A Lakeside Weekend, Part the Second

Now where was I? Right, I had just been having a meal. (Given that it's Malaysia, that doesn't do much to narrow things down.) During dinner, the Malaysian teacher who seemed to be running the camp came over to talk to us about the planned night hike with park rangers. It seemed it was canceled. The hike was supposed to fill 2 hours of the evening's schedule, so this was a kink in our plans. Naturally, we asked why. The teacher seemed very reluctant to explain.

"I don't want to say...might scare."
"The hike might scare the children?"
"No, no...if I tell, you may scare."
"You can tell us, we won't be scared."
"Well, I don't really want to say, but the hike cancel because there are...animals."
"What kind of animals?"
"Elephants. They have find their, how you say, um, their..." (hand motion)
"Their dung."
"Yes."
"Here?"
"Yes, in the woods."
"Are they dangerous?"
"Not now, with all kids make noise in camp. They know we here. But on hike...it is not advisable. Better in morning."
"Ahhh, of course, ok. So elephants live here?"
"Better not to talk about."

As Colin said, it's a surreal moment in your life when you realize that an actual plan of yours has been cancelled due to, of all things, elephants. Although worried about how to fill the time with activities, we were amazed and amused at the thought of elephants tromping around the jungle near our camp.

After dinner, the kids had to pray yet again, so the ETAs re-retired to our lakeside perch. As we sat there chatting in the dark about what to do when the kids were finally free, two of the main Malaysian organizers of the event came over to talk to us. The theme of the camp was animals, since it took place at a nature preserve. When the teachers came over, it seemed like the perfect chance to float the idea we had been discussing of the teachers performing a brief skit about animals to warm the kids up for creating their own animal skits. Genius, right? Kids love to see their teachers acting silly, and it would be a way for us to show that we wanted the teachers to be involved in our activities. We met with a lot of reluctance, though. At first, we thought maybe the teachers were simply embarrassed about doing a skit, or thought it wasn't appropriate for them, as authority figures and professionals, to run around pretending to be animals. We seemed to get them to come around, but after a few minutes of talking amongst themselves, they asked if they could do skits based on different careers instead. We protested that the theme of the camp was animals, and they seemed even more uncomfortable. Finally, they began to explain.

"Animals, while here in woods...Is maybe not suitable."
"But we thought it made sense to learn about animals while we're out here in nature. There are a lot of animals at Tasek Bera."
"Yes, but you talk about animals and then..." (vague hand gestures, seeming to indicate upsetting something)
"Are you worried the children will be scared if we talk about animals while they're camping?"
"No, is more...because of the animals. If you talk about them while out here...It has to do with the spirit of the animal."
(blank stares)
"It...calls to them. To the spirit. To some people, they think that. Me, no, but is not advisable."

Bewildered, we demurred, and the teachers left us after a little more chit chat.

Left on our own to work things out, we ETAs ultimately reached a hypothesis about a possible explanation. I remembered that when the two other ETAs in Kuantan had a rat in their house, they told me that their Malaysian mentors would send them text messages asking them how things were going with the "r**." The mentors also told them not to mention the word "rat" while in the house. The superstition is that if you talk about the rat by name, he can tell you're talking about him, he knows you're saying negative things, and it makes him want to act out against you even more. (If a rat can tell that he's being spoken about in English, he's ahead of many of my youngest students, but that's neither here nor there.) The girls solved the problem by naming the rat "Louie" and always referring to him that way.

I think that possibly the issue with talking about animals was a fear that mentioning their names would somehow call to them and rile them up. That is, it would be bad luck to have the kids running around on "Team Elephant," acting like elephants and trumpeting while the real things were listening restlessly in the woods beyond. That may be why the teacher was so reluctant to explain to us that elephants were the reason for canceling the hike, and seemed not to be happy when we tried to pursue more of a conversation about elephants.

Of course, like all superstitions, this was hilariously amusing. At first I thought the world would be a better place without superstitions, but it would really be a less entertaining one. And there would be fewer excuses not to do things you just don't want to do. It can be annoying when superstitions keep you from doing what you want, but I wouldn't be in favor of abolishing them all together, whatever all those silly Enlightenment guys may say.

