Thanks

I cannot tell you how much it means to know someone is reading these posts.  I’m keeping a diary here also, but I can tell you that there is a big difference to me between recording thoughts which no one will likely ever read, beneficial as that is, and writing for an audience, even a little bitty audience.  People have been kind enough to post a comment or shoot an email and so I know someone is reading.  As I go about my business I am talking to a collective “you”, mostly people I love but maybe a few strangers who read these thoughts.  It’s a delight to have someone to describe things to. 

Anyway, a friend sends an email asking what I’m doing.  I thought I’ve given a pretty good account in the blog posts, but maybe the question really is, “How are your days?”  So here goes:  Just like in the states I get up early, 5 o’clock if I have to be at school at 7, otherwise 6.  I head for the latrine.  The latrine is not a great experience, but walking across the back yard to reach it is OK.  I like to check out the morning here.  If it’s early enough I can see stars and a little slip of a moon, which is, incidentally waning and I am looking forward to darker nights and mornings, ergo more stars.  If it’s a bit later I can see the mists on the mountains. 

Next I brush my teeth in the lavendero and make coffee.  I do that by scooping two tablespoons of coffee into a cloth bag affixed to a handle.  The bag goes in the mug.  I boil water in a tin can that someone has made a bit safer by attaching a small tin handle.  I grab the handle with a piece of torn t-shirt and pour carefully so I don’t scald myself. Then I let the bag steep in the cup for 5 minutes or so while I set up my room for a good morning read.  I have to borrow a chair from the front room which contains. In addition to a television, only a classic Nica rocker, 2 chairs made out of rebar and one of those ubiquitous plastic lawn chairs.  I usually go for that one.  I raise the mosquito net over the bed, gather up my blanket, grab my book and a flashlight if it’s early, my pills, and a watch to keep track of time. I open the window and pull back the curtain so I can see out.  I read and drink coffee snuggled under the blanket until I need to get going for the day. Then I make oatmeal with reconstituted dry milk. I take a shower—cold but thank God not as bad as it could be by some miracle that renders the water more tepid than icy, maybe the sun from the previous day. I dress and, God help me, put on make-up, a habit I haven’t been able to shake in 6 months here, although I don’t use the blow dryer I stupidly brought.

I fill my water bottle and I’m out the door for a 15 minute hilly walk through the campo to the high school.  The walk is strenuous but I love it.  I go past fields, cattle grazing, houses with giant outdoor ovens, shaped like bee hives, for baking rosquillas, and yards where people are making bricks just as the Isrealites must have done in ancient Egypt, packing mud into forms to dry in the sun.   I sometimes pass people on the dirt path, men and boys carrying enormous loads of wood on their backs or shoulders, men with machetes, mothers and kids.  Everyone politely bids me “adios”. At the high school I teach and maybe co-plan with one of my three counterparts.  School is over at noon.

The afternoons differ.  Sometimes I came back to my house and eat lunch, usually a tortilla warmed and spread with peanut butter, and fruit if I have it.  Since school started, I’ve been taking a short nap in the early afternoon. Once a week I walk 15 minutes to the cyber in town to post a blog and read emails. I often stop to buy a thing or two at a pulperia.  I walk through town and maybe buy an Eskimo. Sometimes I have to shop or take a Spanish class in Somoto, a 15 minute taxi ride. away. Sometimes I meet a counterpart to plan lessons or tutor.

In the evening I usually have the house to myself.  I live with a family comprised of a mom, her 7 year old daughter and her brother.  It is a really nice decent family.  They are evangelical and I’d say about 5 out of 7 nights a week they are either at church or visiting at the house of their mother.  So I have the house to myself.  I usually read or work on Spanish till 6 when I make myself dinner.  I put on some music from home while I cook and eat.  I make simple stuff.  Tonight, since I shopped today and the bakery had whole wheat bread, I made open faced sandwiches of tomato, onion and avocado with tea and a bakery cookie.  Good meal.  Sometimes I sauté onions, garlic, carrots, squash and tomatoes.  I can turn this into spaghetti sauce, soup or stew.  The last time I did this I added cilantro which grows outside my back door and a single really small hot pepper which added more heat than you’d think, but it was still good.  I make eggs with hash browned potatoes.  I make rice and vegetables.  I have a hard time with meat—I just don’t want to buy it here, and this house doesn’t have a refrigerator to keep it safely, but sometimes I use soy to add protein. I can make a kind of quesadilla with tortillas and queso.  In about a month I’ll be moving to another house with a refrigerator and I hope I’ll expand my eating options.  I’d like to include more Nica food but a lot of it is starchy or saturated with oil.  Sill I think I could learn to make it a way I’d enjoy it. The soups are great.

