Third Book: Edmund Morris´ ¨Theodore Rex¨

Do not all these things interest you? Isn´t it a fine thing to be alive when so many great things are happening?

So quotes Edmund Morris of President Theodore Roosevelt in his political biography, ¨Theodore Rex.¨ I´m not usually prone to undertaking such political biographies. But when I found this one lying around here and read the first couple pages, I found it suitably engrossing. Morris writes clearly, and his well-researched narrative is chocked full of anecdotes. It is a definitive account of the Roosevelt presidency, the second in his trilogy about TR.

The dominant picture here is of TR the politician, coming to power in a moment of national trauma and guiding his country into a new age. It is his leadership style -- at times forceful, at times persuasive -- that is TR´s most potent weapon. Throughout the book, Morris challenges the conventional wisdom that TR was a rash bully, showing him to be more cautious and calculating in his decisions; indeed I found there to be something Clintonian in it. In several different instances, TR triangulates between the Old Guard Republicans and his Democratic opponents. He does this on each of the key issues of the day: labor rights, government regulation, international involvement, etc. Through a combination of boldness and realism, TR forges an entirely new Progressive movement capable of reshaping the American political landscape.

Reading about TR, however, there are issues with which I struggled. He seems to me, like most politicians, a man motivated both by principals and political expediency: This means that his actions are sometimes courageous and sometimes reprehensible. And then there are the difficulties that arise when considering the legacy of person from another era. Though his contemporaries often lauded him for being enlightened on matters of race and culture, it´s hard to overlook his prejudices against African Americans and non-European cultures and his tacit tolerance of anti-Semitism. Are we to judge him on the standards of his time, by which his record certainly seems progressive? Or are we to employ more eternal notions of justice and equality, and condemn him for not standing up more forcefully for the rights of the disenfranchised? In his imperialist swagger, there seems to be a disturbing disregard for the rights and welfare of the most marginalized.

But taking TR for a moment as a person, and not a president, it is hard not to admire (or even envy) the vigor with which he led his life. As a person, he cultivated a love of family and friends, literature and languages, nature and technology. He saw the world with peculiar acuteness, and strove in all his actions to forge from a mass of experience something meaningful.

Perhaps most interesting for me in this book is the portrait Morris paints of turn of the century America. It seems to me that 100 years ago, America shared a lot in common with the developing countries I visit today. The United States in 1901 is a country with a booming population (including immigration), a rapidly growing economy (with an equally rapid transition from rural to urban), still only beginning to utilize its great wealth of land and natural resources. At the same time, America is starting to look outward to the world as a great power, and the choices and challenges facing our leaders then mirror those that we face today. It´s truly amazing how many of the same issues -- militaristic proliferation, international terrorism, trade reciprocity, labor rights, environmental stewardship, government regulation of commerce -- we still wrestle with today. TR seemed to understand that sometimes a president´s role is merely to bring a topic to the forefront of debate, so that the public could consider it at its own pace. At other times -- most notably with regards to the environment -- it was at his urging that the government acted to preserve a vast amount of wilderness.

If indeed there was greatness in TR´s presidency, it was the fact that he, like other great presidents, called on Americans both to dream great things and to work towards their fulfillment. ¨Much has been given us and much will rightfully be expected of us,¨ TR declared during his second inauguration. Nowhere was his vision more clear than in the area of conservation. He was able to bring together the most progressive thinkers of his time on environmental issues, and with them to forge a consensus on what must be done to preserve America´s resources for generations to come. He protected large tracts of lands as national reserves and gave us not only this wilderness but the legacy for caring for it. Speaking about the Grand Canyon to native Arizonans, he said:

Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it--keep it for your children, your children´s children, and for all who come after you.

As for the genre itself, these historical biographies represented somewhat of a new endeavor for me. One thing unique about this book is that Morris confines all historical hindsight and judgments to the endnotes, creating a narrative that more closely resembled the flow of events at the time. Indeed I spent a lot of time reading Morris´ endnotes, trying to get a sense of where he was getting his information. I would like to know more about certain areas, such as why he privileges certain sources, and how he balanced contradicting information in certain situations. But seems to me that he did a good job using a range of sources, focusing on the most important incidents in TR´s presidency and adding an appropriate amount of color and storytelling with pertinent anecdotes. Overall, Morris presents a suitably engaging portrait of a man and the times he shaped.

