A Teacher's Travels & Search for Math/Science Theorems that aren't Named after White Men |
|
A Teacher's Travels & Search for Math/Science Theorems that aren't Named after White Men |
|
A dear friend who I’ve known since college reached out to me this week to tell me, that she loved my blog and was inspired by my adventures and how much I was learning. She told me she was excited to read about my next adventure. Others have reached out with similar sentiments, and I really appreciate you all for that. However, this week was one of adventure recovery----you know, even Frodo took time to rest in Rivendell, Odysseus spent 7 years with Calypso, maybe 3 with Nausicaa, and Simba spent his entire adolescence just eating grubs with a pig and a rodent. Adventurers need time to refuel. Aside from that, this week was one filled with contemplation, catching up on work, mild frustrations and a bit of homesickness. I’m an introvert, and if you’re not a close person in my life, you might think from following my journey that that wasn’t the case. But, unfortunately, a thing that can happen when I’m not immersing myself in adventures, strange encounters and dealing with children, is that I’ll crawl back into myself, my thoughts, my books, my night runs, and be completely content. This week I allowed for some of that to happen despite my largest attempts to remain social and active.
I spent most of the week in my quiet office at the University of Botswana, building my project website, exploring future possibilities and looking ahead to my last month here. The office is hot and small and sometimes while in it, my mind bounces anxiously between everywhere and nowhere. When I’m there, I might sit and think, “Wait I shouldn’t be here at this computer and with these books. I should be out there talking to people, exploring more.” Other times it goes here, “I’m behind on my project, my email follow-ups, my lesson plans for my return to the US.” My mind didn’t yoyo anxiously like this when I was absorbed in new cultures, languages, and deep human connections. Alas, luckily, I still was able to find those moments as well. “I don’t want to be seen thru my boyfriend. I’m my own person.” When I started living out of my suitcase, just over a month ago now, I was invited to move in with my running buddy, Rati. Rati is a very chic, spunky accountant, who is my age, and said she’d be happy to have the company in her 2 bedroom apartment. This past week we switched from being morning running people, as it’s dark now since winter is apparently coming, (although it’s about 98 degrees daily, to night running people.) This week I saw homes and parks I had never seen before here in Gaborone all during our runs. I also learned more about how Rati sees the world. She is wise and progressive in her views about womanhood and relationships. She is fiercely committed to living on her own and in being seen as her own person, separate of her boyfriend, who I have never even met, or of whom, I never seen a picture. I respect her and these runs soothed my soul and restless legs. I’m happier when I’m physically active and eating lots of fruits and veggies---something one must pay more for here near the Kalahari Desert, where most things are imported from South Africa. So, this week I also splurged on some raspberries, and just like when I was 6 years old in the back of my mom’s car, I ate the whole box before I even got home from the grocery store. “In India our experience was different” I also got back into another at home hobby--yoga---but not the western, trendy, skinny women bowing “Namaste” in $90 Lululemon pants type, but at an older Indian woman’s house. I’m in session along with two other Indian women. Jita, the teacher, sits on her couch in her beautiful, adorned home while she carefully describes the ways in which she wants us to bend our bodies. Frequently she’ll come over and push our bodies and limbs into these uncomfortable positions. My back hasn’t stopped being sore, but I enjoy the practice and my time with members of a very prominent group in southern Africa. One of the women tells me that she came to Africa---first to Zambia---in 1979 and considers herself more African than Indian, although she dresses in Indian clothing, and the women speak mostly in Bengali together. The women, unsolicited, tell me about what they perceive to be the differences in colonialism in India and in Africa. They don’t seem to make note of the huge differences in how the British treated the two groups, but instead focus on the colonized as individual agents. The older of the three women tells me that, “In India we already had established civilization and religion, so they couldn’t make us practice their religion and ways as easily.” Of course this suggests that African peoples lacked civilization, whatever is meant by that term, and religious practices. I just listen because it’s always interesting to hear other people’s perspective. Again, like with Lloyd, while sometimes I disagree, I do like these women, and I feel comfortable around them, mostly because I grew up spending so much time with Indian people, but also because they’re warm and kind. Indians as a whole, are however, granted many more economic and societal privileges than the Batswana, who they both feel sorry for and critique. Yesterday one of the women, Mansi, brought me to a Holi celebration organized by the Botswana Hindu Society. My Motswana friend, Mpho, joined us and together we were greeted with slaps of fluorescent colored powders, and a, “Happy Holi!” We then were served heaping portions of biryani, chickpeas, raita and sweets before we headed back to Mansi’s to change for yoga. I met some of Mansi’s