I recently watched “American Blackout”, a documentary film depicting the utter racial discrimination faced mainly by African Americans and Latinos during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. I suspected fishy happenings in Florida (2000) and Ohio (2004) but never knew that the actions of the election directors in these respective states were so blatantly undemocratic.
How was front-page news not made when Jeb Bush , Governor of Florida, and Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State, hired a private firm to create a list of 90,000 supposed felons (using misdemeanor records from the state of Texas, of course) in order to blacklist these “criminals”? Choicepoint, the privately contracted company, was informed that names on this list only needed to be 80% matched in order to block a registered voter from casting their ballot in the 2000 presidential elections. So in the state of Texas if you had a misdemeanor charge and your name happened to be John Smith, a registered voter in the state of Florida by the name of John Smyth could have been cut out of voting. No questions asked. Choicepoint was ASKED SPECIFICALLY to provide an UN-VERIFIED list of banned “felons”. Turns out that 97% of these American citizens whose civil rights were destroyed were INNOCENT. How ironic that not only were 75-80% of those listed as apparent “felons” African American, but also that statistically African Americans tend to vote 9 out of 10 times for a democratic candidate! This black list (pun intended) blocked approximately 90,000 legitimate American citizens from voting and the state of Florida (as we all know) went to George Jr. by a mere 537 votes.
Do the math.
The documentary also followed sketchy happenings during Ohio’s bit of the 2004 presidential elections in which election machines were pulled in dozens of inner city precincts in which thousands more citizens were registered to vote than the 2000 elections. Camcorder footage shows empty gymnasiums in the suburbs contrasted with people in the inner city areas who waited in the rain 4 hours to cast their ballots. How can the Elections Committee of Ohio possibly explain the numbers when “Blackout” clearly shows that machines were ONLY pulled from the poorer areas of Ohio’s larger cities (in areas where registered voters were up 27% from the 2000 elections); NO machines were pulled from suburbia? Logical? Only because the Republican government was well aware of the lengths it needed to go to in order to keep their puppet in power. Embarrassing? YES.
Last but certainly not least, “Blackout” follows the story of ex-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (of Georgia), a progressive African American woman dedicated to pulling the truth out of war-mongering politicians on the hill, who was sacrificed and labeled as “un-American” for asking questions about 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the debacles of the past two presidential elections (she started asking these questions back in 2000 and to this day has not been dissuaded from her quest for truth). The Republican powers that be banded together to force McKinney out of office when her truth-telling went “too far”. Where are we as a democracy when we’re chucking politicians like McKinney out of power? When did it become un-patriotic to ask questions which DESERVE answers?
It almost seems like the Republican leaders of our country have something to hide!
Let’s do some justice to honest politicians like Cynthia McKinney who are actually working for the people rather than the system, who believe in democracy in its truest sense. Let’s start asking REAL questions and DEMANDING answers. 2008 will not be another regression to the pre-civil rights days. Take action and believe in change!
Let’s get those insurgents off Capitol Hill!
miércoles, 22 de agosto de 2007
viernes, 20 de julio de 2007
back in the us of a
goodness gracious i haven't sat down to write in a long while... where to start?
i got back last week from a 2 week long adventure in the us of a; one week with 20 of my high school choir kids in DC and the other split between katie and dundas (in DC) and my gramma, aunt and uncle, and cousins in ohio. what a whirlwind! some of the highlights from the trip:
- airport hassles, we'd filled out the wrong forms and when we arrived at customs in the us had to fill out different forms for ALL TWENTY kids. insanity ensues, including a few security officials barking at me in english and my answering them in spanish without thinking about it. ridiculous, and i would not recommend offering to be responsible for getting 20 people who don't speak english through customs. not exactly the greatest highlight of the trip, but it definitely stands out in my mind as a lesson. i will never complain about going through customs again, so long as i don't have 20 teenagers in tow.
- lenin, norman, and magda getting interviewed by "telemundo", apparently one of the largest hispanic television stations in the area, meeting the ambassador, chumming it up and getting stuck yahda yahda-ing when all i wanted was to make my way to the wine table! (my god i don't care if you were the previous nicaraguan ambassador to the states just give me some shiraz).
- as we arrived at our dorm at georgetown after our first concert at the nicaraguan embassy, brian (who started the music program here and was on the trip to help chaperone) turned to me and said "um. i lost the key to the common room." (where we had forced all the kids to leave their room keys because then we could be "responsible" for them). i shook my head. typical. after going to the front desk at another dorm to beg the poor work study students to unlock one of the kids' doors, we walked back into our dorm building and could hear yelping from above. figuring it was the kids causing a ruckus, disregarding the fact that the elevator wasn't working, i tromped up the stairs to the 7th floor while preparing a lecture in my mind. when i got up to our floor, i was informed that the elevator was STUCK with 5 of the girls inside. the doors were cracked just enough to peek through and take a picture (i, of course, was absolutely cracking up at the whole situation and not really the sympathetic person you'd want in control of things at that moment). we called a security guard, and 5 minutes later a 7 foot tall black man came bursting up the stairs screaming "EVERYONE OUT OF THE HALL. I MEAN IT KIDS! NOW!" i was a bit shaken and trying not to laugh in his face (he was super intense) and tried to tell him "they're from nicaragua, they don't speak english" as he yelled in the elevator "PUSH THE RED BUTTON. DO YOU HEAR ME?! PUSH THE RED BUTTON!" i could tell he was just scaring the absolute daylights out of the girls. with his brute strength, our incredible hulk of a security guard managed to single handedly pry the doors apart and the girls came flooding out in a rush of tears and exclamations. we had a 10 minute reunion in which i held fifteen year-old roberta as she sobbed into my shirt, and let her cry a bit before asking "but won't your mom think this was hilarious?". she nodded through her tears. and contrary to my revised thoughts on the elevator (i took the stairs the rest of the week) and my expectations of the kids (you'd think they'd be a little wary of it after that experience) bright and early the next morning they piled on the elevator one after one without appearing the least bit tentative. lesson learned?!
- hitting "the toombs" (infamous georgetown bar) with karla (the other fabretto chaperone, and my best girl friend in nicaragua), and marveling at the ridiculousness of the frat boys. speaking in spanish about a guy sitting next to us who turned around and retorted with a haughty spanish remark. ooooops. having a guy offer to buy me a drink, taking a shot with him and talking to him for about 10 minutes, turning around to talk to karla for a moment and having him run out on me BEFORE paying the bill... complaining to the bartender and his reply "oh that happens all the time here. you're in georgetown!" my thoughts on the situation: if that ever happened in montana someone would get their ass kicked! needless to say, the cute bartender took pity on me and ended up buying me the drink. closing down the bar as i talked to the bouncer about children’s' art and what an important effect it has on the world. ha! what a teacher nerd. when i get tipsy i talk about my students... lordy.
- a night of sharing music with a group of teenage musicians from serbia and a children's choir from the DC area. a very low-key event, potluck style, forcing of kids to sit together even though they weren't able to talk (somehow laughter still rose from those tables, clinking and bouncing off the high vaulted church ceiling). each group performed, then the director of the DC choir (who's just a TAD bit more experienced than i am!) had picked out a song for the kids to sing together called "one song". she passed out sheet music to the 80-some kids and a few adults, and as magda and i joined their voices i felt a lump in my throat and couldn't stop the tears... "if we all sing one song, one song of love, one song of peace, one song to make all our troubles cease, just imagine what tomorrow could bring... if we all sing one song"... their voices rose and fell under her expert direction, and though my kids don't speak english they were smiling and obviously impacted. the pianist taught the kids and the audience some sign language, and then they performed the song with full instruments and movements and i just stood there wishing i could bottle the moment, the harmony, how simple life can be when we are willing to work together towards a common dream. after the song, a man i'd met earlier came up and introduced himself as the "drum instructor" for the DC choir. he was from west africa, a mountain of a man with a monumental smile and mischievous eyes which shined as he helped to pass out 40 jembe drums and handfuls of other random percussion instruments to all the kids, who'd sat in a clump at the front of the church in chattering excitement. the man led a 20 minute jam session and i watched his lack of inhibitions spread through the kids as those who started to play tentatively gained more and more confidence and were soon wailing away on the drums with abandon, grinning from ear to ear. my students allowed the innocence of their short childhood to shine through in these minutes, leaving me breathless and skipping around gleefully. when kids are jamming together and creating together, all sorts of good energy comes forth! what a burst of loving kindness! easily my favorite moment as a music teacher yet.
- a day at the museums... my favorite part being at the beginning of the "evolution" exhibition in the museum of natural history where gabby (one of the volunteers state-side who'd basically organized the trip for us) and i talked about how the kids were unable to learn critical thinking with the current educational system in nicaragua (she grew up there) and how the church influences so much of what people unquestioningly take to be true: ie: that evolution was falsified by scientists. we asked a few of the boys at the beginning of the exhibit whether or not they believed in evolution, to which they answered "no. because that's not the way it was". and left it at that. gabby smiled at me slyly and proceeded to explain the exhibit in great detail (i swear if you see it you will not be able to believe in anything OTHER than evolution as the reason we're here now) punctuating certain points. by the end of our time with the dinosaurs the boys looked at gabby and i and admitted with sheepish grins that "maybe" they had been mistaken, and that "maybe" they should think for themselves about things like that instead of just believing what the church says. (YES! SCORE ONE for critical thinking!). beyond that, the kids were in awe of the museums, they'd never seen nor expected to see anything like them. we also went to the museum of air and space, which was incredible. the sheer size of the rockets which propel shuttles to the moon, i have this lovely image of ileana bending over a railing to touch a shuttle rocket with her mouth wide open at the sheer grandeur of the object, turning to me as if to exclaim "can you believe THIS?!".
- saturday night at a piano bar with katie (after she brought me some chicken curry! amazing!) where we made our way to the piano and didn't leave for the rest of the evening, singing at the top of our lungs to every single song... until she slipped the piano man a sheet of paper which read "my friend callie came all the way from nicaragua to hear 'i've got friends in low places' and she'd love to sing it with you" therefore rendering me helpless to resist singing in front of the 300 some people in the bar... gulp! actually it was awesome, probably one of the better renditions i've ever done of it (most assuredly better than at cousin erin's wedding, regs?!). then taking a taxi back to georgetown (about 8 blocks) because katie insisted i couldn't walk and balking at the cost: $8. WHAT?! that could get me from managua to masaya by taxi! outrageous! i could never take taxis around in the us after being in managua so much, where you can go anywhere across the city for less than $2.
- a day spent at the international children’s arts festival (basically the reason we came to the us in the first place), singing on a stage which framed the capitol building. mainly, the highlight being singing our own version of bob marley's "one love" (translation of my spanish words being: here's a song for people who are fighting, we are asking you why, why? there's no politician in this whole world, who can take care of our future?). right at ya george bush! bam!
a 50 foot by 30 foot lego model of the us (you could build and contribute parts, and the kids spent about 2 hours playing there... you can never be too old for legos!), starting to paint a mural (as we watched other very artistic kids creating paintings for bill and hillary clinton, bill gates etc.) then having a woman come over to us FREAKING out because we weren't "art olympiad winners" and we weren't supposed to TOUCH the paints... i got a good laugh out of it. i hope bill clinton got some stick-figure drawing which says "nicaragua" and "coro fabrettiono" on it! ha! all the girls got henna tattoos, and we all had our names written in arabic. there were peace workshops, and an art gallery of children's paintings from all over the world. incredible stuff! peace through art! one love indeed!
- the last concert of our trip, on a side stage at the kennedy center (an impressive giant of a building, with 70 foot tall ceilings and hefty chandeliers... red curtains and all). we spent an hour testing the sound system, another hour listening to the serbian group (the same ones who'd performed with us at the church earlier in the week) tweak their instruments. we were finally set to go backstage when i turned around to talk to my aunt kelly (who was there with my cousins michelle and josh and my uncle david) and did a triple take. my DAD walked up the aisle. a tearful reunion in front of all my kids ensued with me proclaiming "es mi papa! es mi papa!" and them (confused by me as usual) laughing and pretending they knew what was going on. my dad surprised me! the concert was short and definitely our best of the week, and i was elated afterwards as we walked to a local italian restaurant for a "reception" with the president of the org's dad. i got to share dinner with my dad and other family, and felt extremely joyful. the kids started to sing (we took over the upper balcony of the restaurant), guitars were brought out of nowhere, and we were treated to an hour-long concert. we also performed a rousing version of "one love" (which the president's dad claimed to be his "new favorite song") and the kids were jovial and basking in the light of their success. an excellent evening.
