Cultura Comica
Contrary to popular belief, just because a nation is designated third-world doesn't mean that the people don't enjoy some of the benefits of modern technology. Even adobe houses with dirt floors, no latrine, and wood-burning stoves have televisions and flipping huge stereos. In the remote areas, people still watch their prime time soap operas religiously, and if you don't have a stereo, it doesn't really matter, since the person next door is probably playing theirs loudly enough for the entire block to enjoy. House doesn't have power? Not a problem. We'll still power that TV and stereo with car batteries.
Cell phones are still a relatively new phenomenon, but they are catching on as well. For as little as $23 one-time cost for the phone, as well as a $1 phone card, you can be up and running with a cell phone. Text messaging is especially popular, since each message only costs around $0.07.
Just spent the day in rest and relaxation, getting my sanity back after a week-and-a-half of mental and physical overexertion. Two weeks ago this last Thursday, we entered the secondary school located in a nearby small city in order to me the faculty for the first time and express our interest in teaching. Lacking a class schedule at the time, we were kindly told to come back on the following Monday to see if they could fit us in. (What they were teaching the first three weeks with no schedule still puzzles me.) Monday, the schedules still weren't out, so we came back on Wednesday. We found out that yes, indeed, we would be teaching two practical agriculture classes per week, as well as tutoring English for all of 1st year (equivalent to 7th grade in the U.S. Oh, and by the way, can you start tomorrow?
So after Kris giving me a crash course in lesson planning, and after staying up late writing our first class on seed saving techniques and buying tomatoes and peppers for the students to practice on, the next day, we successfully delivered our first practical workshop of our Peace Corps careers to a group of 37 white shirt and blue slacks uniformed teenagers, completely in Spanish. It was a big success, with lots of happy class participation! I big encouragement for my first full-length teaching experience.
Later that morning, Kris wasn't feeling so hot, so I biked back by myself at 11am to tutor students in English, during their so-called free hour. The moment I arrived, before even getting to the classroom building, I was accosted by my entire class of indignant-looking students, demanding to know where I'd been and why I never showed up at 10am to "give them English class". Utterly bewildered, I referenced the schedule and confirmed that it indeed said 11am, not 10am. Thankfully, the teacher let the kids out of their phys. ed. class to come learn English right then and there.
So, I was ushered into the free hour expecting to sit in a corner and answer questions while others worked on homework, like an office hours during study hall in the U.S. How surprised I was when the teacher left the room with me standing up front and every single expectant face staring not at their homework, but at me, awaiting a brilliantly prepared full-length English lesson! Thankfully, being first years, all I had to do for them was practice a bit of pronunciation, numbers, and colors, in my own language. It was a lot harder for them than for me. Most people don't realize why Hispanic immigrants have the accent that they have, but it's because English has about 10 sounds that are just never produced in Spanish. So it was interesting, to say the least, trying to get everyone to pronounce the "R" as in "rebel", "A" as in "apple" and "V" as in "vehicle", amongst others.
The next morning, we arrived early to try and get to the bottom of when the free hours actually were supposed to be taking place, since the schedule said one thing, the students said another, and the teachers had no clue. After our first hour practical agriculture class, which seemed to start about 40 minutes early, we went to meet with the head professor in the main office to try and get another look at the one official printed copy of the schedule. That's when we received our first shock. On the way there, we were told that they wanted us to teach a third section of practical ag., for the second years, that very afternoon (for which we didn't have the tomatoes and peppers). Surprised, we asked the head professor, "so, there are three sections you want us to teach?" Blinking, she stared us a moment and then replied, "no, no. There are five sections. No wait. Three for first year, three for second year, two for third year ... eight sections."
"What?" and, "Are you kidding?" were the first things to shoot through my head, shortly after accompanied by cold sweats, rapid heart beat, and a distinctly nauseous sensation in the pit of my stomach. Panicked looks darted from Kris' eyes to mine and back as she shook her head and muttered quietly to me, "we can't do this," which was exactly what I was thinking. Eight sections per week, plus English classes, lesson planning, and getting all the materials we needed for each week? That would consume our entire Peace Corps service! At least until we ran out of money for materials, or lessons to teach, energy to plan, or all three.
At the same time, I couldn’t help thinking of what an ideal opportunity this was. Over half of Nicaragua is under the age of 25, and if we don't work with the community youth, we're not going to make a very sustainable impact. And here was an opportunity to reach 270 young people from all over the area, including our own site. How could we just pass this up? I figured, impossible as it seemed, we had to at least try to do this, even if maybe we scale back the rate. Maybe every other week or half the sections now, half later?
Our second surprise came as we were trying to puzzle through the scheduling idiosyncrasies. We noticed as we were looking over the official schedule that one of the sections had all the hours crossed out and replaced with an hour earlier than had previously been printed. So this one section was starting at 7am when all the rest started at 8pm? That seemed a bit strange. When we inquired about the discrepancy, the head professor got this look of dawning comprehension on her face and exclaimed, "oh no. All those other schedules start an hour earlier too. They are all still in the 'new hour'. We've changed back to 'old hour', now."
Apparently, in a genius attempt to conserve electricity on a national level like the United States, the Nicaraguan president had enacted a daylight savings time last year called "new hour". Let’s pretend for a moment that this actually made sense for a tropical country with non-variable day length. The main problem with this policy is that the system was never fully explained to the people. Instead of changing their clocks and changing what hour they got up in the morning, everyone kept exactly the same daily routine and rescheduled appointment and meeting to happen an hour "later" on "new hour", and at the exact same time of day on "old hour". Dumblaws.com, we have a candidate.
So last October, it was announced that we were going back to "old hour". Whether this change remains permanent, or is only part of an exercise in futility to be repeated in future years, remains to be seen. What we do know is that the school district forgot to change the times on the new schedules before printing them off. To correct this oversight, they fixed the times on the topmost sheet of paper in the stack and assumed people would get the hint. Problem was, nobody told the new guys, and in the shuffle to share one set of schedules for the different sections with all the teachers, all the papers were mixed up, passed out, and otherwise separated from that corrected top sheet of paper. At this moment we realized what had happened. I wonder what all those teachers thought. "Man. An hour late to every class the first day. They said these gringos were punctual."
However, the important thing is that the students loved the classes, and my confidence as a new teacher started to increase. This is a good thing, since I had ten classes to teach by myself the next week, with Kris attending an active listening Peer Support Network training all week. To make the lesson planning easier, we decided to just have the kids prepare the earth for our class gardens. We didn't realize at the time that this would involve four hours hunched over in the hot sun collecting 16 large bags full of dry cow manure from a neighboring pasture. Nor did we realize that the ground was super dry and compacted from the summer sun and needed hours of watering. Nor did we realize the intensity of just demonstrating the process of preparing the ground eight times and the effect it would have on my body.
Thankfully, we only have to do this backbreaking work once, since from here on it's just planting, playing with worms, and more seed saving. My blisters have started to heal, and my muscles are no longer cramped and sore. But looking back, I love it. They were right. Peace Corps really is the toughest job you'll ever love.
