More About My Students

I’m thinking more about my students these days.  I watch them all the time, when I’m teaching, of course, but also when my counterpart is teaching.  I watch them in the streets and playing ball or practicing marching for the two national holidays on September 14 and 15 (Independence Day and the Victory at San Jacinto). A few observations:

More kids than I originally thought are poor, really poor. I was fooled by the uniforms and by the selection out that poverty makes in school attendance.  The uniforms do what they are supposed to do, make everyone seem the same.  But after a while you see the differences—the condition of the uniforms tells a lot because appearances matter here and when the uniforms are dirty or too small or held together by pins , it’s an indicator of money trouble at home. Some kids carry a dullness about them.  I still don’t know what that is about—maybe fatigue, abuse, malnutrition or maybe just boredom with what school has to offer.  But, the really poor kids may not come to school at all, it being too costly to get there or to buy the uniforms and backpacks and supplies a student needs to go to school.  (Education is free in Nicaragua but it still costs parents to send their children.) I can give one example of a seventh grader named Cindi who is the younger of two daughters in a family in an outlying community. Her mother only had enough money to pay for the transportation to get Cindi’s older sister to school.  Cindi was not going to be able to go until my former site-mate and another volunteer, as a final gift to Nicaragua, gave her the “scholarship” of $15.00 per month to pay for transportation so she could go to school.  Every month I, the administrator of the scholarship, pay Cindi her 300 cordobas.  After this year I don’t know what Cindi will do.  I do know that if Cindi couldn’t attend school without outside help, there are many who are there by the skin of their teeth or not there at all.

I am always reminded by the way in which my kids behave differently than kids in the states.  One way is that they have known each other all their lives. In school kids are grouped in sections by the towns from which they come, the reason having to do with their traveling together, I think. That means that the kids in a class have grown up in the same streets of small communities, living close by, playing  together, going to the same elementary schools.  They remind me of puppies from the same litter; they are like brothers and sisters.  Although the Nica teachers think that there are too many public displays of affection, I don’t see nearly as much of that as I would in an American school. I think it’s because friends are like family.The kids are all over each other, affectionate, comfortable as much with teasing assaults on one another as with playing with another’s hair or hooking arms to walk around the school together. There are kids who think they are cool and there are shy kids, but those distinctions don’t matter much because everyone has known the others forever.

Today I was hiking back to my site along the highway and came upon an impromptu soccer game by the side of the road in which two of my students were playing. I need to set the scene.  One side of the dirt patch they were using for a field was bordered by some trees and weeds abutting the Pan American Highway where big semis and busses pass going fast.  On the other side of the dirt patch ”field” was a barbed wire fence.  At the ends of the field were homemade goals, two upright sticks about two feet high and set about two feet apart, topped by a stick that fit into the natural notches at the top of the uprights. The players ranged in age from I’d guess ten years old to 20 or so.  (This is another mark of kids in Nicaragua.  All ages hang out and play together, there being no rule that olders should disdain to play with youngers.  Quite the opposite, kids of all ages are family, playmates from earliest years and know each other like siblings.  They are who they have to play with. There’s nobody else.) All were shirtless.  The older kids looked like young Davids, bodies naturally sculpted by work and gleaming with sweat.  Three wore no shoes, one had a pair of high rubber boots, one played in flip flops and another in what looked like boat shoes except that 10 minutes after I started watching, the sole of one fell off and he played on the insole. The rest had shoes.

It was a great game.  But frequently the ball flew beyond the barbed wire fence and someone had to go for it, pulling up the crotch of his shorts to keep it from snagging on the barbs and expertly ducking to avoid getting cut.  But when play came up against the fence, people got hurt.  One player, grinning, displayed a gash on his hip to me and kept on going.  I wasn’t the only one watching.  Three other people stopped to see what was going on. The players obviously liked the audience.  We were played to, asked for decisions about whether goals were good, looked to for appreciative responses. I watched for a half hour, having the most fun I’ve had in some time, a part of the sidelines again, cheering and groaning as though my own kids were playing. Only the threat of rain hustled me along back home.

I keep thinking of something my son Adam told me happened on the Appalachian Trail.  People for whatever varied reasons would leave offerings along the trail for the hikers. Things like candy bars or beer.  The hikers called it trail magic.  I could imagine the pleasure of rounding a curve in the trail after 6 hours of hiking and finding a cooler with cold beer.  Well, that’s what the soccer game along the Panamerican Highway felt like to me today-- trail magic.  And, because you can’t take the teacher out of the hiker, I just got a connection I didn’t have before with two of my kids who will remember that I was there on the sidelines.