Grand Events and Water Falls

Life has recently been heavily studded by a series of seriously grand events.

The first magnificent occasion was the English Talent Show I planned for my school. This event had a rather bizarre line-up...

ranging from the small and scared-looking wiggling of teachers' offspring,

to another showing of that reoccuring AIDS play (bit of a downer),

to the schools' very own 15 year-old boy band blasting electric guitars,


to the "Global WARN-ing" Choral Speaking performance,

to my brother, friends, and my redition of R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly."

This event was well-attended by students, but basically boycotted by the teachers, as stringed instruments (especially electric ones) are slightly haram in the Qu'ran. The planning of the Talent Show doused me with stress and anxiety, especially as it was so disconcerting to find out that many things I consider to be talents (guitar, dancing) are actually significantly sinful.

My brother's visit, a grand event in and of itself, consistently wove into the rest of the celebrations.

No one believed he was my brother, and I was constantly asked about wedding dates and potential children. I tried to combat this strange and incestual conversation by reiterating that he was my "abang" which means older brother in Malay. However, after several days of introducing my "abang" to everyone, I was informed that this word also functions as a pet name that wives call their husbands. I obviously sent out some mixed messages, and am still generally perplexed about how "brother" becomes the equivalent of "sweetheart."

My brother and I engaged in various activities: including dancing, teaching, visiting caves crawling with monkeys, and watching sharks mate. Seeing the sharks was one of the most amazing and terrifying things I've ever witnessed. They were roughly the same size as me and seemed very aggressive about the whole thing. My brother and I were the only ones in the water, and we quickly exited after our brief underwater voyeurism. We also saw monkeys steal, open, and eat Pringles, which was a close second in terms of visual stimulation.

Another remarkable happening was the false wedding of Sarah and Ezra (two of the ETA’s and two of my favourite human beings). This is actually one of the most absurd ceremonies I have ever witnessed.

The couple was dressed up in matching hot pink bridal gear,

paraded around and entertained with silat (fake fighting),


seated in thrones (each with their own fanner person),


and physically positioned into a variety of poses for a non-stop, exhausting photo shoot.

I actually suspect that this is what many Malaysians would love to do to each of us visiting Americans. Dress us up in glittering costumes, coat our faces in piles of make-up, tack on some fake hair, match us up into neat little couples, and then parade us around, taking pictures as if we were shimmering props.

Not that (white) people haven’t been doing variations on that theme to many humans for thousands of years. It must be hard wired into our nature, this desire to transform other beings into your fantasies and then have them act out your stories for you. Sometimes I see this glint in my students’ eyes, and I know they are imagining me as their personal Barbie doll. Its creepy.

Finally, the Earth and English Camp was the culmination of all joyous and stressful celebrations. This camp, planned by several of us Americans was designed to spread environmental love through three-days of activities.

The kids on the bus, and the entire camp before beach clean-up.

First, we divided the kids up into different elemental teams. As any good card-carrying tree-hugger should, I led the Forests. Each student painted themselves as a tree on our team flag. "WE heart FOREST"...

We tried to make picking up trash on the beach into a game, by making it a competition. I'm not sure the kids were convinced...

It was a dead tie between the Rivers and the Oceans.

I spent the majority of the camp, in the toilet washing trash. After cleaning the garbage, I instructed the students to make monsters out of it. They were exceptionally creative and created some magnificent creatures out of styrofoam chunks and old broken flipflops.

Monster trash creation station... where magic happens. This is why I believe in art. You can spend hours explaining the intricacies of litter and trash and facts and figures, but no shift in the brain is guarenteed. But give a kid some trash and tell them to make something useful with it and new pathways are being carved into the mind. Rubbish is solved like a problem, and ultimately transformed. Magic.

Bloody Mary monster???


These creations are some of the best art I've ever seen...After the monsters were made, we organized a "Trash Monster Fashion Show," meaning that the students paraded across stage, striking poses with the monsters formerly known as litter. Murdoch is already making offers to buy the video. We're holding out.



Some of the kids looked a bit like their monsters. Which is cute.


We also did other things, like play games.

Capture the flag.

The best and biggest thing: we put on some music (for a freeze tag game) and as soon as the audible vibrations hit the air...a massive dance party erupted! Dancing is not allowed (except very traditional forms in specific settings), and so, in this room with no Malay authority figures, the muscle fibers of these 130 Muslim kids started twitching in long repressed rhythms. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I cried.

Teaching the kids the wave.

Other grand events are on the verge of erupting: brother and I head to Hanoi soon and this is followed by a brief intermission in Southern France. I will return just in time for Malaysian Independence Day, and then the month of Ramadan will unfold. Finally, the arrival of a crew of four magical maniac revolutionaries has been confirmed for the fall. These glorious creatures will help me wrap up my time at school, and then our adventures will spill onto other SE Asia borders. I’ll keep squishing the events into these funny electronic formats, until 16 December, when my only two feet will land once more on the shores of the USA. God willing.

In the meantime, I'm consciously collecting some more grand events, captured like willing butterflies in generous nets. Sometimes they try to hide, or camouflage themselves into the folds of time. But I'm too clever for that. I'm looking out. I got a good one just yesterday and it went like this.

I watched water fall.

Nothing falls like water.