- dropping everyone off at the airport! i don't know if i've ever been more relieved in my life. hugs all around, and promises that i'd actually return to nicaragua... saludos sent to my dad. i took a 20 minute taxi ride to my dad's hotel (right outside of DC) and met with my aunt and uncle and cousins and had breakfast then we hit the road for the 8 hour drive to ohio. they apologized furiously for making me drive with them (and i'm thinking "are you KIDDING! this is LUXURY! we have AIR CONDITIONING!). we ended up singing disney and show tunes for the last 4 hours of the trip, which i think made my uncle david ponder jumping out his childproof window... but made aunt kelser (the tone deaf version of maria from the 'sound of music') extremely happy, and passed the time well.
- time spent with gramma kay in her apartment in ohio, mainly playing scrabble or telling stories and talking about old pictures. we did some shopping and went to lunch, and played and played and played scrabble. gramma invited her two friends mert (age 92) and nancy (age 88) over to play with us for an afternoon which was very exciting. actually the best part of being there ended up being a trip to gramma's physical therapy appointment, where i got to meet her therapist (who she told me "he's SO cute. but he's married. and his wife's having a baby in two weeks") and took some candid photos of her workout (which she claimed not to want but later was so funny about). i admire her so much, she's going through her 8th knee surgery on her left knee and just refuses to be confined to a wheelchair. she wants to walk! her determination and the manner in which she perseveres in her health issues inspires me greatly. we also had a great discussion on "why jesus isn't my best friend" and i think we came to a good understanding that i can think jesus was a pretty awesome guy, but believe that there have been other prophets like him in our world, that he's not the only one. but gramma's pretty persistent that jesus is HER best friend, and not only that, but after i'd spent an hour or so showing her how to put digital pictures on her computer she exclaimed "oh! you can just do so much with the internet! i just thank jesus every day for the internet." i nearly had to sit down for fear laughter would crumble my body. "yes. yes, gramma. jesus did invent the internet."
she retorted cheerfully "well, he sure did help us find it!". oh jesus, finder of the internet... maybe someday we CAN be best friends.
- an extended weekend in DC with katie and dundas- hookah bars, sushi, birthday celebrations (with lots of beerpong, yummy pizza, and carrying on), eastern market, feasting on ben & jerry's, lots of giggles and catching up. dinner date with margo including an adventure to a super sketchy safeway to buy taco supplies, some ice cold blue moon and guinness, and all sorts of excellent conversation. linz's sister giving me a killer haircut, time spent decorating katie's ridiculous house for the parties (with both fourth of july and cinco de mayo decorations), incredible weather, awesome people...
- taking the 2 hour metro/bus trek to the dulles airport only to find that my flight to nicaragua had been cancelled due to an apparent hurricane occupying the air between DC and central america. the woman helping me at the TACA (read: super sketchy central/south american airline) being called to an urgent meeting and deserting her post as camera crews from local news stations showed up to interview folks in line who'd each come to the airport with an average of 8 bags... carrying their lives in duffel bags and tupperware containers. i turned to the pilot standing in line behind me who'd been on the phone with one of his buddies asking about the "hurricane" and asked him what the heck was going on. he shrugged his shoulders "dunno, but there sure as heck isn't a hurricane anywhere between here and nicaragua. they're totally lying to us." i just started laughing. of COURSE they would lie to us, rather than just saying there's a problem with the plane... my lovely airline helper came back after 20 minutes and looked flustered and told me i'd have to come back at 3 AM the next day. um. no. if i chose that program i'd either be 1) stuck at the airport for the next 14 hours, 2) stuck paying for an airport hotel, or 3) stuck paying for a taxi from adam's morgan neighborhood to dulles at 2 AM (read: at least 60 bucks). i ended up rescheduling my flight for the next available afternoon flight (i had two choices: 5 AM or 5 PM flights) and headed back into the city the same way i came. katie was working, and i don't have a phone... so i borrowed someone's cell phone on the bus and left her a message, giggling and shaking my head in utter disbelief. seems like my luck in nicaragua with transportation followed me all the way to DC. i ended up taking the metro to the right spot but got off on the wrong side of dupont square, walked 6 blocks with all my stuff and ended up at a park i'd never seen. i decided that rather than despair i'd do the only thing that made sense at the time, which of course meant picnicking at the park with the turkey sandwich i'd brought for the plane. i ended up talking with a homeless man who shared my bench, our conversation speckled with his observations about the changing city he'd called home his entire life as he carefully rolled cigarettes and politely refused the other half of my sandwich. he smiled to the skies and remarked on the weather being incredible (which it was- breezy, sunny, the perfect afternoon) as i watched the other park patrons- a gothic garbed couple tangled under a tree sharing headphones, a tailored-suit sporting businessman walking his groomed poodle, a woman in stirrup stretch pants and a mesh tank top engaged in a heated argument with whoever happened to be occupying her 10 foot radius. i wondered if any of these people smiled to the skies in the same way as my bench companion. as he used his long dirt-filled fingernails to smoke his 5th cigarette down to the roach and put the remnants securely in the pocket of his duct tape patched down coat, i wanted to thank him for praising such small happinesses, for still looking to the skies with reverence and thanks even though he'd so obviously fallen on hard times. instead, i smiled at the sky, smiled at him, and walked on with a lighter step to find my way.
i got back last week from a 2 week long adventure in the us of a; one week with 20 of my high school choir kids in DC and the other split between katie and dundas (in DC) and my gramma, aunt and uncle, and cousins in ohio. what a whirlwind! some of the highlights from the trip:
- airport hassles, we'd filled out the wrong forms and when we arrived at customs in the us had to fill out different forms for ALL TWENTY kids. insanity ensues, including a few security officials barking at me in english and my answering them in spanish without thinking about it. ridiculous, and i would not recommend offering to be responsible for getting 20 people who don't speak english through customs. not exactly the greatest highlight of the trip, but it definitely stands out in my mind as a lesson. i will never complain about going through customs again, so long as i don't have 20 teenagers in tow.
- lenin, norman, and magda getting interviewed by "telemundo", apparently one of the largest hispanic television stations in the area, meeting the ambassador, chumming it up and getting stuck yahda yahda-ing when all i wanted was to make my way to the wine table! (my god i don't care if you were the previous nicaraguan ambassador to the states just give me some shiraz).
- as we arrived at our dorm at georgetown after our first concert at the nicaraguan embassy, brian (who started the music program here and was on the trip to help chaperone) turned to me and said "um. i lost the key to the common room." (where we had forced all the kids to leave their room keys because then we could be "responsible" for them). i shook my head. typical. after going to the front desk at another dorm to beg the poor work study students to unlock one of the kids' doors, we walked back into our dorm building and could hear yelping from above. figuring it was the kids causing a ruckus, disregarding the fact that the elevator wasn't working, i tromped up the stairs to the 7th floor while preparing a lecture in my mind. when i got up to our floor, i was informed that the elevator was STUCK with 5 of the girls inside. the doors were cracked just enough to peek through and take a picture (i, of course, was absolutely cracking up at the whole situation and not really the sympathetic person you'd want in control of things at that moment). we called a security guard, and 5 minutes later a 7 foot tall black man came bursting up the stairs screaming "EVERYONE OUT OF THE HALL. I MEAN IT KIDS! NOW!" i was a bit shaken and trying not to laugh in his face (he was super intense) and tried to tell him "they're from nicaragua, they don't speak english" as he yelled in the elevator "PUSH THE RED BUTTON. DO YOU HEAR ME?! PUSH THE RED BUTTON!" i could tell he was just scaring the absolute daylights out of the girls. with his brute strength, our incredible hulk of a security guard managed to single handedly pry the doors apart and the girls came flooding out in a rush of tears and exclamations. we had a 10 minute reunion in which i held fifteen year-old roberta as she sobbed into my shirt, and let her cry a bit before asking "but won't your mom think this was hilarious?". she nodded through her tears. and contrary to my revised thoughts on the elevator (i took the stairs the rest of the week) and my expectations of the kids (you'd think they'd be a little wary of it after that experience) bright and early the next morning they piled on the elevator one after one without appearing the least bit tentative. lesson learned?!
- hitting "the toombs" (infamous georgetown bar) with karla (the other fabretto chaperone, and my best girl friend in nicaragua), and marveling at the ridiculousness of the frat boys. speaking in spanish about a guy sitting next to us who turned around and retorted with a haughty spanish remark. ooooops. having a guy offer to buy me a drink, taking a shot with him and talking to him for about 10 minutes, turning around to talk to karla for a moment and having him run out on me BEFORE paying the bill... complaining to the bartender and his reply "oh that happens all the time here. you're in georgetown!" my thoughts on the situation: if that ever happened in montana someone would get their ass kicked! needless to say, the cute bartender took pity on me and ended up buying me the drink. closing down the bar as i talked to the bouncer about children’s' art and what an important effect it has on the world. ha! what a teacher nerd. when i get tipsy i talk about my students... lordy.
- a night of sharing music with a group of teenage musicians from serbia and a children's choir from the DC area. a very low-key event, potluck style, forcing of kids to sit together even though they weren't able to talk (somehow laughter still rose from those tables, clinking and bouncing off the high vaulted church ceiling). each group performed, then the director of the DC choir (who's just a TAD bit more experienced than i am!) had picked out a song for the kids to sing together called "one song". she passed out sheet music to the 80-some kids and a few adults, and as magda and i joined their voices i felt a lump in my throat and couldn't stop the tears... "if we all sing one song, one song of love, one song of peace, one song to make all our troubles cease, just imagine what tomorrow could bring... if we all sing one song"... their voices rose and fell under her expert direction, and though my kids don't speak english they were smiling and obviously impacted. the pianist taught the kids and the audience some sign language, and then they performed the song with full instruments and movements and i just stood there wishing i could bottle the moment, the harmony, how simple life can be when we are willing to work together towards a common dream. after the song, a man i'd met earlier came up and introduced himself as the "drum instructor" for the DC choir. he was from west africa, a mountain of a man with a monumental smile and mischievous eyes which shined as he helped to pass out 40 jembe drums and handfuls of other random percussion instruments to all the kids, who'd sat in a clump at the front of the church in chattering excitement. the man led a 20 minute jam session and i watched his lack of inhibitions spread through the kids as those who started to play tentatively gained more and more confidence and were soon wailing away on the drums with abandon, grinning from ear to ear. my students allowed the innocence of their short childhood to shine through in these minutes, leaving me breathless and skipping around gleefully. when kids are jamming together and creating together, all sorts of good energy comes forth! what a burst of loving kindness! easily my favorite moment as a music teacher yet.
- a day at the museums... my favorite part being at the beginning of the "evolution" exhibition in the museum of natural history where gabby (one of the volunteers state-side who'd basically organized the trip for us) and i talked about how the kids were unable to learn critical thinking with the current educational system in nicaragua (she grew up there) and how the church influences so much of what people unquestioningly take to be true: ie: that evolution was falsified by scientists. we asked a few of the boys at the beginning of the exhibit whether or not they believed in evolution, to which they answered "no. because that's not the way it was". and left it at that. gabby smiled at me slyly and proceeded to explain the exhibit in great detail (i swear if you see it you will not be able to believe in anything OTHER than evolution as the reason we're here now) punctuating certain points. by the end of our time with the dinosaurs the boys looked at gabby and i and admitted with sheepish grins that "maybe" they had been mistaken, and that "maybe" they should think for themselves about things like that instead of just believing what the church says. (YES! SCORE ONE for critical thinking!). beyond that, the kids were in awe of the museums, they'd never seen nor expected to see anything like them. we also went to the museum of air and space, which was incredible. the sheer size of the rockets which propel shuttles to the moon, i have this lovely image of ileana bending over a railing to touch a shuttle rocket with her mouth wide open at the sheer grandeur of the object, turning to me as if to exclaim "can you believe THIS?!".
