the first day of school

so today was the first day after winter break for everyone.  and my first day actually in the school where i'll be teaching.  it was a bit of a madhouse, as registration hadn't really been sorted out, no one had schedules or class rosters, and there were bunches of new kids, and scores of parents waiting in line to shout at the principal about some complaint or another.  we're off to an exciting start, though!

i have heard that most english teachers at public schools in colombia don't actually speak english.  at all.  i found that pretty hard to believe--how could someone whose job it is to teach a language be unable to converse or even string together a sentence in said language?  especially considering that the colombian ministry of education has deemed english a mandatory subject.  what i saw today, however, did little to disprove the rumors.

the kids seem very enthusiastic about learning english, though.  i sat in on a 5th grade class while they tried to sort out the roster, and the gossip spread that i was the new english teacher.  the kids crowded around me and buried me in a flurry of "¿cómo se dice?"s, asking how to say everything from "glasses" and "triangle" to "assassin" and "1,865,399."  a pair of particularly inquisitive boys asked:

"¿cómo se dice amor en inglés?"
"él solo quiere saber porque está enamorado de ti"
"¡ay, no!" a scuffle ensued as he chased his accuser across the soccer field.

i giggled as they were quickly replaced by a dozen other students clamoring to learn other random words in english.  a pert, pigtailed little girl pushed the front, grabbed my hand and announced "hello my name is marcela how are you bye!" and ran off.  i hope they maintain this linguistic enthusiasm, even when the shiny newness wears off and the homework and grammar drills roll in.  i made a mental note to teach them "how do you say ___ in english" in english during their first lesson, and to institute an "i'll tell you but only if you repeat it with me three times" rule.  but for now i was just happy that they were excited.

several of the teachers invited me to go for coffee with them over break, and we had a good chat, much of which i understood.  they seem quite sweet, and this is helping to quell some of my fears that all the teachers would hate me because i live with the principal. 

i was shadowing a teacher later in the day, and as we passed the registrar, i tried to make conversation by asking her something vague like "what are the students like?"  i had inadvertently opened a can of worms, i found, as she began explaining:

"well, they are hard.  you see, the students here have some problems.  mostly they are very poor, and we have many who are rebellious and undisciplined.  lots of them have problems at home, maybe they were kicked out of the house or ran away because of domestic violence, maybe they just live with a brother or grandmother or something.  some are here because they were kicked out of other schools. and then of course, a lot of them are the Displaced, they had to flee the villages and come here to bogotá to escape the fighting with the rebels and paramilitaries.  so yes, they... they are not easy to teach."

i looked out across the schoolyard where the students were playing soccer, gossiping, playing tag, swinging on the goal posts, flirting, chasing old tires down a slope, sharing their crackers, peering through the windows of the classrooms.  they seemed no different than any other students.  perhaps a little rowdier than those i'd seen at the uppity private schools in the north.  but pretty much the same.  in fact, the first word that came to mind when i saw them was not "war-affected-population" but "hogwarts."

because of the poverty of many of the students in the public schools, the government instituted a uniform policy to try to reduce stealing and socioeconomic class-related bullying.  though students still find ways to assert their class--from the hipness of their haircuts to where they bought their backpacks--i guess it's worked to some degree. at any rate, the result is a schoolyard full of hundreds of kids in maroon v-neck sweaters and grey trousers or pleated skirts and stockings.  just like a bunch of hogwarts students.  hogwarts students that are academically way behind and come from very rough backgrounds.

in conclusion, i think this pretty much sums up my day:

on carne and life in the convent

i´ve been on a pretty strict diet of white rice, boiled potatoes, and saltines here.  they´re usually served with some sort of meat sauce, which i of course pass up.  it´s surprisingly hard to find vegetarian food--usually when i travel to developing countries, it´s not an issue because everyone is too poor to afford meat anyway.  but here a lot of things are cooked in lard or meat broth.  there isn´t really a general term for "meat" in spanish--carne is usually taken to mean just red meat. and the concept of vegetarianism doesn´t really exist here, and the idea that beef would be in the same category as fish or meat broth is entirely foreign. (i´m reminded of a conversation i had in uganda once, "were you born that way, or did you catch it recently? don´t worry, we´ll take you to the village healer tomorrow and he´ll cure you straightaway.")

one of the girls on the trip was helping the cooks out this weekend and decapitated a chicken.  she says that if you´re willing to eat meat, you should be willing to kill it yourself.  i guess i respect that, to some degree, because if everyone went by that principle, there´d be a lot more vegetarians in this world.  nevertheless, i still found it pretty disturbing when she came inside splattered in blood head to toe, and talked about how after she´d cut off his head, it fell to the ground and kept moving, while the wings on his decapitated body kept thrashing for a while.  i need to brush up on a more detailed spanish description of "i´d rather not eat anything made of a dead animal, please."

