Coming up for twenty years ago my youngest daughter went a worked for a few months in Tanzania, teaching English. This is what I wrote at the time
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Over the water and far away.
Over the water and far away
my daughter is teaching English
to children who want to learn.
Eighteen years old, five feet tall,
and as Cornish as a Standing Stone.
With a class of one hundred
most of them taller and some
much older. But Kizzi’s in charge.
Knobbly black knees forced underneath
or jutting above child-sized desks.
Their hard won words erased each evening
so the precious paper can be used again.
I glibly throw words into my keyboard
whilst they clutch a short stubby pencil
and wrestle with the language of hope,
knowing that daydreams can come later.
Hi G, I am taken by this, it kept me reading. The second stanza has a strong sense of place.
One thought that came me while reading is why not be more specific in the first line? ‘Thousands of miles away in Tanzania’
You’ve made me think about this for a while. It was a while back, but I suspect that to me ‘over the sea and far away’ conveyed an infinite distance, rather than the specific geographical location of Tanzania.
The concept of ‘over the hills and far away’ is deep rooted in our English psyche, even within the bounds of our own relatively small island. I was very much aware of the separation of parent and child, and the cold awareness that if something went horribly wrong there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t just ‘go and get her’.