WEEK 5

20 - 29 October 2007

Exams at the school. a trip to the Kwanza River.

The main feature of this week has been the exams. Depending on the group they belong to, the students had to face different topics – from Geography to Mathematics, from Portuguese to Natural Science – in a written test. As a member of the teaching staff (I still cannot see myself as a teacher, tough the students call me professor Alessandro, and I usually reply with an embarrassed look), I was asked to take care of a classroom each one of the three days (Monday to Wednesday) of the exams. It has been an interesting experiment to sit on the desk, on the other side, facing the students: another character to play, this time watching young people solving a test. During the two hours of each session, I closed my eyes many times pretending I didn’t see any cheat, and the sparkling look, filled with shrewd satisfaction, that many boys (young men are not as able to hide feelings as girls) shared with their classmates at the end of the test, proved the good job of both teacher and students. Sometimes I was even forced to raise my voice in order to keep the silence, and I was impressed by the power of the social roles, which are embodied, after all, only by names.
Next week we will have the oral part of the exams, and I expect to learn something more about human behaviour.

picture 1. morning bath.

It is easier, instead, for me to catch beauty – even if describing it is another matter. On Sunday I went to Barra do Kwanza, a small town lying at the estuary of the river Kwanza, about 30 kilometers south of the school. First I went to the beach, where the calm tide of the river spreads its waters into the agitated Ocean, creating, not far from the shore, an impressing vortex of waves, currents and foams that, raised by the wind up to the afternoon sun, washed it in white, and reached me in a cloud of marine mist.
After having given some bolachas to the kids at the beach (poverty makes people smart, and kids learn quickly the art of moving the tourist. Children and elderly people, in particular women, are my favourite subjects, thanks to the deep humanity that they show), I walked by the side of the river, where the tropical, finally flourishing vegetation and the furnished cottages of wood drove me for a moment back to the luxuriance of the Victorian Age, when legendary explorers like David Livingstone or Henry Stanley were asked to celebrate the power of Her Majesty by finding the Nile’s mysterious sources.
I went back to the main road. Beyond the place of my arrival, a few hundred meters further, stands a bridge, which past strategic importance is still witnessed by the presence of a police station. The bright turquoise walls of this thatched building, which is protected by nothing but a lonely guard, are framed at both sides by precarious huts of straw, suggesting, instead of the ideas of Law, or Authority, a different order of the World, that now, after ages of surviving, is at the edge of extinction: the life of the Past. I approached the guard to ask some information. He reacted by tightening nervously the grip on his washed Soviet rifle, as wrinkled and old as his face, and which after all these years looked more like a part of his body, rather than a weapon; and answered some confused words. I walked away. On the way back to the school, given a lift by a French couple, I escaped for a moment my anxiety by thinking at the purity that vision had meant for me, and I desired to be at that police station, to visit that place, to spy the silent life of the guard, and to learn the secret of his noble, ancient tradition of humbleness.

picture 2. after 3 days, water has finally come.

Sometimes the school is in short of power, and (much worse) of water. How much time and efforts we have to spend to save it for two or three days, waiting for the supply to come! Being without water not only means that we cannot wash, but also that we cannot cook, and the students have been forced to attend their exams at the beginning of the week without having breakfast and lunch. Only soft drinks give us some sugar to survive, and the lack of energies, together with the incredible heat, makes any unnecessary effort instinctively banned. In these moments it is hard to go on (although afterwards I feel a sort of hero), and a sense of impotence makes me desire to leave this abandoned corner of the World. Now more than ever, I understand my great luck, the chances (many times wasted) that I have had in my life, the privilege of being born in a wealthy family of a wealthy Country. The taste of food; the joy of wine. I miss all the pleasures that I had enjoyed before, unaware. A full appreciation, so it seems, requires comparison.

WEEK 4

9 - 18 Oct. 2007

Angolan nights. The power of time. Some teachers.

The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.

Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922), In search of lost Time.

Tuesday, the 16th of October; 6.30 pm.
The orange Sun has just disappeared beyond the sea, waving another day. Dropping its gold on a far horizon, it leaves me alone, for some moments; very soon the African night proceeds quickly to take place, and scatters on the carpet of the sky a fistful of silver gems from her dark fingers. I turn calm again when I look up and see the stars protecting me with their wise, maternal smile, which tells me once more that there is nothing to be afraid.

picture 1. the school as seen from the water tower.

