ON THE TEACHING LIFE, MINE

Here are a few tales from my life as a teacher in Indonesia.

To set the scene: I live in what is nationally notorious as the most rude and obnoxious city in Indonesia. In this city, I work and live at an Islamic boarding school, called a pesantren. It is run like a boot camp. If the student's hair get too long (longer than a finger), the teacher cuts their hair in front of the whole class. If the student comes to school late, he or she has to crouch down in the "number 2" position for about 2 hours. If you do not go to the mosque at 4.30 in the morning, you have to sit in that position all day. Every night the students go to the mosque for 2 hours, listen to angry speeches and recite prayers from the Al'Quran. On Saturday mornings, a pair of teachers give a lecture from 4:30 until 8:30am, with no breaks (I kept time this morning).

The teachers at my school are currently on strike - it's really an exciting time. They stand up on desks and make speeches to other teachers. They are angry because the administration recently created a policy that stated this: "If teachers do not go to class, they will not get paid for teaching that class." The faculty are furious. I thought it was funny, until they started citing me as a reason that it is not fair. They say, "Mr. Keen is able to miss a day of class, but he still gets paid!" And I say, "No, I don't. I am not an employee of this school. I don't get paid by this school EVER." And they say, "Exactly!!!" So I am currently avoiding the teacher's office.

I usually do so anyways because everyday the teachers cook a big lunch in the office, and the lunch always involves deep fried sardines, bones and all, or some other kind of fish they got out of the local river. The local river is a poop-brown color, because there is an industrial fertilizer production factory right on the river that pumps excess poop into it. Somedays, the whole city smells like poop. Somedays, the fish they cook smells like poop. They always insist that I eat the meal they cook. So I try avoid the teacher's office, strike or no strike.

Another reason I avoid the teacher's office is because I keep accidentally stepping on all the cats that live in it. All cats in Indonesia, except the tigers, are tiny, malnourished mangy demons. They crave attention, so when I get out of my chair, the run after me and under my feet. I have permanently injured more cats than I like to admit. Some of the cats clearly have rabies, and sometimes they get in fights. It sounds like the gates of hell are screeching open against a chalkboard floor, but the teacher's don't mind. They don't seem to even notice it.

Another reason I avoid the teacher's office is that the teachers have been gossiping lately about a certain pattern they have noticed: wherever I seem to travel, there is flooding in that part of Indonesia immediately after, and therefore I caused the flooding. This isn't just a non sequitur, the pattern they seemed to have noticed just doesn't exist. Furthermore, it is currently the start of the rainy season in Indonesia, and it is flooding everywhere. This week, I walked into the office and the teachers fell silent, and a few glared at me. One came up to me and asked me to apologize, and when I asked why she said that her hometown, Padang, is experiencing bad flooding. When I asked why this is my fault, she said, "You travelled to Padang last weekend, didn't you?"

I still have one teacher who wants to be my friend, but she is insane. Like most Indonesians d0, they take befriending an American as an opportunity to loosen up and disobey the usual cultural rules they must adhere to so strictly. This insane teacher friend, a 30-year old unmarried woman (pretty rare in Indonesia) likes to talk to me about menstruation and flatulence - ALL the time. She updates me via text-messages about her menstrual patterns and farts out loud in my house when she invites herself over. She makes me promise not to tell anyone. I just can't resist.

In the afternoon, after classes are out and after I sneak into the teacher's office to grab a cup of Sumateran coffee, I walk the 50 meter path to my house, past the volleyball court, past the girl's dorm, past the entrance to a junior high school, past the mosque, and past some other teacher's houses. The students yell things at me the whole way down, and the teachers' children, playing in the front yards of the houses, yell things at me, like "You Crazy, mister!" or "You eat grass!", and I wave and smile and count the seconds until I get into my house.
Once in my house, I sit and listen to the junior high students standing at the stoop of my front patio, giggling and screaming as they dare eachother to run up to my door, knock, and run away. They treat me like the old witch of a small Southern town that the brave kids mess with in efforts to impress a girl. Sometimes I open the door and invite them in, and they run away screaming. Sometimes I wait until a kid runs up to my door, and right before he knocks-and-runs, I open the door and yell "BOO!" and they ALL freak out and don't come back for a couple days.