(Next up: Tracey Kidder´s ¨House¨)

E.S.L. in America

I´m not much in the habit of blogging about the news these days, but I was glancing at the New York Times webpage and this article on the state of E.S.L. instruction in America caught my eye. Seems that while I´m here teaching English in Central America it´s important to be reminded that there is a strong demand (based on a strong need) for English instruction in the States. When I return, I think I´d like to volunteer weekly at community centers that assist immigrants with their English. It seems like a little something I can do to help give someone the practical skills they need to succeed in America.

As a side note, I find myself identifying a lot with immigrants these days. For one thing, my own parents were immigrants to America. And, personally, I think that spending so much of my time during the last four years living in foreign countries has made me sympathetic to the dislocations, uncertainty, and angst that those who pick up and move their whole lives to a new place face. (Plus, wasn´t there a ¨West Wing¨ episode where C.J. passionately reminded the President that to be an immigrant to the United States meant simply to search out a brighter future?)

Playing Some Chess

Through a friend, I was introduced to a Nicaraguan chess player. I think he plays for the national team or something. Pleased to meet him, I suggested that we play a match sometime.

Him: What´s your ranking?
Me: Hahaha.

So a couple days later we were out at the bar and they had a chess set. We played three games and he destroyed me pretty easily. At least as my friend Mark noted, in one game I actually made him think for a moment before he wiped the floor with me.

Stop Copying Me!

As a teacher here, one of the greatest challenges thus far has surprised me: I am struggling to prevent my students from merely copying everything I write on the board and actually internalize some of the material. This has proven far more difficult than I expected.

That´s because from a very early age in the Nicaraguan educational system, students are taught merely to copy down what´s on the board or in the book. They don´t take the time to think about the material, ask creative questions, or encourage originality. The elementary school students´ homework often involves copying the same letter or sentence over and over again. If there is an illustration in their workbook, they frequently trace the picture for their homework.

As a result, when we are in English class, their natural tendency is simply to copy the sentence and its translation without pausing to figure out its meaning. This is a very hard habit to break. While repetition can be a valuable tool for committing new material to memory, it is also important to cultivate creative processes as well. Somewhat radically, I realize my charge is not only to teach them English but also how to think.

Oddly enough, this proves to be much more of a problem for my adult students. They have all attended college, but remain fixed in a mindset that demands that they copy every example. I´m trying now to get them away from the monotonous repetition of words and toward a place where they can start to play with language and discover it on their own. I don´t want them merely to memorize things: I want them to feel empowered to create.

But because they are adults and have had this method of learning ingrained in them for their whole lives, they are surprisingly more obstinatet than the kids. So right now it´s a work in progress.

The Most Refreshing Part (Update III)

It´s hot here. And when you live in hot places, frequently you crave a cool drink. Luckily, Nicaragua comes through on this account. The frescoes (or refrescoes) are fruit juices that are ubiquitous throughout the country. Many people make these in their homes daily. And in the market there is a long row of fresco stalls, and each lady prepares a half dozen buckets of juice a day. It´s only 5 cordobas (25 cents) for a big glass in the market or 3 cordobas for a take-away plastic bag with a straw in it. I generally drink frescoes three times a day, if not more.

The beauty of this idea is derived from its simplicity: Natural fruit juice served with lots of ice. They are so refreshing.

And the proliferation of flavors makes this an exciting endeavor: We´re talking orange, lemon, cocoa, manderine, carrot, pineapple, melon,watermelon, guava, mango, ensalada (as in fruit salad), and the combinations of virtually all of the above. Ensalada is a real speciality as it comes with huge chunks of possibly six fruits: banana, papaya, orange, mango, melon, and watermelon mixed into the juice.

