Wherein I write about bodies, and not just my own

On the back of a moto, in church, in a bar, standing or sitting on a porch or inside, serving in a buvett, standing around and shooting the breeze. What do these prepositional and participial phrases have in common? They are all places where I have seen breast-feeding. Now why do I bring this up? Because like most people I think it is beautiful, but I never knew it was powerful until Monday night. I walked into Mommy Shah's to take my djamba djamba and drink my shah. She and I chatted for a while and then settled into the comfortable silence that we both like so much. While I was eating, a young woman, almost obviously drunk, danced her way into the shah palace and approached me with all sorts of offers about ways she could earn money from me that evening, while I kept eating and telling her to go away, she resorted to simply asking me for the money. At that Mommy Shah lashed her tongue into this poor woman demanding "do you have hands? Do you have legs? Work for your money or chop them off and then you can beg. Search for your honor. And this house is not a discotheque." The young woman lowered her head in shame and left. Then she asked me to continue eating in peace. Now white people are always asked for money, but usually I completely inaccessible in the shah fortress, but a few moments later, a man entered, latched his eyes on me, and begged money. Again Mommy Shah lashed out, but this man was not leaving, though he left me and walked to where she was sitting and stood inside her personal space. He never yelled or anything, but he loomed high over where she was sitting. But Mommy Shah simply waited until she was annoyed enough with this man of whom she had no fear and only a distant boredom. But she could not move him physically as that would create an altercation--to be clear, she could probably have tossed him out physically; she is mighty. When at last she decided the man was not leaving on her own, she called to her eldest daughter, Esther, who was sitting outside: "Esther, bring me baby." Esther came in with Jocelyn, the youngest daughter (who just crawled for the first time three weeks ago!), and gave her to Mommy Shah. She then lifted a milk-heavy breast from her too and put her child's eagerly suckling mouth to it. And the man stumbled back out of her personal space overwhelmed by this power of the feminine. He dazedly looked around, stuttered an apology and lurched out of the shah citadel. And I continued to set my djamba djamba and drink my shah in an augmented state of awe for a woman whom I already held so highly that I did not know my admiration could rise. In school on Wednesday my student in quatrième, Moussa, poked his nose and complained about pain. He was actually saying he had a cold, but I thought he was saying he had boogers in his nose because whenever he poked he said "it hurts." So I taught the class the funniest word in English, booger. Which, to delight all of you, is coûte de nez in French, or to translate after the manner of Fielding, it is a crouton in the nose. So next time you have salad with croutons, think about sticking one up the nose of a friend, it will hurt. Oh, I will talk about my own body for a moment, and not about my toe that grew an appendage that leaks blood on occasion. So I have big hair, and it is very soft compared to African hair, so my students like to touch it, but a this was the last week, they switched from touching to begin me to allow them to cut it off so they could make wigs and/or braid it into their own hair. And the demanding became so insistent that I had to threaten to count them apsent if they kept sneaking up behind me while I wrote on the chalkboard to touch and stroke and tug on my hair. So the last week of teaching has happened, which happened rather too quickly. Next week the students in the testing grades will write the Mock, which is a practice exam for the actual exam later in the month. Then then the following week I give my final exam and it is over with ColProt. Pretty extraordinary, eh? The rapidity with which it all ended. I got back from vacation and had only three weeks to be awesome with these students. And on the last day, what were the reactions? In 5B, the students tore at my clothes and begged me to say and said they would see me next year, or in America; the students of 5C sang me a strange song called "goodbye teacher" and several of them began to cry. Though some sat in sullen silence. And in 4A, just said goodbye in their cool and composed manner. Though they did line up to shake my hand. But in every class, they begged for stickers and wanted to know where I had bought them! So thanks mom, you made me the most popular teacher with those colorful adhesives. The most popular are the sparkly faces.