I'm Ready

So it is that time of the year—our last week in our schools—and everyone is already feeling super nostalgic about their time in their placements. How do I know this? Because, I can’t help but see the posts all over social media of other ETAs praising their students and teachers, lamenting about the fact that they are going home soon, and just genuinely being really sappy about how much they have loved their time in Malaysia. 

I recently posted on Instagram about how excited I am for cold weather. 

Needless to say—not for the first time this year—I feel a serious distance between myself and how everyone else in my cohort is (showing the world they are) feeling. While I am sure that everyone’s emotions are way more complex than they are presenting on social media, I have to admit it is seriously grating to see so many people feeling so great about their experience in their schools. Even if it is all a show, I am really sick of it. It makes me feel like what I am feeling— elation at the impending reality of not being an ETA at this school anymore—is wrong. Once again, I feel like I am not ETA-ing correctly. I see what other people are saying about their experiences, and I just feel really self-conscious about having a differing opinion about the end of the grant. It just re-confirms that I had a year that was outside of the norm and outside of what this experience is meant to be.   

Although it feels terrible to not have shared the same positive experience as everyone else, I have to remind myself that my experience—as much of an outlier as it is—is still valid and genuine. And even though everyone is presenting on social media that they are so heartbroken to leave and would stay another year if they could, I know that is not the complete truth for most people. It is easy to look at this experience through rose colored glasses when you are basically at the finish line. 

My difficult experience in my school is one of the main reasons I was motivated to apply for the assistant coordinator position in this program. I wanted to share my experience with the new cohort because I felt like it was important that they hear that this year is not going to be “the best year ever” for everyone. Not every person is going to come away from this feeling some deep meaningful connection with their entire school community. I certainly don’t. I will miss a lot of the people and students I have met. But, if I am going to cry in the next few days they will be tears of relief more than anything else.  

So I guess I just wanted to write this post to be at least the one person to say, I AM F*CKING READY TO LEAVE! 

And that is okay. That is normal. I am not ashamed.  

The Beginning of the End

Me on my 23rd birthday at the BOH Tea Plantation in the Cameron Highlands!

I'm getting the point where I am just constantly exhausted. A couple weeks ago I was on the phone with my mom and I was giving her the run-down of my schedule for the coming months and I realized that I am just incredibly busy. Since I last posted, I have taken trips to Laos and Cambodia, which were both beautiful and exciting countries. I have taken road trips to help out with other English camps, sent a weekend on the beach with a friend from college, and I turned twenty three! In the near future I have a scuba-diving trip in the Perhentian Islands planned and a vacation in Thailand about three weeks after that. In between I have (another) new class schedule to adjust to, student programming to plan and assist with, jobs to apply for, and the task of moving out of my house to return to the USA because this grant is over in two months! Oh and I somehow have to find the time to plan a multinational-two-week-post-grant backpacking trip with a friend from college who is normally sleeping when I am awake (thanks a lot 15 hour time difference). 

Young monks receiving offerings at sunrise in Luang Prabang, Laos

Elephants at the National Elephant Reserve in Pahang, Malaysia 

I am by no means complaining. I realize what a blessing it has been for me to be able to experience all that I have in the past 8 months. I am so excited for what these next 2 months have in store but I am also worried about how difficult it will be to adjust back to life in the USA. I have decided to move back to St. Louis, my hometown, because I have been longing to be somewhere I already intimately know. And for whatever problems St. Louis is dealing with (and the USA as a whole) it will always be the first city I loved and I hope that in this next year I will learn to love it even more while living there as an adult. But honestly what concerns me is that I am not giving myself anytime to process what this experience has meant, how it has changed me, and how I will use it in my future. I know people will ask me “How was Malaysia? What was your time like there?” and I am increasingly realizing I am not quite sure how to answer that question. Often, I am not sure how I feel here. Outside of emotions that exist on the ends of the spectrum, I do not really know what my “normal” feeling here is. Maybe it is because normal is so incredibly strange that my perception is skewed, or because I just can’t really find the words. I blame this partially on my dwindling vocabulary and partially on the fact that many parts of this experience (especially how I feel about it) is simply inexplicable. I think of the saying “to know where you are going you’ve got to know where you have been” and  just where have I been this year? I can point it out on a map, trace the paths I have taken with a pencil and a ruler but I can’t really zoom in on the person to person (and person to organization) interactions that actually define where I am. How can i adjust to a new normal (which is really an old normal) if this current normal (which is still such a new normal) isn’t normal but I feel normal in it but not normal but that’s normal….isn’t it? I don’t know. Now, I'm sure, we are all confused. But at least (maybe?) you are starting to see what I am dealing with.  

