Aisha- part 2

Aisha was waiting for me on my way to school the next day. And the next. And every morning that I had the early hour of class. Because of her, I began to recognize the network of house workers who met regularly to chat on the way to their respective jobs.

Although I was glad for the chance to practice conversational Arabic, I still was unsure of what she wanted from me.

The day she had invited me to stay at her house grew closer. Because of my apprehension, I managed to whittle the overnight adventure down to a day trip. On the Friday before, we rehearsed what would take place on Sunday: I would meet her at the same place under the berry tree across from the bus stop at 11:00 a.m.

I don’t think she believed I would follow through with the plan. She tried calling me five times while I was in church. And when I finally answered, I was on my way to the meeting place.

“I’m coming!”

She spewed a string of sentences I couldn’t understand, but what I assumed to be a reason that she was behind schedule.

“Okay. Okay. No problem. Okay.”

And I waited under the berry tree until a taxi pulled up and honked. Aisha was in the backseat, bouncing in her excitement. She grabbed me in a warm embrace before I had the chance to close the door behind me. And she talked, one rapid sentence after another, often missing the fact that I didn’t understand.

The taxi wound through the new city, behind the old city, and up up up on a hill. There was no containing Aisha’s joy as she led me out of the taxi and into her world.

It was the first bite of a day full of exquisite North African hospitality.

Aisha- part 1

We had seen each other before. Most mornings I passed her by on my way to school. She and a friend would sit on a concrete bench under a tree. Noting the consistency of our timing and location, I greeted the women regularly. But I never slowed enough to make conversation.

Until the day I needed help with my homework. Both ladies were startled when I plopped down beside them and asked them to help me. With no context for this encounter, they were full of questions: Was I a student? Where was I studying? What kind of Arabic was I studying? What was my name?

The conversation was labored, but I finished the assignment and arrived at class, breathless and only a few minutes late.

A few days later, I was striding to school with my normal stoic street face when a lady in my peripheral became animated and shouted to get my attention.

Another beggar, I surmised, and turned to greet her without reaching for my change purse. But then I recognized her face, although she wasn’t in her usual place under the tree.

As we greeted each other in somewhat reserved familiarity, I studied her for the first time. She wore old clothes and the kind of shoes that most women only wore to the public bath house. Her face was enveloped in the odor of her breath, which I smelled as I embraced her. She was a tiny woman, not built for the hard work that life required of her.

Who was this woman? And what did she want from me? She insisted on walking with me on my way to school; she said she worked as a maid at a house nearby.

Her speech was complimented with gestures. “You—come—my house—to sleep.” She isolated her words with the intention of helping me understand. “Do you understand?”

I did understand, but said only, “God willing” which was neither a commitment nor a refusal.

Before we parted ways, she asked for my phone number. That evening she called me and together we weathered my first phone call in Arabic. We exchanged greetings and a few other bits of information among the numerous confessions of “I’m sorry; I don’t understand.”

She told me she would wait for me the next day on my way to school.

Let us become more aware

I shielded my eyes from the morning sun as we walked the familiar streets to church. My heart was quiet and my mind was ready to receive a word from Him. Any word. Yet, I was still grappling with the paradox of God feeling absent even when I knew He wasn’t.

“Let us become more aware of Your presence.”

The words became my prayer as we sang them together. And it happened. Not in a warm, fuzzy feeling, but in the faces around me.

The beggar who spoke blessing on me, my health, my parents, (and possibly everyone and everything that I’ve ever known!).
The moment of reconnecting with a lady I had met on the train.
The little boy who ignored my words until I got down to his level and placed my hand on his shoulder.
The church guardian who offered to drive me home from church.

It wasn’t until I was home that I realized what had happened. And I thought of Martin in Tolstoy’s “Where Love Is, There God Is Also.” Sometimes God’s presence is as quiet as the weak and powerless.

In a dry and weary land

Right now, perhaps you are imagining me in loose desert garb astride a handsome camel under the blazing Saharan sun. Well, now you have pictured exactly how my trip wasn’t.

The Sahara trip officially started when eight of us girls piled into a tourist mini-bus. “Oh no! People will think we’re tourists!” It took a few kilometers of riding the tourist bus through my own city to realize that I was a tourist. I had just traded in my student identity.

The changing landscape sang the mighty power of God as we bumped along in our bus along paved highways and skinny mountain paths.

There were tree trunks covered in brilliant green moss, flat orange plateaus with snow-covered mountains beyond, and startling blue lakes.

shepherd with his sheep with looming snow-covered mountains beyond

valley with sheep grazing beside streams

We spent the night in a hotel on the edge of the desert. The next morning, a driver took us to the edge of the dunes. “Are these even real?” we wondered. The dunes looked exactly like the myriad pictures one might find anywhere. It was almost anti-climatic to see exactly what I had expected.

table and chairs perched on orange sand dunes

In the early evening, we started across the dunes on camels. The first 30 minutes may have been more enjoyable if a paparazzi hadn’t followed us to snap pictures of our camel train.