the other day at dinner, we had soup.  after a rather long discussion with the cook, she convinced me that it was entirely vegetarian.  halfway in, i made an unfortunate discovery--chunks of intestines and cow stomach lurking at the bottom of my bowl.  apparently what she really meant was "a ladle of the tripe stew that happens to have a higher concentration of vegetables than normal."  the intestine bits were long and slippery, while the stomach chunks still had a definitive curve to them, and had a spongy texture with little tentacley bits rather like the interior of a passion fruit.  my own stomach lurched and i promptly left the table and threw up my supper.

we´ve taken to calling the place where we´re staying "the convent."  it´s not a convent per se, but a religious compound where masses, weddings, religious retreats, vacation bible schools, and such are held.  it´s pretty, but a bit strict.  alcohol is prohibited on the premises, apart from communion wine, and other questionable activities are restricted, too (though the degree to which these regulations are being followed by our group is arguable...).  there´s never quite enough to eat, though i guess that´s appropriate considering that gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins.  and perhaps more importantly, as an introduction to living in a country in which over half of the population lives below the poverty line. 

i´m looking forward to getting to my site placement and being able to cook for myself.  it will be nice to have a little variety, and a little protein now and then.  rice and beans is actually one of my favorite dishes, and i can probably swing it even with my meager teaching stipend.  i´m also eager to try more of the fruit here--mangoes, guavas, passionfruits, lulos, guanábana, guyaba...  there are also several popular foods sold by street vendors that are quite delicious, and i´d love to learn how to make them: empañadas, and arepas, which are thick, sweetish corn patties stuffed with cheese, fruit, or sweet paste.  i´ve heard that it´s unwise to eat from street vendors, but i feel that building up a hardier stomach and immune system will serve me well for the future.  plus they´re too delicious to resist.

colombian food in general, though, is pretty bland.  the coffee and hot chocolate, however, are absolutely divine.  colombia is, of course, world famous for its coffee.  though most of the best beans are exported, as in uganda, what remains is still awesome--so deep a brown it´s nearly black, served in little cups and so strong you can only stand it in little sips or with milk.  and magnificently caffeinated.  but perhaps even better than that is the hot chocolate.  it´s a staple of colombian breakfasts, and certainly makes waking up at 5:30 am for classes in teaching methods and spanish a little sweeter.  it reminds me of san antonio--whenever we go down there to visit relatives with my dad, we stock up on round bricks of mexican chocolate, dark and gritty and stuffed with crystals of sugar and cinnamon.  it´s meant to be melted down into boiled milk for hot chocolate. but the chocolate rarely makes it that far, as my sister and i tend to break off chunks and make short work of it.

we went into the town of cota a few days ago to hit up a random little lebanese restaurant.  there´s actually a large middle eastern population in colombia, oddly enough.  shakira herself is half lebanese.  and thus you can get pretty great middle eastern food, particularly in bogotá.  we had to wait for two hours for the food, but it was totally worth it to have something other than rice and potatoes for supper:  fresh pitas, hummus, vegetables in tangy sauce, falaffel, lentils...  i got some rose tea, and it came in a little glass cup with rose petals floating in it.  it reminded me of cairo.

but probably the best part of the evening was the music.  arabic pop has the uncanny ability to make me feel energized, happy, and full of life, no matter what.  a few seconds of the haunting melody and the familiar rhythms of the drums, and i wanted to jump up and dance.  two of the instructors from my bellydance studio in dc were from colombia, and i´ve heard it´s pretty big here.  exhibit a: shakira.  i found a dance studio called prem shakti in botogá--another reason i was excited to be placed there.  i can´t wait to get started with classes!

high in the sky

i think i´m getting used to the altitude a bit.  i´m still tired a lot, and sometimes feel dizzy especially in higher parts of the city, but at least i don´t constantly feel short of breath.  i´ve heard that coca tea helps with altitude sickness.  that´s one of the reasons it became so popular in these parts back in the day.  i went into a shop the other day asking for some, but i think i must have messed up the spanish, because the shopkeeper gave me the strangest look.  i think he thought i was asking if i could buy cocaine there.  oops!

one odd side effect of the altitude is very strange, frightening, and vivid dreams.  for a time, i was starting awake almost every night around 4 am crying out or screaming, much to my roommates´ dismay.  though they were doing it, too.  it was a noisy dorm room for a while.  it´s a rather popular topic at the breakfast table for the group in general to discuss what we were fleeing from and who was trying to kill us in last night´s dreams.  i´m aware of my unfortunate habit of talking in my sleep, but this was pretty extreme--the only thing i could compare it to was once when i was on heavy drugs after surgery, i woke up screaming for a week.  i wish there was something i could do about it but... well, dreams are the very definition of unconsciousness, so it´s not like i can just think very hard about it and resolve to not do it anymore.  the shouting fits seem to have subsided a bit... or else we´ve all just grown accustomed to it in each other and sleep through it.  though the dreams persist.

