Clustermuck

March 18, 2011. I’ve hit a low point.
Kim and I are calling it the trifecta, where the combination of culture shock (or overwhelmedness at this culture), homesickness and island fever mesh together to form a near-deadly, tightly-formed cornsack that’s creeping its way over my head and has nearly covered my face. Tightly.
This week started off pretty nice, since I think I’ll get to head home for Christmas. This made me cry over the weekend—unexpected tears of happiness. I love my family, let’s leave it at that.
But that family high didn’t stay long. If anything, the pooeyness of the week made me miss my family more. It made me miss tubs of medicinal ice cream (it’s the cure for everything,) movie marathons, Dairy Queen runs (what is it with ice cream ?), and my billowy, comfortable, back-aiding Queen sized bed with my satiny olive green comforter. And I miss hugs and kisses, jokes and fun stories, long talks and contemplations.
I had all these memories and all this Christmas expectations to juxtapose the untimely, unorganized mess I call my school.
I don’t want to misrepresent my school, and I don’t want to misrepresent myself or the PC by talking about bad things. I love my site, I love the people here, I love my students. But I had a week in which I would’ve eaten a tub of ice cream (the big kind like Southern Bell makes) out of mourning, not celebration. (After all, there are many occasions to eat ice cream. If I celebrate, I eat it out of a wine glass. It makes me happy.)
Anyway, so I’m in mourning mode. My teachers are late every day, my students (particularly one—my friends call him “Grade A” for reasons I cannot tell you), the internet has been at the pace I would imagine a turtle may go if he climbed a glacier.
Also, 2 girls barged their way into my house, rudely interrupted a much-welcomed phone call from one of my PC friends in Vava’u, one of these girls called me fat, and I wasted $10 of phone credit just to hear 3 friends’ voicemails over and over.
1. The last paragraph happened in one day.
2. Calling someone fat here is like saying, “Hey, you have brown hair.”
3. I think she called me fat because I was wearing a tighter skirt around my house, and Tongans aren’t used to seeing me in clothes that aren’t billowy and loose. And I have a big ass.
4. It’s hard enough to supply enough phone credit every month—it’s not a huge financial strain, but it’s annoying because half the time, the falekoloas (stores) in my village are empty or not open, so I have to yell the name of the shopkeeper until he/she comes out and sells me phone cards. OR I have to go to town. Which takes hours. I’m now sucking it up and biking most of the way to town, stopping at my friend’s house, and walking to town, because the bus is too expensive and I now apparently need the exercise for my fat ass.
5. When I do have phone credit and call friends I haven’t talked to in months, and they don’t answer, I understand. I get it. They have lives. And like me, many of my friends are quite unreliable at answering their phones. However, when the voicemails kick on, the phone kicks on the conversation minutes, so when I hang up after 3 seconds of listening to the Voicemail, it counts as 1 minute of credit. A whole minute! That’s over .50 cents, people! And…I’m calling from Tonga. Give me a break.

I nearly broke down on Thursday, especially after I read my first Christian Inspirational novels (I had my doubts, I won’t lie,) but when I read it threw it down because I was so pissed off at the anti-gay statements embedded in the text and the unreasonable models-of-faith characters, I couldn’t handle it anymore.
So I had a God-talk.
God and I talked about my bitterness. I have a lot of it. I do, and it’s been harboring for about 3 years now. It’s part of life, I suppose, and I feel that the bitterness is leaking out and is almost gone. But when it becomes larger than a leak, it’s like one of the various leaks I had in poor Fiona, my white 99 Oldsmobile Alero. Poor girl, she was nearly a POS, but I took terrible care of her, and there was always something wrong. I’m not one to pay great attention to things in general, so I’d go months before I’d realize the rattling crunchy noise wasn’t normal, or that the random ‘ding’ wasn’t a cowbell or xylophone to compliment the music in my CDs.
That’s my bitterness. I’m not much of an angry person, but when it rains it pours, and I’ve had a bit of an emotional clustermuck (please accept my word substitution). Friday was the last straw. My always-late counterpart teacher, who usually shows up between 45 mins and an hour late, came at 11. School starts at 8:30. Do the math.
I was furious. FURIOUS. Seething and tonguing poisonous words I so badly wanted to chuck at my principal, who asked me to give an extra English lesson, and at my student Grade A, who I sent to my principal’s Class 1 class, the 5 year olds, because he was acting like one.
My students, God bless them, were actually encouraging. They could read me. I hate being that readable with my emotions, but sorry—I can’t hide frustration very well, and I can’t help when my eyes get really watery. What do you do.
Once, I went outside and took deep breaths after I gave them an assignment. I needed air. It sucks to be frustrated and sweaty.
When I had nothing else to do, when my voice was hoarse from talking and singing, I went to my principal’s classroom to find the other teacher lounging on a makeshift futon made of boards and old desks. I told him I was finished and would be in my house, and I left.
I ate lunch, finished the rest of the terrible Inspirational novel (because the only book I’ve ever not finished is Wuthering Heights, and that’s another long story.) And I slept. I don’t nap. I’m not good at it unless I’m dripping with sickness or exhaustion. Well, I was sick with exhaustion, so I slept over an hour. I woke up sweaty and groggy, as I always do from naps, but my emotional state felt not so Maleficent-like. (Sleeping Beauty’s villain. This week just isn’t appropriate for Disney heroines. Villains only.)
Luckily Kim is a wonderful friend who lives close and just made homemade Oreo ice cream. She shared with me, let me borrow her phone, and I called my mom, who answered. It’s amazing what a mama’s voice can do. We talked it out, and I explained what was possibly contributing to my emotional clustermuck.
I felt better after that. I shaved my legs after over 2 weeks…don’t judge. I live on a tropical island in a third world country with no male prospects. Shaving isn’t important. Except for the pits. I shave those regularly. I cooked a nice supper, and as I threw out carrot scraps the two girls from the previous night (the obnoxious ones who barged in and called me fat) were sitting at the school and immediately walked over. I didn’t have a free hand to shut the door, so they waltzed in and sat in the doorway. They watched me cook, we made conversation, and I asked them to leave so I could eat and clean my house. They seemed shocked by this—probably because I didn’t feed them. Kids come to my house a lot looking for food. Tongans don’t suffer from starvation, and often have lots of food for dinner, so I don’t offer food anymore. They would eat me out of house and home. Plus they have a whole bush to pick through. I have falekoloas, canned food, and a market vegetable selection that would resemble that of the planet Mars.
I didn’t feel bad about asking them to leave. It’s exhausting, entertaining kids every day. Yes, I am here to integrate and get to know everyone. But in a week like this, it is essential to just seek inward. Find an inward glow, work out the bitter pus from my emotional boil, and just be happy with myself. Ass and all.