Healing
TLDR from ChatGPT: The author reflects on their solo
backpacking trip, seeking healing and headspace after a busy period hosting
visitors from Cape Town. They recall interactions with Mimi, a forceful figure
who embodies healing traditions passed down from her ancestors. Through Mimi's
stories and teachings, the author learns about gratitude, commitment, and the
transformative power of deep engagement with life. Mimi's approach to teaching
and mentoring prompts introspection about the author's own role as a teacher
and their future path. The trip serves as a journey of self-discovery, despite
being cut short by rain, leaving the author feeling rejuvenated and inspired.
April 7, 2024
I’m
writing on a hiking journal I made for myself, sitting on a bear canister and
looking out over a low-lying fog hanging over the treed hill on the other side
of the Hoh River. I’ve been hearing this rhythmic guttural sound that has the
arpeggiating crescendo of bird call but is chillingly resonant. Do bears make
that sound? Elk?
It was my
desire to do a solo backpacking trip, despite the forecasted but fortunately so
far sporadic rain I’ve encountered here, despite learning 30 years and 30 miles
from here—when I fled a trip alone despite the beauty of Third Beach—that maybe
I don’t fill my time as satisfyingly as I foresee. Hiking alone, yes. But backpacking?
Check with me tomorrow.
I want to
do two things on this trip: recover from an extraordinarily breathless couple
of weeks preparing, coordinating, and leading a fully hosted visit of sixteen
students and teachers from Cape Town, and, to find headspace to write about
some of the big things I experienced, hosting Mimi, in particular.
I have
been chaperoning trips to Cape Town since 2017, and from the start, I was awed
by Mimi’s force of will. She is wise and loud, with as sudden a solemnity as with
quick laughter, directing a crowd like a fifth limb, and, with a rebuke,
wielding shame like a thunderbolt to the soul.
April 8, 2024
Just
slept eleven hours, from 7:20 p.m. until 6:20. It was mostly dry last night,
with a light rain now.
In 2019, our
three high schools went for our closing retreat to a place new to us on the Melkbosstrand.
The large, forbidding steel door between wings inspired rumors. Both Mimi and Polly—a
sensitive and culturally unapologetic urban from Yakama Nation who came as
chaperone and driver with my group—sensed something wrong when we arrived in this place. The two quietly went out in the dunes to
introduce themselves to the ancestors and learn what to do for welcome, Polly told me later. She didn’t say what they did, but the place was put to ease.
Since our
visit, Polly had told me that Mimi’d put herself on the path to becoming a
healer, and a Facebook post in isiXhosa—with many congratulations—confirmed.
It’s a very big deal, Polly said. But it was not until hosting Mimi last week
that I glimpsed what that meant.
What does
it mean? Finding cures—physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. Finding
solutions to complex problems and ways forward from unhappiness. She finds
these things through her ancestors, who also were sangoma in their time. They
speak to her through dreams, and more intrusively, knocking about in her head
when Mimi’s just trying to go about her day. Mimi says that people who have
accepted and started on the path of the sangoma and then tried to leave it
cannot stop the ancestors from trumpeting in their heads: they’ve ended up on
the streets, broken and raving. And so this is piece of what Polly meant by a
big deal decision—there’s no going back to a life inhabited by the narrow world
of job and husband, family, friends, and holidays. The ancestors are insistent,
and the mind and body are ever available in waking and in sleep, until Mimi
joins them in death.
April 9, 2024
Wet
morning, wet night; wet evening, wet day. Everything I own is damp and marked
by the forest rot on my wet fingers. It’s six in the morning and the river at
least is louder than the rain against my brave tent. But I am reluctant to get
up and put on the raincoat heavy with wet. I will hike the twelve miles back to
the car today. I can’t stay when every pair of good socks burble in the sodden,
impermeable shoes.
April 10, 2024
I am
writing now from a dry coffee shop blocks from my home. Did I fulfill my two
objectives, to recover and find headspace to turn over events of the past
couple weeks?