location, location, location

so. i am pretty much in love with this organization called funcación pies descalzos, an organization that world teach partnered with last year.  it is an ngo in colombia that focuses on the education of displaced children. it was actually founded by shakira, when she was just a teenager, in her hometown of barranquilla.  that partnership was one of the main reasons that i picked the colombia program, and i remember after reading about it dancing around the house with excitement that i might be able to contribute to such a project.

their mission statement is "the barefoot foundation works to ensure that every colombian child can exercise their right to a quality education. our model targets displaced and vulnerable communities by addressing their unique needs."  i´m all about that.  that was pretty much the point of my thesis, showing that education is vital for development, especially in societies impacted by conflict.  and that the only way to ensure that all children can exercise this right is to put special energy and focus on the unique educational needs of the most vulnerable communities, those most heavily impacted by the war.

i really like their model, too--it takes a very comprehensive approach towards education, especially for displaced populations. not only does it provide quality education, but it also offers psychological support, food and nutrition programs, tutoring, recreational activities, the creation of child friendly spaces, art therapy, anti-child labor projects, and family and community support support through income generating projects.  that comprehensive perspective on education is exactly what´s needed by vulnerable populations, in my opinion.

they were one of the schools that participated in the one laptop per child program.  by many development standards, that project was none to successful thus far, but i like that they were willing to take a risk and try out that innovative idea.  it´s a charter school, so obviously it has more resources than regular public schools.  but it´s no pupi endeavor.  its focus is to pilot programs working to meet the needs of displaced and vulnerable children, to find out what works, and then try get these successful programs implemented in the public education system at large.  quite a grassroots, scalable initiative.  it gets a high five in my (albeit perhaps hopelessly idealistic brunonian DS-ey) opinion.

i pretty much wrote an essay of an email begging to be placed there, with all the reasons that i thought i was perfect as a volunteer teacher at that organization.  but it turns out that they´re no longer partnering with world teach.  i was really sad to hear that, and begged some more, but it didn´t work.  i´m still not exactly sure what happened between the two organizations, it´s all a bit shrouded in mystery, but there now seems to be some bad blood between them.  maybe it was just a funding issue, or a miscommunication,  or a disagreement at the administrative level.  but anyway, the partnership is no more.

i scrambled for a long while trying to find the second-best placement to ask for.  where i´d be able to do the most with war-affected communities.  but that was actually surprisingly hard to figure out.  it seems that, well frankly, the whole country was heavily affected by war, and displaced people are everywhere.  it does have one of the highest rates of internal displacement in the world, second only to sudan.

i read somewhere that colombia is kind of a unique case because so much of the displacement is into urban slums rather than the more traditional internal refugee camps.  that reminds me a bit of kampala--of course most of the displacement from the civil war in uganda was into camps in the north, but when i was researching in some of the slums north of kampala, i found a surprisingly high concentration of displaced people from the north.  it was interesting how war-related issues spilled into slum- and urban-poverty issues, in everything from domestic violence and alcoholism to educational issues.

anyway, so that indicated that a city might actually be better than a rural area, even if most of the current rebel activity, and thus the most recently-war-affected-populations, are in remote, rural areas of the mountains and jungle.  a rural placement would be more hardcore, more of a challenge, which would be fun, though.  but then again, most ngos are based in bogotá. (although a lot of their program operations are in other areas, though it´s really hard to figure out where said operations are concentrated) 

i debated it for a long time, but eventually i asked to be placed in bogotá, rather than a rural area.  and i got it, which i was very excited about. i hope i made the right choice.  someone was giving us a presentation the other day and said something to the effect of "bogotá is one thing, but the rest of colombia is another world," which made me nervous.  but thus it goes.  i read that fundación pies descalzos has a location in soacha, about 20 min. to the south of bogotá.  i´d really like to volunteer there, but i´m wondering whether or not that would be wise considering the mysterious circumstances of the two organizations´ fallout.  well, i guess i´ll just ask around, and do some more research, and see what other options are available for volunteering with war-affected communities.

seguridad

we went to the us embassy in bogotá today for a security briefing.  it was wicked intense--i have been to a number of embassies, and on quite a number of US military bases, and i have never seen anything like this security wise.  it took us a good two hours to get through the gates and through a maze of ever stricter security blocks, even with all the paperwork and IDs we could think of.  i guess it makes sense, though, considering the close links between the US and the colombian military.

the state department fellows scared us a bit, telling us all the terrible things that could happen to us here, and it seems from their perspective that i´ve actually got the most dangerous placement of them all, as urban crime and violence is much more of a threat than rebels, statistically speaking.  i diligently copied down their advice, "don´t go here, here, and here." one of my fellow bogotá volunteers pointed out that "here" was precisely where we were we would be teaching and living. but honestly, i don´t mind that so much.

