Tag Archives: literature

Cultural Harmony in English Class

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English class

By Amanda Miller

Sunlight streamed through the dusty glass slats of the two windows, illuminating the wrinkles of time in the wooden floor panels. Though stale air lingered in the four cement corners and in the folds of the tied-up curtains, fresh life breathed in the middle of the classroom. A few minutes ago, there was just a motley collection of iron-framed chairs around an embarrassed uneven table. But now I saw the chipped yellow paint on the chairs and the elbow-worn spaces on the table as proof of so much more.

As the students meandered in, they all argued about what time English class was actually supposed to start. Incidentally, everyone but the quietly amused American teacher thought they had arrived in plenty of time. We were encouraged multiple times to give the extra-tardy potentials “just two more minutes.”

As we killed time, the young-adult students explained why the previous week’s class didn’t happen; apparently last Tuesday was a major Muslim holiday. All Somalis here in Nairobi, Kenya, stayed home that day, whether because there was more chance of getting police attention and not having legitimate identification, or because their families were celebrating Eid, or because everyone else would be celebrating and there would be nothing to do anyway. Neither the men nor the women had any idea why they celebrated Eid, just that it was something they’d always done.

Eventually the grace period ended, and class began. The first step was to go around the table and introduce ourselves, from the girl whose eyes were all that escaped from the dark burka, to the young man with a swanky watch and button-down collared shirt, to me in my flip-flops and stifled enthusiasm for being back in a Somali environment. Two of the three women were reserved and hard to hear, while Eyes hid her face much more than her thoughts. The three men were all dressed more Western and confident in their English.    The real excitement in this first section of the lesson was when they found out that I lived on a dairy farm; the previous semi-decorum of the classroom erupted in eager questions. How many cows did we have, did we milk them by hand, what did we do with all the milk? The guy who seemed the ringleader of the students was intently concerned that the milking machines might suck the life out of the cows, and wasn’t necessarily convinced by my asseverations of otherwise.

“I have just one question, even if it’s like a joke.” Eyes held out her hand and commanded attention. “If you take so much milk, why are you not fat?” I shrugged and acknowledged that she’s not the only one with that question.

Class progressed and we moved from general interaction to reading a story together around the table to discussing an American proverb. The story was a traditional Muslim folktale that all the students had heard before but never seen in writing. We took turns sounding out a sentence or two (or more, if they really got on a roll). The teacher would ask the most advanced students to provide a vocabulary word in Somali when the blank intonation betrayed the occasional lack of meaning behind a set of phonics. Often an erudite tone reigned in quickly proffered additional translations, but no one seemed to mind. The room took on an almost sacred aura as history and oral tradition revealed themselves both on the page to the Somalis and in understanding to the Americans.

There was no cultural divide, however, when we came to the proverb of the week. I had incorrectly anticipated some need for exegesis on “When in Rome, do as the Romans.” Immediately voices around the lesson table piped up in easy explanation that it’s just like a Somali saying. “When you go where people don’t have eyes…” Naturally.

I have to admit that one of my favorite parts of class were probably the last couple segments. I mean, have you ever heard a motley chorus of burka-ed and accented East Africans jumping in enthusiastically along with a taped chorus of Country Roads? Once they sounded out the lyrics and heard the tune a few times, they sounded just as good as John Denver’s recording. Much more memorable, at any rate. I couldn’t help but wonder how much they longed for the same thing, what they used to call home. Most of the students had left Somalia for Kenya when they were just children, often fleeing for their lives or just looking for a place lacking guns instead of food. And they know they will probably never be able to go back to the place where they belong. It was a hauntingly poignant song, somehow laced with hope.

