English, and other magic tricks

A foreign language is the invisibility cloak I need to battle my own ghosts because my mess is in Spanish. My head is neat and tidy in English, words have clear-cut ends, no attached smells.   

When I was a girl crying at night estaba Triste, never this ridiculous three-lettered word you use. So close to ‘give’ if you turn it up-side down, never cold, never wet, it doesn’t hurt. So unaware of me and my tears I can strike a blow without being seen and make it tell me what the hell was wrong back then.

Fear is not covered in cold sweat, no heart is pounding. Shame? I can even spell the word out loud without feeling the urge to fade into the walls being naked and screaming and so scary because who the hell is making all that noise? ohh… it’s just the wind.

Crossroads

The teacher assistant can’t really dance and yet she’s dancing. Nobody knew this was going to happen and still it feels as if it was meant to, while, don’t get me wrong, none of this should have ever occured. 

I’m standing at the crossroads of hell. 

We are locked inside a windowless white room so we can be anywhere. Any place we like, no place, not here: we choose. 

I look to the left, I look to the right. 

We shall move around, own the space and clap to the music. We shall not move in a straight line. It is ok to step away from the walls. 

There’re hands to grab me on every side. 

I translate once and then we all just start moving, grudgingly at first, bashfully. M has neither Spanish nor need for it. She has turned into something between waves and a radioactive particle splitting people up, never still, and always in the right place. I must have looked like a drunken parrot, but was too close to be sure. Stop. 

I’m trying to protect what I keep inside.

Gazes lift and limbs loosen up. There 's laughter. Time is watching, letting us steal from it. We shake and share and offer our names and moves to the group. We let ourselves be seen. Our fingers touch and the walls are so far now.

Some say the devil be a mystical thing. 

We have long left the windowless white room, located in Tapachula, Chiapas, México, Southern border, migration hot-spot. More specifically, inside a refuge for people from Central America who seek asylum.  

I’ll save my soul, save myself. 

Women

The government is so busy making politics, they won’t even give people the basics. I don’t know how we landed in this conversation. The three of us are leaning against my bedroom door, just about to leave, just as the best conversations tend to start.  

She is young, her English is good, her voice, serious and deep. The urgence she prints into each word can be touched. The injustice challenges her deeply. This is a story that should be told in each’s native language. 

Her first statement is lapidary: 

-A woman, once she marries, is no longer a person. We are turned into things, you know? I am a second wife.   

I remain silent because I don’t know what to say. I would like to ask every question but I’m also scared of hurting, of assuming, of failing to assume. Luckily, my gesture comes forward and Choll explains: It is because we belong to the husband. I still can’t find what to say but she continues, faster every time, louder, but always clear, she answers my unspoken questions: We don’t like it, no! We don’t really have a choice, we can’t tell husbands that we don’t like that. Well, yes, the law now allows us to get a divorce but, the law? We are not ruled by the law here, we are ruled by custom. Besides, nobody really knows what goes on in Gambella.  Who is going to get a divorce if you are gonna be judged and left without your children!

By this point I have decided the best I can do is listen, because in the midst of my own bewilderment is the one thing I have to offer. Yet unknowingly, she answers some of the questions I would have liked to ask. 

That is why women tend to look so old, it is because they have had too many children and are sad. Taking care of children is a lot of work, you know? It is for that same reason that we almost never make it at job interviews. Yes, it is true that women do worse, but it’s not that they ain’t smart or willing to study. It is because we have less time, from the beginning, since we were children. 

Of course we don’t like it -she repeats- but there are so many women who think that, as this is the way it has been for so long, then it can’t be different. You need to know your rights in order to fight for them, you know? Otherwise it is too scary. 

I talk to my children, to all five of them, and I treat them equally so that they understand that women are people too. It is not much, but it’s a start and even that has its risks. If the father listens, he beats us. 

-Would schools..? I stutter softly, sort of guessing the answer. 

-No, not in here! All the teachers are male!

She thinks the solution has to be some kind of forum. A space just for women, where they could talk. Then they will be brave enough, they’ll find the strength, they’ll get to a solution. 

-Do you think I made myself clear? she asks me. I have to do something. 

It is sad that the women of Gambella, although they feel so lonely, are not alone.   

Concerns

Nguenyyiel. Refugees. Refugee camp. South Sudan. War. I just can’t picture it. Visualizing it is still near to impossible even after weeks of reading about it, or what’s worse: the more I read the more complex it all gets and thus harder for me to imagine. 

I also read that important international organizations, the kind that have many acronyms in their names, agree that education in refugee camps is of paramount importance because it restores a certain sense of normalcy to children, in addition to helping them to become productive members of society.

Leaving issues about normality aside, I found it hard to reconcile this statement with the appalling statistics we are presented with a few lines later about fear, violence and hunger. 

Confession: Even though I have been a teacher for some years, I can’t really say I know what education is, regardless of my serious attempts to face the question. 

What I do know: At Nguenyyiel there are children, there are teachers, there is some sort of school and my task is to help the teachers from that school provide a better education to those children. 

What I don’t know: What to do. What kind of curricula is relevant in situations like these? What deserves to be called education in those cases? What can you ask from them and what should you offer children who have been first hand witnesses of the worst sides of men?

