You Always Remember Your Firsts... Part II (Long Overdue)

Sorry about the break there people. I was in the middle of reorganizing my classroom and getting things to where I felt comfortable teaching without having to search for things. Ever since I've been here, I've been cleaning up my desk area to where I feel there is some semblance of organization. I've found things from several teachers ago in my desk that I've had to throw away...

... Anyway... Back to my story...

There we were... The white family, pulling up in a white minivan, and when we got out, I'm pretty sure almost everyone there turned and looked at us. I kept telling myself, "I'm here because my student is dancing and I want to support him." I knew that it was going to be a longer day than I'd planned when I didn't see anyone I knew there at the Pau Wau.

We went to the circle of mini-bleachers and found a spot in a bit of shade. I looked around to see if I could find my student, as dancers were arriving continually, but could not locate him. I also looked for my Aid, but he was nowhere to be found either.

As the minutes turned into hours, I began to wonder if anyone I knew would show up...

Finally, the dancers began to dance. My daughter was pretty excited when someone lent her a jingle dress (a dress covered in tiny tin bells) to dance in. It was better when she didn't have the dress. At least then, she was only slightly drawing attention to the wasichu family on the sidelines. After she got the dress on... Oh boy! Every time the dancers quit dancing, she would run almost all the way out to the middle pole and back to us in one giant loop that caught everyone's attention.

When the drummers began to drum and sing their songs, my oldest boy would hover around them and look longingly at their drum as if to say, "Please let me hit it, too!"

And, of course, there was one little argument between my kids and a couple of the Native kids over something my son dropped. It was really my son who was doing the yelling. The other kid was just trying to be nice and give it back to him.

As for the rest of the afternoon... Well, let's just say that my student never showed up, I met one person from work and, after we ate, my wife was ready to leave. So we left.

I could imagine the sighs that went on when we left, too. We wasichu are an annoying bunch to a cultural thing like that that is supposed to be a traditional event for them...

That's all there is to that little story!

Wasichu-Witko