If you can't beat 'em...

“Omai e inu.” Give the drink. Her brown claw flexed, reaching at the soda that I now instinctively clutched to my chest.

I had just spent my last pa’anga of the day on one soda and two ears of corn: my entire dinner. Unable to afford both, I had bought the soda in lieu of eggs, the luxury of a Dr. Pepper (the first I had seen in a year) too hard to resist. In my excitement, I had forgotten to immediately put my purchases in my back-pack. Thus, I had committed a very foolish error: in Tonga, don’t have anything visible if you aren’t willing to part with it.

Her hand, like a hideously overgrown toddler’s, continued to grab at nothing. I hesitated, my “culturally sensitive” angel battling against my “I’m American and this is mine” devil. I tried to evade the situation with humor: “I’m sick. I wouldn’t want you to catch a palangi disease.” The other Tongans from my village laughed, but the woman would not relent.
“You lie. Give me the drink.”
I tried a different approach. “Give me some change and I’ll go get you a drink.”
She pulled a Charlie Chaplin frown, displaying her hands palms out. “I’m poor. I’m not rich like you. You make lots of money. You buy it for me.”
I explained to her that I’m a volunteer, and thus, not paid.
“But you are a rich American,” she insisted. “Give me money.”
I really wanted to give her something else, but since my job description includes “spreading world peace”, I figured physical violence wouldn’t go over well back in Washington.

Defeated, I poured half of the drink into my water bottle and relinquished the rest of the can to her. She gulped it down, then threw the desiccated remains on the ground. She then eyed the thin plastic bag protecting my corn. Circumventing any irksome debate, she reached into the bag and snatched out an ear. She started to strip back the husk.
“You can’t it eat it yet; it hasn’t been boiled!” I protested. She continued to denude my corn, only stopping when the white flesh was exposed. She paused, then stuck it in her bag. “I’ll eat it tonight,” she shrugged.

I walked away with the little I had left: one ear of corn, half a Dr. Pepper, and a shred of composure. Turning down the road back home, a car stopped to ask if I needed a lift. I politely declined, seeing the car was already full. but the family insisted. They commenced to shift: some bags and groceries were thrown in the trunk, one child went to sit on its mother’s lap (where a baby was already nestled),while another child crouched between the two front seats. There it appeared: a seat for me. I squeezed in, thanking them profusely.

As we drove, we exchanged the usual pleasantries: where I lived, where I was from, how long I would be staying, and did I want to marry their son? Half an hour later, they dropped me off in front of my home. When I saw the car turn back the way it came, I was confused. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“Makave!” they replied.

Makave is a village two minutes outside of town.

The next day, I sat in my home, deep in thought. “Well!” I said aloud, throwing a shirt on over my tank-top. “As the saying goes…”

I went over to the woman’s house. She was sitting by a cooking fire, preparing dinner. “Mind if I join you?” I asked. She smiled, then set an extra plate for me.

For Mrs. Guillard

Mrs. Guillard had been teaching French at South Central High for two months: it had taken half that time for her classes to become infamous.
“I got Mrs. Guillard!” a boy in my Study Hall grinned, looking at his schedule. “That fool don’t make you do shit!”
“Watch your language,” I commanded. The student apologized.
“And,” I interjected, “it’s not that she doesn’t “make you do shit”…you don’t do shit. Understand the difference?”
A few students snickered. The boy rushed to his own defense.
“No, Ms. Solove! Everyone plays cards and talks and she never says nothing!”
“She’s not a good teacher like you,” another student chirped. I raised my eyebrow.
“Yeah. You’re scary,” the boy complimented.
“Obviously not scary enough: do your homework. I know for a fact that you-” I pointed at the sycophant for emphasis, “have a test in my class next period. Study.”
She groaned. The boy, not ready to begin his school work, continued.
“The thing is she’s too nice! She gives cookies and stuff to us every week.”
I took the bait. “And this is what makes her a bad teacher?” I responded. “And just yesterday you were complaining how Mrs. Shapiro always yells at you, how she’s so mean. Then you have Mrs. Guillard, who is beyond kind, and instead of showing her respect, you treat her like dirt.”
The student looked down at his desk, admonished.
“But, Miss,” he muttered. “That’s just how it works around here.”

