Snow in Eskişehir and My Experiences

Happy New Year!  Eskişehir municipality sent up about five minutes of fireworks at midnight New Years. I could see them out of my living room window. I was disappointed they didn't last longer.  By the time I had my camera ready, the color and explosions were over. 

In five days I will have been teaching and living in Eskişehir, Turkey for three months Over the last several months I've had mixed feelings: positive, negative, excitement, fear, anxiety, loneliness.  Sometimes the loneliness is excruciating.  It's not that the Turks are anti-social like so many in the US are, but there is a barrier between me and them, language. Here my race is not a barrier the way it is in the states.  Turks do not seem to expect the worse of me or prejudge me the way some people do back home because of the color of my skin. Some are just delighted to see a black person and would like to get to know me. 

It began to snow here four days ago. The snow started to come down on Tuesday morning. I woke up to it, the flakes quietly falling to the ground most of the day.  I was very very worried about having to go outside and falling. On Tuesdays I don't have a regular class in the evenings, but I do have a private student and conversation club which totals three hours of work.  Tuesday afternoon I discovered that my private student had sent an e-mail overnight saying that he wouldn't be coming to meet me at school.  His car had broke down again and the weather was just too bad he wrote.  I called my boss and told her this, expecting that no one would probably show up for conversation club.  She told me to stay at home, and if anyone came she would phone me.  About an hour before conversation club was scheduled, she phoned me and said one student had already arrived.  I told her OK I was coming, but I would be slow.  

It snows on average every five or six years where I live in northeast Georgia.  However, things have changed a bit in the last few years.  About two or three years ago it showed at Christmas and again the following January.  Even in my parents' lifetimes they'd never experienced snow twice in a short time span.  Here in Eskişehir it's cold and snow is very common.  In fact, some hope for snow because I was told if it doesn't s snow the winter will be painfully cold.  The school lost two American teachers last year because they said Eskişehir's cold weather was too much for them, I hear.  I also hear that Erzurum is the coldest place in Turkey, and I might have ended up there.  A language school in Erzurum wrote to me requesting an interview just one day after I was hired by this school.  I am glad I didn't go to Erzurum.  I might not have survived the low temperatures.  I am surviving here, and I am both surprised and proud of myself.

Tuesday evening when I was told I would have to come to school for my one hour conversation club I was very worried.  Several scenes flashed through my head.  What if I fell?  What I fell and broke my hip or hurt my knees?  I have knee problems, so I was afraid I might be too stiff to walk.  What if my YakTrax (snow grips that I attach to my boots) wouldn't stay on?  My boss' description of YakTrax are very clever.  When I showed them to her, she smiled and said "They are snow tires for the shoes."  All of my anxiety turned out for nought.  Yes, the snow had piled up outside reaching somewhere between my ankles and my knees I discovered when I went outside on my way to school.  One of my neighbors, a young guy was downstairs at the front door waiting for someone, I know because a company car pulled up.  He held the door for me and I went out moving very slow and unsure.  He said something to me which I imagined might have been "Be careful." I took my first steps in all that deep snow, the deepest I'd seen in person in my entire life.  The YakTrax worked perfectly in the narrow path of packed snow that people had made running through the apartment's courtyard out to the street.  Once I got out on the street and walked further along I felt more confident that I wouldn't topple over.  I arrived at the school without any broken bones, and it was the same on the return home.  I was a little afraid of some of the snow that was banked up, but as for slipping on any snow or ice I felt less and less uneasy.  I still took my time and was careful though. I also discovered that my knee problems had disappeared in the snowy air.

On New Years Eve I ventured out again to go to the nearby mall to purchase minutes and messaging for my cellphone (here it's called a mobile phone), buy a newly discovered olive oil soap I just love, and some warmer gloves.  I picked my way along my street in the packed snow and ice.  As I was gingerly nearing the curb leading off my street a young man came up beside me and took my arm. I was not afraid because I realize he saw that I was going so slow as if I was afraid I might fall.  He said something in Turkish and helped me up on to the curb.  I thanked him twice in Turkish and he went on his way.  Nearly always when I go out someone will help me even if I do not ask.  Turks like to help and I've heard this is a characteristic of many people who live in this part of the world whether in Asia, Africa, or parts of Eastern Europe.  I've said on here before that I do not follow femininist idealogy.  I understand that men and women are different and that we compliment each other.  It's not about superiority or inferiority.  So I didn't feel insulted or weak because that guy helped me, in fact I felt honored.  I don't speak for other women, but I happen to appreciate such gallantry.  