Mimi
turned my thinking inside itself only a couple days after her arrival, during
the open mic at the weekend retreat at Camp Killoqua. The oldest boy poured his
heart out there, first in an existential poem he read in turns with his American
host brother, and then, more sharply, in a poem about his father, solemnly and sonorously
intoned by a classmate while the poet openly keened and wept in his seat.
After the
event was over, Mimi went and stood over him, and commenced to scold him a while
and left.
She
returned to where the teachers were sitting and explained. He was sad about his
missing father. I told him, Your mother does everything for you. Everything.
Why are you crying for that loser?
What a
jolt—for all of us, and especially for Seattleites steeped in the pedagogy and
activism of compassion.
The next
night, back at my house, Mimi told Stephanie and me some of her own story:
Mimi grew
up with both a mother and a father in the home, but having both parents was no
great thing, she said. Her two older brothers would hand their paychecks to their
father and then he would disappear for the weekend, leaving them with no money
for their own needs and their mother to scrounge for their meals.
When Mimi
came of age and became a teacher, her father demanded her paycheck too. Mimi
said, You don’t get one blue cent. You can have my pay stub to see how much
money I’m getting, to see that my money is going to the proper taxes, but you
get none.
And she
went to the store with her mother and they filled two carts with food.
Later,
her younger sister got a job and followed Mimi in refusing their father. He did
not like that.
Then Mimi
came to her point, returning to what she’d said to the boy at open mic:
So this
student. I told him not to think about that loser but the mother who does
everything for him, who feeds him, supplies him, supports his every
opportunity, including a flight all the way to America, because she wants him
to thrive. The father, what does he do? He does nothing. The mother, what does
she do? Everything. But he puts his heart on the father, so the heart breaks.
The
student was mortified and regretted not appreciating his mother. She scolded
him for this, too:
No. She
does all this not so that you feel badly, but so you go out and make a better
life for yourself. What parents need most is for you to go and have a secure
life, and that’s what they do it all for. So that’s what you need to do. Don’t
feel bad for your mother, and don’t spend a second on your father. Put your
gratitude in making a good life for yourself, and be strong in your mother’s
love.
As Mimi was
telling us this, our daughter Maisie was up in her room. Mimi suddenly turned
her attention to her: Maisie chooses to come home in her spare time. You did
your job, then. She could be elsewhere, but she’s happy to rest here. She knows
this home is love, so you two are done. You did your job as parents and now
you’re done.
For me,
this was the beginning of a thought about a deep commitment and its
relationship to gratitude. There is an aimless and lost purposefulness in
myself, and to many who share my cultural heritage of self and bottom line—a
scarcity of appreciation for all that elders and most of all family have done
to stand us up and so a lack of urgency to live up to our own riches.
Mimi
continued to demonstrate such largeness of purpose as she described how she
framed her approach to teaching art and to preparing the travelers for this
visit:
She tells
her art students that no matter how poor you are, you can show the world your
creativity. But you have to commit. You have to put everything you have into
your work; and when you do, no one will be able to compete, no matter what
money they have and you don’t.
And she
told her travelers, Think how much money has been spent to send you all the way
to Seattle, and how many people raised it because they were excited to bring
you here. You have to live up to this, she told them. Forty people didn’t get
to go. You have to live up to them, too. So many people made this possible for
you. So when you get there, and it’s time to perform, you have to sing. Sing
like no one has ever sung this before. And then, Mimi described, she’d speak to
students individually: You. You have to be this person.
The
student with the poems, Mimi charged him to forget his father and live up to
his mother, and the next day, she said, his deep weight had been lifted. He had
a miraculous realization.
This is
why I love Hands for a Bridge, Mimi said to Stephanie and me that night. That
student, he was like a duck who goes in water and he comes out wet. The others,
they’re still ducks who go in water but they come out, they’re still dry. But
now his friend, he reads these poems and he gets a little wet too. This is the
goal for every child, that they go on this trip and they come back really
changed; they come back wet.
