Je Te Remercie

It is fascinating how humans choose to interact, how we try and find common ground between one another and when that cannot be found, some change themselves entirely to fit the perfect friend of the stranger we know. It is a universal struggle to seem to find somebody you can be yourself around, especially in my position when, already, many of them don't understand what I am saying, let alone how and why I am saying it. I am grateful for the chance to try and teach myself but even more grateful for the ones who meet me, comprehend me and take me as I am.

It was a difficult morning. I chose to be quite confident in my job and prove on the outside that I knew what I was doing, so I solitarily entered the kids' classroom on my own to observe, much like the day prior, and was greeted with a scattered but unanimous cacophony of "good morning mame!" Unfortunately, that was the case, but we were to check the outside temperature to figure out if it was cool enough for the kids to be in all morning. I was already drenched in sweat and the idea of being outside was one that allowed the cons to outweigh the pros. We sat outside.

Earlier that morning I had been introduced to Goma, Bijata's mother-in-law (Bikesh's mother) who was seated in her office preparing for a day of counselling. I find it so fascinating the passion both her and her husband possess for this program and how, 20 years later, they are still finding ways to help people with the inability to help themselves or to be seen as human. Goma was kind and greeted me as though I were family, hugging me without asking, smiling broadly, trying as much as she could to speak to me in English. She welcomed me into her work, into her life and told me eye to eye I could speak with her about whatever and that her home was always open to me. I felt safe, suddenly, enough to cry into this gentle stranger's arms. She gave off the sense that she knew Love, personally, and could describe it to you if you asked.

While outside with the kids, that feeling of helplessness began creeping into the pit of my stomach once again as their teacher walked up to us, preparing for her class. She began in English, letting the lot of us know, myself especially, that today we were learning about parts of the body. She went from head to toe (literally) listing off each name of the body part, some quite specific too such as forehead or calf. There was then merely an hour left of the morning portion of class and that was when she chose Nepali as the continuing language and I was to sit in that red plastic chair, motionless, speechless and baking in the sun as the lesson went on. She never spoke a word of English after that list that morning and I began falling asleep, feeling guilty that I was placed into a situation I knew not how to help. I once again question whether I was a good fit here or not anymore since I was help to nobody.

After a surprisingly delicious and unspicy lunch, I was invited back into the classroom to help with teacher's aid tasks while the class resumed just outside. I was given the task of colouring alphabet pages. I was quite entertained by this task seeing as it was calming just as much as it filled that hole the feeling of helplessness dug. I was sat beside whom I thought was the IT guy, but never got around to that question and he decided to spark conversation with me. We began with the customary queries: where are you from? How old are you? Do you like Nepal? But then he began with a different route, asked me if I was going to college and what I was studying. I'd told him journalism and he got excited, translating to everyone around him that I was a writer. He'd joked that I must be very good at English and questioned whether there were multiple languages in Canada. I told him yes, French and he asked me if I could speak it then promptly informed me he's wanted to learn it so we struck a deal: I teach him French as he teaches me Nepali. We later struck topic of conversations like family how his sister was a nurse in the UK and has been for 8 years and that he is stuck working for his dad. We joked a lot, he comprehended my sarcasm and laughed along with it, we spoke upon the politics of Canada and the overwhelming population they have of homeless people and other things as he sat beside me printing the alphabet sheets I was colouring to help the children learn the language we were befriending in. It was quite surreal, yet I had never felt more comfortable with someone this first week. Throughout the week I had posed as different people for different people, finding it quite difficult to introduce my true personality to many of these people whom I believed were judging my every step. I am very grateful for this man perking up every few minutes with a random word asking me to translate it into French. Je te remerci.

As the day went on, I returned to the DRC to discover a new found confidence to be with the kids. I thank Bicesta, Bijata's energetic young girl, for the boost. As aforementioned in a previous post, I have had, alongside the feeling of helplessness, a feeling of dread of not being around these children who were excited for me to be there, wanting to open up their curiosity with me. So I chose to enter their shed shaped schoolroom/play area. There was a young boy I'd befriended from afar the first day who wanted to play pass with me with a large grey yoga ball. His English was spotty, but he knew what to say when it came to doing something or following the rules of a game. He'd gotten quite bored of pass (luckily for me, for I was quite bored of pass) and asked a question in Nepali. I tried as hard as I could to comprehend, even as he swatted his arms in a useless game of charades. Giving up quickly on that, he help up the universal "1 sec" pointer finger and sprinted as fast as a twelve year old boy with energy could go, and returned a minute later with Ping-Pong paddles and on a mission for a ball. I agreed with the knowledge that it was not going to end well for I know no such thing as aim. We'd found quite a faulty ball and played along, a large smile being forced down by his face as he tried to look serious during the serious game of Table Tennis. This was when two other guys came around the corner to the table with an actual Ping-Pong ball. One of the boys struggled up the hill on his crutches while the other, a year younger than me and suffering from cerebral palsy took the young boy's position on the other end of the table to play the game with me. We played a million rounds, as a larger crowd began to circle us watching. I sent the ball over the gate at least a dozen times with the first little boy sprinting his little sprint out to get it. It was quite sweet watching how excited he was just to referee my games as opposed to playing against me like how he originally wanted. I played one round against a girl much to my skill level—level zero—and we finally left it after almost two hours and me being deemed the loser. However, I won perhaps a dozen rounds and each time I scored a point they would cheer for me, most likely because it was a change of pace.

After the long, tireless, but worth to learn I can't play, Table Tennis game, I entered the shed where a couple of the boys were playing Chess. I asked who was playing, they pointed each other out. It was the boy from the first day with the kidney failure and another boy whom I hadn't been formally introduced yet. They asked if I played and when I said yes, they immediately ended their game, cleaning it up, pulling out a chair for me and Rock-Paper-Scissoring to see "who was to lose against me." This next paragraph is for you, Grandpa. I played two rounds with them, somewhat of a 2v1 type game, each time I would play a move that scored me closer to where I wanted to be. I, once again, drew in a large crowd to watch me, one of the kids in the crowd being a lot more of an expert than myself, which I learned after moving my Knight to a spot and, instead of whispering "no" like he was doing, he took the Knight and moved it back, moving another piece on the complete opposite of the board. I'll admit, it was a better move. This is what the two games really were—myself starting the game, and someone else finishing it for me. Teamwork, I guess? No matter, I've never won at Chess, it was quite exciting.

Earlier during Ping-Pong, I apologized each time the ball was hit off the table, smacked over the gate or all in all just needed to be fetched and, unfortunately, created a habit with these children who have nothing in their lives to apologize for. They follow my poor lead on this front and I blame my Canadian heritage and it may or may not stick with them. I do think about that a lot, however, that each one of these kids are going to grow up, continue on, have a future and I shall be a small blip in their memory where they may unconfidently say "do you remember that one random girl who showed up, lived with us, then left?" But I will know that I made a difference in their lives. I played Ping-Pong with them, I taught them some English, I laughed with them and was the reason for many of their rare laughs. I was allowed to be myself and I really do hope now that they don't forget me and my impact, because I like to convince myself it is a bigger one than I originally believed when getting here. They won't forget me...they won't.