Visualisation

A new batch of RED (Rural Education Development) volunteers have arrived in Zambia, and like me, they are spending 11 weeks training before being posted to their site. Peace Corps has asked me to help with one of the weeks of their training. There were a number of standard topics that I helped facilitate, but the topic I felt most neglected and most important was the understanding and intertwining of two different cultures. So, I created a little visualization to help remind us that we are not dealing with problems, we are dealing with people, different people, different people with a different past, and the more we understand the past, ours and theirs, the better we can work together.

A visualisation...

Boom. You're born. You're cold. You're hungry. The lights are bright. You're lucky, you're alive, but your mother is not. You're held by your grandmother. Your father is at the mines working. Your grandmother holds you. You cry, but there is no breast to comfort you. The unexpected change of events have left your aunts scurrying for food to give a newborn. Your grandmother holds you. Yesteryear's way, last generation's lessons will be instilled upon you. Your older brothers and older sisters will help carry you. You can walk now, and you're old enough to begin Grade 1 at your school. It's a long walk, but you're excited, you get to escape the monotony of your daily chores and see exactly what your older siblings sometimes tend to. You make the long walk. You arrive. You are told to sweep. The school must look proper. You must have an appropriate environment to learn in before the learning takes place. You come, you clean, you mainly play with your friends. You chase one another around a tree. A week goes by and your teacher arrives. You pile in the classroom, but you get stuck in the back of the line so you sit on the floor because the desks are full. Class begins at 0800 hours, but you don't know that. You just enter the classroom when the teacher tells you. You don't know that you were supposed to begin an hour ago, nonetheless care. Things begin when people arrive, more so the teacher. Your class begins with a song, one you already know because you remember your siblings singing it in the evenings as they cooked you dinner. You then begin repeating sounds as your teacher points to different shaped lines on a chalk board. Next you begin to group different objects together and the count them. It is fairly easy except when there are many objects to count. The class then was over and it was back to running around the tree before returning home to change out of your school clothes and into clothes that were and could become dirty. Evening comes and goes and a new day falls upon you. It's time to pick the maize from the field your family has been working in. You are not strong enough to use the hoe, but have no problem plucking the maize from the stalk. You had a poor harvest last year. You have been eating only dinner the last month or so as you have been waiting for this year's harvest to mature. So you pick, curious as to how long this year's crop will last. Regardless, you pick, accepting the fate of the Gods, the sun, the rain. You return to school some days later. No one told you to go, no one told you not to. There is no more maize to pick, so you return to school. Your teacher is out. Another teacher writes an assignment on the board to occupy your time. You don't understand what is written, but write it in your book as you see it written on the chalk board. This again happens the next day and the following day after. Your teacher arrives again. You sing songs, you count, you try to read but the concept has not made sense to you yet. You want it to, but find yourself soon chasing your friends around the tree again. Later that evening, you begin to sweat uncontrollably and become very cold even though there is no chill in the air. You begin shivering uncontrollably and your head, neck, and back ache and stiffen like a board. You lay still for a couple days, mustering up whatever energy you have left to get you to and from the hole in the ground you use for a toilet. There is luckily medicine at the clinic, so your symptoms only last two or three days, but, as such is the life of a mosquito, the illness will be back at least another half a dozen times that year. You recover, you head back to school. You sing some more songs, and then the term ends. Life like this goes on for a few more years. With each year passing, your responsibilities at home grow more and more. But if you forget to bath or fetch water, you no longer will cry when your sisters hit you with a switch. Therefore, they have given up on using a switch. They may yell at you, but you have developed an outer shell that protects you from their words. Then one day you wake up and notice there is blood on your Grandmother's pillow. You noticed a bit of a cough from her a few weeks ago, but neither of you acknowledge it's there. Now you ask her but she does not reply. The cough develops and soon you have to stay home from school to help take care of her, though there's not much you can do. It is more of a formality that her ailment and well being are more important than the knowledge that a teacher could impart on you. Months go by and the condition persists. No medicine at the clinic can remotely relieve the cough. A hospital is out of the question. Your Grandmother is elderly and life is taking its course. Then one day your Grandmother does not wake. There is a funeral. You, your brothers, and your sisters cry uncontrollably as neighbors sing outside your home, trying to drown the cries into song, trying to sway your minds elsewhere where your grandmother no longer is. It has been decided that you and your siblings will go to live with your uncle on the other side of Zambia. You pack your things, get on a bus, and head away from your village for the first time. From the bus window, you end up seeing things you heard about but never really understood. You come upon a city where you can count more cars parked than you had seen in your entire lifetime. You see buildings that could house your entire village. You see water coming out of boreholes that require no pumping. You see lights, radios, and televisions on, but see no car battery that they are connected to. You see people eating food, but no fire from where it must have been cooked. You're very confused, very excited, very scared. You are calmed once you leave the city and find yourself again amongst recognizable houses made of the surroundings they sit in. You eventually arrive at the house where your uncle lives, and you and your siblings pile your things in one bed room along with your cousins things. Your uncle is a teacher, so this house has more than one room, and a roof made of metal. It is the middle of the school term so you find yourself at school the next day wearing a uniform with the wrong colors. You feel out of place without a tree to chase your friends around. You want to go home but your cousins are in school too so home would be just as lonely. Time passes and you and your cousins become more used to each other. They become friends. They become your smart friends. You and one cousin are both in grade five together, but you notice that he is able to read, write, add, and even multiply with ease. This has an unsettling effect on you and you soon notice that this knowledge your cousin has is a common theme amongst all the children of the teachers at your school. You feel out of place living where you are under a metal roof and not being able to answer questions in the classroom. You have no option but to try harder. You find yourself looking for books that you can understand in the grade two classroom long after the classroom is empty from class. You find yourself adding and subtracting problems that you write for yourself. You want to belong, you want to fit in, so you study. Two years pass and after much anxiety, you get your grade 7 exam results back and soon find yourself sitting in an eighth grade classroom. Your uncle is the grade eight and nine science teacher so it would be unheard of even so much as disrespectful for you not to pass ninth grade, which you do in your first try of taking the exams. Your cousin passes too, and since your uncle has a salary, he has no option to but to send the two of you to high school together. There, away from family, the two of you rely on one another for support. You study together, eat together, work together. Your combined force allow you to excel in school and the next thing you know you both have a grade 12 degree. You head back to to your cousin's and uncle's house where you quickly settle back into village life. You work in your uncle's fields during the day and hang with your friends at the market in the evening. This goes on for a few years. It is the way of life, the way things happen. You don't think twice about what the next day will bring. You are comfortable, amongst friends and familiarity. You have your eye on a significant other and of course marriage crosses your mind. You're ready for your own house and to move out of your uncle's shadow. Then one day your uncle comes to you and says the Ministry of Education is offering scholarships and because you're an orphan you can qualify to go to teacher's school. You don't mind your way of life, but your uncle gives you no option but to take the scholarship. You, the significant other, and your cousin must part ways. Your friends, family, and village all remain while you go away to become a teacher. And that you become.