Logic? The definition of clean. Flies.

I’m sitting across from this very cute Sudanese girl who always looks confused, pouty, and somewhat offended. Somehow she ended up taking the vocabulary test over chapters 6-10 today instead of 11-15 with the rest of the class. I felt really bad for wasting that time during class—I don’t know how that happened. Watching her take the correct test reminds me of an incident the other day. We have assemblies every Tuesday during the day for the entire school. The SA President was making an announcement about the race that we were going to have after school that day when one student raised his hand and made some comment about how we haven’t had basketball intramurals yet only because a lot of Sudanese students like basketball, and it’s not very popular with the Egyptians. Really? This student is somewhat of a silent instigator of the separation, but his comment was just ridiculous and addressed wrongly. Pastor Tom jumped up and restated what this student said to clarify how he was feeling because we will not have any racism on campus and we don’t want anyone to feel that they are being treated differently because of the color of their skin. Pastor Tom also defended the SA President and Vice President really well. Hey buddy, basketball intramurals has been the last sport every year… just because we haven’t had it yet doesn’t mean that we are against the Sudanese. (But then again I’m sure I don’t understand and am not completely aware of the ways that they are treated.) Some of the Sudanese students started a basketball league, and the one that made this comment told Michael that the league was for the Sudanese and the staff—so don’t you dare accuse anyone of anything. After that, some of the Sudanese students had that thought going through their minds, and this cute girl came and had the most absurd conversation with Jessica. She was saying that black people around the world have no value. “But (Name), our president is black.” “Yeah, but some people still don’t like him.” Seriously? That’s your argument? Anyways, she was upset because she was not one of the people chosen from her fine arts class to perform at the end of the year for something. Only two people in the class were chosen. Jessica said, “(Name), have you skipped any practices this year?” “Yes.” “Have you…?” “Yes.” “Have you…?” “Yes.” “Well maybe he only chose the people that really put in the most work and really wanted to perform.” “No, it’s because we have no value.” “Who is ‘we,’ (Name)?” No answer. “Okay. Two people were chosen. One is Egyptian and one is Sudanese, so why do you think that you were not chosen because you’re Sudanese?” “Because black people have no value all over the world.” There just seems to be a general lack of logic.
During Jessica’s conversation, I was having my own discussion with one of my Egyptian students at lunch. He was complaining because it is the harvesting season so some students are called to work more on the farm. The farm brings in about 25,000 Egyptian pounds during this season, so the work is very important.

“We are not animals, ya Miss.”
“Okay, I know that you don’t like to work on the farm, but the work has to be done. What do you think would be a better idea?”
“There is this machine that can do the work in one hour.”
“Oh wow! Do we have this machine?”
“Yes.
“The school owns this machine.”
“No. It’s very expensive.”
“Okay… well in order to use that machine, we need to pay a lot of money for it. We don’t have that money. So either students can work a little bit more on the farm, or everyone can pay a lot of money so that we can get this machine.”
“It’s not fair to have students who already worked on the farm work on the farm again.”
“But the work needs to get done.”
“Why did we buy those trees? We should have used that money to buy this machine.”
“We bought those trees because we will get money from them in the future.”
“Yeah, in five years! I will be gone.”
“But the trees are for the good of the school, so maybe that means the people after you.”
“But I won’t be here. We should get the machine.”

There have just been so many situations where we say no, and students will do it anyway, and then we try to discipline them and they have no idea why. “I said no, and you did it anyway.” “But I needed to study!” “Okay, but the point is that I said no, and you did it anyway.” “But I had to study!” “I said no. Do you understand why you are being punished?” “No. I had to study! There was no time. We had fine arts last night!” Okay, maybe he didn’t study. But his fine arts class was cancelled and I had passed by him playing ping pong a couple times. Some arguments are just ridiculous. I have never experienced this lack of logic before in my life. It is astounding sometimes. Of course I’m not speaking about everyone—just more than I’ve ever come across with people over the age of eight. And some of them are my age or older. It’s so strange. Some of the thinking is very self-centered. Interrupting is looked at as very disrespectful and rude in America, but here it means nothing. But I interpret that as saying, “What I have to say and do is more important than you, so drop whatever you’re doing and ignore whoever you’re working with to talk to me.” People don’t wait in lines. It’s like survival of the fittest in the line for metro tickets. To me that says, “I really don’t respect the fact that all of these people were here first. All I know is that I want a ticket, so I will just plow over all of them.”

This one girl missed my class because she was sick, and I accidentally gave back the rest of the tests before she took it, and I caught her studying one the guy's tests, so I took it away. I told the guy that I found his test, and he was the first student all year to actually be completely honest and tell me the whole story. Pastor Tom and Gladys said I could reward him for his honesty, so instead of giving him a zero and having Pastor Tom call his parents, I took 30% off of his test. He complained later. Seriously?

I never knew that “clean” was so relative and could actually be defined differently than I have always known it. Clean is taking a shower every day and brushing your teeth at least twice a day. Clean is cleaning up the kitchen when you are finished cooking and not leaving tomato juice and seeds all over the counter and bread crumbs all over the stove. In Egypt, clean is having impeccably clean finger and toenails, shaped eyebrows, hairless arms (for girls), and a clean bedroom. Some of the girls make little comments about our arm hair—I’m not Chewbacca. I have relatively nothing, but apparently it’s “dirty.” And if I have clothes not put away in my room I am worth talking about (probably because that would make us bad wives), but I would rather keep the kitchen (the place that we SHARE where bacteria and nastiness can fester—how’s fester for a descriptive word?) and have some clothes on my bed. It’s just weird. They might cringe when they see that I have short fingernails like a man, but I cringe when I see dandruff and know that they last washed their hair a week ago. (I hope that the way that I am talking doesn’t make it sound like everyone has a filthy kitchen and dandruff because that’s not the case, but it’s culturally very acceptable.) Every once in a while I get a little … can’t think of the word… but… I’ll give an example. One boy who jokes about marrying my sister assured me that he was kidding and said that he will not marry an American girl. I said, “Is it because we have hair on our arms?” and smiled really big and half-innocently. They looked kind of shocked and laughed. Yep, they think it’s gross. But then I use those opportunities to mention casually how funny culture differences are and how we feel like people should shower every day and they think that girls should be hairless. I kind of stick it to them jokingly, but it gives me the opportunity to justify my hairy arms.



Yesterday I attacked probably fifty flies with Krista’s flip flop. They were congregating all over the window and sink in the staff room, and I went to town. It was beautiful. A really sweet student that I get along with well came up behind me and said, "Miss, what are you doing?!" as I cackled and shrieked and smacked the windows. (How dare he spy on me!) I felt so successful and called some people in to show them my work. I’m feeling compelled to work again, so I will be going, but the flies here are stupid. They are slow and easy to kill (or maybe I’ve just gotten really skilled.)

Much love to you!