Don't give me an offer I can't refuse

Dear Romeo Santos,

I've reached my breaking point. I've been prompted to write this blog post because I'm stuck in a room with someone who has your song "Propuesta Indecente" as their ringtone. Mr. Popular has gotten about 10 phone calls in about as many minutes, and just hearing the fake French intro has got my feminist hackles up. If you'll give me just a moment of your time, I'll explain why.

As you probably know, your song has made it huge in Latin America, if its popularity in Nicaragua is any indication of regional trends. When I first heard it back in December, I thought it was pretty catchy and sexy and so I downloaded it. Only then, when I actually listened to the lyrics did I realize how horribly machista it is. And since it's played at least once daily on the radio, we get to hear your cloying attempts at seduction over and over again. Romeo, you are better than this!

Let's take a look.

Hola, me llaman Romeo, es un placer conocerla… (Hi, my name is Romeo, it's a pleasure to meet you!)
You start off so great! Introducing yourself so politely!!

Que bien te ves, te adelanto no me importa quién sea El.
(You look great, just let me be up front and say I don't give a damn who that guy is)
This is the next thing you say?? BRO!!!!!!!!! Step off!! Respect her decision to be with her current pareja! Also, don't you want to at least know her name? 

After some other ramblings, we arrive to your chorus. 
Si te invito una copa y me acerco a tu boca, Si te robo un besito a ver te enojas conmigo
(If I buy you a drink, and draw close to your mouth, if I rob a kiss, let's see if you get mad at me)
Here's a thought: maybe instead of trying to awkwardly get her drunk and make out with her, you could ASK if she's into it.
 
Si te falto el respeto y luego culpo al alcohol, Si levanto tu falda me darias el derecho 
De medir tu sensataz
(If I lack respect and blame the booze, If I lift your skirt, will you give me the right to measure your judgement)
Maybe instead of being a drunken lout and trying to conquistar you should ask her what she wants. Because last time I checked, having two X chromosones doesn't dis-entitle you from having an opinion. Side note, but don't you find the verb conquistar rather creepy?   Do we need to review what happened to Native American women during the Conquest? O right. Lots of rape. Which is pretty much what you're trying to pull off here. 

Relajate que este Martini calmara tu timidez (Relax, this Martini will calm down your timidness)
YOU'VE KNOW THIS WOMAN FOR A ROMEO AND JULIET PERIOD OF TIME, HOW DO YOU KNOW SHE IS TIMID, ARE YOU SERIOUS?? 

(Hey, listen, I know what you like…)
ARE YOU SURE? 

I'm not for censorship or anything, but you know what would be great? If your song would just go away. Because it is the last thing that millions of youth need to hear. Boys don't need to be taught to be sexual aggressive bullies, just as girls don't need to be taught to be sexually submissive and to just wait around to be conquested.
Especially in places like Nicaragua, where things like teen pregnancy,
domestic violence, sexual violence and low self esteem are rampant. 

You know what would be the most beautiful thing in the world, Romeo? If you would use your star power, angel voice and smooth bachata rhythms to write a song about women that does not objectify us, treat us like a possession to be won, vilify us, glorify sexual harrassment, or continue the all-suffering woman for the sake of the children image. Write a song in which women have (sexual) agency. Write a song in which Latinas are the powerful protaganistas that we know them to be. 

K thanks.

The girls are back in town

It's soccer season again, which means I get to hang out with some pretty awesome ladies. Our soccer team is full of some of the most fun, loud and least reverent Nicaraguan women I've ever met. While I don't really fit in with them, I admire their gutsiness, their playing ability and verve. In my second year on the team, I've really come to appreciate the way so many of them openly flout stereotypes of what it is supposed to mean to be a woman in Nicaragua. They are not afraid to speak their mind. They don't ask for permission from anyone. They get dirty and sweaty and rained on. It's a beautiful thing.

Reality check

You know you are a ex-vegetarian Peace Corps nerd when the fantasy that gets you through an extremely nauseating 6 hr bus ride in which the bus gets a flat tire, stops at a fish factory and you have a random woman's child on your lap eating a piece of corn and getting kernels all over your clothes is the thought of going to an air-conditioned grocery store and buying spinach.

Mission accomplished and it feels so good.

