burst out laughing. I chalked it up as the next step in moving on.

I salute your resolution, part 2

I was never much a resolution-maker. Until last year, I never really greeted the New Year with much more than a salute at midnight. But now, as I’m starting to find myself in real-life situations where I’m starting to become the person that I will be for a long time, the notion re-evaluating my attitude, desires and life in general each year seems less romatic and more practical. This year, I have three:

-Talk to people more, both here and abroad

-Fight for what I want

-Be angry less

Welcome back friend

Around this time last year, I remember waking up cold for the first time in Benin. There’s this time in between the mini-hot season and the in-your-face-you-will-sweat-for-the-next-three-months hot season when the wind comes from the north and it gets dusty and dry and in the evenings and mornings, cold.

We’ve been waiting for this time to come again this year, when Monday, I was teaching 6^th grade and I noticed something happening: all my students were slowly moving over to a group of tables at which no one normally sat. Every time I looked over there, another student had crept over while my back was turned and was trying to act like he’d been taking notes there the whole time.

I was walking around the room checking on my students’ progress on taking notes about the simple present tense when I realized what was going on. The sun was shining on that group of desks. And like cats, my students who had found themselves under prepared for the weather this morning in just their short sleeve uniforms were trying to find as much warmth as possible from any source possible.

The cold season has arrived.