From the Wastebasket

Picture me as part of a vignette. I’m seated hunched over a desk in a large but empty room. At the corner of the desk is a small lamp that dimly illuminates my body and my work, and otherwise throws diffused shadows on the blank walls. Against the wall to my right is a small wire wastebasket, empty but for two or three pieces of balled up paper torn from a writing pad. Surrounding the basket are a number of other balls of paper, torn from various writing pads, which after being tossed aside have ricocheted off the wall, off the rim of the basket, or simply missed their mark altogether. Tucked into the folds of these crumpled sheets are words, and phrases, and questions, and exclamation points, all written to you. Some pages only contain a paragraph or two, while others are covered back and front, spilling into the margins, with so much to pronounce that not even my bending and folding and mashing can hide all their words. It has been about six months that I have been stuck in this position, slowly massaging my temple with my left hand, throwing crumpled sheets of paper over my shoulder with my right. It’s well past the time I rise from my slump, and maybe, just maybe, I can do so by uncrumpling those crumpled words.
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It seems that a logical place to start my deslumping attempt is in the wastebasket itself; start at the core, and then work my way outwards. I pull out a wad of lined yellow paper and smooth it on my desk. It reads…
Grading tests sucks. It’s a long, slow, boring, repetitive process; worsened by the fact that the vast majority of my students have in some (usually obvious) manner cheated while taking the test, which angers me; compounded by the fact that the vast majority of my students are showing an astonishingly poor knowledge of the English language, which demoralizes me.
I try to pass into a grading trance. Willing my red pen to take on a life of its own, simply bringing my right hand along for the ride, but I inevitably become emotionally involved. I shake my head and mutter miserably as the 80th consecutive student leaves the verb ‘to be’ out of their construction of a present continuous sentence. I cheer inwardly as a student clearly uses the future tense to describe their plans for after school is over. I curse bitterly at the discovery that yet another student has cheated by copying a passage (often completely unrelated to the question) out of their English notebook. And then I pass the test to the bottom of the pile as I’m taking one from the top.
Sometimes students write answers that make me laugh. Usually it’s a circumstance that in the student’s haste to copy one of my example sentences while my back is turned, they mess up a word or two. I’ve received as responses to test questions, ‘I think that men and chickens should have equal opportunities in life’ (a question on ‘giving opinion’), ‘You should not have sex without a ruler’ (a question on ‘giving advice’), ‘I must use a condom when I have sex with your girlfriend’ (a question on ‘expressing necessity’). But these witty, failed attempts at cheating are far and few between. Mostly it’s a long, slow, painstaking process.
All of which is simply a build-up for me to write that I have just slapped a grade on my 440th third trimester final, and my 2007 school year, roughly 4000 tests-graded later, has come to an end.
Although its tone is rather negative, the paper makes me smile. Probably because I can remember how riled up I was at that point in the school year, and these types of things tend to be a whole lot funnier in hindsight. But anyway, I’m glad to have reread my disposed of sentiments and am further inspired to lift another entry from the trash. This one is shorter and far fresher in my head, but still I linger on the words slowly, allowing the extended story to form in my mind…
Would you run if a black rhino bluff charged in your direction? We did. Our safari guide, who led our group out of the land rover to get a closer look at the animal, and who also led the desperate sprint back to the land rover just a few minutes later, would inform us between deep chuckles that black rhinos are only bluffing when they make a short charge of about 10 meters in your direction. He would tell us through little giggles that we were actually never really in danger at all. But I can assure you that he was neither chuckling or giggling as he dove back into the car.
But I pass no judgment on our guide. We too laughed about the event afterwards. In fact we all laughed ourselves silly. My father, Dan, and Evan, who had been farthest from the car and closest to the rhino, laughed as they replayed who got back the quickest and who was left lagging. My mom laughed as she professed there and then that she would have a raging black and blue on her leg due to her launch into the elevated back seat of the jeep. And then she laughingly pulled up her pant leg to show us all where her battle scar would be. And I too laughed as I thought out loud about how close I was to having caught the whole thing on film. It’s a damn spot funnier than you would think, getting bluff charged by a rhino.
Which gets me to thinking about the whole trip, and all the things we did, and all the times we laughed. And it seems like some sort of a waste that this memory, in any form, would reside at the bottom of a trash can. And now I’m enthused by my little project, the way cleaning out a closet and picking through all the junk can be such a great time. And I snatch another paper from the floor.
