life lessons

Education has been forced on me for my entire life.  I had no choice.  I had to go to school.  I had to go to college.

My grades were highly monitored by my mother.  Above average was my only option. Anything less meant some type of consequence/loss of privilege/grounding.

It was serious business.  I'm thankful that it was.

Education opened hundreds of doors for me.  I know where I am and I know where I could be.  I'm thankful.

Some parts of my education were a struggle.  Some things don't come naturally to me. I have to work really hard.  

Other parts feel like they were created for my brain and I excel without trying.

Regardless of my own experiences, I still look back and see a broken system.  In both instances, the whole framework is dysfunctional. From the beginning to the end, it always has been.

Teaching within the brokenness reaffirms this belief. Aspects of teaching are a game.  You know how to make a pretty bulletin board.  You keep data.  You play the cards.  You jump through hoops.  I suppose it's like any other bureaucracy, which I suppose is the problem. 

I thought about this the most when I was in my graduate program. I was studying all that I loved and held so dearly to my heart.  The books I was reading for homework were books I had already read for pleasure.  I looked forward to weeklong residencies where I sat with like-minded people and talked about the beautiful and the ugly. I was going across the world to teach art in the poorest, most vulnerable communities.  It was a dream.  A dream come true.  

And yet, even in the midst of it all,  I was more focused on my assignments and my rubrics than I was on the moment I was living in.

Did I site every source in APA?  How many points will I be docked?  

Did I comment on three individual posts throughout the week?  I think I only did two.  I wonder if I can make it up somewhere.  

Did I include every component of my teach back assignment?  I don't remember all of them.  I'm sure I had a pneumonic device so I wouldn't forget.

Did my lesson meet all of the criteria within the given timeframe?  I didn't time it before I sent it in.

It was hard to think about much else.

I like getting good grades.  I like getting good grades at nearly any expense.  My childhood set a solid foundation for the rest of my life.  

I  completed my assignments.  I learned my lessons.  I  earned my grades.  I graduated.

And now I'm here.  I'm in Kenya as a volunteer with the very same program that took me to of the rest of the world as a student.

The framework is the same.  The projects are the same.  The lessons are the same.

Everything is the same.

Everything but me.

I'm not thinking about the details of my work in order to get the highest grade.  I'm thinking about the details of my work in order to give the highest level of myself.

Did I remember to include metaphor?  I need to rethink that.  I've missed it and it's important. 

Why are these kids so quiet?  I wonder how I can get them to feel freedom to express themselves.  

Will the work that I've done here be sustainable after we leave?  What can we do to put systems in place so that the people here stand on their own when we are gone?  What would that look like?

It's a completely different me.

I'll never stop being the curious, question-asking, full-of-wonder, wide-eyed child that lives within me. 

I'm forever a student, but something about being an actual student makes me miss the lesson.  

I don't know if it's me or if it's the system, but it's reality.

I'm thankful for my education.  I'm thankful for my journey.  I'm thankful that I'm right here, right now.

No longer in class, forever learning.

Buying empowerment

I had not been in the orphanage more than two hours before someone was asking me to finance/support/fund any given "special project" that was being proposed.  Since those first two hours I have been invited into about nine different meetings where I was made aware of needs and then stared at blankly.

I've only been asked outright a few times.  Most often it happens much more passively.

"Yes.  So, here we are in the science lab.  As you can see, we have no supplies.  Without supplies, our students cannot take their tests."  

All eyes turn to me.  Long silences ensue.  

I have no inclination to fill the silence or to meet the need.

Perhaps, at one point in my life, I would have opened my checkbook and said, "how much do you need?"

Not now.  Not anymore.

It's not that I've become stingy as I've matured.  I don't mean that at all.  I have, however, become educated on the ethics of helping people, charity, empowerment, and entitlement.

I thank my grad school program.  so should the people I've been working with, although they probably see my lack of financial contribution as a failed mission.  So should any westerners that choose to come here after I leave.  They owe me a lot. 

In better understanding the world, the history of the world, and humanity, I have better understood the effect of hand outs on communities.  When people come to communities and fix problems they perpetuate the notions that the people within the community are unable to meet their own needs.  The people within the community internalize this process, believing that outsiders with money must come to solve their problems.  

It makes things ugly.  

Today i asked my host family about the wealth of individual nations in Africa.  I want to know who is considered wealthy and who is considered poor.  

