Trauma

I have a girl in my class who is clearly special to me. I mean this in that our personalities are compatible more than the other children. I think it is because she can be bossy, stubborn, she doesn’t communicate her feelings well, and in general is used to doing what she wants when she wants. Hmmm…does this sound like anyone you know? I love her so much and she seems to be doing well in my class this year. The Director is completely impressed as this child hated school last year and seems to love me and coming each day. Her mother has reported that this little girl loves me so much and listens to me that they use my name at home to make her do things by saying “Would Nina like that?”. I laugh but she is adorable and very special to me. At times she is behind on things like fine-motor skills and language development, while other times she seems to absorb information and retain it better than other children. I think she is intuitive and her potential is great if she is not overlooked.

I laugh at the things that she tells me and other children, but by far she makes me feel not so far away from America and my tough kids when she tells me things like “You crazy!” or when I am teaching and she leans forward in her desk with this look of shock and amazement and says “What did you say!?” like I’ve just shared the key to all learning with the class. She makes me smile and laugh so much. Oh and she went through a phase of telling me each day that “Nina, we go to beach at 7 o’clock on Friday, OK?”. It is dark here at 5:30 and there is no way her parents or I am going to the beach after dark, but she was trying to be a big girl and it was adorable. The other children in class sometimes look at her and wonder if she will get in trouble for her scandalous comments (for Kindergarten that is) but then laugh too. Oh and each day during recess she has to play for 5 or 10 minutes and then check in with me and get a hug. Then she will repeat this, unless she is tired or having a hard day then I have to hold her in the sweltering African heat. She is something else.

Yesterday, my little friend was playing at recess and I was parked on a bench in the shade, as always, when she comes running/stumbling over. The look of horror on her face I knew that we were in for drama and lots of hugs. So I scooped her up and she finally caught her breath after many crocodile tears poured from her big brown eyes. I asked her where it hurt and with my little friend you have to ask slowly a few times before she actually starts to make sense. So I patiently wait and go through the process and I get that someone bit her and it was on her collar bone. I check and there is no mark whatsoever. So I rock her some more and she is good. Then the director comes over and wants to know what is wrong and take my little friend to have her point out who bit her. Well, the Director comes back and she said “I don’t understand she said that it was someone in your class but I don’t know who.”. This is funny because I don’t have any bitters, I have a licker, a pusher, a hitter, and a name caller…fresh out of bitters. So I take my little friend’s hand and she takes me to show me. Well, my whole class was gathered around this abnormally large, neon green grasshopper that was hanging out on the wall of the school. May be they are just extra big here in Africa as no one thought anything was weird about it, except me. My children were just fixated with it as they LOVE animals as we have been studying animals and looking at anything moves. My little friend points directly at the grasshopper, not at my students! I laugh to myself and pick her up and talk to her about the grasshopper, which she is now calling a ladybug. She communicated to me that it jumped on her shirt and I can just picture how it scared the beejeebers out of her! The poor thing! Honestly, she can’t really formulate sentences very well, so it’s more of patchwork language than anything with her, but I’m becoming really good at hearing her. I explain to her that it didn’t bite her and yes, that is scary and we had talked about being scared that morning. I have been triaging over this grasshopper for 2 days now. She might be scarred for life.

Today there was a very very small grasshopper on the wall in my classroom and she was very scared to say the least. She nearly lost it when it flew under a desk and was convinced it was in her hair. I hope this doesn’t mean she will hate bugs the rest of her life.