- saturday night at a piano bar with katie (after she brought me some chicken curry! amazing!) where we made our way to the piano and didn't leave for the rest of the evening, singing at the top of our lungs to every single song... until she slipped the piano man a sheet of paper which read "my friend callie came all the way from nicaragua to hear 'i've got friends in low places' and she'd love to sing it with you" therefore rendering me helpless to resist singing in front of the 300 some people in the bar... gulp! actually it was awesome, probably one of the better renditions i've ever done of it (most assuredly better than at cousin erin's wedding, regs?!). then taking a taxi back to georgetown (about 8 blocks) because katie insisted i couldn't walk and balking at the cost: $8. WHAT?! that could get me from managua to masaya by taxi! outrageous! i could never take taxis around in the us after being in managua so much, where you can go anywhere across the city for less than $2.
- a day spent at the international children’s arts festival (basically the reason we came to the us in the first place), singing on a stage which framed the capitol building. mainly, the highlight being singing our own version of bob marley's "one love" (translation of my spanish words being: here's a song for people who are fighting, we are asking you why, why? there's no politician in this whole world, who can take care of our future?). right at ya george bush! bam!
a 50 foot by 30 foot lego model of the us (you could build and contribute parts, and the kids spent about 2 hours playing there... you can never be too old for legos!), starting to paint a mural (as we watched other very artistic kids creating paintings for bill and hillary clinton, bill gates etc.) then having a woman come over to us FREAKING out because we weren't "art olympiad winners" and we weren't supposed to TOUCH the paints... i got a good laugh out of it. i hope bill clinton got some stick-figure drawing which says "nicaragua" and "coro fabrettiono" on it! ha! all the girls got henna tattoos, and we all had our names written in arabic. there were peace workshops, and an art gallery of children's paintings from all over the world. incredible stuff! peace through art! one love indeed!
- the last concert of our trip, on a side stage at the kennedy center (an impressive giant of a building, with 70 foot tall ceilings and hefty chandeliers... red curtains and all). we spent an hour testing the sound system, another hour listening to the serbian group (the same ones who'd performed with us at the church earlier in the week) tweak their instruments. we were finally set to go backstage when i turned around to talk to my aunt kelly (who was there with my cousins michelle and josh and my uncle david) and did a triple take. my DAD walked up the aisle. a tearful reunion in front of all my kids ensued with me proclaiming "es mi papa! es mi papa!" and them (confused by me as usual) laughing and pretending they knew what was going on. my dad surprised me! the concert was short and definitely our best of the week, and i was elated afterwards as we walked to a local italian restaurant for a "reception" with the president of the org's dad. i got to share dinner with my dad and other family, and felt extremely joyful. the kids started to sing (we took over the upper balcony of the restaurant), guitars were brought out of nowhere, and we were treated to an hour-long concert. we also performed a rousing version of "one love" (which the president's dad claimed to be his "new favorite song") and the kids were jovial and basking in the light of their success. an excellent evening.
- dropping everyone off at the airport! i don't know if i've ever been more relieved in my life. hugs all around, and promises that i'd actually return to nicaragua... saludos sent to my dad. i took a 20 minute taxi ride to my dad's hotel (right outside of DC) and met with my aunt and uncle and cousins and had breakfast then we hit the road for the 8 hour drive to ohio. they apologized furiously for making me drive with them (and i'm thinking "are you KIDDING! this is LUXURY! we have AIR CONDITIONING!). we ended up singing disney and show tunes for the last 4 hours of the trip, which i think made my uncle david ponder jumping out his childproof window... but made aunt kelser (the tone deaf version of maria from the 'sound of music') extremely happy, and passed the time well.
- time spent with gramma kay in her apartment in ohio, mainly playing scrabble or telling stories and talking about old pictures. we did some shopping and went to lunch, and played and played and played scrabble. gramma invited her two friends mert (age 92) and nancy (age 88) over to play with us for an afternoon which was very exciting. actually the best part of being there ended up being a trip to gramma's physical therapy appointment, where i got to meet her therapist (who she told me "he's SO cute. but he's married. and his wife's having a baby in two weeks") and took some candid photos of her workout (which she claimed not to want but later was so funny about). i admire her so much, she's going through her 8th knee surgery on her left knee and just refuses to be confined to a wheelchair. she wants to walk! her determination and the manner in which she perseveres in her health issues inspires me greatly. we also had a great discussion on "why jesus isn't my best friend" and i think we came to a good understanding that i can think jesus was a pretty awesome guy, but believe that there have been other prophets like him in our world, that he's not the only one. but gramma's pretty persistent that jesus is HER best friend, and not only that, but after i'd spent an hour or so showing her how to put digital pictures on her computer she exclaimed "oh! you can just do so much with the internet! i just thank jesus every day for the internet." i nearly had to sit down for fear laughter would crumble my body. "yes. yes, gramma. jesus did invent the internet."
she retorted cheerfully "well, he sure did help us find it!". oh jesus, finder of the internet... maybe someday we CAN be best friends.
- an extended weekend in DC with katie and dundas- hookah bars, sushi, birthday celebrations (with lots of beerpong, yummy pizza, and carrying on), eastern market, feasting on ben & jerry's, lots of giggles and catching up. dinner date with margo including an adventure to a super sketchy safeway to buy taco supplies, some ice cold blue moon and guinness, and all sorts of excellent conversation. linz's sister giving me a killer haircut, time spent decorating katie's ridiculous house for the parties (with both fourth of july and cinco de mayo decorations), incredible weather, awesome people...
- taking the 2 hour metro/bus trek to the dulles airport only to find that my flight to nicaragua had been cancelled due to an apparent hurricane occupying the air between DC and central america. the woman helping me at the TACA (read: super sketchy central/south american airline) being called to an urgent meeting and deserting her post as camera crews from local news stations showed up to interview folks in line who'd each come to the airport with an average of 8 bags... carrying their lives in duffel bags and tupperware containers. i turned to the pilot standing in line behind me who'd been on the phone with one of his buddies asking about the "hurricane" and asked him what the heck was going on. he shrugged his shoulders "dunno, but there sure as heck isn't a hurricane anywhere between here and nicaragua. they're totally lying to us." i just started laughing. of COURSE they would lie to us, rather than just saying there's a problem with the plane... my lovely airline helper came back after 20 minutes and looked flustered and told me i'd have to come back at 3 AM the next day. um. no. if i chose that program i'd either be 1) stuck at the airport for the next 14 hours, 2) stuck paying for an airport hotel, or 3) stuck paying for a taxi from adam's morgan neighborhood to dulles at 2 AM (read: at least 60 bucks). i ended up rescheduling my flight for the next available afternoon flight (i had two choices: 5 AM or 5 PM flights) and headed back into the city the same way i came. katie was working, and i don't have a phone... so i borrowed someone's cell phone on the bus and left her a message, giggling and shaking my head in utter disbelief. seems like my luck in nicaragua with transportation followed me all the way to DC. i ended up taking the metro to the right spot but got off on the wrong side of dupont square, walked 6 blocks with all my stuff and ended up at a park i'd never seen. i decided that rather than despair i'd do the only thing that made sense at the time, which of course meant picnicking at the park with the turkey sandwich i'd brought for the plane. i ended up talking with a homeless man who shared my bench, our conversation speckled with his observations about the changing city he'd called home his entire life as he carefully rolled cigarettes and politely refused the other half of my sandwich. he smiled to the skies and remarked on the weather being incredible (which it was- breezy, sunny, the perfect afternoon) as i watched the other park patrons- a gothic garbed couple tangled under a tree sharing headphones, a tailored-suit sporting businessman walking his groomed poodle, a woman in stirrup stretch pants and a mesh tank top engaged in a heated argument with whoever happened to be occupying her 10 foot radius. i wondered if any of these people smiled to the skies in the same way as my bench companion. as he used his long dirt-filled fingernails to smoke his 5th cigarette down to the roach and put the remnants securely in the pocket of his duct tape patched down coat, i wanted to thank him for praising such small happinesses, for still looking to the skies with reverence and thanks even though he'd so obviously fallen on hard times. instead, i smiled at the sky, smiled at him, and walked on with a lighter step to find my way.
viernes, 15 de junio de 2007
Walls
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all of this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action, it is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but murder. - Albert Einstein
I learned today of the U.S. Army's construction of a three mile long wall dividing Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods within the city of Baghdad. I'm not a military strategist, I've never even played a game of "Risk", I didn't play with plastic soldiers when I was a tyke... but i can't help but being struck speechless. Words about stone walls fail me. They seem to me such an ancient component of human existence, a component of our collective history marked by pain, war, death, conquesting emperors, greedy kings, sacrifice, and separation. A barrier between mankind and...mankind? Back in the days of King Arthur and his valiant knights we humans built protective walls around our cities, a security measure to protect against pillaging rogues and raging armies. Given the weapons of the day, the sword and bow, the boiling hot tar and launched boulders, these meters-thick walls provided a sensible barrier from the traitorous outside world. Nowadays the sensibility factor runs thin, and these barricades serve to separate, to contribute to the rift of inequality in our world.
Already having been deeply disturbed by the construction of the "necessary" triple-fortified section of the "Wall of Shame" being built upon 700 miles of the U.S./Mexican border, this bit of news about Baghdad leaves me unnerved. Are we reverting to another Feudal Era in which the kings of our world believe that we must enclose our world in walls in order to remain "secure"? What does the word "secure" refer to? Closing out our perceived enemies, showing them we'd rather spend millions of dollars on concrete and chain link and barbed wire than on creating programs in their country to benefit the poor? Building the wall in Baghdad amidst thousands of people protesting throughout the city crying desperately for the division to STOP? Bush slaps the face of Congress for their attempts at holding his administration accountable for their deception, lies, and greed. Put Mr. President on the defensive and I suppose that's the knee-jerk reaction we should expect to receive. "Oh yeah, look at me now. I can do whatever I want. You think I’m causing civil war and destroying a country? I'll show you civil war."... Mr. Bush would do well to remember the words of his predecessor, Bill Clinton "A world without walls is the only sustainable world... If the world is dominated by people who believe that their races, their religions, their ethnic differences are the most important factors, than a huge number of people will perish in this century." Clinton wasn't perfect, but he recognized the pointless endeavor of imprisoning humans within man-made (and unsupported) confines. Bush's puppetry act becomes more and more translucent as he continues to support policies which lead to the construction of barriers and the deaths of innocent people. Stone by damned stone.
The jackhammers begin to tear away at freedom and block by block a "temporary" barrier appears in our backyard, between neighbors, across Mexico, in Baghdad, pervading our lives. What happens when we become so accustomed to this barrier that we forget its presence, we forget that we were ever truly free to speak of justice and truth and equality, we forget that we were ever allowed to dissent? Will we lose sight of things that once were our unalienable rights as Americans? will we forget? Bush has succeeded in facilitating mind-blowing acts of radical patriotism while creating a society in which we seem to have forgotten our roots. Who are we to morally impose ourselves on other countries? Who are we to say democracy is the only way to live? YES. It could be the most comfortable, safe, and freeing way to live... but does that mean the rest of the world must follow in our footsteps? Has this command been directly handed down by GOD (the one and only true GOD, of course) to Mr. Bush himself to justify a Napoleonic conquest of the world? Does our country as a whole live and breathe by and pray to this same one God our President claims to act under? Are our hands guided by a war-mongering spirit?
From what i know of Americans, I say NO.
Do we line our own suburban neighborhoods with thick cement walls? We cannot be silent and expect peace to pervade the world and to suddenly appear in our government's foreign policy. There are many Americans who have not been silent a single day about the terrible consequences and injustices of the Iraqi War and I thank them from the depths of my heart. There are also Americans like me... who are waking from a slumber rubbing our eyes and wondering "what the HELL happened to our country?" Those of us who claimed to "never get involved" with politics because we didn’t know where to start, scared that once we start to know our hearts will break, and aware that once we have this knowledge we will never be able to step back into our secure bubbles of nightly-news induced reality. We can no longer be numb to the statistics of the dead, unable to see visions of the flag-draped coffins... and yet we continue to be fed self-righteous lies by politicians who claim to be looking out for the lives of our brothers and sisters across the world.
