And no I am not describing a ceremonial Sharro bout wherein I am whipped to prove my manliness, rather we must go farther back in my history to understand the particular flick of the wrist.
When I was in the sixth grade, a wind carried on it a rumor of a newly re-popularized toy. It was before the age of Facebook, before the blogosphere announced cool, rather we understood what to buy based on what the Kmart stocked and what people might have picked up from their family reunions and visits out of town. Other notable manners to learn of the cool would be kiosks in malls. And this particular peddling wind brought with it the Yomega Yo-Yo. Suddenly strings were cutting the circulation of middle fingers to a trickle and then stopping the blood entirely. A rash of cases stood before the nurse to rub the fingers back to life, a most painful process, but how pride shone across the face as one had proven his or her stamina. And then there was a small small crowd, those who advanced beyond the yomega, those who could sleep their Yoyo the longest. And with Butterfly Bumblebee whizzing at shin level, its blacks and yellows mixing stood Christian winning the longest sleep contests.
The fad soon enough lived up to its truncated name and faded leaving in its wake confounded memories. And middle school passed. And high school passed. And out of the faded recesses of memory a painful return began to claw its way through my cerebellum, the nostalgia of the Yo Yo. It took long to require my old butterfly bumblebee, but luckily the young man to whom I sold it just before the Yoyo bubble burst (still my best investment, although repurchasing it cost me an arm and a leg, alas for retro). I wrote a speech, I practiced it while sailing about Lake Superior, and then performed a now legendary graduation speech in the gymnasium of Yankton High School.
And then the Yo Yo faded once more, this time it sank and slept on its string for a much longer time as it perplexed Morpheus himself with its whirling spangle of yellow and black, but it returned and once more the crowds cheered. Like the great High Wire walker from the classic children's book whose name I have forgotten, I found my gift once more. I walked into class to see some chaos prevailing. Onguene, the hero of last week's narrative, was bouncing a Yoyo on the ground. The simple blue contraption has rubber runners along its edges to protect it from just such abuse. I reached out my hand for it, and Onguene meekly passed it over and moved to take his seat. He did this because of my new rigid policy on class comportment, but I decided to not place it in the treasury of plundered objects that I collect throughout the class periods. Instead I shrugged off my satchel, cracked my knuckles, and rapidly unwound the string. Examining the Yoyo, I found it cheap, but luckily with a fixed axle which would allow me to perform, and with a few experimental ups and downs, I looked around, the students stood around, some stop benches others crouched on the table tops and others peering between the crooks of their fellow students' elbows. I began clearing a space with some languid shootings of the moon, and the I whizzed into a routine. It took a second, but after the first around the world when they saw that I could manipulate the string as an adept (I claim no great superiority, but they had never even seen Yoyo sleep before) soon they were chanting Mr Christian in unison and I rocked the baby, through a rocket over my elbow and tossed some figure eights their way. I soon showed them some one and two handed stars and heard shouts of "les etoiles!." and just as quickly as I began, I ended, unclasping the tightened string from my now whiter than my other white fingers and took up the chalk to begin the day's lesson and together we learned to discuss things that we can't do and things that we won't do.
The other even of great note is that the English Club finally took its excursion, a picnic to the site of Wacwa where there is a facility to study cows. The area is quite beautiful, tucked into the bush beside a natural crater lake with the looing of cattle harmonizing with the mosquito's tzzzz. To get there took a hassle and three quarters, for the school has no truck to lend us, but fortunately Ninga, a co-coordinator (a model of bilingualism as he is a native Francophone and teaches geography) contacted an elder from his village who lives in Yaounda and had a pickup. And then with ten girls tucked into the back end and the cab crammed, we bounced and boinced our way out of town. And as we hit the main road, the kids all hit a stride of exhubersnce and began bellowing forth the lyrics to songs praising bilingualism (yeah yeah yeah bilingual, / yeah yeah yeah is important) hardly inspired songs, but when ten voices rise above the noise and clutter of the streets of Yaounde, it is a beautiful thing. And so we arrived with dust clouding around our tires and musical strains resting in our ears.
The site is actually quite depressing, it is a cross between something out of Poe's "the system of doctor tarr and professor fether" with a haunted house at the midway in Levitttown. Once upon a time it was a leading experimental lab, but today many rooms are locked, the lids on glass containers with snakes and various pickled parasites are cracked and fumes leak, the floors are coated with the husks of dead bees, cobwebs creep from every corner desiring to transform themselves into a new mode of haberdashery, and the dried bones of horse skeletons sit in boxes awaiting identification by students that may never come and looking, thus, like the floor of Jack's giant must have looked after he fell to his death and his servants and dogs and wife left the house, leaving only the gnawed remains of horseflesh. The unarticulated bones still rest behind my eyes, but most haunting, for me, was to stand in the bizarre jaundice-painted halls and see in kaleidoscopic perspective the door at the end of the hall, but it did not say exit, nor did the other, instead the smell filled the area of anesthetic/dust odor and the students filled obediently past our guides to look at the active areas of the site (where, to be fair, there is some really exciting work happening on a vaccine for something that hurts humans here in Africa) but our tour guide was a strange woman who kept taking us into different rooms to uncover and object and declare it to be a microscope and then switch rooms and do the same and then have the effrontery to ask why the students were bored. But they were not bored at all when the veterinarian gave his speech. This six foot two Adonis with the languid eyes, expressive hands, and easy knowledge bout performing a c-section on a kicking horse, had the young ladies pecking corn from his calloused palm. And a great question session followed, from the students of ColPro did not even know that such a profession existed and it was awesome to watch their minds torque toward the future and contemplate having a job that they desired and could find fulfillment in. And then it was over and we ate some fish and plantains on the lawn outside the compound and I ate the fish eyes of many fish because at a party last week that many teachers attended, I revealed that I delight in suctioning the eyes of fish down my esophagus and now have a small fame for it. I also am famous for the creation of a new food, namely the "Souris-chauve" the delicacy beloved of the American. It is not a real food. See, a chauve-souris is a bat, but when I was talking about how I would probably not eat mouse but would eat bat, I mixed up the pronoun and gales of laughter met me, and the jokes and elbow prods continued all week as people say that they went looking for the souris-chauve but could not find it, or they asked if I ate any last night. It is, though, pretty funny and I get a kick out of it. (this story makes more since if you know that a chauve-souris translates, literally, as a bald mouse).
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