The principal sent Mrs. Guillard to me for lessons on classroom management. She sat across from me, wringing her small hands and shaking her head.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whimpered.
“Well, if you want to control your class, you need to make rules and enforce them. Mrs. Cataldo posts hers right next to the board.”
“Her classes are so good,” Mrs. Guillard mumbled in agreement. I ticked off some disciplinary tricks.
“If they are rude or lazy, hold detention after school. If they make a mess, make the entire class stay until it’s clean.”
She nodded.
“And don’t clean it yourself,” I added, noting her hunched shoulders. “Basically, you have to be strict.”
“I don’t understand!” she exclaimed, wiping her eyes. “I bring them pastries and they don’t even thank me! Last week one of them threw it on the floor and he even refused to pick it up!”
“Then why do you continue to do it? You should stop,” I advised.

Mrs. Guillard left the school by the next semester.

Years later, I’m watching the film Doubt. In it, Sister James, a sweet and innocent teacher, is scolded for being too nice to her students. The principal insists that she must be tough if she wants her class to behave. In the next scene, Sister James punishes a student for being noisy. “This is my class, boy, and you better not forget it!” she yells at him. The student, astonished, does indeed fall silent, but then he begins to cry. Sister James’s stern face collapses, and tears well in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

I pause the film, blinking and staring at the ceiling.

The movie continues to follow the principal and priest, focusing on their struggle to choose and do what is right, just, and compassionate. At the end of the film, there’s a dedication. At first I’m surprised by it, considering the character played such a minor role, but then I understand.

“For Sister James” it reads.

Ten Minutes

I was running down the street, asking everyone I came across if they had phone credit. I had to call my family. I had to call my boyfriend. I had to reach home to tell everyone I loved them before it was too late.

Two minutes earlier, I had received a call from the Tonga Peace Corps Headquarters, telling me that a tsunami was coming and that it may or may not hit Vava’u within the hour. Stay away from the coast line and find high ground.

One hour. One hour. I have one hour. One hour.

I pounced on two men sitting outside the local shop. “A-tsunami-is-coming-do-you-have-any-phone-credit?” They raised an eyebrow, then both shook their head. “But Mima is coming back soon; she has credit.”
“Coming back when?”
They frowned at my very un-Tongan behavior, especially so early in the morning. “Why are you so afraid?” one asked. “A tsunami is coming!” I repeated. “What should we do? Where should we go?”
He regarded me. “You should make your soul strong,” he advised solemnly.
The other nodded down the road. “There she is.”
I sprinted towards the car.

“A tsunami is coming!” I called out to her. “Get the kindi kids together; we need to find high ground!” My co-teacher looked shocked for a second, then she smiled at my Chicken Little declaration. “No,” she reassured me. “No tsunamis come here. The people of Tonga are very religious. We pray every day.”

I dismissed this as quickly as she had dismissed me. “Do you have any phone credit? I have to call my family.” She said she had three dollars, which I immediately started begging her for. Out of generosity (and an effort to get rid of me), she transferred it over.

I called my father and told him to call me right back. Then, with the remaining credit, I called my boyfriend. As I left him a message, I wondered if I should tell him that I love him. What if he heard the message when it was too late and I never got the chance? I decided I would wait until the tsunami was definitely coming before I took that risk.

As I waited for either to call, I couldn’t stop shaking. I wondered why I had never asked for my friends’ numbers back home; I was nowhere near a computer and wouldn’t be able to reach them. The telephone’s ring cut through my thoughts.

“What’s going on?” Dad asked. I told him the news, which I had to repeat twice, since, in my panic, I had stopped making sense. “Wait,” he said firmly. “Hold on while I look it up.” When he got back on the phone, he told me that it was just a warning, that there was no tsunami yet, and that if one did form, it would probably hit Samoa,

I slumped against the wall. “Thank you,” I told him when I could breathe. “I love you.”