A slightly deranged cultural exchange

So my community English project this semester has been a class, more like an English club really, with a group of 7th graders. There are about 10 kids in the class, but only about 4 show up on any given day. I tried to be strict about attendance at the beginning, but they've worn me down. Quality vs. quanity, although it's been hard to get either, partly because I can't keep up with their energy, which constantly manifests itself as the students bicker, typically calling each other names like "Horse" or "Fox" (Stupid, Slut in coloquial Nica speech). I've tried to ban this and have explained repeatedly that calling someone fox doesn't mean anything in English anyway, but every few classes, there's a resurgence.

The students have very short attention spans so I've been constantly trying to think of things to do to keep them interested. So far, taking them on a paseo (trip) to count animals, after we learned their names in English (Teacher! Cow!! Dog!!), and teaching them the Jellyfish song (Hands Up! And do the Jellyfish, the jellyfish, the jellyfish fish) have been my biggest hits.

A couple weeks ago, my attempt at entertaining the kids (with minimal planning for busy Teacher Emily) was to review conversational phrases we learned at school ("How are you?" "How old are you, etc?"), teach them some new ones and then have them practice by talking with random family and friends of mine via Skype. Only 3 kids showed up for class and one left early, which made it nearly impossible to practice by having them interview each other.

But the kids wanted to go to the cyber cafe anyway, so we went and talked to 6 different people. It was really interesting to see the different ways people responded to English language learners with a very low level.  Unlike me, they didn't really dumb things down as much, which had interesting results. My sister Audrey for example is basically too much of a smarty pants to be allowed to talk to ESL learners. Too many high frequency words come out of your mouth, dear sister. However, it was good for the kids to practice the essential skill of piecing together what someone is saying from only catching one essential word.

Conversely, it was just as interesting to see how the kids interacted with other native speakers. While they kept getting really nervous, forgetting what they learned and breaking into high pitched laughter, they did finally get the hang of certain phrases, such as "Nice to meet you," the social context of which I think had previously been confusing. It was great for them to see that they could (sort of) communicate just by giving it a try. One barrier to language learning in Nicaragua (and the majority of places in the world according to a lot of ESL literature) is that the culture often values perfectionism, and students feel ashamed to just try something out.

Things were going reasonably well until my sister Audrey answered "What is your favorite animal?" with "Hedgehog" and  I translated the word as "errizo" instead of "erizo." For some entirely mysterious reason, they completely lost it. Because of the hedgehog incident, they were still laughing hysterically and (hopefully) inadvertantly creeped on a male friend of mine by asking him "What is your number?" without saying anything else first. I think they were trying to ask "What is your name?" Things continued to devolve from there to the point where they just kept asking me to pronounce hedgehog over and over in Spanish and I decided it was time to go home.

The next week, we had slightly better class attendance (5!) and we practiced the question phrases again. This time, my counterpart Xiomara happened to be in town and so I decided it would be better for the students, mostly girls, to go talk with her. Xiomara is a great role model for them because she is incredibly hard working and intelligent, in addition to being one of  the sweetest people I've ever met. It was fun to have them "interview" her, and vice versa. I was also able to use it as a teaching moment; after having a quick conversation with Xiomara in English, I told the students, "If you keep working really hard and studying, some day you can speak English like Xiomara." It was really powerful to be able to show them an example of a Nicaraguan woman from their own town who has achieved so much. 

We might still try a crazy exchange some other time though.

It´s the most wonderful time of the year!

Words of the day:

regalar- to gift something

chocoyo- parakeet

It's officially my favorite time of year in Nicaragua: early rainy season. There are often rain showers in the afternoon, which make for great napping. Sometimes, it even rains enough to do away with the oppressive heat. Things are getting greener again, and much more lush, although the Pacific Coast is very behind on rain this year. Even here in Rio San Juan we're a little light on it; I managed to dry my laundry in only one day today, practically unheard of.

More importantly, it's high mango season. The mangoes are so ripe that all over town, you can periodically hear the heavy thud of fruit making contact with tin rooves. It's the strangest sound in the world, a thud that should be sinister, but actually marks the arrival of sweetness. The chocoyos know what's up: they raucously swarm in the trees, feasting obsencely.  As do the children, who throw rocks skyward and climb up trees, seeking to snare snacks.

Nicaraguans this time of year become even more incredibly generous than they usually are. Everyone here is starting to get tired of eating mangos, and pretty much any household that has a tree is likely to gift you mangoes when you visit. This works out wonderfully for me, because I can easily eat 5 mangoes or more a day, and while they are cost about 5 US cents at this point, free is still better. I'm attempting to eat as many mangoes as possible now so that I won't miss them as much when I'm back in the states and they're a $1 each for a variety that cannot possibly hope to rival the sweet tangy wonderful mouth explosion that is a perfectly ripened mango rosa.

