June 15th, 2009
On a Mission: Turkish Adventure
Originally printed in Good Teacher Magazine: Term 3, 2007, page 26 – 28
Goreme
Isn’t it amazing …
that there are certain things that will bring tears to your eyes either with joy, sadness or laughter.
Things like a new born baby,
a painting by Gauguin,
a beautiful sunrise over an azure sea,
an unresponsive computer that won’t do what it’s told,
a class of children in their best finery ready for action with their faces painted like Red Indians.
All of which leads me quite nicely into my next episode on travelling through Turkey. If you remember I had travelled down through Turkey having been to Troy, Ephesus, Assos, and having had a few challenges with the car and tires on the way.
As I arrived in Cappodocia with my newfound love of my life Finona, we had steeled ourselves to a life of austere deprivation. Having to drink Turkish wine was bad enough but living in a small village which lacked the basic essentials like a good cappuccino and excellent croissant was going to be a real challenge.
Goreme
Which reminds me of a story about Marie Antoinette. I’ve just seen the most boring film ever made about her (the best parts were the views of Versailles, which I had visited a few months earlier. With no children you will be pleased to know) and I thought you would like to share a piece of history with me. Apparently Marie Antoinette brought the croissant to France when she arrived from Austria. The Croissant was first made in Austria to commemorate a battle in which the Austrians beat the Turks (appropriate to my circumstances you would think). The story goes that the Turks or Ottomans as they were called in those days were attacking a walled city in Austria. The Ottomans were great miners and one of the strategies used was to dig under the walls of a city, build a large fire in the tunnel under the walls which would then make the walls collapse allowing the Turks to attack and raze the city. In this case the bakers of the city baking the daily bread at 2-3 am heard the Turks digging. They alerted the soldiers who then attacked the Turks and the Austrians won the day and eventually the war. This was the furthest that the Turks ever got to in Europe. Anyway because of this the bakers were asked to bake a bread to commemorate the victory. They came up with the croissant (based on the crescent on the Turkish flag). Apparently Marie Antoinette brought this bread to France, however the frogs weren’t pleased enough to make an allowance to excuse her from her appointment at the hands of Madame Guillotine.
Anyway on arrival at Goreme we were remarkably pleased to notice that indeed there were café’s with passable Turkish coffee (strong enough to stand your spoon up in) and they also made passable Danish pastry.
So with this problem conquered we then set out to meet with the board of the local school. Obviously my reputation had preceded me as there were armed soldiers about every 50 metres along the road. On walking into the staffroom we were overwhelmed at the hospitality offered. Apple Tea was flowing like water, as were the names and phone numbers of the many relatives of the staff who just happened to have the best Carpets shops in the whole of Turkey. The head teacher of the 5 staff was a fine looking man with an amazing handlebar moustache reminiscent of those Turkish men of the 1800’s. Having battled our way through this and having persuaded them that Finona was almost as fine a teacher as I was, we found ourselves assigned to new entrants (Finona) and the equivalent of year 8 for myself.
As this story is all about me I will only spend a few short lines on Finonas teaching exploits. She prides herself on being a descendant of the kings of Norway and Sweden and has a lot of that Norse Pagan way of persuasion about her. If you can cast your minds back to the civilized way that the Vikings helped to repopulate half of the civilized world you’ll know what I’m talking about. So the first task she was asked to accomplish (as she was dealing with new entrants) was to up skill on herding cats. You may remember in the last episode the farm of small furry things. Well it was a farm of cats and this was where the new entrant teachers were shown how to look after their new charges. Finona passed with flying colours and apart from the school having to repopulate the cat farm (Finona persuaded all the new entrant parents to take them home as pets) all was well.
Well back to the most important part of the story. ME.
My children were a lovely bunch, all keen and eager to learn. This to me is probably the biggest difference in the education systems of the civilised world and the so called 2nd or 3rd world countries. In NZ the children in the main, have little or no interest in education, as most know that it doesn’t matter what they do when they leave school because Nanny State will look after them. The girls can have babies and go on the DPB and the boys can go on the dole. In a country like Turkey the kids know that if they don’t succeed at school then it is almost literally a matter of life or death. There is no welfare system to speak of and they live by their own hard work and their wits.
This makes teaching them a real joy. Absenteeism is almost non existent as the parents are determined that their kids will succeed. Because their trades revolve around tourism in the main they also speak very good English and sometimes 2 or 3 other languages as well. They arrive at school having had some breakfast and ready to soak up every pearl of wisdom that I am prepared to share with them.
The teaching progressed well for a couple of weeks with all the usual matters being sorted out, like who sits where, how do we organize the room, who are the monitors and what do they monitor and learning all the names of these budding Ataturks. I have a special way of organizing my classroom. I put the children in a semicircle around my desk, as I am the focal point of the class. I divide them into two equal groups and run the class a bit like parliament, but without the lying, bitching and not answering questions that has developed to such a high standard over the last few years.
As you may have gathered my teaching style is based on a little bit of theory and lots of adventure and trips. One of the topics that I was asked to teach was cultures of the indigenous peoples of the world.
Having thought about this for a while and having had a charming weekend trip to a local township for some R&R with “my new found love of my life Finona” I decided to cover the ways of the Red Indian of America. Now I only call these people Red Indians because that’s what my kids know them as, having learnt a lot of the history of America from the movies especially the cowboys and Indians variety. Some of the best Westerns were actually made in Italy, as it was cheaper than making them in Hollywood thus coining the name “Spaghetti Westerns”.
