Surabaya International School

An umbrella, hats, a bug zapper and plenty of warm smiles – what else does a poet need in Indonesia?  Our (too short) visit to Surabaya International School was a blast. What a welcome!  They gave us all that we needed to feel at home and more. After a couple of assemblies, we were happy to join writers putting words on paper.  Michael and I split up to visit all grade levels.

Third Graders in Liene Leiskaine's class were just starting a unit on money and trade so we collaborated in small groups to write questioning poems based on a lesson in High Impact Writing Clinics.  What is money for?  Who invented it?  What will money be in the future. Are coins better than paper? At the end of class we shared our poems aloud. A true test of a successful visit (as far as I'm concerned) is if the kids are writing after we leave.  Guess what?  I received an email the next day from Liene with the following questioning poem that her student had written that night.  

Nature

By: Subin Park

Why is the earth a sphere, not a square?

How do we compare?

Who gets to create the nature and how?

Isn't it cute when a paw meets a paw?

Why is an ocean deep?

Why don't we see green sheep?

Why is the nature so green?

Why is the nature so adventures for me?

How cool is that?  Thank you Subin for extending the lesson and making me imagine paw meeting paw. And why indeed don't we see green sheep?????

Another primary class gave me a send off that made me cry.

In the upper grades we talked about how poems can be starter seeds for longer essays stories and essays.  We wrote "bump in the road" poems, which are really story poems about triumph.

And many many thanks to librarian Leslie Baker and her kindly and professional assistant (whose name I have no chance of spelling correctly) for the hours of work put into making the visit happen.  We move on leaving poems and friends behind.  Thank you, thank you, thank you my friends!

Tripping

Day 2 of my week long personal poetry challenge.

Let me just point out that this is not poetry month.  It is not write a novel in a month month, and it is not even the week taxes are due, which historically has been a great inspiration for me to write poetry instead of getting down to business.  I would never be compliant enough to do such an organized writing assignment. I am a poetry procrastinator. A putter offer. Keeper of a wayward, meandering mind. Truth.

But my cousin Lisa Lofthouse does a 30 day Yoga challenge and my friend Amy VanDerwater did a 360 day poetry challenge, so I started this week thinking surely I could so a weeklong challenge before ADHD lead me astray.

Today I had put on my calendar to do a little cleaning in the attic because committing to entirely cleaning the attic would be roughly akin to me dedicating myself to swim to Canada.  How far is that anyway?  Between Cleveland and the nearest port in Canada? What is the temperature of the water, do you think? Who could follow me in a kayak to post on social media and what if I got encrusted in zebra mussels and ended up failing and looking all embarrassing in the process?

Before I stop everything and go look all that up (which would postpone the attic task for at least another hour), here is a poem I wrote while thinking about cleaning the attic. 

Tripping

Suitcases in the attic,

clouds above my head,

tempting me to daydream

trips

to magic spots

instead of writing in my journal

or picking up my clothes,

lifting me from daily doings

to visit

well . . .

who knows?

Vacation Poem and Reflections

"Granana, do you think we will ever take that vacation again?"

I was tucking 9 year-old Thomas into bed at home after our road trip that had taken him, his two brothers Ben (14) and Danny (10), me and Michael to Williamsburg, 

zip lining in Fayetteville, NC, a tour of the Special Ops museum there, a sterling visit with Aunt Lisa and Uncle Dean Lofthouse, miniature golfing, one day in the Magic Kingdom, 

to the Atlantic for a swim with Lee Ann and Collin Spillane and back home to DC, all in a week.  A whirlwind by any definition.

"No, Thomas. Sweetie, the world doesn't work that way. Even if we went to all the same places next year, it wouldn't be the same.  All we can do is remember it for all that it was and all the fun we had."

VACATION

Vacation

takes me places,

where

I can't ever say

I've never been

before

again.

And when a place is

different, I am

different too.

I can look outside

and in

and still enjoy

the view.

Home is

only one place

here,

I am surrounded by the same,

expected to wear certain brands

and always act my name.

Vacation

takes me places,

there

I shop for the unknown.

Try on something new.

Pocket the change,
and bring it home.

My Global Moment

#MyGlobalMoment from The Ubuntu Center on Vimeo.

