I haven't written teaching anecdotes from class all year, mostly because I got a bit bored with teaching if we're being honest, but this week had a bunch of good ones that begged to be written about.
The Revolution comes to San Miguel
When my counterpart teacher and Antonio arrived at our 10th grade class room in San Miguelito, we found the door locked, with a sign on it saying "10A on Strike! No Spanish! No Physics! No English!" The students, hiding inside, had also moved the whiteboard to cover the window,with a message on it saying "Strike! Because You're Against Children's Recreation!" "They have a test today," Antonio told me. The principal broke up the "strike" pretty quickly, although it took the students a long time to remove their desks and backpacks from the windows. They were not pleased to have class to say the least. It was amusing that they grabbed the idea of student strikes out of the cultural ether and expropriated it to waste class time.
Verde, Amarillo y Rojo
To motivate our 7th grade class in El Tule since they've finished the curriculum for the year, my counterpart teacher Jonathan and I decided to teach a pop song. I suggested Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" because the lyrics are simple, the message is positive, and it repeats a lot. "Don't worry about a thing/cuz every little thing's/ gonna be alright." Plus, all the little necios love Bob Marley, and it was a good way to get them on board with class.
While we were in the middle of pre-teaching vocabulary during a downpour (WHY DOES IT ALWAYS RAIN WHEN WE FOCUS ON LISTENING????), Jonathan had a problem with a student, and asked her to go to the principal's office. It turned into a bit of an ugly altercation, but after she finally left, one of the students told him "Teacher, don't worry!"
It was cute. Then, it finally stopped raining enough to hear the song. As the students got into the song, tapping their fingers, and swaying from side to side a little bit, the mood in the class completely changed, the rain stopped and I swear the sun almost came out. Rasta magic.
Cake, o boy*, is that a gun?!?
In 9th grade in El Tule, we had a party to celebrate a student's birthday, and somehow, obviously because they don't know about my poor knife skills, the skills asked me to cut the cake with someone's pocketknife. I was well into my third or fourth piece when I realized that the knife handle was in the shape of a gun! Things that are not permitted at most US high schools: 1)pocketknives 2) guns or things that look like them. No such thing as zero tolerance out in the campo.
*Cake, o boy! is apparently what I said when I was 3 and saw that there was cake at a family party, and is now what you say anytime there's going to be cake in the Clayton household.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
The Mudderload
Talk about a mud bowl.
On Sunday, our soccer team had quite the adventure out in the campo. We went to go play the team in El Penon, a small rural community. Because the trail that you're supposed to take to the field was flooded by heavy rains, we had to take quite the detour through insanely muddy trails upon which Mother Nature had unleashed quite the deluge the night before. A lot of the girls wore flip flops and ended up having to go barefoot, through muddy terrain filled with spines and ants. I had sneakers on, but still sank in up to my ankles on a few occasions when I wasn't paying attention. Everyone in the community who went to go watch the game laughed at us quite a bit as they strolled by confidently in black rubber boots or rode their mules through the muck. After over an hour of tramping around, we finally arrived at the destination.
Probably because we arrived so exhausted, we had our first loss of the season, but the field is the nicest one in the greater San Miguelito area, a nice change from the muddier, rocky usual state of affairs, probably because no one ever goes there. There was also a howler monkey howling away during the game, which was kind of wild and exciting if you think about it.
The way back was more of the same, but we found/stole lots of fruit along the way which made things much more bearable. Limes fresh off the tree, guyabana, and this crazy fruit called sincoya, which was literally the best fruit I've ever eaten in Nicalandia with a flavor unlike anything I've ever tried. And of course, the craziness of all my soccermates made it really fun trip, even if it took forever to wash the mud out of my clothes and shoes and I'm still itching like crazy from all the ant bites...
On Sunday, our soccer team had quite the adventure out in the campo. We went to go play the team in El Penon, a small rural community. Because the trail that you're supposed to take to the field was flooded by heavy rains, we had to take quite the detour through insanely muddy trails upon which Mother Nature had unleashed quite the deluge the night before. A lot of the girls wore flip flops and ended up having to go barefoot, through muddy terrain filled with spines and ants. I had sneakers on, but still sank in up to my ankles on a few occasions when I wasn't paying attention. Everyone in the community who went to go watch the game laughed at us quite a bit as they strolled by confidently in black rubber boots or rode their mules through the muck. After over an hour of tramping around, we finally arrived at the destination.