Update:

With my favorite fresco vendor Veronica, I´ve been working up a complete list of 26 fresco flavors in Spanish. Check it out:

naranja, piña, ensalada, mandarina, guayaba, mango, zanahorria, remolacha, melón, cacoa, grenadia, chia, linasa, tamarin, calala, papaya con naranja, arroz con piña, pitahaya, limonada, mamonada, cebada, chicha, tiste, pazol, pinol

Update II:

I´ve been thinking a little bit about my favorite flavors. And here´s the order for the top seven that I´ve come up with*: sandía, zanahorria, melón, piña, naranja, mango, ensalada

*This list is subject to change without notice.

Update III:

Traveling around Nicaragua, I spend my days wandering through cities, looking for frescoes.

The Bathroom Situation

At some point during one´s tenure in a foreign country, it behooves one to write about how people go to the bathroom.

The toilets here in the city are normal sit-down, flush toilets we have in the States. The one difference concerns toilet paper: Instead of flushing the toilet paper (and adding to the already stressed sanitation network of this country), it is customary to crumple the uses paper into a little ball and toss it into a wastepaper basket located next to the toilet. Because of concerns about clogging the system, this seems to me a sensible idea.

The showers are normal showers, though there is no hot water and not much water pressure. It´s really more of a thin stream of liquid. Still, after a long day in this heat, a cold shower feels quite refreshing.

In rural areas, latrines and bucket showers are increasingly common.

A Few of My Favorite Things

When drunk, I talk incessantly, passionately, about my hammock and my bicycle.

Why Moving is a Good Idea

A few weeks back I decided to move into a new flat. My three weeks studying Spanish at the Casa de Cultura had come to a close. Although I was enjoying both my course and my time with my homestay family, I felt that I needed a change. I think it takes a bit of courage for me to make a change like this. (I remember how I did this when I was living in India, and what a wise decision it proved to be: But it was also quite an upheaval at first.)

I was content with how things were going here in León, but I also looked around and realized that I wanted something more than I was getting out of the experience at the time. But making changes like this can be difficult because it means shifting from something known and comfortable to something unknown. It was a bit like starting over in the same city: finding places to eat, shop, go to the Internet, buy fruit, etc.

So I moved into a another house in a different barrio, a couple blocks from the center of town. Now I have an English flatmate, Harry. (He´s 24 year-old volunteers at Quetzal Trekkers, an organization that guides hikes to nearby volcanoes and donates the proceeds to the organization Las Tias, where I work.) Harry and I live in the two adjacent rooms on the second floor of a house on a active residential road. We share a balcony that overlooks the street.

The house is owned by a Nicaraguan family: My friend Jackson, age 21, along with his grandmother Señora Albertina, his mother Aura, and younger brother (incredibly named Michael... yep, they are brothers named Michael and Jackson!). We share the kitchen, a simple bathroom, and living area with them; they´ve also got about half the house to themselves. And praise the Lord: we´ve got a washing machine. They are quite hospitable and we get along quite well. (Interestingly, they know Harry´s name because he´s been there longer. But they´ve resorted to calling me ¨El Otro¨ meaning ¨The Other One.¨)

When I moved I also started making more friends, both Nicaraguans and foreigners who live in León. This was good because I didn´t have a lot of lasting friendships during my first few weeks here. And I was originally a bit uncertain about how much I wanted to associate with other foreigners. But from my places of work, from my classes, and from going out at night, I began to meet people. I hang out with the volunteers at Quetzal Trekkers a fair amount too. Several times a week we go to listen to live music at bars in the evenings. And I´ve also become friendly with some Peace Corps volunteers working in Nicaragua: I meet them at the beach on weekends.

At this same time, I also set out to find more volunteer work in the city. I also purchased a bicycle and a hammock. I run every morning before work and go to the beach on Saturdays. I now have four keys on my keyring: Basically, I´m pleased with the decision to move because I now feel like I have more ownership over my life here in this city. I´m enjoying my day-to-day life and learning a lot.

