Volume 1, Issue 3 & 4 - Diverse Voices Quarterly

PALE KREYÓL?
Diverse Voices Quarterly, Vol. 1, Issue 3 & 4 69
by
Anna Steegmann
When I was ten, I dreamt of leaving Germany to become an assistant to Albert
Schweitzer. Nuns and priests who worked in Tanzania visited our church every year.
They brought the promise of adventure in faraway lands. They showed us slides of the
bush and savanna, swamps and riverine forests, along with the orphanages, schools,
chapels, and dispensaries they had built. We were to collect money and to pray for the
souls of African people. Overcome by Fernweh 1 , I pictured myself living in a hut at the
foot of the Serengeti. Dressed in a prim light-blue uniform, a large crucifix dangling
from my neck, I’d be tending to poor orphans.
I am no longer a Catholic, and I never made it to sub-saharan Africa. Working in
Flatbush, a Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn, with Haitian children was about as
close as I was to get to my childhood dream. It was 1988—the height of the crack
epidemic. Flatbush was full of danger and menace. Gang members and drug dealers
ruled the street. Children were either in school or locked up at home for their own
safety. Holy Innocents School was like a besieged fortress. Neither teachers nor
students dared to venture out for lunch to the nearby Roti stand.
On my second day at Holy Innocents School, I was startled by loud knocking on
my office door. Before I had a chance to get up, a middle-aged portly woman pushed a
skinny boy into my office. “I’m Ms. Roberts, the fourth grade teacher. Are you the new
counselor?” she said. “I got someone to watch my class, so I could bring Gladimir
down to you. I’ve had it with him. This child is going to give me a heart attack.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Gladimir does everything he can to annoy me. He argues. He swears. He
knocks over the chairs in the classroom. When he doesn’t get his way, he throws
books at the other children. Every little thing sets him off.”
Gladimir, a handsome boy with a coffee-colored complexion, was small for his
age. His school uniform was messy; the blue short-sleeve shirt hung outside his
pants, and his plaid tie was splattered with peanut butter. His eyes were enormous
and solemn. When I looked at him, Gladimir stared at the floor. “Keep him for the rest
of the day. I don’t want him back in my class room,” Ms. Roberts said and rushed out
of the room.
1 There is no word in the English language for Fernweh. The opposite of Heimweh (homesickness) it is
the longing for the faraway, the desire for new experiences. It is often translated with another German
word: wanderlust.