The director of the factory in "Brave New World" (Adolus Huxley) quotes his forefather Our Ford in a frightening statement "History... is bunk".
Have we come to a point that we're so wrapped up in our actions and reactions of the moment that we are unable to look at the past with any type of intelligent reflective thought? Have we removed ourselves so far from reality that we cannot notice the parallels between our current situation and feudal times, times of the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam War? Do any of these historical events ring enough bells to create a fury of action, do they stir our lives enough that we begin to realize that we're the ones who must take responsibility for changing the doomed course of our country's policies? Have we already forgotten the slippery slope that was Vietnam, and how suddenly our boys overseas were being lost by the hundreds and by the thousands, how the death tolls mounted and mounted to a 58,256 name-long black granite cry to the heavens....
I've experienced this monument, this memorial to a generation lost in the jungles of Vietnam. a bitter sob caught in my throat, I wanted to drop to my knees and wail "WHY?" angrily at the skies, to shake the White House on its foundations "WHY WAR?". Blurred eyes searching the heavens for an answer, fingertips tracing letters- each one a prayer of peace on my lips. The Vietnam Wall. Another wall of our history, another wall for which so many boys died needlessly, another wall which divided a country and families and lives forever.
I looked though the iron bars of the White House, choked on my thoughts- it's so small. For the amount of destruction the decisions made within those walls have created, it should be a palace, a small country, a ridiculously giant theme-park adventure complete with flashing neon signs and a "Bombs Over Baghdad" theme park. If one saw the President's lair out of context, it wouldn't be much of a statement of power. I can't bring my mind past it's color- set against a "true-blue dream of a sky" (e.e. cummings), forged of the purest white... where's the spattered blood of the world?
Certainly not on our hands, for we are the purest form of freedom and democracy that exists on this planet, and our actions come with oh-such-good intentions. Adolus Huxley wrote, "Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions, it is walled and roofed with them". Good intentions matter not when they lead to the murdering of tens of thousands of civilians, they matter not when they lead to the death of one innocent person. Stacking our things around us as protective individualistic walls, we are able to feel that we own our own part of the world, and our prized collection mounts with the dust of years of inaction and spiderwebs woven from a life of closed eyes. But, we have our own little lives, our own museums, monuments to our fleeting lives, and we continue to hoard and justify our miserable mizery. Thing by damned thing.
Reading these utopia-based books leaves me wondering what point we've come to in our world... I live in a small town on a mountaintop in Nicaragua where 80% of people struggle to eat every single day yet own the same amount of high-tech electronic mumble jumble as my friends back in the states- giving up their daily rice and beans for a sugary dose of daytime drama and farcical news. Chuck Palahniuk wrote, "The sound shivers though the walls, through the table, through the window frame, and into my finger. These distraction-oholics. These focus-ophobics. Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of hat. Big Brother's holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed... and this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world". Big Brother constantly keeps the spoonful of sugar within arms reach. Just when we're ready to make a movement toward thinking in terms of freedom and breaking free of societal constraints, there he is dangling shining objects in front of our oogling eyes, enabling us to forget the pain of reality and the necessity of being awake and fully alive. We are being spoon-fed day after day in our educational systems, in our institutions, in our media... with symbols and repeated key words and new things to wish and dream about possessing. Spoonful by damned spoonful.
Did anyone else catch the ironic news of the construction company building the US/Mexican border fence being fined for hiring illegal immigrants to build the wall? What about first-hand accounts such as Michael Finkel's short story entitled Desperate Passage in which he describes an ill-fated venture with a group of Haitians crammed in the hull of a boat named Believe in God? Of the desperate measures those from the poorest country in the Western hemisphere must go to in order to have some hope of a life? What are we saying about our own standards and values if we can't understand that people from these countries, if given any chance or opportunity of having a future, would rather live in the warm circle of their own families than existing on the outskirts of our society?
One of the men in Finkel's story, a Haitian named David, speaks of his stint as a drug dealer in Naples, Florida and his fear that upon returning to the states he will return to this lifestyle in order to afford a North American lifestyle. "In America, he mentioned, there is shame in poverty -- a shame you don't feel in Haiti. 'People are always looking at the poor Haitians who just stepped off their banana boat' he said." the words "illegal immigrants" are just as emotionally and politically loaded as "terrorist" or "insurgent".
What if we were made to look into the eyes of every scared shitless "illegal immigrant" who'd left their home and family in search of the mirage of the US? For our façade of glory? Would we be able to regard them as an equal human and still justify building an eyesore of a fence between the Americas? What if we had to look into the eyes of every mother and father in Iraq, of every “insurgent” brother or sister who'd ever lost someone due to "Operation Iraqi Freedom"? Would we be able to believe in their freedom if we had to brush away their tears, if we were deeply aware of their humanity, if we inscribed every name of an Iraqi casualty on our new wall in Baghdad and traced our fingertips across the letters, the alphabet in a foreign hand yet our own hands connected on a deeper level, aware of the significance of each character, each letter, each pair of eyes?
Would we drop our gaze to the ground and pick up another stone? OR would we cast our stones aside and reach out to grasp our brothers and sisters to honor the lost and help them re-build their world rather than continuing to destroy it? In 1984, George Orwell writes, that if the average citizen "were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore...the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs".
Bombs and walls. Fear and hatred. Self-righteousness. Possessions. Lies. We cast the stone.
We dangerously mock history.
Will we continue to allow ourselves to be fed, spoonful by damned spoonful until we become so engorged and addicted to ourselves that patriotic tears of glory arise with the news of another "insurgent' death?
Will the shining objects in our lives continue to lull us into a nightmarish dream-world in which we forget the reality of freedom and justice?
Will we avert our eyes and continue to cast stones?
Or will we fall to our knees in fumbling clarity and mourn for our war-torn world?
My question is not who will cast the first stone
For as Jesus told us we have all sinned.
My question is, who's humble and valiant enough
to put the first stone back where it belongs
in the arms of Mother Earth?
As Robert Frost wrote:
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
what I was walling in or walling out,
and to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
that wants it down.
This something Frost refers to, the deepest part of ourselves, the collective soul of our world, refuses to be silent.
My last question: when will we finally take a moment from our own diversions to stop, to consider, to release that something, to break walls, to break the hand of the spoon-feeding institutions, to rebuild our own world, to remind ourselves of what freedom once was, to regain the glimmer of hope in our eyes?
Put your stone down, return it to its Mother.
Embrace your own selfishness.
Embrace your neighbor.
Let love travel through these walls
and shatter them into the useless rubble .
Let them become a part of history,
a part I hope we'll never again be trained to ignore.
sábado, 2 de junio de 2007
discoveries
last week as i sat outside the casona sharing a beer with my peace corps buddy oliver i started noticing floating spots of light flashing in the darkness of the garden spread out in front of us. in general i would take this to be a sign of impending eye doom seeing as major eye issues tend to run in my family and seeing flashing spots of light is not a good sign from normal eyes, however oliver informed me that there were LIGHTNING BUGS all over the place in cusmapa... which i had never noticed before that very instant. how in the world i missed such a glorious little insect for nearly 5 months when every other bug in the town seems to have found its way into my life or my bed or my pants is beyond me. my faith in the bugs of cusmapa is entirely renewed, because i don't know much about lightning bugs but i have a completely romanticized childlike fascination with them. like i wonder if when the power goes out i could catch a jarful of them instead of using my headlamp. they would make for much softer lighting, of that i am sure.
discovery #1: lightning bugs are the COOLEST BUG EVER. i want one for a pet.
things in my life here have not slowed down remotely, but after an incident last week in which the entire nicaraguan passport system crashed overnight leaving me and 13 kids and their parents standing in a non-airconditioned office in somoto wide-mouthed in utter shock of our bad luck and the irony of the situation (i really had a "michael shut your mouth, we are not a codfish!" mary poppins-esque look on my face, you could have fit a 12" submarine sandwich in there and i would not have noticed). anyways after that shocking turn of events (and by shocking i mean not very shocking at all, sort of like a game of chutes and ladders with much bigger stakes, or like getting a "go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200" card instead of landing on free parking) i basically threw my hands up in the air and surrendered myself to the powers that be. if this trip is meant to happen for my kiddos, it will happen and there's nothing more i can do about it. thank goodness the system crash finally brought our president down here into the mix and magically the system's up and running today (monday) when last friday i was told it would be another month before new passports would be renewed. the way he said it made it sound like the machine that made the ACTUAL passports themselves had just decided to take a haitus and that we just had to be patient with the thing because vacations are important things. great news though, my utter lack of control has made me feel a bit better about this whole blasted situation; and has also led me to a few realizations and new experiences i would not have expected... the first of those being the lightning bug discovery.
discovery #2: planning for chutes and ladders type events to happen on a consistent basis is a good way to make sure you don't end up wide-open-mouthed in a government office or making voodoo dolls of lawyers.
my third discovery of the week involves fabretto's new volunteer up in cusmapa, ingrid, who's in her early forties and is from madrid, spain. she is lovely and i'm really excited to have another companera up there (i mindlessly referred to her as a gringa as in "wow it's going to be great to have another gringa up here" before i knew that 1) gringa is a word only used to discuss folks from the US of A, 2) i insulted her by using this word... this was the same day i met a guy from utah and said "oh i was born in utah, but i'm not a mormon! hahaha" to which he most solemnly replied "i am." DAMN. i put my foot in my mouth even when i speak my own language!). ingrid has made it her goal while she's here that i will speak better spanish and actually corrects me when i make mistakes (which is something everyone else is either too polite to do, or they just like me sounding like an idiot... either way my spanish is not improving). yesterday she told me "i've noticed that you have trouble with the verbs SER and ESTAR" (which are basically the two forms of the verb "TO BE" in spanish... the most important verbs out there) and proceeded to give me a grammar lesson. i think i've been under the impression that my spanish is much more proficient than it actually is, because i am able to communicate with people... but like david sedaris writes, it's likely that i've gone from speaking like an "angry baby" to rambling like a "podunk hillbilly".
discovery #3: my spanish, which i'd thought to be at the level of at least a preteen, has currently dropped to the late toddler years (which i'm told is a very important time of brain development, so i have that going for me, right?!). though a woman today asked me if i was from spain after we chatted for a minute... maybe it's the current euro mullet i have going on (result of cutting my own hair and not using a mirror) and thick rimmed glasses style combo i'm apparently currently sporting.
my fourth discovery (well not really a discovery, since its something i've known for quite some time) is that it's HARD to break a HABIT. for example, i'm staying in managua right now with 13 of the kids and 11 of their parents and we had to be at the migracion office this morning at 8 AM (meaning we'd have breakfast at 7 and that 6 AM would be the ABSOLUTE EARLIEST anyone would have to think about waking up). yet... at precisely 4:30 AM (after i'd sweated my brains out for 5 hours trying to sleep and had moved myself outside to sleep on a sheet on the ground only to wake up a few minutes later with ants crawling all over me... and had finally fallen asleep inside for an hour or so) EVERYONE in my room except me was shuffling around, showering, and getting themselves ready for the day. i vaguely remember looking outside at what i knew was a very early morning sky and asking one of the mom's "que hora es?" and her responding "5" and me turning over and mumbling "porque?" (WHY? which in this situation seemed an extremely valid question). i ended up sleeping until 6 AM and feeling like a SUPER late riser. then when i asked why everyone woke up this morning so early nobody could give me a straight answer other than "it was hot". when i told karlita about my early morning wake up call she said "what do they think, that they need to be up making tortillas or something?!" which sounds insensitive but since karla's nicaraguan i guess she's allowed to say stuff like that.