Apparently, South Africa is doing quite well while Zimbabwe couldn't be doing worse.  Knowing the economic status of these countries wasn't enough for me.  I wanted to know why and how they held their respective ranks, all through the eyes of this African family.  

There was one and only one answer for both countries; outside investors.

South Africa had outside investors.  Zimbabwe banned outside investors.

Wealth comes from the outside.  Poverty comes from the inside.

The roots of the ideology run deep.  So deep, in fact, that I can't make it a day without being told that I am the answer to their very literal prayers.

I'm not, though.  I'm not at all.  

I want to tell them about my philosophy of helping people and worldview and framework of empowerment.  I want to tell them that I'm not going to buy them things or pay their bills or fix their problems.  I want to tell them that I will leave in less than a month and they will still be here with the same reality they have always had.  I can't change it. I can only change what they believe about it, about themselves.

So I say nothing and let the awkwardness bathe us. 

As difficult as it is to let the silence fill the air, not offering any financial solutions to the problems proposed, it is far more difficult to mend a dependent society that doesn't believe in itself.  

I could make the awkward go away with a trip to the ATM.  I can't think of a more selfish use of my money.

I will remain a failed mission for these people, offering only to educate and serve.  

I will remain true to what I believe to be in the best interest of community.  

I will believe in this community.  

This is life

July 21, 2014

My day begins 

With the kickstart of a motorbike

In a skirt to my ankles

I ride

The roads

Orange as New York October leaves 

Filled with holes

I ride 

The same route

Everyday

Takes us to school

The same fields line the way

Workers till the land

By hand

As I pass by

I watch the soil 

Husk covered to red to brown

As the days pass by

Workers plant seeds

Lines of food

For the next harvest

I watch

Each new day

With the dawn of the morning

Life bursts from dirt 

before my eyes

Green sprouts

Sprout forth

Towards the sun

Calling me to do the same

Standing taller

Each new day

Unaware of the wisdom they hold within

They follow their instinct 

Shouting all that is true 

To whomever will listen

Instinct

Brings the broken, dead, opened seed

To the light

Appealing to my own instinct 

Calling me to do the same

My breath leaves my lungs

In a gasp

As if I should be surprised

This day

Yesterday or tomorrow

That such beauty comes from the ground

I am never prepared 

For the wonder

The wind

Whispers to me

Turning my head to either side

"Look.  Listen. This is Life."

The same whisper

That I hear

In my 5th floor apartment

When my plants bloom

In the spring

When the mulberries 

Paint the concrete 

As I walk

To school

"Look.  Listen. This is life"

I do

Each new day

As though I never have before

This land

Deemed developing

By these people

By the world

Calls out to me

"Look.  Listen.  This is Life.

Tell me now that I am developing

Tell me?  Could you make sugar cane grow?"

These women

Feed their babies

In the night

Rolling over and lifting an arm

The same babies 

Tied to their backs

All the day long

As they do 

All that they do

Unaware of the wisdom they hold within

These people

Take care of one another

Through the years

The threads of their lives

Forming one cloth

The water is dirty

The roads are unpaved

There is injustice

Yes

But the maize 

reaches higher every morning

Singing its song

Of life

I look

I listen

Everywhere

This is life

Puzzling educations

July 19, 2014

As a public educator, I spend a great deal of time thinking about all that is wrong with public education.  

I taught in one of the worst middle schools in New York City for four years.  I am starting my fifth year in one of the best.  They are less than fifteen blocks away from one another. They are couldn't be further apart.  I've analyzed this dichotomy every day for the past four years. 

I have an answer; leadership.  

Same community, same population, same district, same students, same families, same everything.  Different leadership.

I grew up in a small town in the Midwest and went to the local school.  Many of the schools in neighboring communities were also small town schools.  Many of the schools were very similar. We had everything we wanted, more than we needed, at least in hindsight.  Our graduation rates were nearly 100%. We had athletic programs, arts education, drama productions, computer labs.  We had everything that I dream for my students now.  I always wonder what the determined of the successes of those schools.

I have an answer; resources.  We lacked for nothing. 

I've been in public education in five different countries during my travels. I've seen numerous similarities in each country.  I can put the pieces together; lack of resources, inadequate spaces, respect for authority, treatment of women, economic structures within the society, and the value on education.  

I put all of these pieces together and find myself staring at poverty.

For so many of the world's problems, I point the finger towards poverty. 

