Saturday, September 19, 2009
While it feels like I have been here quite some time, I am still constantly discovering new secret realities in unexpected places. These past few weeks, one of those places has been the walls of our house. The four Project Trust girls who lived in my house last year were young, fresh out of secondary school, and had written on the walls in ink, chalk, and paint. We found a few of the girls’ possessions scattered here and there throughout the house and yard: a framed picture of a middle-aged woman, a Karl Marx pin, a calendar with reminders like “Mum’s birthday”, a chest x-ray with the age listed as 19. The school did what they could to scrub away the markings, but some traces of them remain, permanent. Occasionally, as I am doing something about the house, sunlight will strike the wall at an angle I had not seen yet, and reveal new words written there in chalk.
A couple of weeks ago I first discovered words were hidden in our yellow paint. I was in the shower when it happened: scrubbing my face with a washcloth, I looked up and saw the words “Don’t forget to wash behind your ears!!” emerge in faint blue chalk from the wall beside the door. In spite of myself, I began to do as they said; I felt a bit like the woman from The Yellow Wallpaper.
The word “help” is scrawled on the sea foam-green kitchen wall beside the window overlooking the front gate. Too magenta to be blood, too tidy to be written in fear, the letters are splattered and drip marks reach all the way to the floor. Upon arriving in this strange place, I was disturbed at the sight of the word, taking it to be a possible bad omen. This afternoon I was doing dishes when I noticed there are more words a bit above and to the left of it, but they are difficult to decipher. I can only clearly make out “love you.” In light those and of the other words I have noticed, I have become as indifferent to the “help” as one is to an old freckle.
Last night we experienced the longest blackout since we arrived in the country. It began at around 5:30 PM and ended some time after 1:00 AM. Being a Friday night, we had over a couple of guests, one young Guyanese teacher and one VSO volunteer, whom we had met in Georgetown. Sitting around our small coffee table drinking warm Banks Beer, we played Texas Hold ’Em by the light of a candle stuck in a guava jam jar. The VSO was telling us about his day-to-day activities, he’s here for two years to try to put some sort of special education program in place. Currently, there is little being done for children with learning disabilities here in Berbice. He was saying he was in awe of the teachers around here: many are young, fresh out of secondary school, underpaid and untrained. They do their best to make it up as they go along—it must be frustrating to do something as difficult as teach without proper experience.
His words rang true for more people than I think he knew. Our Guyanese friend shifted uneasily, subconsciously taking on a defensive posture. I thought of the Project Trust girls. I thought of myself. Even with my small amount of experience living on my own, I still feel lost most of the time. How could these girls be expected to cope with the stress? I thought of the word “help” on the wall of the kitchen. Help. Was it simply a joke, or did it mean something more? An outlet for frustration? A small act of retribution?
While it feels like I have been here quite some time, I am still constantly discovering new secret realities in unexpected places. These past few weeks, one of those places has been the walls of our house. The four Project Trust girls who lived in my house last year were young, fresh out of secondary school, and had written on the walls in ink, chalk, and paint. We found a few of the girls’ possessions scattered here and there throughout the house and yard: a framed picture of a middle-aged woman, a Karl Marx pin, a calendar with reminders like “Mum’s birthday”, a chest x-ray with the age listed as 19. The school did what they could to scrub away the markings, but some traces of them remain, permanent. Occasionally, as I am doing something about the house, sunlight will strike the wall at an angle I had not seen yet, and reveal new words written there in chalk.
A couple of weeks ago I first discovered words were hidden in our yellow paint. I was in the shower when it happened: scrubbing my face with a washcloth, I looked up and saw the words “Don’t forget to wash behind your ears!!” emerge in faint blue chalk from the wall beside the door. In spite of myself, I began to do as they said; I felt a bit like the woman from The Yellow Wallpaper.
The word “help” is scrawled on the sea foam-green kitchen wall beside the window overlooking the front gate. Too magenta to be blood, too tidy to be written in fear, the letters are splattered and drip marks reach all the way to the floor. Upon arriving in this strange place, I was disturbed at the sight of the word, taking it to be a possible bad omen. This afternoon I was doing dishes when I noticed there are more words a bit above and to the left of it, but they are difficult to decipher. I can only clearly make out “love you.” In light those and of the other words I have noticed, I have become as indifferent to the “help” as one is to an old freckle.
Last night we experienced the longest blackout since we arrived in the country. It began at around 5:30 PM and ended some time after 1:00 AM. Being a Friday night, we had over a couple of guests, one young Guyanese teacher and one VSO volunteer, whom we had met in Georgetown. Sitting around our small coffee table drinking warm Banks Beer, we played Texas Hold ’Em by the light of a candle stuck in a guava jam jar. The VSO was telling us about his day-to-day activities, he’s here for two years to try to put some sort of special education program in place. Currently, there is little being done for children with learning disabilities here in Berbice. He was saying he was in awe of the teachers around here: many are young, fresh out of secondary school, underpaid and untrained. They do their best to make it up as they go along—it must be frustrating to do something as difficult as teach without proper experience.
His words rang true for more people than I think he knew. Our Guyanese friend shifted uneasily, subconsciously taking on a defensive posture. I thought of the Project Trust girls. I thought of myself. Even with my small amount of experience living on my own, I still feel lost most of the time. How could these girls be expected to cope with the stress? I thought of the word “help” on the wall of the kitchen. Help. Was it simply a joke, or did it mean something more? An outlet for frustration? A small act of retribution?
Have you considered adding to the mess of scrawled, barely-articulate thought around your house? It would create a time-lapsed, compounded, stratified effect and meaning. You're relatively intelligent, too, so I bet you could think of cool stuff to write.
ReplyDeleteTry a bananagram type format. Make your scrawlings in a very orderly fashion and add to it daily.
ReplyDeleteFabulous. I like this post best so far. Do you feel like you're happening upon some sort of ancient graffiti? That's what it seems like to me.
ReplyDeleteI hope you don't turn in to the woman from the Yellow Wallpaper. I don't want you coming home crawling around the edges of rooms, scraping your shoulder on the wall.