On Staying Inside

Some days, i feel like doing absolutely nothing. Actually, it's not that I feel like doing nothing, it's that I don't feel like doing...something. Maybe that something is going to the market, or teaching, or laundry, bathing.

Our Wildlife Club meets on Fridays after classes, and boy oh boy, if I felt the club wouldn't have noticed the absence of the only white man in the group, I might not have been there. The reasons for my lack of enthusiasm vary. Maybe I feel like reading, maybe I don't feel like being stared at by every passing kid, maybe I don't feel like hearing, "Sir, you don't know how to dig," every time I pick up a hoe. I don't always know the reasons why I want to stay away, and alternately, I don't always know the reasons why I go. But somehow, I found myself ankle-deep in dirt digging around tomatoes with the Wildlife Club on Friday afternoon. We were weeding our tomatoes, which the students are then selling to the school for a small profit. At first, there were only three of us, but soon, more and more students came, and before long, we were working the field better than those two guys from, Of Mice and Men. With more people, generally comes a higher chance for critique, and soon enough I heard it (although said kindly!). "Sir, let me help you. You don't really know how to dig." As my Steinbeck-acquired confidence faltered, I prepared to defend myself (and ultimately give up the hoe). But before I could say much, another student spoke up. "Ah Sir, you're doing fine. You didn't even cut yourself like I did." Simple words. But I was grateful.

As I went on working, now assigned to picking up the cut weeds, I didn't say a lot. I listened. I heard the girls working. I heard the students laughing. I heard a group of kids enjoying themselves to a degree which I don't always understand how it's possible. There are many, myself again included, that look continually on what Africa doesn't have. But I think I tend to miss all that Africa does have; and apparently, all those things which aren't here, aren't prerequisites for happiness.

I kept working, silently. In about an hour we would call it a day. I would head back home, my feet caked in dirt, sweat all over my green, Indiana University t-shirt, and with a fairly high chance of having some parasitic insect residing somewhere on my body. But I also had a happiness that I perhaps wouldn't have had, had I stayed inside.