Probably because we arrived so exhausted, we had our first loss of the season, but the field is the nicest one in the greater San Miguelito area, a nice change from the muddier, rocky usual state of affairs, probably because no one ever goes there. There was also a howler monkey howling away during the game, which was kind of wild and exciting if you think about it.
The way back was more of the same, but we found/stole lots of fruit along the way which made things much more bearable. Limes fresh off the tree, guyabana, and this crazy fruit called sincoya, which was literally the best fruit I've ever eaten in Nicalandia with a flavor unlike anything I've ever tried. And of course, the craziness of all my soccermates made it really fun trip, even if it took forever to wash the mud out of my clothes and shoes and I'm still itching like crazy from all the ant bites...
Sincoya
Jokes
Any of you who have ever had the painful experience of hearing me butcher jokes in person will be pleased that this blogpost is written. Judge for yourselves.
Nica humor can run the gammut from the really dark to slapstick, which makes sense in a country scarred by war and where Mexican comedy is broadcast. Indeed, most of the comedy shows on TV are classic Mexican shows such as El Chavo, Chespirito, La Hora Pico, La Familia Peluche and Derbez en Cuando are pretty popular on weekends. I used to watch a lot more of these programs during training on Saturday mornings with my host mom's granddaughter, Salome, and learned a lot of great double entendres. It was a great way to boost my Spanish skills.
There are several basic trends to Nicaraguan jokes that I've observed. First, there are punny word play jokes, very commonly featured on gum wrappers of a candy called chiclin. Sometimes a little racist, sometimes a little bit sexist or racy, but often very clever. (Ok, maybe not the ones on the chiclin). A second major theme includes intercultural misunderstandings or situtations with power differentials where the person who supposedly has the upper hand does something wrong and gets leveled.
And now without further ado...A few jokes! Probably mostly lost in translation, but you never know.
Old stuff
[From El Gueguense, a famous play/ballet about a cunning indigenous merchant from the colonial era. Sorry for non Spanish speakers, I can't translate this to English without it losing its meaning! Basically the Alguacil keeps asking for money and the merchant keeps "mishearing" him]
Alguacil: ...Primero debo recibir mi salario.
Gueguense: Pescados salados? Ah, muchachos, alli estan las redes de pescados salados...
...
Alguacil: Nada entiendo de pescados salados, Gueguense.
Gueguense: Pues, que es lo que quiere, Senor Capitan Alguacil Myaor?
Alguacil: Reales de plata, Gueguense.
Gueguense: Ah, redes de plato....
[My friend Kleydy upon hearing music that's past its time]
God, that's so old Colombus must have brought it over on his ship!!!
Cornier than a Dad Joke
[Courtesy of a chiclin wrapper]
What's the only country that can laugh and explode at the same time?
JA- PON
(Japan)
[My friend Brian's counterpart teacher William taught us this one, now the preferred English joke of my students in El Tule]
milk a cow= mil cacao (A thousand cacao plants)
Damn Kids
Students: Teacher, how do you say garza in English?
Me: Egret.
Students: How do you say chancho?
Me: Pig.
Students: How do you say cherepo?
Me: Gecko.
Students: How do you say gasoline?
Me: Um...why are you asking me all these words?
Students: These are our nicknames.
[I now call them by the English version of their nicknames . Guaranteed laughter, every time.]
7th grade student: "Teacher, if por means times and que means what then por que (why) is times what, right?"
[A favorite from Josefa, the Spanish teacher in one of the rural schools where I work]
Primary School Student: Do you know English, teacher?
Josefa: No, honey.
Primary School Student: I know English!!
Josefa: What do you know?
Primary School Student: hippopatamo (Spanish) is hipopataMUS!!!
Intercultural Exchanges
A Nica comes back from the States, showing off all the stuff he got there. Someone asks him if he knows English now. "Sure!" he says. "For example, uno= one. dos= one one. tres= one one one."
