Watching

The last several weeks I've been watching: watching at the school, watching the streets, watching people be themselves. There's no pretense here, a refreshing change to never knowing quite what people are thinking. Outside of the GTA game on the computers (a particularly violent game of car theft), I've seen things lately at the school that amaze me and make it hard to keep a slow smile from spreading on my face. I've had nothing to do with their development, but I'm so fiercely proud of this community and the people I get to be around every day. 

One of the teachers, Sameh, is responsible for teaching the boys about their health. The other day, she gathered a group of them around a table to talk about the possible skin or throat diseases they could contract here. She showed them slides of the afflictions on a computer and talked to them about what they should do if they feel anything strange under their skin, what to say to the doctor and when to go. It was cool to watch. Because especially in this community, it's a great thing to learn young how to take care of oneself and recognize things before they get serious. 

Another thing that makes my heart smile is watching the boys that have grown up here teach the young ones coming up under them. They learned to read here and now they teach what they know to the ones just coming through the doors. All of the male teachers here now are graduates of the school. It's a beautiful cycle. They may only be here for a while before they pursue other things, but it's amazing what they're doing with their in between time. 

I love this place. I had no idea how much I would when I first stepped off the plane months and months ago. My experience here isn't always quantifiable. I can't tick off a lot of to do's. And I'm not so sure that that matters, because my world is changing. 

A Funny Thing Happened...

In the office of the Association today. I was sitting across the room on my computer, half waiting for the internet to load pages, half playing with my phone, when I hear Remone say from the couch against the opposite wall, "Is that a banana?" (the entire sentence in Arabic except for the last word). I'm looking around for the random piece of fruit when I realize his friends sitting on either side of him have started laughing hysterically. 

He says it again, deadpan, not quite realizing his mistake. "Is that a banana?" I am still in search of yellowish-brown fruit when one of his English speaking friends says through his laughter, "He means is that an Apple." He looks over at Remone and says to him in Arabic, "The word is Apple, you idiot. The computer is an apple, as in 'tuffah'." Tuffah being the Arabic word for apple. After this, it took me a while to get my breath back. 

This may have been/probably was one of those you had to be there moments. But one of the things I love about this place is when the miscommunications between languages are downright laughable. Besides the one above, here are just a few I've had the privilege of hearing: 

"Pedesterians" (I'm guessing these are Presbyterians who like to walk)

"I'm an addictive." (This after having discovered where something was located. It took me quite some time to figure out he wanted to say "detective.") 

ob-STACK-el  (this also took several minutes of me wracking my brain. This one was in the middle of a paragraph about something else so was repeated several times before I realized they were saying 'obstacle.'  emPHASis on the wrong sylLABle.)

Yet to be fair, I've probably said 'I need to go to the pigeon' instead of bathroom, 'I've been here a hair' instead of month, and 'No, I just live in a cat, there aren't a lot of cats, just one cat' instead of saying I live in a room. I guess all's fair in love and foreign languages. 

Ashraf

I was 2.5 seconds away from writing about my crappy cab driver yesterday. Either my Arabic is terrible or he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. I'm going with the latter considering the majority of the people in this country understand me at least 75% of the time. 

But just as I was going to put my pen to paper, Laila, the school director, said my name. "Jenniferrrr...." I laughed and told her, "That's just how Ashraf says it. With the long rrrr." 

She smiled and asked, "Ashraf at the school?" 

"Yeah. He's always saying my name like that." 

She told me then that they recently discovered that he's developed lung cancer. At age 9. The doctors said that it had most likely been caused by some of the components found in an improperly disposed of computer. Something from the electronic waste had been broken and released chemicals to which he was exposed at some point in his young life among the waste. My heart broke a little. Ashraf usually has a runny nose, dirt smudged on his cheeks, and I've never heard him say much more than my name. Now I see this kid who may not make it past twelve or even that long if his parents can't move him to a cleaner environment with fresh air and clean food. 

I wish knowing someone was ill didn't change the way I look at them, but it's as if all of the sudden I want to make his life beautiful and tangible in a way it might not have been before. Yet as I was thinking this, I thought that it shouldn't take knowledge of a terminal illness to want to make someone's life beautiful. I should do it just because he's a little boy who laughs and wrestles and lives and breathes. Because maybe if I talk to him a little more, or make a funny face when he rolls my name off of his tongue, or hand him another Kleenex to wipe the green goo off from beneath his nose, he might smile an extra time that day or at least know he's also loved by the foreigner who keeps randomly showing up at his school. 

I'm learning lessons in love all the time, but the thing that's left the most lasting impression is that love kind of hurts. It's kind of uncomfortable and it changes the way you see things. It makes your current routine unacceptable. And it usually quickens the blood to some sort of action - action that is rarely convenient. I guess I always knew I'd probably learn more from being with them then they would from being with me. But it still catches me by surprise when a snotty nosed kid calling my name from the back of a passing garbage truck makes my heart sing and cry all at the same time. 

"Ashrrrrraaf!" I yell back and wave. And he's still rolling his arms and pointing at me as the truck rolls away into the twilight distance and turns the corner out of sight.