The fool on a tree

When I went to South Africa about four years ago, the first phrase that I learned in Afrikaans was “Klum en die boom”, which means “Climb the tree”. It was my first day at Lynedoch Primary School, where I wound up spending two days a week during my 5 month semester “teaching” third grade students (aka, having an ENTIRE week to plan one hour of goofing off with students while their class teacher maintained discipline and I was flanked by two other co-teachers. A bit different from what teaching looks like now).  A student named Brighton was hanging on a tree limb and speaking really great English to me, and I asked him to teach me something in his language. So he did. Climb the tree.

That phrase became meaningful to me during my study abroad experience, and was part of my motivation to seek out what I thought would be a similar experience in Tanzania. Climbing trees is what you do as a kid. It’s foolish and reckless and pointless from an adult perspective. There are no marketable skills gained from climbing trees, at least not any that are easily slapped onto a resume. But there’s something about the thoughtless scramble from branch to branch, not knowing your route or where it will end, not knowing when you’ll have to backtrack or shift your weight in order to avoid falling on your ass, that makes climbing trees thrilling and attractive. That’s why I came to Tanzania, originally. I thought being in South Africa was a thrill, and I wanted more. “A bigger tree!” I thought, “The flimsier the better!” So I came to Tanzania. And immediately realized what an idiot I was.

Two years later, it has been a thrill, but to label it as such cheapens the experience and the daily life that I have come to adopt as my own. I had completely forgotten about the tree metaphor. I fumbled on branches for a long time before settling onto a sturdy one, but then I felt like I found it. One of the reasons why I haven’t written a blog in so long is that for the past year, things have genuinely felt normal. I don’t think to share many of my experiences because they no longer feel like shaky, hilarious balancing acts.

But something happened during my final days in Tanzania that made me reconsider this perspective, and it woke me up from my false feelings of normalcy. I was at English mass, which is offered daily by the Jesuits. I pop in a few times every month (it’s about 30 minutes long compared to the typical Tanzanian 2 hours). Anyway, one of my favorite Jesuits, Father Joe, gave a homily about the story (which I had never heard before), about this awful tax collector guy who was pretty much the miser everyone loved to hate. Fat, taking tons of money, living like a king while all the other folks suffered. But then he heard that Jesus was walking through town. Moneybags, probably all sweaty and ridiculous looking, pushed through the crowd full of people who hated him, and scrambled up a sycamore tree in order to try to see Jesus. Fr. Joe painted the picture of the townspeople taking full advantage of his compromised position… throwing rocks, laughing, yelling at him, anything to get back at this horrible snake of a man who was foolishly and precariously hanging from a tree in order to get a glimpse of something special. But Jesus called out to him, told him to come down, and spoke directly to him, obviously with more love and forgiveness than any of us humans could muster. When Moneybags’ feet touched the ground, he was completely changed. Gave all his cash away, made promises to fix all of the crooked deals he glibly cheated his way through over the years, all that stuff that happens when you turn your life around.

The point that Father Joe was trying to make in his homily, and the point that really stuck to my gut, is that we all need to keep trying to climb up on trees in order to see Jesus, no matter what kind of shit we've done, and no matter how many people try to stand in the way or throw potatoes at us while we’re clinging to the branches. Now, when I say Jesus, I don’t necessarily mean JESUS the guy. We have to climb in order to see love; a new perspective; any person or experience that will change us or make us different from who we were when we were still on the ground. Without looking like a fool and taking the risk to just get up there, we’re just living on the ground as a part of the crowd and standing on tip toes.

I returned back to the crowded, freezing cold ground about two weeks ago. It’s weird, having been up on a tree for so long, but just like the fat dude, I feel different. It’s not something I’ve processed yet or think is very important to talk about right now, but the point is, I’ve been thinking a lot about my last few weeks in Tanzania. After over two years of becoming acquainted with the culture, I still had multiple moments, every single day, in which I screwed up and felt like a publicly humiliated fool. Some anecdotes for proof: I went to a rural area about 2 hours away from Dar during my last month, confidently riding on the mini buses, listening to the stops being called out and chatting with the conductors in Swahili. I then hopped out five stops too early because I misheard the name, and had to chase after the bus waving my arms like an idiot while the conductor called me back on and shook his head like a disappointed grandfather. Impressed with my ability to jump back onto a moving vehicle, I smiled a bit when I re-entered, until I had to face all of the Tanzanians staring at the fool on the tree, their eyebrows raised into looks that asked me what the hell I was doing there by myself. But I didn’t feel ashamed.  The next day I accidentally said “I will remember me forever” instead of “I will remember you forever” during an impromptu farewell speech to my choir. Damn fool. That evening, my roommates and I decided to finally kill the giant spider that had been growing in our compound, and I’m sure the neighbors were shaking their heads when they heard the most girly shrieks of 2013 (in all fairness though, the spider was bigger than my hand and I had to chop it with a gardening hoe, so that one was a little less foolish). I tripped and left pools of sweat and constantly made grammatical and cultural errors up until my very last day in Mabibo. But there’s something to be said for all that failing. I’m a human. We all are. And we’re fools. If there’s anything I’ve gained, it’s a confidence to laugh at myself when I do something unbelievably stupid. Because when you’re up on a tree, you look ridiculous, but you can see things. And people, life changing people, can see you.

A couple days ago, I was able to call my choir at 11:30 pm (Tanzania time) from my house in Connecticut, when they were singing their final song during the New Year’s Eve mass. The final song just so happened to be my favorite song, and I sang it with them via phone one last time. The final line says “Kwa kuwa umeniona, asante”, which roughly translates to “thank you for seeing me” (or more like… because you have seen me, thank you).  In 2011, I scrambled up a sycamore tree, looked around, and stayed up there. I saw my students. I saw my neighbors and my choir and the banana trees and the chickens. I climbed the tree and learned how to dance, I learned a language, learned how to operate at a different pace, I found love and I gave love. And I was seen by people who forgave me for my foolishness and forced me to face my weaknesses in order to become more human. 

Thank you for seeing me.

Keep your eyes peeled for your next tree to climb. That's what I'm going to be doing.