[A joke my counterpart teacher Jonathan taught me]
A gringo goes into a typical Nicaraguan restaurant. When it comes time to order, he asks the waiter for the "Mama no se vaya" soup. The waiter is confused and asks him to repeat his order again. The man says again, "I'd like the mama no se vaya soup." The waiter looks at the menu to try and figure out what he's talking about. The man gets exasperated and says, " I want the mom don't go soup!"
(Mondongo is a traditional Nicaraguan soup made from cow stomach)
[Another joke from Jonathan]
A gringo is walking down the street in San Carlos. He sees a vendor with fish and asks in a really bad accent "Pescado?" "No," she replies "Mojarra (A type of fish)."
[Me, getting in on the fun, while getting checked out for ear pain]
Doctor: Have you gone swimming lately?
Me: Well, no, but I did get really wet in a rainstorm yesterday.
Nica humor can run the gammut from the really dark to slapstick, which makes sense in a country scarred by war and where Mexican comedy is broadcast. Indeed, most of the comedy shows on TV are classic Mexican shows such as El Chavo, Chespirito, La Hora Pico, La Familia Peluche and Derbez en Cuando are pretty popular on weekends. I used to watch a lot more of these programs during training on Saturday mornings with my host mom's granddaughter, Salome, and learned a lot of great double entendres. It was a great way to boost my Spanish skills.
There are several basic trends to Nicaraguan jokes that I've observed. First, there are punny word play jokes, very commonly featured on gum wrappers of a candy called chiclin. Sometimes a little racist, sometimes a little bit sexist or racy, but often very clever. (Ok, maybe not the ones on the chiclin). A second major theme includes intercultural misunderstandings or situtations with power differentials where the person who supposedly has the upper hand does something wrong and gets leveled.
And now without further ado...A few jokes! Probably mostly lost in translation, but you never know.
Old stuff
[From El Gueguense, a famous play/ballet about a cunning indigenous merchant from the colonial era. Sorry for non Spanish speakers, I can't translate this to English without it losing its meaning! Basically the Alguacil keeps asking for money and the merchant keeps "mishearing" him]
Alguacil: ...Primero debo recibir mi salario.
Gueguense: Pescados salados? Ah, muchachos, alli estan las redes de pescados salados...
...
Alguacil: Nada entiendo de pescados salados, Gueguense.
Gueguense: Pues, que es lo que quiere, Senor Capitan Alguacil Myaor?
Alguacil: Reales de plata, Gueguense.
Gueguense: Ah, redes de plato....
[My friend Kleydy upon hearing music that's past its time]
God, that's so old Colombus must have brought it over on his ship!!!
Cornier than a Dad Joke
[Courtesy of a chiclin wrapper]
What's the only country that can laugh and explode at the same time?
JA- PON
(Japan)
[My friend Brian's counterpart teacher William taught us this one, now the preferred English joke of my students in El Tule]
milk a cow= mil cacao (A thousand cacao plants)
Damn Kids
Students: Teacher, how do you say garza in English?
Me: Egret.
Students: How do you say chancho?
Me: Pig.
Students: How do you say cherepo?
Me: Gecko.
Students: How do you say gasoline?
Me: Um...why are you asking me all these words?
Students: These are our nicknames.
[I now call them by the English version of their nicknames . Guaranteed laughter, every time.]
7th grade student: "Teacher, if por means times and que means what then por que (why) is times what, right?"
[A favorite from Josefa, the Spanish teacher in one of the rural schools where I work]
Primary School Student: Do you know English, teacher?
Josefa: No, honey.
Primary School Student: I know English!!
Josefa: What do you know?
Primary School Student: hippopatamo (Spanish) is hipopataMUS!!!
Intercultural Exchanges
A Nica comes back from the States, showing off all the stuff he got there. Someone asks him if he knows English now. "Sure!" he says. "For example, uno= one. dos= one one. tres= one one one."
[A joke my counterpart teacher Jonathan taught me]
A gringo goes into a typical Nicaraguan restaurant. When it comes time to order, he asks the waiter for the "Mama no se vaya" soup. The waiter is confused and asks him to repeat his order again. The man says again, "I'd like the mama no se vaya soup." The waiter looks at the menu to try and figure out what he's talking about. The man gets exasperated and says, " I want the mom don't go soup!"
