My Other Delinquent

      "My teacher wants to talk to you."

      This year I told the kids that I do not want to talk to their teachers. There are no circumstances when I will talk to their teachers. The only exception I will make, I told them, is if the teacher requests my presence to be on the jury to determine who brought the best meal on the once-a-quarter occasion that the kids are asked to bring a dish to share with the class. I will accept food juries. Always. And now Jordao had asked me to do what I absolutely did not want to do.

      "What did I tell you?"

      "You said you don't want to talk to my teacher this year." Jordao eyed the ground sheepishly.

      "So why are you telling me this?" I pondered

      "Because my teacher wants to talk to you." Jordao was insistent

      In the states, if a kid has a problem it usually means a call home to mom or dad. I the states, a teacher saying he is giving your parents a call is followed by fear. Fear leads to racing home to delete the message on the answering machine before your parents can hear it. This is followed by the teacher assuming the child raced home and deleted the message on the answering machine. The teacher then decides to go over the student’s head and calls the parents' work number to explain that TJ and his best friend had been left behind on the field trip and the vice principal had to personally drive out and get them.

      Here in Mozambique, getting a phone call would be nice. It is nice because you can just not pick up when you really don't want to hear that your child has started a dojo and is giving karate lessons during recess. Or when you don't want to hear that your child was chasing other kids with a dead cobra. Or when you don't want to hear that your children were using bamboos as light-sabers after watching Star Wars that weekend.

      As a parent, phone calls would be nice. In Nampula the parent gets summoned to come school and have a face-to-face meeting the teacher. There is not after a phone call or several interventions prior to this. This is cultural custom, not a disciplinary procedure. Still, for being cultural, it feels very disciplinary. If you want to hash something out with somebody, you summon them, they come, and you sit down and hash. Hashing is not my favorite thing to do here.

      "So, knowing that I don't want to go school this year to talk to any teachers because my kids are being undisciplined, you come to me to say your teacher is asking me to come to school because you are being undisciplined. Is this correct?"

      "Yes." Jordao was now aware that it was my goal to make him aware that I wanted to shame him for being undisciplined. Rhetorically, and mathematically, he was now doubly aware.

      "I there food involved?" I hoped.

      "No."

      "So why are you telling me."

      "I didn't want you to think I was undisciplined."

      "So you decided to not be undisciplined by telling my you are undisciplined?" At this point my hand is massaging my supremely furrowed brow.

      "Yes, exactly." Jordao's showed that he was pleased with his reply. The pleasure quickly faded and confusing set it. "Wait...what?"

      Jordao is fifteen years old and a smart kid. There is absolutely nothing that Jordao does without having a reason for doing so. But Jordao does not do normal things like a normal person does normal things. All it takes is talking to Jordao to pry at the reason for doing such abnormal things and you will discover he has thought out every aspect of every detail all the way down to when others will undoubtedly ask him what he is doing. Jordao planted chicken bones in the garden because if you put corn in the garden, corn will grow. If you put spinach in the garden, it too will grow. So Jordao put chicken bones in the garden. No, it is not a magic garden. It is a normal garden and grows normal food. Once, Jordao got up in the middle of the night and started raking leaves. The guards told him to go back to bed. He calmly explained he was woken by the sounds of a cat and went to go see where it was coming from. Upon going outside and noticing the leaves on the ground he started raking because, as he put it, "The leaves aren't going to rake themselves." It was 2am. One we were digging ditch. There was a spot we were not supposed to dig because a water pipe had been previously laid there. Jordao, seeing a spot was undug, starting digging. After striking the pipe, water started gushing out. The pace of his digging increased as he announced, "Hey guys, I discovered a well. It's coming from with pipe."

      Despite his disadvantage, Jordao is a very reasonable person. That is why he is a smart kid. Unfortunately, though, Jordao is not a smart kid.

      After talking to him for a while longer, I discovered that Jordao was showing up to school the first several weeks to play hookey and kick the soccer ball around rather than go to class. He thought that since he was repeating third grade, he would just have to pay attention come the end of the year when things get difficult in order to move on to the next grade.

      One day, after not going to class, Jordao decided to go to class. His teacher that Jordao had been playing hookey all these weeks because Jordao is fairly well known at his school. His teacher asked him to go get his dad. Despite making a good decision to study that particular day, Jordao made a particularly bad decision by telling his teacher that his dad left for work and wasn't at home. At this, high classmates, feeling either too much or not enough sympathy for Jordao, told the teacher that Jordao doesn't have a dad and lives in the orphanage. This exacerbated his condition considerably.

