After I had been in Peace Corps, teaching woodworking out in the bush for about a year, I was in town one day to pick up my mail, and work on the volunteer newsletter, and the country director saw me in the volunteer lounge, and invited me to visit him in his office.
Director Stabler: Sam, my office.
John was not a man to waste words. I got up and collected my pile of mail that had come in over the last month since I had last come into the Peace Corps office, and followed him into his office.
Director Stabler: Sit down, Sam. It has been about a year since you were sent to your school, and I am curious about how it is going out there.
I liked John. He was from Austin, Texas, like me, and we had a lot in common. He had built the second high rise tower in downtown. Back then, there were only two. John’s building, and the Darth Vader tower. He missed Austin as much as I did, so we always had things to talk about.
Me: I am doing ok, John. I have friendships with my colleagues, three secondary projects going on in the community, and I feel a vital part of community improvement. My headmaster thinks I am a master teacher. All in all, it is a real adventure. I am always busy.
Director Stabler: That is great. Your headmaster did speak highly of you the last time I met with him. You seem healthy. You seem undaunted by the hardship of your posting. Is there anything that I can do to make your life easier?
Me: Well, now that you mention it, yes, there is. I am a closet musician, and when I left the US, I figured, Hey, it is Peace Corps, every other volunteer probably has a guitar, so I left mine at home. I am pretty attached to it, and was unwilling to risk it by bringing it along. I figured to buy a guitar from another volunteer who was ending his or her contract. Unfortunately, there is only one volunteer in-country right now who has a guitar, and though he has agreed to sell it to me when he leaves, it will be a year before his contract is up. I have been unable to truly soothe my soul with music. I am pretty sick of singing acapella. There are no music shops in Swaziland where I could buy a cheap guitar.
Director Stabler: (smiling) I see, Sam. That seems to be a fairly grave medical emergency. Do you want to ship your guitar here?
Me: No, not my guitar. But I do have a mandolin back in Austin, and if I could get it here, it would soothe me until the guitar becomes available. But, as you know, I only make $200 per month, at least half of which is going toward school fees for girls I have found who want to remain in school, but their families have no money, and shipping anything from the states is too cost prohibitive.
Director Stabler: If you could have someone back in Austin ship your mandolin to this address in Washington DC, (he wrote an address on a piece of paper) I will have it put into the Diplomatic Pouch, and shipped here for free with the rest of the embassy stuff.
Up to that point I had thought of the diplomatic pouch as a briefcase sized thing, that important papers were sent in. As it turned out, the diplomatic pouch was a large steel shipping container that embassy folks had all sorts of things sent overseas in, like new shoes and cornflakes and Campbell’s tomato soup. Even furniture. I thanked him, and left. I wrote a letter to my buddy Jim, who was in the band I had played and sang with, and stuck it in the mail that day.
3 months later I was again in town, and in my mail was a note that my diplomatic pouch item had arrived. Yippie! I hurried to John’s office, and there in the corner I spied the case which held my mandolin. I was excited and carried it back to the volunteer lounge, and took it out, and tuned it up. The mandolin is such a pretty instrument.
I glanced at my watch, and saw that it was 1:00, which meant the Accounting office was open after lunch break, and I went up the hall to claim my pay. There was a dutch door in the hallway giving egress to the Accounting department, and I patiently waited in the hall, for one of the finance women to notice me. I could see inside, and the woman who normally dispensed pay was on the far side of the office, talking to another woman. I saw that she noticed me but was paying no attention. I waited for about 15 minutes and she kept talking to the other woman. I am a patient guy, but that was just too long to be ignored. I had coughed a couple times, and saw the woman glance at me, but she continued to ignore me. Bad move on her part. She could have at least said, I will be with you in a minute, but no.
I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. Peaceful protest was second nature to me. So I took out my pick, and strummed my mandolin a couple times, hoping that just that would spur the woman into doing her job, and she would come over and give me my pay. If for no other reason than curiosity about the sound. No dice. She continued to ignore me.