When we arrived at our desert camp, we ate a big meal and then strolled around outside of the camp to gaze at the expanse of bright stars that blanketed the dark sky. We contemplated the insignificance of man (Ps. 8) and then joined a group of other tourist around a campfire.

The next morning, we watched the sun rise over the dunes and then rode our camels back to civilization. On the way home we made several stops, one of them to have tea with our driver’s family who lived far up in the mountains. The scenery along the way was breathtaking.

But it was wonderful to come home again!

First day of school

This wouldn’t be so bad.

I gathered my school supplies, double-checking everything at least once. Forgetting a necessary item on the first day of English class wasn’t acceptable. Where was my flashdrive? In my handbag next to the stapler.

Ready.

It had been almost three months since I had arrived in North Africa. Three days after arriving, I started teaching English to twelve students ages 13-16. Each class period was different because depending on which trouble-makers attended, the dynamics could swing wildly. I planned each lesson with trembling, trying to predict the mood of the class upon its execution.

I had signed up to teach English, not manage behavior.

But this semester would be different, right? I locked the front door and went in search of a taxi. At the school gate, the guardian’s familiar smile was hardly encouraging. I had seen that smile every day last semester just before my carefully planned lesson was trampled by misbehavior.

I worked with the other teachers in the computer lab to make copies. I hesitated to leave the lab, knowing that unprotected by chatter and laughter my stomach would begin its nervous churn.

What if this semester was just as stressful as last?

“Here is your class roster.” The director handed me a sheet of paper. I had been told I would be teaching a class of 5-7 adults. This list had fourteen names. But it was okay. They were adults. Easy, right?

Except that last semester I had heard several teachers complaining about adult ego problems. “Classroom management is still an issue with adults,” they had said.

“And could you sign the contract please?”

Fourteen students. And what exactly did the contract say again? I pressed the pen to the paper and then signed my name quickly. What would the semester hold?

I still don’t know. But I do know that I loved every minute of my first class with these students. And I know that no matter what problems I may face this semester, I have a God who has not given me the spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control (2 Tim. 1:7).

A morning of sounds

What does my typical North African morning sound like?

Mourning doves cooing outside of my window and a lonely rooster penned in someone’s courtyard
Slated shades being pulled up from various apartments
Water running, the electric kettle steaming, my own munching and slurping
A few mumbled “Good morning”s and “Have a good day”s
The bang of the door as I pull it shut behind me
Clomp, clomp, clomping down two stories of steps and the banging the apartment building door
The murmur of passing cars from a perpendicular street
A few snatches of conversation between school children and university students
A cat meowing as it digs through leftover garbage
“Bonjour!… Bonjour! Hola! Hello?”
Horns honking around a busy intersection as other cars and pedestrians assume the right-of-way
Motorcycles, buses, trucks, cars, bicycles weaving in and out of each other—the screech of brakes and more horns and perhaps some yelling
A jackhammer of busy men working on the street
“سلام”
The scratching of a stalk broom on a sidewalk
The buzz of the Arabic school’s call button and consequently the opening of three heavy doors
“صباح الخير. لا باس؟” “لا باس الحمد لله.”
The sharp sound of chairs on a bare floor and the rumble of moving wooden tables as we all pile in and settle down for a long Arabic session

Bread and soap operas

What do bread and soap operas have in common? Perhaps nothing. Yet recently, I’ve been beginning to wonder if there indeed is some sort of correlation.

Imagine bread for every meal—breakfast, lunch, afternoon coffee time, and dinner—and soap operas, not between those meals, mind you, but before during and after those meals.

Lest you become concerned that I have just wasted a week of my life by living with a local family, rest assured that not all of my energy was spent in anticipating the next show.

More than spicing my limited vocabulary, the week marinated me in the flavor of the culture. What do their homes look like? What do they eat? What do they do during the day? How do they use a bathroom without an American toilet? How does a typical family function (or dysfunction)?

Overall, the week was culturally awakening. Now the North Africans I pass on the street aren’t just people–they belong to a home and a family…and maybe I’ve just sampled a slice of their typical day.

Having said that, I still might be able to tell you the time of day according to what soap opera is on.

A day of successful tourism

These are some of my favorite pictures from yesterday. A friend took me down into the dark depths of the Old City and out the other side, through a people-less village of makeshift houses, and up a hill. It was quiet up there. No hollering. No one trying to be our tour guide or pull us into their shop to buy merchandise. And the scenery was lovely: the city, the sky, the ruins.

On our way back, we even visited a tannery (one that I had missed the other week) where we happened upon our very own tour guide.

After our smelly visit to the tannery, our guide took us to a friend’s shop to buy something. We weren’t very good tourists. After tolerantly sniffing the bottles of spices and perfumes that were thrust in our faces, we smiled and said, “Thank you! Good bye!”

