Displaced Persons 1 of 3

His name was Mohammed Chaleb. He was twenty-one years old, unmarried and a farmer. He had a head wound and was disoriented.

I am not even sure if he was a real person.

But for ninety minutes last Friday, I was him.

Crossroads is a one-of-a-kind organization. They started out collecting clothing and furniture from those with excess to give to those in need. Things quickly grew and Crossroads now sends out several cargo containers worth of goods every month.

Then CrossRoads set up an international, state-of-the-art website that matches up those in need with those with excess so that a company in Taiwan with excess office furniture can connect with an orphanage in Zambia who is in need of desks. This on-line clearing house was so successful, that when the UN needed something similar, they contracted with Crossroads to design it for them. Not bad for an organization that started out in an Australian couple's spare bedroom in their Hong Kong apartment fifteen years ago.

Crossroads also does a lot of work with refugees here in Hong Kong. Another service that Crossroads provides is the chance for visiting groups to get an insider's feel for what it's like to be a refugee. They started running these simulations a couple of years ago and they have been widely successful. In fact, Crossroads was invited to an economic summit in Europe last year where luminaries such as Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines participated in the very simulation I was about to take part in.

The Headmaster at our school is a pretty extraordinary guy. In addition to being a crack administrator, he is quite the visionary. While some heads of school might plan a faculty picnic to kick off the school year, Ben Norton signed up our entire staff for Crossroad's refugee simulation. Several years ago, he was the first headmaster to bring his teaching staff to Cross roads. Several area schools have since followed suit.

So last Friday, after a brief explanation and a short history of Afghanistan, I was handed a small, laminated i.d. card. I was to be Mohammed Chaleb - a soon-to-be displaced person. I was also given a bandage to wrap around my wounded head. All the women in our group were given headscarves. We were given a few minutes to get comfortable with our new identity.

Boomerang Kids

The summer school program not only uses ICS teachers, but also makes generous use of a lot of college-aged alumni who are back in town for the summer. They serve as teacher assistants, hallway monitors, gophers, and a few of the more experienced ones actually teach a class.

It was fun chatting with them before and after school. It's pretty standard for these alumni to go to school in North America or Great Britain. Toronto and Vancouver are particularly populare destinations. Because we are a Christian school, a lot of alumni end up in evangelical colleges like Wheaton or Taylor. During summer school, the head of the hall monitors, Y.K. regularly wore Calvin College basketball shorts that his buddy brought back for him.

Having all those college-age kids around added an extra dose of energy to the whole summer school atmosphere. It meant that our program was one part school, one part vacation Bible school, and one part summer camp.

Y.K. and his family are originally from South Korea. He just graduated from ICS and was his senior class president. He was also the starting pointguard on the school's boys basketball team.

When I asked him where he was going to school in the fall, I was a little taken aback when he told me he wasn't going to university.

You aren't going to college?

No, I am going back to Korea to do two years military service.

Every South Korean male, I found out, must give two years of military service once he turns eighteen.

You can be exempted from service if by your eighteenth birthday, you have lived out of Korea for a total of twelve years.

When Y.K. turns eighteen next month, he will have have lived out of South Korea for eleven years and five months.

So close.

Hopefully, they give him the summers off to come back and work in the ICS summer program.

-Jack

Enkido

As the assistant director for summer school, one of my jobs was to circulate through the building and make sure that everything was running smoothly. Occassionally I would slip into a classroom and join a class in progress. If the kids were coloring at their tables, I would join in.

If they were sitting on the carpet listening to their teacher, I would quietly slip in beside them. But I had to stop doing this last one. Whenever I sat down on the carpet next to the children, the kids around me would stop listening to the teacher. It wasn't my presence per se that was a distraction. It was the fact that when I sat down, all the kid's within arms reach would start playing with my leg hair.

So fuzzy. So hairy.

Apparently over in the land of windmills and wooden shoes, they breed 'em a little hairier than they do here is Southeast Asia.

-Jack

Aspirate those T's

One of my favorite things to do during summer school was to greet students as they came into the building. Many of them had limited English language ability, so when I greeted them and asked them how they were, they all invariably gave the same word-for-word response. They would pause on the staircase landing, take a breath, and then clearly articulate (over articulate, really) each word with an ever-so-small pauses in between each.

"I am fine, thank you."

Wow. So formal. So polite.

After working with local students for the summer, I started to pick up on some of their other Enlgish language patterns. First, among these pint-size emerging Enlgish language users, I noticed that they did not use contractions. Every word got its due.

Instead of "I didn cut her hair" it was "I did not cut her hair." (Actually we know you did, three of your classmates saw you do it.)

Instead of "I won't write on the back of the teacher aide's shirt anymore," it was "I will not write on the back of the teacher aide's shirt anymore" (Darn right you won't. First your cut a girl's hair. Now this?)

The second thing I noticed was that compared to native English speakers, our local students tended to aspirate all of the their T's. In English, even though we spell it "button" we don't really say it that way. We say something a little closer to "buddon." When saying Wheaton College, very few native speakers apsirate that internal T so that a little punch of air comes out between the teeth. Most say something half way between a T and a D.

In their quest for precision, our little local students aspirated everything.

"Why did your teacher send you down to my office"

"Because I was NaughTy."

"You were being nawdy?"

"Yes. I was mean to QuenTin. But I will not be naughTy anymore."

Way too cute.

Unless you're the girl who got her hair cut.

Then it's not so cute.

-Jack

Um, yeah . . . about that

This past winter, Julie and I both signed up to teach summer school. Being a nurse rather than a teacher, it took Julie a little while to agree to take on the responsiblity of teaching a summer school class. But, in the end, she found my powers of persuasion too much to resist (hence, why we are even in Asia in the first place). I promised that we would do it together and I would be with her every step of the way. With all that homeschooling expereince, I knew that she would do great. Besides, she was going to be working with first graders. How hard could it be, right?

Shortly after we both signed on to teach summer school, I was approached by the director of the program and asked if I was interested in being the assistant director which meant that I would not be in the classroom. To summarize: the nurse was going to be teaching and the teacher was not. Did I mention that this whole summer school thing was my idea?

It took me almost a month to work up the courage to confess to Julie that I would not be teaching. My trepidation was not ill-placed. She was none too happy with me. She claimed that while she was busy running a classroom full of little ones, I was going to be sauntering down the halls with my morning cappuccino in hand glancing into classrooms windows.

Nothing could be futher from the truth.

I don't drink cappuccino. I prefer lattes.

Julie taught writing to five and six year olds. She had five classes which were 35 minutes each. On average, she had 24 students per class and she had two teaching aides in the classroom with her.

She did a great job.

And her husband was with her every step of the way.

Granted, he was holding a latte in one hand the whole time.

-Jack