The Best Day Ever

The Best Day Ever

Well, maybe not the BEST day, but a damn fine one.  There were no classes today.  Instead the teachers broke into teams to visit the communities and to chat with the parents of failing students.  (An aside: The 23 communities are widespread.  No one uses mail to communicate.  There is no delivery and it costs to send letters. Telephone communication costs money, too, and besides no one to my knowledge has all the phone numbers.  So the teachers visit.  I’m betting this is a requirement of the Department of Education, left to the end of the year by our school.  With two weeks of classes to go, you wonder what effect can come from the parental contact.  Why didn’t they do this at the start of the second semester when there’d have been time for the visit to do some good?  Ask and despair.)

Anyway, I jumped at the opportunity to sit in on this one and showed up early at the bus stop of a near-by community to wait for the others.  A teacher from my school lives in that town and was just leaving the house of a relative on his way to another community.  This teacher and I like each other.  He tries to speak English and this morning he was doing just great.  We had a brief exchange in English during which he invited me into the house for coffee and rosquillas. Of course, I went, with time to spare and someone new to meet.  Profe Ozmán had to take off but he left me in the loving hands of his family who could not get enough of me.  It’s hard to describe what it’s like being the object of such beaming affection by people who have so little.   There is such kindness, no sense of me as the rich American and they the resentful poor, only a genuine pleasure to meet a new and different person whom they have decided they already like and to find out what they can about her.  This is the famed Nica hospitality at its best. Eventually, I had to go, but any time I am invited to return to that house for more coffee, rosquillas and conversation.

We started out the family visits in teams of two, I with a counterpart.  She and I decided to speak only English as we walked from house to house.  She, too, was in good form today and we had real communication as we walked around the town.  I watched her in action in one household, the parents pulling out the ubiquitous plastic chairs (2) for us to sit in while they stood (no other chairs) with the kid present to witness the teacher explaining that he was intelligent but refused to obey rules or do any work. I admired her skill with this awkward situation, the boy and his parents humiliated, having to respond, to agree with the authority, but trying to find reasons or excuse themselves.  Had this conversation taken place a few months ago it just might have done some good.

We ended up at two different houses where there were no parents, only overworked grandmothers. In one, an ancient grandmother, wearing ancient flip-flops repaired with string, invited us to sit as honored guests.  She explained that the boy about whom we had come, a very short, hyper-active kid who does nothing but make trouble, is the son of a mother who lives about 20 miles away with her boyfriend and does not want the boy. The rest of the family pitches in as they can, but the grandmother is the person in charge and she cannot control him.  He cries, she tells us, because his mother doesn’t want him with her. My counterpart and I were subdued.  I asked if anyone in the family had influence with the boy.  The grandmother went next door and brought over an aunt, a young woman who is studying at the university on Saturdays.  She acknowledges the challenge but says no one had been able to help.

At the house of the other grandmother, the story was similar.  The student’s mother lived a distance with her boyfriend and the child was left with the grandmother who could not control her.  At fourteen, she had an eighteen old boyfriend she spent time with.  He, according to the grandmother, neither studied nor worked. The girl’s poor grades are the least of her worries, it seems. (Another aside: I heard stories like this in the States often, parents abandoning their children to grandparents to raise.  But here, when added to the number of kids whose parents are absent because they work in other countries, the census of poorly cared for children further burdens an already plagued school system, has effects for classroom management and bodes ill for the institutional strength of the family.)

I got back to my town in time to get to the ciber before lunch.  My goal: to get to vote in the election on November 6.  The background:  I arranged for an absentee ballot before I left the U.S.  There was a change in the law last year and I had to register again in on the federal level.  I thought I’d done that on line, but I never received my ballot. Needless to say, I was pretty unhappy, in despair of fighting the bureaucracy from Nicaragua, and I’d given up when another volunteer urged me to try to see what I could do to get the ballot.  I called my voter registration office at home and, guess what, someone—Penny—actually answered the phone and helped me.  I had to fill out the form again and email it to her.  She is supposed to send me a ballot.  I have to print the ballot and mail it tomorrow, getting it postmarked.  So, “Si dios lo quiere,” I’ll be able to vote, just one vote, but in a swing state, and that makes me very happy.

The Best Day Ever ended with my trip to a town about a half hour away where Peace Corps has just sent a new English teacher volunteer—a compañera up here in the North.  I must say it’s been a little lonely up here and I’ve been looking forward to someone else to work and talk with.  They sent a great person, an intelligent,  self- confident young  woman.  We talked for two hours in the park, enjoying the company and the surprisingly cool breeze (the rainy season is over—we’re heading into winter, shorter days, cool nights).  The volunteer is only visiting, but will return to her site at the end of November and we’ll hang out some, I think.

So, I’m writing tonight in a long sleeve shirt, having made macaroni and cheese for dinner, tea and homemade yoghurt with honey for dessert.  No work for 4 days. Maybe I vote tomorrow. Life is good.