Pre-secondary

Most of the schools, clinics, hospitals and utility infrastructure of Timor was burned to the ground near the start of this century. This act of vandalism and cruelty seems to me to be the largest declaration of, "I am taking my ball and going home." ever. The Indonesians saw they were leaving and what they could not take with them they put to the torch.

 It means that most Timorese schools are less than 6 years old. Communities, along with international organizations and the government have been rebuilding them since the fires went out. These large cinderblock buildings have corrugated tin or fibreglass roofs and wire mesh covered windows that allow air to flow. They are filled with desks of all  sizes, styles, stability and function. One student sits at a desk large enough to serve ad a kitchen table while another, smaller girl, stoops to write on a desk more suited for a dog. The boards are cheap and scratched  black and green paint slathered on plywood framed by aluminum strips. Some schools have electricity, some do not. Some have bathrooms, some do not. Some have water, some do not.

Education is important in this culture, learning has a mark of status here. When I ask people how many children they have they tell me the number, how many are alive, which ones have jobs and then what schools they attended or are attending. Like this "I have seven children, four live with me, three live with God. One of them drives a truck for the oil company two finished secondary school and my youngest is going to university."  Just like the United States, sort of.

On the day I visited him in school Mark was teaching the future and past tense. Mark is not a teacher. It was not in my heart to tell him that he was teaching the subject despaired over by trained sympathetic interlocutors. The national language of Timor has no conjugation verbs do not change depending on the time of the action. We use the same words for the past tense in the future tense. We merely add a small word that means already, or about too. So teaching children to conjugate and decline is a very difficult thing. Mark Campbell handles this like the old fisherman who ate the whale, one bite at a time.

I sat in my seat watching him work, observing the kids. "I did go to the store", "I will go to the store", "I have gone to the store". Try explaining the pluperfect tense to children who have never considered that they might need a word for past. Try explaining it to someone period. Mark did not, he sticks to the basics.

 "She went to the city", "She is going to go to the city", "She is in the city" “Can we form it as a question?” “Anyone?”  I realized as I sat, slowly sinking into myself , that I had not been in a pre-secondary school since they jerked me out of it in eighth grade.

“He is in the school.”  “He was in the school.”  “Can we make it possessive?”  “Anyone?” The story is for some time, but not now.  

When I start to think deeply my eyes go soft, the floating focus on all things instead of nothing. These kids, 16,000 miles and 16 years from my own experiences had similarities. I couldn't understand what the girl beside me was whispering but I knew what she was saying. It was written on her face. There was the scapegoat she was whispering about. He was hunched over like someone had tied huge stones to his shoulders. There was the boy who would always do well in life. There was the girl that the boys whispered about when they were alone. The kid who eats bugs, sat next the girl who could never be trusted to remember her books. They were all familiar to me. I felt a wave of nauseous nostalgia. We don't have a word for that feeling, the feeling of bad nostalgia. How it drop shimmies in your stomach and chest. How it falls from a great height pulling the cobwebs of years and experience.  Taking me back.

For just a moment I had trouble taking breath. Smells from then flooded my nostrils, tater tots and dirt and chalk dust and sweet cloying candy on breath. I didn't like pre-secondary school. And that is an understatement on the level of hyperbole. How could I possibly have forgotten that when taking this job?

This, spiraling of then and now. It is also familiar. It is  mental glitch that I haven’t had for years.  But one never forgets the internal warnings and pits. This is not a road I travel anymore.  I am grown too real.   I remembered what I used to do in the days when it was all I could do to keep a smile stapled to my face.  Something to wipe away the memories and bring back the real.  I dug the tip of my pen underneath the nail of my littlest finger and pressed hard. You get a jazz of adrenaline when you do this, and for me it snaps the mind back to reality. I got over this habit sometime in my junior year of high school.

It worked as if not a day passed. My mind popped back from the long dark hallways where the fluorescent lights barely touched the awful brown green carpet. I had the strange sense of duality I usually do when I come back from there. As if I'm a mere smear of dirt on a huge work of art.  Something accidental on top of something beautiful And as I looked at the kids realize I brought something back with me, a little pearl from the harder days.  The next time Mark asked a question I shot my hand in the air.  I stretched and I twisted and I made little Ooo… Ohh… sounds.  The kids giggle nervously.  Mark called on me and I answered.  The next time he asked a questions another boy raised his hand in imitation of me.  And then everybody was doing it.  Monkey See… Monkey do.