Kuang Si Waterfall in Luang Prabang, Laos 

A lot of people I have talked to about the end of the grant have been thinking about reflection about, decompressing from, and figuring out a way to give a synopsis for this experience too. And I know it will help at least a bit to gather together as one cohort for the final time before we leave. It’ll be the last time I am in this community of Fulbright Malaysia ETAs who understand (more than anyone else will) what I am saying when I say it or don't say it, or can’t. For me, that will be the first time I stop and really sit with the fact that this time in my life is over. And while l am so excited to be heading back to the USA leaving is going to be so hard. I have made myself comfortable in situations where, a year ago, I would not have conceived it was possible. I have put in so much physical and emotional work and earned spaces for myself where there previously weren’t any. I have adventured around the country and the region and my house actually feels like home now. There are still so many things that I want and need to do before my time is over so I just honestly do not have time to really think about how things are ending. I don’t really know how to think about things ending either. All I know is I supposed to be looking forward to my next steps after this and that means soon ill have to break down this experience to consumable parts  for both myself and those around me and I don’t think I can. At this point I know I can’t and I don’t see how two months left in my community and school and 3 days of programming is going to change that very much. So I guess this is all to say I don’t know how Malaysia has been. I am still digesting and making sense of it for myself. And until I do I don’t know how I can use this experience to move forward in my life. How can I consciously integrate what I have learned and experienced here in order to progress in my career and educational aspirations? Is it even supposed to be a conscious integration? Ugh. I just don’t know. And i’m too tired and too busy to figure it out. I guess that is what the holidays are for. 

Ten weeks until I am home. I cannot believe it. 

Angkor Wat Temple, Siem Reap, Cambodia 

Kebonbong

Part of my job here as an ETA is to conduct “English Camps”. They are basically special programs for students that last for at least four hours. Most English Camps have themes, any theme is acceptable as long as you can create activities for them. People in my cohort are so creative, they have hosted camps with themes such as superhero, super-spy, journalism, cooking competitions, survivor, kindness camp, and girls empowerment. Last week I co-hosted a state-wide English camp with the four other ETAs in my state which was titled “Once Upon a Time in Perlis”. The goal of our state camp was to have 100 students from our 5 schools come together to bring to life 10 short plays based on popular fairytales that us ETAs grew up with. To be completely honest I was extremely skeptical about how successful this was going to be. It was a tall order. This meant getting 10 groups of 10 students who don’t know each other to act, direct, create props, backgrounds, costumes AND perform on stage in front of an audience in less than 48 hours! And everyone there to help them ONLY speaks English! The morning of the first day I mentally prepared myself for complete and utter failure. My students barely talk in class let alone ACT on A STAGE. The idea that they could even be loud enough for the audience to hear without microphones seemed absurd to me.  

I carried my skepticism with me like a shield throughout the entire camp, I told myself not to expect too much. Sure, I pushed them to be loud and we all tried our best to help our students feel confident in this experience  which was way outside of their comfort zones but I still prepared myself for disaster when performance time came. And to be completely honest I was totally blown away by just how successful our students were. Students were loud and serious and passionate, they took chances and adapted the plays in fun ways that we did not expect. They were creative and confident and we also had so much fun. Not only that but they were respectful and friendly to each other and we did not have many serious problems. At the end of the performances on the second day I felt like crying tears of joy and pride. I saw some of my students, who were so shy  in school, get up on stage and act in front of their peers and they actually enjoyed it! Some of them had even volunteered for the leads! I couldn’t be happier. When I got back to school I had students telling me that it was “the best English camp ever teacher!” and I could have died of happiness. The student’s success at our camp was a real moment of affirmation for all of us. And affirmation is NOT something that happens EVER in this experience. 