It was so funny to picture ourselves not having this conversation, trying to go ahead with an animal camp, and being completely clueless at the kids' reluctance to participate or constantly shushing us whenever we said the word "elephant." And we came within inches of doing just that! What's more, I STILL don't really know if our hypothesis about this superstition is correct. That just goes to show how easy it is to walk into a cultural booby trap and commit a huge faux pas (or, as the Soltan family likes to say, "fox paws") without realizing it.

The rest of the camp passed relatively uneventfully and quite enjoyably. The kids had to be up to pray the next morning at 6 am, and they were already chattering loudly in their tents at 4 am. (Ugh.) This confirms my hypothesis that Malaysians just don't sleep. The morning started with a brief "jungle trek," a phrase they always use here and that sounds so much more hardcore than "light hike" or, more accurately, "15-minute walk in the woods." Then we spent several hours taking turns kayaking, which was a blast. (Thanks, Kate, for giving me that crash course over the summer!) I managed to get a girl who was too scared to kayak to try it with me, and, as predicted, she loved it and kept asking if we could stay out on the water even longer. I don't want to make it sound like I was an amazing role model, though--I also spent a lot of time sitting in the parking lot watching boys play around with a soccer ball and not really feeling like talking to anyone. Sometimes going up and talking to kids in a situation like this, when they're having fun with their friends, feels like inflicting myself on them. After all, besides having to interact with a weird stranger who doesn't really have much to talk to them about, they have to do so in a language that still requires a lot of effort for them, even when their proficiency is high. If I'm honest, it's also sometimes a lot of effort for me, and takes some social gumption to just go and talk to a teenager knowing it will be awkward. It does get tiring to be "on" all the time, let me tell you.

After the camp, Amy and I planned to stay with Pat and Colin at their apartment, which is right next to their school. En route to dinner in the nearest town, a 45-minute drive, the boys got a call from a teacher saying it was "not suitable" for us young ladies to crash in their spare bedroom. Apparently, the powers that be were already preparing a room for us would-be loose women in the students' hostel next door. It was lucky, really, because all my ladies-in-waiting were otherwise engaged, and I don't know who would have protected my honor. Plus, I'd only packed one petticoat. Really, though, my upbringing had me well-prepared for this sort of thing, and it was easy enough to let it pass with an eyeroll.

The ride back to our respective quarters was something of a rollercoaster. It started out on a high note, with a stop at a gas station to fill up and to grab some ice cream bars. We each ate a Magnum bar sitting out on the hoods of Amy's and my cars, and it felt like summers gone by in America. I  love rest stops and gas stations, since there's a comforting sameness to them the world over. Once we got back in the cars, though, with me following behind Amy's car to find my way, things got wild. We drove in and out of and then finally definitively into a torrential thunderstorm. We drove along back roads with potholes turned into miniature lagoons, none of them boasting the modern convenience of streetlights. I was on the lookout for malnourished cows that might step into the road. Amy had a much harder time of it, as the first driver, and she was an absolute champ. Thank God, we made it safely, and Amy and I were bundled into unexpectedly nice digs--the room the principal uses when he has to stay at school for business. The bright purple sheets even had the school's crest on them. After a shower in a bathroom with no real shower head (think showering under a garden hose, basically), we got into bed expecting to be awakened in the morning by the call to prayer. Instead, we woke up around 7 am to the school's loudspeakers blasting Green Day's "21 Guns." I guess we'll never know the explanation for that.

After a quick breakfast of roti canai and teh tarik at a roadside stall, where of course we ran into the boys' mentor, I embarked on my road trip back to Kuantan. It was blessedly uneventful, until I made it home to an apartment with running water working only in the shower. C'est la vie. I think I'll talk about my irrational desires to do things efficiently in a country where I can never seem to get all the essentials working at once (ie, if the internet is going, the water ain't, etc) in another blog post. For now let's just say I threw in the towel (picked up the towel?) and just went to the beach that afternoon to relax.

There you have it, kids. Have a photo.

On a motorboat on the lake. Somehow every time Amy and I see each other, we end up in a boat. I like it.