Host: Catherine Burns
Catherine: [00:00:00] Hey y'all. This is Catherine Burns, The Moth's artistic director. I have exciting news. Our new book is about to be released. It's called Occasional Magic: True Stories about Facing the Impossible. It's got stories from some of our biggest names, including Adam Gopnik, Krista Tippett, Andrew Solomon, Rosanne Cash, Ophira Eisenberg, and Wang Ping, with an introduction by Meg Wolitzer. But it's us, so you'll also hear stories from a 15-year-old saving a life in Chicago, a mother of triplets trekking to the North Pole, and a 90-year-old Russian man talking about his stand with the KGB.
At the risk of insufferably tooting our own horn, we've already gotten a few good reviews. Kirkus refers to Captivating, artfully wrought tales: Heartfelt stories bear eloquent witness to hopes, dreams and triumphs. And Booklist writes, “Each story is as captivating as the one before it." If The Moth's live events are full of people gently holding their beating hearts up to the mic in front of a breathless audience, these written adaptations definitely do such sacrifices justice. The book is available for pre-order right now.
If you love books, pre-ordering is important, because it shows publishers what readers would love more of, what they're excited about. So, if you love The Moth and books and stories, it would be a huge help to us if you consider pre-ordering. Thank you all for listening.
Dan: [00:01:16] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. And on this episode, we're celebrating International Women's Month with two stories from two incredible women on opposite sides of the world.
First up, Alexandra Rochester. She's from England, but she actually told this story at The Moth StorySLAM in Nashville while she was traveling. The theme of the night was Education. Here's Alexandra.
[cheers and applause]
Alexandra: [00:01:46] When I graduated from university, the only thing that I knew for sure was that I did not want to get a real job. So, I moved to Western Canada to become a ski instructor. The requirements to teach small children how to ski on a mountain are pretty minimal. You can take a six-week course to make sure that you can ski pretty well and you learn a few other words other than pizza and French fry, which, for those of you that don't know, those are the shapes that your feet make as they go down the mountain. And then, after that, you are responsible for eight small, erratic, excitable, clumsy, whining, tired, adorable children. And that was my job.
I had to keep them safe and not kill them on a mountain in which it frequently reached temperatures of zero degrees Fahrenheit, the winds were strong enough to blow me over and you frequently had the experience of skiing inside a cloud. And I had to make this fun, because that's all kids care about. But I also had to make them good skiers, because their parents were paying a lot of money for these lessons. My favorite class was a group of eight seven-year-old girls. They all wore pink and purple ski jackets, and loved to talk about their American Girl dolls and Taylor Swift a lot. [audience chuckles]
We were BFFs pretty much all the time. But every time I was able to give one of the girls a specific piece of praise for how she was skiing and I couldn't give it to another girl, because she just wasn't there yet, because kids learn at different speeds and that's totally fine, it was a challenging thing to experience and watch in these tiny little innocent girls. And then, it was time for them to ski black diamonds, which are the more technical, steeper runs. They would quake in their uncomfortable plastic ski boots and they would ski with their mittens in their mouths, because they were so scared. And I needed to figure out a way so that they would be more assertive without it just being based purely on my praise.
So, I turned to my more experienced male colleagues. And they said, "Competition. They need to want to beat somebody else. It's the only way. It works every time." [audience chuckles] This did not sit well with me. Ski instructing is a male-dominated industry, with there being roughly seven male instructors to every one female. I had been taught by male ski instructors to be aggressive and to want the biggest, fastest, gnarliest, steepest line, whilst also competing for who had the best turn shape. If I simply said I had a fun day skiing, it would be countered with, "Yeah, but I found the most snow and had the best day." [audience chuckles]
I was tired of competing. I was tired of it feeling like skiing was about being better than somebody else and I didn't want these girls to think they were only good if they were better than somebody else, and that skiing was something that you had to be praised for. Because when I ski on these frozen water molecules down these 45-degree angled slopes, I feel like I'm flying. And that's what I wanted it to be for them, full of them. And so, I struggled with this for a couple of weeks. And then, on one of our many chairlift rides, in which we had decided that Katy Perry's Roar was her best song, [audience chuckles] it hit me, and then I hit play.
So, on every chairlift and every gondola ride after that, we listened to Katy Perry's Roar, we danced to Taylor Swift's Fearless, and we sung along with Sara Bareilles’ Brave. I didn't explain to the girls why we were doing this. They just thought I was the weirdest and worst singing ski instructor they'd ever met. And then, I took them to the top of a black diamond run. It was the kind of run where it just drops off the side of a cliff, and you can see all of the ice and rocks and bumps that may well lead to you breaking a leg.
All these teeny, tiny little girls said, "You want us to ski that?" I said, "No, I know you can ski that. You know how to pole plant. You know how to control your turn shape. You are brave, you are fearless, and you will roar." [audience laughter] And then, I made them roar just to get the point across. And then, we all skied it and they all nailed it, every one of them. I've seen a lot of smiles on kids' faces. There's a specific kind of smile they get when they've got two scoops of ice cream or they've met Mickey Mouse or they've had fun.
