Slow Start

We are now almost three weeks into the school year and we still do not have a schedule.  Every night the principal lets teachers know what classes they are going to teach the next day. The sizes and composition of classes change often, if not daily.  For instance, today we had a class of seventh graders and were prepared with a new lesson only to find that all but 6 of them had not received the prior lesson—the class was a new one made mostly of kids who had not had English yet this year and a smattering of kids who had. For me a lot depends on the schedules of my teachers—my own schedule for one, my ability to be adequately prepared, for another, my availability for other projects, for a third.  But there really is no use getting excited about this, calculating how many lost hours of instruction time we suffer.  Nothing matters.  We’ll know when we know and we’ll go from there and that’s that. In the meantime I received a nice visit from the librarian who asked me to teach another primary school class (45 minutes) once a week.  And I have a class in  Somoto for tourist guides and people in the tourist industries, already planned for two afternoons a week. My counterparts want—and need -– an English class to teach them how to speak English.  So there is plenty to do.

A story to illustrate how things are here.  In my school—all schools in Nicaragua so far as I know—there is employee who cleans the public areas, raking and burning leaves, watering plants so they can survive the dry season and sweeping the walkways.  But the inside of the classrooms is kept clean by the students who perform “aseo” twice a day, once during the recess that takes place half way through the morning and once at the end of the morning. The kids and teachers take aseo seriously.  Sweeping all floors, even dirt ones, and mopping any floor that’s tile or concrete is a required job at home and kids who can’t speak two words of English go at the floors with admirable industry. In my classroom today the teacher noted that the top of the whiteboard and the chalk tray were covered in mouse turds. I’d seen them without really registering what there were, not being too tuned into mouse turds, or, more precisely, never having see so much mouse turd in one place.  I think there must be mice above the ceiling and the turds slip down from a gap in the ceiling.  The girl in charge of aseo lost no time sweeping down the turds onto the floor and then sweeping them out the door as waves of foul smell enveloped the classroom.  Happily only the aseo kids and I were there, I not for long.  Que barbaridad, as we say here.

Mangoes are back—so are avocadoes, not plentiful or cheap yet, but available.  How happy is that.  I got a Christmas package from my son 2 months after it was sent and am working on the last of the chocolate bars.  Thanks to an indulgent vacation time—with two sets of visitors and some pretty fine trips—I’ve put back on some of the weight I lost.  I nap some.  I continue the coffee and bread at 4 or 5 in the afternoon routine, sitting out on the porch with Dona Candida and reading or greeting passersby.  As opposed to last year when everything was an effort, pretty much everything is easy.  The change is in me, us, since others report the same tranquillo attitude. More and more I appreciate the virtue in less striving, more hanging out, more taking what comes.

Sights don’t wow me so often, but I still get a big kick out of being here.  For instance, it’s dead- frog- on- the- road season.  I remember this from last year during the dry season, big frogs, as big as your hand, lying dead in the middle of the street.  I’m not sure what went on because there aren’t that many cars that pass.  The frogs look pretty flat.  I wonder if the dryness brings them out looking for water and they die, disappointed and dehydrated in the street.

Also, yesterday on a bus I enjoyed watching the game the driver plays with the comprador, the guy who collects money and helps people on and off with their stuff, some of it stored on the top of the bus.  There is always a tension between serving the people and keeping the bus on time.  The comprador shoves people on with their chickens and children and hauls kids off at the stops so the grandma can move down the stairs a little faster. The he hurries people on and when the last one has just raised his foot to climb into the bus he shouts for the driver to go, go and runs beside the bus grabbing for a hand hold so that he swings on the bus as it’s gaining speed. Sometimes he comes perilously close to being dragged by the bus or failing to get on in time.  That happened yesterday, the comprador running fast and swinging with a final leap to safety and he and the driver laughing their heads off.  Muy divertido, as we say down here.

There are always flowering trees of some hue.  Now they are yellow, lining the highway and brightening the days.  The dry season is really dry.  Every growing thing in my beautiful site is brown and dry, sere really, looking as though it can’t survive. But it will.  The days will get hotter and hotter and drier and drier until one day, on or about April 15 according to lore, the rains will start and by  May the place will cool a bit and the green will return. So will the frogs.