Getting in a Rhythm

As is typically the case with new experiences like this, you eventually get into a rhythm and new, exciting stories become a little less frequent. But, some things still happen.

Firstly, there was a debate last week at school. The debate was part of the Form E (senior) English class. I don’t have them in class, but I know a few of them from diversity camp that I took them to two weeks ago. They were visibly and somewhat melodramatically nervous, as humans only are before public appearances in the high school arena.

“Alexander, let me see your hands.” Alexander showed me his palms, which I wiped with one finger as if I was sporting white gloves at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance (spelling? Ugh, French). He watched his hands with curiosity. “Wow. You really are nervous. You know, the WHOLE SCHOOL is in there, right Alexander?” If the probability of his eyeballs actually popping out of his hadn’t been so remote, I would have been worried. His head snapped back and he looked at me with a et tu Brute? (Ugh, Latin, is that quotation Latin? Ugh, no Wikipedia) surprise. Then I smiled and laughed, and he relaxed a little.

The topic of the debate was, “Pregnant students should be expelled from school.” The entire school was there. All 200 of them stuffed into one classroom. The moderator and his bellman (the dude who rang the bell when a debater went over her time allotment) were seated at the front of the classroom with their backs to the blackboard. To their left were two desks for the judges, and immediately in front of them were the debaters. Chairs for the debaters were arranged in a horseshoe pattern with five seats on either half of the horseshoe. On the right of the moderator were the teachers in attendance and stuffed in the corner behind the door was yours truly. I arrived late.

The moderator, a Form D student named Moeletsi, began to introduce the students who were in the debate. I’m not sure how to describe the reaction of the audience as the individual debaters were announced and walked in to take their seats, but as best as I could tell it was somewhat akin to the entrance of a boxer into the arena for a Vegas title bout. There was a lot of energy, to say the least. Entrances of the female students were less engaging than the entrances of the male students, who postured and strutted more, but it was pretty exciting. I had no clue what was happening. That happens a lot.

Then the debate started. The first girl got up and stood at the desk that was in front of the moderator and facing the crowd. She looked up at the crowd, then looked at her note page on the desk, stuck her right leg out to the side, put her right shoulder forward a bit and, at a volume usually reserved for lovers, proceeded with her arguments in support of the motion.

The following five debaters had similar body language, but some of their voices wobbled more or less than others. I couldn’t hear most of what was being said because of the quiet voices and my position behind the speakers and in the corner, but the audience seemed to get the idea of what was going on and let out jeers, cheers and yelps at various times. I rarely saw the correlation.

After the first three advocates on either side, there was a break time. Any student was given the chance to come up and speak their views on the topic or tell a joke, story or sing. I thought this was the coolest part of the whole afternoon because the result was unrehearsed (although it would be hard to make an argument that any of the debaters rehearsed their points beforehand), untheasarusized, and generally crowd-acclaimed performances. I understood very little of what was being said as the English wasn’t particularly good and was sometimes said into the speaker’s hand, which often covers students’ mouths when addressing anybody of authority or in a public forum, but, I had a smile on my face the whole time and the student body was eating up every second of it.

The debate eventually continued, the last debaters gave their pre-scripted arguments without regard to rebuttal, and the judges found that the expellers had argued better than the educate-the-pregnant-girlers had been. Despite my sadness at anybody feeling any vindication for holding that position, I had been thoroughly amused and impressed for a solid hour. It was a fun afternoon.

Secondly, one night after Mike and I had enjoyed a dinner of pasta with a delightful red sauce with fresh tomatoes, onions and carrots out of the garden, we decided to have a night cap of warm sprite from the shopong. I locked up the house, and we started off on the five minute walk to the shop. At the end of our pleasant walk we rounded the cyclone fence only to stumble upon the Machinese (I’m not really sure about the spelling here, but it is phonetic) shop owner kneeling over the carcass of some bird in a pool of its own blood, plucking away. The Ntate that was overseeing the taxodermic efforts turned and said hello. He was the same Ntate who had given me the fat off the knee joint of a cured goat knee last week. Nice guy.

The Machinese owner, Tia, looked up and smiled. Mike laughed a disbelieving, loud, echoing laugh. We thought it was a chicken at first. Then we realized it was the carcass of some large-wingspanned bird. We tried to ask what kind of bird it was. “Twenty Rand,” the shop owner said with a broad smile. The Ntate informed us that he had purchased the bird from someone who had killed it.

Mike and I looked at each other quizzically. To us it looked like one of the large white birds that nest in a tree in the village that is probably 25 meters tall. It might have been a stork. We had no clue how anybody would have gotten close enough to one of these birds to kill it. And, with that in mind, we don’t know why they would sell it for as little as $2 American. Or why Tia would buy it. For that much you can get a bag of frozen chicken from the shop down the road. And you don’t have to clean frozen chicken. And chicken tastes good.

Mike laughed again. Loudly. We went inside only to find out there was no Sprite left. We left the shop. Mike laughed again, loudly, and we went and got a beer at a shop 20 minutes away.

Thirdly is Makai. Makai is the smallest student in the school. She is maybe 4’ 10” and 75 pounds. She makes me laugh everyday. Her desk is in the front of the class, and I quite often find her absent mindedly making very strange faces at me. Sometimes she puts a ruler in her mouth and flops it up and down like a spring board. When I find her in such strange pose I mimic her or tilt my head and give the, “WWWHHHHHAAAATTTT??!!” look. You know the one.

She inevitably looks up at me, realizes that I have witnessed whatever she has done and pulls the turtle. Sometimes that involves her pulling the peek-a-boo invisibility pose behind her hands. I can still see her. When her English gets a little better we’ll attack that metaphysical reality. Other times it involves her hiding behind/under her desk. She is so little that she could almost climb in her desk. It makes me laugh everyday. She is my favorite this week and makes me laugh every time I see her. Makai the turtle.

In other news, last weekend Mike and I got a little generator. We can now charge the battery that we bought a month ago and has been dead for the following three weeks. However, we may have bought a trickle charger on accident, or the capacity of our battery is much larger than we thought, because I charged the battery for 10 hours today and it is still not full. Part of the problem is that we are at an elevation of over 6000 feet and I don’t think the throttle was calibrated for that altitude so it’s running a little underpowered. I’m going to have to pick up a crescent wrench in town this weekend in order to get that 67cc hellion tuned a charging things in 8hrs flat. It will at least power a couple computers and a projector, so kids had better be ready to have their minds blown by Planet Earth when everything gets hooked up. I can’t tell you all how excited I am to show that to these kids. They’ll finally be curious enough to want to try to speak English. Glory awaits.

Okay, this is getting quite long, so I’m going to stop now. Sorry my new posts are so infrequent, but internet is a luxury I only get every couple weeks. And thanks everybody for keeping up with me. Packages and letters have been fantastic. I love you all and think of you often.

Cheers.