It's hard to be a functional society on a dysfunctional base.

Yet, here I sit, on this red soil, in the poorest place I have ever been, and I see the strongest educational system I have ever come across.  It's fascinating. 

I've been teaching kids that are using their only writing instrument, the last tenth of their pencil, to take as many notes as quickly as they can. They have no shoes.  Their clothing is falling off of their frames, unraveling at every stitch.  

The room is silent.  The only sounds come from them writing on their papers.  When I speak to make an announcement, they all turn to look at me.  Every single one.  I don't know what to do with myself.  

I've never experienced this before.  Ever.

It's fascinating.  

The teachers at this orphanage are volunteers.  They work here for free, mostly because they cannot find employment elsewhere.  The economy is so bad that they choose to live in an orphanage so that they have something to do with their days until they become gainfully employed.

I say that I'm offering training for teachers and the word spreads to neighboring schools.  Women walk for miles, with their newborn babies strapped to their backs, every single day to learn how to teach.

Last week, one of the children of my host family was sent home because she arrived back to school late from the semester break.  Her father had to take me to the orphanage and then drop her off at school.  We ride by motorbikes here and traveling takes time. She arrived late and was sent home, a six mile walk.  Her father took her to school the next day and was required to speak with the principal about her lateness the previous day.

I've never experienced this before.  Ever.

In Kenya, education is free through the eighth-grade.  High schools are boarding schools that require monthly fees.  If you don't pay, you don't go to school.  If you don't go to school, you literally don't have a hope for your future. 

It's school or it's nothing.  Education is the sole foundation of this country.

It's poorer than I've ever seen.  It's educational system is stronger than I've ever seen.

I don't mean in terms of content, because I haven't seen enough to know.  But in terms of respect, value, and necessity, I've never seen better.

I don't understand it.  I can't put these pieces together. They don't fit.

I have no answers, only infinite questions. 

What would happen if children in the United States were required to contribute to their educational journey?

What if more responsibility was put on families to answer for their children?

What if children believed that education was the sole hope for their future?

What if communities surrounded families, education, and children?

All of these questions would, in some way, solve and complicate all of our problems.  

I can't imagine all of the consequences of every proposed solution.  No one can.  That's why we are where we are today.  

No one dreamed that their decisions would lead us where we are. 

No one imagined that standardized tests, meant to ensure a quality education for every child, would be used against teachers and keep kids awake at night.

No one fathomed that providing a free education for all students would foster a sense of entitlement for generations to come.

No one conceived that putting all children with special needs in one classroom would isolate, label, and ostracize them.  

I'm sure these people had the best intentions.

I'm sure I do as well.  That's why I'm glad I don't have to make decisions.  I have no power.  I only have the broken system and my own two hands.  I get to make it work with what I've been given.  Here, in Africa.  At home, in New York City.  

I've seen the best systems.  I've seen the worst.  

I have to make it work. 

Whether with the stub of a pencil, gallons of paint, hungry kids, whole communities, or broken families.  

I have no answers.  The more I see, the more I know this to be true.

I'll spend my life asking questions.   

I'll spend my life making it work.

It takes a village

July 17, 2014

Sometimes I look at people across the subway train, across the street, or across the room and I think of how different they are from me.  I think that they act differently, speak differently, and think differently. 

Sometimes it feels like we are worlds apart from one another.

But really, we have far more in common than not.

Our basic needs are the same. 

Physically, emotionally, socially, mentally, and spiritually, we need the same things.

Our different life experiences alter how we express these needs.  Most of the time we express them in some sort of muddied translation of what our heart truly wants.

When it comes down to it, we're really insecure creatures that spend a majority of time protecting our emotions from one another.

I think, though, that one of the greatest needs that I believe binds every human together, is the need to be known and loved.  I think we all want to be a part of a family.  

Some communities take care of this need within their social fabric.  

I watched a documentary on this.  It was called, "the human tribe" and it was about the difference between big cities and tribal villages.  

In tribal villages, every person is known.  Every time you pass on the street you greet the other person.  You greet every single person.  All of them.  Because they are real people that you know and love and take responsibility for.

In cities, people become like trees in a forest.  You do not see them as you pass.  They are obstacles in your way.  If one of the trees falls in your path, you need only to walk over it towards your destination.  

From my life in the city and my time in different villages, I have witnessed both of these to be extremely accurate descriptions of both walks of life.

