New Uses for Chalk

It seemed that some very strange things happened to me after a bout of malaria subsided. Maybe it was just that I was off my guard, worn out. In any case, I remember these three occasions very clearly, despite the fact I was at less than 100%at the time. I can already tell that what I am about to recount won't sound as strange or odd as they struck me then, but I will press on....
I was just back in the classroom for a few hours after my first experience with the disease. It was about 100 degrees with 75% humidity, and I was teaching fifty children in a small, poorly ventilated classroom. I was sweating, weak, but determined to finish the lesson. I hadn't prepared the lesson properly, so I was unaware of what was coming. When we were practicing dialogue, there was a conversation between father and son over allowance. The son asked for a large sum (about fifty dollars) and the father said, "what, do you want to buy an oil well?" The students were a bit perplexed, they didn't get the irony. Luckily, I thought, there was a new offshore oil well right off the coast where I was teaching. I pointed out the window, and asked them in Arabic if they could buy the oil well for 500 riyal (fifty dollars in the Yemeni currency). As if on cue, half of them said "mumkin" - Arabic for maybe. I sat down. Where do you go from there? Anyway, I pressed on, a bit exasperated. I got to a new section of dialogue (that I hadn't read), and we began making progress on a conversation between two friends (British friends, the curriculum was British based). The two friends were arranging a meeting, and the kids took turns reading the parts. At one point, I had a boy and a girl (I had boys and girls in my class, quite a concession for a westerner in a very, very conservative climate!) reading the parts of the friends. We turned the page, and I did not read what was coming. Instead, I heard the boy tell the girl "why don't I come by and knock you up later?" I had had it - I choked, started laughing and couldn't stop. Poor kids. I was choking, laughing, then I got very light-headed. I leaned forward to put my hand on a desk to steady myself and I missed. As I was falling to the floor, I saw their terrified faces. Now my hand missed the corner of the desk, but my head did not. I woke up thirty minutes later in my tent. The kids had carried me back somehow. When I sat up, there were three kids on the floor of my tent staring at me. The had volunteered to stay with me to make sure I was ok. I smiled, considered laughing but thought better of it, didn't want to scare them. I very soberly thanked them and walked them back to the school. When we entered the classroom, a little girl solemnly handed me a piece of chalk as the whole class watched silently. I sat back down in the front of the class, and we continued reading dialogue, not missing a beat. No one ever mentioned the incident again, and I often wonder if it really happened (it did, I still have a small dent in my head).
I had just recovered from my second case of malaria, when I got up the strength to take a long walk. It was my custom to walk out to the beach and walk up and down a few miles in each direction collecting small seashells. I would then make them into jewelry for the girls in the camp. It was another scorching day, and I headed out from my tent. About half a kilometer out, I saw two women approaching me. They were dressed appropriately, but they were not Yemeni. As they approached, I realized they were both very attractive, one older than the other. The older woman made eye contact (the first weird sign) and just as she was about to pass me said "so Michael, you no $&^%^$$&, no?" (you can email me for the uncensored text). I was startled, I had never heard that from a stranger in the US. I supposed she knew who I was as I was the first westerner to ever live in the village, but I couldn't believe she said it, especially in front of the younger woman. I turned and they kept walking as if nothing happened. I shook my head, and chalked it up to the malaria. Later, when I recounted the incident to other Peace Corps friends, they told me I was nuts, so I believed them, at least temporary malaria insanity (TMI). A month later, I was talking to a Somali teacher who was a good friend. We were standing by the school and the woman walked by (it was a very small village). He saw me looking at her and asked if I knew her. I said no, and then I shared the hallucination I had. He laughed very hard, then looked at me and said "so you two have met?" I could tell by his tone and countenance that something was strange. He went on to tell me that the woman had married a man from Djibouti and lived on a naval base with a lot of "sailors." The other woman with her that day was her daughter, and according to my friend, they were both very vocal and vulgar. Sadly, I preferred the hallucination explanation, even if it was my hallucination.
My final post-malarial incident almost caused and international episode, well not quite that bad. I was teaching a very large class (70 students) in a small classroom. As it was an ESL class, I gave all the kids western names for roll call only (given the number of Mohammeds, this was helpful). The kids didn't mind, and they had to pay close attention during daily exercise. Once again, I was just back in the classroom, feeling very weak. I turned to the door where I saw my Somali friend standing with the local security agent. Yemen modeled its security protocols after the East Germans I am told. I believe it. This man had followed me quite a bit during my first few months in the village. He was large for a Yemeni, wore a perpetual scowl along with a pearl-handled 45 in his waistband. He never spoke to me or acknowledged me. Now he was in my doorway with a translator. I knew I was not going to enjoy the interchange. I gave my students something to do for a few minutes and attended to my guests. My friend translated - apparently there was a complaint that I was trying to prosthelytize the students by giving them Christian names. I patiently explained why I used the names, how it helped the kids learn proper nouns, etc. The security agent just shook his head and glared at me. I took a few steps back to write something on the blackboard for the students when my friend translated the last bit of the conversation. He told me that I was to discontinue the activity immediately or I would regret it. Maybe it was the malaria (nice name for a book I think),or maybe it was just me, but I had had enough. I took the chalk I was holding, hurled it at him hitting him in the chest. All the oxygen in the room was sucked out by 75 simultaneous gasps. I walked to the door, edged past the two visitors telling my friend the translator "tell him to teach the damn class." I then went back to my tent for a rest. An hour later a large contingent from the community came to my tent. We spent two hours discussing the issue. Finally, I was allowed to continue my English roll call, and I apologized publicly to my foe. He was happy, I was happy, and I had no more discipline problems in the class for several months.

