Ins and Outs, Ups and Downs

The culture of sharing here continues to surprise me. Example: on Sunday I went to watch one of my friends play soccer and I brought him a Gatorade. He had a small sip before he handed the bottle off to one of his teammates, who also took a small sip before handing it to someone else, etc. The bottle never got back to my friend before it was empty. This happens with everything; clothes, food, shoes, etc – you need something that I have? Take it, it’s yours. At first, I got frustrated (and I’ll admit that I still do) because when I gift something to someone, it’s for them and their consumption and enjoyment, not for their friends or their friend’s friends. Sometimes I want to say something, like “Hey, I got that for you!” but that’s the USA talking, and I have to adapt and adjust to the nica culture, which is big on sharing. But the street goes two ways, and as easy as it is to focus on the giving side, I more often find myself on the receiving end. I went with some friends to the park last week and a friend of a friend bought an ice cream cone. It was passed down the row of nicas, with everyone taking a bite or a lick until it got to me. I took a bite, savored the delicious taste of friendship, and passed the ice cream down the line.

One of my best friends, Jonathan Malacarne, wrote a poem during training when we lived in Nandasmo and I just recently found it again. We had had a discussion during Spanish class about living in harmony with nature, versus fighting her and the implications and impacts of city-living and country-living. A day, or a week, or a month later he showed me the poem in his little brown book that he carries with him everywhere in his pocket that is reserved for the finished product: the poems that he has written and rewritten probably hundreds of times in his head and at least a dozen times on paper, and he has deemed worthy of self-publication, to be seen by (almost) no one but him.

Send the hippies to the city
Pave its streets with grass
Set them up in a bee’s nest
Plant the fences
Till the roof
Send the office workers home
Live from dawn till dusk
Stop separating life like garbage
Bottles and cans
Jobs and families
OR
Shine light on shadows of correctness
Proselytize
The glittering book cover
Scrap and claw
Lie and abuse
Light fires to move forward
Bury not treasure but the fallen
Say in the long run
“We’re all dead”
Whatever.
Choose.

A lot of weird things happen here, but one of the notably weirder things happened two weeks ago at one of my schools. I arrived about 30 minutes early and went straight to the teacher’s lounge to hang out until class started. I heard wild giggling punctuated by little squeals of excitement and didn’t think much of it because it was recess and recess can get pretty crazy. None of the other teachers even looked up from what they were doing and continued their conversations. The students squeals grew louder and more intense and I noticed little groups of them running around. I finally asked one of the other teachers what was going on and she replied nonchalantly that a crazy drunk guy was running around on campus chasing kids. Um, WHAT?! So, I went to look outside and sure enough, a boy of about 17 years of age (who had long ago dropped out of school) was drunk and perhaps drugged running around chasing the students, and yelling incomprehensible things. I was also slightly amused and assumed that he must not be a threat or else the teachers would have already taken action to dispel him and lock the gates. But then he started to throw rocks. And his antics grew more violent. And girls started crying because they were scared. All of the teachers but one are women and they locked themselves in the teacher’s lounge, screaming just like the little girls that they locked out. It was every man for himself, the men in this case being children between the ages of 10 and 16. The students continued to run from classroom to classroom, trying to hide from the intruder; it reminded me of the running of the bulls in Spain. The trespasser cut a girl on her face and the situation stopped being funny to me. The school has no telephone, the community has no police, there is no cell phone service and even if there had been no one had minutes on their pay-as-you-go cell phones to make a call. And so, the one male teacher tried to remove the crazy, drunk prowler from the premises by what looked like logical reasoning through dialogue, which proved to be ineffective (duh) and the charade went on for more than an hour. The drunken dude chased students, climbed trees, broke off branches, attacked students with aforementioned branches, threw rocks, yelled obscenities, made rude gestures and never appeared to lose momentum or stamina. Somehow the police in a neighboring town were notified and arrived. Before the police got out of their truck (which they were in no hurry to do) the inebriated young man ran out the open gate of the school and disappeared into surrounding corn fields.

