Students as People

At the risk of sounding like a terrible person...it's only this year that I've really been able to appreciate my students as people. 

My first year of teaching was so all over the place and so much about getting the hang of classroom management that I don't feel like I was really able to relate much to my students. I was too exhausted by them to want to. I tended to see their behavior as a variable in the way a class resulted, but didn't always take the extra step back to consider why their behaviors existed. I got caught up in the cult of the "necio! necio! "(annoying/bad!)  instead of trying to be a model of positive reinforcement. 

My second year is different, for the most part. I'm a little better at being patient (some days). I know a few of their home situations a little better, which can help. But I think the biggest thing that is different is that now that I know many of their names or at least recognize faces, I see them around the various towns where I work and in different contexts. While it's awkward at times (ie the rebellious student eyeing me as I was curled up in a ball of pain on the bus, or when they're drinking at parties), it's also a really beautiful thing that builds a bond with them. I see them performing folklore dances at special events, riding bikes, loitering in the parks with their friends, watching their brothers and sisters, holding their children, selling food from house to house, doing errands, playing soccer. I've gotten slowly accustomed to having no space apart from them, and I've grown to find it more comforting, a sense of belonging to a community, if only in the most temporary of ways. 

Like any teenagers anywhere, life isn't all rainbows and sunshines. There's plenty of the awkward manifestations of puberty, especially in the boys, as they awkwardly grow into their bodies, suddenly lanky and high pitched, posing as more knowledgeable about life than they really are with hair gel and fake swagger the only things backing them up. Then, there are the happy teenage couples, who scare me with the likelihood of teen parenthood. I want to give all of them a million condoms. And then, the students who I imagine may not have enough to eat, or whose parents are absent or have other difficult circumstances.

Yet there are moments of pride as well. Having two of my favorite students from last year, with completely different personalities, go off to study English at UNAN, the public university, was an amazing reward for me as their teacher, as well as seeing them participate in a leadership camp put on by Peace Corps.

So that´s exactly my resolution for this year: to see the students as more than students. To see them as people.

The Undervalued Vos

When you study Spanish in school, they generally tell you that there are two forms that you use to express the word you- usted (unfamiliar or showing respect) and tu (informal/familiar).

However, if there's one thing I've fallen in love with recently about Nicaragua, it's the word "vos." While delegitimized by Spanish grammaticists, vos is used in the majority of Central and South American dialects of Spanish as the informal "you", albeit in different forms depending on the region. Note that I say region and not country: in Nicaragua, for example, no one in the Northern mountainous region uses vos, opting for an exclusive use of usted.

But there's something that I find really sexy about vos (pronounced bos, with the o pronounced roughly the same as way as rose), the way it comes out of your mouth round and hot and thick and resonant, and the intimacy or friendship it implies. So many times people use usted with me, which makes me feel old and too respectable, or tu, assuming I won't understand vos, which makes me feel ever more conscious of my outsider status.

Vos is just right. The kind of casualness I miss from American culture, but with an implication that I could belong here, that there are ties and friendships that anchor me.

It saddens me that students of Spanish aren't usually taught this form. It's a giant slight to so many Latino cultures, and sometimes even to the students themselves, because in their grammar classes, vos is treated like the redheaded stepchild, abandoned in favor of the two forms that dominate the written word. It's a shame, because I think it harms the students pride in their culture, in what they speak with their siblings or their friends, deeming these linguistic interactions to be of a lower quality.

On the Wall

Word of the Day

 

el marco- picture frame

Here in Nicaragua, you can tell a lot about desire from the images people post on their walls. There are pictures of the family looking serious and proper on a photoshopped background perhaps featuring a giant marble staircase, library or red carpet. There are glamour shots of women, perhaps when they were still young and hadn't given birth yet, with their curves in all the acceptable places. Giant homes with lush backyards, sparkling with cleanliness. Religious images, perhaps a washed out Mary featuring her impossibly light skinned cherubic baby Jesus. Pictures of random babies, particulary blondes, with inspirational mensages are also a big seller. 

These images often make me feel uncomfortably aware of the position of relative affluence in which I was raised and of the perniciousness of white supremacy, spurred onward in the modern era by media, but existing in the Americas since the conquest. So many of the backgrounds come from my original context, yet placed here they constitute an impossible dream, a desire for deceny, comfort, luxury or to be something other, supposedly more beautiful than what is. The escapism breaks my heart a little.

Thanks again, Alexander Flemming

I get sick a lot in Peace Corps. Really, people who don't get sick a lot in Peace Corps are the exception. For a lot of my service, at least the first year, I maintained the (extremely false) belief that I hardly ever got sick. I didn't really question this until I mentioned my lack of illness to a friend once, and he was like "What about that kidney infection? And the time you couldn't breathe very well?" I took mental inventory and then realized that indeed, I was sick quite a lot. I swear there's a sort of amnesia involved with illnesses here. One day you can be dying with food poisoning, and then a few days later, no big deal, you're eating slightly sketchy but delicious foods on the bus again. No fret man. 

