Air Male

I know that I’m breaking very little new ground when I say that airports aren’t the most pleasant places; the better airports are generally distinguished not by appealing qualities, but by the relative lack of the indignities that characterize the species.  When graded against pretty much any other human-built structure, even the best airports would fall short—less convenient than train stations, uglier than government buildings, less fun than, say, Dave & Buster’s.

All that said, New York JFK appears to suck even for an airport.  Unlike in O’Hare, outlets are in criminally short supply, so I type this sitting cross-legged on the white tile floor, hoping it’s less dangerously unhygienic than it looks.  There’s also a complete lack of electronic departure boards, so underlying all the boredom is the persistent worry that my gate has been changed or flight cancelled without any way to know.  So I sit here, eagerly awaiting the moment when I can stand in line to sit in a tiny chair and breathe in recycled farts for six hours.  The only way to travel!  (In that there is literally no other way for me to reach Guinea.)

I’ve been traveling for twelve hours now; I have about twenty-four more until I arrive in Conakry, Guinea.  My flight lands at 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, and the first day of school is Monday.  Tick-tock.

I’ve been teaching for roughly eight of the last ten years, which I understand will make me something of a hotshot at the international school where I start work in about sixty hours.  It’s nice to be taken seriously and have my experience respected as a useful resource.  On the other hand, all eight of those years were enabled by my exacting qualifications of being born an English speaker and pretty much nothing else.  It should be no surprise that I’m still stuck in that wonderful tailspin of ego and imposter syndrome that’s characterized my career to date: “How dare they treat me as a clueless newbie just because I’ve been hired without any teaching qualifications?  They’d better respect the expertise I have to contribute to the school community…just as long as they don’t discover that I actually have very little idea what I’m doing!”

Twenty-three hours and fifty minutes.

Of course, they know what they’re getting.  Last year this school actually offered to hire Jenn and me both, sight unseen, certification unnecessary.  The only thing that kept us from accepting on the spot was prior commitments, but the fact that I have another year of graduate classes and teaching experience under my belt should make me overqualified if anything.

This is it, then, my big chance.  After the next six months and a few more grad classes, I’ll have the license and Master’s degree to back up the sense of self-importance.  I’ll be qualified to teach in elementary schools around the world.  Assuming, of course, that I make it out of the next six months alive.

That’s another point of conflict: for as much credit as I get from friends and relatives about my international lifestyle, I’ve spent extremely little time in developing countries (to use a somewhat loaded term), and all of that has been in very tourist-centered countries such as Lao and Indonesia.  Sure, plop me in a foreign city and within a day I’m confident I can manage the subway system and mail a postcard home.  The thing is, in addition to having to worry about tropical diseases, poor infrastructure, and wild dogs, I understand Conakry lacks both public transportation and a postal service, rendering my international skills (such as they are) pretty moot.  Mooter than usual.  The mootest, even.

What little I know of my incipient workplace has been fragmentary and not a little frightening.  I understand the school lacks a lot of resources and until this year was housed in a relatively unsafe environment (the phrase “razor wire” doesn’t crop up in most pedagogical literature), and has been kept open and revitalized by the U.S. government in order to maintain diplomatic relations with the country.  Communications with my new coworkers have done little to allay my worries.  If nothing else, I’m confident I can manage the students; jokes about butts transcend culture and language, I’ve found.

I think it would be relevant to bring up how alarmingly poor is my knowledge of Conakry, Guinea, and Africa in general.  I can finally point the city and country out on a map after a bit of sweating, and I know that the lingua franca is French (appropriately enough) and that the region is famous for drumming and, more recently, Ebola.  I feel a bit sheepish about entering a long sojourn in a country with such pathetic ignorance of my new temporary home (not that that stopped me in Korea), but with twenty-three and a half hours to go, it’s a bit too late for that.

I guess knowing things about Guinea is about to sort itself out, one way or another…