Last week was Nicaraguan Independence Day which meant that Monday there was no class because the students were practicing for the parade, Tuesday and Wednesday there was no class because there were celebrations that consisted of said parades and civic acts, and Thursday and Friday there was no class because they were declared national holidays. Which meant that I spent the week attending various events, swimming in rivers, hiking mountains, drinking mojitos, going to dance parties, and general vagando en la calle.

Ideay

I had a dream last night that that I was back in Glenwood Springs after my two years of Peace Corps service was finished. I didn’t remember anything from my two years of service, as if my memory had been erased. Everything at home seemed strange and foreign. The entire town was under construction – installing strip malls. The unfinished strip malls were shiny, cookie-cutter designed, sterile, and flooded in florescent light from the cloudless sky. The town was full of strangers. I went to my favorite places hoping to find familiar faces and all I saw were strangers. I called my friends, eager to have someone to talk to and relate to, but they didn’t recognize me and had moved on with their lives, getting married and starting families. My cat didn’t even recognize me. I tried driving and found that I didn’t know how to. I rode my bike and crashed into things on the street. I wanted to call my friends in Nicaragua but I couldn’t remember any of them. I was totally lost and alone with no direction. And then I woke up. And what I thought was, “Shit, I’m only going to be here (in Nicaragua) for two short years and I need to make the most of it by taking every opportunity I get.” And also, “I need to have a plan mapped out for when I finish so that I don’t have to go home and face that situation.”

We haven’t had steady electricity for two weeks, maybe because of the rain, but maybe not. The rain has been flooding rivers and washing away houses and bridges. The water that comes out of the tap is mud and it gives me a good excuse to put off showering for another day to wait and see if it will clear up. I got a water filter – a clay pot inside of a bucket – and now I don’t have to use the chlorine but my water tastes like clay, which I can live with, because at least it’s clear.

I had my first terrible class last week. The professor was in a meeting so I taught the class alone, which I’ve done several times and it’s usually not a big deal, in fact I almost prefer it. The grade was 10th, the class size was around 40 students (small by Nicaraguan standards) and the topic for the day was “Leaders with Entrepreneurial Spirit” and “Creativity.” Class started out normally: about 10 minutes late with students walking in and out at their leisure, yelling out the open doors and windows at class mates, passing notes, and texting on cell phones. All of this activity I have to work around every day and with minimal shouting it isn’t usually an issue. But for some reason, on this day, the students were absolutely hellish. They up and left class, they refused to participate, they were screaming. And after multiple attempts at controlling the situation in a measured and civilized manner, I ultimately got frustrating and ended up yelling, curse words and all, in English. Which was actually pretty effective because the room got silent as I paced back and forth in front of the room berating them for their poor behavior and lack of respect. Honestly, I come with a disclaimer that says “I AM NOT A TRAINED TEACHER” and my classroom management skills are mostly made up on the fly. And that’s what you get. This next week, the professor was in the classroom and their behavior wasn’t much different so it was a consolation to me that they weren’t just acting up for me - they’re always a rowdy class, and that made me feel better.

The boyfriend/girlfriend thing here is really weird to me. On the one hand, it’s very formal and conservative. Girls generally aren’t allowed to have a boyfriend until they have graduated from high school, and when a boy wants a girl to be his girlfriend he asks her in person, “Will you be my girlfriend?” kinda like middle school. On the other hand, Jinotega (my district) has the highest rate of unplanned teen pregnancies in the country, and Nicaragua has an infidelity rate of 70% among men (the highest rate in Latin America.) WHICH is one of the reasons that when my site mate, a health volunteer, asked me if I wanted to co-teach a series of 10 classes to 9th and 10th graders on healthy relationships (Noviazgos Saludables) I agreed. I really enjoy the class because it’s information that the students never formally hear (self-esteem, emotions, gender roles, sex, etc) in a format that they never have (participatory!) We get to talk about topics that are slightly taboo, and I feel like I learn just as much from them about Nica culture as they learn from me about destrezas para relacionarse.