neighbors (or cleaning lady’s children--I wasn’t sure)---three small Zimbabwean children. I asked the oldest, maybe 7 or 8 years old, which school he goes to. He tells me he doesn’t go to school, and has never been because his father cannot pay school fees. I then remember that in Botswana, Zimbabwean children--who may have even come to Bots at age 1, whose country borders this one, whose country has had a very bleak past few years of economic crisis, dictatorship, government suppression, food shortage and now flooding--have to pay school fees while their “Batswana” peers do not. This reminder, sent a sharp pain to my stomach. Mansi heard this exchange too, but to her it was normal, and she rushed us out the door to yoga. Bellies full, mine pained, we went to Jita’s for yoga, which was in equal parts, challenging and relaxing. I was told my shoulders, still tinted purple from Holi, were nice and manly. We then had traditional chai tea before heading home to our showers and beds. N!ow came in two forms, good n!ow and bad n!ow” This week I spent a lot of time missing Tsumkwe. I talked to Steve a bit, and finished that beautiful, beautiful, I wish I lived it and wrote it, book Affluence Without Abundance. I think I book marked every other page of the book, and it was actually just by fate that I had downloaded that book onto my Kindle before I left Chicago. I didn’t even know it took place in Tsumkwe, and I just happened to buy it because it came out recently and was on the San. I began reading it when I came back from Tsumkwe, only to find that it is an authentic, empathetic, living history and ethnography of Tsumkwe and Ju/’hoansi in Namibia. James Suzman traces the history of the San in Namibia, their horrific experiences on the Afrikaans farms, and their understanding of nature and spirituality, their relationships, their shifts to what we perceive to be modernity and in the ways in which they hunt. I find myself highlighting passages on every other page. I find the passages about hunting and tracking animals to be particularly breathtaking. The Ju/’hoansi carefully study the tracks of animals and from those tracks can tell the size of the animal and the amount of fat on it. Then, when they find the animal, after tracking it in almost complete silence, they shoot a poison arrow at it. They’ll then need to wait several hours and even days for the poison to set in, and during that time, they empathetically feel the pain in their own bodies in the exact position the arrow struck the animal. While they wait, the hunters do not eat meat, or lay with women, they feel the poison, they feel the animal. Ju/’hoansi see animals as people, but not as humans, and not as a beings that should be doted on like teacup-dogs in affluent neighborhoods. However, this idea of oneness with nature, this complete connection to the land as being essential to the human experience and not rooted in hierarchy, brings many tears to my eyes. I emailed Suzman, the author, because I had to share my love of this book and my newfound knowledge of Tsumkwe, which is abundant. He wrote back, and told me he was happy I met Steve, (it turns out he also knows him) he connected me to another scholar, asked to read my blog and welcomed me to visit in Cambridge. Perhaps that if you connect with the Ju/’hoansi and with Tsumkwe, there is something special that bonds you to the next person that finds herself in deep conversation, under the trees at the General Dealer Shop. I also connected to San Research Center at University of Botswana this week. The center is really just a small office, manned by a generous and knowledgeable Bakgalagadi man named Leema. He grew up in Kang among San people and took an interest in their struggles in Botswana. The Center primarily is interested in providing scholarships for San students. The scholarships are funded from the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA). The organization is South African. The Botswana government does not provide any scholarships for San students, whose families they have of course displaced and prevented from living in the ways they have always lived. Leema suggested I reach out to Dineo, a San graduate student, who I believe is !Xoo. I sent her a WhatsApp message that day, and she responded within 5 minutes and asked to meet up with me right then. Dineo is a graduate student and is finishing her dissertation on the importance of multilingualism in schools, and she focused her research on schools in Ghanzi. Dineo and I meet up in front of the library, the day is particularly hot, and so she brings me to her dorm. She’s clearly a girly girl---There are colored heels neatly stacked in a shoe rack and other feminine accessories throughout her dorm. I sit down, and she hands me her dissertation, marked with edits and comments. I think she’s happy that I’ve been to Ghanzi and observed the same prejudices in Ghanzi primary schools, as she has both experienced as a former pupil and observed as a researcher. She doesn’t often tell people at UB that she is San because in her experience, they respond with ignorance---ask her to speak in her language, sometimes even start clicking, ask her about living in “the bush.” Dineo teaches me what the word “basura” means and why she disdains it so much. It means. “one without land.” Thus the original inhabitants of this land are “named” in Setswana, “people without land.” Suzman writes: “Like with the other Ju/’hoansi at Skoonheid, the fact that !A/ae was considered a “Settler” in a land that his ancestors had lived for tens of thousands of years often filled him with despair.” Dineo let me know that she’d be going back to Ghanzi, her people’s land, just for a day