So, I started strumming a progression, and burst out loudly into an impromptu song, making up the words, and strumming loudly.
Me: Oh, I came to the office to get my pay
But the lady wouldn’t give it, so I could get on with my day
I don’t know why she is ignoring me
But it is pissing me off, as she can clearly see.
I work so hard out in the bush
For a pittance in pay, it isn’t much
And now I have to wait while giving her a nudge
For the lady who has finished her lunch and doesn’t want to budge
It was a poor effort wordwise, but I thought that for a spontaneous display of music, it was ugly, yet not very harmonious. It was so loud, that all up and down the hall of the Peace Corps office, people were sticking their heads out of their offices to see what the noise was all about.
I am hungry as a horse, haven’t eaten for a week
Cuz I got no money, of this I want to speak
But nobody seems to be listening to me
And if I don’t get my money soon, in my pants I will pee.
Director Stabler: (from his office at the end of the hall) Sam, don’t make me regret the favor that I just did for you.
Me: Oh, sorry John, I am just trying to collect my pay, but the finance office seems indisposed to give it to me.
The phone at the desk where the pay woman was standing lit up and rang. She punched the button to put it on speaker, and I heard the director’s voice… “Give Sam his pay before he drives everybody nuts!” And she bustled over to the dutch door, with an angry look on her face. I smiled my best smile at her.
Me: May I have my pay please? So I can buy food, and head back to my school where there is no water or electricity, unlike those of you who live in the lap of luxury here in town.
She counted it out, very grudgingly, and I picked up my pile of crap, and stuffed it into my pack, along with the mandolin, and headed out to hit the market to buy food. As I left, I saw a poster advertising that a volunteer was giving a weekend workshop on beekeeping, and it sounded interesting, so I decided to hitch up to Piggs Peak, and check it out.
I arrived there about 3 hours later. The school was a boarding school, and the students were gone over summer break, so the volunteer gave me an empty room to stay in for the workshop. The session that afternoon was very interesting, and later I hung out with the volunteers who had come for the workshop, and drank beer and swapped teacher stories. About 10pm, I went back to my room, washed my face with fresh clean water from the bathroom sink, and brushed my teeth with water that did not taste like mud. It felt absolutely wonderful. And I went to bed.
I woke up at the crack of dawn like I usually did. I made a cup of coffee on my little camping stove that I carried everywhere, ate an apple, and got out the mandolin to give myself a morning concert. It took me a while to get accustomed to playing the mandolin. It had been 2 years since I had played it. But before long, I was rocking some John Prine, and Bob Dylan. It felt great to play and sing, and I enjoyed the next hour and a half.
Something made me look up at one point, and standing in the open doorway was a small boy of maybe 9 or 10 years old, quietly watching me play and sing. I had no idea how long he had been standing there. I smiled at him and finished the song that I was playing. My fingers were really sore because my guitar calluses had gone away from not playing anything for so long, so I decided to hang it up for now.
As I set my mandolin back in its case, the boy chatted me up. I introduced myself. His name turned out to be Liter, like a liter of coke.
Liter: I have never seen a small guitar like that one Maseko.
Me: Well, Liter, it is called a mandolin. Do you play anything?
Liter: Oh, no, I don’t. There are no musical instruments in my village. That is the first one I have ever seen up close.
He was looking longingly at the mandolin, so I took it back out of the case and handed it to him. I quickly showed him how to place his fingers to make some chords, and he happily set about practicing them. It was difficult for him to get his fingers to do his bidding, but he stuck with it, and I left him to it, and made myself another cup of coffee. It was just discordant noise at first, but after half an hour, he was doing ok with making the chords work. Then I noticed he was experimenting with changing the chords a little, to get the sounds he wanted from the instrument. He was spontaneously discovering how to make seventh chords, and augmented chords, which got better and better as he practiced. I was amazed, and watched him become more adept at making music as I watched. I gave him some help here and there, but he seemed to be doing just fine on his own.