Then we were off to the guide’s friend’s café where we were directed up a ladder-like staircase to the upper room: the room where women were allowed to sip their tea and coffee. “Watch your head.” My head almost brushed the ceiling. The owner followed us up the stairs and wiped off the dusty table and chairs. Our guide plucked some trash off the floor and tossed it into a nearby bucket. The owner crept back down the ladder to start our tea. “Half sugar, please.” Our guide parked himself at our table. Conversation was lethargic until the delicious, syrupy tea arrived. It was then that our guide gave a parting handshake and left us alone.

house top overflowing with plants and flowers

stacked sacks lined against crumbling wall

The tourist attempt

Today I got my first taste of the unique flavor of tourist and local culture…alone. That taste has shaken me. Upon returning home, I brewed myself a pot of coffee and put in the remainder of a carton of cream. Just try to convince me that I don’t deserve every calorie.

My intention was to get home from school and join some friends at the leather tanneries in the old city. They left before I got home. So I grabbed my camera, a little cash, and my phone and started after them. The brisk walk took me down familiar streets full of familiar vendors. The colors, activity, and smells are why I like the old city.

The tanneries are located at the bottom of a very long street. Although I had never been there, it was simple. I would keep walking until I met up with a group of white foreigners with cameras around their necks.

After shaking a few persistent vendors who believed that they were selling what I was looking for, I put it in high gear for the downward trek, dodging children as well as the elderly, carts, donkeys, and cats.

No, I didn’t recognize the area, but of course I wouldn’t since I’d never taken the street down so far. I was encouraged by the faint stench of the nearby tanneries. But then I came to a T. And then another T. I paled and stood up against a jewelry vendor to let the crowd press by me. The streets had disappeared into tunnels. At the call to prayer, vendors began closing up their shops with thick wooden doors.

I pulled out my phone. “Um… where are you guys?” As long as I was on my phone, passersby were less likely to approach me, right?

Fat chance. “Hiiii. How are you? What’s your name?”

The jewelry vendor tried to help me when talking with friends unveiled no solutions. Before I left, he told me to come back to his shop if I ever wanted earrings. I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.

I started back the way I had come, but the closing doors of the shops threw off my sense of direction. The landmarks were disappearing. I started down one side street, only to realize that it looked more like a public bath entrance than a street. I spun around and kept walking…and walking.

Look confident!

I turned down a promising street and marched onward. The overhead daylight was a good sign.

“Where are you going, madame? That street goes nowhere.” A schoolboy approached and promised to take me to find my friends. “It goes to the tanneries.”

I explained that I wanted to meet my friends at the tanneries, and the boy insisted on being my guide. I tried to shake him, but he refused to go…and I was beginning to realize just how lost I was. When I came face to face with a few haughty men who wanted to take me through deserted buildings to the tannery, I told the boy to take me back to the main street. I was going home.

He led me to the back streets, narrow alleyways between towering concrete walls. Something was dripping ominously. A few men wandered in and out of partially hidden doorways.

Look confident! Don’t act afraid! But if I would scream right now, who would hear me? I had no concept of how close I was to the public. This school boy was relatively harmless, but was he leading me into a trap?

It took many more little streets and uphill climbs for him to point me to the correct street that would take me home.

“Thank you!” I talked to him as I paid him and found out that he spoke several languages; what a perfect little tour guide.

I turned down his offer to go to coffee (perhaps he didn’t realize I could almost be his mother?) and scuttled toward the street. I wanted to kiss the familiar vendors and buy everything in their shops, but I charged uphill toward home.

I nearly collapsed when I stepped inside the front door. That’s why I made myself a pot of coffee. I guess I’m not cut out to be a tourist. No tanneries for me today. Maybe ever! At least without people I know chained to my wrist.

The Noisemaker

Somewhere along our street lives a tiny man, perhaps no taller than my shoulder. I can’t say for sure because I’ve never seen him. He sleeps during the day and when the neighborhood goes to sleep, he steps out of his musty little house and begins his work.

See, although I have no proof, I do have ears. Every night I go to sleep, and every night the Noisemaker awakens me.

One night he walked up and down the street making a noise like a hoarse donkey’s bray. The dogs at every house barked furiously as he came and went, back and forth, back and forth. I lay in my bed, stricken with fear because the noise sounded like what I imagined a lion’s hiss to sound like. Now, I’m not even sure that lions hiss, but that wasn’t a factor I considered in my sleep-deprived state.

Just last night, the Noisemaker borrowed a keyboard and put it on the chorus setting. He played three notes and pause, three notes and pause. At least that’s what it sounded like: carolers outside the door starting and restarting their song. AhAHah, ahAHah. This time I wasn’t afraid because I knew it was just the Noisemaker.

Sometimes he comes in pattering feet up and down the hallway. Sometimes he pretends to be the wind and bang the poles that fasten the courtyard tarp.

And I’m sure he must smile as he snuggles up in his bed about the time the rest of the world struggles to get out of theirs. And he dreams of creative noises to make when the city once again goes to sleep.

What I want to know is: does he get paid?