Usually I’m in bed by 9, but I admit to being tired enough to want to be there by 8.  The night ritual consists of my applying 2 creams my Nica doctor prescribed for skin, a last dark visit to the latrine, arranging the mosquito net, getting my flashlight and Kindle set up for a fall-asleep-read, and  brushing my teeth.  That’s it.   

Thanks

The First Week of Classes

School has started in the most confusing way, but confusing to no one but me.  The first day I was ready to go.  No one had a schedule or a lesson plan, but I was assured that on Monday all would fall into place and that my counterparts and I would have time to plan for Tuesday, the actual first day of classes.

 At the end of previous week we had learned that there was a big change in the routine occasioned by the smaller enrollment over the last two weeks.  As a result, a decision was made to cancel the afternoon session at the high school.  All students and teachers would be in class only for 5 hours in the morning.  There are 2 consequences (probably more, but two I see right away).  One is that students from the 23 communities which feed students into the high school will have to leave very early, in many cases, to get to school by 7. These students used to enroll in the afternoon session.    There is a kind of school bus, a small jitney, which serves one or two communities, but the other students need to find a way to get to school.  Walking is an option for some, especially if they can start in the afternoon.  Others can take a bus, but that starts to be expensive.  For instance the fare from one large community one way is 3 pesos or fifteen cents.  Round trip is 30 cents or $1.50 per week, $3.00 for a family with 2 high school students. A teacher’s monthly salary is about $200. So you can see the investment a family makes to get a child to high school.  Consider the hit if the family makes less than a teacher which most do. My guess is that change in the schedule will result in some students just dropping out of school. (Since I wrote this I saw 2 other transportation possibilities.  Bikes, of course but on the highway.  See below for downside. Also I saw maybe 9 students stuffed into a cab.  I’d guess someone has worked out a deal with a taxi driver because usually a cab would be way to expensive.)

The second effect is obvious: classroom space.  Even if there are fewer students, you still need a certain number of math classes, for example.  Answer: the first year students will remain at the elementary school along with one section of second year students.  What about the elementary school students?  They now go to school in the afternoon.  Irony:  The elementary school only draws from the town, not from surrounding communities.  I don’t get it, but then I’m new to this system.

Back to the first day: I arrived at the school at the appointed hour.  Teachers were busy sweeping the cement court which serves for all sports.  The students had gathered l dressed for the first day in their blue and white uniforms, many with new shoes and little fancy touches like bows on their knee socks.  The high schoolers hung out being cool outside the fence but the elementary kids (yes, everyone is together for the first day) with new book bags and pens and virgin erasers and slick notebooks were happy to be with their little friends—lots of hugging and hand holding.  After an hour sweeping and decorating the court with slogans and balloons, the officials started to assemble: a lawyer, a priest and finally the delegado, the representative of the government, a kind of superintendent of schools.  The sound system blared. Another half hour passed.  There were many parents to observe this important day in their children’s lives. Finally the children, including high schoolers, lined up to sing the national anthem and listen to the invocation and the remarks of the delegado (not sure why the lawyer was there). He reminded the kids of the great opportunity given to them by the government.  He reminded them of the sacrifices their parents made to give them this opportunity to learn.  Later I asked the teachers about the sacrifice.  They all agree it is great, that there is a big bite out of the family budget to buy uniforms and supplies and back packs—and—as mentioned above—bus fare. Everyone sacrifices here.  One teacher lives about 20 miles away.  He rides his bike for an hour to school every morning on the Panamerican Highway, a two lane thoroughfare.  I guarantee he is not safe doing that with 18 wheelers blasting by him.  School is serious stuff, for the parents at least.  That night on the news the first day of school was the lead story.

