The Foreign Service Journal, June 2009

J U N E 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 23 India and Pakistan seemed headed toward war, and we had been living in a new world of heightened ter- rorist threats ever since 9/11. Still, I was intrigued by the trainer who came every day to teach the Korean martial art in the outdoor patio of our small apart- ment building — not only by his graceful movements and flexibil- ity, but by the way he cleaned the patio before every class, sweeping away the dust and soot accumulated from the city’s pollution like a weekly puja (the act of showing reverence to God). When I met him at a party one night, I was drawn by the charisma of this young, wiry Nepali who proposed to teach me Taekwondo. Sher — because his full name was too complicated to pronounce, he said “Just call me Sher” — could barely speak English. But he radiated enthusiasm. You’re Never Too Old We began working out in a tiny consulate happy-hour room with a pool table at one end, a large wooden bar at the other, and walls filled with photos of movie stars. The room was musty and smelled of beer, but it was the only free space I knew of that had enough room to do a few kicks and provided indoor air-conditioning to ward off Mumbai’s humidity and pollution. Sher soon had me doing duck walks around the pool table and push-up dips with bar chairs. Over the course of a year, he shared fragments of his life — how he had left Nepal several years before to seek a better life in India’s biggest city and had devel- oped a network of Taekwondo “gigs” all over Mumbai. He taught middle-class kids in a large park near our house; he taught Indian movie stars; he taught street children. One day Sher took me to spar (practice fight) with one of his street pupils, a one-armed man in rags who showed me his kicks and punches with incredible determination and skill. We had just done push-ups in a local park; every time I dipped down, my face was swimming in a cloud of mos- quitoes. After that experience, I limited my workouts to the air-con- ditioned pool room and ap- proached the sport with greater humility. As a poor migrant far from his family, Sher had very little, but gave a lot of himself — to his students and to the ani- mals he frequently rescued on the streets. One day he came to class with a huge injured hawk, which he teth- ered outside the room so he could take it to a vet after our lesson. He saw potential in me, his oldest student, reassuring me “you’re never too old for a challenge” and seeing me through my green belt. (Taekwondo belts start with white, and then go up through yellow, green, blue, red and, finally, black.) In 2004, my wife, newborn son and I moved to Accra and were once again consumed with setting up a new life. As the embassy’s political chief, I scrambled to un- derstand this new country as it headed into national elections. Our three-year tour would keep me busy with participating in Ghana’s 50th-anniversary celebra- tions, launching a major outreach effort to the Muslim community, tracking narcotics and corruption scandals, and handling a steady stream of visitors. Abel-Bodied I still found time for Taekwondo in Ghana. It helped that our house was well configured for it, with a down- stairs open-air garage that doubled as a dojo. My first teacher was a muscular Burkinabe named Abel. Like Sher, Abel was trying to make a better life for himself far from home. He was also escaping family expecta- tions, avoiding pressure from his father to join the fam- ily construction business. Abel taught Taekwondo literally by the book, con- sulting instruction texts to walk me through my paces. He loved working with groups of children and his soft smile contrasted with his rippling, cut physique, mo- torcycle and air of mystery. But his life was compli- cated: he had constant, ever-more-tangled problems with women; family members constantly called him for favors; and he got into rumbles with Ghanaian neigh- F O C U S Every new instructor I’ve had focused initially on correcting all the “mistakes” of my previous teacher. Scott B. Ticknor joined the Foreign Service in 1990 and has served in Madrid, Barcelona, Dhaka, Managua, Mum- bai, Accra and Washington, D.C. He is currently the po- litical/economic chief in Yaounde. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he worked for three years as a civil servant for the U.S. Information Agency.