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    Teachers: The Ones I Can’t Forget
    Teachers: The Ones I Can’t Forget
    Teachers: The Ones I Can’t Forget
    Ebook121 pages1 hour

    Teachers: The Ones I Can’t Forget

    By Martin Fletcher

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    About this ebook

    • Written by National Jewish Book Award winner Walking Israel and finalist Promised Land
    • Appeals to Jewish readers due to author’s name recognition and background 
    • Offers an inspiring and uplifting look at picking up the pieces following personal tragedy
    • Featuring real-life reportage from Martin Fletcher’s work as an overseas news correspondent  
    • Includes many extraordinary images to illustrate each story/interview
    • An intimate self-examination and career assessment by the journalist Anderson Cooper considered “the gold standard of television war correspondents”
    • Emphasizes the importance of gratitude and resilience  
    • Addresses themes at the nexus of hard-nosed journalism and wellness literature
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMorgan James Publishing
    Release dateFeb 28, 2023
    ISBN9781636981086
    Teachers: The Ones I Can’t Forget
    Author

    Martin Fletcher

    Considered for decades the “gold standard of TV war correspondents” by Anderson Cooper, Martin Fletcher was an NBC News Correspondent and bureau chief in Tel Aviv for nearly thirty years. Fletcher has won five Emmys and a Columbia University DuPont Award—a Pulitzer for work in television—as well as awards from the Overseas Press Club and Royal Society of Television.  Today, Fletcher’s work as an author is rapidly gaining an equally impressive reputation. He has written non-fiction resources Breaking News and Walking Israel, the latter receiving the National Jewish book award, as well as novels: The List, Jacob’s Oath, The War Reporter and Promised Land, which was compared in multiple reviews with Exodus and ranked as a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. He currently lives in Mexico and New York.

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      Book preview

      Teachers - Martin Fletcher

       INTRODUCTION

      Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight

      I HAVE LONG WANTED to write a book about what I learned in my four decades of reporting, and of course joked it would have to be a very slim book.

      I’ve certainly seen a lot. My business was to meet people on the worst day of their lives, tell their story, and move on, often to a different tragedy in a different country. I needed thick skin, but many left a scratch on my soul. I learned from their lives and they changed me.

      It is from this well that I draw.

      For our world is made of tiny stories. Some are happy and funny, some are tragic, some merely unfortunate.

      We are told the road to success is paved with failure, for that is where the lessons are, these are the stories that help us grow. Well, that’s where I come in.

      Take the Greek women’s relay team. In the 4 x 400 relay at the 2004 Athens Olympics, the United States women won gold, Russia silver and Jamaica bronze. But the stadium’s loudest cheer came a full half minute later when the last Greek runner finally fell across the finish line. While the press pounced on the victors, my attention was on the losers. Who were these Greek duds? How did it feel to fail so fully? Before their home crowd even?

      All winners celebrate the same way. They leap and hug and laugh and drape themselves in the national flag before the cameras. But what do the losers do?

      ________________

      The people I learned from lost. They may have been defeated, scared, weak, alone, but none gave up. They put one foot before the other and then another in the hope that tomorrow would be a better day, however unlikely.

      Like the mother who waved away her newborn because she hated the thought of bringing her son into war and exile. Yet two days later, in her freezing tent in Kosovo, I watched as she nursed her baby and beamed with joy. The father in Somalia whose wife and four daughters died of starvation, yet who still dreamed of going home to plant his crops, find a new wife, and sit under the tree. The little girl in Macedonia who lost her family yet never stopped smiling. Every day in the refugee tent she drew stick figures of her mother and father and after two months, found them again. All these people and a thousand more taught me never to give up hope, that every problem has a solution, and that if you don’t find it, keep looking. And if you still can’t find it, well, find another way. As the saying goes, a door closes and a window opens. The Japanese say, fall down seven times, get up eight. And the British wartime slogan was Keep Calm and Carry On.

      Anyway, what choice do we have?

      ________________

      In these pages I want to introduce you to some of the people from whom I have learned, and maybe pass on some of their lessons. I emerged from many of my encounters bewildered, wondering how the people I met in such hard times could possibly recover and how they could pick up the pieces. Over many years, and in many places, their fortitude has made our world stronger, and their tiny stories have given me forbearance and understanding. Above all, they have made me grateful for what I have and shown how easily it can be taken away.

      ________________

      My first teacher is Evelyne, a sweet little girl in Uganda. Eight years old, Evelyne was an orphan and HIV positive, yet she was wise beyond her years. The cover of her schoolbook revealed everything, and wet my eyes.

      TEACHERS

      KAMPALA 2008

      Evelyne, in the red shirt, eight years old, an orphan. Her parents died of AIDS, she is HIV positive. She makes her bed, cleans the floor, washes and irons her clothes and each day walks from the orphanage to school. On the cover of her school book she wrote, School of Struggle and Class of Hope.

       TEACHER ONE

      Evelyne Kabatesi

      I KNELT BY HER SIDE and stroked her head and felt the rough weave of her cropped hair. In a tiny voice, barely above a whisper, Evelyne was telling me that every night she dreamed of her mother, who had died of AIDS. Her father had too. I felt her tremble. Her voice trailed off into silence. I stood as she took my hand and walked me to the next room, where she joined three friends sitting on the ground.

      Dinnertime. First they were given a beaker of water and pills to fight their virus, for each of these little orphans was HIV positive. Then they waited patiently for their meal of rice, beans and fried onions, the same each night.

      The children stared at the ground, looking sad and worn, grouped around an empty burlap US aid sack which served as a tablecloth. Their foreheads glinted in the dim light from the bare bulb above. Our presence, three strangers with big cameras, an NBC News crew, didn’t help the mood. But how happy could they be in a dark room in a cramped home for abandoned or orphaned children, many of whom were sick.

      Evelyne made her own bed, washed her own clothes and swept the floor. All the clothes she owned fit in one drawer, along with her schoolbooks. To reach her only shoes she had to climb on top of the cupboard. Yet you would have thought that she had been brought up in the finest of homes. She curtsied as she shook my hand and whispered thank you and please. When I took my leave and thanked her, she murmured, You’re welcome.

      But her schoolbook revealed all. The slogan on the Delux cover proclaimed The Joy of Success, a rousing call to study and succeed, a rallying cry of promise for all the children of East Africa.

      Evelyne knew better.

      Where she was supposed to write the name of the school, Evelyne had written: School of Struggle.

      And for class she had written: Class of Hope.

      In seven syllables she summed up her life.

      In her other exercise books she had filled in all the spaces with the same single word: Angels.

      How much pain and understanding she had crammed into her young life, which she was able to communicate in so few words. Hope was like the last flutters of the dying candle in her bedroom.

      However, in school she dressed for success, with her uniform of dark green sweater with white braiding and matching green skirt, which she had ironed herself. She strolled arm in arm with her friends, as boys kicked a ball in the yard. When the bell sounded for class,

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