it's the truth though, i was thinking that for the majority of these mothers this 5 day trip to managua will be the longest vacation they've ever had away from the daily cooking, cleaning, washing, child-caring that goes on nonstop for most if not all of the years of their lives. i wish i had the money to take them to do something really fun! the women are so cute, they tisk tisk over everything and don't seem to be satisfied with anything (ranging from the cleanliness of the sheets to the quality of our food... (to their kids' hair before the passport picture) that isn't starch clean or infused with lots of good-ol cusmapan beans and salt. i have a feeling that my kiddos are going to starve when i bring them to the states, because if they don't like the food we've been eating the last few days they most certainly won't like the food there! and being kids too makes it even harder, i remember being about 13 years old and only liking VERY specific types of foods. we shall see. thing is that i know most of the women here are used to going to bed around 10 and waking up at 4 or 5 to make tortillas, start the day's pot of beans, and feed the animals before their kiddos are up for the day demanding attention. and the concept of vacation just doesn't exist- you're either working or with your family or your work is your family... not a lot of planning for the trip around the world in my new sailboat type of moments around these parts. i also believe that for some of these parents this might be their first trip to managua (lord knows i've been here enough times for all of us combined) because i feel like i'm supposed to be a leader here and i have NO clue what i'm doing. people wait for me to make the first move, it's like i'm responsible or something. yikes.
i had a moment this morning in the migracion office where i was getting frustrated with people asking me questions about the ONE FORM i had each of the parent/kids fill out for their passports... when one of the mom's walked up to me and asked me if instead of signing it she could just put her initials on the form because she DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO WRITE. OH. i'm an asshole. of course they have questions if they can't read or write on the form, and although my spanish is sketchy at best i at least know the letters and the general gists of questions.
discovery #4: although they will complain about being tired all day, every group of nicaraguans i've spent the night with makes a point of getting up before it's light out to make sure they're good and squeaky clean for the day... even if it means just sitting around for 3 hours until breakfast. go figure.
discovery #5: vacations are not universal.
discovery #6: reading and writing abilities are a GIFT i will not take for granted.
my seventh discovery: i really miss my family. all these kiddos are so close to their parents, and i think being around them and not having my parents around leaves me looking like a lost little kid tugging on pantlegs asking "MOMMY?!" hopefully yet peering time after time into the faces of strangers. i want to hug my family.
discovery #7: i really am still a child.
my eighth discovery: i finally found something that i REALLY miss about americans. we are overzealous about thanking each other, sometimes to the point of exhaustion but every now and again it is really important to be told that what you're doing matters and to have people be verbally thankful of your efforts. i've found that to be very difficult these past few weeks as i've been running around like mad trying to collect all these papers and not having a clue what is really going on and literally i have not had one parent or child say a simple "GRACIAS" to me the entire time. the ENTIRE time. sometimes it seems more like they're waiting for me to make a mistake, to falter so they can titter about it. the thing is, i can see that they're thankful in their eyes... and i guess the other thing is what do they REALLY have to thank me for? i'm taking their kids on a choir trip that's basically a fabretto PR tour... their kids will be the face of fabretto in the states. it's not like i'm giving them scholarships to go to college or anything spectacular like that. i can only do so much...
discovery #8: as cynical as i am, i really do miss some things about the states.
i saw my first nicaraguan rainbow on our bus ride down here yesterday and pointed it out to my seatmate miriam expecting her to shrug it off (which is what happens 99% of the time when i point out a natural event to someone here which i consider to be particularly miraculous) but instead she seemed absolutely delighted and we marveled at it for a few brief moments until the highway took our bus around a hill and it was POOF gone. hope lingers.
discovery #9: miracles happen in EVERY MOMENT of every day. miracles ARE universal!
discovery #1: lightning bugs are the COOLEST BUG EVER. i want one for a pet.
things in my life here have not slowed down remotely, but after an incident last week in which the entire nicaraguan passport system crashed overnight leaving me and 13 kids and their parents standing in a non-airconditioned office in somoto wide-mouthed in utter shock of our bad luck and the irony of the situation (i really had a "michael shut your mouth, we are not a codfish!" mary poppins-esque look on my face, you could have fit a 12" submarine sandwich in there and i would not have noticed). anyways after that shocking turn of events (and by shocking i mean not very shocking at all, sort of like a game of chutes and ladders with much bigger stakes, or like getting a "go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200" card instead of landing on free parking) i basically threw my hands up in the air and surrendered myself to the powers that be. if this trip is meant to happen for my kiddos, it will happen and there's nothing more i can do about it. thank goodness the system crash finally brought our president down here into the mix and magically the system's up and running today (monday) when last friday i was told it would be another month before new passports would be renewed. the way he said it made it sound like the machine that made the ACTUAL passports themselves had just decided to take a haitus and that we just had to be patient with the thing because vacations are important things. great news though, my utter lack of control has made me feel a bit better about this whole blasted situation; and has also led me to a few realizations and new experiences i would not have expected... the first of those being the lightning bug discovery.
discovery #2: planning for chutes and ladders type events to happen on a consistent basis is a good way to make sure you don't end up wide-open-mouthed in a government office or making voodoo dolls of lawyers.
my third discovery of the week involves fabretto's new volunteer up in cusmapa, ingrid, who's in her early forties and is from madrid, spain. she is lovely and i'm really excited to have another companera up there (i mindlessly referred to her as a gringa as in "wow it's going to be great to have another gringa up here" before i knew that 1) gringa is a word only used to discuss folks from the US of A, 2) i insulted her by using this word... this was the same day i met a guy from utah and said "oh i was born in utah, but i'm not a mormon! hahaha" to which he most solemnly replied "i am." DAMN. i put my foot in my mouth even when i speak my own language!). ingrid has made it her goal while she's here that i will speak better spanish and actually corrects me when i make mistakes (which is something everyone else is either too polite to do, or they just like me sounding like an idiot... either way my spanish is not improving). yesterday she told me "i've noticed that you have trouble with the verbs SER and ESTAR" (which are basically the two forms of the verb "TO BE" in spanish... the most important verbs out there) and proceeded to give me a grammar lesson. i think i've been under the impression that my spanish is much more proficient than it actually is, because i am able to communicate with people... but like david sedaris writes, it's likely that i've gone from speaking like an "angry baby" to rambling like a "podunk hillbilly".
discovery #3: my spanish, which i'd thought to be at the level of at least a preteen, has currently dropped to the late toddler years (which i'm told is a very important time of brain development, so i have that going for me, right?!). though a woman today asked me if i was from spain after we chatted for a minute... maybe it's the current euro mullet i have going on (result of cutting my own hair and not using a mirror) and thick rimmed glasses style combo i'm apparently currently sporting.
my fourth discovery (well not really a discovery, since its something i've known for quite some time) is that it's HARD to break a HABIT. for example, i'm staying in managua right now with 13 of the kids and 11 of their parents and we had to be at the migracion office this morning at 8 AM (meaning we'd have breakfast at 7 and that 6 AM would be the ABSOLUTE EARLIEST anyone would have to think about waking up). yet... at precisely 4:30 AM (after i'd sweated my brains out for 5 hours trying to sleep and had moved myself outside to sleep on a sheet on the ground only to wake up a few minutes later with ants crawling all over me... and had finally fallen asleep inside for an hour or so) EVERYONE in my room except me was shuffling around, showering, and getting themselves ready for the day. i vaguely remember looking outside at what i knew was a very early morning sky and asking one of the mom's "que hora es?" and her responding "5" and me turning over and mumbling "porque?" (WHY? which in this situation seemed an extremely valid question). i ended up sleeping until 6 AM and feeling like a SUPER late riser. then when i asked why everyone woke up this morning so early nobody could give me a straight answer other than "it was hot". when i told karlita about my early morning wake up call she said "what do they think, that they need to be up making tortillas or something?!" which sounds insensitive but since karla's nicaraguan i guess she's allowed to say stuff like that.
it's the truth though, i was thinking that for the majority of these mothers this 5 day trip to managua will be the longest vacation they've ever had away from the daily cooking, cleaning, washing, child-caring that goes on nonstop for most if not all of the years of their lives. i wish i had the money to take them to do something really fun! the women are so cute, they tisk tisk over everything and don't seem to be satisfied with anything (ranging from the cleanliness of the sheets to the quality of our food... (to their kids' hair before the passport picture) that isn't starch clean or infused with lots of good-ol cusmapan beans and salt. i have a feeling that my kiddos are going to starve when i bring them to the states, because if they don't like the food we've been eating the last few days they most certainly won't like the food there! and being kids too makes it even harder, i remember being about 13 years old and only liking VERY specific types of foods. we shall see. thing is that i know most of the women here are used to going to bed around 10 and waking up at 4 or 5 to make tortillas, start the day's pot of beans, and feed the animals before their kiddos are up for the day demanding attention. and the concept of vacation just doesn't exist- you're either working or with your family or your work is your family... not a lot of planning for the trip around the world in my new sailboat type of moments around these parts. i also believe that for some of these parents this might be their first trip to managua (lord knows i've been here enough times for all of us combined) because i feel like i'm supposed to be a leader here and i have NO clue what i'm doing. people wait for me to make the first move, it's like i'm responsible or something. yikes.
i had a moment this morning in the migracion office where i was getting frustrated with people asking me questions about the ONE FORM i had each of the parent/kids fill out for their passports... when one of the mom's walked up to me and asked me if instead of signing it she could just put her initials on the form because she DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO WRITE. OH. i'm an asshole. of course they have questions if they can't read or write on the form, and although my spanish is sketchy at best i at least know the letters and the general gists of questions.
discovery #4: although they will complain about being tired all day, every group of nicaraguans i've spent the night with makes a point of getting up before it's light out to make sure they're good and squeaky clean for the day... even if it means just sitting around for 3 hours until breakfast. go figure.
discovery #5: vacations are not universal.
discovery #6: reading and writing abilities are a GIFT i will not take for granted.
my seventh discovery: i really miss my family. all these kiddos are so close to their parents, and i think being around them and not having my parents around leaves me looking like a lost little kid tugging on pantlegs asking "MOMMY?!" hopefully yet peering time after time into the faces of strangers. i want to hug my family.
discovery #7: i really am still a child.
my eighth discovery: i finally found something that i REALLY miss about americans. we are overzealous about thanking each other, sometimes to the point of exhaustion but every now and again it is really important to be told that what you're doing matters and to have people be verbally thankful of your efforts. i've found that to be very difficult these past few weeks as i've been running around like mad trying to collect all these papers and not having a clue what is really going on and literally i have not had one parent or child say a simple "GRACIAS" to me the entire time. the ENTIRE time. sometimes it seems more like they're waiting for me to make a mistake, to falter so they can titter about it. the thing is, i can see that they're thankful in their eyes... and i guess the other thing is what do they REALLY have to thank me for? i'm taking their kids on a choir trip that's basically a fabretto PR tour... their kids will be the face of fabretto in the states. it's not like i'm giving them scholarships to go to college or anything spectacular like that. i can only do so much...
discovery #8: as cynical as i am, i really do miss some things about the states.
i saw my first nicaraguan rainbow on our bus ride down here yesterday and pointed it out to my seatmate miriam expecting her to shrug it off (which is what happens 99% of the time when i point out a natural event to someone here which i consider to be particularly miraculous) but instead she seemed absolutely delighted and we marveled at it for a few brief moments until the highway took our bus around a hill and it was POOF gone. hope lingers.
discovery #9: miracles happen in EVERY MOMENT of every day. miracles ARE universal!
lunes, 14 de mayo de 2007
paperwork, punishment and parasites
magda and i have been collecting all the documents the kiddos need to get their passports and visas throughout the past month or so (ever since we found out that the DC trip was actually happening). this whole process definitely has made me realize how lucky i am to have been born in the US because for us to travel ANYWHERE in the world really doesn't take more than a passport... here to GET a passport itself costs about $100 US (of course the kids can't afford this, fabretto is paying for that) and beyond a passport, to go anywhere outside of the country you need to apply for a travelers visa. just to have an APPOINTMENT with the american embassy in managua costs $100. put those two costs together with the amount of traveling, paperwork, etc. and it basically costs an average family's YEARLY INCOME to get a passport and a visa to go to the US (not even including the actual travel to the US itself). ridiculous, meaning that i'd guess about 3% of the people here get to travel outside the country in their lives.
