Written by Boo Flynn: Akaa team leader and passionate world-traveling teacher.
Just a short 2 years ago I was walking along the dusty paths in Akaa. One year ago I was shuffling my feet in the sand on the way to school in the Marshall Islands. This year I trudge out my front door over frosted boardwalks to a class of yupik eskimo first and second graders in Kasigluk, Alaska. From 90 degrees and sunny every day to temperatures well below zero I would like to say there’s not much that can surprise me. In truth, however, it’s quite the opposite. The more I travel, the more it shocks me to see how similar new places are.
“Anyone who has been to Akaa will tell you that the children are the best part of the experience.”
Boo teaches Akaa students how to count.
Anyone who has been to Akaa will tell you that the children are the best part of the experience. I clearly remember how touched I was by their ability to play hard, adore unconditionally and live easy. Working in the school there was a combination of teaching, diverting, laughing and rolling with the punches. I thought I would never meet kids like that again.
As soon as I graduated college, I took off for the Marshall Islands. After spending time in Ghana, I knew I had to keep traveling. I arrived in a daze after the hour-long boat ride to the small island of 150 people that would be my home for the next year.
The two-week orientation I had could not have prepared me for this. Strange people stared at me with dark eyes, and the ocean stretched out dauntingly before me. I tried to remember what my program directors had told me. “If you need us, there is a radio at your school.” “Take it a day at a time.” “If you think you need to go home, give it time and it will get better.” How was I going to survive here for an entire year?
“Two weeks in Akaa was the best orientation I could have had.”
Boo teaching in the Marshall Islands, a small island country in the Pacific Ocean.
As the boat sputtered away and I stood on the beach doubting every choice that had lead me here, three little girls ran up to me. Babbling in Marshallese, they took my hands and started walking. They pointed to things and spat out Marshallese names. As we walked along the path, adults smiled at me and kids swarmed me, talking to one another and stealing furtive glances up at me. Suddenly I knew I would be fine. I saw that these children had the same unconditional adoration for others that I saw in Akaa. That was the experience that gave me the footing to start on the path of the most amazing year of my life. The packet of orientation materials found a permanent home under a pile of books, and I never once opened to the list of ways to deal with culture shock or the notes from past volunteers. Two weeks in Akaa was the best orientation I could have had.
I came home from the Marshall Islands to start a teaching career. Having grown up in New England, my friends and family encouraged me to look into schools around home. When I told them I had applied to a school district in Alaska, they laughed. I probably would have, too, had I been told 2 years ago that I would end up in Alaska. With Ghana and the Marshall Islands in my mind, though, the New England dependency was gone.
The school in Kasigluk, Alaska, where Boo now teaches.
So here I am in bush Alaska, in a small town accessible only by boat or bush plane. I don’t think twice about the native delicacies such as salted fish heads, and it doesn’t phase me when students miss weeks of school at a time for moose hunting. What never ceases to amaze me, though, is that I see in my students here the kids I knew in Akaa and the Marshall Islands.
As I walk home from school, a chorus rises from the playground as children shout my name. I’m on the other side of the world, but I can hear my students in the Marshall Islands shouting my name from somewhere in the jungle and I can hear the footsteps of kids in Akaa running down the path to catch up with me.
“What never ceases to amaze me, though, is that I see in my students here the kids I knew in Akaa and the Marshall Islands.”
As a yupik child holds my hand and asks me what those spots on my arms are called I remember sitting in the lagoon in the Marshall Islands as my host sisters tried to scrub my freckles off, or sitting in the dry grass on the soccer field in Akaa as children turned my hand over and over in theirs. When one of my students catches me in a hug, I remember Marshallese children casually sitting right on top of me as I try to read and picking through my hair for lice, or Ghanaian kids swarming me to play with my hair. When I see my yupik students playing with chunks of ice, I see Marshallese kids rolling old batteries down the path and Ghanaian kids chewing on plastic water bags. My trip to Akaa is getting farther and farther back in time, but with each of my travels it becomes more and more entwined with my life and closer to my heart.
Read more about Boo’s Alaska experience on her blog
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