Sharpening Pencils

The boys were processing the shampoo bottles at the school today, which means the big green machine in the back was running, chewing up Pantene scented plastic and spitting it out in confetti sized pieces. The noise was loud and constant, making conversation, English or otherwise, rather difficult. So I decided to sharpen all the colored pencils in the room.

But as I was sharpening the pinks and yellows and blues, I realized that I was creating a rainbow array of yet another weapon the boys could use to stab each other with. I know at normal elementary schools, small incidents are bound to pop up. Here, it's almost every day. Everything's fine and dandy, the room is dark and the boys are watching yet another American or Hindi movie from MyEgy, and the next thing you know, chairs are scraping linoleum, voices are bouncing off the walls, and one of the 'peacekeepers' as I call them, is pulling one of the younger boys out of the fray- said culprit flailing his arms and half shouting angry words in Upper Egypt accented Arabic. Half the time, blood has been drawn, and more than half the time, the skirmish continues as three or four older students begin shouting as well in their attempts to subdue the defiant anger sparking throughout the room. 

My first week or so I thought, "This is nuts-o!" Now it's just run of the mill. I've occasionally ripped a broom handle out of somebody's hand as they were brandishing it in their pursuit of someone out the door, and I've sternly said "BAS!" more times than I can count to two who were just beginning to argue heatedly over something silly. I think the word 'enough' coming out of the foreigner's mouth has a bit more shock value. They stop at least a moment longer than usual before resuming their pettiness until crazy Ibrahim comes up to one and drags him by the collar back to the green machine to get to work. It's fascinating, this dynamic. Working, learning, yelling, laughing, dumping gargantuan bags of shampoo bottles onto the floor... Today was one of those days where I wouldn't trade this for anything.