This time, an intestinal infection knocked me out. I went to the Peace Corps doctor because I hadn't been feeling great, and they ran some tests. I almost didn't go because I'd been feeling slightly better, but I'm so glad I did because they found some sort of slightly obscure parasite. How hipster of me. There's no way to be sure of its provenance, but a good guess is probably water or cabbage salads from my rural schools. I've gotten careless with these things as time has gone on, feeling invicible due to the above mentioned amnesia factor. 

Ironically, after I went to the doctor and taking antibiotics, I started feeling worse. Somehow, I managed to give a co-facilitate a workshop to a group of English teachers in San Carlos yesterday (mind over matter), and then promptly proceeded to have intense stomach pains during the 2 hour bus ride home, which took extra long because we stopped to load rice onto the bus. Como no. Today I'm feeling better, but I've dedicated the day to lying as flat as possible and trying to eat little bits of food like gatorade and soda crackers. 

It's humbling to realize that if antibiotics hadn't been invented, I could be potentially be very very sick or even dead  in this moment. It's also amazing to think that in much of the industrial world, we've improved our water supply to the point that getting a parasite seems like an insane thing to have happen to you. Embracing one's fragility in the midst of the arrogance of one's twenties is perhaps not the worst thing. 

At the same time, it's frustrating, feeling knocked out any time I want to focus on side projects or even just my main job. I need to write syllabi and a grant right now, but I can't focus on numbers, already a huge weakness of mine, to save my life and I'm feeling terribly uncreative. And I'm missing the Patron Saint Festival, which is actually fine, because I won't lose my hearing and see all my students drunk. Still it makes me a little sad because I was supposed to hang out with friends I haven't seen in a while. 

But such is life. It's good to have to be more flexible and roll with the (literal) punches (to the gut).

Rage Anatomy

Peace Corps can make you a worse person. Maybe that's counterintuitive, but too much of a different culture can make you a reactive, overly angry, cynical bad person. I am seriously starting to worry that I will need anger management soon, because I'm starting to fly off the cuff at everyone. Well, pretty much only the men. Because several of them seem to be aspiring to jerk-faceness.

Here is a brief list of all the different kinds of rages that can result:

Body rage- The anger felt when you have a million things to do and then your body succumbs to a parasite, or you eat some slightly bad cream and nothing gets done for the next several days even though you had them off.

Chichero rage- The anger felt when a chichero band wakes you up at 4 or 5 am in honor of the patron saint, every day of the week. I'm pretty sure Jesus would have been anti-bands and fireworks at 5 am. Doesn't that go against the whole "Don't be a jerk to your neighbor" deal? Now I get why my students wanted to add "The Right to Sleep" to our list of human rights last year.

Misinformation rage- When a taxi driver tells you that a bus is going to pass soon and then you wait at the empalme for over an hour. Or  conversely when the bus decides to abandon any pretense of a schedule and leave early and you are stuck stuck stuck.

Parrot rage-I know my host mom loves it, but I hate our catcalling/cackling/shrieking/whistling/yelling parrot. He is the worst pet. This leads me to greater appreciation of our rabbit. He is a great pet. He is extremely silent and hops in an extremely cute fashion.

Piropo rage- Nature hath no fury like a woman who's been street harrassed too many times. Especially if it is by a man in uniform, ie police, army or naval officer. In theory, I have many smart sounding retorts to the ever common catcall, but if you catch me on the wrong day, it sounds more like this incoherent babble.

To a soldier who made the mistake of doing the annoying hiss- hiss- hiss thing at me: "NO!!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE A MAN IN UNIFORM!!! BAD!!! BAD!!! UNACCEPTABLE!!!GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

To a random vago dude who called me mamacita while I was on my way to do aerobics : "WHAT IS THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ALL OF YOU MEN??? YOU ARE SO UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. ENOUGH. ENOUGH. NO MORE. " (At this point all of the kitchen staff of the local hotel come out to watch, talk about embarrassing.)

So clearly I need to work on not getting so bent out of shape and try to have some real conversations.

Rooster rage- The furiousness still experienced upon being woken up too early by the fighting cocks. When I was telling my boss that I thought a bunch of them had died because it had gotten quieter of late, he said "You seem really gleeful about that." Probably true. I was never a vegetarian because I liked animals I guess.

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Luckily, I got out of site recently, for work purposes, but it was good to have a break. Now, I am a little less crazy. I really need to start doing yoga again. Maybe next week when it is less loud. Fiestas Patronales are not the best for quiet moments of self reflection.