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.

GETTING READY

Every once in while I check out the blogs of other volunteers.  I’ve noticed that after a year of service, bloggers start their entries with an apology.  “It’s been 2 months since I wrote.  I’ve been busy but it’s time to catch up…”  I’m no different.  I used to try to post a blog once a week and now weeks, a month or more, go by and no urge to set it all down.  The  compulsion to write diminishes for some reason.  Why is that?  I think because we are so used to being here, so in the Nica groove, that we don’t see as well as we did when we first got here, or maybe that things seem usual, less demanding of comment. Or maybe it was, in my case, two months of fine vacation. But I went back to school this week and am back in writing mode.

Two things stood out in the first 3 days.  Teachers got their assignments yesterday.  Up till then they did not know what classes they were going to teach.  Surprises came with the announcement.  One English teacher found herself with eight preparations; another had none—she was taken out of the classroom and made a “helper”, not a promotion—I don’t know what it means. These dramatic assignments are accepted without public comment or complaint.  (My counterparts complain to me.)   Teachers just do what they are told.  No one asks for an explanation.  If this happened in the states, the union would be in evidence.

For the week before school begins the teachers are there getting ready.  But that consists largely in making murals, so far at least. The murals are large (6’ by 4’) posters.  The two under construction thus far employ the attentions of 6 or 7 teachers each.  They preach the government ordained motto for the year, “2013-- Year of productivity, blessings and prosperity—in victory!” My Nicaraguan teachers display not a bit of cynicism about the motto contents or its appropriateness in the school.  They set about the mural-making task with good and cheerful heart.  I was at school and there was nothing else to do so I helped out.  On the first day I watched as the letters for the slogan were made out of a foamy kind of paper.  For models, we dug through a pile of letters of all different sizes kept from prior murals.  One person shouted out the letters we needed and 3 of us looked for them—a process that took some time. I was wondering why we didn’t just pull out all the letters of the same size and then from them pick the ones necessary, but no, that’s not how things are done, we had to find the letters in the right size and shape and in the order in which they would appear on the mural.  Then one person traced the letters—again in the order in which they are needed for the motto--another cut them out, a third supervised and the 4^th person, me, held the cut out letters.  The norteamericano in me was impatient as hell.  Why can’t 2 people trace letters and 2 cut them out?  Do we really need a supervisor and a holder?  But no one else was offended and everyone bent to their task with careful attention and lots of joking and chatter, everyone working but kind of enjoying the super-simple task and the fellowship. That we ran out of one color of foamy paper in the middle of a word bothered no one at all: we just continued with another color.

That process took the better part of the morning.  The next day it was time to assemble the murals. With a lot of discussion and some disagreement, the letters were placed on the mural itself, cardboard covered in sheets of glued-on white paper. Then strips of colored paper were cut to form a border.  Finally three people laminated the thing by placing strips of wide cellophane tape edge to edge until the whole mural was sealed and protected.  This work took the better part of the morning.  Teachers in another part of the school were working on the other mural—same slogan—and by noon of the second day both were hung up outside to the universal critique, “Es bonito.” It’s pretty. Two mornings’ work: two murals.

What strikes me is how everyone gets along during projects like this, and generally here in Nicaragua. If one person has a strong opinion of how the mural should be, people back off and let them have their way. No one seems put out that another assumes the boss roll.  Neither does anyone think they are too good for cutting out letters or dabbing their fingers in white glue to affix borders or sheets of white paper. Everyone wants to help.  When a teacher was called away from an arguably more important task to hold the end of the cellophane tape, she didn’t complain at all or ask someone else to do it.  She was glad to help.  You can’t be a notreamericana and not wonder what happens to all the ego we assume must be sublimated to make a mural—or any other project for that matter, like a school or a family.  But there is no sign of hidden resentment or hidden fury.  Makes you wonder if maybe the huge ego isn’t a Western invention.  Gives credence to that theory that maybe competition isn’t the greatest contributor to the survival of the fittest, but co-operation is. Getting along just works better.  Being resentful sets you apart from the group.  And that’s not where you want to be.

Footnote: Today’s La Prensa, the liberal newspaper which refers always to the president as the “unconstitutional” president (I guess there’s some free press here) ran a story mocking the first lady’s initiative for this year to change attitudes to one’s more positive in order to counteract a conclusion held by many that things are pretty bad in Nicaragua (see unemployment rates, poverty, inadequate health care, etc. which is why it’s a third world country and Peace Corps is here.) Themes to be stressed are that we are to live beautifully, live clean, live healthy and live well. This initiative is to be implemented by the schools and it appears that the murals are just the beginning.  I expect we’ll be hearing a lot about positive thinking this year.  There are two views on this effort.  La Prensa thinks it’s just another attempt at mind-control, trying to make it so by insisting that everyone says it’s so. But one person I talked to thought it was a great attempt by the government to get everyone to live a better life.  I tend to go along with La Prensa, but then I remember how people made fun of Ladybird Johnson when she told us to ”Beautify America” by getting rid of billboards and stopping the dumping of trash out of car windows.  Nicaragua needs a first step like that and maybe this is it.