Group photo of all the students and ETAs in the State Camp 

And just when I was feeling confident about my impact and how my students saw me, the first class I had after the weekend quickly brought me back down to earth. First, the lead teacher told me five minutes into the class period that she wouldn’t be attending the class that day. Instead of having a lesson prepared for me to take over she handed me a SINGLE worksheet and asked me to help the students complete it. Needless to say that did not workout well. When I returned to class and informed the students that the other teacher was not coming, all of the students started to chant “GAME! GAME! GAME!”.  I had to shout for them to quiet down and  told them we had work to complete. As I transcribed the worksheet onto the board for students to complete, I realized it was way above their understanding (I could barely understand some of the instructions) and after revising the assignment on the spot most students basically refused to even try to complete the lesson. Instead they chose to mock me in a way that has become classic for this class in particular. They speak to me in rapid malay and then when I tell them I do not understand or ask them to speak slower they roar with laughter at my expense. It is a joke that got old (for me at least) a very long time ago. I left the class feeling defeated, sad, angry , and just plain tired of this shit that keeps happening. I got back to my desk and felt like crying. I wondered, “why is it that as soon as I have a good streak going something has to happen to make me question myself again?” 

Just as I was about to allow myself to drown in my sorrows, my mentor came back to his desk holding a bag full of what looked like limes. (If you have kept up with my blog you know that my mentor and I have had quite an interesting relationship. At times I wanna hug him, most of the time I want to karate chop him in the throat, but he never fails to surprise me). Recently I have been seeing a lot more of a caring side to him.  A few weeks ago he took his only child to college in Kuala Lumpur, just five hours away by car, but I think it made him see the impact that distance from loved ones can have on a person. I think he realized that I must be lonely.The day before he took his son to college, he sighed and told me to call my mom because “she misses you”). My mentor has never really been one to ask me how I am doing or actively try to cheer me up. But sometimes I think he knows when I am feeling down and he will tell me the latest gossip, invite me to eat with him in the canteen, tell me a story or folktale, or like to day, give me some new random food to try.  

Today that food was Kebonbong, it is a fruit native to Malaysia and it is kind of hard to describe. It grows on trees—my mentor got a kilo from a staff member who has a tree in her back yard—and before it is peeled it looks like a bit like if an avocado and a lime had a baby. It is small, I can easily hold two or three in one hand, and hard like a rock. When you peel off the skin you can smell the sweet and tangy flavour. The flesh is white and stiff like an unripe pear. It crunches as you bite into it and the flavour is bitter, sweet, sour, and tangy all at once. When I eat it my nose scrunches and I hate it but I love it at the same time. My mentor peeled and sliced one and we shared it as he told me about different ways to eat kebonbong, how it is the oldest fruit in malaysia, and his undying love for sour stuff. He cracked a joke, filled me in on school gossip, and ended up giving me half the kilo of this fruit I both love and hate to take home with me. Our conversation sparked other teachers to talk with me about their opinions on the fruit and how to make sambal belachan, a sweet and spicy (and of course fishy) paste that most people eat with kebonbong. And I felt the day turn around just a little bit. 

A handful of kebonbong :) 

This year has been full of ups and downs. As soon as I have a great moment in one class or a successful program something else in my life turns sour. But then the moment I just want to curl onto a ball in my bed, a teacher invites me to sit with them at the canteen, or a students comes a bit farther out of their shell, or my roommate makes me laugh so hard that i spit out my water and i feel a little weight life off my shoulders. Everyday here is like taking another bite out of a kebonbong: bitter yet sweet, tart but satisfying and I keep taking another bite, though I am not always completely sure why. 

I have less than 100 days left as an ETA in Perlis. Tomorrow is the beginning of my 8th month in Malaysia and sometimes i’m just as unsure as I was on my first day. I came to the conclusion long ago that some things about this experience will never change, including some things I really don’t like, and I have made a certain kind of peace with that. But each day is a special experience and with so few days left I am starting to realize how much I will miss even the rowdiest, craziest, laziest students I have had the honour to (try to) teach. 