Working with the Kids

I spend my day with children. Here´s a quick sampling:

At Proyecto Rocas:

I help out with homework, read stories, and play games with about a dozen children. Most of their parents work long hours in the market or in poorly paying jobs, so Rocas is a place where they can come to do their homework and participate in cultural activities when they aren´t in school.

• I help Cristina de los Angeles, age 9, with her math homework. She´s doing multiplication and long division. When she gets stuck I remind her the siete por ocho son cincuenta y seis. (7 x 8 = 56.)

• I read the book ¨Los Tres Cerditos¨(¨The Three Little Pigs¨) to Magna, age 6. He loves this story and we have read it MANY times already. I must confess I am also learning some Spanish vocabulary words here. I am getting good at my animal voices in Spanish, sounding like a big bad wolf and a flustered piggy.

• After class, I ride my bike back into town alongside some of my students. Cristina´s sister Otilia, age 7, sits on my crossbar while I wobble my way down a steep dirt road. With my free hand I hold hands with Cristina or her brother Francisco, age 11, as they run along side the bike. I leave them at the main road where they turn for home, slapping them five as I go.

At Las Tias:

I teach an English class every afternoon for an hour. There are six students in my class between the ages of 8 and 11. Most of these children live have family situations that are for various reasons difficult, and so this is a good opportunity to provide them with some stability in their daily life. We do a short lesson with new vocabulary words and sentences, then sing songs or play games that I´ve designed to keep them interested. Kids are kids anywhere, and they really respond to this stuff.

• When I arrive at school with my bicycle, Walter, age 9, jumps into my arms. Lester, age 11, runs in for a hug while Cristobal, age 8, plays with my hair.

• I design our English sentences to be as instructive as possible, and I admit I am trying to cultivate in their young minds a particular worldview. Examples:

1. My school is very good.
2. The boys share the books to the girls.
3. They write a story together.
4. I like to play with my friends.
5. I do not like to eat cheese.
   

• We´ve learned the songs ¨Head Shoulders Knees and Toes¨and ¨Happy Birthday,¨ both of which they love. We sing them everyday. Children from other tables that aren´t in my class also have started doing the motions while they mumble along.

• After the lesson we play the game ¨Red Light, Green Light¨ using the motions walk, run, jump, slide, and twirl. This is a favorite, and again, half the students from the school seem to be joining my class in the courtyard. (Thanks for the tip, Jen!)
  

• If you have other ideas for games or songs that kids might like, please let me know (perhaps by leaving a comment!) I also need to come up with new diversions for them.
  

I´m with the kids so much that I sometimes forget where they come from and why they are here. It´s only occasionally that I remember, with the sight of worn clothing or a legion on the skin, that they are impoverished, at risk ¨streetchildren.¨Sometimes I catch some of them looking sad, and I remember the troubles that lurk beneath the smiling, smooth surface of their face. Most often, though, I just see them as the kids they are: silly and adorable and trying and hilarious.

It´s also been good for me to just volunteer directly with the kids this time around: I am here because I want to get to know them, and to help them if I can. In other situations while working or studying abroad, I´ve concerned myself with how these social organizations run, whether they´re operating appropriately, and how to deal with the egos and issues that inevitably result from that process. For now though, in this context, I am happy to ignore all that other stuff and simply spend my time with the kids themselves.

Second Book: John Steinbeck´s ¨The Grapes of Wrath¨

And the people listened, and their faces were quiet with listening. The story-tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words, because their tales were great, and the listeners became great through them.

Well, I figure that maybe 100 million people or so have read John Steinbeck´s ¨The Grapes of Wrath,¨ so I´m not sure I´m about to say anything new here. But since I like talking about books almost as much as I like reading them, I´ve decided to sit down and write a little bit about this story.

This is the story of a family of Okies, the Joads, who leave their land during the Dust Bowl and travel west to California, encountering various hardships along the way. It´s a surprising portrait of America: turbulent, angry, fearful, and on the move. It is indeed an indignant book, and in the story of the trials of this one family there is the story of a nation in upheaval.

