Astral Facts, February 2013
Shades of Gray in a Million Pieces
A recent article in the Seattle Times noted that public and private universities in the State of Washington led the nation in the number of Peace Corps Volunteers in the past year. I was surprised at the number of negative comments posted online in response. Mostly, the views expressed feelings it was just an indication of lazy and inept people who couldn’t get a “normal” job, so they were volunteering to use public money for their personal pleasure. Needless to say, not many returned volunteers came forward to confess such “sins.”
All this did bring to my recollection a short piece I had written for one of the “chicken soup” books. It didn’t quite make the final cut because the editors said it was not “uplifting” enough. Unfortunately, the final line had been omitted from the copy they had and the omission was not discovered until after the book went to press. Here it is:
Calm at Storm Center
“Go ahead, Walter,” Jim told me as he pointed to the three folded slips of paper, “you can choose first.”
Jim Barker, Ed Ciok, and I were Peace Corps Volunteers in Afghanistan in September 1973, teaching at the Nangrahar Medical University in Jalalabad, where students studied English their first three years. During the first week on campus we had given them all placement tests and grouped them according to their levels. We considered calling them sections 1, 2, and 3 or A, B, and C but worried that those grouped as “C” or 3rd would be upset at those labels. We decided to call the groups Red, White, and Blue.
“Go ahead,” Jim repeated, “Whatever color you choose for the first quarter with these third year students, you’ll have a different color for the other two groups.”
“I’ve got the Blues,” I said after unfolding the furthest away paper I had picked.
“You sure do,” Jim commented. Later I wondered how much he understood just how ironic my simple statement really was. Certainly I had a lot to learn, but I was filled with the volunteer spirit.
I had arrived in Afghanistan on July 9th, fresh from graduate studies at Buffalo State College and a year’s internship in cross-cultural education at Lincoln Jr. High in Lackawanna, NY. Eight days later, on July 17th while the king was out of the country, his cousin overthrew the government in a bloodless coup. From that point, the government in general shifted from its slightly pro-Western alignment in favor of Russian involvement.
Similar political winds had been swirling at our school for some time. Because of Jalalabad’s strategic position above the entrance to the Khyber Pass into Pakistan, Russia and the US had been competing for political advantage. One built a dam for flood control; then the other built an irrigation system to use the water. Then the first built a hydroelectric plant and the second built a modern road between it and Kabul, the capital city. In this process, the Russians built a large complex to house the workers and specialists brought in to design and build their projects. When they finished, they built a classroom complex and donated the site to Afghanistan to use as a medical university. Not to be outdone, the American government arranged for university professors from the US to teach specialized medical subjects at no extra expense to Afghanistan. These classes were taught in English during the final three years of the schooling, so Peace Corps Volunteers taught English as basic subject during the first three years.
Ideally, we volunteers are the ones just wanting to lend a helping hand for others in completing tasks without worrying about who gets the credit. We volunteers may sense some surrounding political struggles, but we idealistically try to stay focused on “the mission” for the benefit of the general population. Frequently we calmly carry forth in the eye of the hurricane of political and cultural forces swirling around us until suddenly those winds blast us. Such was my case, and I felt those forces building up from the first day in class.
My thirty-five “Blues” were a combination of three types: those who had never studied English, those who had studied but had never learned, and those who refused to learn. With only the first two groups, I probably would have been okay, but the third group, staunchly anti-American, preferred that English should not be a required subject, so they actively sought to sabotage our efforts. They quickly figured out that “Blue” was the lowest level, and they resented us even more for this stigma.
With these unhappy saboteurs assembled in my classroom, I stood in front of the group and innocently invested my efforts into their education.
The first day I distributed the mimeographed texts and introduced myself. As I was speaking, one student in the third row leapt to his feet.
“Your honor, I object!”
This was my introduction to Omar Gul, who essentially objected to everything in class.
We studied the vocabulary of the circulatory system and did an oral review for the exam.
“Faisal Ahmed, what is an artery?”
“Oh, Teacher,” Faisal responded, holding both sides of his head, “the blood!”
“Yes, what about the blood?”
“The blood is rushing in my head. I cannot think!”
The room erupted in laughter.
After this, “The blood is rushing in my head” was the frequent answer to many of my questions.
We also studied the elimination system.
“Teacher,” asked Speen Gul, a sincere student totally baffled by English vocabulary, “what means ‘eliminate’?”
“To remove; to make gone.”
Seeing the blank look still on his face, I dropped a small piece of chalk on the concrete floor.
“Like this,” I said, crushing it into dust under my foot.
My foot made a “Squoosh! Squoosh!” in the fine layer of sand which accumulated in the buildings every day.
“Squoosh! Squoosh!” reverberated through the room as the students imitated my action.
“Eliminate!” they cried in unison.
“Squoosh! Squoosh!”