Later that morning, we learned about the change in the structure of the day, but no one had a  teaching schedule.  They were still being worked on.  I planned for a class with one of my teachers who has 4 sections of first year students.  We knew that she would need a plan sooner or later and sure enough, the following day we were assigned to teach a section, three actually.  She and I did a great job in both our opinions.  The plan was sound and lively and interesting and we made a great start with the first years.  The best part was that one of the other English teachers sat in to observe and after class said to me, “ I want a plan like that plan.”  And so I planned a class with her in the afternoon, which we still have not given.  No one knows when his/ her classes will be taught.  With a third counterpart, I planned a class for third year students.  We’ll teach it tomorrow, I just found out via text from my teacher who just received a text from the principal.  Is this any way to run a school? Nope.  But this is how it is and everyone is adjusting, even me, as I sit in on classes and help out where I can even without formal planning.  Will we have a complete schedule by Monday, a week after the first day?  The teachers think so.  I’m betting no.

Your moment, if not of Zen, then of Reader’s Digest: I was sitting next to a student just as class ended.  She turned to me and said” Quien es Shakespeare?” Who is Shakespeare?  I told her that like Ruben Dario, Nicaragua’s most famous poet, he was a great playwright and poet.  She was happy to know.

P.S On the Spanish front, I have progress to report.  My counterpart teachers, the other day, were commenting on how much better my Spanish had gotten since I first met them last November.  That made my heart sing.  I think it’s true.  When I teach, the students understand me.  I don’t plan what to say.  I just say it.  I still am way behind the Spanish majors and the volunteers who lived for a semester in Spain or Latin America, but I now pick out “modernismos”, colloquial phrases, when the teachers talk and ask them what they mean.  I am pleased that I hear them at all.  It is a source of a lot of hilarity that I try to look up modernismos in my dictionary. 

The First Week of Classes

Amazing Stories

My post about the amazing sights I’ve encountered in Nicaragua got such good reviews I thought that I’d try to set down some of the stories I’ve heard.

 I was on the bus on the way to Mangua from my site when we stopped at Esteli to take on passengers.  I noticed a rare sight in the northwest of Nicaragua, a black man, headed down the aisle.  Another black man was seated just behind me and I figured he was from the Caribbean Coast.  But the man in the aisle looked American to me.  I was hoping he’d sit next to me so we could speculate about which was rarer in Nicaragua, an old gringa or a black man from the States.  But he sat behind me, and the other man and he got into a conversation in English, so of course I eavesdropped. (FYI English is spoken on the Eastern coast of Nicaragua, along with creole and some indigenous languages.)

 The man I thought was American explained that he was in Nicaragua in search of his father.  He hadn’t seen his dad in some years.  He thought he lived on the Atlantic Coast in Bluefields, and so had gone there.  He hadn’t been able to find him, but some people told him they knew his father and that he had moved. So the son started traveling.  He went to the next place where he was told his dad had moved on. Ultimately someone told him his dad was in the north of Nicaragua, and so that’s where he went.  He had no luck.  He was traveling to Managua in hopes of finding out something in the capital city.  The other man suggested that what he should do is take out an ad in a Managua newspaper.  He thought someone who knew the father would read it and tell the father.  The son agreed.  He explained that he liked Nicaragua, had a small business here dealing in computers and cell phones which his girlfriend was minding while he traveled around tracking down his dad. He hoped to find his dad so he could stay in the country.  He doubted he’d want to stay if he couldn’t locate his father. He wanted to live in Nicaragua near his dad. I can go for days without hearing a word of English, never mind an English speaker on a bus, never mind such a story. 

I can relate another, very different story.  As I wrote earlier I am helping one of my counterparts study for a very big English test.  We work for two hours at a time, usually three times a week.  I described this counterpart before.  She is a noisy kind of person with a big laugh.  Anyway, it’s not hard to imagine that sometimes we get off topic.  That happened one day recently because something big fell on the metal roof over her patio.  She jumped and looked scared. “What was that,” I asked.  She said she was afraid it was a bruja, a witch.  She lives in fear of brujaria.  I asked her to explain.  There are witches, she said, many of them all around us, who put spells on people they don’t like.  They can cause all kinds of damage. They are especially feared for turning people into monkeys.  A man in Somoto died during the war years here, killed in action according to his family, but it widely believed that a witch turned him into a monkey and the family concocted the war story to cover up absence.

 I thought she was probably kidding.  She is, after all, a teacher, but she was dead serious.  She has direct experience of the harm they can do.  She lived in El Salvador with her mother for 10 years when she was young.  They witnessed a woman, cursed by a witch, vomit snakes and spiders.   Brujas are a part of Nicaraguan and I guess Central American folklore. But I had no idea how current is the belief.

