A loss in the family

Last Thursday, my colleague/PC-appointed work partner/friend lost his infant son. (He was sick for about a week. The doctor prescribed him medicine, but it didn’t work. The doctor did not say what disease it was, only that it was caused by an insect.)

Last Sunday, the day here for going and sitting at people’s houses, I headed off to my friend’s to pay my respects. From before I left my house, I did not want to do it.

As I walked to his house, my steps getting smaller and smaller, I thought about how my life would be easier here if I hadn’t developed relationships like this. If I hadn’t developed a friendship where I felt like I needed to go spent an hour awkwardly sitting in a house where death had just happened.

I thought about my life when I first moved into my village. It was a life of the West Wing and counting the minutes until I go shut myself in my house once again. I thought about how I hadn’t thought that I would ever get to this point. To the point where I had friendships that meant this much to me.

I guess that’s what having friendships is about. Sometimes you have to do things. Things that are awkward. Things you don’t want to do. Things that are hard.

In the end, it was the gratitude on my friend’s face when I showed up with my bag of oranges that made it all worth it.

How foosball changed everything.

As I biked back from school tonight, I was hell bent on the intention to go home, read some Foster Wallace, eat some popcorn and finish the episode of Homeland I had started. (Not necessarily in that order.) I had already spent seven and a half hours at school, so I was feeling I had made enough of an appearance in the community for the day. (If the past few posts were not enough of an indication, I’ve been in a bit of a funk for the past few days.)

My route home leads me past a boutique where one of my best friends here has a tendency to hang out when he’s finished teaching. About four months ago, two foosball tables appeared there, making it one of the go-to destinations in my village.

As I pedaled past the small group of students who had already been released from class for the day, but had not yet decided it was time to go home standing around the tables, my friend yelled at me to come sit with him.

“I saw you were tired, so I thought that you should come hang out here for a little bit before you go home,” was his explanation as he made room for me to sit on the mat next to him. (When Martin became so perceptive, I’m not quite sure.)

“Do you know how to play?” he asked me, motioning to the foosball tables.

I nodded. “But not well." 

"Let’s play.” He stood, searched in his pocket for the 25 CFA needed to release the hard plastic balls, and took his place behind table.

One of my favorite things about Martin (and several of my other colleagues) is while he is older than me, he still has the tendency to act like a teenaged boy. “I’m going to beat you 5-0,” he said as I dropped the ball onto the table.

He did beat me (9-6). And as we walked away from the tables to let the students play, I realized that he had also given me back that feeling that had been missing for the past few days. That feeling that someone would care if I wasn’t here. That feeling that I could do this for the next 19 months. Never has a game of foosball meant so much to me.

Tonight I learned drinking cold water is bad for you (false) and sometimes you make sacrifices (true)

You know those times when you do something just because your friend asked you to? When you don’t really want to go to the grocery store or sit through a documentary or attend a 2 and ½ hour workshop in French on what foods and plants are healthy to eat but you do because your friend wants you to?

My colleague at work invited me to the latter a couple days ago. I forgot about it until he stopped by my class yesterday to announce the event to my students. Today, my students reminded me about it again, and, since the person who asked me is important to me and I still have another 22 months in the same village, I lured my postmate with a promise of peanut butter cookies to come with me so I would have another American with which to talk.

You could argue there is a fine line between being true to yourself and being a good friend. I didn’t really want to go to the presentation, but to be fair, usually, what I really want to do here involves air conditioning, ice cream and Netflix. So, almost not possible.

Right now, my job here really, even more than teaching middle school students English, is to become part of a community. To build relationships with people who have lived their lives very differently than mine, and to learn from that exchange.

So, for now, if that means sitting in a hot church until 10:40 at night listening to a lecture that is sometimes both bizarre and false, that is what I’ll be doing.