The rest of the morning, I taught at the kindi. As I sat with the children, I concentrated on coloring within the lines. I read my favorite book for story time. I helped build a sand castle.

Still, as I walked to town to meet with friends, I began to sob. I stepped into the bush where no one could see me crying. For the second time that day, I called my father.

“What’s wrong? You’re safe now.”
“I know. I know. It’s silly, but for ten minutes, I really thought I was going to die. I thought…” I broke off crying.
“Jenny. Listen to me. You need to take something away from this experience. What were you thinking about in those ten minutes? What did you regret? What did you wish you had said, but never did? Create something out of this, write something on your blog. This kind of experience can change your life.”
“I don’t know, Dad. I mean, it’s not like I had an actual near death experience. At most, I had an extreme cultural misunderstanding.”
“But you didn’t know that at the time. Think about it. I’ll be looking forward to reading your blog. I love you.”

As soon as I arrived in town, I wrote all my friends and family, telling them how much I loved them and how much they meant to me. There was just one person left.

I hesitated over the words, erasing “I love you” to retype “how much I care for you”: I didn’t need to tell him now. I could wait for him to say it first, wait for the right time, maybe over Christmas…

I erased again. I love you, I wrote. Taking a deep breath, I clicked send.

I once had a friend tell me that they liked my blog, but that I seemed to be absent from it, always commenting on what was around me, but never really putting myself in the writing. To be honest, I’m afraid to post this. What if it’s too intimate? What if the reader thinks it’s maudlin or histrionic? I should just wait, rewrite it later, put it in my diary…

But I learned an important lesson. I didn’t listen to it then, but I will now: make your soul strong. To me, this means never take those you love for granted and never live in fear. Love and live freely, without reservation, or you will regret it when it comes to the final hour.

It took me twenty five years and ten minutes to discover this.

A nice day

I was hungry, dirty, and poor. My one working faucet no longer held that title, my cooking gas had run out, my single electrical socket had blown, my headphones had broken, and I was in debt with no possible way of getting out any time soon. And it was still raining. The monsoon season had broken two weeks back, breaking my spirit and hygiene with it; unable to do laundry, I had resorted to wearing my underwear inside out.

A trash bag covering my head and back-pack, I stepped out of my door to hitch a ride to work. My landlord greeted me with a smile and a water bill. Even though it was only the equivalent of ten American dollars, tears welled in my eyes.

"Have a good day at work!" he called out to me as I started trudging down the road.

At the end of the school day, the sun finally made an appearance. The gray sky was back to its robin's egg blue, water dripped from greener plants, and children were screaming and running about barefoot. I passed two grinning kids jogging down the street, a kite flying behind them. They had made it by tying pieces of cord or rope together, which was then attached to a single trash bag floating at the end. They waved to me as they ran by, laughing and squealing at their invention.

What a nice day, I thought as I watched them go.

The Train

I was approaching the end of my eight kilometer trek home when I passed by the elementary school of our neighboring village. Class was over and the students were pouring out of the small school house. I heard one of the teachers call out to me from the porch.
“Senifa! Where are you wandering to?” She was frowning and I noticed she had chosen the verb “to wander” as opposed to “to go”.
“Home!” I answered, trying to seem cheerful.
“How come you are never here to help us? You are always wandering in town.” she stated without preamble. Immediately on the defensive, I tried to explain that I wasn’t just “wandering” in town.
“I’m sorry,” I replied. “I work Monday through Thursday at Kalana High in town, then I work Fridays at the Kindergarten in Ha’akio. In the evenings I teach night school to the children in my village.”
This response did not seem sufficient; she continued to scowl and another teacher shook her head from side to side. I didn’t know what else to say, so I apologized again, waved good-bye, and kept walking. I cursed under my breath.