More stories when I hear them//

Amazing Stories

GETTING READY FOR SCHOOL

I’ve struggled with a bit of a writer’s block, but now that school is ready to start in one week, I can fill everyone in on what I’ve learned about the system here.  Teachers have had a 2 month “summer vacation”-- if they were lucky.  My counterparts have been going to school during the vacation, usually half days, to try to secure their position as English teachers.  Many of them studied something else in college and if they want to teach English they need, quite justifiably, to learn enough English to be effective.  Three of the four use no English in their classes.  English is taught in Spanish.  Needless to say there’s a lot of rote teaching of grammatical rules and lists of vocabulary and very little practice speaking. The courses these teachers take are more of the same.  I’ve tutored two teachers during the vacation and I can say that they are not learning much that would help them with the job. No wonder, they teach as they were taught.

Two weeks before the students show up, the teachers appear daily at the instituto.  What do they do?  They had a full day presentation on interfamilial violence sponsored by the national police and an NGO.  After that day, though, each morning half of the teachers register students and half prepare the classrooms.   No one knows what classes they will teach because no one knows how many students will enroll for the year.  That’s why the registration.  There is no support staff except for one secretary and one lady who sweeps the hallways and waters the plants outside and monitors access to the bathrooms—no guidance department, registrar or administrative assistant,  And so half of the teachers sit at tables outside and register any student who shows up with proof he passed the previous grade.  This goes on for two weeks and then the business of forming classes and assigning teachers can begin.  That should happen by the 10^th and classes start on the 13^th.  For me this means I have been unable to work with my teachers to prepare a schedule for myself or even to start preparing for the 13^th.  I am told that the class assignments we receive on the 10^th aren’t final at any rate.  There will all sorts of changes until mid-March.

The other half of the teachers are preparing classrooms.  This means they literally wash them down, ceiling to floor.  They take down last year’s bulletin boards and replace them with new touting the virtues of the socialist state as last year’s did.  Nicaragua has a moral and political base to class and curriculum.  The kids are taught politically and socially articulated values, like the value of community and solidarity. I’ll be interested in watching how this plays out this year as we teach.

The teachers assigned to classrooms have another job as well. It is apparently hard to flunk out because there are always other chances.  The school offers tests to any student who failed a class.  Moreover, the teachers post what will be on the test and are available during the first two weeks to help students prepare for it.  I’ve sat in on a few of these sessions—all of them the same half hour review of the time and what people do in the morning-- and I’ll be interested to see if the test is a duplicate of the exact material reviewed.

No one complains. No one articulates disdain for the jobs assigned.  I can sit and have a conversation with a math teacher who is patiently cutting out letters he’s traced for the bulletin board slogans.  He’s happy to talk, but then again he’s happy to cut.  One day last week someone brought in ingredients for soup and while all this registration and classroom work was going on some people broke away to build a fire, set out a pot of water to boil and start the cutting up of meat and vegetables. People looked happy to be doing that as well.

I make school sound like an island of camaraderie and it is.  The teachers appear to love sitting and talking with one another.  But I also hear complaints about the “chisme” (gossip) which is also a part of the school world.  The complainers recite that what they say is repeated and that others are eager to bad things about the others.  This belief is widely held.  It makes me so careful about what I say.  Any hint of discontent on my part with a person or a system will spread, I’m afraid, like wildfire.  It’s hard, too, because once I’ve established “confianza” (confidence) with a teacher, as I am happy to say I have with 2 of my counterparts, and after they have confided in me about their difficulties, it’s hard not to be candid about my own.  But it’s a bad idea, especially if anything connected to the school is the source of my problem, or anyone in the community for that matter.  Even an apparently neutral remark, like my observation that the principal of the school works very hard, is an opening.  Why doesn’t she hire help?  She makes more than they do.

The net result of all the uncertainty, after is caused me some discomfort, has been to make me relax.  I’ll be ready when I need to be, whenever that is.  No use stressing about it.  I’m off to the instituto now.  Maybe someone will let me cut out some letters or make crepe paper ruffles for the bulletin board.  If not, I’ll head on down to the cyber to post this blog.  Am I already a little Nicaraguense?  Hope so.