The dismissal prayer also filled the dusty room with a paradoxical beauty in sorrow. The teacher asked the male ringleader to pray for us, knowing that one of his life goals is to educate people about the Koran without forcing them to convert. He seemed appropriately unsure about praying to Allah in conjunction with the white people sitting beside him, but folded his hands and spoke anyway. Maybe I’m not supposed to be OK with it. Nevertheless, I found it to be a very meaningful and humbling connection. He didn’t pray for anything sacrilegious or destructive or evil. He prayed for needs and desires that are human. He blessed us, these female Western Christians. Socially, culturally, religiously, that is so not supposed to happen.

Class was over then. Throughout the hour, I soaked up the beauty of Somali faces, accents, and personalities as they whirled around me in a flurry of realtime. I feel like my heart had a silly grin the whole time; there is something deep within me that finds joy and life in an environment like this. Not only is there something restoratively right about active peace, but God is truly being glorified by these diametrically different cultures respectfully engaging each other. How can you not feel soul excitement?

I could sit here and type and type about this one ESL class period. I could describe in more detail the intricacies of the atmosphere and personalities, or I could analyze perspectives of different sociological theories and implications. I could get all emotive and express how this made me feel then and now, or I could lay out my confusion about what to actually do with this. I have so much to say — but I’m out of words. I just wanted to share, share who I am and who they are and who we are together, like we all did that day around the worn wooden table.

Amanda Miller lives with her husband in Kansas, and can’t wait for summer to arrive and remind her of Kenyan temperatures. She works at a local train-depot-turned-coffee-shop and is looking forward to gardening this summer. 

Back in the Midwest

By Posted in Poetry Tagged ,

By Candice Mast

 

Ablaze in my rearview mirror

The sun rises from battle,

Blood-soaked but brilliant.

I drive past frosted round bales,

Golden harvest in rows of neat containment.

Pencil drawing of a tree on sky,

Leaves excised from precisely half of one oak

By a prevailing wind.

Light, dusty corn soldiers mown down;

Miles of empty fields, rolling to the sky.

The bump of railroad tracks

And the haunted train’s ghostly wail echoing;

The tracks going on to somewhere else.

Back porches with torn screen doors

Chimneys, adding clouds to the gray sky.

Rounded barn, hunched solitary in a field, an old widower

Watching the cars go by.

The sycamores in the woods that border the fields

White lightning among  dark trunks.

A curve of river fills with the fire

Of the turning autumn trees.

A buried pioneer graveyard slides into view.

Choked with forgotten dead

Tall, brown weeds grown over graves;

Only the tops of markers reaching through,

The long sweep of blacktop narrowing into the distance,

Leading me on to somewhere else.

 

Candice Mast lived for seven years in Bangkok, Thailand and now lives in Columbus, Ohio. She likes writing simple poems, trying to capture some of the beauty around her and the thoughts on her mind.

Of Mallards

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Mallards

By Rebekah Sauder

Sally and her family lived on a back road in a foresty area with a small pond beside their house. Every year at the end of winter Sally’s mother would start saving up bread crusts to feed to the mallards when they came to the pond. Sally would peek out the window every day to see if the ducks were there yet.

“My favorites are the ones with green heads,” Sally told her mother as she smashed her nose on the glass.

“Do you know why they have green heads?” Her mother asked.

“Why?”

“Because the ones with green heads are man-ducks. They’re called ‘drakes.’ The brown ones are ladies.”

“Drakes,” Sally repeated to herself.

Soon the mallards arrived. When Sally saw them sitting peacefully in the water she shrieked.

“Mom, the ducks are here!”

Her mother sent the excited little girl out the door with the bag of crusts, watching from the kitchen window. Sally tried to walk slowly to the pond so she would not scare the ducks away. There were two female ducks and one male. Sally started ripping up the bread and throwing it into the water. She shifted from foot to foot impatiently as the ducks slowly swam over to get the bread.

“Hello, ducks,” she said. “Hello, Mr. Drake.” She thought he was the most beautiful duck she had ever seen. “Why do you have such a nice green head, but the ladies don’t?” she asked him.