Right now I chose to weave through dialogue with questions that can help us find each other. If freedom was to be a colour, which one would it be? If family was to be an animal, what animal would it be? What about peace? However, there is one that sticks with me: If education in this site was to be a bird, could it fly?

Dust

The omnipresence of poverty shocks me. Misery spills through every front: you can look at it, listen to it, smell it, touch it with your hand. It fuses with non-misery and challenges it, turning it also miserable. Bothering. The very least is lots among those who have nothing. 
The gaze lands inevitably over layers of decay: Half-built buildings, half-built streets, houses that only made it to the attempt, cars on the verge of collapsing, amassed garbage. And everything is insistently covered by dust.  
You don’t get to not see it. There is nowhere to hide, it is impossible to dodge and hope to forget. Poverty is everywhere and from the second floor of the sad and chipped building where I sleep you can see those who have nothing passing by. And from the bus that’s still standing thanks to some magic spell, you can see those who have nothing. And from the street, on foot, you can see the ones who no longer have the strength or the will to keep walking. 

Frey

We used to be a good civilization. Long long ago we were one of the most advanced civilizations. Some of our ancestors made history, but not my generation, we are not going to do anything. We are a drawback country. Maybe we make history again, but not yet. It is all because of religion. 

First we were enslaved and then they brought religion, which to me, is another way of slavery, because it destroys your mind. They took away our culture and brought religion, which doesn’t let us work because we are so scared. There are too many saints, too many holidays in which we are supposed to stay at home. We just celebrated Christmas and in a few days we’ll have another holiday for… what do you call them, those with the wings? Angels! Yes, that 's it! Saint Gabriel is an angel. How are we gonna get better like this?

It is Ok to pray. We should be with God, but you can do that a moment before leaving home. And we could have just a few holidays, just for the really important dates and without stopping work. 

Besides, we are robbed. They offer some petty cash to those who have really good minds and they take them to a foreign country. They steal the intelligent ones. I say they steal them because even if they do come back they have changed. They see things differently and are no longer part of us. That’s why many of them just don’t come back. 

All this followed from my approaching Fray to ask for suggestions of what to do on a Sunday in Addis Ababa and she suggested to visit Menelik II square if I was interested in learning more about their history, of which she also explains a little. 

She explains how Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea were once the same country and why is it that they splitted. Abraham, who has just arrived, jumps in and they both entangle in a discussion about the reasons for this and whether or not Menelik is a national hero. 

 

Salam! I greeted Fray in Amharic just for the sake of it, but the rest of the conversation was in a mixture of English, Google and gestures and was only interrupted in the rare occasions where she had to answer the phone or deal with some other host, near the end of a 24 hour shift for which she is payed $1.50 dollars. 

Wondu

After a few weeks in Seville that were so nice they deserve their own entry, the long-awaited moment arrives. I am going to Ethiopia, tomorrow, in the midst of the Three Wise Men celebration to dawn at Christmas. Yes, I still can’t understand why, but in Ethiopia, in addition to the fact that we are in the year 2012 according to their 13 months long calendar (12 of which are more or less long and then one that stretches only for 5 or 6 days). Those days, by the way, as nobody knew exactly what to do with them, do not count, and as they do not count, you do not get paid. I learn all this through Wondu, the driver who picked me up at the airport. But there is still a while until we meet Wondu. 

There are lots of people, plenty of children and tons of packages in the queue at the airport. I don’t get it, why are all these people going to Ethiopia just now that vacations are over? Why are they taking so much stuff? I guess they could be getting their families things that you can’t find in Africa, but I still look at my tiny purple suitcase with suspicion. Am I missing something? Let 's hope not.

On the flight I’m seated next to a gigantic and inconsiderate woman. She inflates a cushion to prevent her neck from twisting, falls asleep and spreads out. I, crushed, fall asleep too. We have landed. 

I am not in Africa yet. Africa is beyond customs and in customs there are so many people. We are asked to wait in different lines according to some mysterious criteria. Mine is not too long but it’s really slow so I start talking to a guy who turns out to be Spanish and works for an NGO. I suddenly feel dizzy and get a little scared. ‘Fuck! Why now!? The man, who turned out to be a doctor, tells me to lie down and not to worry and offers to wait on the line for me. I comply and throw myself on the only bench of that boiling-hot room. A woman offers me chocolate and I take it. 

I’m feeling fine when I finally leave that horrendous room and go fetch my suitcase, which takes ages to come, but it does. I have arrived. I leave the airport to merge with a sea of people, a crowd in front of a fence like those you have in concerts or when someone important is going to make an entrance, but it is only us that make an entrance, people with tired faces and lumps. 

Wondu is nowhere to be found and I am approached by every taxi driver on earth. I try to explain to one of them that somebody is there to pick me up when he takes out his phone: “Call him”. I try to explain I have barely started looking, but he insists: “You have not found him yet, this is easier. Call him”. As he is absolutely right I say no more and make the call. 

Wondu emerges from the crowd and hugs me. He wants to know if I’ve been to Ethiopia before and when I admit it’s my first time in Africa he laughs and hugs me again. He doesn't stop talking on the way to the hotel and he gives me a high-five each time I make him life or we agree on something. 

He teaches me some amharic words, like ‘hi’ and ‘banana’ which of course I can no longer remember, and he explains that Ethiopia is a developing country, that is why there are so many buildings under construction. He is right, the way from the airport is gray and green.