However, having spent thirty-six
hours in the company of one-hundred and four giddy, flustered, loud-mouthed
tweens whose parents sent them away packing enough sugar to give an elephant
ADHD, I find myself quite unable to give any straightforward account of the
trip’s (many, many, MANY) events. My throat has not yet recovered from the
yelling, nor has my body from the adrenalin needed to maintain the hive of
hyperactivity that went on, nonstop, for two days and one night (of which time
I had precisely four hours of sleep, interrupted by an hour of guarding their
tents – a heady throwback to my army days), so I know that the trip happened, but just what happened there is as unclear to me as to Alice awakening in
her field.
The best thing, I think, would
be to work according to Coleridge’s example, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the events of which he claimed to have
seen in “an opium dream”. According to this poet-addict, one must first
overcome the troubling visions encountered by the mind’s eye in order to set
them down, in an orderly fashion, on paper.
So in the great tradition of
characters descending into unknown universes of horror, fantasy, and madness,
here is my account of the school trip:
To begin with, upon gathering at
the unholy hour of seven a.m. at the school, we discovered there had been a
miscalculation in seating arrangements, leaving us with one seat fewer than
necessary, meaning one of us (teachers) would always have to stand, or crouch
in the aisle next to the driver.
Oh well. Off we go!
The kids secured seats for
themselves, each according to preference of mate, which of course left those
students next to whom nobody wanted to sit (two in our bus), this attitude
including that of each to the other. For the rest of the trip they would each
bolt onto the bus to secure a seat, of course it was always someone else’s
seat, which meant that I had to beg, cajole, and finally yell in order to get
them to move… thus began every single bus ride.
Also, in order to make life
harder on ourselves, apparently, we had decided to prohibit the students from
buying snacks at rest stops, where we were forced to give them bathroom breaks
(to suggest that they urinate anywhere apart from a porcelain bowl was to
elicit offended howls of ‘EWWWW!’). I therefore had to rush ahead of them to
any convenience store on the premises and stand guard at the cash register,
then wait out the coke and cookie junkies, from whom any street beggar could
learn a few lessons on determination. Of course, they had about twelve other
snacks stowed like Leprechaun gold among their things, which their considerate
parents had taken the utmost care to pack, otherwise I am quite sure they would
have stopped at nothing to get past me.
After successfully jumping the
first bathroom-break hurdle, we continued towards our destination, a rocky
downhill riverbed studded with boulders two meters tall. Our guide had warned
us that there were a number of downhill climbs students sometimes found scary,
but that he and the other two guides were used to such reactions and could
sweet-talk any seventh-grader into descending the ladders.
This turned out to be quite
false.
When we came to the first
‘ladder’ – a series of rungs bolted to boulders that descended at an inverted
angle from the precipice (so that one could not even see them from the top,
only a three-meter drop greeted you) – well, it’s hard to describe the horror
that ensued. I arrived at the circular expanse in which the guard had gathered
our group to witness a scene that reminded me of the only time I had been at a
funeral (I had since then refrained from attending funerals due to the
traumatic scene I had encountered there). A group of girls stood shaking as if
from the after-effect of a bomb, crying hysterically, holding each other in
trembling embraces that, though an attempt at comfort, only encouraged one’s
hysteria to feed off the other. So whipped up into a frenzy were they that I
was immediately struck by the notion they would faint, like nineteenth-century
novel heroines, but this would perhaps have been preferable, as they could then
have been carried down in a more peaceful fashion.
It was not so much the hysteria
of the girls that got to me as that of their male counterparts, for whom the
display of fear was a disgrace, something they recognized as shameful yet could
not hold back. Thus a student of mine fervently maintained that his leg was
cramped and that it suddenly pained him, though he had already walked for about
an hour. He and two others, both boys, refused wholeheartedly to go down,
despite the zealous inveigling of three guides, six teachers, and countless
friends and classmates. They ended up retreading their steps back up to the
minibus, which was returned to the parking lot to await their retreat.
Altogether, the descent from the cliff took our school three hours. Traversing
the riverbed, a four-kilometer stretch, took five and a half hours.
I was hoping, at least, that
this harrowing experience would render the children more docile on the bus ride
to our next destination – a Bedouin camp in which they would sit by a campfire
and sleep in spacious, high-ceilinged tents – but the extensive amounts of
sugar they had ingested at lunch encouraged them to burst into song, and we
were subjected to gaudy renditions of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer” as well as
numerous Justin Beiber and One-Direction cover hits. There emerged a battle
between the front and back of the bus, the former of which desired to sleep or
at least to remain in relative quiet. Their cries of indignation, however,
served only to spur the ‘morale-keepers’, as the ebullient singers called
themselves.
We arrived at the camp, a
stunning desert oasis of palm trees, bougainvillea flowers, and family-sized
tents lined with colorful, Bedouin-woven cloth, just as the sun was setting. Awash
in rosy light, the stillness of the verdant island, which lay so carefully
tucked away among the hills of the Judean desert, exuded an aura of peace and
tranquility that was almost tangible.
Of course, tranquility is often no
match for outright rowdiness, and the unwitting hills soon reverberated with
screeches of “Where’s my bag?!” “I lost my sweatshirt, oh no!” “Where are the
showers in this place?!” “EEEW! We’re sleeping here?!!” Darkness had fallen,
and a lone boy with glasses and hunched shoulders – the class ‘nerd’ – was
found crying hysterically because he could not find his way to the tent. Others
were loudly complaining of crippling hunger – the sugar rush had swiftly fallen
and they demanded sustenance – and one girl whimpered that she simply could not shower with the others. My
head was aching from the heat, and my clothes stuck irritatingly to my flesh.