(Mondongo is a traditional Nicaraguan soup made from cow stomach)
[Another joke from Jonathan]
A gringo is walking down the street in San Carlos. He sees a vendor with fish and asks in a really bad accent "Pescado?" "No," she replies "Mojarra (A type of fish)."
[Me, getting in on the fun, while getting checked out for ear pain]
Doctor: Have you gone swimming lately?
Me: Well, no, but I did get really wet in a rainstorm yesterday.
Monday, October 6, 2014
The Snack Wars
Pejibaye, a weird fruit from a plant related to the coconut, which has a unique almost nutty flavor
There's a food fight brewing
in Nicaragua.
Every few months, stores,
called pulperias, pop up on the front of houses like mushrooms,
overflowing with colorful snack bags. Yet another person has started a store.
The cycle is at once aspirational and predatory; upon seeing the success of
some store owners, people decide to start selling themselves to get some
income, especially after encouraging salespeople make their rounds. It strikes
me as the developing world equivalent of subprime home loan lending: starting
businesses that could never hope to be profitable.
The packaged snack onslaught
is mainly spearheaded by Yummies, a subsidiary of a Honduran company that sells snacks all over Central America. Students
are the main consumers, scarfing down processed
Ranchitas (like Nicaraguan Doritos), fried plaintain chips, taquitos,
lollipops, and God- only knows what other forms of empty calories to supplement
the often insufficient diet of rice and beans they receive at home or at their
school snack, in the case of the primary school students. Soda is also a
problem, but to a slightly lesser extent, because it's relatively expensive.
Local soda brands such Rojita are a common treat although Coca Cola and
Fanta brand sodas are more often reserved for birthday parties because of their
higher cost. The junk food leaves a mess in its wake: garbage on the ground and
in students mouths: teeth can only bath in sugary goodness for so long before
they develop numerous cavities. Research shows that oral health in Central
American children is actually declining, despite advances in other measures of
health access.
On the other side of the
snack wars, are the homemade traditional snacks, mainly sold by women or
children, which date back to Precolombian or Colonial times- rosquillas,
empanadas, tamales, guirilas, fried plaintains, atol,
rice pudding and many other immortalized in the song "Hijos de Maiz."
Mainly corn based, although not exclusively, and somewhat healthier, these
snacks provide income directly to their producers, however slim the profit
margins. However, they face the difficult challenge of competing with changing
taste buds and don't have the constant supply that packaged snacks do. While
they have the appeal of tradition and their own unique flavor, I often wonder
if these traditional foods will be able to hold on for future generations.
Reading Jaime Wheelock
Roman's "La Comida Nicaraguense" gave me some perspective for all the
challenges that Nicaraguan cuisine has faced in its development and the threats
it faces nowadays from corporate, globalized food. Nicaraguan cuisine is a
hybrid, combining traditional elements from pre-Colombian times such as corn
and beans, with Spanish additions such as rice, pork, beef and oil. The book
traces a sad history: one in which the average Nicaraguan has had a less and
less access to a healthy and satisfactory diet in the centuries since the
Conquest. Nevertheless, it highlights the mainly dishes which are the pride and
joy of Nicaraguan cuisine and represent the continuity of culture and
resistance.
Wheelock remains optomistic
about the strength of cultural traditions:
"To our benefit,
Nicaraguans continue to eat tortillas and plantains instead of wheat bread, and
drink pinolillo and tiste or corn chica when others have
succumbed to Coca Cola. No pancake has been able to take the custom of a Sunday
morning nacatamal away from us, and we continue preparing our criollo
dishes with the flavors characteristic of the Nicaraguas, the indispensible
triad of achiote, tomato and pepper."
Let's hope that Wheelock is
right and that Nicaraguans can resist the global assalt on its culinary
traditions, and continue to eat, to paraphrase food writer Michael Pollan, mostly the foods their grandmothers would recognize.
A trip to the Waterfall of Farts
Word of the Day:
el paseo- trip, hike
el cusuco- armadillo
el pedo- fart
Ok, so I´m a little too tall and white to blend in...