Dialogue on Diarrhea

After my suturing adventure, I tried to limit my medical excursions. Despite my reluctance, I was occasionally called to help with something when there were no other resources. This was very ironic, as I barely knew what to do with simple medical cases. In the course of these "house calls" I learned far more than I wanted to about malaria, thyphoid, dysentery and female circumcision.
I had heard about female circumcision, but I considered it an antiquated practice. I would come to discover that there was a small sect of people in the camp that not only practiced it, but also infibulation (sewing the vagina nearly shut). It was very late one evening when one of my students came into my tent, obviously in distress. He looked about at his feet and stammered something in Afar. Eventually, we switched to a mixture of English and Arabic, and he let me know he wanted me to come with him, but we had to be very careful. We crept through the camp to a shack on the outskirts. He carefully surveyed the area, then whisked me through the cloth doorway. In the dimly lit room, I saw a young girl laying on a cot, moaning softly. There were a few other students in the room, and they were very frightened. They wanted me to help, and I knew something was wrong as it was very late, and there were no adults present. I sat down near the girl, and began to ask the other girls questions. I asked how long she had been sick, if she had seen a doctor, if she had a fever. She was covered with some thin material, and I knew I wouldn't be allowed to examine her too closely. I knew the problem was in her pelvic area, and I tried to get as close to her as I could without touching her. When I moved closer, I smelled the infection. I could also see some "projections" sticking up from her crotch, poking up into the cloth. She was incoherent, and I knew she was in dire trouble.
I told the students to stay with her, and I raced to the nearby village. A young female Sudani doctor had recently arrived in the village, and I thought this was a good time to make her acquaintance. I stopped and recruited a friend, a Sudani teacher, and we woke her up. At first she was reluctant (the refugees could never pay for medical service, and she would be looked down upon if she started to treat them). She finally agreed to come to the camp to see the girl. I was not allowed to go back into the room with the doctor, as a matter of fact, I was directed to go back to my shack. I was told the girl was taken to the regional hospital the next day, but she never returned. I am sure she died. Later, the translated story was that she had been sewn with some sort of thin grass, and that her family didn't want the officials to know. I was never allowed to know her name.
The first death I witnessed was that of a baby. I learned the child had died of dehydration. The camp had no running water (only salty wells), no electricity, and very few sources of fuel for fires and sterilization. Because of the heat, humidity, and poor hygienic conditions, the children were often sick. Malaria took its share, but more children suffered and died from dysentery and diarrhea. It is an eerie thing to push your finger into a child's belly, and not to see the skin spring back. After the first death, and the rumor of a second, I took a trip to a large town four hours to the north, and met with some Russian doctors I had met. They explained rehydration therapy to me, and gave me a copy of a newsletter, Dialogue on Diarrhea. I returned to the camp with a new mission - sanitation and education.
I met with the elders and told them I wanted to hold some classes for women in the new school. I showed them the tools I would use (liter cups, bottle caps, salt, and sugar). I bought enough sugar and salt to start the project, and an eager Yemeni shop keeper provided the bottle caps. Slowly, the mothers came forward and I, with the help of some of the early converts, showed them how to clean the water vessels and mix the rehydration solution in proper ratios. The students pitched in and made some posters with instructions written and drawn. And although I couldn't get them to boil all their water (there simply was not enough fuel), they did boil some communal water for mothers with young babies. It was a wonderful campaign.
Later, I turned my attention to the large garbage pits surrounding the camp. We found some large metal cans, and got most everyone to deposit hypodermics and other sharp metals into them. The older students patrolled the camp and picked up anything that was dangerous or unhealthy.
It wasn't that the refugees weren't aware of many of these issues, they were just so preoccupied with survival and day to day needs that they neglected them. Also, there was no designated person or official to monitor them. I was very pleased that once we started attending to the issues, the refugees (particularly the women and children) took charge. And I gained a new favorite literary source - the Russian doctors began to forward their bimonthly journal, Dialogue on Diarrhea to me. I was excited each time I got a copy.

