Mangroves and Waterfalls part 2 of 3

Finally, we arrived at a bend in the river, the boat drivers pulled in, and we all jumped onto the muddy river bank. Surprisingly, no one fell back into the river. Once we got ourselves organized, we made our way single file down the somewhat muddy jungle path.

We had been told that if we didn’t make too much noise, we would probably see monkeys along the way. I really wanted to see monkeys. As much as I tried, I could not get our long line of eighteen eighth-graders to be quiet. It was an exercise in futility. I don’t think that it was the kids’ loud chatter that scared the monkeys away as much as it was their singing.

Oh well.

I guess your priorities are different when you’re fourteen than when you’re forty-four.

Hey kids, check it out! Rubber trees! Gather round, Mr. Mike is going to explain to how the locals harvest the sap of the rubber trees into these coconut halves. Fascinating!

Nice try, Mr. VanNoord.

They were too busy poking each other and trying to remember all the lyrics to all the verses of Taylor Swifts “Back to December.”

No seriously, see how they strip away the bark and . . . . But . . . see . . . they tap this little nozzle into the tree . . . and . . . oh, never mind. After Mike finished explaining the process to me and I got a few obligatory pictures, we had to walk at a brisk pace for several minutes to catch back up with the rest of the group.

But see . . . the rubber comes out all milky . . . and . . .

Mangroves and Waterfalls part 1 of 3

All our island hopping up to this point had been done in one large wooden boat. So on or last full day in Indonesia when we were scheduled to go on a jungle hike to a waterfall I was a little confused when the staff had us get into two smaller boats.

We motored on the open sea for about twenty minutes until we turned inland and started making our way up a wide, lazy river. On either side, the banks were dense with mangrove trees which are common in the tropics. They typically grow in the brackish water where fresh-water streams pour into the salty sea water. These bush-like trees send out a complex network of exposed roots that help to secure the soil in the mangroves. Mangrove trees form an important part of the local ecosystems by preventing erosion.

It would be an understatement to say that serving in two Indonesian villages had given me a fresh appreciation for modern life in Hong Kong or Chicago. Yet, those visits had not prepared me for the scattered dwellings we saw on the river bank as we made our way through the mangrove. It was not only the primitiveness of the homes on stilts, but the utter isolation that grabbed my attention. These humble abodes which were fifteen minutes upriver in the middle of nowhere, made the villages we’d been in seem like teeming metropolises. Try as may, I couldn’t even begin to image what life was like out here.

As the river twisted its way deeper and deeper into the Indonesian jungle, it became increasing narrow. It became so narrow that we could have reached out from either side of the boat and touched the mangrove trees. In fact, several of us did. Suddenly, it occurred to me why we had to take two smaller boats. As the river got more and more narrow, it simply wasn’t big enough to handle the larger boat.

Sit Back, Relax, and Enjoy the Show

I first heard the drums when I got off the boat. We were in our second village for our second project. As we approached the school, the path was lined with local students in their school uniforms playing traditional Indonesian drums with animal hides stretch over them. What a welcome.

We spent the morning expanding and smoothing a soccer field and painting a classroom’s worth of desks bright red.

The village was preparing lunch for us so we were trying to quickly wrap up our work projects. As I was checking around to make sure we hadn’t left any tools lying around, out of the corner of my eye, I could see some activity behind one of the school buildings. I wandered over –and sure enough- the rumors were true. There were a dozen local middle school boys and girls in beautiful Indonesian outfits preparing for a dance.

We were going to be getting lunch and a show. Awesome. As tempted as I was, I didn’t say anything to our kids. After our lunch of fish wrapped in banana leaves cooked over an open fire, papaya salad, and other local delectables, someone popped a CD into the karaoke machine and cranked up the volume. We were treated to -not one, not two- but three dances by groups of local middle schoolers.

After lunch, our kids had an hour of free time. They scatter to the four corners of the village to run around, hang out, and play soccer with local kids. That was my cue to grab my camera and wander from one end of the village to the other and back again

A little service work, good food, a dance by our new friends, and a chance to get some cool photos.

Pretty much a recipe for a great day.

And a One . . .

I had managed to get Hudson up on the platform. It was a start. All I needed was one.

For the better part of the afternoon, I had been cajoling our eighth-grade boys to jump from the 18-foot platform. I knew that if I could get one kid to jump, the rest of the boys would feel compelled to jump as well. I am not afraid to use a little shame and embarrassment to motivate students –well, at least when we aren’t in the classroom.

Hudson is not the most athletic boy in eighth grade. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that he was the first one to venture onto the platform. I figured it would have been one of our soccer or basketball players.

But here was Hudson up on top of the deck trying to decide if he had the courage to jump.

I was giving him the old Coach VanNoord pep speech. “You can do this. Dig deep. Courage is not about not being afraid, it’s about overcoming your fears. The pain will only last a moment, but the glory will last a life time.” I quoted every hackney halftime locker room scene from every hackneyed sports movie I had ever seen. I was on a roll.

I was trying to read Hudson. I figured I would have to go on like this for several more minutes before he had himself psyched up. But right when I was in the midst of channeling Gene Hackman from Hoosiers, Hudson backed up ten feet and made a mad dash for the end of the platform all the while yelling “I am Poooooooookeman!”