“And you call yourself an educated man.”

I was having a buffet breakfast in 2006 with two Afghan teachers at a conference for Middle Eastern educators (TARA) in Bahrain.  The man was young, maybe thirty, the woman, Hamaira, more seasoned, with a married daughter of her own. She had told me of her marriage at the age of 11, how she was in the garden playing with dolls when her father came to fetch her to meet her new husband.  While they had grown close over the years, she was quick to distinguish her marriage from her daughter’s, which, with a slight straightening of the spine, she described as a “love marriage.” Her daughter lived in Atlanta, far removed from her but also from the fighting in Kabul. “It is good,” she said definitively.

Hamaira, who had endured refugee camps and had very little in the way of material belongings insisted on giving me her headscarf when we parted, an act of generosity that I could not refuse, but which hurt to accept.  Years later, it still smells of her perfume.

The young man had a permanent look of concern.  He thought the ideas being exchanged at the conference were all good ones, but, he tipped his head, unfortunately not much use to him as his students had neither desks nor pencils.  These were only a couple items on a long list of what had gone missing in Kabul as the result of war.  No electricity. No clean water. His grandmother had no legs as a result of an American land mine.

“And you are sitting here having breakfast with me?” I asked.

“You did not plant this bomb,” he said matter-of-factly, evidencing a maturity of reasoning not present at home where educated folks had actually debated the merits of calling French fries “freedom fries,” a few years prior -- a phrase still in use at that time (and still in use in some restaurants even today).  Americans know how to hold a grudge and spread it with ubiquitous contempt from border to border.

The conference had sponsored the attendance of these two teachers.  They were both classroom teachers and trainers of teachers in a school system in which many children go to school in 2 hour increments because of their work schedules.  Not the teachers’ work schedules, the kids’.  With so many of the men absent from families after decades of war, basic provisions were a joint effort. As we sat trading stories, the young man said something that made Hamaira flare. “Ah, you say these things, and yet when you ask your wife to bring you a glass of water, you do not look her in the eye or speak her name. You wave your hand and say, water.  And you call yourself an educated man,” she sniffed.

“What do you expect?” The young man replied with a shrug. “I live in my father’s house.”

Changing the hearts and minds of people with such deep traditions suddenly looked to me to be a foolish, misguided and painfully arrogant notion, dreamy, magical fiction, transient as freedom fries.

To some extent, we all live in our father’s house.  How we find common ground is never along path carved out by one party.

Do you have a Global Moment?  Post it here and read others: http://theubuntucenter.org/moment/

Dostyk American International School, Atyrau, Kazakhstan

“What were you doing in Kazakhstan?’ asks the customs agent in Newark.

“How much time do you have?” I want to answer, but these folks get paid to not know how to take a joke, so I just say, “Visiting.”

He stares me down. 

“Visiting a school.”

“Do you speak Russian?”

“No.” Neither do all Kazakhs, I’m thinking.  They have their own language.  But I don’t say that part.  It was a long trip; I don’t want to add any interrogation rooms to the legs of my journey.  “English language,” I say.

“What are you bringing back?”

The true answer involves memories, smiles, stunning lines of poetry, new friendships, hugs from old friends, new vistas, tacos, home made beer, a muddy market, laughter, and a slight head cold.  But this guy doesn’t want all that, so I just say, “a hat and some alpaca socks from Frankfurt.”

Thump.  Thump.  He stamps my passport and hands it across the counter.

“Welcome back.”

How do you sum up a weeklong trip to the other side of the planet in a single sentence?  Memories are crammed into the data bank like an over stuffed suitcase, hard to contain even if you sit on it.

My best attempt would be, “Spots of brilliance against an otherwise grey landscape.”  Favorite line came out of Cheryl Fullerton's pre-school class where one student said that "snow is water than looks like sugar."  Most laughable line came from the K-1 class where one writer was searching a word and pointed to my eye for me to help her.  "She's not being rude," explained her writing partner, "she just doesn't know the word."  The word was wrinkled.  

Salinger and I spent a week working with the 81 students at all grade levels at Doystk American International School in Atryau.  The skies may have been grey most days, but the kids were brilliant.  Writing poetry can be risky business, but the kids just jumped right in.  This tells me that they are in an atmosphere where they feel safe.

