Last night, I woke suddenly to rain on my face.
Drips landed on my sleeping eyes. My nose. My mouth.
I sat up to reorient myself, feeling the bed beneath me, the pillow, Eric’s warmth and breathing as he slept soundly next to me.
It was an exhausting week. I had gone to bed early and was in a hibernation-level, slow-wave sleep. I was so tired that despite the abrupt wake-up, my body and brain remained more than half-asleep.
I threw a towel on the bed to catch the drips, grabbed my pillow, my water glass, and my alarm clock (phone) and padded over to our guest bedroom where I immediately fell back asleep.
This is not the first time I have woken up this way. Our roof leaks exactly over my sleeping face with each season’s first heavy, sustained rain over Nairobi as though it were a bucket placed to collect drips.
Although this might seem like an easy fix, there’s really no room to move our bed over. Plus, this is just the second time in six months that this has happened and probably only the fourth time since we moved in a year and a half ago. So I forget about it fairly quickly. I now know not to call our landlord to send someone to repair the roof. After a few minutes, the wood swells and the drips stop. As far as we’ve observed, the leak doesn't return until the roof has dried out again and a new wave of monsoons begins. And then the cycle starts again – drips-wake-towel-guest room-swelling-stop-dry. No big deal.
Visas
When I awaken from a deep sleep and then fall back asleep like that, I often have vivid dreams that I actually remember in the morning.
In last night’s second sleep, I dreamt of a close friend who had traveled with me from Kenya to the United States. We were staying at a hotel and the manager barged into our room and demanded to see her visa. He grabbed her arms as if to handcuff her, handling her brusquely in the way of the “Cops” show from the 90’s and early 2000’s. The fight and feistiness drained from her body. She made herself small, resigning to the situation, looking at me with tired, you-people eyes.
I don’t know what happened next. Don’t ask me what business a hotel manager has verifying a person’s legal right to be in a country. It was a dream. A nightmare.
In my nightmare, I started to try to figure out what to do about this injustice. I felt rage and powerlessness and guilt and shame.
Then, I mercifully woke up, safe in my bed, my U.S. passport in the office safe just down the hall, my citizenship wrapping me in a warm blanket in my cozy, dry guest bedroom. I could have slept forever.
I know the seed of this dream was an earlier conversation about how hard it is for people with Kenyan passports to travel – especially to the US – and how easy it is for those of us from the U.S., Canada, and western Europe to go anywhere. And another about whether or not our nanny will be able to join us for two months in Colorado during the North American summer when we make our second annual pilgrimage to our home in the mountains from our home in Nairobi. Her visa renewal appointment is coming up and we are gripped with our all-eggs child care plan hanging in U.S. authorities’ hands.
Another seed for my nightmare was a work meeting when several people – Kenyan, Indian, and American – discussed the wait time to get a visa with various passports. Here in Kenya, the U.S. embassy proclaims with pride its streamlined, expedited visa process. Indeed it may be relatively faster and relatively easier than before, but it can still take months or even years.
From Visaguide.World:
“The processing time for a US visa application depends a lot on the type of visa you are trying to get. While the temporary nonimmigrant visas might take you up to a few weeks, or months at most, the immigrant visas can take years to get approved.”
These conversations dripped into my consciousness.
Choice and Inclusion
Hear me out. This is connected to the theme of
.For me, an educator who wants to mainstream apple-a-day, outdoor, nature-based learning in schools everywhere, who advocates for learning outdoors to be “plan A” always, who has seen and felt the positive difference teaching and learning outdoors has made for teachers and students, it all seems so obvious. Just go outside. Now.
Teach students outdoors. You can do it. You must do it. No need to ask for permission.
But there are nuances to making the choice to teach outside. And not everyone has a choice. There are different passports and levels of access and inclusion and welcome and these all have real implications, not just the stuff of dreams or nightmares.
Sleeping under the stars might not feel so good if there were no “it all” to get away from.
Being off-the-grid might not generate a sense of relief if you’ve never had access to electricity.
An evening stroll in the park might not seem so inviting if you’ve been working under the hot, harsh sun doing backbreaking labor all day. Maybe what you want then is a cold beer, hot shower, air conditioning, and TV.
Likewise, teaching and learning outdoors might feel unsafe and unwelcome if there is no safe indoor classroom from which you ventured. If you have no choice in the matter. If sitting under the tree is the only option. Or harsh sun on bare ground. If outdoor learning is “plan A” because there is no “Plan B.”
There is something here about choice and privilege. Those of us – including yours truly – who are passionate lovers of more-than-human nature (educators, ecologists, botanists, birders, permaculturists, gardeners, hikers, bikers, runners, walkers, academics, artists, etc) must be mindful of the privilege we’ve had to develop our love for nature.
I know when my roof leaks I can just go sleep in the guest room.
When it comes to mainstreaming apple-a-day nature-based learning in schools, we need to meet teachers where they are. For starters, we might bring nature indoors.
Next, we might develop some outdoor classrooms that look a whole lot like indoor ones – with a roof, desks and chairs, and a whiteboard, but maybe only three walls. These outdoor classrooms must feel familiar and welcoming. The should be filled with many of the creature comforts of an indoor classroom. In these three-walled spaces, students might see a bird fly by or wonder about the shape of a cloud. They might be calmed by the leaves rustling in a tree. They will inevitably start asking questions about what’s beyond.
And meanwhile, let’s not unnecessarily conflate outdoor nature-based learning with a whole new pedagogy or curriculum or something inaccessible or only for certain “outdoorsy” teachers. Instead, let’s cast a broad, inclusive, accessible net where facilitating apple-a-day nature-based learning is a small adaptation of the skills of the teaching trade and draws from expertise that ALL classroom teachers already have. If we do this, teachers from all backgrounds can see nature-based learning as part of their bag of tricks. As being for them.
Feeling welcomed, when they do teach outside, there’s a good chance they’ll enjoy the fresh air. Or the calm they feel because their learners are finally able to focus. Or they’ll see a student light up who has never indicated a shred of interest in school before.
The birds, the clouds, the leaves…the fresh air, the calm, the focus, the lit-up student – these are the invitations to venturing further afield. They are openings to abandon another wall or walk away from the classroom all together into forests or fields. They are emissaries for inquiry-based, authentic, place-based, relevant learning. By choice.
❤️ Becca