Once inside my house, I sighed and leaned against the door. In my peripheral vision, I caught my reflection in my home’s one cracked mirror. Something didn’t seem right, so I inspected myself closer. I touched what appeared to be bruises underneath my eyes. “Oh my god,” I exclaimed to no one. “I have under-eye circles!”
My cell phone started chiming an alarm. I fished it out of my pocket and groaned. “Aerobics” it reminded me.

Several weeks ago I had promised the women of Ha’akio that I would teach an aerobics class, but due to extenuating circumstances (choir practice, power outings, etc.) it hadn’t actually happened yet. It was raining outside, and knowing Tonga, I knew this was a good enough excuse to cancel again. I watched the rain for a few minutes.
“Screw it! Just get it over with!” I told myself and started to change.

Ten minutes later, I emerged from my house looking like what I envisioned as an“aerobics instructor”. I wore black yoga pants and a form-fitting t-shirt with my blond hair held in a high ponytail. I had even tied a bandanna across my forehead. I marched through the rain to the town hall. A few women were lounging out front.
“Time to do aerobics!” I chirped. The women laughed.
“My stomach aches!” one complained, rubbing her ample ailment.
“You’re only fake sick! Stop being lazy!” I chastised her, bringing forth a fresh burst of merriment. I rang the church bell that announced town meetings or other Ha’akio activities.
“We’re doing it today! I’m going to go get some more women, but we’re going to begin in ten minutes. Don’t you dare try to escape!”
I went to the individual houses, navigating a path over the pig fences and patches of mud.
“Time for aerobics!” I called out. Most of the women told me they were sick, or that they had to do laundry/weave/cook, but I was taking no prisoners.
“You can do that later! C’mon, let’s go. You don’t even need to change, just come in that.” I grabbed their hands and dragged them out of their houses.

After a good half hour of verbal and physical harassment, a ragged group of middle-aged potential exercisers were assembled in the hall.
“Yay!” I clapped, already the perky instructor. “Thank you all for coming!” They threw side-ways glances to each other. One sat down.
“O-kay!” I said, my voice rising on the “kay”. I turned to start the music I had prepared for the occasion. "Down in Mexico" by The Coasters began, and the women seemed to perk up.

We stretched (a necessary precaution, assuming most of the women had not exercised since high school, if then), the women surprising me with their ability to touch their toes. Stretching their quads wasn’t as successful: most of the women had too much leg between their heels and glutes. The fact that everyone wore ankle-length skirts also didn’t help.

The Coasters finished and Missy Eliot’s "Work It" began to thump through the speakers.
“Time to exercise!” I cheered. I started to do slow squats in time with the bass, making the movement, without my intention, extremely suggestive. The women howled with laughter, then tried to mirror the movement. Some could only bend at the waist, but everyone was enjoying the effort. A two hundred pound house-wife next to me grabbed my rear and cried out, “Ouaie!” She then took large handfuls of her own bottom and pretended to compare the consistency.
“Good to exercise!” I winked, which was followed with more hoots of laughter.

Pitbull’s "Hit the Floor" came on next, and I prayed no one would understand the lyrics. Encouraged by the communal mischievous mood, I decided to show them a modified version of pop, locking, and dropping it. Tongan dancing is mostly performed with the hands, so most of the women didn’t understand how to “shake it”. I assisted one woman by placing my hands on her hips, guiding her weight to shift from side to side. A mother of eight, she giggled and covered her face with her hands.

The women were huffing and losing steam, so I announced that the next song would be the last; I skipped ahead to “The Train”. The pulse came on and I instructed the women to form a line behind me, hands on each other’s shoulders. We hopped from foot to foot and conga lined around the room.
“Up high!” I called out and the women squealed and raised their hands up to the ceiling. “Down low!” I shouted and circled my hands at my knees. Everyone followed, laughing and hooting. Then I had everyone join hands in a circle, come together, run back out, then come back in again.
“Whee!” they cheered. We finished by dancing however we wanted to: knocking hips, shaking butts, flapping arms. The song ended with everyone exhausted and smiling. “Next week?” I asked, grinning. The question was met with a resounding “Yes!”. Outside the hall, a teenage girl approached me and asked if she could join next time. “Of course!” I replied.