      "And then he put his hands in his pockets." Jeremias reeled with laughter.

      "No he didn't!" One exclaimed.

      "You're kidding me." Another added with laughter.

      "Seriously?"

      "Honest truth, he put his hands in his pockets." Jeremias placed one hand over his heart and the other in his pocket as if to demonstrate for those that were unsure what a hand or a pocket were.

      I, having already refused to go to school for these kinds of situations, decided to send one of the older boys with him to school. This is also an acceptable practice here because so many folks are taken care of by uncles, cousins, or neighbors that really anybody could pass as being your guardian. This boy, Jeremias, is pretty good-natured, polite, and knows how to tell a funny story, so it would be better to send him for our entertainment purposes.

      Upon Jordao and Jeremias' return, we asked him how it went. Jordao refused to say. Asking Jeremias provided an answer. The two arrived after school to talk with teacher where Jeremias explained he was sent to hear Jordao's case. Heard straight from the teacher that Jordao's would dump his backpack in classroom and slightly soon thereafter, as was his habit, would announce, "I'm not really seeing anything to to here," and go play soccer with all the other delinquents who also did see anything to do there.

      Jeremias asked Jordao to apologize to his teacher that promise that he would reform and start attending class. Having been fully embarrassed at this point, he apologized and promised to reform. His teacher accepted the apology and obliged Jeremias for coming. Then Jordao decided that he would like to contribute to the discussion. Clearly, Jordao was not invited to contribute, nor had he anything to contribute, but having not yet justified his desire to skip school he decided that there is no time like the present.

      "And then he put his hands in his pockets." Jeremias reeled with laughter.

      "Jordao, did you put your hands in your pockets?" I inquired of him, stifling my own laughter.

      "No." He pleaded.

      "You didn't put your hands in your pockets?" With Jordao, the key to ascertaining information is to ask a question in as many different ways as possible.

      "No, I'm telling you the truth. Look, I did this." Jordao proceeded to put his hand in his pocket. Laughter ensued from the onlookers.

      "You put your hands in your pockets?"

      "No, I put my hand in my pocket. Only one. I'm telling the truth." Jordao is a smart kid. He was now visibly upset with the turn the mornings proceedings had taken. He certainly could not have foreseen that skipping school to play soccer, repeatedly, would have consequences. Jordao is not a smart kid.

      "Ask what he did with his other hand." Jeremias chimed in, barely able to speak in an understandable manner through fits of laughter.

      "I'm afraid to." I countered. But before I could ask Jordao he had started walking away as Jeremias continued the story. "He took his other hand and started pointing a finger at his teacher."

      "No he didn't!"

      "You're kidding me."

      "Seriously?"

      It was possible that up till now Jordao's teacher could have been understanding of the circumstances Jordao. Despite being a reasonably thinking person, he is not always the best at thinking reasonably.

      This is the person that once got up in front of a meeting of everybody at the orphanage in order to speak. His story started as, "When I came back from church I found Isac in my backpack stealing my crayons. Then Isac grabbed me—." The story also ended there because as Jordao continued talking he slapped a hand over his own mouth, mimicking the actions of this other boy that day, and continued to tell the story. Jordao mumbled through a muffled mouth for two minutes, deadly serious, while recounting this great injustice that had been done to him. Everybody lost their collective senses laughing at the scene of Jordao pantomiming and recounting the fight between them, all the while unaware that his hand was still over his mouth and rendering everything he said unintelligible.

      Jordao's teacher could have been understanding that, while Jordao is sometimes the sharpest tool in the shed, his elevator doesn't go to the top floor. His teacher could have understood that one hand in one pocket was only half as insulting as two hands in two pockets. But when Jordao started pointing to reprimand him teacher might have lost all understanding and been so insulted expel Jordao right then and there.

      Jordao had put a hand in his pocket, pointed at the teacher with the other. Thus, desiring to speak, he opened his mouth. This is a serious of bad decisions getting worse. Jordao had no sooner said, "You, look here for a minute," when Jeremias, performing his parent/guardian admirably clapped his hand over Jordao's mouth and whisked him away. "I think we're all done here, sorry again about the trouble." Jeremias shouted, by now practically carrying Jordao as they hurried off.

      "There wasn't any food, was there?"

      "No."

      "Good. Well, then it it sounds like everything turned out just fine."