Work, Weather, and World War II

So I wanted to write another blog post just to catch up on current events. In terms of the day-to-day, very little has changed down here in the southwest of Tanzania. The O-level classes have closed and it is quieter around school with just the A-level kids hanging around. Currently we’re also in the middle of mock exams for form 6 so that keeps half the kids studying furiously in a corner in an attempt to prepare for their tests. My class’s exam was relatively easy. There were few tricky questions, as most of them were very straightforward and asking for very mainstream concepts to be produced. There were two questions that I thought were out of line as they were never mentioned in the syllabus but I suppose they were probably concepts taught in O-level which would make them fair game for an A-level exam, as they are supposed to be fully cumulative. However, partial fraction decomposition and (less so) the equation for a circle were concepts that we never went over and I’ll be surprised if the students score very well on them. Although, I guess I should be grateful they showed up here and not on the exam for the first time. Other than exams, school is continuing, if only at a seemingly sluggish pace. Since I lost my physics periods, my work load is down hovering around that line where I don’t have to do any work to still get by and at times it can be hard to motivate myself to do quality work day in and day out. However, I am attempting to use the time to give effort in my secondary work, library and presentations, to counter when I regain my physics periods in the coming weeks. However, I find I do better work when I have more of it so it may take that additional responsibility to trigger a consistent quality response.

The seasons are one thing that is changing, and rather rapidly, right now. It has looked like a storm several times and even spit rain while grumbling thunder, but until quite recently the actual precipitation has been lacking. That all changed this last Sunday when I could see the storm clouds gathering in the early afternoon. Part of the difference was the fact that the storm approached about 3 hours before they had been gathering lately, and part of it was the cloud structure, which was much more defined and solid. One of the cool things about tin roofs is that you can hear what is coming for a little bit before it arrives. The storm came in like a continuous crescendo of applause and once the rain showed up the wind picked up too. It got to the point where I was waiting outside to watch the tree that would inevitably fall, do so. I turned out to be correct, although it was only a large branch as opposed to the full tree this time, but I missed it because I was driven inside by the pea-sized hail (yes hail!) that was blown sideways compromising my porch as a shelter. Ever since that storm, we’ve had pouring rain every night, and even some showers during the day. It was clearly the beginning of the season which now looks to stay quite wet. Well, at least it feels like Tukuyu again!

I watched the movie Saving Private Ryan the other day for the first time. I’d wanted to see it ever since I remembered hearing Ian got to go see it in theatres when we were not even teenagers. I’d even seen some of the opening scene once, but never the entire movie. I have no idea if a World War II vet would consider that a good representation of the experience, but it moved me in a way few movies have in recent memory. I have levels of quality in my mind and often movies are good but do not get up to that highest rung, but this one certainly did. From the opening scene where the fronts of the boats open at Omaha Beach to greet a wave of bullets, I was filled with the feeling that I did not appreciate what that war meant to America and the world. We hear the words about how our soldiers are fighting in the name of freedom etc. in Afghanistan and Iraq but somehow, with all the disagreement on where we should be fighting and if we should still be there, the words lose their meaning. But to know that failure meant the conquest of pure evil in the world, the call to fight must have been undeniable. Yet, war in those days was so much different. Casualties were expected and you were happy with numbers lost in a battle that today are unacceptable in a war! Men went to fight, knowing it was likely they would die, and yet they did it anyway; literally for family, god, and country. I don’t think my generation can truly appreciate what war was for those fighting in WWII because I don’t think we think we equate war with such a high likelihood of death. Obviously today’s soldiers have to be willing to give their lives and indeed many have already given themselves mentally to the cause. But at least for me, “going off to war” doesn’t mean what it must have for the men in the 40s.

I think the other element of the movie that struck a chord with me was the camaraderie of the men in battle and dying for your fellow soldier. At the end of the movie, Tom Hanks’ character says to Matt Damon simply, “Earn this.” What an inescapable burden the survivors of that war must have felt from those they left behind on the battlefield. By some inexplicable roll of the dice, they were the ones that got to go home to their wives, girlfriends, and unborn generations that lived only because they did. I have never claimed to understand Post-traumatic Stress Disorder because I’m not sure what it could possibly feel like. But the moment where Private Ryan has grown to an old man and is begging for his wife to tell him he’s lived a good life, earning every life that was sacrificed to save his own on the battle field, I think I got a glimpse of what that burden must have been like to the survivors and how it could cause some to never recover. I’m not trying to say that from one movie I am suddenly privy to even a small portion of what that war did to America, but I think that movie did exactly what a great film does; it gave, if even for only a few moments, the sense of being in the experience and not behind a screen.

Given that today is December 7, I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to every veteran that fought in World War II and every other veteran who has served to keep America and her people safe. And thank you to those who continue to do that duty today, especially my friends and family who are serving. I could not do what I am doing without your work.