The Six Month Mark

Three days ago marked the end of my sixth month in Malaysia. Last night I lay awake counting the number of days I had left in my school; there are less than 80. I am officially on the other side of the hill in this experience. As is tradition when facing the end of a chapter in my life,  I am not really sure what I want I want to do next. I have no plot, setting, or character list laid out for this new part of my story. Now, with more time behind me than ahead in Perlis, I have turned my senses toward home with increased urgency. I look forward to hugging my mom, laughing with my cousins, and catching up with friends and family. But the reunion with loved ones will only last so long and after the holiday season comes to a close I need a goal to pursue. 

Like most people in my generation, I have moved from space to space looking for meaning and fulfillment in what I am focusing my time and energy into. And I hope that I will be more successful in my next choice than I was here in that aspect. Not that I believe my work here is meaningless, but I have not felt as fulfilled as I anticipated, and that has been extremely disappointing especially when dealing with so many other factors that have made this experience so challenging. The issues I have faced while doing this work have given me an intense anxiety when considering the next move I will make and next organization and community I will choose to be apart of. As I try to make a plan or try to think about my aspirations in a realistic way, I am plagued with unanswerable questions: What if I am disappointed again? What if I am never as content as I want to be? Should I try to rebuild the life I had for myself before moving to Malaysia? What if I can’t? Do I really want that if it is possible? Where will I live? What steps should I be taking to get to my end goal? What even is my end goal? 

What. Is. Next? 

I know from conversations with my fellow ETAs I am not the only one asking these questions and struggling to find the answers. I am having flashbacks to my final weeks as a college student, where the question “what happens next?” hung around our heads, constantly swinging into our line of sight like the tassels on our graduation caps. Once again, I am being ushered into the reality of moving, packing, evolving, and planning for the future (whatever that might be); a state of being that is synonymous with terms like twenty-something, millennial, and recent college graduate.  

The end of this experience is coming faster than I expected and as of now I do not have a plan. But four months is a long time and, like trying to solidify a thesis in my writing, I tend to not realize I have discovered the path until I am already several strides down it. When my sister came to visit me she asked me to, “just tell me what to do next Naja, please”. She saw my life as a series of good first choices and wanted me to help her choose her next step since, from the outside looking in, it looked like I was pretty good at planning my life. I had to admit to her (and myself) that most of the major choices I have made have not really been my choices at all. My college counselor in high school told me to go to Loyola for undergrad, I accidentally discovered my love for Sociology after a mishap while registering for classes freshman year, I studied abroad because all my friends were doing it, I applied for the Fulbright because of the suggestion of a professor and chose Malaysia based on the opinions of a friend. The most I do to make these things happen is just to take an opportunity as it presents itself (normally in the form of someone smarter than me suggesting it). Up until this point I have just done what feels right and exciting and I have been happy. So, I guess my anxiety and fear is not that necessary, because so far this method of just stumbling upon the next thing has worked out really well. 

But I have always liked the idea of having a longterm plan. Of seeing a finish line and planning carefully what I am going to do to get there. Like someone preparing for a marathon (though long distance running does not sound appealing to me at all). So many of the people in my cohort have a “big picture” they are painting with a fine haired brush. So many are able to tell me just how this experience fits into their 5 year plan. I cannot do that. I did not really know what I wanted out of coming to be an English Teaching Assistant in Malaysia beyond just having the experience itself and seeing a part of the world I was always too afraid to consider accessible. I do not feel embarrassed or ashamed of this because my reasons were genuine, though not necessarily goal-oriented. But now that I do not have someone to tell me what to do, and I am at a loss. So I am trying to look for a sign or a suggestion but as it stands I haven’t found anything and this does not necessarily feel productive. How do I trust my process if it isn’t really a process at all? 

One of my best friends, Jacqueline, always says not to worry and that everything will work out. We met while studying abroad in Botswana and if you have ever spent time in Botswana you know what I mean when I say that things almost never go as planned. When this would happen I would feel like the world was crashing all around us and she would look me in my eyes completely calm and serious and tell me that she is never worried “because things have always worked out for the best  in life and so why would things start to go wrong now?” Truth be told, when I was first getting to know her I thought she was crazy. But as our friendship grew I realized that Jacqueline simply has an unshakeable faith in the process of things. And honest, things normally do work out, sometimes not in ways I want or expect but in the aftermath I am always grateful for the experience. Jacqueline’s faith is rooted in a higher power and plan, in the path creating itself. So I guess I should stop trying to be someone I am not and give up on the idea of having a rigid plan and allow myself trust in the way the path illuminates itself instead of painstakingly searching for it.  

Besides, if you are always looking down trying to figure out the right direction to go, you’re going to miss the magic that is happening all around you. So instead of looking down I will keep my head up, staying open to opportunities that might present themselves. Like my now-eight-year-old cousin said to me a few summers ago, “keep looking around because something amazing might happen”. And if my life up until this point is any proof, something amazing always does. 

Understanding

Over the break I was lucky enough to have my older sister come into town to visit me for nearly two weeks. Unfortunately, we did not make it up to Perlis so she could really see where I was living but we did some traveling within peninsular Malaysia—Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Melaka—and then on to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for a few days. While it was definitely difficult to travel together for two weeks, something we had never done before, it was cool to be able to show her a small piece of this country I have called home for the past five months. 

Since being here I have often lamented about the fact that I am in a world of strangers. My co-workers at school barely know anything about me. The worlds we grew up in were so far removed from one another in so many ways it makes it difficult for them to conceptualize my life in the United States. And while I have grown incredibly close with the four girls in my state, especially my housemates, there is only so much you can know about a person who you have only met a few months ago. While it was really wonderful to have someone who I have known for quite literally my entire life with me, my sister’s visit made it glaringly obvious that this life I am living now is not really knowable for you all, the people who read my blog and leave me WhatsApp voice messages, my friends and family. As hard as it is for the Malaysian people in my life here to understand my life back home, it will be just as difficult for people back home to understand my life here. 

Even after being here and getting a taste of the heat, food, and culture it was hard for my sister to really understand what I was experiencing even though she was right there next to me. Part of this is because she was here very much as a tourist, we visited popular cities, went to museums, and tried the most popular foods. She had me as a guide—though in many ways I am still trying to figure it all out too—but I haggled down prices, translated menus, bought bus tickets, planned travel and called rides. Not saying that it was a bad thing or even complaining about having the responsibility, but through this trip there was really no way for her to understand what it was like for me to live and exist in my community for almost a year. In this community I am both an outsider and an insider, I know things and am still figuring it out, I am a resident of Malaysia and in many ways still a tourist. This semi permanent position in both this job and this community is so complex that it is really difficult to put into words. 

A great example of this was about a month and a half ago I was on the phone with one of my friends during a break I had at school. Ultimately, we were trying to hash out the details of the plan to meet me at the end of the grant term and travel through South East Asia together but, as friends do, we began chatting about our respective lives at present. As I was explaining to her how removed I felt from the students and teachers at my school, detailing how difficult it is to feel appreciated, a group of female students walked past me. As they passed they erupted in a chorus of “good morning teacher”, “I love you teacher”, and “how are you teacher”! I replied back “good morning students, I am fine and I of course I love you too!” My friend, upon hearing this, was basically un able to understand how, though I regularly received bouts of verbal affection from students I  could feel disillusioned or disconnected from them. I struggled to explain to her the differences in relationship norms between students and teachers in Malaysia and the US and how, with my position being somewhere near teacher but not quite, informed my relationship with students. When I went home and told my roommates about it they both understood perfectly how the covert disconnection was there even with such overt expressions of love and happiness about my presence. 

The only people who truly understand my experience that I am having are the people who have lived it. (And really only the people who have been ETAs on peninsular Malaysia because Borneo is really like a totally different country.) I have realized just how much less needs to be said when telling a story, or detailing a problem, when talking to a ETA or a coordinator than with someone from back home. While yes, of course, my family and friends back in the States do know me better than anyone with me in Malaysia, the people here will always understand the context of this experience much more. I, for so long, thought it would be easier for me to be here if I could just bring my whole life with me, but that isn’t how it works is it?  It would be easier to be myself with the people who I have known longer, who no longer need an explanation about what makes me laugh, cry, or angry. The familiarity of life back home is easier for me to just be Naja. But here I am more than that, I am Naja in Malaysia. And Naja in Malaysia needs what Naja in the USA cannot give her which is allies in this experience.  

So thank goodness for all the weirdos who also decided to come along on this journey. We did not begin it together but we are going through it together. Midyear break was ultimately a reminder of the feeling I had of being surrounded by everyone else in the cohort at the start of this journey so many weeks ago now. I felt at peace, I felt support and I felt a lot less alone. As isolating as this experience is I need only reach out to other people going through it when I need to talk to someone who needs no explanation at all, who do not try to offer solutions that they do not understand are not available, who understand how something can be both hilarious and frustrating, who can laugh at jokes that need too much context otherwise, and with whom I have developed a pseudo language of English with horrible grammar and a smattering of Malay words and idioms that really no one else (Malaysian or American) can really understand. 

Comeback Kid

A few weeks ago a professor from my school emailed me asking for updates about how I am doing and details on what I am feeling about my experience so far. She is the person who encouraged me to apply for the Fulbright and mentored me throughout my application process, reading and re-reading my essays, providing insight, criticism, and endless support. (She is also the professor whose class, which I took early on in college career, kicked my butt and pushed me to be a better student and helped me develop my voice in my writing.) After sending her a fairly long email about my thoughts, feelings, and experiences, I received her reply this morning. Two things she said really stuck out to me as things I need to keep in mind during the second half of this journey: 

1. “Just think of this as a time to learn learn learn about another culture and education system instead of a time to actually teach…” 

2. "I’m rooting for you!” 

The first thing, about shifting my perspective about what my time here actually means, is something I have been forced to constantly do since my arrival. Before coming here I was pretty nervous to be responsible for high school student’s English education for an entire school year. I had never been a teacher in a formal classroom setting before. I even wrote a blog post earlier in the year about how I have never wanted to be a teacher. But honestly I have not really been teaching that much. Sure, I assist and lead lessons in the classroom almost every day, but I do not think that when I leave the memory that the  students I have worked with will have of me will be connected to a specific lesson. And I have no tangible proof that any of the lessons that I have taught by myself have stuck with any of the students. This is partly because the times I am teaching my own lessons have no real schedule or repetitiveness and therefore it does not allow time for me to review or check understanding the following day, and also because students know I am not teaching them  things that will specifically be on their exams and therefore do not make effort to remember the lessons. This is definitely a double edge sword that cuts through any chance I have at effectively teaching anything. 

What is really interesting about having this realization—that I do not have a set class that I can regularly teach lessons I have created in a coherent pattern—is that actually want that experience. (I can hear my family’s collective “we told you so” now.) While I am still convinced that being an educator is not something I would want to continue to do for the rest of my days, this time as an ETA has taught me that I do want to be an actual teacher, at least for a while.  

For now though I need to let go of that desire and focus on this identity I am currently claiming. I am, in most ways, a student. This entire region of the world is my classroom and I need to take in as much as I can. That means asking more questions, stewing in the discomfort, and trying to make sense of it all, instead of taking things personally. I came into this experience without many expectations of what my time will be like but after being here for a while I realize that I have been building up so many expectations through comparison with other ETA’s stories. Short of cutting off all communication with anyone in my cohort, it is basically impossible not to keep up with what other people are doing, but I need to work on compartmentalizing what I see and hear about other ETA’s experiences and what my own is like. Our schools and communities are all separate self-sustaining microcosms and instead of pining about how the grass is always greener I need to stop and smell the roses in my own backyard. 

