One of my first Impressions when I got to Sembehun was that I could never live up to people’s expectations or repay the kindness they had shown me. I certainly was not going there in hopes of changing the world, as many people seemed to believe I could. I was just going to teach, and even that I was uncertain about. What did I know about managing a classroom or making information accessible to students whose life experiences were so different than my own? As things turned out, managing a classroom was not as difficult as I anticipated and my students’ lives were not as foreign to me as I once imagined.There are brief instances when I am teaching that I believe maybe I can repay the kindness of my community. Being a part of my students’ lives matters. I am doing something for those kids - or so I tell myself. Sure, I show up to school every day and teach. I care about my students. I celebrate their successes and mourn their failures. But honestly, I am just doing my job. There is nothing remarkable or spectacular in that, yet somehow people still manage to treat me as if I have done something wonderful for them. It is nice to hear their praise, but I cannot help feeling their words are unearned.It has taken me awhile to realize that no one expects me to earn the respect they give me. Even if I were the worst teacher in the world, my students would still be expected to treat me well, to go out of their way to fetch me water, bring me pineapples, or sweep my porch. Even if I were a terrible person, my neighbors would greet me every morning, let me ditch in line at the water pump, and help repair my fence when the goats tear it down. To me, all this feels like unearned kindness. I want to be able to repay the things that people do for me. I suppose that is a very American mindset – we have to work for whatever we have, and in turn, we do not give people things for nothing. I do not mean to imply that such a mindset is entirely negative, only it is not applicable to village life in Sierra Leone.I think I consciously accepted for the first time that I will never be able to do as much good for people here as they have done for me on the day that Abu Bakar Sedik gave me mangos. Abu Bakar Sedik is one of those people who always seem to give me perspective when I grow frustrated. It is not that Abu's life is particularly tragic as far as things go in rural Sierra Leone; it is that, despite the tragedies of his past, he is eternally optimistic. Abu is just a fifteen year old boy who is intelligent, hardworking, and quick to laugh. He is one of seventeen children, only four of whom are still alive. His father is dead, so Abu helps his mother by raising crops to sell. He is the first in his family to get an education. One could argue that this child's life has elements of a tragedy, but Abu goes through life with a smile. He does not see himself as a victim, but believes he is privileged - and he is right. He is the one who survived. He is the one who got to go to school.
Abu is one of my best students. He has never asked me for anything, but goes out of his way to do things for me. He will bring me pineapples or avocados and would never dream of letting me carry a bucket of water from the pump. One evening, after Abu had carried a bucket of water to my house for me, and I offered to give him some mangos. (My students were true to their promise to give me more mangos than I can eat.) Abu thanked me and said yes he would like the mangos, so I went inside and selected the best two to give to him - ripe, but not yet turning mushy. The next day, Abu showed up at me house with five mangoes of his own. "Dis mango swit pas do wan yu bin gi mi," Abu announced as he handed the mangoes to me. Thanks for dissing my gift, I thought ruefully as I accepted the mangoes. It turned out to be true though. The mangoes were sweeter than the ones I had given him.
I cannot help but think of those mangos as a symbol of life in Sembehun. I can try my hardest to help people here - offer over my best two mangos so to speak - but then they will turn around and do something that surpasses whatever I did for them. They will come with five mangos that happen to be more delicious than the mangos that I gave away in the first place. Whatever good I do here will never measure up to the good that people do to me. That is a very humbling thought, and one worth remembering.