The story begins when the Joads are forced off their land:

Sure, cried the tenant man, but it´s our land. We measured it and broke it up.
We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it´s no good,
it´s still ours. That´s what makes it ours--being born on it, working it, dying
on it. That maes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.

But leaving their land is a difficult thing:

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it´s us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.

But when they arrive in California, they find little work or welcome. This story takes place during the midst of the Depression, when the economy has a perverse and destructive absurdity. (I know that this passage is long, but it is so good, so important, so much the heart of this book.)

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Car-loads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the organges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit--and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescene drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our successes. There fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates - died of malnutrition - because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, and the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for vintage.

What I loved about this book was how deeply Steinbeck commits to the story and to the people that this story concerns. He embraces their language and customs. He portrays their experiences with startling realism, and there are moments that are just heart-breaking. Yet the most lasting impression is the ultimate resilency of the family and the dignity they maintain in a struggle against some vast and unknownable force.

When it comes down to it, this is really the story of cultural change caused by social and environmental factors, which is really what I want to study for the rest of my life. It´s interesting to examine what happens to the family unit, and in the societies of Hovervilles that spring up along the side of the road, and especially in what happens to the characters: to Tom and Ma and Rose of Sharon as individuals.

At the start of the novel, Steinbeck presents Tom as a man who will have to do whatever it is to defend himself: He killed a man in a fight at a dance after being stabbed with a knife. But as the story progresses, he sees the great injustices committed against his people and he yearns to defend not only himself, but the rights of all as well:

¨Then it don´matter. Then I´ll be all aroun´in the dark. I´ll be ever´where--wherever you look. Wherever they´s a fight so hungry people can eat, I´ll be there. Wherever they´s a cop beatin´up a guy, I´ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I´ll be in the way guys yell when they´re mad an´--I´ll be in the way kids laugh when they´re hungry an´ they know supper´s ready. An´ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an´ live in the houses they build--why, I´ll be there....¨

But ¨The Grapes of Wrath¨ is not only the story of characters or of a family: it´s also an intensely politcal work. It´s about, essentially, the right to work and bread and maybe a bit of land. It´s about the pursuit of happiness and how society can so effortlessly conspires against it. It´s amazing how the characters in this book worked so hard for so little. It´s a little hard to believe that this is the story of Americans barely 80 years ago--an America with that amount of suffering and dislocation.

But though the portrait Steinbeck draws seems foreign to me, the same themes are of course repeating today: Immigrants who come to the U.S. looking for work face this same desperation, for they are the ones who have taken on many of these wage labor jobs. Moreover, much of the plight of landless people that I´ve witnessed in India or Ghana or here in Nicaragua is echoed in the events of this story. This story is still unfolding today, and it is dangerous to consider it solely a quaint relic of what America once was.

He describes ¨native¨Californians as reacting fearfully, angrily, and unlawfully against these immigrants from Oklahoma. The Okies are Americans, for generations Americans, but they are unwanted. Throughout the book, Steinbeck plays with ideas of community and exclusion, pointing the paradoxes in the ideals we hold dear.

Above all, Steinbeck asks hard questions of the reader, hard questions about how we can stand to profit from another man´s tragedy. Reading this, I couldn´t help but thinking: What would I do to prevent my family from starving? What lengths would I go to fight injustices perpertrated against me? And more ominously: In my own hard-heartedness, have I denied bread to a starving man? In what ways have I conspired to dampen the hopes of the yearning poor?

(Next up: Edmund Morris´ ¨Theodore Rex¨)

Notes on Transportation

So you might know by now, from my previous letters from abroad, how utterly fascinated I am by transportation: how people move themselves from one place to another.

Here´s a sampling from Nicaragua:

On my first bus ride, on my very first day in this country, the bus broke down.

The long distance buses are all school buses from North America, the ones manufactured by the Blue Bird Corporation. Yep, those familiar big yellow school buses (with the black stripes) which we all rode to elementary school. Many of them still have the school district name painted on the side. I´ve got my eyes peeled for the ¨Chappaqua Central School District.¨ Gotta represent.