The same goes for avocados: people are trying to get rid of avocadoes, now that they are all ripening at the same time and can't be stored. This is again, amazing. Guacamole daily, for basically free!

Hence the awesome food stache, all regalar-ed!!

May (and June and July) Mural Madness

Word of the Day:  

Tapa- cap, like a bottlecap from a soda bottle

What can you do with about $30, a lot of spare time and a lot of help? Make a tapa mural! Or 3. 

This ambitious project was the brainchild of my sitemate Christina Palazzolo: make a bottlecap mural at each of the high schools where we work. It sounded easy enough, just requiring a little concrete, and a lot of trash. The principals and teachers were excited about the idea of having something to beautify their schools at a low cost. Nevertheless, the process has been less than straight forward; we would hold a contest to see which grades could collect the most bottlecaps and create the best designs for their school's mural. However, the kids at the schools showed varying degrees of interest in the project, some being very enthusiastic about creating mural designs and collecting bottlecaps and others being entirely apathetic. At one school, the only design submited was a picture of Bob Marley, which, while very awesome, was deemed inappropriate.

Once the mural process got underway, the kids have been more interested in helping, particularly the students in my English club, who begged me to let them go look for tapas instead of having class and who have spent some of their days or afternoons off helping out. 

This project has been really meaningful for me. There are too few opportunities for kids to work on art projects here, and it has been amazing to engage students who aren't usually interested in class, but like to draw or work in hands on ways. There's also a lot of symbolism in the murals as well: they take so many of the things that ail the community: drunkeness (cheap sugarcane alcohol bottlecaps), trash, diabetes (soft drinks) and turn them into art.The rampant consumerism of Coca Cola and other companies is recast as national symbols, school symbols, arte alusiva a la naturaleza (nature images), etc. Arguably this could be seen as reifying the new kinds of consumption, but I choose the opposite interpretation.

We're mostly done with 1 mural, 1/2 way done with another, and hoping to start with a third next week. Here are some images of the process so far!

 Day 1

 Que bonito: a human sized guardabarranco, the national bird

 Kleydy, expert in mural design

 Sitemates in action

 In process, all three symbols almost there...

 Action shot

 An extremely ugly wall at the school in El Tule

 Students help to sort bottlecaps

 So many.

 Students getting into action

 The school symbol

Finishing off the Sacuanjoche, the national flower

All in a good day´s work.

Globalization and Resurrection: Viva the 80s

How long has it been since you heard this song?

Or this one ?

This?

Foreigner?

Tom Cruise?

The ubiquitous Bryan Adams. Every time the San Miguelito bus plays its Bryan Adams mix, I curse Canada a little bit more.

I really wish I had that flame effect.

It is truly staggering how many famous people are in this video.

Teacher! Sing us the Titanic song!!


If you're in my parents generation, your response to that question is likely "Not in quite sometime." If you're in my generation, your answer might be "Never." Yet in Nicaragua, all the songs I've sampled here are widely listened to, mainly on public buses, but also at home and in English song competitions. In an age in which hipsterdom reigns, I may need to clarify that people actually love these songs, not ironically. Musica clasica (Classical music) or Musica romantica (Romantic music) are very common responses if you ask Nicas, especially those in their 30s and up, what kind of music they like. There are Spanish language versions of many of these songs that are commonly played as well.

I've had nearly two years to figure out why these songs are still so popular here. Did they just make it down here really late with the war and subsequent economic turmoil? But it's not like "Radio Disney" doesn't play the latest hits, albeit a few months after they come out in the States (which I realized on a trip home in December). What was it about the 1980s and 1990s in America that resonates with Nicaraguans today? How does the cheesy-ness of the music I hear not translate? What gives these songs so much staying power?

Many cultural commentators have voiced fears that globalization means we'll end up with one super bland worldwide culture in which everyone listens to Ke$ha and eats big macs. What I find more to be the case is that American things are adopted ad-hoc, and maybe they take on a different meaning.

I have one more interesting musical tale of cultural globalization: the song "Nwa Baby: Ashawo Remix." This song, by the Nigerian artist Flavour N'abania somehow made it to Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast (primarily home to people of African descent and indigenous groups). By now though, it's made it to the mestizo side of the country, and I've heard it a lot on the buses. To me, this doesn't seem as mysterious. It's unbelievable catchy. I dare you not to feel happy as you listen to it.