I was riding on the bus yesterday (feeling sick again with flu) when a man boarded and sat in the seat behind me. He waited until the bus started moving again before he twisted around in his seat, craning his whole body around the back of my seat and leaned over my shoulder.
“Sarah Johnson” he said. Um, if that’s a statement then I don’t need to reply with anything other than a weak smile, right?
“Sarah Johnson” he said more urgently.
“No” I said, assuming that he was trying to verify whether or not I was she.
“You were here in 1991” he said in Spanish. And if I was confused before I got even more confused because, dude, I was 6 years old in 1991 and either 1) you have no concept of age or the passing of time or 2) you are verifiably crazy. I decided to just ignore him since I wasn’t really feeling up to playing along. He sat back in his seat a few moments and then lurched forward again
“What’s your name?”
“Vanessa” I replied.
“Donalda?” he said.
“No, Vanessa” I replied.
“Oh, Donalda” he said.
“No. Vanessa” I stated firmly, thinking that he must be fucking with me, but know that he wasn’t.
“Nice to meet you, Donalda.” And with that he sat back in his chair, pleased with how the conversation was going.
He leaned forward again “Where do you live?”
“San Rafael” I replied, trying to be a vague as possible as to thwart any attempts at stalking me.
He eyed me suspiciously “Where in San Rafael?”
“Over there.” I pointed in a general direction.
“Who do you live with?” He interrogated.
I sighed. It really is impossible to keep where I live a secret since the town is so small and there are only two white girls living in it. One would have to conduct a random survey of probably 2 people to find out my whereabouts. I told him where I live. “I live with [name omitted to protect the identity of my land lady].” LUCKILY, he was just as confused about that as he was everything else.
“Oh, you live at INTA?” he said, smiling.
“Umm…..Yes” I said, although I have no idea where the INTA office is (Ministry of Agriculture). And with that he left me alone for the remainder of the bus ride.

I have gripe for the third time in as many months. I usually feel fine during the day, light cough, slight fever, congestion, but I’ve been spending my nights awake taking various mixes of drugs trying to control my symptoms so I can rest. I have a friend who is a doctor and he comes over to check on me periodically and adjust the plan of attack according to my latest health developments.

Last weekend was the birthday of a relative of the family that I live with and they threw a party at their finca in the mountains. A friend and I decided to walk to the finca instead of catch a ride because it’s a beautiful, rugged dirt road curving through mountains and we hadn’t seen each other for a while and wanted to catch up. A heavy rain had just passed through the area and the air was fresh and the ground was muddy. We walked and talked and laughed for about half an hour, all the while I was following her lead thinking she knew where she was going, and she (as it turns out) assumed that I knew where I was going. Both of us had been to the finca once before, and it isn’t that hard to get to, IF you know which forks to take. But….we got lost. My friend climbed up an embankment to get a better view and try and figure out where we were and heard the music from the party. Excellent, all we had to do was climb over a barbed wire fence, walk through a field, and presumably we would be there. But, it had just rained, so as we got about half way through the field we found ourselves mucking through a swamp. Which made me glad that I had decided to wear my new rubber boots on their maiden voyage, because I arrived dry and comfortable.

Lately...

I constantly flip flop. “I can do this, I can adapt.” “What am I doing here? I’m not even making a difference.” “This is exactly where I want to be.” “Is this where I want to be?” I have to ride the bus a lot. The people that I talk to on the bus want to know where I come from, why I’m in Nicaragua, what I think of Nicaragua, where I learned Spanish, if I’m married, if I left any boys crying in the US, how old I am and who I voted for. Sometimes I give English lessons on the bus, usually to boys my age who want to learn how to woo a girl in English so that they can “get passports.” When I’m not talking to people, I draft stories in my head that I never write down. I change the plot, the characters, the feeling, depending on how I’m feeling. If I’m having a good day the story might be about triumphantly overcoming adversity and the similarities of all humans that unite us. If I’m having a bad day it might be about soul-crushing loneliness and how each individual was born alone and will die alone.