April 11, 2024
At my
high school, for the years since the Covid shutdown, our administration has
embraced our district’s goals of inclusive grading, restorative justice, and
particular thought and care for Students Furthest from Educational
Justice—referred to as SFFEJ—by asking patience, grace, and frequent
communication. But all this has somehow translated into a noticeable segregation
in our building: Black students in halls, lunchroom, and library, and everyone
else in classrooms. I know that’s an oversimplification. Still. When teachers
last year demanded more support in getting students to our rooms, we were a)
individually presented the same “wonder” [eduspeak turns innocent verbs into tools]—I
wonder why your students don’t feel more welcome and invited in your space?—and
b) collectively told by our principal that we were no longer going to rely on punishing
students who have been historically traumatized. Good theories. But in
practice, we’re a white staff knowingly allowing Black students to fail.
Midway
through the visit, the South Africans joined History classes in the library for
a few periods. By the end of the day, Mimi witnessed the same group of jawing
bodies return again and again to a corner of stuffed chairs in the corner.
Mimi and her colleague went
to these kids she didn’t know and started dressing them down. The librarian
called a few other Black boys over to stand under their piercing heat:
What are you doing? You are at the best school
in the city and what are you doing? What is your mother doing right now? Oh,
she’s working at the hospital. Is she a doctor? Is she a nurse? No? Then she’s
a cleaner. And how much money are you carrying with you today? Who gave you
this money? Show me your phones. What about these expensive phones? Who bought
these for you? Your mother. Your mother gave you all this. Why? Because she
wants you to be happy. She wants you to have what you need so you have the
advantages other students have so you can succeed. And what have you done with
all that? All she wants is for you to work hard. Is it so hard? You’re black,
but you’re not dumb. But you choose to be cool and you don’t go to your
classes. I see you coming to the library all day. Why aren’t you going to your
classes? If you don’t understand the work, tell me, who you have asked for
help? Who. Nobody? Look. Look at the pictures of our students. These are
squatters’ houses, made out of zinc. These are not wealthy children. But they
have flown all the way around the world to make their lives better. They are
poor but they are working hard. You should know better. Your mother sends you
to the best school in the city and makes sure you have what you need here so
you can come and make something of yourself. How do you think your running away
from classes all day makes her feel? Go to your classes. Learn your lessons.
It’s not hard.
What a
dousing. I hope these are some ducks to come away wet.
* * * * *
When Mimi
describes her initiation into the sangoma, she strokes the string of turquoise
and white beads that hang from her neck. She dreamed exactly these strands. The
furred ends are from the goat sacrificed at the beginning of the journey,
something that also signals her rank to others on the journey. Dreams are
essential to the process and to the communication with ancestors. Everything
she needs to fulfill this journey will come to her in her dreams, and it is up
to the ancestors to put her on the path to encounter their manifestations in
waking life. It is the reason her teacher says initiates must not sleep with
their partners until their journey is complete: Another body in the bed
interferes with dreaming. When Mimi goes to her teacher on the Eastern Cape,
initiates sleep in the middle of the compound, her teacher on one side, and his
wife, even now, well away in a room on the other. It is because Mimi stays with
her husband at night that her initiation is now in its third year rather than
third month.
Nevertheless,
her dreams have brought everything she has needed, and dreams put her on this
path: Mimi originally rejected the whole process despite her inheritance,
telling others that, no, she would not be a healer until both of her dead
parents showed up in her dreams and demanded it. Then she did dream of her
father. And she dreamed of her sangoma great-grandmother who was the one who
revealed this particular healer and where to find him.
Mimi
dreamed of this man, this sangoma teacher, and she found him. She dreamed of
the red cow that will be sacrificed to bring her the final connections and has
learned where this cow can be found. She has dreamed of needed herbs and
medicines. She has dreamed of the beads she wears now but also the beads she
will need in the end. Those beads are the last thing Mimi needs to find.
