One drawback of teaching in an unfamiliar language, to students who speak a completely foreign language, in a subject that is both technical and at times culturally trying, is having to talk about subjects that have as a main description, a cognate in that third language which means something completely different.
In case the run-on sentence above made no sense, I'll explain again. I teach in Portuguese, a language I know only mildly well. They speak Changana, a language I'm only just beginning to learn. I have to say words in broken Portuguese that have meanings in Changana. Bad ones.
For instance. Consistencia (consistency) in Portuguese, "masturbation" in Changana. The name McKenzie means "testicles" in dialect, and enzima (enzyme) and xilema (xylem) both have unflattering meanings. Which brings me to estoma.
The estoma (stoma) is a very important part of the leaf. I have an entire lesson devoted to it. Unfortunately, and inevitably, the Changana for the female anatomy sounds very similar. And not the innocuous "vagina", but the almost unutterable "c" word. As if this weren't bad enough, I have to draw the estoma. If you remember this part of biology, you'll see where this is going.
The stoma is a hole in the outer layer of the leaf which opens and closes, allowing gases to be exchanged. It is composed of two sausage-shaped cells that dilate. A drawing looks almost exactly like a rough sketch of a vagina. So really, I have no choice but to milk this lesson. I'm going to make every possible cognate reference I can and maybe I won't die laughing. It's really the only choice.
I've found that I don't cry when I need to, but only when I'm prompted to. This reminds me of after the death at my school, teaching the class the next day. I didn't need to cry, but the emotions of the students were overwhelming and it was everything I could do to maintain my composure. (Now, I think about what would have happened if that incident happened now and how much differently it would affect me and how much I could help the kids out. Not to say that I want it to happen. Not at all.)
There are things that make my want to cry, like how my students demonstrate a complete failure in understanding that I'm a human being, being away from everyone, etc. But these things aren't suddent events but gradual and well up inside me. I've even sat down a couple times and told myself to get it out, but to no avail.
And then it all comes pouring out when it's safe and can be easily justified. Like tonight, watching "I am Sam". A good movie, but nothing groundbreaking. I was like a faucet. And something inside just let go - found an opportunity and ran with it.
I find it dangerous to open myself up here, because of my students. And it isn't their fault. I'm as strange a subject to them as the biology I teach. They don't know where to begin, so like teaching, I have to start out simple and work my way up.
What am I going to do with my life? I really hate that question. It's as if there's a mandatory objective for everyone, that there's some finish line. And it implies that life is not being lived in the current moment. I don't wonder too hard about the next step, because it's so far off - and even when it is close, every situation is only what you make of it. So why bother spending all of my time looking for something "perfect" when even perfection is a lot of hard work. There's a very real unspoken aspect of "What are going to do..." that has to do with external rather than internal motivation. You have to look good to others, rather than feel good about yourself. And honestly, for all of the selflessness going around, we're only doing it for ourselves in the end. Which is fine - selfishness that betters others' lives is selfishness put to good use. And then when you look at this issue really closely, you see that there is only the unfortunately named "selfishness" and it has no opposite. So really, it is a concept that does not exist. There's nothing bad about it, because there's no good to be had in its absence.
So was it selfish to come here? Yes, and I hope more people benefit from my doing it than if I hadn't in the first place.
Peace
John