After 45 minutes, he started humming and working out chords for the song he was humming. Then he burst into song, and sang some songs in siSwati that I had not heard before. He was really rocking the mandolin, having naturally figured out chord progressions. I was awed by how calm he was and how quickly he had learned to play. He played on for another half hour, and I recognized some of the songs he was playing and singing, as songs that the kids at my school sang during morning assembly.
Finally his fingers got too sore, and he finished the song he was playing and handed the mandolin back to me. He had a huge smile on his face.
Me: That was great, Liter!
Liter: Thank you for letting me play your small guitar, Maseko. It made me very happy.
He shook my hand, and headed out to wherever he was going when he heard me playing and stopped to see what it was. If I had thought about it at all, I should have just given him the mandolin. He was so naturally gifted. I felt that he would have become master of it in no time at all. In fact, I jumped up to do just that, but he was gone.
That happened another time when I was traveling after my Peace Corps service was finished. I was in northern Zimbabwe, visiting a family whose father was a famous healer, and had invited my buddy Mike and I to stay with them for a week. One afternoon I was sitting in the shade, surrounded by some of the kids from the family. We were talking about life in the bush. I reached into my pack, and took out my recorder, and played for them. I was not very good with a recorder, but I could play Mary Had a Little Lamb, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Red River Valley, and Way Down Upon the Swanee River. They sat politely and listened to my amateur efforts. When I paused, one of the little girls made the gesture for me to hand her the recorder. So I did. She hooted around for a minute, and broke into playing a song. It was a Bach piece, complicated and beautiful. Then she played a piece I recognized as Mozart. Precisely played and wonderful.
After a couple songs, she handed the recorder to her older sister, who also was able to play some other classical pieces. They both did creditable jobs playing the songs. Even in my dreams, I did not think I would ever be that good with a recorder.
Me: That was so beautiful! Where did you learn to play like that?
One of the girls: Oh, once a month we walk to the church, about 10 km over that side, and the nun there teaches us how to play things after the service. But we can only play there. She won’t let us take the recorders out of the classroom.
Both girls played a couple of other pieces, all classical music. It was amazing. This time I did give them the recorder. At minimum, it would bring some wonderful music to this homestead out in the middle of the Baobab trees and millet fields. And maybe, in the amazing ways the universe has, one or both of them might bring good things into their lives through their mastery of the instrument.
John, the girls older brother, who was a nurse at the local hospital an hour walk away, in the town of Binga, caught me playing my harmonica one evening. He was completely enamored of it. I let him play it, but he made no attempt to make a song. He just blew in and out, and seemed pleased just by the sound of it. He asked me if I would let him play it the next morning, and I handed it to him. He kept it all day, and for the whole day, you could tell where John was on the homestead by the sound of his breath going in and out of the harmonica.
It was my last musical instrument that I had brought with me on my travels after Peace Corps. I had sent my guitar, that I eventually got to buy from the volunteer, Home with other accoutrements gathered during my service. I had sold the mandolin to a boy from my school who had learned to play it pretty well, and would accompany me on my guitar in impromptu concerts for morning assembly. And just yesterday I had given my recorder to the girls. As much as John loved hooting on my harmonica, I still had months ahead on my journey, and wasn’t willing to give it to him. That was ok with him, he just got joy from the sound.
You can never predict what will be the future outcome of a small kindness to a child. Because I am an optimist, I try to show as much kindness to children as I can think of. They need and deserve it. Most of the truly great people that I know have a person or experience in their early years that opened the door to them thinking out of the box. Mine was Mrs Grubbs, my fourth grade teacher, who had just gotten back from a year of teaching in Haiti, the year before I started that grade. She had the most interesting stories I had ever heard an adult tell. And she had us listening when John Kennedy said his “… Ask what you can do for your country” speech when he started the Peace Corps.
Children are empty vessels. Be sure to fill them up with good things. <3.