The drake seemed interested in what Sally had to say, but the others ignored her.

“Do you wanna know something?” Sally whispered to the drake. “My friend Anna goes to ballerina class. I can show you how to dance, if you want.”

Anna often came to visit Sally after ballet lessons on Thursdays. Sally always asked to see what she had just learned. Sally would practice what Anna showed her when she was alone — but only after making sure no one was coming and shutting the door.

It looked like the drake was interested, so Sally showed him what Anna had taught her. She put everything she could muster into her jumps and twirls. The two female ducks quacked in protest and swam quickly away. The drake, however, was not disturbed. Sally stopped dancing when she saw some of the ducks leaving. But the drake was just watching her calmly. Sally turned and ran back to the house with a huge smile, thinking that she should have worn her twirly skirt.

Sally burst into the house. “Mom! I made a new friend.”

Her mother greeted her with a smile. “That’s good, dear, but next time be more careful when you’re that close to the water. If you jump around too much you might lose your footing and fall in.”

Something inside Sally crumpled up and slid into a dark place. She went to her room and hid all her stuffed animals under her bed.

The drake rejoined his companions. “What’s wrong with you?” they scolded. “Don’t you know not to sit so close to something that moves so suddenly? It’s dangerous and stupid.”

The drake did not respond. He just swam peacefully in little circles.

Rebekah Sauder lives in Plain City, Ohio, where she works at an assisted living home, rides around town on her bicycle, and watches “a ridiculous amount of movies.” Every once in a while, she writes a short story. 

Here Comes the T-Rex from the Rear

By Posted in Column Tagged , ,

By Tamara Shoemaker

Don’t you just love the whole atmosphere of a gym? Cardio, fitness, ambition blazing in the sweat-soaked faces of hard-core people bound and determined to burn at least 500 calories in the space of 20 minutes?

I like watching the joggers. Lithe, smooth, graceful. Kind of like gazelles. They push off from one foot, the opposing leg stretching forward in a smooth arc, landing in a light roll from the heel to the toe. Repeat as needed.

I wish I looked like that when I run. A graceful doe bounding at the head of the pack.
I’m more like the T-Rex, lumbering along at the rear. Thud THUD, Thud THUD. Thud THUD. Clear the track! Ponderous heavyweight coming through!

I certainly don’t resemble the majority of gym-enthusiasts who frequent the fitness facilities, muscle tone oozing from every pore of their bodies. “Tone” in my book runs more along the lines of a spot-on musical note. But that’s beside the point.
The point is, I am bound and determined to succeed at health.

But I don’t eat salad every day. Protein smoothies do not constitute a major portion of my life. I even sneak a brownie into the closet now and then out of view of my kids’ prying eyes and attack it like a starving animal.

However, in my slow, determined, lumbering way, I drag myself to the gym (or the track or the street, or to the front of the TV for an aerobics routine) and doggedly burn away those calories.

When the mental fatigue hits (usually about a mile into my run), I think, I can’t do this anymore. My feet plod slower and slower in front of me as I heft my weight from one foot to the other, to the first one, to the second one. Just. One. More. Lap. I. Can. Do. It. No. I. Can’t.

Enter the good guy. The Encourager.

I like to call him that. He’s a regular at the gym at which I often run. He’s always there, pink cheeks glowing from exercise. He wanders around the weight machines, nodding to one person or another, always giving a word of encouragement. “Great job!” “Five more reps, you can do it!”

He usually comes out of the weight room about the same time I’m rounding the curve of the track to cross the mile-marker. My mind has shut down. All I can think of is taking the next step. And the next. And the next. My lungs are burning, oxygen is short, and I won’t be able to sustain even that much effort very long.

Then the grin crosses his face like lightning, shooting a bolt of new energy into my tired muscles. “You’re doing great!” he says. “Keep it up!”

And suddenly, I find I can do one more lap. Sure, why not? What’s a little fatigue when it’s all said and done anyway?

