Wild Nature – My Safe Haven

I was interviewed yesterday by award-winning French director Jean-Michel Roux. He is working on a documentary about forests and the meaning of forests to people. The whole interview was a bit of a surprise, but I found the issue very interesting, and it very much touches my life story, especially during early childhood until I moved away from my home village to experience the big world.

Safe Haven

I grew up on a small farm surrounded by farm animals—cows, bulls, chickens, and even sheep at one point. The wild nature was also very much present. Especially from late spring throughout the summer until late October, there were plenty of moose walking around the farm’s estate. Hares, foxes, all sorts of birds, and squirrels were around too. One of the coolest animals was the weasel. In those rare moments when you managed to see a weasel, it was a real-life entertainment show. A weasel is so freaking fast that it’s like magic. One moment, it was 10 meters in front of you behind a rock lifting its head like a submarine’s periscope, and two seconds later it was 10 meters in the other direction. For a little chap, it was heaven. There were always cool things to see and listen to.

Before I started my hellish school journey, wandering around the fields and forests was purely for fun and play. Very quickly after attending school, the surrounding nature’s meaning started to change. At first, I was full of joy and enthusiasm to learn all sorts of things that school could offer and make possible for me to find out. Then, the horrific reality kicked in during the first week of school. I found myself physically and mentally abused by a teacher. When Jean-Michel heard this, his face expressed disbelief. He asked, "What did she do?" I explained. It was really like a prison camp; you just got out of there in the afternoon for the rest of the day and night and in the morning you faced another day in that "prison camp". There was banging fingers with a map stick if you made some error or made a joke or something. Pulling hair was another thing that the teacher liked to do. The worst thing was force-feeding. If I didn’t like to eat some dish like liver casserole, she would come and shout like hell, standing right next to me. “You stupid kid! You have to eat everything because there is hunger in Africa! Eat!!!” I couldn’t stand liver casserole, so I refused. When shouting didn’t work, she took the fork and started to shovel the food into my mouth by force. It’s actually a little miracle that I didn’t lose any teeth in that violent process. As I always got a puking reaction as a result of force-feeding, I was forced to swallow my own puke alongside that nasty food. I wasn’t the only one who faced this terrible thing.

After the shock period, I froze myself and stopped showing any emotions no matter what that teacher did. So, what about nature? During the breaks, we played all sorts of games in the school area: hide and seek, cop and robber, you name it. Lots of running around. At some point, I started to go skiing during the breaks between the lessons in the winter months. I skied a one-kilometer round in the woods. That was a great safe haven and a way to blow off my steam. The older I grew, the more important running and skiing in the forests became. There, that monster couldn’t touch me, and I was on my own.

Jean-Michel asked why I didn’t tell my parents about the abuse. Physical punishment was used by most of the parents too, and you thought that it was normal that you were having a rough time. Remember, I wasn’t the only one who was abused. I think there was also the fear of what would happen if parents were told about the abuse. At least, I was scared that I would get more abuse if I talked about the teacher to my parents. Let’s face the fact, my parents also used physical punishment, and once school started, I felt that I was very much on my own. Parents were busy running the farm, seven days a week, year-round.

I broke the news very briefly to my parents in 2019. My mother banged her fist on the table and asked with an amazed voice, “And you didn’t tell anything about it then?” My father just sat in silence, staring at the coffee cup in front of him. That was the end of the subject.

Long story short, nature was a great getaway and safe haven for me as a child and young chap. You may have heard that during the early days of the human race, cavemen would sit around a live fire and stare at the flames in silence. My caveman thing was to run through the forests and fields or go on the rocks on the shore and watch the lake.

#abuse #school #nature #powerofnature #chilhood #violence