Living in this very literal tribe in Africa has deepened this belief in me.  While this tribe is quite large, the size of an entire county, and not every single person is known by name, there is still a proper way to greet one another. There is still a responsibility for the other.  No one would dare to pass someone in need without stopping to help. Everyone is their brother's keeper.

I think we all want that, in our heart of hearts.

The family that i am staying with is quite large.  There are eleven children running around this hut at any given moment.  They have no electricity, let alone an electronic device.  They have to toys, with the exception to the tiny rock-like fruits they use for a soccer ball and a spare tire.  They wake up in the morning and gather corn for breakfast.  They help their mother with daily chores.  They laugh and they play with a sense that they understand true joy.  I've never seen them argue with their parents.  I've never heard them complain.  They don't fight with one another.  It's like an alternate universe. 

I think of my students and how some of them are so truly angry with no outlet for expression. Their phones are their connection to community.  There are students that live with constant depression, rarely smiling over the course of many years.

I can't help but imagine that their hearts long for this type of a family life.  I think that they want relationships with their parents, responsibility for the betterment of their community, high expectations for themselves and others, and opportunities to celebrate in daily life.

It seems like a perfect life.

Don't hear me wrong.  This place is full of injustice and inequality. 

The building blocks for community, especially the kind so lacking in the rest of the world, are foundational here.  

Here's the thing, though.  My heart beats for the city. I come alive with the sound of a bustling street. I live for the rush of people living their daily lives in close proximity.  Even now, when I hear that we are going to the market, my eyes have a new light in them.  

I. love. cities.

But my heart longs for the connectedness of the village.  It's a paradox.  It's a struggle. 

I live to juxtapose these two lives.  I live for intentional community on an island of 8 million people.  

I will always need the responsibility for my neighbor and I will always need the life of the city.

A part of me will always live between these two worlds.  One part wishing for the other, trying to bridge the two.  

I dream of a village of people in the middle of city, living and loving and laughing, crying mourning and serving, with an open invitation for others to join, all for the good of the city.

Call me an idealist.  It wouldn't be the first. It won't be the last time.

Sketching identities

July 12, 2014

When I was in grad school I had to make a list of my non-negotiables. I had to decide what I was unwilling to give up in any certain circumstance. Specifically, in going abroad, I was supposed to decide the things that I wouldn't be willing to live with or to live without.  Electricity, personal safety, adequate sleep, clean water, and clean clothing were of the most common answers in the class. While adequate sleep is high on my list, none of those responses are my first priority.

My main concern, whether at home, on a Caribbean island, in the desert, in the mountains, or in a hut in Africa?  my sketchbook and a good pen.  

It's a need. A real need. 

I have to have it. 

I know.  It sounds insane. I know it does.

But, to me, it's my greatest material possession in this world.

It's my identity. 

I fill my sketchbook, over a period of years, with all of the good and the true and the beautiful in my life.  

I write when people that I love say funny things.  

Like the time when stelly said, "it's not fun to poop your pants."

Like the time when joy said, "I was trained to fall asleep in any church.  This church."

I write when people that I love say live-giving things.  

Like years and years of listening to Jon Tyson.

Like when I woke up to my niece staring directly into my eyes so she could say, "before I go to school I just want you to know, you really mean a lot to me."

I draw my life in the pages. 

If you, your words, or some remembrance of are in my sketchbook, it is because I love you.

I can skim through the pages and remember, in an instant, where I was, what season I was in in my life, what I was doing at the time, and what I was feeling at the time.

It's like a portal to the past parts of me.  It can take me anywhere I ever was.  It reminds me of all that I never want to forget.  About the world. About me. 

It gives me an escape when I feel trapped in any moment. I can open it, flip through the pages, or draw something new. I can leave the moment and go anywhere else that I dream to go. 

I take it everywhere. Always. 

I have every sketchbook from the time I was in the seventh-grade. All of them. They are the fabric of my days, tied together with a literal binding. 

I say all of that to set the stage for my greater thought. 

I use my sketchbook, especially when I'm in a new land, to find common ground. When I pull it out and start drawing, I stop being the foreigner and start being another human. 

People will gather around me, ask to see the drawings.   When they open the book they open the door for conversations.

Without fail. 

Art ties everyone together. 

On this trip, specifically, I was skimming though the pages with several new friends and came across the words of my professor, Dr. Corbitt. 

He's all over my sketchbook.

