The Hard and the Soft

Okay. Lots of stuff all mixed together. I've started doing yoga. The book that I have is called "Power Yoga" and is the official yoga program of the New York Runner's Club. The author makes reference to that olde dichotomy, the yin and the yang, or the hard and the soft. What she was referencing on the literal level is that you have to be flexible in order to be strong, or in order to actually use your strength. Of course, similar lines of reasoning can be applied in other situations. All of that is only vaguely related to what I will talk about in this post, but you'll see why that title came to mind.

First, The Soft:

I defied all sorts of cultural norms with regards to sexuality on Sunday. Me, a young bachelor, had invited two of my Kenyan friends, who happen to be married, over to my house for Sunday lunch. In preparation I went down to the milk buying center, bought some milk, and made some poor quality mozzarella. All of this all by myself, without the help of a woman! Then I got a couple of students to help me build a fire and make the bread and pizza dough. Then we chopped veggies, made sauce, and prepared for our guests. The guests came in their Sunday best and we feasted! My recipe just keep improving, and they were very satisfied, although I did require a lot of steering by the others about how to treat guests. I continued to work cooking even though they were standing. I cooked tea, but didn't bring the sugar, and then didn't bring the spoon for the sugar. I did offer them water for drinking before they were able to ask for it. Both the guests and the students were very appreciative, despite the fact that this may have been the first or second time in their lives that these 14 year old boys had cooked. I asked a 20 year old male assistant teacher to cook with me a couple of weeks ago and he told me that it was the first time he had ever cooked a meal! It feels really good to share the soft side of myself with Kenyans and to help them open up their soft selves also.


Then, The Hard:

Later that night, 15 minutes after finishing a long phone conversation with a friend from America, I was laying in bed and heard three loud bangs, like someone hitting a piece of wood. Then 30 seconds later one louder bang that sounded like something hard hitting something soft.

I pulled on my trousers, debated whether or not to take my wooden cudgel (decided against it), and rushed out of my house towards the screaming noises in the dark. The boys were all standing around outside yelling at each other looking upset, and piece by piece I found out that one student had been making noise (for debated reasons). The self-appointed asst. dorm captain had responded by first telling the boy to be quite and then beating the boy with a belt - the three whacks. In retaliation the boy had grabbed a timber, about the size of a 2x4 and had whacked the student in the back of the skull, causing the asst. dorm captain to get pretty loopy to the point that he was unable to walk.

By the time that I reached them, a group of students had instinctively decided to rush him off to the hospital. Unfortunately, their instincts over powered their logic and they didn't tell me or take any money. At night, the hospital is a 4 km walk and then a 4 km. taxi drive. From sampling different hysterical students knowledge there seemed to be a group of about 15 of them somewhere in between our school and the hospital at, by now, midnight. The students are not supposed to have cell phones, but they do have them, and after another half hour I coerced them into giving me the number of one of the students in the hospital party. By this time I had called the teacher on duty, who also has a Land Rover, and he was on his way to help them. In Kenyan emergency rooms they wont treat you if you do not pay first, so these students were not going to get very far without our help. Thankfully the teacher was able to find them, and front the money and the student got stitches.

By 3:15am when they had dropped back to school, I had counseled the hitter, quieted the students, and made sure that the hitter had protection from the others. So things were quite until 8:00am when I gave them a riveting speech about being your brother's keep - even referencing the bible. The situation had escalated over the course of 15 minutes, while 50+ male boarders sat around and watched first one student whip another, and then the other retaliate. It was only after the retaliation that they started becoming upset and restraining the fighters.

All over the world people want to punish each other with physical violence. It is not just the culture of this one school, American schools have guns, drugs, and fist fights also. I think that counseling is an under nourished aspect of the educational system everywhere. That being said, here it is still normal in rural places for students, children, wives, and animals to be punished with physical violence. Caning is officially illegal in the schools, but if I tell one of my student's parents that his child misbehaved he will tell me to give him a good caning. Most teachers oblige and do give the students' canings, simultaneously telling me how much "better" the canings used to be when they were in school, back when men were men, and the moral fabric of the villages was upheld.


Okay, here's how all of this relates to yoga and The Hard and The Soft. Now, we think that by punishing the body we are being very hard and strong, but maybe by learning to be soft and pliable through challenging our views we will be able to achieve a different sort of strength. I don't think that cooking is exactly the answer... but it probably wont hurt.