Walking home, my feet still keeping time to "The Train", I sang to myself:
“C’mon ride the train, jump right in…I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.”

A small exchange

I already felt like an outsider, a white girl on an island in the middle of the South Pacific, but the three teenage girls teasing me made it much worse. Tonga usually lives up to its name, the friendly islands, but, at times (as it is world-wide), kids can be punks. And, let's admit it, I made an easy target: face red from the heat, walking bent forward to counter-balance the weight of my back-pack, sweat forming a crescent on the neck of my shirt.

The three adolescents had started following me at the bottom of the hill, whistling, making noises, giggling; I ignored them and pushed on towards my office. They continued to follow me, asking, in Tongan, if I'd give them money, if they could have a camera, etc. Then one said, "I'm thirsty; give me your soda."

I turned and they froze. "Thirsty?" I asked in Tongan. I held out the Coke I had been carrying. They eyed me warily, then looked at the offering and nodded. One crept forward, extending her hand for the treat. Once she had it in her grip, I yelled "HAH!" and took off running up the hill. When the group realized it was an empty can, they started sprinting after me, shouting. I had a good head start on them, so I reached my office, just in time to shut the door and stick my tongue out at them from the window.

We were all laughing.

What can you do?

Fifteen minutes before the end my first period class, the intercom sputtered with its daily interruption of announcements. The voice of our principal, Vincent Carbino, invaded the classroom. Mr. Carbino was pale and pudgy with blond hair and watery blue eyes: the picture of what anyone would envision as “the man”. Despite this, in an effort to relate to his Spanish students, Mr. Carbino pronounced his name Carrr-bee-no, but everyone else, mostly to spite him, pronounced it Car-bin-o.

“A word to the wise,” the voice began and the students groaned. “A word to the wise,” one student parroted and everyone laughed. Even I, not one to encourage the students' inherent disrespect of authority figures, rolled my eyes.
“Next week is the William’s Compliance Check, so every student must bring their textbook every day.” He emphasized every word with grandiose pauses; his flare for the dramatic usually stretched his announcements into ten minute sermons.
“Textbooks?” I said out loud. We were halfway into the semester, and I had never seen a book for Journalism, my subject, in all of Santee High. As a result, I had written to The Los Angeles Times and they had been donating fifty newspapers a day, all of which I had to share amongst my three periods of at least thirty students each.

“Today, during each period, every third floor teacher must report to the textbook room, with their students, to ensure that each student has their own book. I want, and I know, the Santee Falcons will soar through the William’s Compliance Check with soaring colors…”
I stopped listening. I had asked for Journalism textbooks at the beginning of the semester, but Car-bin-o had told me that the budget didn’t cover “extra-curricular” courses. I wondered what the budget did cover, considering that the school had been rented out as a movie set during last semester’s week of exams, closing the library for filming. No one knew what had happened with the money garnered from that “extra-curricular” enterprise.

“Are you going?” my surly neighboring teacher asked, opening the door between us.
“I suppose we have to, although I’m positive there are no textbooks for my class.”
“This is such bullshit,” she muttered, and for once, I agreed.

The textbook room was chaos. Before any of my students took the golden opportunity to ditch, I gathered them into a clump towards the back. “Ah, miss!” they complained, watching their peers make the most out of the mad-house. Mr. Carbino approached in his three piece suit, the tie bringing out the color of his dish-water eyes.
“Where are your students’ books?” he interrogated.
“We don’t have any,” I replied. “My class is Journalism and there are no books.”
He snorted.
“Yes, there are. The tenth grade Literature textbook. Have each of your students get one then return to your classroom.” He began to turn away.
“Sir, I teach Journalism. That book has nothing to do with my class.”
He scoffed. “Have you read it?”
“Yes, Sir. I taught it last semester. That book has fiction, poetry, and drama. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to check it out.”
He whirled on me and pointed his finger at my chest.
“If you were a good teacher, you could a find a way to make it work. Check them out and go upstairs.”
He walked away before I could reply.
“Wow,” one my students said. “You want us to throw down?” another joked.
“Do we have to check them out? Those books are heavy, Miss.”
I stood there a moment, watching his back.
“No, we don’t. Let’s go.”