Cream Puff

Yesterday, I made my monthly trip to Ocotal, about a half hour bus ride from my site, to do my banking, buy a month’s supply of coffee (Dipilto, famous for its coffee, is located just outside Ocotal), and see what’s up.  Bought the coffee in, of all places, a pharmacy which had, of all things, a small display case of pastries.    The pastries looked good and I had 4 weeks of money in my pocket so I pointed to one I’d never seen before (the lady called it a “lámpara” – lamp), just to try it out, slipped the pastry in its little bag into my grocery sack and headed off for the bus station. I just missed a bus and so found a seat to wait a half hour for the next one.

  All around were the usual vendors selling bus station food: fried chicken and cabbage salad in a bag, Eskimo ice cream, cheaper sorbeta, rosquillas, soft drinks, super sweet hot pink candy, corn bread called masapan. Nothing appealed but I was pretty hungry. I decided to try out the pastry. I pulled it from the bag and sunk my teeth in, and guess what, it was a real delicious eggy cream puff filled with cool sweet (but not too sweet) cream.  Could not believe my tastebuds. A cream puff is a delicate thing to make.  I remember watching my mother make them, sometimes throwing out whole batches because they “fell” in the oven when somebody banged a door or jumped too hard on the floor.  I have made them, cooking the flour, water and butter mixture and then, laboriously, beating in one egg at a time until the texture was sinuous from the eggs.  Cream puffs are very much of the fine French pastry tradition that gives us brioche and napoleons. What are they doing in a pharmacy in a relatively small city in the North of Nicaragua when ovens are expensive to run and oven temperatures a guess?  I wish I knew the answer, and in a month, when I return to Ocotal, I’ll try to find out and let you know.

Today, back in my pueblo, I bought tortillas at the home of Yamileth.  I’ve been buying them there for some time, ever since I discovered by trial and error that they are the best in town. I think I may have written about Yamileth and her family before.  I’ve taught both of her daughters and she gave me a tortilla making lesson.  Today she was, as she always is when I come, standing in the kitchen at the rough wooden counter next to the fire on which sits a comál, a flat dish for cooking tortillas.  She makes tortilla after tortilla, placing each on the comál, turning it while she pats out another tortilla.  She does this from early in the morning until about 2 or 3 when she stops. Her husband is a lovely man, a musician, who as far as I can see does not do much.  Once in a while I see him playing with some musician friends.  He also builds guitars, but infrequently, one since I’ve known the family. In the past Doña Yamileth has acknowledged that is hard for her to stand all day making tortillas, in a labor which starts with making the dough in the early morning.  The kitchen is small and dark and smokey with a packed dirt floor, adobe walls and adobe tiled roof. Chicken have free run.

Today Yamileth didn’t have my 4 tortillas prepared and so I sat down to wait.   We got talking about how she alone is working while the family is at church and her nice husband is sitting outside watching the world.  I took a chance and asked what she thinks about her kids’ futures.  She responded that they need to study so they can do something else besides making tortillas.  I asked if both girls like to study. Too bad, no, they don’t (she made a sad face) but we agreed that with education they had more choices. I suggested that in many houses I saw the same thing, the woman making the little bit of money the family has.  She agreed that life for women was hard here in Nicaragua.

I so wish I had somewhere to go with this, both as a blog entry and as a response to the situation here.  Before coming to Nicaragua, I was willing to teach English but in my heart I wanted to find a way to help women be economically independent which, I guess, Yamilth is in a way.  It’s good for her and her family that she has a skill.  Her tortillas are valued and she sells all she makes.  I guess I think two things.  I’m bothered that she does all the work, or most of it, like many other Nica women, while their men do not. And I say that understanding that there are so few jobs for men or women here.   And I wish she didn’t have to work so hard to make the living.

Finally, I find poignant people’s belief that education will do it for their kids, provide opportunity, a belief we share in the States, and which proves true enough times at home  so people continue to believe it.  But here an educated person often faces a different set of difficulties.  No jobs, just like for the uneducated, poor wages, frustrated ambitions. 

What a decadence, my cream puff.  In today’s newspaper, this information regarding the cost of living, the canasta basica, the  cost for a family of meeting minimum needs: In Guatamala 87% of the people make enough money to meet basic needs;  El Salvador, 60% make enough;  Honduras, 67%; Costa Rica 100%;  and Nicaragua?---- 28%.

I met 2 students on my walk today, nice girls so happy to see me.  Where are you going, I asked.  “Home”.  What are you going to do? “Cook.”  What, I asked.  “Beans” they told me.  Of course, and lucky to have them.