"The Classroom Without Walls (And with Chickens)"

On my first day of teaching, my students came barefoot. No uniforms. No bags. No books. One even brought a chicken, and I’m still not sure if it was a pet or part of lunch plans. The classroom? It had no walls—just a sagging tarp tied to trees and hope. But they came anyway. Bright-eyed. Curious. Willing. Their curiosity hit me harder than any city rejection letter ever did.

I decided, right then, we needed a real classroom. Not fancy. Just something that didn’t flap in the wind. With the help of students—some of whom were older than me—we started building. Language? That was tricky. I didn’t speak theirs. They didn’t speak mine. We weren’t deaf or mute; we were just separated by thousands of unspoken words. So we turned to gestures, laughter, drawing in the dirt, and lots of trial-and-error. Slowly, a traditional classroom rose from the earth: walls made of bamboo, roof of sago leaves, and dignity woven in every fiber. It wasn’t perfect. But it was ours.

Teaching continued, and slowly, we learned the same language—one made of patience, shared struggle, and homemade chalkboards. They learned math, reading, and why the sun “rises” even though it's technically the Earth moving (that part blew their minds). I, on the other hand, faced my own learning curve—like how to eat Buah Merah, a traditional dish that at first made me gag and later made me smile. I began to forget the city and feel at home in the forest. But sometimes, at night, under a sky riddled with stars, the silence whispered like an old friend: reminding me of everything I left behind.