at first i'd been under the impresson that if we were able to collect these papers (original documents, birth certificates of both parents and kids which becomes a bit difficult when some parents were born about 10 hours away by bus and there's no such thing as a telephone signal or fed-ex here) we'd be well on our way to reciving passports. i found out that we needed to deal with a lawyer... and it's all been downhill since then. apparently these kids need a "special letter" in order to get their passports in the first place, even though one of each kids' parents will be accompanying us to the migracion office. this wouldn't be such a big deal but 1) fabretto's lawyer is located in MANAGUA and 2) for whatever reason a LOT of the kids were blessed with ENTIRELY different names than both of their parents... meaning the lawyer needs MONTHS to fix the problems on their birth certificates (though for some reason she's able to fix some of them in a few days... something which i do not understand in the least). so i brought all the paperwork we've collected thus far to managua last friday in hopes of meeting with the lawyer and getting stuff sorted out... hoping to return to cusmapa on sunday. HA!!!! what a ridiculous hope that was. i ended up finding out that 6 of the 20 kids that didn't have passports just simply COULDN'T go on the trip.... that there was nothing i could do, if only i had a freaking TYPEWRITER and could fix the type-o's on their birth certificates, those one or two mistaken letters that are ruining this opportunity. i also found out that for about 4 of the kids who had problems, the lawyer could fix things... but needed me to return to cusmapa, go to the civil registration office, fix the birth certificates, and bring them back to managua. something i am both willing and capable of doing. i finally ended up getting back to cusmapa WEDNESDAY after a lot of waiting around, worrying...
thursday i spent all day in the civil registration office. walking into this 10 X 15 foot room the first thing i noticed were the 3 bookshelves on the wall which appeared to hold ALL the important documents in Cusmapa's history. dated, numbered, PAPER information... though Lenin (the assistant) had a computer to use... everything else was CATALOGUED. of COURSE Panchita (the mom of one of the girls who's going on the trip, and the ONLY person in Cusmapa who's capable of finding things in that mountainous mound of paperwork) was conveniently in Managua for the week. Lenin and I had to find 60-some documents, the first 15 or so of which he looked up and just shrugged his shoulders like "OH WELL" when he couldn't find them, and told me they must have been "repositioned" (whatever the heck that's supposed to mean). about 40 documents into the search i was beginning to get really frustrated because we were NOT having any kind of luck, and it was rapidly approaching 5 PM. at that very moment of exasperation the POWER WENT OUT. one of those moments where tears jumped to my eyes but i found myself laughing anyways. he couldn't type out any of the documents without his computer, so we ended up looking up the rest of the documents and marking them in the books with pieces of paper so that we could find them the next day. Lenin also informed me at this point that he couldn't do the new birth certificates, that i'd have to wait for Panchita to get back (NEXT monday or tuesday) for her to help me. i walked back to the school to try to find magda, and we looked through our collection of parent identification cards to find those she needed to take to Las Savannas the next day to track down their birth certificates, but it kept getting darker and darker and we were left with no ability to see names on the cards. just then, a huge clap of thunder and it started a DOWNPOUR of rain. at this point, there were no tears... more just laughter as i NEEDED to bring my computer home to work on organizing our info for a parent meeting the next day. so i stuck my backpack in a plastic bag and said a quick prayer of "why am i stupidly bringing out this electronic equipment into a nicaraguan rainstorm?!" and decided to take my chances. luckily the rain let up after a few minutes, so my computer was just fine.
i got back to my house to find that there were about 15 people staying the night, and since we hadn't had water the whole week things were in a disasterous state of filth. dishes everywhere, people everywhere. my friend arturo watched me make a peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich and told me i looked "worried" then said, "we have NO LIGHT and i've heard it's not coming back until Sunday!" in a jolly tone and i just shook my head. I NEED LIGHT. the boys were all jovially eating dinner and sharing beers, but i just wasn't in the mood. so i locked myself up in my room and started writing a letter by candlelight to one of my buddies, trying to calm my worries down a bit and to let go of things that i was so OBVIOUSLY unable to control. about half-way into my letter the lights flickered and CAME BACK ON! i was giddy happy, and ran into the living room parading around and whooping, which the guys got a huge laugh out of.
friday i spent the morning searching through more books, and unable to find at least 15 out of the 60 documents we need for the kids visas, i returned to school to plan our parent meeting. i got there and wasn't expecting to see magda but apparently she'd gone all the way to Las Sabannas only to find that the woman who did the registration papers there was WORKING IN SOMOTO till monday. typical.
i spent a few hours putting together some info on the documents we still needed, and sorting out why the 6 kids who couldn't go so i could talk to their parents, then jorje and i hiked up to the public school to find the director to ask if our permission for the kids to miss school had been approved. SOMETHING FINALLY WENT OUR WAY! the director was there, and very kind, and wanted me to know that not only was it OK for the kids to be missing school, but he thought it was a wonderful opportunity for them, and wanted me to tell the kids that their tests would be rescheduled to before our trip so they didn't have to worry about anything while they were gone. the parent meeting was supposed to start at 3 PM, and at 3:15 there were approximately 3 parents there, so I waited for another few to show up, and since magda wasn't there I just started right in. i'm pretty sure there were a lot of blank faces in the crowd and many of them didn't seem to understand what i was talking about (i don't blame them! i barely understood myself!). after the meeting (which most of the parents ended up showing up to at about 3:45) i had each of them come talk to me about the paperwork their kid still needed, and how we could go about getting it. some of the parents just told me flat out that it would be "impossible" to get their original birth certificates, and i told them that if this was the case their kid could not go on the trip. what a predicament. there were also a handful of the choir kids there who came to talk to me about problems with their papers and i hated not being able to really explain to them why they couldn't go, why some kids' problems were getting fixed and theirs weren't. a few of them seemed really bummed out, and others reacted with a "i didn't want to go anyway" type of attitude. i felt devistated, really sad, and helpless- i wish there was something i could do. i kept telling them that i wished i was a lawyer so i could do something more about it, but that i couldn't. two of my favorite girls in the choir, belen and aleyda came and talked to me individually and it ended with them having to leave because we could both sense that the other was about to burst into tears. it was awful. especially because aleyda's one of the cousins of the family i hang out with all the time, and her brother died last year- and he'd been in the choir and had gone to the states in 2004 when they travelled to chicago and colorado... YUK. i knew this was going to happen, but it didn't make things any easier.
i've also been feeling sick for the last week or so (i think my intestines are finally realizing all the yucky parasites they've fought and are giving in a little bit). but i woke up saturday morning and felt like absolute hell. i had told a group of nurses who were visiting Cusmapa for the weekend and didn't speak any Spanish that i'd show them around, so i put my best healthy face forward but the whole day i felt like i was going to pass out. i probably drank about a gallon of water, and took some pepto bismol, and just felt worse and worse. this morning i woke up in a cold sweat at 7 AM and tossed and turned for a few hours, ate some bananas (felt like i had to eat something, but it was not a good idea) then went to bed until 3 PM (something i haven't done since i've been here... but i just felt exhausted and feverish). i started taking some prescription meds my mom sent with me but i am still feeling terrible, and just thinking it's SO typical that my body would choose this moment in time to break down.
cindy and magda are headed to managua tomorrow for cindy's surgery and will probably be gone till wednesday, and i need to get this paperwork done with Panchita as soon as she gets back (i'm hoping she'll be there when I visit this evening- though she was also in managua for a surgery on her little boy who i think has some sort of cerebral palsy) and then head to managua myself... BEFORE tuesday if at all possible. my body is failing me, something which does not happen often. i'm so bad at being sick, because i've been so lucky and healthy for most of my life... i'm just praying that these meds kick in soon cause there's no way i could make it to managua in my current state.
things have got to go up from here, eh?!
at first i'd been under the impresson that if we were able to collect these papers (original documents, birth certificates of both parents and kids which becomes a bit difficult when some parents were born about 10 hours away by bus and there's no such thing as a telephone signal or fed-ex here) we'd be well on our way to reciving passports. i found out that we needed to deal with a lawyer... and it's all been downhill since then. apparently these kids need a "special letter" in order to get their passports in the first place, even though one of each kids' parents will be accompanying us to the migracion office. this wouldn't be such a big deal but 1) fabretto's lawyer is located in MANAGUA and 2) for whatever reason a LOT of the kids were blessed with ENTIRELY different names than both of their parents... meaning the lawyer needs MONTHS to fix the problems on their birth certificates (though for some reason she's able to fix some of them in a few days... something which i do not understand in the least). so i brought all the paperwork we've collected thus far to managua last friday in hopes of meeting with the lawyer and getting stuff sorted out... hoping to return to cusmapa on sunday. HA!!!! what a ridiculous hope that was. i ended up finding out that 6 of the 20 kids that didn't have passports just simply COULDN'T go on the trip.... that there was nothing i could do, if only i had a freaking TYPEWRITER and could fix the type-o's on their birth certificates, those one or two mistaken letters that are ruining this opportunity. i also found out that for about 4 of the kids who had problems, the lawyer could fix things... but needed me to return to cusmapa, go to the civil registration office, fix the birth certificates, and bring them back to managua. something i am both willing and capable of doing. i finally ended up getting back to cusmapa WEDNESDAY after a lot of waiting around, worrying...
thursday i spent all day in the civil registration office. walking into this 10 X 15 foot room the first thing i noticed were the 3 bookshelves on the wall which appeared to hold ALL the important documents in Cusmapa's history. dated, numbered, PAPER information... though Lenin (the assistant) had a computer to use... everything else was CATALOGUED. of COURSE Panchita (the mom of one of the girls who's going on the trip, and the ONLY person in Cusmapa who's capable of finding things in that mountainous mound of paperwork) was conveniently in Managua for the week. Lenin and I had to find 60-some documents, the first 15 or so of which he looked up and just shrugged his shoulders like "OH WELL" when he couldn't find them, and told me they must have been "repositioned" (whatever the heck that's supposed to mean). about 40 documents into the search i was beginning to get really frustrated because we were NOT having any kind of luck, and it was rapidly approaching 5 PM. at that very moment of exasperation the POWER WENT OUT. one of those moments where tears jumped to my eyes but i found myself laughing anyways. he couldn't type out any of the documents without his computer, so we ended up looking up the rest of the documents and marking them in the books with pieces of paper so that we could find them the next day. Lenin also informed me at this point that he couldn't do the new birth certificates, that i'd have to wait for Panchita to get back (NEXT monday or tuesday) for her to help me. i walked back to the school to try to find magda, and we looked through our collection of parent identification cards to find those she needed to take to Las Savannas the next day to track down their birth certificates, but it kept getting darker and darker and we were left with no ability to see names on the cards. just then, a huge clap of thunder and it started a DOWNPOUR of rain. at this point, there were no tears... more just laughter as i NEEDED to bring my computer home to work on organizing our info for a parent meeting the next day. so i stuck my backpack in a plastic bag and said a quick prayer of "why am i stupidly bringing out this electronic equipment into a nicaraguan rainstorm?!" and decided to take my chances. luckily the rain let up after a few minutes, so my computer was just fine.
i got back to my house to find that there were about 15 people staying the night, and since we hadn't had water the whole week things were in a disasterous state of filth. dishes everywhere, people everywhere. my friend arturo watched me make a peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich and told me i looked "worried" then said, "we have NO LIGHT and i've heard it's not coming back until Sunday!" in a jolly tone and i just shook my head. I NEED LIGHT. the boys were all jovially eating dinner and sharing beers, but i just wasn't in the mood. so i locked myself up in my room and started writing a letter by candlelight to one of my buddies, trying to calm my worries down a bit and to let go of things that i was so OBVIOUSLY unable to control. about half-way into my letter the lights flickered and CAME BACK ON! i was giddy happy, and ran into the living room parading around and whooping, which the guys got a huge laugh out of.
friday i spent the morning searching through more books, and unable to find at least 15 out of the 60 documents we need for the kids visas, i returned to school to plan our parent meeting. i got there and wasn't expecting to see magda but apparently she'd gone all the way to Las Sabannas only to find that the woman who did the registration papers there was WORKING IN SOMOTO till monday. typical.