(And if you want to read more about the history of these school buses (i.e. I am a huge nerd), click here. You will learn things like the fact that the color is officially called "National Glossy School Bus Yellow.¨)

Within in the city, the school buses are too big to maneuver in the narrow streets. So the public transportation system is based on the collectivos. These are essentially trucks, with a flat wooden bed on the back. The platform has benches along both sides, a gated entrance at the rear, and a tarp covering the sides and top. The conductor stands on the step at the entrance, calling out the stops, collecting money, and hauling people in and out of the truck. Naturally, one must board while the truck is moving and jump out while it´s still in motion.

There´s something in León that my friends and I refer to as ¨the party bus.¨It´s a traditional school bus from the States with the top cut off, and the sides painted vivid colors. On weekend evenings it rides around the city, blasting Reggaeton music and serving drinks. A string of festive lights hangs about the contented passengers. People queue up at the corner of the parque central to go for a loop of the city. It looks like SO MUCH fun.

Women are walking down the street with their notebooks and folders. The sun is strong here though, and so when they walk into the light they all use their notebooks to shield the sun. Natural, intellegent idea. But it looks quite peculiar when literally everyone is walking down the street doing the same thing.

There are lots of cars in León, some motorbikes, and the occasional horse-drawn carriage carting good from one place to another, but the majority of people get around on bicycle. Obviously, I am a fan. This is really a perfect city for cycling. And most of these bikes are just cheap steel-framed bikes from made in Taiwan (Interestingly, Nicaragua is one of only a handful of countries that officially recognizes Taiwan and not China).

Here are some bicycle observations:

• It is quite common to see a passenger riding on the crossbar of the bike. This is usually the novia of the cyclist.

• Friends ride on the bicycle in an astonishing number of positions and configurations. One of the most inventive ones is for a young man to attach an elongated piece of metal onto the center of the rear wheels, jutting outwards perpendicularly. His friend will then stand on the spokes and balance himself on the rider´s shoulders.

• León is a city of one way streets. This means that you must sometimes cycle 4 blocks to go just 1 block over. Nice.

• There is a shortage of adult-sized bicycles in this country. Thus it is common to see a grown man riding around on a child´s bike.

• It´s about as common to see two people on a bicycle as one. Seeing three on one bike is a nice treat. But the exacta is four people on a single bicycle. Because of the physical limitations of a bicycle and those of the human body, there is really only one way this can happen: The father of the family is riding. His wife sits on the crossbar. She holds the young baby (age 2-4, ideally) in her arms. And the older sibling (age 5-8, ideally) stands upright on the rear spokes and balances on papá´s shoulders. Seeing this is something special, like getting a TETRIS.

• The other day I saw a man cycling by with an infant balanced on his knee. The baby went up and down, up and down, rhythmically as he pedalled.

• It´s also common to see a toddler standing on the crossbar while his father pedals, the young tot balancing his hands on his father´s shoulders.
  

• It´s also possible to see young men riding from place to place with a live chicken tucked neatly under one arm like a running back tucks a football.

• And, then, my personal favorite, I saw a dude carrying a birthday cake, fresh frosting glistening in the sun, in his right hand, face up, like a waiter carries a plate above his shoulder in a restaurant. Most impressive.

My first two experiences hitch-hiking in Nicaragua was with a bunch of Peace Corps volunteers I met on a day trip out to the beach out in Chinendega. We just pile into the back of a pick-up truck as it drives by. I figure I´ve hitched about 70 rides in my life, so naturally I will try to break my record in this most-hitchable country.

A Reoccuring Conversation

It seems like I have this conversation repeated in every country that I visit:

Jackson: Buenos, Señor.
Me: Mire, Jackson. No soy ¨Señor.¨ Soy tu amigo o compañero o hombre. Pero no ¨Señor.¨ Jackson: ¿O niño?
Me: Claro.

Update: It was a day of joy for me when Jackson called me payaso, which means clown, something he´d been calling Harry when I´d arrived in the house. Now he regularly calls me ¨payaso barato¨ which is more endearing still.

