Not invited

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 are cloth walls, they normally are only about half-walls, hitting chest-high on me. This makes it so any child in the neighborhood who wants to watch the event can do so, either by standing on a slight hill, sitting on a nearby rooftop, or standing near the entrance. Some kids are big enough to see over the wall, and more power to them.

Guess which ones were invited?

At the beginning of an event, the inside crowd normally outnumbers the outside one, but by the end, well, the outside one can get pretty thick. Especially when it's an English ceremony that involves songs and skits.

I was sitting in a ceremony the other day pondering this thought, about those invited and those not. And so thankful that we're all invited into the Kingdom. There's no standing outside for that party!

They just don't know

"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's an honor thing, and not something easily done away with.

The man was explaining to me some of his woes, things that he was having a hard time with. Former soccer teammates who married at the same time ask him what his "father-name" is, and he has no answer. Students ask him if he's married, then ask about his children, and sometimes he just tells them he has children because it hurts too much to say the truth. His wife doesn't want to go out in the community anymore and is depressed because everyone who sees her will know that she's not pregnant.

"My wife, she had a visa and scholarship to travel to France and study. But when I asked to marry her all her friends told her how lucky she was to have me. And she stayed to marry me."

"I would never marry a second woman, I love my wife. But her family keeps telling her that if she doesn't get pregnant I'll start looking for another woman."

"She's so worried about making me happy. I love children so much, and she does too. But I can't sleep at night knowing that she's depressed over this."

"We want to get some sort of medical treatment, but the closest specialists are in a country that doesn't easily give us entry visas."

 This isn't exactly my area of expertise-- married, unable to have children-- but it's a common story here. And I talk regularly with people who yearn to bear children of their own.

Could I wrap this story up in a nice package and a pretty ending? Maybe. But I think that does an injustice to the pain in this world to finish a story that's far from over. I pray for them to have peace, to have children, to find the Author of peace and Source of all good. Would you pray too?

That class

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 same time as their other classes finished. And it takes a few minutes to walk between classes. So once we got that sorted out, we set the start time 15 minutes later and the students have been arriving on time. Amazing!

But then the other teacher quit teaching regularly. So I would often find out on the day of the class that the lesson I'd prepared wasn't what they were ready for. And they hadn't studied since the class I taught the previous week, so their English was quite rusty. It's hard to teach effectively that way.

But sometimes he'd teach, and the class would progress. So when is enough, enough?

I've felt pretty discouraged about the class. Because of their inconsistent attendance, distraction level, lack of consistent classes, and general lazy attitude towards studying, my assumption was that 80% of the class would fail the exam when they went to take it.

But this week was the review session before next week's exam. And they studied!

They were producing good sentences in English.

They were having discussions in English.

And maybe, just maybe, they'll pass their exam!