Infratructure Blues

I just got back from a vacation to the Atlantic Coast for Semana Santa (please see next blog post for details) The trip is an epic journey of somewhere between 13 and 16 hours by bus from mt site.  Half to a third of that time is spent either on bone-rattling dirt roads or in pongas—boats that carry 10 or 12 people. It’s hard to believe that there is no direct road connecting the capital city to the main city of the Atlantic Coast, but there isn’t.  This has gotten me thinking again about the huge need for infrastructure in this country where everything—raod building excepted—is done by hand.

Up here in the north, too, there is simply not enough public space for basic activities.  For example I teach in both the high school and the primary school buildings.  The school buildings are in blocks of 2 or 3 classrooms each, single story brick structures with two doors for each classroom and windows along the long sides to admit air, insects, noise, dirt.  In some of the 2-classroom structures there is no wall separating the two classrooms, but rather a folding wall which someone thought would be a good idea for large gatherings.  This year I have 4 classes each week in one of these structure, but unfortunately the folding wall has been broken since the beginning of the school year in February, the pieces tied together with string and hauled to the side of the classroom. As a result two classes meet in either end of the large space.  The noise is incredible.   We’d be better off outside.  If my fellow teacher has group work planned and I am presenting material, I really can’t be heard above the din.  Or so I thought.  One day I sat on the side and watched my co-teacher present some material as the noise from the other classroom made her remarks unintelligible to me.  But I watched the kids.  Not everyone was listening, but those who were trying to understand could hear her.  I think they were reading her lips. Had this situation happened in the States, either the teacher would have refused to go on or the students would have been put out beyond words. But my kids were cheerful, participating as they could (once again those who chose to participate) paying no attention to the horrific din.  As an aside, no one complains to an authority about the missing wall.  The teachers will say what a pain it is not to have a wall, but no one is marching down to the delegado’s office to demand that conditions improve.  This is how it is for right now, the attitude of both teacher and student says, no use getting upset about it.  Just let it be. Could be the theme song of Nicaragua.

I also teach a community class in Somoto twice a week.  It’s at two in the afternoon, the hottest time of day in this, April, the hottest month of the year. By contrast, this class is taught in the second fanciest facility in town, the Palace of Culture.  However we share the space with 2 or 3 other groups who meet at the same time.  One, a guitar class given by my old English teacher, Profe Ernesto, has an inside room, but my class and an art class share a corridor outside.  Ernesto’s students make a fair amount of noise but it’s not unpleasant noise and I can talk above it.  The artists are a quiet bunch, so the three of us share the space peaceably.  What I note, however, is how unfazed my students are by the sharing.  They appear to have no expectation of a separate facility.  They are used to sharing, making do with what is given.

My little class for the primary grade kids continues at the town library once a week. The library is a hot little room painted a bright yellow.  There is a door and two windows.  During class people come and go.  Kids not taking part in the class visit the library to play games or hang out with their friends.  Usually there is not much problem.  I can’t say the visitors actually respect the class but then they aren’t too disruptive so we go along on parallel tracks, they occasionally sitting down to see what we’re up to, sometimes joining in for a few minutes.  But this week there was a new element. A chainsaw, rarely seen or heard in It this town, was employed by government officials to cut up a big tree that had fallen outside the door of the library. As you can imagine the noise was considerable.  It was impossible to be heard. The librarian tried to compensate by closing the door and shuttering the windows. The noise continued; the heat rose. The kids continued working on their projects, oblivious, not even curious.  Everyone is so used to putting up with things.  Only their gringa volunteer has a problem.

I have described before how all the labor to build things here, with the exception of roads where machines are employed, is manual labor.  The roads, too, are the only exception to the haphazard way things are built.  There are apparently no standards for anything.  Sidewalks, where they have them, start and stop without reason, change levels, contain obstructions or holes.  It’s safer to walk in the streets.  Stairs are built as the builder, often not a professional, sees fit which means that sometimes the steps are steep, the tread narrow, and sometimes they are shallow and wide. I’ve fallen 3 times in Nicaragua, once in a hotel where I was looking at paintings for sale on the wall and didn’t pay attention to the fact that the floor inexplicably dropped a level. (Another time I fell while walking on the impossible sidewalks, the sun in my eyes.) This is all part of what it means to be third world. 

I hope I don’t sound like I’m complaining. (OK—I admit to complaining about the noise while I teach, but in my favor I can say that it doesn’t surprise me anymore and I recognize that my reaction is a matter of incomplete acculturation.) I am just amazed on how much is to be done here, and how patient and adaptive the people are.