July 8th, 2009
Xmas in Turkey
Originally printed in Good Teacher Magazine: Term 1, 2008, pages 28 – 30
Xmas was fast approaching, as was the end of year xmas concert.
Now you may be wondering why I am using the word xmas rather than the other word that denotes that it is a religious festival. As you probably know Turkey is not necessarily a Christian country although there are a lot of Christians in the country.
Not wanting to annoy anybody who’s name starts with Osama or some such who may be lurking in the caves that surround Goreme I decided to use the more usual version which denotes that it is just a shopping festival.
Now the Turks can understand that, as their whole lives revolve around the fact that shopping is a good, if not a sacred, pastime. This is as long as you’re buying my or my brothers or cousins or cousins-cousins carpet, Turkish coffee set or backgammon board or whatever.
After reading about that poor teacher in the Sudan who allowed her pupil to call a teddy bear Mohammed and who got chucked in prison for it, I was a little cautious about allowing any of my pupils to go home extolling the virtues of the Christian xmas just in case one of the parents got the huff and came looking for me with one of those trusty scimitars that the Turks had back in the old days.
So I racked my brains for an item for the xmas concert. It was advertised as the end of semester concert but I knew it was really a Christmas (damn, that one slipped in) read xmas concert.
All the kids and I sat around in the classroom and had a brainstorming session. If you have read any of my previous stories you will remember how I set my classroom up. I have my desk in the centre at the front with all the little dears in concentric circles around me. Its like I’m the nucleus and they are charming little electrons chasing each other round the cosmos which is what the classroom is like a lot of the time, come to think of it.
Which reminds me have any of you seen certain Bishop’s number plate. You know the Destiny church chappie. I was sent a photo of it by friends back home. His number plate reads “Proton”. For all you non science teachers a proton is a positively charged particle. Cute eh! Personally I would have thought that BLKHOL would have been better. My online dictionary says it means “a celestial object or dark region in space, perhaps formed by the collapse of a large star, with such a great mass that its gravitational field will not let even light escape.
Jezabel’s mother’s donkey
Anyway back to the story.
With me in the centre of the class I was able to control the ebb and flow of the discussion as we went from: the fact that the three wise men probably came from Turkey or came through Turkey at any rate (that was rejected as we didn’t have any camels and they’re smelly); to the baby Jesus in a cradle. We could use one of the many babies in the village (just contact Rent a Babe we thought. Well we rang them and discovered that the agency is for babes a little older than baby Jesus. They told us we needed Rent a Baby). After ringing them and deciding we didn’t want a Croatian baby for the weekend we gave that idea away as well. Also Jezebels mother (a not too PC family) has a donkey, which is not very nice at all. Fairly incontinent so I’ve heard. One young biblical scholar thought that Jesus on a cross would be good. I told him the story of Easter and he just said that he thought the sight of nailing somebody’s hands to a cross would look great. I couldn’t disagree but as nobody volunteered we gave that away as well.
We tried to look at the Muslim idea of Xmas (whoops I put in a capital letter there. That’s probably worth 20 lashes of the whip.) What do Muslims associate with xmas. I do know that they consider Jesus a prophet although not as good a one as Mohammed.
Interesting enough when I was in Istanbul with Lomfl we went to the Sultans museum and discovered that they had the cooking pot of Abraham, the staff of Moses with which he smote the sea to make it part and the arm of John The Baptist. So obviously they do hold some of our beliefs in reverence. Maybe they just bought them at a bloody good price in exchange for a couple of old carpets.
So I thought to myself what would a country of itinerant salesmen find exciting about our xmas?
A couple of weeks before I had been to one of the sporting highlights of the winter season in Goreme.
Planning for the xmas concert
Now you have to realise that the cradle of civilization is only 2 hours drive away from here. They are surrounded by and live in caves and phallic shaped houses and sit on top of underground cities that are 3000 to 4000 years old. It’s enough to turn even the sanest person into someone with ideas that are slightly different from the norm.
The sporting highlight of the season was curling. They had built this largish ice rink in the square and the idea was to throw your stone into the middle and get as close to the bulls eye as you could. Like normal curling you used brooms to smooth the ice so the stones would change course or go further. The team throwing their stone was allowed 2 minutes to confer with their stone and tell them what was expected. I’m hearing a gasp of incredulity here. Did I not tell you that the stones they were using were dwarfs. This is a sport that has grown in popularity since the All Blacks visited Europe over 20 years ago. The Turks, have a great affection for everything NZ’ish (probably because of Gallipoli) and they follow the All Blacks with great passion. They also research other sports played in NZ and that was about when Dwarf tossing entered the pub scene. The Turks of Goreme thought this was a great idea and merely changed it a little to suit the conditions.
So there they were tossing their dwarfs across the ice and it was really rewarding seeing the dwarfs actually doing their bit for the team. The rules allow a moderate amount of kicking and elbowing but biting and eye gouging are strictly forbidden. They get a red card and are tossed in the bin. No, not the sin bin, just the bin.
