This week I am Ms. Janet. I am the girls’ dean while she is taking some time off to process and heal after the death of her niece. I am staying in her apartment that is attached to the dorm. There’s a white cat that hangs around Ms. Janet’s house, and it has one blue eye and one green eye. He’s my little friend. A lot of fear exists in this culture, and especially in this dorm. Since Sandy’s death (and after the other deaths in the past couple years) the girls have been very afraid to sleep with the lights off. They fear for me when I walk from the ad building to my villa at night after study hall. Sometimes boys will insist on walking me home because they don’t think that it’s right to let me go by myself or that I’m just pretending to not be afraid. It is probably about a sixth of a mile (if that) and it is all within the walls of our campus. So this week they are very surprised that I am staying in this apartment all by myself. They’re very sweet and have invited me to their rooms and have offered to stay here with me. Last night Saeda and Christine asked with wide eyes, “You’re going to sleep here, but you’re not going to turn the lights off, are you?”
“Uh… yes….”
“No, Miss! Aren’t you afraid?”
“Of what?”
“Ghosts!”
“No.”
“My mother always told me that the ghosts come in the dark. Did yours?”
“No. And if they did come, I could ask Jesus to make them leave.”
“Hmm… I wish to be brave like you, ya Miss. Are you going to sleep here on the couch or back there?”
“In the bedroom.”
“Nooooooooooooo!”
“Yes?”
They’re sweet. I hope that I am showing them that with God they don’t have to live in fear. And I get irritated that they freak out easily about being sick or bad things happening, but when I take into account what has happened here in the last couple years and probably in their villages, I have to give them more of a break.
Friday, April 12, 2013 10:39pm—Ms. Janet’s house
I’m still here. I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I am so unmotivated and feel burned out. I haven’t even really been doing much. I’ve been teaching ESL Bible, night classes twice a week, health, and I’ve been the girls’ dean and nurse. It’s really not that much. But I just dread… something. Not sure what. Maybe I just want to be in my own house instead of here because I’m obligated to be here every night after my other nightly obligations.
I’m also tired of being the bad guy when it’s not my fault. I know teenagers complain sometimes, but I have never experienced such a whole society so comfortable with questioning the authority and almost every move of a teacher. “No, I will not excuse your absences for those classes. You were here, I gave you pepto bismol and told you to come back if it didn’t help you, you skipped your next two classes immediately after that, and now you’re coming for a medical excuse for those two classes. No.” I overhear him telling another teacher in the hall, “Miss Sara gave me excuse!” I whip open the door. “No, I didn’t. I told you I would tell Miss Taylor that you came to me for medicine so that she could do what she wants, but that I am not excusing the classes.” “Yes you did, ya Miss!”
“Ya Miss, I need excuse for my test today. I was sick last night and didn’t study.”
“Joseph, I saw you last night and you did not tell me that you were sick or that you were having trouble studying.”
“Because I didn’t see you for very long. But I was sick.”
“You didn’t tell me. You have my number.”
“I don’t have credit!”
“Mr. Girgis does. I did not see you last night. So I’m not going to excuse you because I don’t know any more than Mrs. Janet does. So you tell her what you’re telling me.”
“Thank you for F, ya Miss!”
Pastor Tom put us under a “code red” status on Sunday, which means that because of trouble/protesting in the area, we are not allowed to leave the school without direct permission from Pastor Tom. On Tuesday we were on Code Yellow, where we could go into the local town and only further than that with special permission. “Special permission” was granted to two girls (out of the kindness of Pastor Tom’s heart) to let them go shopping a little bit further away but not quite in Cairo. The agreement was that they were supposed to be back at the school before dark. Pastor Tom told them 6:00. At 8:30, one of the girls’ brothers comes by my house and said that when his sister comes back to not let her go out again and to give her whatever kind of work I want as a punishment. This sister, R, did not have a phone and the girl she was with, S, had her phone off. S came back at 10:20—more than four hours after Pastor Tom said. If she had come back before dark (6:30), she’d be ten minutes less than four hours late. Where was R? Well, they split up and S went home to her uncle’s house (not part of the pass that I gave) and R went who knows where but she was fine. Do I stay up and wait for this girl? Is she coming back by herself? Sudanese Christian girl in a place where Sudanese are mistreated and there were very recent killings between Muslims and Christians? Are you kidding me? Without a phone? Without calling at all? Yes, I’m American so 6:00 means 6:00, but seriously? I had been laying in bed for probably two minutes when at 12:35 someone banged on my door. It was girls holding a cell phone. R was on the phone. I didn’t feel like the phone was the best time/place to ream her out. She stayed at a family member’s house that night. Are you kidding me? And I’m sure some things don’t translate exactly, but she was completely unapologetic. Ugh.