we learned a word in spanish class the other day, pupi  i know, we seem to be adopting the maturity level of our 4th grade students, but we all found it quite funny.  it means rich or uppity.  the colombian population is divided into 6 social strata, based on income, and it´s usually used by the bottom four to describe the upper class.  colombian society is incredibly unequal--it has one of the highest gini coefficients in the world, and over half the population lives below the poverty line.  at all costs, i don´t want to have a pupi experience in colombia.  that´s not why i´m here.  i want to spend as much time as possible in the slums to the south of the city, to work in soacha and other areas with high concentrations of people displaced because of the war.  i hope my host family´s poor, i hope i have it rough.  a mentor of mine once told me to stay "in the weeds" as much as possible.  he said that in development speak, that means stay in the field, get your hands dirty.  i intend to do just that.

i have determined, however, that i´ll take the state department fellows´ advice in doing all i can to blend in, and try to make myself seem as colombian as possible.  that will be good not only for security, but also for general social acceptance.  i also think this is a great excuse to get more colombian clothes!  the clothes i brought were nowhere near warm enough for the frigid altitudes of bogotá.  there was too much wishful thinking involved when i stuffed my suitcase with skirts and baby-tees, so i bought a sweater and sweatshirt in town.  and colombian jeans are inexpensive and have absolutely magical properties that make everyone look amazing.  (i am certain that the traveling pants of the famous sisterhood traveled from colombia originally.)  the proper term for the jeans is levantacolas (no don´t laugh, that´s what they´re actually called!), but they´re so popular in colombia that they´ve come to be known as "colombian jeans" around the world.  i´ve spent many an evening with the other girls from the program in the nearby town of cota, trying on piles of pants in the little shops, giggling and squealing at the astounding results of the magical jeans.

my roommate marcella and i spent an evening this week dyeing my hair almost-black.  i was a little nervous at first that i´d mistranslate something on the instructions and wind up with purple hair.  but it turned out great--i love it!  i´ve dyed my hair black a few times before, and as my hair´s already so dark, no one really noticed.  it´s subtle, but i think it does make a difference here in how i´m viewed--both by students in the classroom, muggers at the bus stop, and vendors at the arepa stand.

"With the bittersweet taste of goodbye... I finally felt myself lifted definitively away on the winds of adventure toward worlds I envisaged would be stranger than they were, into situations I imagined would be much more normal than they turned out to be."

Che Guevara,

The Motorcycle Diaries

i´m here!

whoo! i´m finally here in beautiful bogotá, colombia!  i got in late sunday night, and met up with the other volunteers.  as i´d predicted, the group quite resembles my sit study abroad group in uganda, and all development studies classes, for that matter--a bunch of girls (and a few boys) with a worldly, hippie vibe, most with longish, dark, curly hair, wearing scarves and interesting earrings, peasant blouses and embroidered tunics, holding passports with many stamps in patch-worked or tie-died hobo satchels.  we had some interesting chats about our backgrounds.  most had studied abroad, done IR, worked for NGOs and such.  several were actually from DC!  i met a girl who worked for save darfur in dc, another who´d volunteered in mbale, uganda, another who´d studied abroad on the same program my friend did in cairo, and a really interesting fellow who´d worked for the UN in Liberia doing child soldier rehabilitation.

we had an adventure trying to fit all of us and our stuff on a little bus to take us to our lodging, but eventually managed, stuffing people and suitcases in like ugandan taxi drivers.  i worried because try as i might, i´d failed at the whole packing light thing, and pictured arriving with my suitcase and duffel and seeing everyone else with little backpacking packs.  but i was by no means the most overburdened.

we were then quickly shuffled off to a little town to the north of bogotá, onto a little compound used for religious retreats, full of bunk beds and crucifixes.  we´ll be here for a month, doing TEFL (teaching english as a foreign language) training and a crash course in improving our spanish.  i almost feel like i´m not yet in colombia--we haven´t left the compound for days, seen the city, or met many colombians apart from the people at the compound and our teachers.  but we were finally able to leave the compound today and explore the little town for a bit.

TEFL training.  note the crosses & blankets.

the area is gorgeous.  there are mountains all around and fields full of noisy cows and chickens.  the air is cool--in fact, i´m freezing most of the time, i definitely didn´t pack enough warm clothes.  but at midday it´s sunny and quite pleasant. and the altitude is getting to me!  it´s a strange sensation, but i can feel it with every breath. a 15 minute walk leaves me gasping, each breath seems only half full, and when i ride the bus along the roads that wind even higher up the mountains, i can feel my ears popping and start to feel dizzy.  but i´m sure i´ll get used to it soon.  and when i return, i´ll have lungs (and an immune system) of steel!