This is another example, sorry its about a month old at this point. And yes, I am in better spirts. Will write a new one this week!
Hello friends and family and greetings from Nicagagua. I apologize if
I haven´t been in contact with some of you in quite awhile, but I
figured that this would be the best way to let everyone know how I am
doing!
I am sitting on a chilly (pants weather for me) rainy Sunday morning,
cup of tea in hand and Spanish contemporary music on my speakers. I
had meant to do some gardening today, but the rain seems to have other
plans for me. I have tomato and cucumber and some squash planted, but
I haven’t really had success in anything growing. Having planted
twice directly in the ground with no success, I decided to plant in an
old tire and a couple of grain sacks using compost I had made. In my
effort to either cut corners or internally diminish the risks of rain,
I never built a roofed seed nursery. However, it seems that for the
short time I am here, an investment in roofing and construction time
for a few veggies also doesn’t make a ton of sense.
In my school gardens, I have had more success mostly due to dumb luck
of planting times between hard rains. In my rural school, we planted
tomato and green peppers. There is a second and much larger garden
being built there; a large multinational food producer and distributor
has taken interest in this school giving the teachers some training,
founding an ecological brigade of students, and directing the parents
to make a garden on school grounds. I welcome any attention paid to a
school system lacking resources, but of course, if I were in charge, I
would have focused my efforts differently. For example, to have
parents come and make a giant school garden is great – if it can last
for more than a year or two. I have a premonition of this group
leaving my school soon, taking with them their expertise and the
strict oversight that organized volunteers and built interest.
Lacking here is a strong commitment to the school system from some of
the parents. For example in every grade about 1/5 or more of the kids
were never enrolled for the academic year, and never show up. For the
kids that do show up, their parents naturally have other things to do
than build or maintain gardens. From year to year there is a lot of
work in regenerating the soil and re-tilling and with a garden of this
size. It will be hard to rely on just the will of teachers and
students to carry out the work year after year if parents loose
interest. Outdoor work is traditionally the work of men, and here
there are only female teachers. Fortunately, they have great soil at
this school, so it might not be as hard as I think to get everything
ready again.
At my other school, which is much larger, every class (2 of 5th and 2
of 6th) has tried making their own garden. I suggested combining
efforts to save costs and upkeep, but due to space issues and problems
from years past, this is not in the works. So far, only one of the 4
actually looks reasonable. Here, we have to find dirt and compost
from other places because the high clay content essentially prohibits
anything fragile from growing. We have collected manure and dirt from
the river banks which is much more silty. The successful garden is
straight rows of dirt in an area that was already fenced in. The
others are spread out among the school grounds and have improvised
fences and have had less dedication.
The most notable non-functioning garden has circular rows originally
built around a large hole to be used for compost. We fenced in the
circle and dug the hole about 2 months ago, and since then the teacher
has not really continued the garden process. So, in the meantime the
rains are heavy, and the hole filled with water which could not drain
because of the clay soil. After a few weeks, the hole became
extremely smelly and had rotting branches and insect larva growing in
it. On a day when the kids planted corn on the majority of the school
property (separate from the garden project), I pointed out the public
safety issues created by the hole, and tried employing some boys to
fill it with rocks. I was interrupted by the teacher with the “good”
garden, who said the hole wasn’t these kids problem, and better to
have the other teacher take care of it. A couple weeks later, in the
first teacher’s class, we checked the soles of all the kids shoes to
see who had brought in the pig shit. Of course, the smell was from
outside and we needed to close the windows for a few days till someone
filled the hole in.
One thing I have noticed down here is that people are generally
willing to deal with problems when they are obvious, but mitigation or
contingency for problems down the road are lacking. Another example
that comes to mind is something as simple as a doctor’s meeting. One
teacher had to leave school more than an hour early one day, and after
recess ended, the teachers who had been chatting about this and that
got their kids seated, and then spent the next 20 minutes in the hall
assessing who would watch this class while the teacher was gone. For
me it is hard not to have my blood pressure rise, to jump to the
conclusion that these delays and interruptions that are so common are
robbing these kids of an education, and that even from the inside of
the system, I am incapable of doing anything. While lamenting my
issues to a friend, she asked me, “Have you given up in thinking that
this job is better than it is yet,” and I suppose by being mad is a
sign that I have not.
I can only lead by example, but I find the example that I am to be
fairly lost, sometimes unmotivated, and generally inconsistent from
the ways which Nicaraguan teachers are trained. I gave a lecture
presenting a small guidebook for teachers written by other PC
volunteers to the teachers a few weeks ago. It touches a wide range
of topics like transitions, in class games to review or share
information etc. and I finished with a challenge to have every teacher
try one of these activities in a class, and that I would be happy to
watch and help or give feedback if my schedule fit it. I also asked
for a paper giving me suggestions at the end. Most teachers suggested
that I give more lectures like this in the coming months, however no
one came to me mentioning a time to observe, or even an example of an
activity’s outcome to me in the last few weeks. It has been
impossible to try reinforcing something which seems ignored. For
reasons like that, the job seems so hit or miss, with the good and the
bad almost overlapping each other. Like the US economy, where the
same day as a good jobs report comes out, the housing market drops
another 4% in price, my head is filled with conflicting notions of
from where to focus efforts, how to improve on failures, or even
whether I should involve myself here anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment