About Cane

Well, although my official duty is to teach the subject of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) – Computer to deaf children from Primary-4 to JHS-3, my official post name is called “Youth activities”, which requires volunteers to cultivate children’s aesthetic sensibilities as well. It means that we, volunteers, are supposed not only to teach academic studies but also to develop socialization of children. Human being is not human from the birth but becomes human with proper education and discipline. In short human being is born as an animal and grows up as a human. However the deaf aren’t given right education as human in family because parents don’t know sign language, so they can’t communicate each other even if they live in the same house for a long time.

Therefore it’s very important for teachers to show proper behaviors as human. Essentially children are all the same: they cheat, they steal, they lie, they fight, they refuse etc. regardless of deafness or hearing because they are immature so you have to wait until they change themselves with their wills. I think that Discipline is more important than academic studies at their age. The thing is that how you give Discipline. Ghanaian teachers use “Cane” for it, but I can’t use it because it’s against Human Rights and above all, I don’t want to use it because they are not animals. I always say to my children: “Cane is a language for animals. If you don’t change your attitudes with words, you are the same as animals.” Nevertheless there is, in fact, the moment that I have to give them some physical punishment. In that case, I use my “hand” to slap and “fist” to hit them instead of Cane.

 So what’s the difference between Cane and Fist? They are both physical punishments to give physical pain on body. But “you” don’t feel pain with Cane while I feel pain on my fist when I hit them. This is the big difference. And children feel pain on body by caning but unless they feel pain in their heart, they’d never change their behaviors. I believe that I can pass something to children through my hands. And I can’t forget the face of a colleague when he caned children in the dinning hall, which was the first time for me to see caning on the spot in my life. I felt it was no longer a human face but a face of animal or evil. He is a really nice man but once he holds a cane in his hand, he becomes a barbarous beast and can whip children cruelly and aloofly. It was a huge “culture shock” and brought me disgust. If you don’t feel pain on your hand, you can be a cruel creature.

Needless to say, Caning is against Human Rights and GES (Ghana Education Service) warn teachers not to use cane, but many teachers insist to use it for discipline. They say, “Caning is the most effective way for children!” Is that true? Have you ever tried other ways to discipline them? It’s the easiest way for teachers to “feel” discipline, but in reality children never learn right behaviour with it. On the other hand, teachers are not punctual, not reliable, don’t keep promise, come late, even skip class, and they always excuse themselves, saying “Oh, I forgot it.” What amazed me was that in Ghana “forgetting” is not wrong, but it can be a “reason”. Sometimes I feel it should be used rather to teachers than to children; if they’re entitled to cane students, I’d have to use it to teachers.

The first time I saw caning children was in an animated cartoon: “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and I got stunned and felt “barbarous” with the western culture. For there is no such culture in Japan; we traditionally educate and discipline children with words. Caning would’ve been imported from Western world with “corruption” into Africa in the era of Slavery, so it’s a heritage of Slavery. Caning reminds me of slave owner, thus I never use it. Now is the time for Africa to “Look East”.



Child Labor

 About 10 years ago, I had a chance to visit a friend in Indonesia on my way back home from Australia. And her family was kind enough to lodge me at their home and show me around places in Surabaya during my stay. Thanks to my friend and her family, I could have precious experiences in life. It is, in general, said that overseas Chinese merchants are minority in Indonesia and dominate the economy of Indonesia. My friend’s family was one of them and their house was a mansion built in a district where rich people reside with gates and walls around it. In a morning, I had a cup of coffee with my friend’s younger brother after the breakfast. And this boy called a made to bring some sugar to enjoy his tea. But when the maid brought him the sugar, he said, “I changed my mind, I don’t need sugar.” And when the maid brought it back to kitchen, he called her again for sugar. Surprisingly enough, when the maid came to him with the sugar again, he shouted, “I don’t need sugar.” He repeated this stupid “going and returning” a couple of times. He was teasing the maid. This was how he “enjoyed tea with sugar”. The face of the maid was filled with deep resentment.