When I go into stores and shops, often some of the Turks brighten up with excitement. There are black people around here (Africans) but they are scattered around and I only see some on occasion.  At the pharmacy that I go to near my apartment, an older man works there, perhaps he's the owner.  He also speaks some English.  There are several women who work there too, an older woman who is perhaps his wife, a middle aged woman, and a young woman.  The older man and woman are always extra excited when I come in.  I use a mix of English and Turkish there, and the older man does the same.  Today when I picked my way to the pharmacy they all welcomed me and he told me to sit down and relax before I made my purchase.  Often I think about Walmart and its' greeters back home, most them stand at the store entrance not greeting any of the customers or only the ones they probably know.  Some of them will not greet you if you are black.  This has happened to me a few times.  The people coming behind me who were white, they would greet.  Both the white and black greeters have done this, but I expect this kind of behavior in the US. Here when I enter 98% of the stores I will be told "Hoşgeldiniz"  which is "Welcome" in Turkish and I always answer back with "Hoşbulduk" which is "Glad to be here" or "I'm honored."  There are a number stock phrases the Turks use to show courtesy, concern, or appreciation.  To me this is showing culture. 

Also today on my way to the pharmacy and the market, a middle aged man took my hand and helped me up onto the sidewalk as I was crossing the street through some water and ice.  I am gradually becoming more comfortable out now.  The first time I came to work in Turkey in 2004 a lot of Turks would stare right through me.  I mean almost not blink an eye and just stare.  Some would be in cars, look up and see me on the bus and start smiling and waving.  I have been sitting at the busstop and some on a passing bus would look down and start waving.  I was younger than and just so happy to be in a place where people were not intimidated by my skin color. I felt like a celebrity, but now that time has passed and I'm older I prefer just to be a bit anonymous in the crowd.  

The weather forecast says it will snow off and on over the next week.  Today it has not snowed and the sky seemed as if it would reveal the sun.  Yesterday it snowed a great deal during the afternoon.  The air here feels so pure and healthy the way it does after a snow. I saw a disturbing sight when I was walking along this afternoon on my way to the pharmacy and the market.  A stray cat was lying dead on the sidewalk; I suppose a victim of the cold. Temporary I felt very sad (I like cats), but I walked on by and got my mind back to making sure I kept my footing in the snow and ice.  Today at the pharmacy they marvelled at my YakTrax.  I am beginning to understand Turkish more even though I cannot always respond. The older woman was saying they are like snow tires.  I responded in Turkish telling her yes they are snow shoes.

It is both difficult and wonderful here.  There is such a thing as good stress. And this is it I sometimes believe.

Gangnam Style in the Classroom: Randoms

This is going to be rambling, but here I go.  This was post was stimulated by what I saw in a classroom yesterday, but I will get to that later. 

Years ago after frustration and feeling the heartbreak that I was not appreciated as a teacher and had gotten the worse of it because of my race, I said I would never teach in America again.  I turned my back on my profession, my people, and the society.  I felt that my principal, many of my black students, and some of the white parents had taken my good intentions, enthusiasm, dedication, and concern slapped me in the face with them, threw them on the ground, and trampled them all underfoot. 

I had gone into my profession idealistic and ready to go, eager to make a deep and positive impact on young lives, but instead I had been faced with bad grades, indifference, breaking up fights in the classroom or having to run to one of my male colleagues to break up the fights, being cursed at once by a student, a parent who made it painfully clear she didn't want me to teach her little blonde daughter solely because I was black, another who subtly complained because she didn't like the fact that I taught her blonde son three different subjects. You see a black person even with a masters degree couldn't possibly be capable of giving her son a quality education because the few of us who got that far were just benefactors of the handout called affirmative action and were naturally less qualified than whites.  I faced a parent who complained I was giving too much homework, extracurricular activities were more important for her daughter than doing work at home to reinforce what she had been taught in the class. 

