16 Noviembre 2011

Today, I might have gone a little crazy.

Some days, I just don’t want to get out of bed. I want to read or write and I have to drag myself to drink a cup of coffee and then go teach. Other days, I pop out of bed and I am ready to conquer the world.

Today, I was vanquishing the patio.

I haven’t really had time to do laundry in about a month and a half because of the program, working for the medical campaign, and because I started a TOEFL class that will certify me to teach English globally (excuses). I have been washing one pair of undies at a time and rewearing pants and tops (gross, I know). (get some cheese ready for my wine) it’s just that it literally takes an entire day only to do one week’s worth of clothing by hand, and I have just had better things to do.

So today, I had no options, no pants or tops passing the sniff test and an empty suitcase next to an overflowing hamper. I started my weekly spring cleaning, took the rug out and scrubbed away with a brush, washed the sheets and put them on the line; then, as I was taking the whites out to scrub with hot water I tripped over some trash on the patio. Last night, when I was kicking the soccerball with elvis, I had also tripped over a rock. I decided I was done. When Paul was here he said, “So the patio is like a garbage disposal, huh?”. He was completely right. Today, I had had enough. It collects with pastic bags, animal guts, animal bones, animal skins, rocks, plastic bottles, broken glass, etc. So I took out the rake and went at it. You would think that buying the family a large trash bin would be enough. But a lifetime of just tossing trash to your side trough motor memory apparently cannot be trumped by logic and utility.

Mila showed up around 10am and quickly picked up a shovel to help me carry away the three not-so-small mountains of trash I had raked up. Sometimes, I think about how if I didn’t have friends like her here, I could go entire days without saying a word to anyone but my students in the library.

I couldn’t bare the idea of her digging into my laundry with me, so we started cooking lunch together. Tacos. The teachers would be coming for lunch exactly an hour after Mila would catch the only bus that would take her back to Chivay.

I cranked some (a lot) of wheat grains through the family’s hand mill and made my very first whole wheat tortillas for tacos.

After laughing together for an hour I ran off to the program then collapsed over a glass of wine at 8:15.

Knock knock.

Of course. “Luz, un favor grande, grande…”

Roxana couldn’t figure out her math homework. Probabilities. Fortunately, one of my favorites. It is funny how teaching math is so challenging. You kind of have to let your hand just go, and work out the problem, then explain subsequently. But, then explaining in Spanish still gets me. I have never heard the math phrases and regularly screw up “divide it by” and “divide it into” still. As I had exhausted all the ways I could imagne to explain a few problems, I still didn’t trust her grasp. I wouldn’t let one of my tutees walk away with the confused face Roxana had on, but her eyes kept blanking over as I was explaining and I kept having to say, “are you listening” to which she would embarrassingly snap back. I told her to go to bed and look over them again in the morning, sometimes rest does the trick.

As I was laying in bed, I couldn’t help thinking, “I am amazed her teacher understands what I was just explaining to her.”

The following afternoon I asked if we got all her math problems right. She smiled broadly.

“Is that a yes? Did you get 100%”

“Well, I am not sure.”

“Did the teacher go over the homework?”

“We had to stand up in front of the class and I talked through it, but the teacher didn’t say anything. So, probably.”

Quickly I realize, the teacher probably doesn’t understand how to work out the problems, they just copy instructions from the government issued books. Immediately my insides begin to fume and I covered it up with a gentle smile.

Roxana, is not a stupid girl, but it was very obvious that the concepts I was explaining to her were completely foreign and she wasn’t ready for them. Even if I wasn’t explaining properly in spanish; problem after problem, if she is watching me work it out the same every time, she should get it eventually no matter how long and complicated the arithmetic if she has a healthy base in algebra. It appears that she doesn’t. But, she will continue in school never really understanding, memorizing problems from teachers that don’t understand themselves.