I’ve often watched the other people at the gym, most of them petite, fit and and obviously in better shape than I am. I wonder what they think of me, trotting around the track at a snail’s pace, gasping for air like I’ve just swallowed a gallon of sea-water. I think to myself that I’m doing pretty well, with three young kids at home, a side-career as a writer vegetating in front of a computer, carving out a few extra minutes to get some cardio in. But that pep talk doesn’t even cut it in the throes of fatigue.

What does cut it is that one encouraging word. That extra smile that boosts me for another lap. The smile that says, “We’re all in this together; it doesn’t matter what your body build is or the amount of sweat you drop in a 20-minute period of time.”

So when you hear the tell-tale thunder of Jurassic Park behind you on the track, think about how that person may be watching you with a little admiration, even a little envy, and throw a smile their way.

We can’t all be gazelles.

Tamara Shoemaker is the author of several books, including “Broken Crowns,” “Pretty Little Maids” and the recently released “Ashes, Ashes.” She lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with her husband, Tim, and their three children.

On Red Meat and Mortality

By Posted in Column Tagged , ,

By Matt Swartz

The other evening, I visited a newly-opened grocery store. The marketing and signage made it clear to me from the street that its intention was to compete with Whole Foods. I pulled in hoping that its strategy would be price competition, rather than an escalation in the arms race of foodie esoterica that has recently gotten so obnoxious (“I wanted some gluten-free pine-nut-based energy snacks with acai berries in them, but the only ones I can find have soy isolates in the ingredient list! Thanks, but I can’t buy these. I care too much about my family!”)

On the whole, my expectations were met. The innards of the store were filled with healthy snacks at inflated prices, much like a Whole Foods, but all the important deals are on the outside edges of a grocery store anyway: produce, dairy, bulk dry stuff and meat. These were wholesome and reasonably priced, so much so that I intend to return regularly. But I had an interaction at the butcher’s counter that stayed with me.

At the butcher’s counter, I could see that they were doing everything right. My powers of description aren’t anywhere near equal to the shiny redness and thickness of the steaks, marbled, stacked high, and priced cheaper than I’d expected. On the wall behind the counter, various marketing blurbs were written (did I mention how good ALL of the typefacing on this store’s advertising looked? Painstaking effort had clearly been taken.)

One of the blurbs was styled like this: “ask me about _______ .” “Me” was clearly the butcher, so I asked him the scripted question. He paused for a moment, considering, I suppose, that we were of  similar age, build, social class, and level of grizzeledness, and went off script: “Oh, they have a big speech I’m supposed to give you, but basically it just means we massage the cows before we kill ’em.” We MASSAGE the cows, before we KILL THEM.

I bought two steaks and left, but on the drive home, I realized that in his parting words, I’d found an ace that I could keep (apologies to Kenny Rogers, of course). It is a natural fact that every one of us is going to die, and we don’t know when. Luxury deadens our awareness of this looming fact, in the same way small acts of conscientiousness (Buy grass-fed! Buy organic!) lead us to imagine that we can delay it. But neither change facts. On a day we don’t and can’t plan, we’re going to be led down the chute, and when we get to the bottom of it, whatever massages we’ve had recently will be utterly beside the point.

My drive home took me past what I think is the oldest cemetery in Columbus, Ohio. I looked over the stone fence into the  tree-filled, shadowy resting place of those now, some of them, nearly 200 years dead. Some are marked with crosses, some with obelisks, and a few, signage informs me, aren’t marked at all. Those people ate grass-fed and organic, and I suppose if they’d had health care plans they liked, they would have been able to keep them. But they’re gone and forgotten.

I’m a Christian man; I have hope for the next life, and for that I’m thankful. But what I don’t have, what nobody has, is control over this day or that one. Our mortality is a fact that bears reflection. And when a meat cutter at a yuppie grocery store can spur that reflection, it’s been a good day.