Where there is No Doctor

When I got to Yemen to start my second Peace Corps tour, I found out that I once again had some freedom in choosing my assignment. Most of the volunteers were to serve as ESL teachers in the mountain villages. I too was to be a teacher, but I had input as to where. Two factors helped my decision: I wanted to be on the Red Sea (I had brought my snorkeling gear), and I discovered that there was a refugee camp in a small village on the coast. I lobbied hard for the refugee camp in Al Khawkha, a small fishing village on the coast. The coastal region of Yemen (named the Tihama)is very different from the rest of the country. It is at sea level, one of the hottest areas in the world, average temperature. It is also much less conservative, more easy going than the mountain regions.
When the Peace Corps officials forwarded my request to the Ministry of Education, it was denied with the following rationale - "The Tihama is too hot, too difficult for western workers, we will place them in large cities where they have access to electricity, but not in villages." I didn't give up though, especially as I learned another volunteer was working in the camp temporarily building a school. We went back to the ministry several times and finally wore them down. As we were leaving, the ministry official said something in colloquial Arabic that made my Yemeni Peace Corps official smile wryly. I pestered him for a few minutes, asking him what it meant. He looked at me and said "I believe the English expression is its his funeral." I laughed as only a 30 year-old fool can laugh.
When I arrived at the village a few months later, no one knew I was coming. It turned out that the ministry official didn't really believe I would move out to such an isolated, hostile place (hostile in the environmental sense). After a few days of confusion, I was given a timetable at the local school, and I went out to the refugee camp (for Eritreans) and met the volunteer. At the end of his allotted time on the school project, we had completed 2/3 of the school. He left the rest for me to finish. I then moved out into the shack in the camp that he had occupied. It had two rooms, one with a bed of sorts and a small table. It would be home.
I won't attempt to describe the heat and humidity of the Tihama, it is impossible to relate. Instead, I can share some reactions of folks who came to visit me. One volunteer, a tall, fit guy from the east coast showed up one evening and told me he planned to stay for a few days. He laid around for two days groaning, and insisted I get him to a phone (two hours away) so he could call the nurse to tell her he hadn't urinated for days. More typically, friends would show up in the evening (there was limited transport into the village) when it was 90 degrees and vow to stay for a few days. Inevitably, they would leave the next day before noon. You couldn't sleep at night, and you could barely breathe. It took me a month to acclimate.
I was living in the refugee camp for a few months before the residents grew to trust me. I worked with the orphan boys to finish the school, and I often entertained the children in my shack at night. When we did finish the school, some of the elders stopped by to congratulate me. One of them noticed one of the two books I had, Where there is No Doctor, a general first aid book given to all Peace Corps Volunteers. My life changed drastically shortly thereafter. There had been a doctor in the camp, but he had been recently arrested on some mysterious charge and was in the local jail. The Eritreans lived in the camp by the grace of the Yemeni. They had no rights per se, as they were not citizens. To this day, I don't know why the doctor was arrested, or what became of him. I do know that my first aid book had been noticed, and that I was to become the medical expert in his absence.
A few weeks after the discovery of my book, I was summoned to the the center of the camp by a group of frantic children. I had a base understanding of Arabic, and was just then learning some Afar, their language. They drug me by the arm to a shack with more than fifty people surrounding it. I was pushed inside where I saw a man laying on a small table in obvious agony. He had come into the village by motorcycle taxi, and had gotten his bare foot tangled in the chain and sprocket. It was mangled, cut to the bone. I was in a bit of shock, and I gradually realized I was being admonished for not bringing "the book." I rushed back to get it and also brought my meager first aid kit.
When I got back into the makeshift clinic, several of the adults were holding the injured man down on the table firmly. They pointed at his foot and told me to get to work. I got out some gauze and hydrogen peroxide and started to swab the cut. These were hard people, survivors of a 35 year civil war. They nodded and told me to clean the wound more rigorously. I reached in and scrubbed the wound feeling muscle and bone. I think I was closer to fainting than the patient. When I had cleaned it as well as possible, I reached in the first aid kit for some more gauze and wrap in order to tie up the wound. There was a buzz in the room that let me know this wasn't to be the course of action. Someone, I don't remember who, handed me a big needle and some fishing line. I was to stitch him up.
I hesitated for a moment (felt like a year) and became aware of hands pushing me towards his foot. I looked at the wound and tried to remember the suturing I had received on some of my own misadventures. If you can imagine how hard the pad of a foot is, particularly one that seldom wore shoes, you can also imagine what the next several minutes were like. I tried to push the needle through the skin and muscle and couldn't. He was screaming and I was pushing. It was a nightmare. Finally, a rusted pair of pliers was brought forward and two of us pushed the needle through. It made a sickening pop as it exited. We repeated this about ten times until we closed the wound. I used all of my hydrogen peroxide trying to keep everything clean. It was the most gruesome (at least at that time) thing I had witnessed, let alone participated in. Some days later, the elders in the camp were able to get permission for the man to leave the camp and go to a hospital three hours away. He recovered, with a limp, and his wife crocheted me a nice colorful cover for my bed.
Months later, at a Peace Corps gathering in the capital, I recounted the story to some of the Peace Corps nurses. They gave me proper suturing tools, but thankfully, I never needed to use them.
This was not my last medical experience in the camp, although I tried in vain to tell them I was not qualified for such things. They would remind me that any help was better than none, given that they had no access to proper treatment. I did buy more medical supplies, learned how to give injections, and worked very hard to get a Yemeni doctor to make visits to the camp. The worst however, was still yet to come.