 According to a book, slave owners must have educated their children to teach distance and difference between them in their childhood because “conscience” toward slave will destroy the wealth of family, and “insensibility” is a protection for slave owner and family. I'm not writing to criticize either this boy or this family, but I’m merely explaining my experience in Indonesia. There is one excuse for the family that they pay some money to their “servants” who are satisfied with it, even if it is far less than the legal minimum wage. The problem was that how the family treated their “employees”. Obviously they rather ordered slave than talked to human in my impression, and I witnessed that when we had a lunch at a restaurant, the driver wasn’t allowed to sit at the same table and he was sleeping outside on a corner of verandah at night. I had thought that slavery had died out but in reality it does die hard. I could witness slavery alive and well unexpectedly then.

 When I came to my school in Savelugu, I’ve encountered with the same sort of aloofness and cruelness on the faces of colleagues. And what’s worse, the former headmistress was like the head of the aloofness. During my home stay program, I happened to have a chance to experience a harvest of maize. All students were working on it and after the harvest and some of them continued to dry maize for weeks. I asked the headmistress who would enjoy the harvest and the head replied “Children”. From her face, I felt: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Namely I perceived a “lie” behind her words. The school has a land for farming but the land is divided and assigned to teachers. Although there is a small portion for school, it turned out later that most of the land is for teachers. Students cultivate the soil, sow the seeds, harvest the crops, and dry ingredients; what teachers do is to order students, to enjoy the harvest, even to sell the crops. Namely without working, you can get money, what a nice business! What you need is only aloofness and cruelness.

 Last year, the school invited a group of people for a talk on “human rights” and all students were called in the dinning hall for it. Human rights!? In my school!? I couldn’t help laughing at it. It was completely hypocrisy for the headmistress and some teachers to “educate children” on human rights. They treat children as tools or labors and on the other hand they talk about human rights of the same children. As long as children are tools for adults, Country won’t be developed. For children are the most useful tool for adults: obedient, no complaint, and free of charge. It’s domestic exploitation.

“The Legend of the Holy Drinker”

From time to time, I see “genius” who makes me think that this person is surely created by God. So “Genius”, where do they come from? My uncle is so eccentric and a kind of genius who lives freely, following his desire and will. On an occasion, I saw a wired picture at my uncle’s place: in the center of the picture, there was a thick trunk and behind the tree, a bus was there in small as a background. And I asked who had taken this photo. My uncle answered, “Well, it’s strange. Because I snapped the bus and found the tree there after printing it out.” I got stunned by his explanation. The logic is reversing itself. My uncle likes bus and when he saw the bus, he took the photo without noticing the tree; namely his concentration toward the bus erased the existence of the tree from his sight. How surprising! What an irrational behavior! It won’t happen to an ordinary person like me.

There is a different type of genius in my class, JHS-1. She lives in dream and her mind is flouting on the surface of pond of dream like a fairy. This fairy called “Amoabil” likes smiling, playing and joking, and always seeking for something interesting. When she eats, when she walks, when she talks, any moments are playgrounds for this genius. And she is so witty and has a good sense of humor to come up with new ideas, so you can’t anticipate what will happen in the next moment. She is like a jack-in-the-box! For her mind is emancipated from the yoke of “common sense” and her heart is released from any fear, anxiety and worry, as fairy lives in the wonderland: Peace & Happy.

And she is always drunk. Needless to say, she doesn’t drink any alcohol, but she got drunk with life itself. When wind breezes, she gets drunk with the smell of wind; when rain falls, she becomes tipsy with the drop of rain; when a fairy tempts her to the wonderland of Sleep, she falls asleep embraced by the lullaby of the fairy. She can enjoy small happiness in life and never resists her ego like a 3-year old baby. Every small matter in everyday life seems a drop of alcohol for her. And some deaf children utter sounds (though not words), and she always does so like “Dafaaaaa”, “Defefeee”, “Uheee”, as if a drinker was unable to talk properly. Genius, “To be or not to be, this is the question that I want to ask God”. Yet there is one thing for sure: Genius surely lives closer to God than we do.