I got sick last week. I spent the night trembling with cold and a fever of 103 degrees. I went to the health center as soon as it opened and they immediately internalized me in their emergency unit due to low blood pressure, 70/40. They ran a series of tests: urine, blood, feces, and after waiting in a one-room building for 5 hours, with an IV, no air-conditioning and no privacy, they announced out load that I had amoebas in my stomach, a bacterial infection in my lower intestines, a kidney infection, flu, and possibly dengue. The doctor told me I should not drink the water out of the tap. I asked the nurse when I might be able to leave. She ignored me. After a couple of hours they brought me some pills to swallow with a glass of water out of the tap. I informed the nurse that I was told by the doctor not to drink water out of the tap and was there perhaps any purified water? Absolutely not. I spent the day listening to babies crying, to telenovelas (Spanish soap operas) that the nurses and doctors were watching instead of taking care of patients, to nurses yelling at patients and at each other. People came in to visit family members and ended up watching me for an hour or two until they got bored. Strangers came in and touched me and got close to me and wanted to know all of my symptoms. I just lay in bed shivering and ignored everyone. I had to spend the night in the emergency room because my fever would not go down. I called the Peace Corps office the next morning and they told me to come to Managua so that they could monitor me. They ran a series of tests: urine, blood feces. They didn’t find anything. Maybe it was an anomaly? They ran the same tests again. Nothing. All I had was flu, after all.

I drink the rain water that runs off of the roof. I collect it in a plastic bucket and fill up my water bottles and add 4 drops of bleach per liter of water. The water that comes out of the tap is milky at best and brown at worst. The people here drink the water if made into coffee or refresco (juice, water, sugar) otherwise they drink soda. I have a hard time writing because my mood changes so often. I begin to write, inevitably have to put it down, and when I return I cannot tap into the same line of thought. I was walking to class yesterday, on my mom’s birthday, when a man started hissing at me to get my attention at a bar on the outskirts of town. He had his penis out and was shaking it around and yelling at me from across the street. I ignored him and kept walking. I usually don’t look or acknowledge when people hiss at me. It seems uncivilized when they could use language to communicate with me. Every time I walk by the police station the police officers hiss at me. Last week, I got hissed at by some men in a funeral procession. Some neighbor boys were calling me “lesbiana” whenever I left the house and they were in the street playing soccer. I ignored it for a week, hoping they’d get bored, but they didn’t. I went over and told them “Listen, it’s nice that you want to say hi when I leave the house but my name is Vanessa, not lesbiana. Now you can call me that, instead.” They were embarrassed that I had approached them and have now taken to calling me “chelita” (white girl) instead. Ok, we can compromise on that.

Role Play

One of my favorite elements of Peace Corps is that I get to play pretend a lot. A year ago if you had told me that I would be teaching high school I would have laughed at the impossibility of the idea. But here I am, a high school teacher in Nicaragua. I had little to no training in classroom management (and it’s probably obvious to the seasoned professors) but I’m learning new techniques daily and getting better and better at standing in front of 40 fifteen year olds and holding their attention for longer and longer spans of time (sometimes forcibly, sometimes through bribery.) The first week was the hardest. I work in five schools; with both 10th and 11th graders and some schools have two sections. That means that I had to give 13 introductions, and in theory (if my schedule didn’t overlap) teach 13 classes per week. Wowza. I digress. The first week was the hardest because I’m NOT a high school teacher. But, it’s my job, so the only option was for me to get in front of the class and pretend that I have all the training and preparation that I need. And it was probably awkward. BUT, the next time was better. And after 13 introductions, 13 first classes, 13 second classes, I can now say that, yeah, I’m a high school teacher, and when I walk down the street my students say “Adios, Profe.” And it’s kinda awesome, because I get to play a role that I would never have imagined playing, and I’m getting pretty good at it.