Rita Dove

I had met Rita Dove in Ohio at a book signing event. I talked to her for thirty seconds or so, and she was very gracious. I loved her poetry and the history reflected in it. As a matter of fact, her book, Thomas and Beulah, was one of three books I took with me when I went off to Yemen as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

After three months of training near the capital city of Sanaa, I moved to the small village of Al Khawkha on the Red Sea. I moved into a shack in an Eritrean Refugee camp while helping another volunteer build a school. It was a small room with a few open windows (it only rained once in the two years I was there) and a dirt floor. I slept on a Tihama bed (named after the coastal region there), a rope bed suspended on four tall legs resting in coffee cans. The idea was to keep nasty things from climbing up into the bed. I had a thin foam mattress and a crocheted cover that the women of the camp made me. There was a small desk and chair in the room, and I had a little kerosene cooker on a stand by the bed. Life was good!

I split my time between the local village school and the camp. During the day, I taught English at the school, and would return to work on the school in the camp. Gradually, I got to know many of the families in the camp, and I spent a lot of time in the orphan section. At night, my shack would be a hangout for the children, slowly developing the courage to drop by. I would later move into a small tent, but those days in that shack were fantastic. The ladies of the camp eventually wove me straw mats, so the place became very homey. For the first six months I was there, the camp generator worked, at least for a few hours each day. I would line up the cassettes I wanted to listen to in eager anticipation. I would read, listen to music, and try to manage the growing number of children milling around in the room.

On one evening, a small group of girls (probably ages 7-9) were sitting on the floor, listening to a tape they had requested that I play. I had gone to letting various groups of kids in on different evenings. I was reading Thomas and Beulah, when I laid it on the floor, upside down. There was an audible gasp amongst the girls that startled me. They recovered and began to jabber excitedly in their language, Afar. I could only get a bit of it, so I tried to calm them down and speak to them with my slightly better Arabic. It turned out that they were very, very shocked that anyone would let a woman, let alone a black woman write a book - Rita Dove's picture was on the back of the book, staring up at them.