Finona and I had decided to go on a little trip to a town nearby where there was reputed to be a really good pottery shop. We were looking for small pots for our flat to put some greenery in, as it is incredibly dry and dusty in this area. We arrived in the town and having spent some time trying to find a parking space (almost as bad as Queen St in Auckland but not as expensive) we set out to find the shop. A lot of these places are built in caves as the ground is made up of a top layer of hard soil with a very deep layer of volcanic ash. By deep I mean 20 or 30 meters. The hard top surface stops the ash washing away because it is quite soft. The ash can be dug out and makes very habitable living areas or shops. Once the ash is exposed to the air it hardens up and becomes a bit like a roughly plastered wall.
Anyway that’s your geology lesson for the term.
Finona and I eventually found the shop, which was very small considering all we had heard about it. It was only when we started exploring it that we discovered that the small cave that was the front of the shop was merely one of many that ran back into the hill. There were pots of every description and we realised after having listened to a lecture from a very well meaning and charming shop assistant (probably the owners 2nd cousin twice removed) that as well as Carpets this area of Turkey was very famous for its pots.
As we traversed our way deeper and deeper into this underground labyrinth we noticed this older sleazy looking guy following Finona around and looking at her hair. He actually came up to her and mumbled something in Turkish and touched her hair. Well Finona being descended from the Norse gods or their earthly equivalent (like King Vladimar the terrible) doesn’t take this sort of behaviour lightly. 
I must explain that Finona’s hair is like a verdant pasture, thick and healthy whereas mine is a bit like the same pasture after it has been mown and then partially plowed. So it appeared that this rat of a man wanted to take some of her hair. Finona in her typical and tactful Norse way told him to b****r off but to give him credit he stayed put and persisted. A bit like Gregan round the scrum, you just can’t get rid off the little blighter. Anyway we were persuaded to follow him through into the last cave. As we walked in you had to duck your head and as you raised your eyes it was as if you had walked into the lair of a very successful serial killer who collected the hair from his victims. This room (about the size of a large staff room) was covered from ceiling to walls with locks of people’s hair, and when I say covered I mean you couldn’t see the walls or the ceiling for hair. There were thousands of bits of hair everywhere. Each was tied up with a piece of ribbon and a card showing the date, name and telephone number of the lucky contributor. Well I am sure that you’re asking yourself how could such a shifty little man get people to give him their hair. Well it was almost like he mesmerised poor Finona. A bit like a king cobra and a mouse. It took only a few minutes of gesturing and mumbling and out came the scissors and he lopped off a good chunk of Finonas hair. I think he didn’t approach me as he realised that what little hair I had left was fairly precious to me. Well before you could say “scalp a whitie” he had it beribboned, carded and up on the ceiling.
As we staggered out through the maze of caves Finona was wondering what had happened and I was thinking “scalping, red indians, indigenous peoples, new topic, wow.
So back to school …
Well there I was on Monday morning explaining to my little treasures about this shop. Not surprisingly they all knew about it (the boys had probably sold their sisters hair to the guy) and as we talked about it, it didn’t take too much of a stretch of the imagination to lead them to the wild west and the Indians. We talked about scalping and how it was done. A cut with a sharp knife around the top of the forehead and then down just above the ears and a quick tug and whacko the goose you have the need for a large hair transplant. I also explained to them that like other indigenous cultures a lot of these bad habits (if you can call scalping a bad habit) actually were behaviours that they had picked up from people who invaded the country. In this case the French (bless their devious little hearts) when they came into the American continent put a bounty on Indians and the means to secure the bounty was to produce a scalp to verify the kill. The Indians being quick learners thought this was a great idea and ran with it (as they say in the corporate world.)
So in the class we developed a strategy for putting our new found knowledge into practice. In the adversarial way that I had set up my class (2 competing teams) we decided that we would have a competition which would run over a week and the team which collected the most locks of hair (with no skin attached) would be exempt from cleaning the class room for 2 weeks. (I forgot to say that with the schools being reasonably deprived we did our own classroom cleaning). So I sat them down and issued them face paint to paint themselves as Native Americans of the indigenous variety. (I was incredibly lucky as I had been rummaging through the 2 Drachma shop and I had come across these paints from China. Being a careful Kiwi I checked the ingredients and discovered that there was no flavouring or MSG just a moderate bit of lead so I bought them very cheaply)
With this task completed and with lunch around the corner I had them line up and collect their scissors. After the obligatory taking of fingerprints and getting them to sign a declaration to promise to return them I had them return to their seats and get ready for the break.
As the bell rang for lunch time, the kids were out of their chairs and off. They charged through the door like a bunch of Catholic’s trying to get to the Sistine Chapel. An hour passed and back they came. What an incredible haul. I had all the cards and ribbons ready so that we could start to categorise all of our trophy’s. I was amazed to see just what the kids had collected. Whole pony tails and locks of hair were everywhere. I did notice that some of the children were looking a little unkempt and some even looked as if they had been in a fight or two. Just normal behaviour I thought. Then I saw a lock of hair which looked strangely familiar. Thick, greasy and redolent of Turkish tobacco. Where had I seen it before? At this stage there was a huge bang on the door and in marched a rather incomplete head teacher sporting a brilliant red face with a sadly diminished large moustache. (Did I forget to tell you that he had a siesta at lunch time.) Bugger I thought and then in the same breath what a brilliant accomplishment for one of the class… must find out who it was.
Well I was invited down to the office for a quick chat. It was suggested that it could be a really good idea if the competition was called off immediately if I didn’t want to be assigned to a little school on the border of Turkey and Iran. They had an immediate vacancy as the last teacher had just been killed by friendly fire. (How can people be killed by friendly fire? Surely if it kills you it must, by definition, be unfriendly).
Well I declined the head teacher’s very kind offer of an immediate transfer and we agreed that my little competition would cease. As I left his office I complimented him on his moustache saying that the one sidedness of it gave him a very distinctive Turkish look.
Anyway it is now 4am so it is off to bed for me and I look forward to catching up again next term.
Travelling Teacher