"Good evening ma fille." There is an old woman on my block who has taken to calling me daughter. She greets me as I pass her house each day and always asks about the baby. Tonight, as with many afternoons, those ever ready tears are pushed that much closer to the surface with her words.
I want to roll up in the promise of home and surround myself with the image of comfort that they bring. But I haven't either awaiting me and so I walk on, trying to drown my thoughts with the sound of music pumping into my ears. It's only been the last few weeks that I could even listen to music without being transported back to the streets of Kin. Finally able to indulge, I now use it to quiet the steady rhythm of my mind during my morning and afternoon commutes. It's mostly successful. Dancing in the streets is the strongest urge I am fighting now and I figure if I give in to that I will just be considered cheerfully weird instead of woefully despondent.
It's hard to show up at my school each day and witness the lives of the privileged. My worn out shoes and tired clothes make me feel somehow less. I wonder what separates us and how we drew our lots in life. The situations in my life are circular, making me feel more and more convinced that there are past lives and in mine I must have caused a lot of suffering to many people. It's hard to be reasonable about this.
My most recent, but ever ongoing, frustration has to do with my job. Or more specifically, my salary, which always runs out by the middle of the month. If someone has gotten sick that month, or some other event occurs, it could be even sooner than the middle of the month. Like maybe the 12th. We've taken to calling the last two weeks of the month "weeks of suffrance." Once we've made it past the first week, the boys smile and say "we survived," and then buckle down to get though the next week.
My moments of elation and extreme relief at getting paid are fading faster and faster. It is frustrating, discouraging and at times, infuriating that I am not being paid what I am worth. I have to remember to say it that way lest I begin to believe there is something wrong with me personally. In the French system, apparently it is perfectly acceptable to discriminate against others based on their country of origin. It is not quite akin to the idea that women make less than men, but the result is the same. I am getting paid less directly due to conditions I cannot control. I am American.
It is another of those circular logic puzzles I have so frequently found myself enmeshed in since arriving in Abidjan. Because my degree is not from a French authority, it is not really counted. However, I have been hired to teach in the bilingual program- one which requires an English speaker, preferably a native English speaker. The bilingual classes cost more than the classique. They fill up quickly and, presumably, are a big draw for parents in choosing schools.
And yet, I am not paid enough to live on. It is a topic no one likes to discuss. You might not even like to be reading about it. I don't even want to be writing about it, but it continues to be a thorn in my side. The principal has tried to offer some help in the matter, (the French system being wonderfully autocratic- the administrators seem to have tied hands when it comes to making individual decisions. No French diploma=no living wage. End.) Trying to be creative, he has suggested looking for loopholes in years of experience (colleagues have told me this only counts if they are years of service in other French schools) and finally by achieving an increase in the discount for tuition fees. (Not the same as cash, most definitely.)
I was discussing the new 60% reduction in tuition for local hires with some other teachers. I (foolishly, in a moment of complete abandon) shared that even with the new discount, one trimester of tuition at our school equaled what I was paying for an entire year at L'Ardoise, the Ivorian school my boys are attending.
"Mais, L'Ardoise ne pas bonne," the coordinator of our program said and with that she dismissed my whole case. I no longer existed for her. She went on to complain about how much she had to pay for tuition for her two girls and how it threatened her ability to plan her summer at EuroDisney, the way she had promised. I may just be feeling sour grapes, but in reality, I am not looking to finance a DisneyWorld vacation. I just want to eat 3 meals a day, every day of the month. Being able to send my kids to a 'good' school would be a bonus but for now I am content that they are in school.
According to this article French teachers are prone to strikes. Any time us English speaking teachers get together, I wish I could propose one. Most of them have husbands with salaries, however, and view their jobs as a sort of recreation or supplemental income, I guess. And there is the large part of all of us that is just happy to have a job. Even if we can't actually live off them.
But no one really likes to talk about actual poverty. It's easier to pretend it doesn't exist. Or, if it does, it is somehow the fault of the person experiencing it. While searching for remarks from two of the greatest champions against poverty, I came across this ridiculous wiki-how that shows an obvious ignorance of real poverty. Lottery tickets and financial advisers don't even figure into the realm of real world poverty. Parents are busy making decisions about whether their children should go to school or have food to eat. An impossible choice at the end of the day.
At the end of my day? I'm still puzzling over my colleague's quick judgement. I have been working on a post about the curriculum in the Ivorian schools -a fascinating and surprising discovery that leads to a much more complex evaluation than merely 'pas bonne.' Hopefully it will soon be published, with photos. Meanwhile, I'm off to eat my gruel (just kidding, we still have the ever present rice with some sort of sauce.)