It sounds
exhausting. When she’s on the Eastern cape every Wednesday and Friday night and
Sunday, she hauls around hillsides gathering weeds and at night will be woken
any time when the healer, who seems never to sleep at all, wakes the initiates
to tell them ancestors need to talk to them. In everyday life, ancestors are
always piping up: This one is lying. This one is a bitch. And Mimi will say,
No! Why are you telling me this right now? And through all this, Mimi is still
teaching full-time. Sometimes, ancestors will call her and she’ll go groggy and
fall asleep in front of students. But they’re Xhosa too and know what it’s
about. They tell each other: Don’t worry. That’s just Missus talking to people
we can’t see.
I
witnessed it myself. On our final Saturday, we took our students to Bainbridge
Island, first visiting the Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Garden and then
to the Suquamish Museum and Chief Sealth’s grave. We visited the garden on
March 30th—the 42nd anniversary of Bainbridge forced
voyage to internment at Manzanar and Minidoka. We missed the speeches but not
the extraordinary sense of community and power, laying the many cranes we were
given against the winding memorial wall. But Mimi was halting. On the way to
the Suquamish Museum, she told me the ancestors were angry with her: She hadn’t
introduced herself and hadn’t praised the ancestors there. On Suquamish lands, where
ancestors openly live among the people, Mimi kept to herself, communing.
In some
sense, Mimi was already a healer before she found her first beads. But I know
from disruptions to my own sense of right and purpose and from the loose joy I feel
today that Mimi is sanctified.
* * * * *
This
visit from the South Africans was very meaningful to me, as meaningful as any
trip I’ve taken with students to Cape Town. Perhaps more.
These
last few years of teaching have been demoralizing and hollow. I know many
workers have more distant relationships to their jobs since Covid. I know that
teachers around the country have faced the new stresses of our jobs and come up
short. And it’s true for me, too: For the first time in my career, my work has
become a job I go to, and I have studied how to leave it.
This
visit, I knew, was likely to be my last big thing. And I spared myself nothing.
Preparing for hosting and coordinating all the field trips and other
necessaries—the exponentially expanding red tape and encounters with fussy,
admonishing, soul-defeating bureaucrats—propelled me to announce this would be
my last year as a teacher in the program. When our visitors arrived, I was
coordinating assemblies and class visits and speakers and open mics and trips
to other schools and the retreat and field trips and potlucks and the hosting
families and student-groups in clubs and setting up the informal gatherings. I
was the go-to for all emergencies and disruptions to communication. I was the
primary group teacher, the leading emissary outside our school. And I was
conducting my own classes, still collecting essays. I gave up all my time
before and after school and lunch to the visiting teachers. My own hosting
responsibilities meant comforts at home and meals to take out. I didn’t sleep
more than a few hours a night, weighing details, settling emergencies. One evening
I set an alarm for ten minutes and woke up at the end of it bewildered. I lost
eight pounds. All my moments were occupied. I put everything of myself into
this visit.
But by
the end, I was joyful, deeply fulfilled in my work as a teacher for the first
time in years, years.
Mimi
pushed an urgency into it all, into how I teach, how I live: Will I live up to
others, will I demand others live up to all they’ve been given and all they
face? Am I still the teacher I need to be and also the teacher my students need
me to be? Will I move to something else, and is this something I can cultivate
as richly, commit to as fully?
I went to
up the Hoh River Trail alone, to explore some of these questions, to think of
what I’ve learned from Mimi, to comprehend the largeness of life she invokes,
as a teacher and as a healer, to commune with my own whispers—in the bending
trees and regenerative loam of their leaves and needles, their hanging moss and
intermingling roots. Going there and sitting down to write gave me a start.
I left
because the rain overpowered me.
And I came away wet.
