That Chick from Pitch Perfect

As much as I am a chronic optimist, my emotional buoyancy took a bit of a hit over the past two weeks.  Since late last Fall, close to my arrival at school, I began experiencing a hoarse voice.  Every weekend, it seemed like I would recover just a little bit, yet by the time I began teaching again on Monday, my voice would break, and allow the raspy, hollow sound of the wind to interrupt my teaching.  My family and friends back home wondered who the old woman on the other end of the line was.

This year, I began teaching many, many more periods – 28 periods from Monday – Thursday, plus teaching at the vocational school in the neighboring village on Fridays.  Weekends were filled with acting and dancing with my youth group, and teaching music to students.  No matter where I was, I was always talking.  When I phoned my family and friends back home, they expected the high clear voice that they remembered, and always commented that my “cold” seemed really awful.  I did refer my problem to our Peace Corps doctor, soon after it worsened this year, but we were not able to find a solution.

Living in Tanzania means that each and every person in my life feels it their personal need to give me unsolicited “medical” advice.  Upon hearing my voice, teachers, students, and villagers will tell me that I have eaten too many potatoes, or the climate change is simply too much for my body to cope with.  They tell me I need to eat ginger and honey, or more commonly, “mayai mabichi” (raw eggs – yuck!). 

On a recent trip to Dar es Salaam for a training, I agreed to see an ENT specialist.  After his diagnosis, I was relieved to find a real medical solution, but the treatment is less than ideal.

Later that day, I told my friends what I had – vocal nodes.  More specifically, a node in my right vocal cord.  While it’s not a simple problem, it is less complicated than it sounds – just a small, red growth on my right vocal cord.  I finished explaining this, and one girl broke the silence by saying, “Isn’t that what the chick from Pitch Perfect had?”  Fits of laughter erupted around the small room, as we finally remembered where we had this association from.

Further appointments with a speech therapist and our Peace Corps doctors helped me to realize that it is imperative for me to heal if I want to continue being an effective volunteer.  This means that, beginning yesterday, I need to take complete vocal rest.  In other words, a complete vow of silence.

I am 48 hours in to this nightmare, and it is one of the most frustrating things that I have done in my life.  I carry a pad of paper and pen with me everywhere I go, but leading music during a mass service, and supervising my youth theatre group are nearly impossible to do with paper and pen instead of two powerful lungs.  Yesterday, in town, people treated me either like I had a disability, or the plague.  Most thought I was deaf as well, and used interesting forms of sign language.  Men, rather than harassing me through words, decided to write them down.  One particularly insistent character wrote me a series of written notes in English.  They read things like, “You are so beautifully!  What is your name?”  “Are you married?!”  “Can I please have access to your phone number?”  “Twitter/Email?”  “What is your full name so I can find you on Facebook?”  I piled each note in a growing stack next to the computer I was working on a Peace Corps report on, furrowing my brow further as to appear busier with each successive interruption.  One man who was writing notes to me was actually deaf.  I felt just a little bit bad brushing him away, as well.

I’m not sure quite how I will pass the time during these next two weeks.  If any of you know me, relaxing is not one of my personal strengths.  My days as a Peace Corps Volunteer are completely chock-full with activities.  If our faulty village electricity obliges, I rise early to set up our projector for my morning classes.  My rare breaks are usually spent formulating ideas to help some of our best, and poorest, students to pay their school fees, or cutting out some sort of poster or activity for my classroom.  In the evenings, I might teach extra periods, or help students, before making my weary way back home.  With dusk rapidly approaching, I grab a hoe, and potter around in the garden, with the smattering of students who invariably appear to help me.  A quick dinner has me back in the office, attempting to prepare notes and lesson plans, but often just tutoring students, and finishing my own notes uninterrupted during the late night hours.

Maybe, just maybe, it is a blessing in disguise to have a change of my routine.  This morning, I actually had time to cook breakfast.  Soon after dawn, I sat down with caramelized sweet potatoes, green tea with honey, and a fabulous book.  I visited my garden, wishing my weeds a “safari njema” as I propelled them through the air.  And, I wrote.  If I keep this pace of life up, I will have time.  Time to prepare fundraising campaigns and “success packets” for my students to complete over the holidays.  Time to apply for scholarships for my best students to study abroad.  And, maybe most importantly, time for myself.  Time for writing and yoga.  Time for making that coffee cake – because, just maybe, I’m worth it.  Time to finish those documentaries, and the mile-high stack of books on my bedside table.

Expect more of my presence here, on this blog.  I have plenty of stories to share, jotted down in memo pads, and in the margins of my notes, and I’ll have the time to share them.  And, your prayers and well wishes would definitely be appreciated as I struggle with the agony of silence over the next two weeks. In the words of our favorite Acapella-crooning redhead, "I have nodes. I am living with nodes. But I am a survivor, but I have to pull back because I am limited. Because I have nodes." 

A Rare Moment of Quiet

     The sun is bright and gentle at the same time, in a way that words cannot accurately describe.  Rain is falling softly, sparkling throughout our village skyline in the cheery, warm laughter of the sun.  Whispering at first, then slowly drowning out the rustle of students’ papers and the scratching of their pens.  Raindrops, like full, heavy goblets, fall upon the water-logged Earth and bounce away like my sister on her Pogo stick all those years ago.  I still wish I’d learned how to ride a Pogo stick.

     Students, just 19 – 20 years old, their brows furrowed in concentration well past their years, are seated in rather crooked rows in front of me.  Hundreds of questions race through their heads.  What kind of country is “imperialist in nature,” again?  Which African countries had to liberate themselves through armed struggle?  What, in the name of the tumultuous rain falling outside our window, is “armed struggle,” anyway?!   The thoughts echoing through their minds are almost audible as these Advanced Level students complete their exam.  I scan the classroom I am invigilating, watching for wandering eyes and whispering mouths, but my attention is diverted elsewhere.

     It’s a rare moment of quiet – our playing field is empty, except for the water-flecked blades of grass, finally drinking their fill after months of frying under the equatorial sun.  The sound of tree branches hitting flesh, and sometimes breaking flesh, has subsided for the time being.  The village children have already left school, taking their songs and strong lungs with them.

     In this rare moment of quiet, the frustrations of the day vanish.  The only things I have are a fresh stack of our grayish-yellow exam papers, my red teacher’s pen, fading after hours of making angry marks all over students’ essays, and a three-foot-tall stack of student exercise books I have shoved to the side of my small blue desk, neglecting work to put this rare moment of quiet onto paper.

     The morning events seem far away – the experiences that stretched my voice and my patience alike.  Now, however, I can remember the events like a distant dream.  I remember the dismal feeling of entering my first class at 7:28 am (two minutes to spare!), only to find empty seats.  I waited for a passing-by student to tell me the reason-of-the day –

the reason why my students were cutting spinach and grasses instead of filling my classroom. Granted, it has been a while since I exercised this speech, but I pulled the same old and tired words out of my pocket.  I explained to teachers, academic masters, whichever higher power would listen, the clear link between punishment work during class periods and student failure.  I preached about how it was time, today, to stop punishing the teacher, the school, and all of Tanzania by sending our students to the fields instead of classrooms.

     All the small successes, the challenges of the day fade away for a rare moment of quiet, before the chatter of students, the pit-pat of running feet, and the harsh slap of the stick return in a flood.  My fleeting moment of peace passes, just like it came, and the blessings of my daily life rush back in, without stopping to knock and allow my moment of serenity to pass politely.