He used to live in Kenya.  He's the reason that I am where I am, literally and figuratively, for infinite reasons. 

He's an important man in my life. His words hold weight in my heart. 

These words, these ones I ran across the other day, were the closing words to a story he told our class in grad school.  

He said, "we have been given names and we live up to the names we have been given. But, we have the power to change our names."

I wrote those words in my sketchbook.  I think about them often. 

I think about the names that I was given as a child, as a teenager, as an adult.

Some gave life to my soul.  Some still make my stomach turn. 

I think about the names in this community.  Names for women.  Names for children. Names for orphans.  Names for impoverished. 

I wonder who will tell them that they have the power to change what they've been called.

Whether beautiful or ugly, we live up to what others think of us.  

We all do. 

But we also choose who we are going to be, we choose who we surround ourselves with, we choose the names that we allow others to speak into our lives.

I've been given my names. I've lived up to them. I have the power to change them.  

Same with you. 

I've been privileged enough to have people in my life that empower me to change my names.  

It's beautiful to be able to remember those words, especially when I'm half a world away from home.

It's important to remember that I have a responsibility to speak those words to this community.

It's why my sketchbook is a non-negotiable. 

Swallowing the sun

July 8, 2014

Let me tell you something.  

Kenya is the scariest place that I have ever been. 

I live in New York City. 

I grew up in the Midwest, which is a close second. 

I've taught in the deepest depths of the bateyes in the Dominican Republic. 

I've worked in the mountains with the indigenous people of Colombia. 

I camped with the Bedouins for a summer.  

Nothing compares to this. 

Nothing.

It's not the lack of power in the home where I am staying. 

It's not the lack of clean water as far as the eye can see. 

It's not the Mosquitos, which whisper threats of malaria with every buzz past my ear.

It's not the latrine just outside my door, nothing more than a hole in the ground. 

It's not the threat of wild animals in the night, the pride of Africa. 

It's most certainly not the people. They are among the nicest, most hospitable, gentle, peaceful, and loving that I have met in my journeys.

The reason that Kenya is terrifying to me has to do with the extreme level of love that I have felt in being here.  

It's too much.

It's way, way too much. 

I arrived in kisumu on Friday morning and drove two hours to the orphanage.  Upon arrival at the orphanage all 180 children and 20 staff members waited for me at the gate. They lined each side of the street.  They sang.  They danced.  

My driver, the bishop of this tribe, looked at me, told me I was to look to my left and wave, and then he rolled my window down to a parade of people that I imagine Bono and Angelina Jolie see on a daily basis.

I exited the car, greeted each child, danced, sang, and smiled until my face hurt.

We proceeded to meet as a staff, more of the same.

We went to every classroom, more of the same. 

And everywhere I've gone ever since, more of the same. 

Women are greeting me with hugs and telling me that they love me.

Men are telling me that I am quite literally the answer to their prayers. 

I catch children are staring at me when i am not looking.  They must think I'm some sort of alien from another planet.

Everyone is serving my every need as though I dropped from heaven.

It's completely disarming. 

It's like swallowing the sun.

I can't take it.

I wanted to stop the car on that first day.

I want to stop every person in mid-sentence. 

I want to tell them, "listen. I came here to serve you.  I came here to learn from you. I came here to wash your feet.  I'm not the answer to your prayers.  You are the answer to mine.  Stop.  Stop all of this madness."

I want to tell them, "lower your expectations.  I'm mediocre at almost everything that I do.  You're falsely putting your hopes in me.  Stop. Stop all of this madness."

It's scary.

But it's the kind of scary that pulls me into the best version of myself.  It makes me want to be the person that they believe I am.  It makes me want to spend hours upon hours planning lessons to train the teachers, planning art projects for the children.

I don't want to disappoint them. I don't want to let them down. 

It's a heavy burden. 

It's like swallowing the sun. 

I can't take it. 

I didn't come here to be a hero. I'm not oprah. 

I came here to teach people that they their own heroes. Already. 

They have the power. 

I came to work with them, to bring that out. 

If I could answer their prayers, if I could dig the wells, if I could build the schools, I would be failing them.  What would happen if I leave?

I didn't come for that. I'm not that person. 

I can't swallow the sun.

But.

I will give my all while I am here. I will love fearlessly.  I will serve unconditionally.  I will pour myself into teaching.  I will hold up a mirror and expose inner strength.

I will help to build capacity.  I will help to empower.

My prayer is that that will be enough.