My English group seems to be
turning into "paseo" club in our last month or so, and I am totally
fine with it. The kids are just as bored with learning English as I am with
trying to get them to listen to me and stop leaving every 5 seconds to eat
highly processed snacks, so we've reached a good equilibrium. Plus, attendance
is stellar when we take trips. The parents are probably less pleased, but I'm
past the point in my service where I care about making everyone happy.
This week, we were going to
take a short hike out to a nearby river, but of course, being rainy season and
all, it threatened to rain, and so I suggested going somewhere more close by.
"Isn't there a waterfall by the baseball stadium?" I asked the kids.
"Salto del Pedo!!!(The Waterfall of the Fart" they laughed.
"Let's go there!"
So we headed for Salto del
Pedo, hopping barbed wire fences with several dogs on our heels. Almost all
hiking in Nicaragua requires some mild trespassing. Luckily, it didn't rain,
and we had gorgeous views of the mountains over in Costa Rica, rarely ever
visible, as well as the twin peaks of Ometepe. The kids commented to me about
what a beautiful day it was, and were excited to be out of the classroom. I've
noticed that Nicaraguans have a real appreciation for the beauty of their
country, but that few people, other than kids, spend much of their leisure time
out in nature. I think it's partly due to the fact that so many people still
work out in the fields, and maybe there's a stigma attached to being outside, for
those who don't. It's really a shame, because there's so much beauty in almost
every community. Regardless, the kids had a lot of knowledge about their
surroundings, which was encouraging. They found a cusuco den and played
with ferns, using the spores to create tatoos on their skin.
We chanced upon a farm
house, which the kids essentially ended up invading, and the kids stole tons of
lemons from her tree. She was totally cool with it though, and gave them a
knife for peeling and salt to eat them with. Nothing beats Nicaraguan
hospitality.
It was a great afternoon,
despite all the usual "he said, she said, he pushed me, she stole my
umbrella, she won't share her salt" that 7th graders love to pull. I'm
really going to miss the kids when I leave.
By the way, it turns out
that Salto del Pedo is not actually a real waterfall, but merely a large hill.
Humorous misadvertising.
Reflections on Patriotism
"Mama! SOY PURO PINOLERO!!!"
(Mom! I'm 100%
Nicaraguan!) The cutest three year old I've ever seen, spent much of the bus
ride the other day singing this popular folk song, in between drawing his
mother's attention to the different geographic features we passed. "Mom!
Look at the cows! Mom, look, a mountain!" It occurred to me later that
this was probably the most beautiful expression of patriotism I've ever seen. A
little boy seeing the amazing landscapes of his country, and connecting his
identity to the land that gives so many life and well-being. For me, this is
precisely the type of love of country that we need more of, especially back
home.
September 14 and 15th are the Independence Day celebrations in Central
America. Everyone turns out for parades that seem to be rooted in militaristic
nationalism* but which are nonetheless joyful expressions of patriotism, as
drumlines beat a danceable rhythms and the color guard twirls sticks in
creative and over the top costumes. Many young people dress up in traditional
outfits, frilly folklore dresses with braids or buns for the girls while the
boys don guayabera shirts and straw
hats. This year, the band put a new spin on things with everyone sporting
cowboy hats.
As a small country with an identity that is very consolidated for the most
part** Nicaragua has a very clear sense of itself, with traditional music,
foods, clothing and family life. While there are many schisms along political
and religious lines, they don't shake the core foundations of people's love of
country too much. Nicaragua's national identity might not always be popular in
the international arena or within the neoliberal economic order, but there's a
palpable sense of consensus that "This is who we are, and we feel pride in
it." When everyone stood to sing the national anthem at the assembly on
the 15th, I almost cried, looking around and seeing the pride and seriousness etched
on everyone's faces. The pride of a people who've intensely experienced the
struggles and sacrifices to obtain their freedom, a freedom with narrow
parameters, but a freedom nonetheless.
Here are some pictures from the celebrations:
The ballerinas
*Not an unreasonable thing to develop when the US invades or messes in your
politics for most of the 19th and 20th centuries.
*Nicaraguan identity is problematic for many social groups, particularly
the indigenous and creole groups of the Atlantic Coast, but also for those on
the Pacific side who´ve been coopted in the mestizo consensus. Read the
enlightening "To Die in this Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of
Mestizaje" for more info.
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