There was so much I faced as a young teacher so that after two years I said never again.  My soul had been slashed by knives.  My spirit deflated.  I rejected another contract for third year at that school, applied and was accepted into Peace Corps, went to the African nation of Botswana, enjoyed myself there,  felt more at home in Africa than I ever had in America, loved my students and my international set of  colleagues from various African, European, and Asian nations, loved one man in particular, it was a great romance, but it was not meant to be, came back home and went through a very dark period in my soul, recovered from the depression, and in the last few years taught English occasionally in Turkey. 

It is not easy being an educated black woman in America.  I have an Eastern bent to my mentality than most of the people I live among.  I am a hybrid of sorts, American in name but more Eastern than American.  African Americans used to be closer to our African counterparts on the continent and other Eastern people back in my grandparent's era.  My mother's parents were very much like some African and Middle Eastern people.  They were deeply religious and unselfish.  Even though they were poor they helped those they knew who were poorer and more desperate. They were devoted to the well-being of their families, hated divorced, were well liked by their communities and even by many of the whites they knew.  These were the heroes I looked at and were influenced by including my mother who is just like her beloved mother and father. They live on in her and in two of their other surviving children.  I didn't have to look to the TV and have some celebrity or sports figure as my role model.  I lived with and visited my role models. 

It is not easy to live in America.  It's even more difficult and lonely if you refuse to model yourself after everyone else.  The is a recipe to being an American, and most people follow that recipe.   Blacks expect you to be just like them, and whites expect you to be a version of their envisioned stereotype.   All my life I have longed to be free to be me, not have some vision of who I am supposed to be imposed on me by my own people or white people. 

I would say that life has gone nothing like I had hoped partly because I was very different from most in my environment from almost the very beginning.  At various points in my life I have been an outcast.  Other times I was applauded, usually by foreigners and a few others.  I've had few real friends. Either I got bored and frustrated with them or they got bored with me.  I refused to settle for less, so I have been often alone with mainly my family except in the last few years.  For a long time I have felt more at home with non-Americans than I have Americans.  I am not an optimist like many Americans.  I am more of a fatalist and realist, but I am attracted to mysticism.  The world of the mind and of a higher plain outside of what we can see with the physical eye is more real to me sometimes than the absurdity of this world.  

I have come back and for better or worse I am going to try and help my people again.  I have been substitute teaching randomly in the last several years when I was not teaching English in Turkey.  When I was certified to teach in my state, I could teach anywhere from grades 4 to 12, but after elementary school I was confined to only the subjects of social studies and English which are my two favorite areas.  If the children in these groupings are not taught love of learning and respect for teachers and other adults by this age there is very little that can be done, I feel.  This may sound harsh and discouraging to some, but by second or third grade many kids in this country are infested with arrogance and dislike learning.  Many including people in the government blame the schools, but few are courageous enough to blame the parents, but maybe they don't because of their own guilt over their lax parenting.  Some say the schools are grooming kids for our prison industrial complex, and yes the way some schools are formulated, this is probably true, but a lot of parents are also aiding in their kids' downfall.  Then at the same time there is the threatening cloud of the state taking away people's kids if there is the accusation of abuse which can come even if a parent is not being abusive, but is only trying to discipline an unruly child.  The system we live under craves more prison inmates and just sits there like some big predatory fish with his mouth wide open for small fish to just swim right in.

Next week I begin an experiment to help my people. I will be teaching a course at a local community center on African historical figures from J.A. Rogers' first volume of World's Great Men of Color.   I have Facebook friends who live in other countries, a few who help and try to enlightened others.  They have been a big influence on me and an inspiration even though I haven't met any of them face to face.  They write prose and poetry, have gatherings to talk about geopolitics and write articles about wars and their consequences. Some are guests on international news networks that I watch online.  Some have gone on peace missions, and organize and go to demonstrations.  In other words they are trying to make a difference, a phrase commonly said in this country.   I am invited to some of their gatherings, but sadly I live too far.  Even though my residence is in a small city with a huge state university, this place is an intellectual and cultural wasteland.  I was a part of a writer's group for almost four years, but no deep and honest critiquing of anyone's work was done, When the leader of the group become so self obsessed, stop coming with anything to read and only wanted to talk about gifts she got from her grandson and men, I quit silently without saying another word to her or sending an e-mail.  I was also a part of what I call a pseudo-intellectual group run by some so-called friends who are Turkish.  They are mostly doctoral students, but they don't seem to have the dedication or level of knowledge to be Ph.D candidates. To me is it very strange to sit in a room with a group of people working on higher degrees who are too afraid to voice their own opinions.  I got tired of being one of four openly expressing my views in that group when all the rest were too afraid to open their mouths.