Song of the City

Like all great cities, León has an official song. It´s entitled ¨Viva León Jodido. The people sing it at baseball games, fiestas, and other events where it´s appropriate to show some civic pride. (León of course means lion en español.) Here is a look at the chorus of this song, which I´ve translated to the best of my ability:

Por todo el oro del mundo
no cambiaria mi León
pues lo quiero con amor profundo
y es el cerebro de todo mi nación;
León puede ser abatido pero nunca vencido
¡Viva León, jodido!

For all the gold in the world,
I would never change my León
For I love it with deep affection
and it is the brains of my nation;
León may be knocked down but never defeated
¡Viva León, jodido!

On Learning and Teaching a Language

Hi. My name is Hayden. I am a Spanish student. I am an English teacher.

I carry these dual roles everywhere I go: They define my identity here. And after thinking about it a bit I´ve come to the conclusion that right now this isn´t such a bad thing.

To be sure, learning a language can be frustrating: I remember quite clearly my first day at the language school here. My teacher Aura Cristina began talking to me for twenty minutes very rapidly in Spanish: I did not understand a single word. Then she gave me an introductory diagnostic test, on which I got a 15%. At that moment, I wanted to cry. What was I doing, taking on a whole language, with thousands of vocabulary words to memorize, lists of subjunctive verb conjugations to nail down, handfuls of idioms to master? I only got a 15% on that test because I knew to write el and la in front masculine and feminine words, respectively. That´s all I knew. Apparently I wasn´t able to get a cross to her that I had studied Spanish nunca. But from there we went to work, and I began learning.

Sometimes I feel like I´m really making progress. There´s this surge of joy when you actually say something and someone nods their head and you see that they actually understand what you mean. And, then again, and this occurs more frequently, there´s also this counter-sensation of extreme hopelessness when I listen to two native speakers jabber away in a language I´ve studied for a month and I don´t have a clue what they were talking about. It´s a bit frustrating to realize that I can be out in public in the morning, spend several hours in my hammock studying, and then return to the world and still speak the exact same amount of Spanish as I did that morning. All I know is that at this point I´m not at all where I want to be. I need a lot of practice because I am not very confident speaking yet, which is strange for me when I compare my progress with my over-confident Hindi.

In my life I´ve studied Latin and Russian and Fante Twi and Hindi. From these experiences I´ve learned well how to learn a language. Yet I´m a little disappointed to say that at the age of 23 I don´t know any of these with anything close to fluency. Perhaps I am too much the product of a generation that likes to take short-cuts (or expects everything to be written in English.) Or perhaps I´m too prone to tasting a bit from every source without committing to one area of expertise. There are benefits to this, of course, and I feel like I have a lot of knowledge about different places and peoples. But I suppose I´ve always been a bit of a dabbler when it comes to language.

Well, whatever the reason is, I want it to change now.

Taking up Spanish now, and concentrating on it for six uninterrupted months, seems to me a good first step toward speaking Spanish well during the rest of my life. (I also maintain this same goal for my Hindi.) Spanish just seems so plainly useful for work in the States and in this entire hemisphere. I certainly don´t expect to reach my goal at the end of this period, but I hope it will be a project I can work on in the years to come. A hundred times a day I find myself thinking the same thought: ¨Wow, language is so intrinsically connected to who we are.¨

Because it´s beneficial to set benchmarks for oneself, one immediate goal I do have for myself is to read one of my favorite books, Paulo Coelho´s ¨The Alchemist,¨en español. (The Spanish title is ¨El Alquimista.¨) I think that will be a fun and challenging project for me. I should note that Coelho originally wrote the book in Portuguese, but I still think reading it in Spanish will be worthwhile since the two languages are quite close.

And then of course when I´m not studying here, I find myself teaching English. It´s not that my life´s ambition is to be an ESL teacher, or any type of language teacher, or that I find the work particularly stimulating. Rather, it just seems appropriate for where I am. Teaching English is one of the only useful things I can offer. And it just so happens that people here want to learn because of the job opportunities resulting from the increasing importance of tourism. For me, though, teaching a language is just a good way to get to know people: to learn about their lives, their families and friends, their customs and beliefs, their hopes and worries, and their personalities. That´s really all I want from Nicaragua at the moment--a country in which, upon arriving, I knew not a single person.