I left campus every day feeling like a racquetball that had been bounced off all four walls. My other students, the first year Whites and second year Reds, were trying to learn. But I had to start every day with the third year Blues and to them I was nothing more than a permanent substitute teacher for them to play with. Two years before, when my Blues had been in their first year, the American professors had quit teaching at the school because several of the students at the school had acted in this same way. The school administrators could not back the professors since many of these students were members of prominent families. To expel the students would have cost those administrators their careers. When the professors left, the primary purpose for our teaching English had left with them. The subversive Blues in my class had their basic anti-American views reinforced by the lack of consequences during the previous two years of disruptive behavior. They had advanced in spite of failing English every year. Although the dean had given us a written statement that any student failing English would not be promoted at the end of the year, no one believed it would be enforced.
As the quarter progressed, these disrupting blues would bring pinecones into class and throw them around the room when my back was turned. They regularly took books away from the more serious students or stole homework assignments when others weren’t looking and turned them in as their own. I would scold them or send them out of class, and they would act chagrined for a time, but it soon started up again.
Several nights a week some of us Peace Corps Volunteers would have dinner together and discuss the challenges of the cultural adjustments and our missions. They were always amazed at the stories of the goings on at our school, but my tales of the third year Blues kept them spell bound. They consoled me and encouraged me not to give up, as had the Peace Corps Volunteer the year before. Still, they were anxious to hear the latest events each time we met.
Things reached the breaking point in November.
As I was writing new vocabulary on the chalkboard one morning, I heard a different kind of snickering going on behind me.
“What is it now?” I wondered as I quickly turned around and saw a flicker of bright light.
“Omar Gul!” I shouted as I approached him, “Show me what you have in your hand!”
As he showed me the pocket mirror he had been using to reflect the sunlight onto my back, in the corner of my eye I saw Ghulam snatch Ramatallah’s assignment paper from his book.
“Out!” I sad to Omar Gul, pointing to the door.
“But Teacher! The blood is rushing in my head!”
“Out!” I repeated, still pointing at the door.
“Out! Out!” the students chorused.
“Squoosh! Squoosh! Eliminate! Squoosh! Squoosh!” they chanted with lips and feet.
Omar Gul slowly swaggered out the door.
I then pointed to Ghulam and the door.
“You too! Return the paper. Out!”
“Out! Out!” came the chorus.
“Squoosh! Squoosh! Eliminate! Squoosh! Squoosh”
Once the squooshes had died down and a sense of order had settled on the class, I resumed writing the vocabulary. With the next word, a spotlight appeared on my hand and then into the space where I was writing. Omar Gul had climbed on a large rock outside the high classroom windows and was using his mirror to highlight the words as I was writing them. I had no choice but to ignore this and just keep writing as the light danced across my hand and the chalkboard.
The bottom of the windows started at about six feet above the concrete floor. The students seated in the front rows could not see outside, but the floor was sloped, theater style, for the rows in back to see (the room had about 120 seats), and several students ran up the aisles to the back of the room to look out and see where Omar Gul was. Just as this commotion began, a large boulder, about the size of a basketball, came in through the open window near the front row of seats.
“Clomp!” went the boulder, and “Clomp, clomp, clomp” as it bounced and rolled across the concrete floor, kicking up clouds of dust along the way.
I stood at the front of the room, the chalk still in my hand, dumbfounded by the scene unfolding before me. Six or seven students had run to the back of the room to see what was happening. Another milling gang of eight or ten students had pounced on the boulder and were hoisting it back out the window, hoping to drop it back on Ghulam’s head. Four students were violently throwing pinecones at each other. Someone had stolen Ramatallah’s homework again and he was struggling to get it back. Three students were running to the door on the opposite side of the room to go outside.
As I stood there, only one thought was running through my mind:
“They will never believe this at dinner tonight. I need to remember every detail to make the story as accurate as possible!”
As I stood there calmly taking it all in, Speen Gul came up to me.
“I take Omar Gul for you,” he said, turning his back to the others while opening up a pocket knife with an eight-inch blade.
“That’s not necessary,” I said while noting this detail for the evening’s report. “Just sit in your seat and wait.”
“I must go, “ he said, looking at the three students going out the door. “He takes your honor. You are Teacher!”
“It’s okay. He is the one who has lost honor. Thank you for your offer.”
Speen Gul reluctantly returned to his seat. After about ten minutes, Omar Gul and Ghulam had scampered off, so the remaining students also returned to their seats and we finished the lesson.
The next day Omar Gul and Ghulam were back in class, but I had become an observer instead of a participant. The class was no longer “fun” for Omar Gul and his friends; they sullenly sat in class or skipped all together and we spent the quarter exploring the digestive system and navigating the alimentary canal until Jim took over in winter quarter.
A week later, I found an anonymous note pushed under my office door. “Mr. Lowe, Thank you for laboring and efforting for us.”
Astral Facts is a somewhat regular presentation of Humanities Science, produced in the bowels of the Humanities Science offices during the academic year.