But that day, I got to see the smile when they realized they'd accessed their own superpowers and that they could do something, anything in that moment. And that was really magical for me to see. And then, the smile I got to give when I went back to my male colleagues and said that I had ignored their advice and I had taken Taylor Swift's, [audience chuckles] that was a pretty special smile for me, too. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:06:54] That was Alexandra Rochester. Alexandra intended to ski instruct in Whistler, British Columbia, for six months, but of course, she's still living there eight years later. Retired from instructing, she's now a baker, a radio producer, and a writer. She's currently working on a novel about the highs and lows of living in the peculiar mountain town that she calls home. You can see some photos of Alexandra hitting the slopes in the extras for this episode on our site, themoth.org.
Up next, we have Kendi Nderitu. Kendi came to The Moth through our Global Community Program. She actually told this story at a Moth night during the UN General Assembly. Here's Kendi, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Kendi: [00:07:47] It's dusk, and the night is quickly falling. My mother and I are walking down a dusty road. We have jerry cans at hand in search for clean water. The stream is about a kilometer away. I can hear her grumbling under her breath, which tells me she hates the village life as much as I do.
You see, I was born a city girl. I lived in the city for 12 years. The move from the city was sudden. My mother explained that we ran out of resources, and so could not sustain an urban life. This is the first month in the village.
The realities of the village are different. We have to walk long distances to tend to the farm, where we have to stay in dark homes, because there's no electricity. The city had flowing tap water. There was stomach. There were story buildings. I thrived in the city. The kids of the village did not make settling in the village very easy. They would mock and tease me. At first, it was that I did not speak the local language too well. And so, they would point at me, make faces and mimic me, then they would break out into outright laughter. They loved to pick on my forehead. They said it was big. Their aim, to alienate me.
With time, they became even more aggressive. They turned physical. One time, they threw stones at me. And a stone hit my head. When I would get too close to them, they would shove me to the side. Other times, they would charge at me, hoping to scare me enough to run away. I learned quickly that I needed a ticket out of the village. And I understood that ticket was going to be education. And so, for the year that followed, I buried myself in books. The more they bullied me, the harder I studied. Fueled by the passion to leave and disengage from the village, I set myself a goal.
Come November 1993, I was required to sit for a key examination, the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education, to move from junior school to senior school. Then, a month later, in December, the Cabinet Secretary for Education would come to national television and invite all pupils to pick their results the following day. That night, I hardly slept.
Being that I studied some 50 km away from home, the easiest way for me to pick my results was by calling. It's either I used a house phone to call, which we didn't have, or I used the public telephone, which was some 2 km away from home. And so, on the morning of the big day, I made my way up the tarmac that I remember as one of the hardest walks I've had to make in life. I was anxious, worried, tense. What if I didn't do too well? What if I was confined to life in the village?
Like I had done so many other times in the last month, I made mental tabulation of what I expected my results would be. And as it was already known publicly that the highest score in that exam in the village was 454 marks out of a possible 700, an equivalent of a B minus, I wondered what would my results be.
At this point, I could see the telephone across the road, not too far. It was housed in a red metallic booth. Around it were big chunky trees. I crossed the tarmac and on opening the booth, stepping in, I said a quick prayer. I then raised the receiver, and with shaky fingers dialed the number that had been given. It was a relief to hear the dial on the other end and an even bigger relief to hear a gentle voice invite me to state how they could help me. I went on to give my index number, which was my unique identifier, and I requested that they read out the results for me. I repeated the score just to be sure that I had the right thing, and so I said aloud the score of 500, which was an equivalent of an A minus.
As soon as I did, I heard a loud applause around me. I looked around and I saw about 10 kids of the village. Unknown to me, the kids had walked up the tarmac before me and they had hidden themselves behind the booth, behind the building, behind the trees. And as they made their way towards me in celebration and in shock, this time not laughing and not teasing me, and I still confused, I remember that moment because they made me an instant village heroine.
This was the first time that I had known the joy of achievement, the joy of success. I understood then the power of being celebrated. It is this time that I understood very well and even greater the payoff of hard work and the payoff of excellence. I got admission into the school of my dreams. That moment set pace for the rest of my life. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:14:00] That was Kendi Nderitu. Kendi has worked in the IT industry for over 14 years, and she's the founder of SheGoesTech, where she coaches and mentors girls to take up science-related careers. She's also an instructor now in The Moth's Global Community Program, teaching storytelling workshops all over Africa and South Asia. Gender equity and women's rights are always part of the work that we do here at The Moth, and you can find more global stories of women and girls on our website themoth.org.
Also, a quick reminder. The launch of The Moth's third book, Occasional Magic, is quickly approaching. The book comes out Tuesday, March 19th. You can pre-order it on our site themoth.org. You can, if you so desire, read my story about the last time I went to therapy. It's got quite a twist in the ending. No spoilers, but I think therapy and I have made a clean break.
That's going to do it this time around. We're going to be back soon with some more new stories. Until then, from all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week.
Julia: [00:15:07] Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First, Rock On and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and storyteller with The Moth.
Dan: [00:15:15] Podcast production by Julia Purcell and Paul Ruest. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.