Jungle Law and Order

I came back from my Everest Base Camp trek in January "centered". Om mani padme hum. Om mani padme hum.

Then back-to-work happened.

Fair enough. I've been out-of-work before, and that is no way to win friends and influence people and try to maintain cerebral equilibrium.

Across the highway from the university, a community college (attached to the university) had just opened, and if ever two words needed to be qualified with fingered air quotes it's these-- the community college's "English department".

This is another "bread and circuses" pacifier for the masses, and it needed volunteers who could help set up a program based on the model we have at the university. Eager to accept a challenge equivalent to hiking up to 5,000 meters in the Himalayas, I raised my hand and I offered to go.

B.F.M.

Of all the things I wish I knew before I raised my hand that I know now, at the summit of the list is that many, if not most, students enrolled in the C.C, are nationals existing in the flatlands of society. Many come from outlying villages and many had to drop out of school, marry in their teens (marriage often being a way to climb at least one rung up the social ladder in this culture) and join the army or police force or take on some dead end municipality job to help support their large extended families not too far removed from a nomadic, desert lifestyle.

God bless them and I sincerely mean that.

I (more fingered air quotes)--"teach"--in the evenings; that leaves me with a lot of day light hours to kill.

I said I came back from Everest centered and that is not a state of mind I easily gravitate towards.

Y'see. I am this DSMD personality type: half of my soul inhabits the north pole, the other half the south pole, half of my brain lives in Tropic of Cancer, the other half in the Tropic of Capricorn; I'm an extroverted introvert, a misanthropic good samaritan. I am a world class architect at self demolition and self reinvention.

The 2,000 volt vibrations that split me in two came on the first day on my new job when I had to introduce the technological phenomenon of the textbook to my students, demonstrate in an incomprehensible babble how to open a book, then point out that each page had a number and that whenever I wrote a page number on the white board, they were meant to labor like children in a Sri Lankan textile mill, trying to remember what it was I told them about turning to a page where they would only find cryptic symbols as comprehensible to them as Mayan hieroglyphs are to me.

As previously stated: God bless them.

When I decided mumble grumble years ago to show my back to my country in order to travel around the world teaching English as a way to finance travelling around the world, I had two options.

1. Pander to my charitable nature and go to work for a non-governmental organization or
2. Pay respect to my me-firstness and bolt for an oil-rich Arabian Gulf governmental organization where I'd get really nice free digs, long, paid holidays, pay no taxes, hire servants to clean my house, wash my car and make believe I had it made.

My first impulse upon discovering I'd really stepped in the shit was to go back to my departmental director and try to cajole, to sweet talk, to cry "foul", to sob my way back across the highway to my office where I taught during daylight hours academic English to upper tiered nationals. The answer from my departmental director was "Nope, no, uh uh, get your ass out of my office and quit harrassing me with your erratic, cries-for-help Emails!"

I have had a lot of time on my hands ever since. Too much. The sort of free time where it is OK to get drunk before 9. But I can't. I have to go to work at 3.

I had two options: start my long, long, long under-employed days with elephantine doses of the latest generations of tri-cyclics and MOA inhibitors sprinkled on my Mueslix OR wait out my under-employed free mornings and afternoons glued to the computer checking my Facebook page every half hour on the half hour, reading Wikipedia articles on obscure dead 1960s rock stars, while keeping one tab open in my browser desperately seeking images of breasts all the while waiting for my double shot of Simpson's reruns from 11 - 12 before I have to death march across the highway at 3 PM. I chose to put apple slices on my breakfast cereal instead.

The last three months have been an epic struggle between the two me's. A left brain versus right brain doomsday cage death match. In theory, I have only three more weeks of classes to go before we give final exams which will be a bit of a farce since the students are on a Pass/Fail system, 50% is passing, and we teachers are encouraged to factor in the full 30% of the teacher's marks to push all students onto the next level. Only the students who have never been to class fail, and that's not true in all cases. My can't sleep, four AM chatter monkey keeps insisting that despite this being a voluntary, one off assignment, the director could very well say, "Tell ya what--you folks teaching over there now, well, since you know the ropes, consider yourself reassigned there permanently."

If that happens, I'll bid goodbye to garden, the rooms full of furniture, wife, cats, wardrobes full of apparel for all seasons and give that NGO a second thought.

Till then. Wait and see.

This summer, I am going to reverse myself on last year's decision to by-pass Southeast Asia as a summer get-away.

I really, really, really need a river that winds deep, deep, deep into a lawless jungle where I have always found a confluence of my two selves, where I find cheap high quality hash, peace of mind and atonement.

And this time, I am going to buy a home there.