And it´s the same when I´m teaching the kids too. I don´t in the slightest expect them to be good, or even competent, English speakers by the time I go. I´m here for too short a period and we´re starting completely from scratch. My role is small and I have no illusions about my importance: Life goes on without me. But I do think the endeavor has some value: Perhaps the kids just know the basics and that will help them someone. Perhaps they´ll become more interested in other cultures or more tolerant of those who are different. Perhaps I´ll plant a seed of interest that germinates later on in their lives. And, as my friend here Allie pointed out, learning a new language -- for anyone, of whatever age or ability -- is just a good mental exercise.

I´ve heard it said that moving to a foreign country with the goal of education (either teaching or learning) can be an fraught activity, one tainted, one from which we should shy away. When you go to a place only to learn, you are said to be appropriating someone´s culture. And when you go to a place only to teach, you are said only to be furthering a paternalistic or neo-imperialist mindset.

I´m cognizant of the issues, and I´m particularly cognizant of my country's destructive role in Latin America during the last century. But ultimately I just think such arguments are overblown. We need to start somewhere. And specifically, I think that there´s an enormous need for education in this world--a need to share what we know and what we´ve learned with each other. I feel proud to be where I am, helping in small ways and trying to understand this process better.

For being a language student makes one humble. And being a language teacher makes one patient. And both learning and teaching a language makes it slightly more possible for more people to talk with one another in this world, and that is a good thing.

Something Random

At the barberia where I get my beard trimmed every week, there is a sign that I like on the wall listing the price for a hair cut:

CORTE DE PELO -- C$25
And then underneath there is a clip-art picture of George Washington in all his wiggliness.

February Daily Schedule

It took me a bit of time to get this schedule ironed out so I could keep my various commitments in the city, but I think I´ve done it:

8 AM: Morning run

9-10 AM: Morning hammock: journal writing

10 AM-12 PM: Work at Proyecto Rocas

12-2 PM: Lunch, Internet, & errands in town

2-3:30 PM: Teach an English class at Las Tías

4-5 PM: Teach my English class at the Casa de Cultura (for my former professors)

5-7 PM: Afternoon hammock: Studying español

7 PM: Dinner at the fritanga (street stall) of a woman named Flor de Maria

7:30-9 PM: Evening hammock time: Studying and reading

9-11 PM: Go with friends to hear live music at a bar or just hang out

Midnight: Bedtime for this boy

So both Proyecto Rocas and Las Tias are before/after-school programs in the barrios in León. (The children have a split schedule here: half go to school in the mornings and half in the afternoons.) The idea is that these poor (and in some cases abused) children are not well-served by the current public education system: They need a place where they can get some more support and instruction, do their homework, take part in cultural activities, play games and sports, and most of all find extra help, supervision, and role models. At Proyecto Rocas I help the kids with their homework, doing math and reading stories to them. At Las Tías, I teach an English class and play games with the kids. (At both schools, there is a range of ages but the average age of my students is about 10 years old.) And at the Casa de Cultura, I am continuing the English classes with the professors that we began last month.

So that´s what I do here. I spend about four hours a day in my hammock so I´m obviously enjoying life right now and feel quite content with my schedule.

Newsflash: Bicycle Purchased!

The day has come: For the fourth time in my life, I´ve purchased a bicycle. And this time she´s really a beaut. She´s an almost new mountain bike--brakes, gears, and frame in excellent condition.

After searching high and low for more than a week, I bought a bike from my friend David. Technically, I suppose I must say, I am renting her from a friend of David, Don Fransisco, for the two month period I will remain in León; I paid $50 to do so. This arrangement suits me and I´m excited about this new addition to my life.

I have not seen any helmets in this country but if I do spot one I intend to buy it.

A bicycle naturally needs a name. Suggestion? Submit it as a comment.










Update: I decided to name my bicycle Maria.