Typical Hudson: goofy, lovable and –as it turns out- pretty darn courageous.

Atta boy, kid. I knew you had it in you. I couldn’t be more proud.

And I was right.

Once Hudson broke the ice, other students started to make their way onto the platform. But to my surprise, it wasn’t the hotshot boys; it was several of our eighth girls who made their way onto the platform.

Finally, after Grace had made her third jump, the rest of the boys decided they had seen enough. They were not going to be outdone by Pokeman-boy and the girly girls.

Finally, the rest of the eighth grade boys made their way onto the platform. To my knowledge, one of the boys Quentin only made one jump all afternoon. After a running leap, he did a mid-air spinning 720. I guess if you're only going to do one jump, you might as well make it count.

My students spent the rest of the afternoon jumping of the platform.

Meanwhile, I retreated to a nearby hammock knowing that my work here was done.

-Jack

(I’m sorry, what’s that? Did I jump? Well, how do you think I got Hudson to jump?)

No, Seriously, You’ll Love My Next Activity

Two nights before we were to leave for Indonesia, I panicked. I looked on the itinerary that the staff from Telanus Beach had put together and saw again all the blocks of time that said “Team-building activities lead by ICS staff.”

ICS staff; that’s me.

I stayed up late researching and compiling what I thought would be some fun, age-appropriate group activities. On our first evening at Telunas Beach, we played the first of my activities. I put the kids in two lines holding hands. I squeezed the hand of the first kid in each line one, two or three times. Each of them was supposed to pass the correct number of squeezes down his or her line as quickly as possible. Depending on how may squeezes that last person in the line felt he or she was to grab one of three objects that I had put on the table on the other side of the room.

Yeah, it was about as lame as it sounds.

And my activities only got lamer after that.

That same day, we gave the kids some free time. A lot of them spent the majority of the time on the beach and in the water messing around with Telunas Beach’s one surfboard. Other’s spent the time trying to drum up the courage to jump off the eighteen-foot platform. Three of the boys became totally enamored with fishing from the dock.

My co-leaders and I were surprised at how well the kids were getting along and using their free time. We thought to ourselves, if they keep exhibiting this level of maturity and independence, we might be able to dole out larger and larger blocks of free time.

In other words, we wouldn’t have to do any more of Mr. VanNoord’s lame team-building activities.

In the end, all those blocks of time on the itinerary that said “Team-building activities: ICS staff” we pretty much gave to the kids as free time. After all they were on a beach hemmed in by the dense Indonesia jungle. How much trouble could they get into? Furthermore, we were the only guests at the resort for most of the week, so we didn’t to worry about our kids disturbing other paying guests.

Open space to run around and lots of free time: it’s a combination our Hong Kong students don’t get to experience very often. We were happy to give it to them.

Hey Shrimp

The notes in the folder said “Be sure to go shrimping.” I had no idea what that meant. But when last year’s leaders say “Go shrimping,” we figured we better go shrimping.

At dinner that evening, we announced to our students that as soon as it was dark and the tide was out far enough, we were going shrimping. They had no more idea what shrimping entailed than I did, but they knew it was something worth getting excited about.

Mike from Telunas lead us down to the beach and sat us on the stumps that ringed the bonfire pit. He explained how shrimping worked.

Ten minutes later, in groups of four and five, equipped with our flashlights and mini-spears, we headed out. Our mini-spears looked like marshmallow roasting forks but thinner and with a multi-prong tip on the end. Each group had a local staff member from the resort leading the way. The groups spread out into ankle-deep water. We all kept our eyes peeled, but it was invariably our guide who spotted the shrimp. He would hold his light on the shrimp and point it out with his spear if necessary. One of the kids or I would ease up on it, lower our spear into place and when our spear was two or three inches above the shrimp, thrust it into the water hopefully harpooning a shrimp.

If we managed to snag the shrimp, we’d lift our mini-spear up to our guide’s bucket, rest the fork in a notch in the bucket’s lip, and pull back until the shrimp pulled free and fell into the bucket.

I got pretty good at spearing the things, but for the life of me I could not spot the little buggers. They are clear in color and half the time they were buried in the sand so that only their tiny eyes were visible. My flashlight was way too weak, so while my students spread out, I had to stay close to our guide and his mega-watt headlamp. I was amazed at his eagle eyes. He would sweep his light across the water and stop it on a location ten or twelve feet away. I would walk over to where he was shining his light and would see nothing. There were times when he was literally pointing with his spear three inches above where there was a shrimp and I still couldn’t see it. How he spotted it from ten feet out, I will never know. With blind faith, I would jam my fork in where he said and –sure enough- I would come up with a shrimp.

One of my students, David had wandered from our small group. He had a strong flashlight and had gotten the hang of shrimping. David not only was getting good at spearing the little suckers, but was surprisingly good at spotting them. Now what you need to know is that I can’t get David to focus for more than three minutes on a single task in the classroom. But for forty-five minutes, he walked around hunched over peering into ankle-deep water and out-shrimped all of us.

We turned all of our shrimp over to the Telunas staff and finished the night sharing our tales of conquest around the bon fire. We were pleasantly surprised, when the next night among all the other delicious food the staff always prepared at every meal, there was a platter heaped with the shrimp that we had caught.

Few things in life are more satisfying than eating food you have caught. They were yummy.