Fumigation, Poets and Gifts

Fumigation, Poets and Gifts

A week ago Friday my second period class was stopped by the fumigators who came to the school to kill bugs.  The high school is loaded with mosquitoes and has been since before school started.  I have been spraying on the hated OFF at home to protect myself before going to school.  (We have prophylaxis for malaria but not for dengue and the dengue mosquitoes are out during the day.)  One day, also before school started, I saw the fumigators at work in houses along the then dry river that runs by the town.  They come in a crew, each worker holding smoking can of dangerous stuff.  The workers tried to protect themselves from the poisonous mist by old t-shirts wrapped on their heads and over their faces.   I wondered then why they were not at the high school—so many kids, so many mosquitoes—as good a use of insecticide as you can imagine.  But whatever the reason, they didn’t get to the high school until Friday morning,six weeks after school started.  (Maybe you are wondering why they didn’t wait until after school.  Keep wondering.)  They moved rapidly, wrapped in their rags like lepers, from classroom to classroom, and we all stood outside and tried not to breathe bad stuff. We reentered classrooms after a half hour, and carried on class, all of us breathing as shallowly as possible.

Class is interrupted for all kinds of reasons.  I understand the need to fumigate.  I understand the need to give kids vaccinations, but this week we had another interruption. My counterpart came to me and asked what I thought about letting a man come into the class to read his poems to the students.  I told her in my view it wasn’t a great idea in an English class, but that she was the teacher and she should decide.  She decided to let him in.  The man was in his twenties, skinny as a rail, dressed in a button shirt and slacks, i.e., dressed for the occasion.  But his shoes were several sizes too large.  They curled up at the toes, and his hair didn’t have the precision cut that’s common around my site. He recited three poems and then pulled from his back pack copies of the three stapled together which he announced were for sale for 10 cords ($.50).  The students didn’t buy any but I was pretty astounded  that the school would let a salesman talk to a captive audience of students.  My counterpart argued that he really wasn’t profiting because he had to pay for the copies, but that was a weak one, and she knew it.  The copies of the three pages cost 3 cords, so the guy’s profit was 7 cords. In her defense, I’ll say she didn’t know the poet would try to self his poems.  Several of the other teachers thought he shouldn’t have been let into the classrooms.  But, like everyone else, he was just trying to make a buck.

Friday, also, in the afternoon I headed over to the house of one of my counterparts.  Her English is too limited to permit us to plan classes in English, but she wants to improve and wants me to come over to practice with her.  I really don’t mind this at all.  She has a three year old and a 14 year old.  Usually, life at her house is noisy and there are always many distractions,.  But Friday I found her sitting peacefully outside under a tree with a friend and the friend’s three year old.  I was offered a plastic chair, however, and after the three year olds were pacified with snacks, we started to speak English.  It’s amazing what you can talk about with a little bit of a language.  We exchanged views on religion.  She doesn’t like the church because, she says, you have to pay for things like baptism. She loves God and the Virgin.  Like me, she likes to go into the church once in a while just to sit.  She asked about my religion. I told her I was raised Catholic but didn’t go to church.  She asked why.  I took a chance and told her I had stopped believing.  She nodded.   Then she turned to the friend and told her in Spanish that I wasn’t a believer.  I put my hand on her arm immediately and in English asked her please not to share my religious beliefs because I was afraid people would think I wasn’t a good person.  She got that right away.

 A while later she said (we were back in Spanish), “I want to give you a present.’ (The verb in Spanish is regalar and it means to give a gift.  We don’t have a similar verb except the awkward “to gift”, but you hear regalar all the time here.) Like the stupid gringa I am I said, “Why?”  Gales of laughter all around.  Who ever heard of someone asking “why” when they were getting a present? I made it worse by adding “It’s not my birthday.”  More hilarity.  I am endlessly divertida to the people around me.  My counterpart went into the house and came back with a pair of her earrings.  I put them on right away and, of course, thanked her profusely.

This is only the most recent example of my struggles to get over the norteamericano rule of reciprocity.  I could argue that my problem with getting without giving is altruistic, people here having so little.  But the truth is that when I eat lunch repeatedly at the house of another counterpart before we start to plan classes, I feel awkward, because I can’t so readily reciprocate and make lunch for her.  It is part of this culture to give, to share, to regalar.  It’s quite lovely and all I have to do is to learn how to do it, too.  And even more, to be happy and comfortable receiving things which are, after all, signs of esteem or fondness or just the giver’s happy pleasure.