The second thing that my professor said—that she is rooting for me—is something that I have been blessed enough to hear continuously throughout my life. My family, friends, and teachers have always shown me support and guidance in the different things that I do. But, being half a day ahead of everyone in the US makes it really difficult to stay in touch with people. Most of my conversations with friends and family are voice and text messages left in reply to one another when we have a spare minute during the day. I have to schedule days (sometimes weeks) in advance with most loved ones if we want to actually talk on the phone and have a conversation in real-time. My professor’s words were a wonderful reminder of how vast my support system back home really is. It can be hard to remember, because of how isolated I am from the community here, that I am not alone.  Because every interaction here is slightly strained (because of the effort it takes to breach communication barriers) it is nice to be reminded of all the communities and groups I am apart of with whom I can interact with ease. I helps me to realize that this isolation I experience at my school is not a reflection of my personality or my potential  but a situational consequence of where I am. 

My mom always says, “Be a problem solver not a problem maker”, and this time in Perlis has definitely been forcing me to put those positive thinking practices my mother instilled in me to the test. But just like always, when I am starting to feel incredibly down in the dumps and the woe-is-me-mindset is clouding my thoughts, someone in my vast support group gives me the push  and prod I need to get back to the problem solving habits that have served me well throughout my life. (If my mom’s mantra can get me through statistics it can get me through anything right?)  Besides, with the end of month five just around the corner I have already made it through the uphill climb! Im sure, like any downhill slide, I will receive just as many bruises and bumps as the way up but there’s something sweet about knowing you’ve passed the halfway point. I have more time behind me that I do ahead and that is giving me the motivation to step my game back up and work towards a second semester that I can be really proud of. Stay tuned y’all because, like any sports fan knows, the second half is when it gets good. 

On being an object

Objectify (v): to treat (someone) as an object rather than as a person. 

 Within feminist discussion, sexual objectification is at the forefront of every conversation about objectification. As a young woman the experience of sexual objectification is unfortunately all too familiar for it to not have been the dominating my association with the word. However, since beginning to work in my school I have been subjected to objectification in a new capacity.  The way that I consider the term objectification has changed as a result. 

There is a classic riddle that I have been thinking about a lot recently. One of the things that drove me to write this post that I have been reluctant to compose for a while now. I goes like this, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”  

I spend the majority of my time, at school and in my community, completely immersed in a language that I am not able to understand. Between the rapid pace at which people speak, pronunciation which lends itself to blending words, and my really horrible vocabulary memory, my ongoing attempt to learn Malay has not been very successful. I would say that about 95% of the time I have absolutely no clue what anyone is talking about. And generally teachers and students don’t really do anything to help me understand. For the most part I guess I get it, it is hard to constantly remember that there is that one American in the school who does not know what is being said, and can be pretty awkward to try to constantly translate into a language you are not comfortable speaking in. I have tried to stop thinking about what I would do if the situation was reversed because I have never been on the other side of this awkward linguistic tango. (Frankly, imagining what I would do can be a frustrating because I assume that I would put more effort into inclusion than what generally happens at my school.) But since I cannot change my situation, I am trying to make the best of it by just getting used to it. It does not mean I am giving up on learning Malay—I ask teachers what certain words mean, try to write down phrases I hear (or think I hear) and see a lot, and am constantly trying to recruit a Malay tutor from the teachers I interact with more often, but I am not allowing myself to be frustrated with how little I understand things. I try to understand as much as I can from context clues and snippets from vocabulary I recognize, but for the most part when people are talking around me I just tune it out, wait for someone to address me, and if not just kind of do my own thing.   

A couple of weeks ago my school celebrated “hari kanteen” (canteen day). This was basically a day where students and teachers ran different food, drink, and activity booths in order to raise money for the different student organizations and clubs that they are a part of. For me, this meant wandering around aimlessly basically all day stuffing myself with Malaysian delicacies, becoming the “model” (read: guinea pig) for a teacher’s Mary Kay makeup booth, and going through an elaborately executed haunted house (imagine a bunch high-school boys with tons of fake blood, black cloth, and masks trying to scare the daylights out of their peers).  