The kids had illustrated some of our poems before we arrived and are active writers, so were open to trying new approaches as they wrote and revised their way to a culminating performance for classmates and parents.

The first couple of days, I taught in borrowed clothes as our bags got hung up in Moscow and flights to Atyau only happen every two-three days.  

Luckily, they arrived before the evening reading we did for parents.  Lots of good snacks and warmth with the ever gusty winds whipping outside.  Once in a while it's good to share poems just for the sake of the words.  Not teaching, just sharing.  

This was the first time we could leave behind a copy of our new book with projectable lessons, High Impact Writing Clinics, with teachers for follow-up, which was exciting.  We never go into a school thinking we know the needs of the students better than their teachers.  What we hope is that we can add a few more lessons for teachers to draw upon as they help kids find their voices through writing.  Sometimes it just helps to have someone back up what the teachers have been saying all year -- draft, revise, be specific, use comparisons.  The normal stuff made more than normal if kids hear it from more than one place.

Atyrau, Kazakhstan is not a well known tourist destination.  But we had fun touring, one day taking a 5 mile walk.  This picture was taking on the bridge where you can cross from Asia to Europe and back again.  The hat is on loan from Konna, the face mask a souvenir of Vietnam.  

Thanks to Principal Raul Hinojosa and his favorite librarian, wife Patsy for the invitation.  Thanks to Konna and Peter Parker and their therapy husky Toshe for opening their home to us.  Special thanks to the parents who made us feel welcome with spectacular meals and conversation. 

To Brent, Cheryl, Lauren and Maxim Fullerton, how great to see you again! Thank you so much for recommending us.

As Spine Straightening as a Rooster Crow

Thoughtlessly this morning I brushed my teeth with the tap water. I cooked oatmeal over a steady natural gas flame in a heated home and then poured it over frozen blueberries.  When I saw the clock blinking on the stove, I realized we must have had a power outage in the middle of the night, but a quick time check with my cell phone told me that it was for less than a minute.  I stood in my bathrobe and slippers, clothes made in another part of the world just so I have something to lounge around in, and my mind flashes to…mothers bathing their children in littered streams in Bali, bundled up students on benches in an unheated immigrant school in wintery Shanghai, the 14 hours power outages that are common in Zimbabwe, the garment workers in Dhaka, the women selling small bags of grain that they have beaten into flourly submission beside the road in Ghana for whom lounging about is something you save for after you’re dead.  I searched my mind for images of people I saw in Africa who had shared as many mornings with the world as I and came up empty.

What’s it like to travel?  It makes rinsing out the oatmeal pan an act of wonder.

Cape Coast, Ghana

“Do you really want to do this?” Michael asks.  He knows that I hang on to images.  The Hanoi Hilton.  Treblinka.  Hiroshima wiped me out for a week.  I couldn’t eat, close my eyes. Man's inhumanity quite literally makes me sick.

“Yes.” 

So, we take a cab to one of the castles that housed dungeons that kept male, female and children captive, 200 to a room the size of your average subway (only without the windows, the flush toilets, or the fresh veggies), for periods of a few days to 3 months until the imprisoned Africans passed down unlit stone passageways to The Door of No Return and onto small boats similar to the fishing boats still in use, to ships that would take them through the middle passage to North and South America. It is the same one that the Obamas visited when in Ghana.

“Africans were stronger,” our guide explains.  “They were more able to survive harsh working conditions on the plantations rather then simply enslaving the indigenous peoples.”

I slip and almost fall as we descend into the men’s dungeon.  The floors are slippery, a muddy looking covering over the cobblestone floors as thick as asphalt.  This, she explains, is the caked residual of blood, vomit and feces from the nineteenth century.  I feel nauseous and disoriented by the darkness as she switches off the light for less than a minute. 

In this picture, a young Dane contemplates the magnitude of what we are experiencing and the guilt that all of European descent must bear.

