Reflective Essay (January 25)

I was walking through the hallways after lunch on a Wednesday, struggling to find the sponsor teacher for the chess club that I had just been informed existed at my school. The fact that I was lost is crazy now that I recall this story because I’d been at the high school 3 years and still couldn’t remember which classrooms were in basement one versus basement two! On the other hand, however, I guess it was understandable because I had just found out that my high school had chess club; I really wasn‘t an observant person. Still, my off course walk was good because I meet Emara, and the stories of him kept me laughing…and at times a little afraid, for weeks.

That Wednesday I was originally by myself, but through my search for the chess club sponsor, I realized there were some boys following me. The boys were mostly horse playing behind me and talking loudly, but I knew they were following me because I’d made a circle twice. When I decided to finally stop and turn around, they spoke to me. I didn’t know them but I smiled and waved. One was black, and three were white (I thought). Whether or not they said hi I’ll never know, but they did give me some sort of greeting. The black guy then said “I Amada, what’s your na?” Of course I said “Huh?” for I had never heard of a guy named Amada and I didn’t have a “na”. He said “Huh” right back. We looked at each other for a second and I realized, he didn’t speak English.
It was surprising to me because he looked like a normal black kid and most of his friends I had guessed were white, but they were all African too. I kept asking him his name but I honestly couldn’t pronounce it. Finally I just asked him to spell it. “E-M-A-R-A”, you had to roll the “r”. I cannot to this day roll my “r”s, so I’ll probably never be able to pronounce his name right, but I can definitely spell it. I told him my name and he took my hand and kissed it. It was rather sweet, but still pretty odd because black kids at my school did not usually kiss girl hands upon meeting each other. I’m pretty sure I blushed and I know I told him it was nice to meet him. I believe he said something to the effect of “nice to meet you too” but his accent was extremely heavy. It was evident to me then that he did speak English, but I just couldn’t understand it. After that day I started running into him more often because I soon learned that the ESL classroom was pretty close to my locker.
We would attempt to talk some days when I saw him during school, but I never could understand him completely. In our few chats, I learned no more than that he was a sophomore (which was a grade under me) and that he not only spoke a native African language, but he spoke fluent French and English (though his accent was extremely heavy). We never really could get past that. Now that I look back at it, I realize that we would have been able to communicate better if we had wrote each other rather than tried to communicate orally. Still I figured he understood most of what I said especially when I didn’t use slang. I later discovered that we often were not on the same page when communicating, and we soon stopped chatting.
After we really stopped talking, some days he would wait for me after my psychology class. It was fine at first because I knew the class was near my locker and I assumed he just saw me coming out of that room often so he knew what time I in was there. But then he started waiting on me after other classes and I felt slightly uncomfortable cause he wouldn‘t say anything. He would just walk a little ways with me, stop, and go the other way. It was most uncomfortable because he would walk past the doorway during my classes more than once in a class setting and I found it odd that he knew where they were and odd that he was just watching me and wasn’t in a class himself. When I would look at him he’d dart out of the doorways. I thought it was funny at first, but soon it was bothersome to me because he would be everywhere. I’ve already admitted that I wasn’t too observant of a student, but I knew he wasn’t normally walking the same path as me during the day. He was often going out of his way to see me and it could have been sweet, but he would never really say anything…he was just always there. We weren’t communicating well enough to be hanging out everyday and we just occasionally spoke to each other. Sometimes he would be standing outside of the girls bathroom when I came out too, so that is when I decided to confront him. My friends were noticing him watching me in the hallways and outside of classrooms and soon so did my psychology teacher.
Before I got a chance to speak to him about it, he came up to my locker one day, hugged me, and told me what I made out to be “I’ve never had a girlfriend before.” I said, “ok?” and he hugged me again and stood there. He thought I was his girlfriend. I attributed that to why he had been basically stalking me during the classes he was not in with me. So I tried to talk to him about it and set him straight. I told him he was very nice and we were friends. I told him I was “not” his girlfriend as clearly as possible, and he smiled, nodded, and walked away. I remember my friend Ashley being beside me at that time and we both agreed that my explanation went well. We were totally wrong! For the next week Emara snuck up behind me everyday and hugged me and he followed me most of the time, and every day I politely told him not to do that. He always smiled and ran away. Emara either thought I was joking or confirming our relationship. I told my parents and they only made jokes like my friends, and those jokes would have been funny had I not been afraid. I started avoiding my locker after I knew his ESL class was out and I managed to not have close contact with Emara for a few days but he began catching me after school. My friends would warn me if they had seen him recently and I would walk through school on edge trying to avoid him. He would just stand there at my locker at the end of the day or before school until I started carrying all my books with me in order to avoid my locker. It was the oddest thing because even though my school was huge, he would always find me. My friend Ashley started walking with me when I did need to go to my locker because she knew I was afraid and she understood that either Emara was crazy or we had an apparent language barrier. I kept telling him to stop and he kept popping up more, these times when I was usually walking alone. When I talked to my psychology teacher she told me that the situation was more serious than I thought and that I needed to either explain to him myself that following me and hugging me and standing outside of my classrooms was not ok or I needed to get someone else to explain to him. I did not want to make it a big deal so I chose not to involve the ESL teacher or anyone else.
Finally one day when he reached out to hug me I yelled at him. I told him I did not like him and that he was scaring me. It was after school at my locker and this time there were other people around. He looked extremely hurt and confused and just walked away. I expected him to just pop up at my locker the next day but he didn’t. He never did. I saw him only occasionally the rest of my junior year and we didn’t even speak.
To this day I wish I hadn’t yelled. Although he was stalking me, he probably didn’t see it that way and I believe he was really a kind person. I realize that it must have hurt his feelings or at least confused him when I got loud because after I told him “no” a million times, he never got it until I yelled. Just like smiles are understood in every language, I think now that even if anger isn’t, yelling is probably understood everywhere… at least to some extent. We spoke once or twice my senior year and he never really smiled at me again. I tried to talk to him once since then and apologize and he asked me why I didn’t like him. The truth was I did but he didn’t understand personal space. Of course I couldn’t explain that to him, but the sad part is that I never tried to. As I look back now, I realize that I had a great opportunity to meet someone totally different from me and because of my poor effort and fear, I blew the chance to help an ESL student and the chance to learn about a different culture. I hope to never hurt a person again because of miscommunication.