Once they recovered from their shock, they turned to me and demanded to know if I knew her. I tried, with my limited language skills, to explain that I had met her. It must have came out that I knew her, and they got even more excited. They sat down in a huddle, earnestly discussing a plan. One girl stood up and spoke for the group: They had decided to make some cards for this woman (it was Eid soon, an Islamic holiday) and I would send them to her. I tried to explain that I would try but was not certain, etc. but they nodded and bolted out the door into the night. Two days later I had five beautiful Eid cards on my desk.

I put the cards in the envelope and sent them to Rita Dove, c/o the University of Virginia. The girls questioned me daily if I had heard back. It was very cute, eventually I would see them coming, shake my head, and they would feign bitter disappointment. Finally, we received a response from Ms. Dove. She had received the cards, hung them two-sided on a mobile of sorts in her office. She had been delighted to get the cards and was very touched. The girls took turns with the letter, kind of a traveling trophy. They wrote back, and Ms. Dove responded. It really was a moving experience for me.

I had read articles and books about culture, race, and gender issues in college. I believed I was fairly open-minded and progressive about those sort of things. But I had no true idea of the depth and pervasiveness of these biases until I saw the look on those girls faces when that book hit the floor. I don't think I understood the concept of self-esteem until I saw them planning their cards, watched the way their confidence increased, noticed how they carried themselves around the camp. I was so taken by this, that I went back to school and studied Multicultural Education, and worked on initiatives like Girl's Empowerment in Tanzania. To this day, I still work with at-risk and underrepresented students in many types of educational settings. All this because a book landed upside down on a straw mat.

The Maudlin Mist of Morning

The Maudlin Mist of Morning
I, like the fog
Was born with a veil
On my face.
I frolicked with shadows
Played hide-and-seek
Through the dark corridors
Of my soul.
I saw what others could not see
In the maudlin mist of morning.
I wept. And the fog and I,
From our eclipses,
Mourned the sun.
Audrey Lee

This is one of only two poems that stabbed my heart the minute I first read it. I was in a small tent in an Eritrean refugee camp reading an anthology of Black Poets when I discovered it. As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Yemen, I had worked hard to get myself placed in the camp as my primary assignment. I taught English in the nearby village, and helped another volunteer build a school in the camp. For two years I lived and worked with these refugees, eating what they ate, suffering from the same health issues (typhoid, malaria, and hepatitis), and sharing their heartache as they faced a bleak, uncertain future.

I knew immediately that the poem was about the anonymity of being black in the USA. I also knew it resonated with me because of the situations of the refugees, and women in general in this Islamic country - veiled, moving silently about like shadows. But what I didn't account for was the depth of the personal connection, at least not for several years. Not until I realized that I had worn a veil all my life. This veil had kept others out and prevented me from seeing and feeling the world in its natural state. I don't think I have ever really belonged anywhere. I have enjoyed fleeting connections with others, and I am certain that I love my family, but I have never felt that I was where I belonged.

I don't attribute this lack of belonging to the experiences inside my household growing up. This uneasy truce with the world comes from the way the world perceived me as I grew up. I know how we appeared to the world then: Those half-dressed children living in the run down rental at the end of the street, dirty with snot running down their noses. Children from the house that exploded frequently in a frenzy of domestic violence. Children of a family that was best avoided. Children that made you feel better about your parenting skills, no matter who you were.

I am sure I didn't notice the way some people looked at us, but I am also sure it affected me. From an early age, I didn't appreciate authority and I came to view the USA negatively as an entity early in my teens. And although I have met many people since who did not judge me thusly, I believe I have continued to project this pity or loathing or disgust onto them, and maybe onto society itself. Consequently, I have found that I have always related to people and groups who have been marginalized somehow by society. This has made me a good advocate, at least half and advocate, for you can't advocate for others if you do not relate to those you are petitioning. I am amused by the fact that I still carry this around with me. I have been out in the world for thirty-three years, and I am no longer identifiable as that poor kid from the crazy family.

I have learned that no one should be invisible, no one should have to look at the world as a place they don't belong. I need to remember to acknowledge everyone I deal with, not just those who I feel deserve my attention. As a leader this is doubly imperative - I probably rememeber every gracious gesture given me by my supervisors/superiors over the years. These gestures shouldn't be rationed out as "bones", nor should they be used to exploit people (Paulo Freire). They don't make we weaker or vulnerable as a leader. They are more than just gratuities: They are the tools that humanize the workplace and create an inclusive enviroment for everyone.