i spent a few hours putting together some info on the documents we still needed, and sorting out why the 6 kids who couldn't go so i could talk to their parents, then jorje and i hiked up to the public school to find the director to ask if our permission for the kids to miss school had been approved. SOMETHING FINALLY WENT OUR WAY! the director was there, and very kind, and wanted me to know that not only was it OK for the kids to be missing school, but he thought it was a wonderful opportunity for them, and wanted me to tell the kids that their tests would be rescheduled to before our trip so they didn't have to worry about anything while they were gone. the parent meeting was supposed to start at 3 PM, and at 3:15 there were approximately 3 parents there, so I waited for another few to show up, and since magda wasn't there I just started right in. i'm pretty sure there were a lot of blank faces in the crowd and many of them didn't seem to understand what i was talking about (i don't blame them! i barely understood myself!). after the meeting (which most of the parents ended up showing up to at about 3:45) i had each of them come talk to me about the paperwork their kid still needed, and how we could go about getting it. some of the parents just told me flat out that it would be "impossible" to get their original birth certificates, and i told them that if this was the case their kid could not go on the trip. what a predicament. there were also a handful of the choir kids there who came to talk to me about problems with their papers and i hated not being able to really explain to them why they couldn't go, why some kids' problems were getting fixed and theirs weren't. a few of them seemed really bummed out, and others reacted with a "i didn't want to go anyway" type of attitude. i felt devistated, really sad, and helpless- i wish there was something i could do. i kept telling them that i wished i was a lawyer so i could do something more about it, but that i couldn't. two of my favorite girls in the choir, belen and aleyda came and talked to me individually and it ended with them having to leave because we could both sense that the other was about to burst into tears. it was awful. especially because aleyda's one of the cousins of the family i hang out with all the time, and her brother died last year- and he'd been in the choir and had gone to the states in 2004 when they travelled to chicago and colorado... YUK. i knew this was going to happen, but it didn't make things any easier.
i've also been feeling sick for the last week or so (i think my intestines are finally realizing all the yucky parasites they've fought and are giving in a little bit). but i woke up saturday morning and felt like absolute hell. i had told a group of nurses who were visiting Cusmapa for the weekend and didn't speak any Spanish that i'd show them around, so i put my best healthy face forward but the whole day i felt like i was going to pass out. i probably drank about a gallon of water, and took some pepto bismol, and just felt worse and worse. this morning i woke up in a cold sweat at 7 AM and tossed and turned for a few hours, ate some bananas (felt like i had to eat something, but it was not a good idea) then went to bed until 3 PM (something i haven't done since i've been here... but i just felt exhausted and feverish). i started taking some prescription meds my mom sent with me but i am still feeling terrible, and just thinking it's SO typical that my body would choose this moment in time to break down.
cindy and magda are headed to managua tomorrow for cindy's surgery and will probably be gone till wednesday, and i need to get this paperwork done with Panchita as soon as she gets back (i'm hoping she'll be there when I visit this evening- though she was also in managua for a surgery on her little boy who i think has some sort of cerebral palsy) and then head to managua myself... BEFORE tuesday if at all possible. my body is failing me, something which does not happen often. i'm so bad at being sick, because i've been so lucky and healthy for most of my life... i'm just praying that these meds kick in soon cause there's no way i could make it to managua in my current state.
things have got to go up from here, eh?!
camera man
a few weekends ago i took a trip to quilali (a little mountain-valley town in central nica) with 20 of my middle school choir girls, 15 of the older choir kids, and about 7 random Cusmapanians. we started off from Cusmapa at about 10 AM (a good hour and a half behind schedule) and i had the distinct honor of sitting in the front seat of one of the two trucks we took on the journey with two ten-year-olds on my lap for the entire 6 hours. yes, we had two trucks for 42-odd people. quilali's this little middle-of-nowhere town with about 15,000 people in it, which means it's much more modern than Cusmapa and feels like a metropolis. we were scheudled to sing at a Catholic mass at 6 PM so we had a few hours to hang out, eat some lunch, and explore before church. the Catholic church was HUGE (compared to the one i'm used to up here) and was all decked out in pink ribbons and flowers for a quincenera birthday celebration (the girls in Nicaragua have a huge "coming of age" party for their 15th birthday which is basically her parents sending her out into the dating world, putting her on the market- it's a bigger celebration than weddings here). the celebrated girl st up front of the church in her Glenda the Good Witch dress, and our chior was crammed up into the second level music pit with no airflow up a rickety spiral staircase with a broken railing (not a super-pleasant situation). i was fascinated by the event's camer man who seemed to be hyped on some sort of amphetamines, he was rushing around the church panning over the audience in a completely ridiculous and skitterish manner. i'm sure the film was a blur of faces. he was also taping the choir and i kept thinking about how funny it was that some random girl will have me, a wierd gringa, on her quincenera video. little did i know...
so after the mass we walked out of the church to join a procession, led by the Good Witch in all of her glory, down about 6 blocks to the family home. Don Trino's guitar provided a lovely and appropriate soundtrack for the moment, and i held hands with jubelki and dignah and whistled happily at the stars while trying to get them to spin in circles with me. everyone else seemed awfully somber for what i imagined to be a joyous event in this girl's life, but i was really chipper about the whole thing (probably more chipper about getting out of that hellhole of a sauna music pit than anything). still, the camera man came out of nowhere ever onec in a while- paparazzi style, and i was in a jovial mood thinking about his film footage and just loving the moment. when we arrived at the family home/reception there was an awkward "do we go in?" moment (and by moment i mean about 5 minutes). of course all of the little girls wanted to go to the party, and i could tell that the older kids and i were feeling... well... very awkward. the mother/hostess said she wanted a picture of us and motioned for our group to sit at the tables in the front of the room (um... no thanks) so we sort of booked it with half of the girls (the other half had already sat down). we got back to the Padre's house (where we'd stored all of our bags and stuff) and found it LOCKED. (typical)
the lady who was in charge of our group there was hell-bent on getting us all to the party (though she was trying to be nonchalant about it, her motives were completely transparent). i found myself in the back of a truck with her and a bunch of the little girls (pleading "WHY?!" the whole time) as the older girls chose to stay curbside and wait for our return. at that point i just wanted to eat and go to bed, and i could see exactly where this evening was headed. another awkward moment at the party... when we got to the reception ALL of the girls started to pile out (though i had been assured that we were just making the trip back there in order to get the key) and i looked at Beranay (one of the older choir girls) like "are you KIDDING ME?!". so, with a heavy sigh, i resigned to my destiny. of course i ended up seated at the table in the very front of the room (obviously where i was fated to have been seated in the first place) and could not stop laughing. it was such a hilarity to me that none of us knew this girl, we totally crashed the party, and the 4 little ones I was seated with picked at their food (which looked a heck of a lot like beef with mayonayse sauce) and giggled with me.
AND, the camera man came back into my life. true hilarity ensues.
round one: he slowly creeps by, pans across the table, does a triple take long lingering shot of me that the kids notice and laugh at.
round two:
He: "Hi. MY NAME'S EDMOND. DO YOU SPEAK INKLISH?" (no i do not just have my caps key on for the heck of it, he was sort of yelling in my face in monotone, camera still rolling in his right hand)
Me: "Yes. I'm from the United States." (in Spanish)
He: "Oh yes. You speak Spanish?" (I nod) "I have question. I study in Mexico. What... what you think about women?"
Me: "Women? Like women, in general?"
He: "You know, women here, somen in Mexico. They good?"
Me: "No. I think things are getting better for women, but I don't think they're good."
He: "Oh." (as in one of those "OH's" I so often use when I don't have a clue what somebody actually said to me). "I mean abortion."
Me: "What do I think about ABORTION?!"
(remember, the camera is still rolling and we are yelling at each other, he at me for no reason- me at him for clarity's sake)
He: "Yes. Abortion. Many women in Mexico have abortion."
Me: "Yes. And it's illegal here. Do you think it should be illegal?"
(abortion was just legalized in Mexico City, much to the disgust of the Catholic Church - and was just made illegal in Nicaragua last November, even in situations where the woman will die if she doesn't have the abortion)
He: "Yes. I mean... Yes. And you?"
Me: "Well, what if a woman will die if she doesn't have an abortion?"
He: WHAT?! MUCH SLOWER PLEASE.
Me: "WHAT IF A WOMAN WILL DIE IF SHE DOES NOT HAVE AN ABORTION?"
He: "Oh. It's OK."
(at this point he walks off to do another go-round the room and I am in tears thinking "my GOD is that how I sound when I speak Spanish?")
round three:
He: "I have other question. You know cowboy movies?"
Me: (lying) "Yes, I do."
He: "Clint Eastwood, you know him?"
Me: "Yes, I do."
He: "Good. I have question. You know that bad war?"
Me: "The Iraq war? Yeah, It's BAD."
He: "NO NO NO NO, the war... in the century... with the North?"
Me: (incredulous) "Um. You mean the Civil War?" (am I really having a discussion about the Civil War on video camera at a random girl's quincenera party in the middle of Nicaragua?)
He: "Yes. That one. Why was it?"
Me: "Why did we have a civil war?"
He: (nods)
Me: "Well... the South wanted slavery and the north didn't."
He: "Slavery?"
Me: "Yes, slavery." (he nods in understanding though I can tell he's never heard the word before, and I have no idea how to explain that concept in Spanish... here's what I could get across with my current level of Espanol: ' slavery... cuando una persona es propia de un otra persona, y necessita travajar por la otra persona por gratis' ... direct translation ' slavery... when one person is property of another person and must work for the other person for free'. i knew how ridiculous the concept was in the first place so didn't even try to explain it to him)
He: "My question. Who won the war? In the Clint movie the war was not won?"
Me: "Who won the Civil war?" (which I realize is a pretty valid question)
He: "Yes, who won?"
Me: "Well, do we have slaves in the states?"
He: (long thinking pause) "I do not know."
Me: "No, no we don't. The North won."
He: "Oh, the NORTH?! Thank you. And that president?"
Me: "Lincolin?"
He: "Yes, Lincolin was a... a man."
Me: (giving him a break by finishing his thought) "Lincolin was a GOOD MAN."
and, finally, round four:
He: "You are a student?"
Me: "No, I am a teacher. I am their choir teacher." (point to the giggling kids sitting around me)
He: "Oh, a teacher."
Me: "Yes."
He: (with great conviction) "I can tell YOU LOVE JESUS."
Me: (WHAT?! ... a smile with tears in my eyes holding it in...)
He: "Yes, I can tell you love Jesus Christ because you work with kids."
Me: (oh God just please please please hold in this oncoming burst of laughter Callie)
He: "And it's in your eyes. And you know, psychologists say: the eyes are the window to soul."
Me: "Yes, yes that's true." (holding my composure by a thread)
He: "Yes, yes you love Jesus. I'm a painter."
Me: "Oh, you are?"He: "Yes, I paint things that are important to me. I have a painting of an eagle with four chickens. And the mother chicken died for her babies. She was a sacrifice like Jesus."
Me: "That sounds beautiful." (fueling the fire, feeling like a bastard for doing it, but I couldn't help myself)
He: "Yes, yes. I'm a painter. I have 4 paintings."
Me: "FOUR PAINTINGS?!"He: "Yes, four."
(at this point, the power went out... chaos ensued... candles were lit and he still tried to carry on a conversation for a mintue though our group was trying to make an invisible exit out the side door)
He: "Nice to know you!"