Recently I was invited to a gathering of black ladies, but after sitting through a presentation given by the head of the local Red Cross, a middle aged, dyed blonde, fat, white female who acted like she was still God's gift to men I said I would not go to a second meeting which I was invited to.  I've so tired of going to some prosaic gathering dressed up as something interesting and refreshing when it really isn't just to get out of the house.  I like my own company better than being bored to the edge of insanity.

As to Gangnam Style, it has replaced one of Justin Bieber's songs in some of the elementary schools here.  The pre-K and kindergarten set require more than Mary Had a Little Lamb and The Itsy Bitsy Spider nowadays.  Such nursery rhymes and childhood songs just don't cut it with kids raised on TV and Gameboys.  Learning must be backed up by entertainment or the kids go cold to it and stay jittery.  Yesterday I worked in a pre-K class and the parapro couldn't get the kids to pay much attention to swaying houses with lyrics about numbers and days of the week, but when she pulled up a version of  Psy's Gangnam Style on the smart board, the kids were all eyes.  They wouldn't dance before but when Psy and a woman dancing in hot pants, garters, and police cap got on the screen they did.  At four they are already being conditioned to become disciples of fads and commercialized entertainment like the rest of the population.  Today's media is extremely adroit in indoctrinating all ages.  It was sad to see that early they are learning to conform to what doesn't promote art and culture, the here today gone tomorrow opiates that the media pushes down their throats.  Learning for learning sake died some time ago in this country.  It is advocated in educational circles that education and entertainment must be wed in the American classroom.  American kids need an assortment of extras to get excited about learning.  Still so many of them fall short.

I liked the parapro at the school today.  Despite hating her choice of putting up a video of Gangnam Style, I guess she felt the only way she could grab the attention of a large class of 4 year olds, a number of which were highly jittery was to start up a popular pop song. She and I sat together at recess and talked, finding common ground since both of us plan to take the state teacher's certification exam this spring.  She even asked me about myself.  Often as a substitute teacher and being a black woman people just expect that you probably have only a high school diploma or less.  Most don't ask me about myself. Living abroad where people were often curious about me resulted in my being spoiled a little. I was more visible abroad and sometimes got weary of the attention.  At the schools here they probably couldn't imagine that I have taught both here and internationally and that I have a higher degree.  Sometimes as a substitute I feel invisible, but I make myself feel better about that invisibility by conducting myself professionally and dressing better than the majority of the teachers.  I still believe in professionalism in attire on the job.  In Botswana and Turkey the standards for dress at work were higher than here.  It's difficult for me to go to schools and see teachers dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and some even showing cleavage.  What happened to high standards and dress codes?   

I don't worry so much about the majority or white culture around me.  My concern is for my people.  I am not sure there is much hope for us locked into an alien identity that has scarred us.  I am not saying that all white people are bad, but there is so much that is wrong in the culture which destroys lasting human connections on so many levels.  I remained connected to my ancestral values mainly due to how I was taught by my mother and witnessed from her parents.  My father is very American in his outlook.  He admits that even as a child he dreamed of having what white people had.  His family was not close and very dysfunctional.  He and some other family members say they don't like having people coming around visiting all the time.  In all the years that he visited his in-laws he never allowed himself to open my grandparents' refrigerator once even though almost everyone they allowed into their home were treated with hospitality.  You're at home, my grandmother would say.  I wonder how my grandparents felt about my father never trying to really make himself at home for all those years.  Dad's mother grew up in an abusive and violent home and then married my grandfather who drank, was abusive and unfaithful.  He said she would tell him to never accept food at the home of his friends even if he was offered it.  I feel the suspicion, competitiveness, narcissism, and paranoia that some of the members of my father's family have, including himself, are some of the worse symptoms of white American culture.  However, despite the differences I've had with my father and continue to have I must say that one spot I praise him in is that he has successfully run a small business for many years and states that black people must become more independent, productive, and have their own businesses.

So this is my rambling post.  I guess I just wanted to get a few things off my mind even though this was inspired by seeing little kids dance to Gangnam Style in a classroom.  I wonder often where are we going as people.  It never gets better despite all of the so-called improvements, all the "grand" propaganda that is touted.  It will never get better until we examine ourselves and realize where we are heading.