Goodbye RMI

I tend to skew towards the sentimental. So now that I am on my way out of the RMI I wanted my last week to be filled with happy tears, lot’s of laughs and a house-full of hugs. Anything that would have fit into a TV sitcom montage would have been perfect.

Things didn’t work out that way – let me tell you what.

First of all I was robbed.

A few nights ago, while I was sound asleep, someone crept into my yard, peeled back the security screening on my living room window like a can of tuna and rifled through my roommate’s room. They stole his money and I pod.

That wasn’t so great. I felt pretty alarmed that someone would go through all of the trouble to rob volunteers.
Then, a few days later I went to school. While I was taking role my principal came whirling through my room, stick in hand, demanding to know who was late. I told her that every single student was on time (a lie) and that she needed to leave my classroom (the truth). She yelled at me for a while in the hallway. I asked her if we could talk about it later. She told me I had no control over my class. I said she was handling this the wrong way. She told me to go back to my class. I somehow ended up with the stick.

I examined this stick from end to end and was disgusted to see the end was studded with nails sticking out like jagged teeth from a bad dream. She had intended to hit my kids with it and had actually half-heartedly tagged one on the shoulder on the way out.

To get rid of the stick I went to the window of the bathroom – a deplorable place with no running water that over the course of the year has turned into a haven for hellish smells – and looked out my two-storey vantage point for a good place to toss the stick.

That was when I saw John. John is a student whose most consistent quality is that he skips every single class every single day. I’ve had him in class maybe five percent of the year. Anyway, I saw this kid sitting against the fence behind the school. He kind of looked like he was in pain. I couldn’t make him out clearly so I leaned out further. It was only then, to my terrible, horrible and scarring surprise that I saw he was feverishly completing the rite of passage all young men do on their way to manhood. Instead of being in the darkened corner of his own bed, he was in broad daylight behind an elementary school.
I took the stick and threw it in the bushes near John without him seeing me. He ran away with wild eyes.

Killed two birds with one stick.

I went home and fell asleep, homesick and frustrated.

I woke up to the sound of rocks being hurled at my door, the sign that some of my students want to come and hang out. I got up and let Billis and Paul in. they immediately set to work with hammer and nails and fixed my window. Then they saw how messy my room was.

“This is no good, Mr. Tim,” they told me.

“I know guys, but it’s been a tough couple days.”

Well, they fixed my window, cleaned my room and afterward we threw a football in my front yard.

Positive montage scene worthy of sitcom: Check.

Next mission: Adjusting to life in America.