The fourth and final quarter has begun at the American School of Douala. In the first two quarters, my class and I spent the first ten minutes of every class reading a book that was not assigned for class. The goal was to encourage reading outside of class, bring down higher energy levels after gym classes and get our minds focused on the tasks at hand. For the next two quarters, this practice has been replaced by ten minutes of writing. This practice will bring down energy levels and set our minds to task, but it is also an opportunity to experiment with our creative sides. Students are free to write about anything they want or interpret the prompt in any medium they wish – the prompts are only for those who need inspiration.
I write the same prompts with my students in all three of the classes we practice this activity – teachers should always be willing to do what they ask of students. Below are the prompts from this past week and my favorite of the three responses I wrote with my classes. All prompts were written by myself.
The picture at the top of this post was taken by our apartment’s pool this past weekend. It’s a hard life here in Cameroon.
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Monday 14 March
Why is it so hard to stop bad habits? Is that harder than starting new, good habits?
There are a lot of thoughts on this. As “creatures of habit,” the separation of our identity and our behaviors into different camps is problematic, and in many ways this question frames a dichotomy that is unresolvable; the subject, I, is a static, unchanging thing, while the object, habit, is by definition a series of actions and events defined by their patterns. At a basic level, I cannot have habits, because I would change as they come and go, which implies that I am not some unmovable thing, which means that the word “I” loses most of its meaning. What this dichotomy really shows is that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously, and we especially shouldn’t judge ourselves too harshly, for the patterns we wish to change. We are those patterns, continually folding and unfolding, hopefully towards a greater good or a more perfect version of ourselves, but always oscillating, never stuck in place. Even our worst habits teach us about ourselves.
***
Tuesday 15 March
“Beware the ides of March.” – Shakespeare
Do you believe in bad luck? How significant is luck in your decision making or in your life?
Throw salt over your shoulder
for the ones that got away;
they walked across your path,
black tail, silent as night,
and made the hairs stand tall
on the back of your neck,
my mother’s back was broken once, she turned out pretty great,
so step on all the cracks you please
crack the mirror while you’re at it –
what an improvement already –
walk under a ladder while the man’s about to sneeze.
Luck has never made herself known,
good or bad, tied or free,
but when my lottery is finally over,
pour one out for me.
***
Wednesday 16 March
You wake up in a strange bed. Everything feels different. You go to the bathroom and, after looking in the mirror, realized that you are living inside your best friend’s body. You call the friend (yourself?) and learn that they are now inhabiting your body. What are you going to warn that other person about?
The day begins over an hour before school, or it begins badly. Never underestimate the number of alarm clocks – always add one more than sanely predictable. Plug in the coffee pot first. Answer the emails in first period, not second. That last student wasn’t alive for 9/11, but the one after her wasn’t alive when Obama won the presidency. These are the things that coffee will make you aware of, so try to drink less than three cups before lunch. Spend at least five minutes an hour considering the incredibly impossibility of human existence in a universe of so many seemingly-random chance occurrences, especially when stressed. If the air conditioning is off for longer than five minutes, close your eyes and try to remember Rwanda (or would that be remembering my memory? Unclear rules.). The hour of the day you are least likely to want to do anything healthy or productive is 4:00 PM, when the day catches up with you. That’s the worst part; if you keep focused, you will find evening exercise to be very rewarding. And for the love of everything good in this world, be in bed by 9. You’ll want to leave one foot outside of the blanket.
***
Thursday 17 March
Soil. Dust. Earth.
There is a path near Dschang
that twists and cuts for hours
within green walls, thin stalks, bursts of color
and on the path are rivers
in the road
they dance together, depressed streams of wear,
calloused by tire tracks,
pressed hard into the Earth.
There is a path near Dschang
that is parched, gasping for life,
where days before color screamed,
and traffic, rivers, flowed
in the road
they submit to caked dust,
a pallet of ogre and soil,
picked up by the march of the timber industry.
There is a path near Dschang
that can breath again, free at last,
where flowers bounce under heavy rain drops
in the road
there are reservoirs, murky, jumping
archipelagos of access, cutting above the bend,
flying onward, carried by butterflies.
***
Friday 18 March
Many people believe that in stressful situations, people resort to a “fight or flight” instinct. Are you more likely to fight or leave in these situations? What do you think that means?
Below is a conversation that I had with my brother recently. I’m lucky to be related to such an outstanding man. Missing you, Zach.
CJ: One billionaire CEO down, 100000 to go ~
ZJ: There’s not that many billionaires Chris
Johnson: Even if you took all their wealth you’d just fund our governmental expenditures for a week.