Any way having seen this amazing sporting highlight it came across me like an epiphany as we were planning our party.
Why not dress up as elves I asked the kids. Elves are funny, they are non religious, they make the presents and help Santa deliver them. Well the kids were delighted.
Another decision that they had reached themselves with only a little help from me.
The next thing to arrange was the costumes and what would they do. The boys were no problem. Digging was something that elves did and digging was a very old tradition in this town. Here if you wanted a house or a house extension you had to dig it.
Charlotte’s Mother
The girls were a little more of a problem. What could they do? Then Charlotte put up her hand and said her mother was a dancer and she could teach the girls to dance. Well I had seen Charlottes mother and she was a stunner so I agreed wholeheartedly. With the concert being the 7 days away (the following Friday) time was of the essence. I arranged for Charlottes mum to come to school the following Monday morning.
She arrived bright and early in her dancing attire which did seem a trifle brief, but who was I to complain. When the kids arrived she started to explain to them what dance was all about. She talked about the expression you need to put into the performance, the energy and how you need to connect with the customers. Audience I corrected. No No she replied. The customers. Well to cut a long story short she worked at the local bar as a pole dancer.
Charlotte’s Mother demonstrating, please excuse picture quality... camera shake
The idea of teaching the girls pole dancing seemed a bit risqué but having seen papers from NZ where women have dancing academies where they teach pole dancing I thought well why not. Also I suppose it’s a little like belly dancing only the belly is gyrating around a chrome pole.
So we set to work. I left the girls to the tender mercies of Salome (probably her stage name) and the boys and I went to work on the rest of it.
My thought was to have a panorama of small sets showing the xmas story at its best.
The first one would be of a child writing a letter.
Second would be an elf receiving the letter and then typing into a computer. We didn’t have one at school so we were going to use my laptop.
Third would be boy elves digging up the minerals to make the presents and other elves with hammers etc making them up. We had a slight accident with the boys on Tuesday where one clonked another (accidentally of course) with his shovel. We immediately got rid of the shovels and got the kids to pinch their mothers gardening trowels instead.
Fourth would be some girl elves (the ones who had 2 left feet and didn’t like to dance) wrapping them.
Elves aplenty!
The fifth and final would be Santa and Mrs Claus, suitably attired (Lomfl and myself) being entertained by the dancing elves.
Well we had to get a large number of the local fathers in to prepare the set but by Friday it was ready.
We were going to run it like a mini movie and with the discreet use of lighting we would illuminate one set at a time. The ideal was to have each set illuminated for as long as it took for all the parents to see their little dears performing and for them to clap politely.
The time for our little set piece arrived quickly. Lomfl and I had to race to the back of the stage and don our best made up santa costumes. Lomfl had scoured the shops and had found some brilliant cheap red fabric. Having no sewing machine I thought like a teacher and we stapled all the bits together. Cotton wool and lavish coatings with the glue stick provided the hair and beard and before you could sashay a pole we were dressed and ready to roll.
With a little organisation we were all in place before the lights went on.
Unfortunately I had misread the enthusiasm that the local parents would exhibit when they saw their kids. There was no polite applause but deafening cheering and whistling. I was keeping an eye on the headmaster while our little pageant was being performed and he actually wasn’t watching, being in a very close conversation with Salome. However when the last scene was lit up and the cheers became deafening at the sight of 5 young ladies pole dancing he turned around. I could see his face change from sickly yellow to Puce in an instant. His scream broke through the rest of the cheering like a hot knife through butter. The kids froze.
Then amazingly the crowd of parents obviously thinking the heads screams were of approval and excitement, broke into even more rapturous applause. And my little troopers continued their pageant. Well suffice to say that the pageant was an amazing success. The head had to swallow his pride and agree that what the kids had performed was pretty amazing, although he did talk of an incredible opportunity in a school down by the Iraqi border that he would like me consider. I assured him that I was very happy in Goreme and went back to my little hovel with my beautiful Lomfl. I wrote a poem to commemorate the night.
Twas the week before xmas
And all through the town
The elves were all waiting
Waiting to dig down
The big night arrived
Lomfl was oozing with charm
She came and she showed me
my suit on her arm
With the lights at the ready
And the kids on the ground
We got the show started
As the Head turned around
The kids danced and they dug
Just as well as they could
But the Head was beginning
To look very odd.
There’s an almighty commotion
His temper flared like a flame
Then all of a sudden
The kids started again.
The parents applauded
Increasingly loud
Because all the kids
Were looking quite proud
Twas the night before
And after the show
The children were dreaming
Of presents you know!
The Travelling Teacher
For privacy reasons all photos are merely representations of the people mentioned in this story.
The Editor takes no responsibility for the Travelling Teachers meandering mind!