I wave the mandiocha dildo over my head energetically, and then gesture with it in a vaguely threatening manner at one student who’s becoming even more unruly then the rest at the sight of what I’m grasping in my hand. I try to keep a straight face, as the message I’m conveying is rather serious. We’re talking about condom use, and the risks of HIV; about the wasteful death that is striking down all around us. But at the present moment the kids are hooting, and slapping five, and gasping for air, and I can’t help but crack a smile because an oversize mandiocha dildo is pretty funny, I don’t care who you are.
And it was funny too. And now I’m starting to feel somewhat deslumped, and sorry that all of these humble treasures have lain in waste for as long as they did. It seems to me now that people may enjoy hearing about dildos and rhinos and tests and whatever this next one has to say…
Dan proclaimed the afternoon ‘epic’, which although somewhat melodramatic, is exactly the way we all viewed it. To even start to convey the reasons for our sentiments of grandeur you must understand a thing or two about the bicycle taxi. In my experience, public transport in Africa is always a profound experience unto itself. Whether its planes, trains, busses, or boats, you can’t help but feel like you’re toeing the edge of something deep and dark. You are asked to look within yourself and bring forth those truest qualities of faith and perseverance, so that you may in some manner, and in some time, reach your destination. Bicycle taxis, with their padded passenger seats, their welded foot pegs, and the optional handles directly below the driver’s butt, are African public transport in its purest form. Here, with all of your belongings on your back, you find that you are asked to use your own abdominal muscles to keep yourself upright, a shift in your balance could mean disaster, and you are required to make your own way on anything resembling an uphill. We started our epic by sitting down to 12 km on the back of bike taxis, heading down a waterlogged dirt road, into torrential rains and darkness.
Which immediately makes me think of the Carlsberg beer we drank when we stepped out of the rain and darkness, into that little restaurant in that little town at the base of the mountain, and how good it tasted. And then how we somehow found ourselves dry and comfortable in that great Mission guesthouse. And how we laughed a lot that night as well.
Looking down to my right I see that there are other papers scattered about, but I don’t want to read them, not right now. Instead I think I should write something about the present. Something that will cement me in the here and now, and turn my head to the future. So I will.
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When I step off the bus this time I feel kind of strange. I had been back in Mossuril about a month earlier, but that time hadn’t been for real. I had been with my family, and we had been on vacation. It was just a few day stop in the middle of a bigger tour that included various countries and various islands and various beaches. This time was for real, and maybe that was making me feel strange. It was definitely a good kind of strange. One of those times where you feel outside of yourself, but you look back and see that you’re smiling. And I knew I was smiling because it was so different this time, one year later than when I had first gotten off a bus in Mossuril.
It was that same good kind of strange as Lima hustled down the road on his bike to help me with my bags, and Roger came bolting down the road peeing on my foot in excitement as he greeted me, and somebody yelled Mr. Zach, and some people didn’t pay any attention at all this time. And all that made me smile hugely as I walked the short stretch back to my house.
Usually when I come back to home after being away for any real period of time, I dread all the shit that awaits me; and I mean that in the most literal sense. Inevitably there’s rat shit, and lizard shit, and cat shit, and dog shit, all hiding out in corners that Lima either doesn’t have access to in my absence, or just doesn’t have interest in. And who wouldn’t dread all that shit. But I didn’t dread it this time. This time I had the emboldening spirit of out with old and in with the new. A new year was starting, so it was goodbye to all that old shit. Go ahead and bring on the new stuff.
Settling down into a chair, I look around and continue to grin. I am remembering a year ago, before there were chairs, when I had sat on the ground. Which makes me think back to when six thirty had rolled around and I had brought out my head lamp and lit a few candles propped in empty beer cans. Now I have a modest entertainment system, complete with my laptop, printer, and three piece speaker set. Now I have a fridge and a fan and an electric kettle. And if you could only see the smile that puts on my face.
Walking across the football field to the school, the strangeness as well as the smile follow me. To think that a year before the school wasn’t even up yet; it was still being built. And now these eight classrooms, and these 600 students, and these 10 teachers, that I know just as well as anybody, because I have been here from the beginning just like they all have.
And you better know that I don’t shake that smile as I sit down to the computer, with my new scheduling program, to work out all the class and teacher’s schedules. That’s when I really know that things are going to be different this time around.
So why should it feel strange to feel like you’ve established yourself somehow; to feel comfortable and at home. Maybe it’s the place, the unlikeliness of it all. Maybe it’s that one year is really not very long, and has a way of passing so that you’re never aware that it’s doing so. Maybe the strangeness can just descend on you at any old time, like any old feeling.
It’s a good kind of strange though. Out with the old and in with the new.

To a new year, full of laughs, and smiles, and strangeness.

Back in Mossuril,
Zach