Me: "You too." (you have NO idea).
i think the greatest part is that literally the whole of our conversing was taped and that simple awkwardness of being at a formal dinner i wasn't invited to (it would basically be the equvalent of going to a wedding in a small town where you didn't know anyone, the whole town was invited, and you just showed up only to sit at the front table and monopolize the photographer). he was glorious, and made me absolutely gleeful and also made me realize how really ridiculous i must sound about 95% of the time i speak spanish. i just hope i don't yell at people in monotone very often, it's definately not something i intentionally do... but i suppose you never know!
so after the mass we walked out of the church to join a procession, led by the Good Witch in all of her glory, down about 6 blocks to the family home. Don Trino's guitar provided a lovely and appropriate soundtrack for the moment, and i held hands with jubelki and dignah and whistled happily at the stars while trying to get them to spin in circles with me. everyone else seemed awfully somber for what i imagined to be a joyous event in this girl's life, but i was really chipper about the whole thing (probably more chipper about getting out of that hellhole of a sauna music pit than anything). still, the camera man came out of nowhere ever onec in a while- paparazzi style, and i was in a jovial mood thinking about his film footage and just loving the moment. when we arrived at the family home/reception there was an awkward "do we go in?" moment (and by moment i mean about 5 minutes). of course all of the little girls wanted to go to the party, and i could tell that the older kids and i were feeling... well... very awkward. the mother/hostess said she wanted a picture of us and motioned for our group to sit at the tables in the front of the room (um... no thanks) so we sort of booked it with half of the girls (the other half had already sat down). we got back to the Padre's house (where we'd stored all of our bags and stuff) and found it LOCKED. (typical)
the lady who was in charge of our group there was hell-bent on getting us all to the party (though she was trying to be nonchalant about it, her motives were completely transparent). i found myself in the back of a truck with her and a bunch of the little girls (pleading "WHY?!" the whole time) as the older girls chose to stay curbside and wait for our return. at that point i just wanted to eat and go to bed, and i could see exactly where this evening was headed. another awkward moment at the party... when we got to the reception ALL of the girls started to pile out (though i had been assured that we were just making the trip back there in order to get the key) and i looked at Beranay (one of the older choir girls) like "are you KIDDING ME?!". so, with a heavy sigh, i resigned to my destiny. of course i ended up seated at the table in the very front of the room (obviously where i was fated to have been seated in the first place) and could not stop laughing. it was such a hilarity to me that none of us knew this girl, we totally crashed the party, and the 4 little ones I was seated with picked at their food (which looked a heck of a lot like beef with mayonayse sauce) and giggled with me.
AND, the camera man came back into my life. true hilarity ensues.
round one: he slowly creeps by, pans across the table, does a triple take long lingering shot of me that the kids notice and laugh at.
round two:
He: "Hi. MY NAME'S EDMOND. DO YOU SPEAK INKLISH?" (no i do not just have my caps key on for the heck of it, he was sort of yelling in my face in monotone, camera still rolling in his right hand)
Me: "Yes. I'm from the United States." (in Spanish)
He: "Oh yes. You speak Spanish?" (I nod) "I have question. I study in Mexico. What... what you think about women?"
Me: "Women? Like women, in general?"
He: "You know, women here, somen in Mexico. They good?"
Me: "No. I think things are getting better for women, but I don't think they're good."
He: "Oh." (as in one of those "OH's" I so often use when I don't have a clue what somebody actually said to me). "I mean abortion."
Me: "What do I think about ABORTION?!"
(remember, the camera is still rolling and we are yelling at each other, he at me for no reason- me at him for clarity's sake)
He: "Yes. Abortion. Many women in Mexico have abortion."
Me: "Yes. And it's illegal here. Do you think it should be illegal?"
(abortion was just legalized in Mexico City, much to the disgust of the Catholic Church - and was just made illegal in Nicaragua last November, even in situations where the woman will die if she doesn't have the abortion)
He: "Yes. I mean... Yes. And you?"
Me: "Well, what if a woman will die if she doesn't have an abortion?"
He: WHAT?! MUCH SLOWER PLEASE.
Me: "WHAT IF A WOMAN WILL DIE IF SHE DOES NOT HAVE AN ABORTION?"
He: "Oh. It's OK."
(at this point he walks off to do another go-round the room and I am in tears thinking "my GOD is that how I sound when I speak Spanish?")
round three:
He: "I have other question. You know cowboy movies?"
Me: (lying) "Yes, I do."
He: "Clint Eastwood, you know him?"
Me: "Yes, I do."
He: "Good. I have question. You know that bad war?"
Me: "The Iraq war? Yeah, It's BAD."
He: "NO NO NO NO, the war... in the century... with the North?"
Me: (incredulous) "Um. You mean the Civil War?" (am I really having a discussion about the Civil War on video camera at a random girl's quincenera party in the middle of Nicaragua?)
He: "Yes. That one. Why was it?"
Me: "Why did we have a civil war?"
He: (nods)
Me: "Well... the South wanted slavery and the north didn't."
He: "Slavery?"
Me: "Yes, slavery." (he nods in understanding though I can tell he's never heard the word before, and I have no idea how to explain that concept in Spanish... here's what I could get across with my current level of Espanol: ' slavery... cuando una persona es propia de un otra persona, y necessita travajar por la otra persona por gratis' ... direct translation ' slavery... when one person is property of another person and must work for the other person for free'. i knew how ridiculous the concept was in the first place so didn't even try to explain it to him)
He: "My question. Who won the war? In the Clint movie the war was not won?"
Me: "Who won the Civil war?" (which I realize is a pretty valid question)
He: "Yes, who won?"
Me: "Well, do we have slaves in the states?"
He: (long thinking pause) "I do not know."
Me: "No, no we don't. The North won."
He: "Oh, the NORTH?! Thank you. And that president?"
Me: "Lincolin?"
He: "Yes, Lincolin was a... a man."
Me: (giving him a break by finishing his thought) "Lincolin was a GOOD MAN."
and, finally, round four:
He: "You are a student?"
Me: "No, I am a teacher. I am their choir teacher." (point to the giggling kids sitting around me)
He: "Oh, a teacher."
Me: "Yes."
He: (with great conviction) "I can tell YOU LOVE JESUS."
Me: (WHAT?! ... a smile with tears in my eyes holding it in...)
He: "Yes, I can tell you love Jesus Christ because you work with kids."
Me: (oh God just please please please hold in this oncoming burst of laughter Callie)
He: "And it's in your eyes. And you know, psychologists say: the eyes are the window to soul."
Me: "Yes, yes that's true." (holding my composure by a thread)
He: "Yes, yes you love Jesus. I'm a painter."
Me: "Oh, you are?"He: "Yes, I paint things that are important to me. I have a painting of an eagle with four chickens. And the mother chicken died for her babies. She was a sacrifice like Jesus."
Me: "That sounds beautiful." (fueling the fire, feeling like a bastard for doing it, but I couldn't help myself)
He: "Yes, yes. I'm a painter. I have 4 paintings."
Me: "FOUR PAINTINGS?!"He: "Yes, four."
(at this point, the power went out... chaos ensued... candles were lit and he still tried to carry on a conversation for a mintue though our group was trying to make an invisible exit out the side door)
He: "Nice to know you!"
Me: "You too." (you have NO idea).
i think the greatest part is that literally the whole of our conversing was taped and that simple awkwardness of being at a formal dinner i wasn't invited to (it would basically be the equvalent of going to a wedding in a small town where you didn't know anyone, the whole town was invited, and you just showed up only to sit at the front table and monopolize the photographer). he was glorious, and made me absolutely gleeful and also made me realize how really ridiculous i must sound about 95% of the time i speak spanish. i just hope i don't yell at people in monotone very often, it's definately not something i intentionally do... but i suppose you never know!
miércoles, 9 de mayo de 2007
opportunities in yahda-yahdaing
the fabretto bigwig in DC who's organizing our trip in june writes that i should "let the kids know this trip is about work and not all about play". i feel cut to the core by this comment... does she have any idea what this means? or how it feels like a personal cut at me? of course i'm not expecting to be galavanting around the city skipping along without a care in the world when i'm responsible for taking care of 30 kids! of COURSE i realize that i'll have to be doing a bit of puckering up to appease the other rich folks who've provided us with this opportunity. but my question is this: what kind of OPPORTUNITY are they "PROVIDING" for us if the kids are going to DC just to be schlepped around from one venue to another singing for private parties with hors d'ouvres and sparkling wine and marble floors and hand-shaking and name-dropping and all the bullshit things that go along with the public relations and business world?
my next question is how the heck i ended up being a public relations major in college? (though i have known the irony of this for some time- ever since i showed up at a "shadow-a-professional day" in my normal clothes and everyone else there was wearing four inch tall stiletto heels and a business suit... talk about being a sore thumb! i probably stuck out more in that room than i ever will being a gringa in nicaragua).
i refuse to tell my kids that this trip's not about FUN because that's ridiculous. another thing that's just eating away slowly at my choir director's SOUL is that the same bigwig also wrote to me that "it's OK if there's 5-6 kids that can't go. and it's OK if at our international choir festival concert we don't have enough kids to really sound good because THAT'S THE LEAST IMPORTANT CONCERT PR-WISE". are you KIDDING me LADY? what's that supposed to mean? just because we're not being PAID to be at this festival makes it UNIMPORTANT?! for me, this concert is the REASON we are going to the US in the first place- so that my choir kids will have the OPPORTUNITY to interact with kids from all over the world, and will get to experience the marvelous harmonies found in creating art with other children. HOWEVER according to the money money money worldview, of course this would be the least important part of our trip.
ironic and sad that she's using the festival as an excuse to get the choir to the US to use us for a PR campaign, that the festival seems to be pretty important when donors are considered yet loses it's importance somehow in the mix of things. what it really comes down to is i am so frustrated that these kids are looking forward to having time to spend in museums, and experiencing the festival and the city... and instead we'll be running around DC like mad with our instruments going from private concert to private concert... selling our musical souls to make a buck. i suppose i should be grateful for the free trip, and fabretto is paying for everything for these kids to get the trip to DC (which for most of them will be their only trip to the states in a lifetime). but just don't tell me flat out that the trip's going to be about WORK when i'm already fully aware of it.
i figured i knew how things worked in the world of tax-refundable donations but now i'm certain.
all work and no play means a world filled with dischord and unhappiness.
so i'll work on my yahda-yahda-yahda skills, suck it up, put my PR smile on (didn't pay for 4 years at GU for nothing!), and trudge to the capital with a twinkle in my eye.
and i'll find a way to work in a bit of my own magic in the meantime,
little does she know that even when i'm working i'm still playing in my own mind!
my next question is how the heck i ended up being a public relations major in college? (though i have known the irony of this for some time- ever since i showed up at a "shadow-a-professional day" in my normal clothes and everyone else there was wearing four inch tall stiletto heels and a business suit... talk about being a sore thumb! i probably stuck out more in that room than i ever will being a gringa in nicaragua).
i refuse to tell my kids that this trip's not about FUN because that's ridiculous. another thing that's just eating away slowly at my choir director's SOUL is that the same bigwig also wrote to me that "it's OK if there's 5-6 kids that can't go. and it's OK if at our international choir festival concert we don't have enough kids to really sound good because THAT'S THE LEAST IMPORTANT CONCERT PR-WISE". are you KIDDING me LADY? what's that supposed to mean? just because we're not being PAID to be at this festival makes it UNIMPORTANT?! for me, this concert is the REASON we are going to the US in the first place- so that my choir kids will have the OPPORTUNITY to interact with kids from all over the world, and will get to experience the marvelous harmonies found in creating art with other children. HOWEVER according to the money money money worldview, of course this would be the least important part of our trip.
ironic and sad that she's using the festival as an excuse to get the choir to the US to use us for a PR campaign, that the festival seems to be pretty important when donors are considered yet loses it's importance somehow in the mix of things. what it really comes down to is i am so frustrated that these kids are looking forward to having time to spend in museums, and experiencing the festival and the city... and instead we'll be running around DC like mad with our instruments going from private concert to private concert... selling our musical souls to make a buck. i suppose i should be grateful for the free trip, and fabretto is paying for everything for these kids to get the trip to DC (which for most of them will be their only trip to the states in a lifetime). but just don't tell me flat out that the trip's going to be about WORK when i'm already fully aware of it.
i figured i knew how things worked in the world of tax-refundable donations but now i'm certain.
all work and no play means a world filled with dischord and unhappiness.
so i'll work on my yahda-yahda-yahda skills, suck it up, put my PR smile on (didn't pay for 4 years at GU for nothing!), and trudge to the capital with a twinkle in my eye.
and i'll find a way to work in a bit of my own magic in the meantime,
little does she know that even when i'm working i'm still playing in my own mind!
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)