Directly above the cries from the dungeons stood (stands) canons pointed out at sea and a church, where the overseers prayed for peace and redemption.  A trap door is in the entryway so worshipers could look down and check on the status of the imprisoned before taking communion. Redemption indeed.  Were the overseers clinging to guns and religion on this rock thinking they were worshiping on some high ground?  I stand there trying to pull logical thoughts together in the blasting wind. Later she takes us down to visit The Door of No Return, which she unlatches and swings open.  Our little tour group steps out into the blinding sun to imagine what it might have felt like for the departing prisoners of slavery.

Our guide is a soft-spoken volunteer who tells us about the five graves in the open yard of the castle.  These were not for slaves that succumbed to the horrors, those folks were either buried in a mass grave or thrown to the sharks.  Instead, this is the final resting place for four white guys who mostly succumbed to malaria along side the body of one woman.  She was the wife of the head overseer, who arrived at Cape Coast only to find out her honorable husband was getting it on with a local.  There are three theories why she died. 1. She found out her husband had been unfaithful and did herself in.  2. She too succumbed to malaria.  3. Her husband's mistress poisoned her.  “Which do you think?” the guide asks me.

“Murder.” I reply.  Our kindly guide does not agree, She thinks malaria or maybe the woman died by her own hand. 

Later we have a few minutes to ourselves.  She is slight, young, leading our tour with compassion and exquisite detail. A striking beauty with her braids piled high on the back of her head.  She is well educated, her English impeccable.

“I would think the locals would have wanted to kill all the Europeans, they were so wretched to them,” I speculate.  She has already told us how some greedy chieftains had been complicit, trading their enemies and even members of their own tribes for payments by the European slavers.  She patiently reminds me that the Europeans and their clients in the Americas were not acting alone.

“I don’t care,” I say.  “I would have blamed the Europeans and wanted to kill them all.” 

She reaches up to gently take a blond strand of windblown hair that has attached itself to my angry lip and tries to tuck it behind my ear.  She speaks to me of the power of forgiveness.  She says that it was the Europeans who brought Christianity to Africa and for that Ghanaians must always be grateful for that gift.

I have always thought the missionary movement in Africa to be an epic case of presumptive arrogance, but I try and see it from her side, especially since her side comes from such a loving place.

Tonight as I write this I am still trying to digest all that we saw there: the overseer’s bowed bedroom with 14 windows to catch the cross breezes from all directions, the special dungeon with no windows for rebel men who were locked up and usually suffocated within two days, to the special dungeon for women who would not submit themselves to the sexual whims of the guards.  They didn’t suffocate those women, just starved them and kept them cooped up for years as a model lesson for incoming females.  I am digesting, but I am not so sick as I might have been.  I keep thinking of the deep walnut colored eyes of that young woman speaking to me about how we need forgiveness in our hearts in order to progress.

“We must forgive others of course.  But it is just as important to forgive ourselves.  This is how we go forward.”

This picture is from the castle looking north, bare shore similar to what the departing slaves might have seen back then.  It is not a friendly port, but an uneven shoreline with aggressive waves and a vicious undertow.   

The next picture is taken looking out The Door of No Return to the south, onto today's vibrant community of fishermen, tangles of nets and waiting boats.  In order to get the boats back into shore, men must pull them from the shore, tug-of-rope style.  

We used this photo in our writing at the AISA conference and one teacher observed that these people are all living on the edge, trying to subsist on what they pull from an increasingly debilitated ocean.  When I asked stupid question number 1,067, "what is the unemployment rate here in Ghana?" a teacher's response was, "it depends on what you consider employment."  Are these people employed?  If you take coconuts from trees and try to sell them on the side of the road in order to buy a day's meal, is that a job?  This is the way many or most eke out a living in Ghana.  I remember how over lunch our red eyed cab driver told us that his father is a fisherman and how he had been up all the night before helping him.  How his mother pounds grain and sells it beside the road.  How he took my left overs from lunch home in a bag.

It takes a few days to notice that as you walk down the street, through the markets, you see very very few old people.  For the most part, they don't exist here.  

I will remember the sights, the heat, and the kindness and good humor of the people of Ghana. We were made to feel very welcome. I will remember the close quarters of those dungeons and our guide's hand brushing my cheek and her observation that forgiveness is always a component of progress.

Thank you to Lincoln Community School and particularly Rhona Polonsky for helping us plan this side trip.