I still haven’t identified the Southern Cross, in which outstanding brightness I had laid many expectations – and a secret relationship – before leaving the Boreal Hemisphere. Perhaps the power of this marvellous dancing theatre lies in the choir of its shining voices (I can easily say that the stars here, in particular after the electricity is cut off every night at 10.30, are at least twice as many as in a small town in Europe), rather than in singles’ performances. Perhaps each one of these unreachable jewels speaks its own silent monologue, following rules of solidarity which cannot apply to any human play (though the Full Moon never misses, in her monthly appearances, to show an arrogant beauty that washes away a consistent number of stars from her ivory gown). Perhaps our expectations, especially when nourished with desires for a long time, simply turn into disappointments whenever we face reality. The Future and the Past, that is to say Desire and Memory, don’t live in the prison cell of a human body, but float on a different dimension, much more vague, made of a mixture of feelings, dreams, perceptions and images that can always be recombined according to our pleasure, and where the strict laws of the Present (Consequentiality, Coherence, Duty, Necessity) can be evaded or at least put aside for all the time needed.

So it has been with my trip to the Atlantic Ocean: after having lied in wait for days, weeks with sweet fantasies about my incoming visit to the Owner of my dreams, I was disappointed when, last Sunday – pushed by Allen (a volunteer who stayed in the school few days before going to Huambo) and by his American spirit of challenge – I finally convinced myself to cross the Lagoon and the narrow stripe of land which divides us from the same Sea that, in different ways and colours, had already amazed me in Spain, in Senegal, in America.

picture 2. the teachers' dining table.

My expectations grew as I walked the road made of red soil that crosses some huts, where friendly farmers and shepherds (poverty is often the first condition of hospitality), together with their families, waved our passage with the purity of their simple life, and whose smile, warmed by the early afternoon’s sun, seemed to anticipate an unknown beauty. But when I arrived there, to the shore, what I had barely seen on the way to the beach was confirmed, and a grey mountain of furious water scared me. I could not hesitate, I’m a man; I had to swim. Maybe because of the clouds, which covered the sun and took away any sign of tropical transparency from the water, transforming it into a leaden, indifferent devourer; maybe because of the absence of any form of life, apart from some crabs, who looked lost and startled by this terrifying giant of water, as we were; the joy that I was certain to feel turned into a deep sense of abandon that I could hardly bear in front of my companion. I cheered my loneliness up by thinking about the size and the power of this infinite living element, and with the help of my imagination I began to escape that hostile reality and wander with my sight on the sea, reaching the warm coasts of Brazil and Argentina.
The day after my instinct of surviving made its good job again, starting to work together with my memory in order to store the images of the experience (as closely as possible to reality, but at the same time as painlessly as possible) in my mind. Therefore when I recall it today, I say to myself that after all it has been a good walk, that I have learnt something, that there is some indefinite charm in the sadness I felt, which mystery I want to discover next time in front of the Atlantic Ocean.

picture 3. typical taxis in the town of Benfica.

That is, more or less, how Time deceives me. And how I cannot oppose my will to the most powerful of the Gods, who rules my deeds, my feelings, my entire life.

Day by day I timidly involve myself in the school’s human environment. My lessons of English and Computing give me some satisfactions and some of the confidence that I need, and correcting the students’ tasks helps me to improve my Portuguese and to feel part of the Development Project (perhaps once I will face the delicate topic of Development). I work with the other teachers, and being with them most of the time – there is a big gap between the roles of student and teacher, in terms of authority – allows me to draw the first impressions of my colleagues. About 15 teachers work in the school, 5 of which (including me) full time. Most of them come here for two or three days and then go back to their homes. But this is enough for me to depict briefly a couple of figures (writing this part of my diary in the teachers’ room, while I sit together with them, gives me a secret feeling of power over their destinies, like a Greek god who plays with his doomed heroes): first of all, Professor Eduardo, whose irregular but full smile tells a constant disorientation that he tries to cover with a more serious countenance (and with a pair of glasses). The result is a great tenderness, that I perceive every time he approaches the dining table and seems not to know where to sit or what to eat, or when he introduces his intelligent answers at the teachers’ meetings by lifting his shoulders (as to say: that’s all I could think), and, again, showing a smile which looks bigger than his height and stronger than his will. If asked to play the game that compares humans to animals, I would choose Professor Eduardo as a typical example of honeybear.
It would seem too easy to compare Professor D.P., the Big Father and students’ confessor, to a hippopotamus, thanks to his short legs, his round head at which sides lean two little ears, and, above all, the huge space that separates his upper incisors. D.P.’s personality, however, confirms this association on a deeper level: his sunny and available attitude – that turns suddenly to an angry and unreasonable behaviour, when something doesn’t go as planned (such as the meals on the table and, in general, the “order” in the school) – matches perfectly the character of the funny-looking hippo, which is considered by many zoologists as the most dangerous animal of the African waters.

picture 4. lunch is almost ready. fish is delicious.