Later in the staff room, I vented to the fellow teachers.
“He chastised me in front my own students! My students! And he has the audacity to tell me I’m a bad teacher when he’s just trying to cover his own ass!”
“I don’t have any Economics textbooks either, and he told me the same thing,” a fellow teacher added.
“So, what are you going to do?” I asked, turning to the veteran History teacher. He took a bite of his sandwich.
“I checked them out. What can you do?”

I still refused to check out the books, and continued teaching Journalism as I had before; if the auditors came to my classroom, I would be more than happy to inform them of the situation. Then, on Wednesday morning, I was no longer the Journalism teacher.

“What the…” I whispered, staring at my computer screen. I had logged on to submit by daily attendance and saw that my Journalism course title had been changed to Writing Seminar…the class requiring the literature textbook.
“He can’t do this!” I shouted, slamming the desk.

I went to the Culinary Arts teacher, our former UTLA representative, and apprised him of the dilemma.
“Is there something the Union can do about this?”
“Well, he really can’t change the course half-way into the semester without giving you three days off, paid, for lesson planning...”
“But what about the students? Half of them already took Writing Seminar with me last semester!”
“Hmmm. Jordan Henry is the current UTLA representative. He could take it to the Union for you and maybe something would happen.” He paused.
“You know, Jenny, this is sorta how it goes around here. Maybe UTLA could help you, but in all likelihood, nothing will happen and you’ll just end up on Carbino’s shit list. He’s fired people for less than this, and considering you’re a brand new teacher, not even fully credentialed, this could easily mean your job.”
“What floor does Mr. Henry work on?”

Mr. Henry told me he would find out how many other teachers this had happened to and then he’d get back to me. The bell rang and I returned to my classroom. Before I could even shut the door, I was bombarded with complaints.
“Miss, I already took Writing Seminar and I need my credits to graduate!”
“Look guys, I’m figuring this out and this is still Journalism. Don’t worry about it. Let’s begin class.”
I walked over to the board and erased the day’s agenda.
“I’ve decided we’re going to put the review section on pause so that we move straight into the current events section. Since I want all of you to have the experience of real reporting, I would like us to write on events here at Santee.”
I turned back to them and smiled.
“Maybe the Williams audit would make a good piece?”

Every day, the students came into the “newsroom” excited to share their new information. It had turned out that a married couple on the first floor, history teachers, had also had similar problems: their AP textbooks had never been delivered, so Carbino had switched their classes to regular History. One teacher had yelled at Carbino and been thrown out by security. Her husband was now planning to walk out on Friday.

“Ok,” I instructed my class. “We need to be unbiased reporters, so make sure all your facts are correct, that you have reliable sources that you can quote, and be sure not to express your own opinion. This isn’t the opinion section and I don’t want any of you getting into trouble. I want the final drafts on Wednesday.”

The students did incredible work, surprising me with their enthusiasm. A few groups even interviewed Mr. Carbino, who seemed to be avoiding my classroom. On Thursday, I gave my last assignment. “We don’t have a printing press, but this is your voice and it can reach your community. I want all of you to go home and read your article to your parents, your family, everyone. Then I want you to invite them to the protest tomorrow morning. I won’t be in class, but I hope to see all of you there.”
“Miss Solove takes it to the street!” a student cheered.

The next morning, the sidewalk was packed. Students, teachers, and parents were all shouting: “Are we gonna take it? -No! -Carbino Must Go!” The police surrounded the school, helicopters circled above us, even The Los Angeles Times came to cover the story. Everyone had come together.

By the end of the following week, Mr. Carbino had resigned.

* * *