ON BEING WRONG

In my last post I mentioned this topic and how I recently heard Bishop Kee Sloan of Alabama speak on this at Growing in Grace. This past summer he attended the Lambeth Conference in England, which brought together leaders of the Anglican Church from all over the world. One night college students attending Oxford from all over the world invited all the bishops out to a local pub to talk about life, religion, politics, basically shooting the breeze with students. Unfortunately only a handful of bishops even attended the gathering. Kee was one of those few. At the gathering a woman from Ireland, who supposedly could not get any more Irish with her freckles, red hair, thick accent, and affinity for the drink, approached Kee to talk about Adam and Eve. She asked when that story took place. Kee answered that the Jewish tradition dates that story at around 6,000 years ago or whatever the exact date is. She started bringing up the fact that we have found fossil records from long before that. Kee started sweating a bit, not because he believes the earth is 6,000 years old, but because it can be hard to convince someone that you believe in the spirit of something and not the actual historical truth of a story, especially while wearing a clerical collar.

It was at this point that Kee remembered directing a special session camp for the physically and mentally handicapped at Camp Bratton Green. A 30 year old man name Billy who had Down Syndrome came up at the end of an evening when everyone was enjoying the nightly milk and cookies and asked "Mr. Keys" (the name the man had given Kee) if he could go behind the chapel to smooch his girlfriend. Kee had never dealt with a situation like this, so the request seemed a bit fishy. He told the man, "I'm sorry Billy, but that's against the rules." Billy quickly replied with, "But the counselors do it all the time!" Kee was put off, yet he was quick on his feet and explained that he was the director of the camp and it was his judgement and that the rules were the rules. Billy sulked off to tell his girlfriend the upsetting news. Kee went back to talking to other campers and couselors, though his mind was still with Billy and the words he spoke.

On his way to the director's cabin, Kee came across Billy again. Billy stood with tear stained cheeks right in Kee's way. The 30 year old man then told the camp director, "You know Mr. Keys, you could be wrong." As those words hit Kee's ears they stung him harder than perhaps any message of his life. Kee thought for a moment and took Billy by the arm, "You have ten minutes behind the chapel and that's all. Only kissing." Then, Billy headed off gleefully to tell his girlfriend, while Kee headed off to inform both their counselors where they would be and to make sure they were back in 10 minutes.

Kee drifted back to the pub in Oxford and realized that he was still talking to this Irish student. He came again to the realization that sometimes he could be wrong and that what was important here was not so much whether or not Adam and Eve truly existed, but the truth that lies within the story. As Kee wrapped up his story in All Saints' Chapel several weeks ago, I began to think of instances in my own life where I held onto things that were proven elsewhere to be false. Perhaps the most valuable lesson that I continue to learn in conversation, in reading my fellow fishermen's posts, in hearing others speak, and in attempting to empathize with everyone I encounter is that I could be wrong. How then shall I correct my wrong?

ON THE MOST MEXICAN CONVERSATION OF ALL TIMES

Mexicans have several main concerns, two of which are saying hello to people and telling me how pink I am. Greeting people is of the utmost importance. Not doing it is a tremendous mistake and could seriously hurt some one's feelings. In the MBA class I am taking, every student who walks into the room goes one by one to every other student, shakes their hand and makes a comment about tacos, siestas or señoritas. Of course when they get to me they say something along the lines of "Hello, American. You're looking pink today."

So, today I had a conversation that was so typically representative of these two traits, I had to share it*.

Co-worker: "Hello you!"
"How come you no longer greet me?"

Pink American: "What do you mean?"

Co-worker: "The other day I passed by your desk and you didn't even turn around"
"Or do you think a lot of yourself because you're pink"

Pink American: "Well, did you say anything?"

Co-worker: "Yeah, but you didn't even turn around"

Pink American: "Maybe because I didn't hear you?"
"It wasn't on purpose."

Co-worker: "I forgive you....but only because you are pink."

Pink American: "Um, thanks."


*Although I usually lie in my posts this is the actual conversation, only translated into English. No exaggerations.