Watch the Walk

As an English teacher, I get to go to a lot of certificate ceremonies. I also go to other events, ones for weddings, haircuttings, circumcisions, prayers, coming-of-age, and etc. For every event, there are those who attend who are invited, and those who attend who weren't invited. But the way they attend is different. Those who have been invited dress up. The ladies do their hair and makeup, and wear nice clothes, down to mile-high heels. The men will wear a suit, a prayer cap, and oftentimes a prayer robe too. Those who have been invited walk directly into the event. If the event is held outside, it's normally marked off by cloth walls and banners, making the area quite festive. The invited guests see the walls and banners and walk right in, finding a seat where they expect fits their place in society and visiting with other friends who are there. Those who haven't been invited don't bother to dress up at all, they just stand around outside. Now when I said that there ...

"My friends, the community, they just don't know," he said. "They love to talk about my wedding and how great it was, then they ask 'so, is your wife sick(pregnant) yet?' They just don't know." I've been friends with this particular couple since shortly after arriving on Clove Island.When I arrived, they had gotten married just 3 months previous in a small ceremony and were waiting a few years before doing their big wedding and community celebration. They've now done the big wedding and community celebration, but have yet to give birth. While some places that might be normal, here it's highly unusual to wait for children and a source of great distress. Many men will marry a second woman just to have a child. Unlike some cultures, where your name changes at marriage, here the name change occurs with your first child. My name might be Abby, but as soon as I gave birth I would be called "mother of (first child's name)." It'...

For the last few months I've been teaching a class in a town about half an hour away. Of course, by the time I wait for taxis and deal with all the stops along the way, I have to leave at least an hour for travel time, but that's not really the point of the story... This class has been a long-term frustration. First, I didn't plan on teaching the whole class. I planned on teaching the first session, then a session later on. But somehow my amenable self got roped into teaching the class once a week, which meant every other lesson. So it was more of a commitment than I planned. Then the students were consistently showing up late. At class time I would have maybe one student, but by 15 minutes into the class time everyone would be there. After three weeks of this behavior (and reminding the students every time to arrive on time), I finally asked the students straight up why they were never on time. And it turns out that the administrator scheduled the class to start at the s...