Then I saw a colleague of mine
holding a set of keys. He was distributing them amongst the guides, guards, and
medics we had brought with us. Soon just one was left. I inquired meekly. It
was ours!
I rushed to the room with my
belongings. The staff would not sleep there, as it was too far from our
precious charges, but there was a shower, and I intended to use it. The day had
left a residue of adrenalin-charged sweat, which had mixed with the fine desert
dust to create something that felt rather too much like mold, and now covered
my entire body. Though the showerhead emitted a forceless, piss-like stream, it
did the trick. The room had also that quality as precious to me, at that point
in time, as a mountain of gold:
Silence.
Heading back, I felt my energies
sufficiently renewed to handle the complaints of the children, regarding the
traditional Bedouin meal that was being served them by an obsequious
black-skinned servant. My general impression was that they would eat nothing
that was not delivered in a sterile plastic bag. Fortunately, they had no such
alternative, and those who were truly hungry eventually ate what was placed
before them.
The most enjoyable part (or
perhaps the only enjoyable part?) of our trip, to my mind, came next. A
campfire was arranged at my behest, and tea and cakes were offered. I sat next
to two of my favorite students, gossiping about which boys they liked. Now,
this may seem oddly perverse to some, but hindsight tells me I just may have
become a teacher for the gossip. Those who have known me long will find this
odd indeed, as I have never before been especially prone to such empty-headed
nonsense, but there it is. One of the students I spoke with had a crush on a
male teacher, something he had divined already but which it was quite
satisfying to verify. I also discovered that they knew all members of One
Direction were actually homosexuals, though, in the spirit of true teenage
savoir-fare, considered that this might possibly be alterable (given the right
match was made, of course).
Thus the night progressed, and soon
our guidance counselor pulled out of the fire a string of hot potatoes. Some kids
roasted marshmallows. Our Math teacher attempted “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
on a banged-up harmonica, while the Science teacher attempted to follow along
on a plastic, clarinet-type object. The atmosphere was nowhere near peaceful
(in fact I feel the world ‘cacophonous’ may be appropriate here), but there was
a sense of togetherness that satisfied me for the time. I would only achieve
perfect peace later, during my guarding shift between three and four a.m., with
the final student having gone to sleep just a half hour earlier, according to
the colleague who woke me. It was suddenly strange, this silence before a
crackling fire, which had been kept alive for the heat, and I welcomed the sight
of a small-statured boy whom I knew to be struggling both academically and
socially.
“I can’t sleep,” he said in that
small, helpless moan that binds you to them everlastingly, no matter what they
have put you through in the past, no matter what they will do in the future.
That forlorn tone will reverberate in your eyes, play a piper’s tune in your
mind, open and enslave your heart.
“Come, sit here,” I said. “Look
at the fire, it will make you drowsy.”
Thus we sat, he and I, for a
full hour, watching the hypnotizing flames beneath a cold black sky supported
by tall, motionless palms. We spoke only once, when a fox went by, sniffing at
leftover crumbs in the gravel. He asked, I answered, and put another log on the
fire. So it was.
And come evening, and come
morning of the second day.
Breakfast, a flurry of activity
as the girls dressed in shorts though we had explicitly ordered them not to.
Fights with us. Some borrowing and changing of clothes. The guide explaining
that we would never make both hikes if we were not quick about it. More
wardrobe-driven squabbles and then, finally, the loading of bags onto the buses.
At one point I looked out at the desert spread out behind the idling mammoths.
It was heartbreakingly beautiful, and I succeeded in breathing it in for a few
precious moments before noticing one of my kids without a hat, ordering him to
get it, and turning my attention to others without hats, which he generously
pointed out. It was time to climb Masada.
Having overcome the bitching and
moaning that accompanied our trudge up the infamous mountain, the kids were
sufficiently exhausted to listen to their guide’s explanation of its legend.
The Romans were demonized, the Jews were exalted, the children were riveted. My
colleague dared to venture a word in opposition to the general belief in the
tiny community’s heroism – was it really necessary to hole up amongst these
unforgiving desert cliffs? Was it not just the tiniest bit melodramatic to kill
oneself rather than join the prevailing gentile forces? The children, enamored
with the romance of the legend, stood starkly beside the rebellious population.
But at least they had been given the priceless opportunity of another point of
view.
It was during the unending toil
down the mountain that I gained the most respect for my students. Towards the
end, even I began to think the Jews
may have committed suicide just to get the hell off the damned thing. But the
kids barely complained. Carrying bags laden with three liters of water and, for
most, equal weight in snacks, they pushed on, encouraging each other, making
jokes and listening to my geographic and ecological explanations regarding the
Dead Sea. They greeted every blond, or even slightly pale, person of any age
with gales of “Hello, how are you?!” with which they delighted in proving their
English skills to me, and I began wishing all my classes had mountains to walk
down – it appeared to calm and steady them, the stillness of the desert, the
downward plod into blank swaths of gold, blue and white.
At the parking lot we decided to
surprise them. Rather than attempt another hike, we would take them to the
beach. Granted, it would be a Dead Sea beach, and the Education Ministry had
communicated to us a proviso that they would only be able to enter the water up
to their knees (who could drown in the Dead Sea, I wondered?) but we felt
certain they would adore it, and we were right. My principal, undyingly devoted
woman that she is, bought everyone popsicles at the end.
A close friend has described
school life as “pure chaos”, and I tend to agree. When that chaos goes on
ceaselessly for thirty-six hours, during which you climb boulders and mountains,
forget to eat, and spend a cumulative time period of at least five hours
hushing and shushing, it can be a tasking ordeal. Inevitably, I cried tears of
hopeless frustration in the shower that night. But somewhere among them were
also, possibly a chosen few, tears of joy.
I was just so happy to be home.
