A Change of Pace

Just wanted to share another quick story of the nature of our new home.

As we’ve mentioned in earlier posts, we’ve been attending our assigned schools for about two months now. We’ve been spending this time observing class, getting to know the teachers and students, and creating a work plan for the next two years. At the same time we’ve started to assist an NGO with their reforestation project. The immediate needs of this task were to survey the families in my schools’ community, which gave me a great opportunity to get to know everyone.

My first day of surveying was very successful in my mind. After classes I managed to introduce myself and survey a total of ten houses in about and hour and a half, get back in time for a late lunch, and work on other things in the late afternoon.

My second day of surveying was very different. This time I recruited a few of my students to act as guides for the afternoon, enabling me to execute my task even more efficiently and also get to know the kids better. As I did not yet know, only one of these two goals would be met. By including the children on my journey, I thereby put myself at the whims of the Nicaraguan pace of life, and I would later appreciate this folly…but not yet.

A Peace Corps volunteer is constantly forced to deal with contradictions. One of the most central of these in my experience has been the inherent contradictions in our supposed purpose in Nicaragua as volunteers. Peace Corps states that our intentions are to promote positive cultural exchange (requiring being sensitive to cultural norms), while at the same time helping to generate increases in the opportunities for improvement of people’s lives. At times balancing these two goals can prove difficult.

In my view United States citizens tend to be a very driven people, efficient and “professional” in their work. Indeed, these are in many ways very admirable and beneficial traits. Although PC volunteers tend to be very unique people, they are surely products of their culture and I am no different in this way. Along with our flexibility and hunger for cultural difference, we intend to work hard to produce tangible results for those we serve. Enter frustration.

My afternoon with my three chavalos (young boys) began at the house where two of them lived. Naturally it would be a longer visit, but I hoped I could keep it to around fifteen minutes as I was shooting to visit at least an equal number of homes I had the day before. As I was an honored guest, I was immediately seated and provided with refreshments. I was then presented every personal item the boys owned before I was able to talk with their parents. Thirty minutes.

A major delay was met on the way to the second house. A mango tree. Mangoes are a trendy snack in the US. In Nicaragua they may be considered a reason for living. Mangoes trees are planted everywhere, the fruit is taken from the tree still green the first week they appear, everything stops to enjoy the sweet, sweet, sweeeeeeeeet…..what happened? Sorry I was eating a mango. Another half hour spent under the mango tree chatting and mostly suckling.

Second house was that of the third boy, who lived with his elderly aunt. This women’s slow speech made her easy to understand, but further pushed me from my goal. Chairs, refreshments, chatting, mangoes. This was a very typical type of visit to a home in rural Nicaragua. Sitting, a bit of conversation, a lot of long silences that are at first very awkward for gringos. After forty-five minutes I forcefully and offensively pried myself away, but not before having my backpack stuffed full of tamarindo fruit from their tree.

At this time it was getting more towards dinner instead of my late lunch. I resigned myself to only achieving two introductions for the day, but my chavalo guides insisted one more. Already drained by the sun, concentration on language, and fading blood-sugar level, I was met with the opposite extreme of a Nica home visit. Instead of slow and inconsistent conversation, I was met by a barrage of greetings, instructions, questions, advice, etc. from a super-humanly gregarious family. My brain already asleep, I simply smiled and nodded for another forty-five minutes. Sensing my fatigue, they released me for my long ride home, but not before filling my backpack with yet more tamarindo fruit from their own tree.

Three houses in a total of over four hours.

Initial frustrations have led to deeper understandings and appreciations...and resignation. Our own concept how to approach “work” does not always coincide with others’ here. People do not walk into someone’s house, give them their name, and start firing questions at them all in the name of efficiency and progress. Relationships are everything and work is not done before relationships are forged. Indeed, “There is more time in life”.