Sabbath, April 13, 2013 1:49pm
Pet peeve: saying “tired” instead of sick. Apparently it works in Arabic, but when my English ears hear, “But Miss, I’m tired!” all I think is, “We’re all tired. Suck it up.” Ugh… it drives me crazy. My encounter with R today:
“Where are you going?”
“To the dorm.”
“Church isn’t over yet.”
“Yes it is.”
“No, it’s not. We sing the song and say the verse together.”
“Church is over and I’m tired.”
“You’re tired?”
Then it sinks in that she means sick. I’m the only medical person on campus right now because sadly Peggy has been in America for the last three weeks since her mom died. Any excuses come through me.
Another medical pet peeve: “I have flu.” First of all, it’s the flu. Secondly, no you don’t. You have a cold. All of them say that. I’ve even had to stoop to say that when they don’t speak much English and are not understanding my questions.
There is a drinking fountain by the ad building, and there is a reverse osmosis filter that the water runs through. The water was recently tested and it’s apparently as clean as bottled water—how awesome! The students bring their own spoon to the cafeteria for every meal because so many spoons were disappearing. They’re not supposed to wash their spoons in the filtered water afterward but at a hose around the corner from it. Today at lunch, a bunch of us SMs sat at a picnic table near the fountain and booed and yelled to the people who tried to wash their spoons there and clapped and cheered for the ones who drank from the fountain. We caught most of them off guard and they were pretty startled. It was so funny.
Phil was teaching the tenth graders about small claims courts in government class. His next thought was to show them something from Judge Judy. (Excellent thought, Phil.) So we spent some loading videos with our painfully slow Internet to see which one would do her justice. I fell in love with her no-nonsense approach all over again. In my excitement, I set my status as “I’M GOING TO MARRY JUDGE JUDY!” Refaat, a very sweet man in his thirties who comes to the night classes, commented on it. I guess I shouldn’t have expected anyone to know that Judge is not a man’s first name… ☺ I laughed so hard. I figured that he would feel embarrassed by how many people liked what he said and my response to it, so I deleted the post... but not before taking a screen shot of it.
That night in class Refaat didn’t come, but a really loud man who closely resembles a beach ball named Samir, his son, and his nephew came. We continued to learn medical vocabulary and common ailments. Jordan and I try to subtly skip some words that might be awkward to talk about in this culture, especially in mixed company… However, nothing gets past Samir, except when it’s not supposed to. So we talked about breasts and buttocks, and he is now quite familiar with diarrhea. I asked him some question shortly after our discussion about diarrhea, and he answered loudly (of course), “Ah… sometimes.” He thought that I asked him how often he has diarrhea. Jordan and I laughed so hard. I usually bring my computer to class, and a couple times I have opened a program and recorded the noise in the room during that time so that later I can listen to Samir mispronouncing “nerve” as “noooooohhhv” in the loudest voice possible or so that I can hear Refaat say that Joe Dirt or Abraham Lincoln stole his motorcycle—it was an activity to practice comparatives and superlatives, I promise.
God is good. I’m trying to be good and stay motivated. Life here is easy, I just need to press on and stop complaining. A positive attitude makes all the difference. I need to learn to be patient, and I am trying to more consciously ask for a heart of love like God’s. I need to go find R and apologize for being short with her as she walked out of church.