While these two full days of festivities were super interesting (and delicious), I spent most of the time sitting with groups of teachers while they talked about and around me in Malay. It was a really interesting time but those moments that are full of energy and conversation are when I feel the most lonely in my school. I am not able to fully engage with what is going on because I am watching and not really participating due to the language barrier. I did not realize how much this has really been effecting me or how used to this feeling I have gotten until hari kanteen. I sat next to a tuition teacher (basically a private tutor) who works with Form 5 students in after-school classes, she is getting her masters in English language education and just recently moved back to Perlis after living for several years in Kuala Lumpur. Throughout her conversations with teachers she was translating for me what was being said, and responding in English even when speaking with other teachers, making a conscious effort not to make me feel left out. If she forgot to translate or slipped back into Malay for a while she would apologize and catch me up in the conversation. I felt so much gratitude for her throughout the whole day, we actually had substantial conversations: she told me a lot about herself, and asked me about my life and future plans and feelings about being here. She really wanted to get to know me for me and become my friend. Obviously she felt more comfortable having a conversation with me because of her profession and education background. But what I valued more than her translating and english skills was the feeling of being recognized and acknowledged. I felt like she saw me as a person, a colleague, a friend even, and that is not something I really feel very often at my school. 

The longer that I have been here the more that I realize I am basically seen as a walking, talking, English lesson for the teachers, administrators, and students. Basically I exist as a way to force people at my school to speak English, therefore helping them to increase their vocabulary and confidence. But like any lesson, most people only participate if they are required to or passionate about it.  My mentor encourages me to speak with teachers (and vice versa), and there are some teachers who are generally excited to speak with me and get better at english. So in a way it is best that Im not fluent in Malay because then I wouldn’t fully be doing what I have ascertained is an important part of my role in my school. But it is exhausting to constantly exist not so much as a person but as a dictionary, a puzzle, a brain teaser, something that people engage with when they are seeking a challenge rather than someone people speak to for companionship. 

I feel a special type of isolation to be in a full room, or sitting at a full table in the canteen and have no one address me . It makes me feel invisible. I try not to take it so personally, but honestly how can I not take personally actions that deny me my personhood?  I know it is not about me specifically. I have not consciously done anything to push teachers and students away or make them uncomfortable. It is just this cavernous language barrier that none of us know  how to navigate well. Had I come into this experience with a wealth of knowledge in Malay I know I would be having a very different experience. 

This is not to say that no one ever speaks to me. But just that when they do I know it is because they are making a really conscious effort to do so. People have to actively remember to include me. I recognize the most comfortable space is to default to one’s first language. I am always grateful to the people who work to help me stay apart of the conversation. But even still, it does hurt to go through the day not being part of the conversation (and therefore not really apart of the community), sometimes actively being avoided just because people don’t want to be uncomfortable. It is doubly frustrating when people who have the capability to keep me in the conversation do not do so for whatever reason. While I am here I cannot simply choose not to be uncomfortable by avoiding the language barrier because I am completely surrounded by it everywhere I go. I wake up everyday in a place where I am constantly and relentlessly uncomfortable and I can’t change it. I do not know if people have not considered how difficult this is for me or just do not care. The lack of consideration about my comfort level or feelings about how I am treated (more like not treated) has to be directly correlated to the fact that no one really thinks of me. Me, Naja, not the ETA, the american, the foreigner, or the outsider. Me the young woman all the way on the other side of the world from everything familiar just trying to be seen. But why would you work to meet someone halfway if they are not even a someone to you in the first place, right? 

I left a work environment that was seriously fulfilling, with a employer and co-workers who saw me as an equal and a friend (despite being the youngest) and it can be very difficult to rationalize my decision to come here, to be immersed in this ceaseless isolation, this unending discomfort, this complete denial of consideration. I know I am gaining a lot from this experience but I cannot help but mourn the loss of what I had before. I cannot help but to be off-put by this blatant, habitual disregard. 

This objectification is taking a toll on me in ways I did not anticipate. The constant lack of acknowledgement as an actual complex person with emotions, opinions, and a need for more than baseline human interaction on the best days is a slight bother but on the worst days makes me question more than just my effectiveness as this school’s ETA. And so I will leave you with this question, one that I have not been able to answer for myself but has been bothering me for the past few weeks. If I am here without acknowledgement it does it matter if I am here at all?