I remember the title of the Italian movie: “The Legend of the Holy Drinker (La leggenda del santo bevitore)”, though I forgot its story, and when I think of Amoabil, this title came to my mind. From time to time you’d have witnessed the scenes of Genius in sports, music, art etc., as if they’re beyond human beings. The moment your mind is released with extraordinary concentration, you may be able to get closer to God like genius. When you get drunk, your power would be enlarged and you could perform more than you think. It is, so-called, the state of “intoxication” in which human could perform more than human. In Olympic Games, you may have seen that an athlete gets intoxicated (drunk) with extraordinary concentration and people see God in the athlete and also get drunk with it. And in religion, Faith must start with getting drunk by God. Drunk is the religious rite for God. 

Well, the other day my adorable drunken genius fairy, Amoabil, came to me and talked about “work” with her unusual serious face. In the school, some students “help” teachers but some teachers are very cruel to students. According to her, her “master” teacher forced her to work when she was sick and even if she explained it, he didn’t believe her and never gave her medicine. And she worked alone and the teacher’s children didn’t work. I would regard it as a case of “Child-Labor”. I had to wake up from the dream of my Fairy Drinker in order to confront the reality of our school.

L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

I’d like to ask you a question: what makes us, human, alive? Or what controls human? My answer is “Unconsciousness”. Physically “autonomic nervous system” is in charge of basic functions of body such as heart beating, breathing, nerves, and all organs; you don’t how to move your heart beating?! Oh you may say when you meet someone you love, your heart beats faster?! Another question: Can you explain why you love that person? You can’t because Love is controlled by unconsciousness, and Love is a feeling in your mind, which is actually “fiction”. And that’s why you could hate that person when broken heart – the end of the fiction. So why you don’t know the reason you broke up with your partner? Because your unconsciousness finds something different from a “delusion” in your mind such as an image of your partner, namely Love itself is a delusion. In essence we, human beings, cannot control ourselves and are controlled by unconsciousness physically and mentally. 

Interestingly enough, people can control other people. You would know the words “mind control”, “brainwashing”, but no “heart control” and “heartwashing”. So why you can control mind and brain and cannot control heart? I would say that “mind” is something that you artificially create, namely “delusion” while “heart” is unconsciousness itself. When other people change delusions behind mind by imprinting, they can control others, while they can’t control unconsciousness itself, so heart control or heartwashing can be realized from outside by others. So if you talk to heart of people, you can understand each other; if you are true to your heart, your heart will be true to you. That is why children are good at hunch, intuition, and instinct?! That’s why they can see fairy with their heart?!

 Let me talk about something cynical and uncomfortable. You can also apply the same idea for “International Development”, namely “the essential is invisible to the eyes of ordinary people”. Because we are all brainwashed and the truth is hidden by the hands of “some people”. The real evil never shows up in public and does something malicious invisibly like “parasite”. There would be a physical evil as an entity existing in layers of society, however the real evil is not “them” but the evil living in “their” mind, because they’re also brainwashed by the values they follow. Namely they’re just blind and deaf. In sum, we can change their delusions by talking to their unconsciousness hidden behind their evil mind. This is the key to make International Development successful.

Sorry for the digression. Rafiatu is always happy and full of happiness. Her mind and heart consists of happiness, pleasure, joy, and all kinds of positive feelings, so her happiness is always overflowing from her heart, which fills her mind as well. She can unconsciously smile with small matters in every day life. If you try to squeeze your happiness from your mind with the help of things, money, social values, you would get tired at the end of the day and would be brainwashed by someone else because you can’t have gold medal everyday in life. If small happiness overflows from your heart, you don’t even notice “happy”. There are some disadvantages for the deaf caused by the lack of hearing sense, but spirit, endeavor, dream, idea, thinking, love, kindness, happiness, heart, mind, all these human essentials are the same as we have. They are deaf and have disability, but they can be being happy; with  or without disability, God is fair enough to give us happiness indeed.

Lastly, what troublesome is that the essentials are not necessarily always good, but bad aspects of human are also invisible: malice, evil, mean, deceive, betrayal, hypocrisy, etc. so please open your “eyes of heart”, not eyes of mind, to see the world properly.

 

L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.