CJ: We’d save thousands of women suffering from breast cancer
CJ: Seems worthy to me
CJ: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1LOB9vN07AR8GMalI8zftZ?si=ejrkwqaMR4ikDDTIrvwNEw
ZJ: And then tens of thousands would be without jobs because the people who make the jobs wouldn’t be doing it anymore
CJ: [insert Koolaid meme here]
ZJ: ?
CJ: Gulp gulp gulp
CJ: This is the only political argument I find compelling anymore
ZJ: What do you mean gulp gulp gulp?
CJ: That you’re drinking the koolaid
CJ: I thought that was pretty self explanatory, sorry
ZJ: In hindsight I see it but at the time I thought you were saying “oh yeah” lol. So are you saying I’m drinking the kool aid to say that industrialists wouldn’t be industrialists if we took all their incentive for doing so?
CJ: No, that you only seem to lionize the wealthy and powerful elites, like most proletarians throughout history have, instead of sanctifying the sacrifices and struggles of normal, real humans
CJ: I’ve never heard you praise a pacifist, or a beggar, or a ln activist. Only the greedy and violent. And it’s soooooooooooo boring
ZJ: This coming from the guy who once cursed me out for getting a pizza for a homeless dude
ZJ: 🤔
CJ: *you were being an asshole, context matters
CJ: But touché lol
ZJ: Also, I work with the most real, normal people in the country in service to all the rest of the country. I came from the same background as you did. I think maybe you’re a little off base to say that I don’t have any relation to the struggles of the common man.
I don’t praise pacifism because I don’t believe pacifism is praiseworthy. I don’t praise beggars, or certainly activity’s, unless they have a redeeming quality that deserves praise.
And to say I only praise the greedy and violent – your evidence? Praising the wealthy is not the same thing as praising the greedy and praising the brave is not the same thing as praising the violent.
CJ: Have you heard any convincing arguments against these beliefs recently? Are you able to be self-critical and complex in your thinking? Is there a crack, anywhere, that you can acknowledge in your idealistic foundations?
Regardless of what I think about your opinions – and I’m sorry that my judgmental language has helped create this tension – I find the totality of your ideology frustrating. By not admitting room for error (in this case, strongman CEO idolatry can certainly be criticized intellectually), you close down discussion, which makes discourse boring.
Saying that there’s nothing to be praised within pacifism closes down a Stellaris ethic full of history that contains convincing cases both for and against it. Like you only know how to play the game one way, and that was is enough. There’s no fun to be had anywhere else. Discourse requires critical thinking.
The solidarity that comes through military camaraderie is honorable and beautiful. There’s a lot of Kurdish brothers who showed me that pacifism and that camaraderie aren’t mutually exclusive. So your beliefs are also disappointing (or at least expressed to me in a way that makes me feel pretentiously disappointed lol) because they exclude the opportunity for your beliefs to grow and encompass new definitions, and thus become more beautiful and perfect.
ZJ: I think it kinda boils down to our overarching difference in assessing value/meaning. Like when you say “encompass new definitions and thus become more beautiful and more perfect,” to keep that doesn’t follow. But I think for you, you believe meaning (maybe perfection?) comes through a breadth of experiences / viewpoints. Would you say that’s accurate?
As for me, I take the opposite perspective. There is a single perfect perspective out there and I want to mold my perspective to it. Meaning comes from depth, not breadth.
I feel like this is a very fundamental difference that leads to the difference in a lot of our opinions
CJ: Hmmm…. I can get behind that division. Although I wonder how much of that dichotomy is really there in some dialectic way and how much we define our perspectives as opposites because its easier to frame our ideas as traditionally opposites. Is there really a polarity in belief here, or do we make up one because we like the conflict/disagreement that it seems to need? And how much more holistic and healthy and mature would both our perspectives be if we instead saw these perspectives as two necessary but insufficient languages needed to sing the beauty of the world?
CJ: I have to go kick some ass at pool
CJ: Talk soon
ZJ: “Two necessary but insufficient languages needed to sing the beauty of the world.”
1) That’s what I’m talking about. For you, you think our two viewpoints are both necessary and insufficient. For me, I don’t want my viewpoint to be insufficient and I think there is, somewhere, a sufficient viewpoint. So essentially you’re retrenching into your perspective, which makes me more confident that my assessment on the dichotomy is accurate.
2) the hell does singing the beauty of the world mean? Lol
Hey love you bro go kick ass
ZJ: Represent the fam
***
certification 
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