this weekend--an 8 hour journey she makes regularly to stay connected to her family and her home. Our meeting is brief, and she lets me know to let her know if I need anything else at all. “But did you bring me sweets?” My week ended with a promised trip back to Ben Thema Primary School, a school I hadn’t been to in about month. I was there to deliver cookies for the standard 6 class, I partnered with as pen pals for my own class, as they were in the midst of testing. I spent time in standard 1 being hugged by 6 year olds, while the 10 years olds finished their exams. That day they were writing their agricultural studies exam, which was 1 of 9 written exams, including a composition. The poor teacher is expected to, on her own, grade these exams, of her 47 students within a week. The children were happy to see me, and of course I was ecstatic to see them. In-between exam completion and cookie eating, the children broke off into study groups and prepared for their next tests in the following week, while their loving teacher began her grading. As I walked around the room, I noticed that all students were on task, going thru their study guides, referring to notes, asking each other questions. This would never be the case in my classroom. As I’ve written before, my students have been a mess in my absence. In fact, they’re a mess in my presence. If they aren’t watched, monitored and their time isn’t structured, they really struggle with working on tasks independently. In the past few days, of course I’ve had students from my former school, Dulles, write to me about how much they miss me, and how this year has been a struggle without me for them and their peers, and then from my current students telling me about all the fights, rule breaking and constant struggle. How did we get to a point in the US, especially in urban education, at which, the teacher is seen as the only change agent in the lives of children both by her society and by her children? My students blame my absence for their struggles without looking at any other factors that are present and in front of them. Yet here I am, in a classroom of 40+ students, all of whom are on task, doing a very boring task, without much supervision. On the other end of the spectrum, this society typically puts sole blame on the students when they fail. Both are inaccurate. I part ways with Ben Thema at about lunch time, and let the students know I’d try to come back one more time before I leave next month, but that if I didn’t, I was proud and inspired to know them. “Open a Multicultural Center!” After leaving Ben Thema, I headed to meet with Jobe, the head of social studies curriculum development for the Ministry of Education. He was warm, kind and very intelligent. He discussed the ways in which he wants to help me, and then asked if I would present my findings to the Ministry before I leave. He was especially interested in multilingualism, so I asked him if I could bring Dineo to speak with me on the issue. I would actually feel fraudulent speaking with authority on this topic to that particular audience and think that Dineo and voices like hers should be the ones invited to the Ministry, so I’m glad he agreed that she could present with me. Jobe flatters me when he tells me that he doesn’t think I should be in the classroom and a teacher, but should instead, think of using “my amazing language and cultural skills” to build some sort of multicultural center in Botswana. I’m flattered, but the more I miss home, my family and other places in the world, some of them even nearby, I realize that Botswana will never be my home. I also resent the idea that capable people should leave the classroom, as if the classroom is purgatory. Plus, I’m still conflicted about what it is I offer. Scencia, my unofficial mentor, a former Fulbright DAT Botswana teacher, and CPS teacher, told me to look at this program as an exchange. I haven’t honestly felt that I’ve had much to offer teachers and schools here besides a listening ear and perhaps validation in their practices. “Look at my beautiful feet!” I talk about this a lot with my DAT colleague, Sara. Sara is the only other Fulbright-er here with me, and she’s a delight--a fellow Midwesterner, with roots in Door County and a shared fear of impostor syndrome. It has been refreshing having this “adventure break” in Gabs this week, mainly because I’ve had the company of Sara. Sara has been teaching, I believe, over 25 or even 30 years. She’s an exceptional human geography high school teacher and is studying population studies here. It was her birthday this week, and we had to deal with some pretty problematic lack of professionalism from the US Embassy, so we vented together about our mistreatment, drank coffee milkshakes and got expensive pedicures. Birthdays shouldn’t include being scolded for lack of knowledge. We also met up with Moabi at a night market at the No. 1 Ladies Detective Cafe, and dear, Moabi, even surprised Sara with a cake. We made new friends, danced to new songs, and Moabi, as usual, connected me to a dozen new people, with whom I have appointments, observations and coffee dates spread out through this upcoming week. For those of you looking for an adventure, sorry if I didn’t deliver. For those of you, recuperating from your own adventures, hard work weeks, illness, the cold, the heat, vacation or just because, I feel for you and hope that you’re enjoying your stays in Rivendell. All my love, Tess
1 Comment
Claire
3/28/2019 11:33:51 am
Tess, I so loved the shout-out! Sending my love.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorFulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching Archives
April 2019
Categories |