Love and Hate

The Marshall Islands is a crazy place. I have experiences here I would never have in the US. Today was crazy. It all started yesterday when Katrina saw this kid Ari. He's a 7th Grader and speaks almost no English. He does nothing in class and is learning nothing. That is beside the point of the story. A lot of the guys like to give Katrina high fives. Ari came walking by with his hand out and she didn't give him a high five for whatever reason. He left his hand out there and grabbed her breast. She yelled and him and kept going. That afternoon she told us guys and we were all really mad. I think I've written about he inappropriate behavior that has happened in my class. A lot of the guys here have no respect for girls but this is a whole new low for them.

Today Coach Zac decided to punish Ari for what he did. He called him up at PE and told him he was going to be punished for his inappropriate behavior toward Katrina. Despite his bad English, Zac made sure he understood. Then he proceeded to make the kid do lots of pushups, situps and running laps. I came in and the period was more than half over. Ari had been exercising for awhile. Coach told him to run more laps. When he came around Coach gave him a rock about twice as big as a football and told him to carry it. I laughed because I thought it was awesome the kid was getting what he deserved. The next time he circled around Zac shouted at him to carry the rock over his head. I laughed at that too. Ari walked a few steps and then threw the rock on the ground. He walked over and grabbed his backpack and started back. He started screaming something and I could see tears were running down his face. No longer sporting his characteristic stupid grin, his face was twisted in rage. He ran at Zac and acted like he was going to fight him. Jon jumped up and herded him out the door of the gym. He disappeared for an instant and then popped back with a rock which he threw at Zac's feet. Jon pushed him back around the corner. Ari just broke down and cried. Then he went home.

I instantly felt bad for laughing when he broke down like that. On the one hand, Zac was pretty harsh and I didn't make it any better, but I don't think the punishment was excessive. I wonder what emotional problems this kid has that prompted a complete and total loss of control. I definitely didn't want to reduce the kid to tears. On the other hand, guys here are inappropriate with girls in public and it is shameful and degrading and they don't care. They have no concept of the feelings of the girls when they feel up in front of all their friends. I may have shared this story but I'll share it here for effect. This one kid in my class went up to a girl. She was sitting on a table in front of the class. He acted like he was going to give her a high five and then "missed" and slapped her chest lightly. All his friends who were watching laughed. Hopefully this incedent will remind the guys who are thinking about feeling teachers up of what will happen if they try it.

This afternoon I went down to the ECC where they have volleyball and basketball games because my students said they would be down there watching games. I had nothing else to do and I was bored. I ended up having a great time hanging with my students. I walked back with them and had a great conversation. I realized today that they stuggle dealing with our culture. Their culture is a shock to us and we are immersed in it. We never really think about what effect we have on them. We are arrogant and assume we are here helping them and they are suppose to be learning from us. To them our culture is harsh and abrasive. They don't get our humor and it sounds mean to them. What we think of as a motivational talk to them is yelling. I think both of us miss a lot in the translation.