To conclude with Professor Januário, whose dignity and manners – always acted spontaneously, with easiness, as if it was natural to sit correctly at the table, to speak at the right time and always with simple but effective words, with a tone of voice which informs rather than ask, shy but never humble – prove the intuition that nobility is not a matter of blood but a gift of birth. The endangered lioness probably best resumes his qualities.

Also among the students, in the blurring mass of the indistinct, of the empty names, of the accepted set of social behaviour and rules, some stars begin to shine with unexpected colours. This week I will try to catch their rays.

WEEK 3

30 Sept. - 8 Oct. 2007.

Getting accustomed. An encounter. Spring is coming?

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings—always darker, emptier, simpler. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 - 1900), The Gay Science.

My faith in this project, in this choice of life, in myself, flow inconstantly in the daily life, as in every beginning, and the river of my changeable feelings still has not dug its bed. It takes time for me to get used to the people, to their style of living, of communicating, and to the material conditions of life here in Angola. My mind is not as flexible as when I was 18 years old, and my brain has to bear the physical effort (that, by the way, I consider as a sign of learning) of trying to formulate or understand sentences in the new language. However, Persistence is the wisest of the teachers, and, without even realizing it, day by day we feel comfortable in a place that some days before we could not think as ours, a place that we can somehow dominate. Even the small, daily actions require a constant repetition to become automatisms: my room is finally dressed with the comfortable suite of Habit; and my motivations towards this new experience of life increase proportionally as I get accustomed to it: perhaps that is the reason why I like to travel, to change, even to suffer when a new adventure begins; perhaps it is a Habit of my times.

picture 1. the lesson is about to start.

The school hosts about 190 students, divided into two groups, according to the year of enrollment (2006 – 2007). They live and study in the school for 18 months, learning all the basic topics (Portuguese, English, History, Mathematics, Philosophy, etc.). After this period, they will attend a one-year stage in other schools of the Country, giving the final exam which will disclose their way to the Diploma of Teacher. The age of the students ranges between 19 and 30 years old. I have been asked to take care of one specific class (20 students, more or less), giving them courses and correcting their tasks. At the moment, however, my main duty remains to teach English.
I have never been a teacher before, and giving a course is quite hard. I agree with the idea that the teachers should be paid more. The biggest difficulty so far has been to lead a lesson in which I am able to explain the knowledge that I take for granted. Last Saturday, for instance, it took two hours to make the students understand the difference between the present simple and the present continuous. But at the end, their attention and their satisfied eyes witnessed that my good will (and, again, my persistence) finally worked; anyway, the students deeply want to learn English, the language of opportunities, of dreams, of coolness, and, I must say, they show hunger for knowledge in general, although they often mistake it with notions.

picture 2. a funny sign on the way to Ramiro.

On Saturday, right after my lesson, I rewarded my newly regained confidence with a long lonely walk to the village of Ramiro, 4 km north of the school. I walked quiet along the road which leads to Luanda, taking the chance to do some “shopping” (bread, butter, orange juice in powder. These are my diversions). When I approached the town I encountered a student, named Gildo, who greeted me with a surprised expression, asking if I was not afraid of being alone, especially as a foreigner, among the dangers of the streets, of the villages, of the Country. My calm negative answer doubled his disorientation, probably because a shy person is not supposed to be brave or self-confident, according to the unverifiable equation (that so much made me suffer during my youth, when my sensitivity was not aware enough of itself to make me consider it as a cultivable feature of my personality, and not a fault to hide; an equation that even some dictionaries apply so easily): shyness = lack of courage.

picture 3. kids on the beach by the school.

Meanwhile, the first green leaves colour the majestic and ancient “Imbondeiros” with emerald gems of green, and proving that there is a tiny, hidden, and meticulous life inside these arid and hollow barks; and a great tenderness comes by the vision of this contrast – the enduring will of these old, white, sleepy giants, to produce their little offspring day by day. I ask myself if it’s true that the spring doesn’t exist in the tropical Countries.
Time is up: I’m going to see the Ocean.