The Up Side

So the last two weeks since I last wrote have been one of extremes...moments of major goodness and moments of major badness. I will split them into two entries, so that they do not taint each other...

First, the Up Side. The good stuff. If I went back to when I last wrote, it was sitting here at this same computer the day that I lost my voice. The next day, my voice was back, more or less, so i returned to work. The week that followed was great! for a number of reasons.

1. I received unneccessary (but always welcomed!) amounts of care packages. When I last wrote I had received 2 packages...in the days that followed I got three more. My friends are amazing. I cannot express that enough. There is so much candy in my room that I do not even know what to do with it, I feel like I should just carry it around and give it to the street kids selling cigarettes and gum on the bus. But then I think, candy makes cavities, dental care doesnt happen, who would I really be helping? (and this make-believe will get me through another night...) Okay, so maybe I am just really greedy, whatever. So needless to say, me and the ants in my room are very happy with the new supply of sweets. I also got two books (gracias a dios!) which I proptly began reading since I have no unread books left...danger is near! Reading is always made easier with the peaceful tunes of adult-alternative mixed cds (although I am pretty sure the dueña and her son think I might be falling into some kind of musical depression of sorts...) And the walls of my room are colorfully plastered with beautiful pictures and cards of pieces of my life from home. Its great. You are all great. I am grateful for each of you.

2. The Mujeres de Lucha. They are a group that I work with in one of the barrios here. They are freaking awesome! I love working with them so much, helping people who want help! Pfft! Who ever heard of such a thing?!?! I love it. We (how exciting is it that I can use that pronoun instead of "they"?!?!) are working on plans for a Día de Nutrición coming up this Tuesday. I was asked to print off some nutritional info on carrots, beans and quinuoa (a grain that is super common here and super good for you) and to try to think of ideas for a charla on nutrition. What I came up with (aided of course by my awesome PC pre-service training) is Nutrition Bingo. I printed off a copy of the new Food Guide Pyramid, news to me that there even was a new edition. I suggested that we make Bingo cards with the food groups in place of letters, and food in place of numbers. And the free space: exercise! because we must remember that exercise is an important part of nutrition. It sounds lame, I know, but Bingo is crazy popular down here, and learning is always better when it is fun...right? So I was hoping the idea would not be totally laughed at. I presented the idea, and guess what? In true Ecuador style, the Mujeres de Lucha were so excited about it. They got all pumped and were like, "We can give away apples, pears and bananas as prizes instead of candy! Great!!!" I was so happy! I am continually blown away at working in this country. I am always thinking that whatever ideas I come up with or whatever I try to offer will never be enough, that the ideas have been done so who would want to do them again. But the result is usually the opposite, and it seems to surprize me everytime. Tomorrow at the meeting, we will make the Bingo cards (What? Make our own personalized Bingo cards rather than buying premade ones? Great idea!), and Tuesday is the program. One of the ladys asked what we would do to make sure that the point of the Bingo was getting explained everytime? And another lady was like, "Of course, Theresa will be there to help us, dont worry. Youll be there, right Theresa?" Of course I will! Little do they know that I will do very little so that they will see how very much they can do without my assistance...

The Mujeres also asked for English classes. Ugggghhhh....have I mentioned that I hate teaching English? I dont know, part of it is that its hard to teach: I refuse to just write the phrases in Spanish, then write the English version of the phrase. I think it is important to understand that "Cómo te llamas" does not exactly mean "What is your name," because that is actually "Qué es tu nombre" because things are said differently in English than they are in Spanish. And I like to explain that "Buenas tardes" is "Good afternoon" because "after" means "despues de" and "noon" means "medio-día." When I teach that to kids here, often times the respond is just a blank stare...they dont really care. They just want to know how to say the freaking phrase in English. Why, though? Why do you want to speak English? Thats the other reason I dont really like teaching: Something about people wanting to speak English bothers me. I feel like teaching English is giving into American capitalism taking over the world. Thats a hugely broad stroke of the paintbrush, I know, but thats not something that I want to do. And I know that teaching some kids in Ecuador how to say "Good Morning" isnt really a huge step in that direction, but its like littering... Yeah, my gum-wrapper on the ground isnt really hurting anyone; but if there are lots of gum-wrappers on the ground, that is hurting someone. So my small wave is contributing to the bigger tsunami, and I dont like to do that. But thats what they want, they want English. So I try to set aside my wants and just go with it. Thats made harder when my actually trying to TEACH the words rather than having them memorize the pharases is answered by blank stares.

But, in the first class with the Mujeres de Lucha, it was a different experience. Before I even launched into my explaination between asking for someone´s name in English vs. Spanish, the question was asked for why it took more words in English than it did in Spanish. How awesome is that? That means that they werent just writing the letters down on their paper to form some random words that they dont really look at but just try to remember how the words sound. They actually were paying attention! Its the little things that count, folks.

3. The sewing ladies. My constant frustration of not living in the barrios continues. It gets worse everytime I go to the barrios. How am I ever going to be a part of this community when I live on the outside? No one here will every seem me as part of their "them" if I continue to be the chick who comes in on a bus and leaves during the night in a taxi because their neighborhood is too dangerous at nighttime to take public transportation. But the time I spend with the ladies in the sewing room makes me feel so much better. If a day (or even several hours) passes that I am not there, when I return they are like, "Tere! Where were you???" They always make me feel so welcome, so wanted. Its nice. They want me to move into their barrio, but they understand that I cannot. They invite me to hacer la vaca (really means "do the cow" but for whatever reason in slang is means to split the bill) with them and go in on a group lunch. They are sad that we are almost done with our 1000 bolsos and dont have plans on what to sew next. The other day I was having a HORRIBLE day (as explained later in the Down Side), but at the end they surrounded me, linked their arms with mine, and told me excitedly all about how the machine repair man had come to the office today, all the machines are running like new, and he even taught them how to use the double needle! They couldnt wait for me to come in the next day to see the work they had done with their new found knowledge. They make me smile.

4. The jovenes got in a fight. That should be a bad thing, I know. But they got in a fight and now they are working on resolving it. The group that I work with the most (who have now agreed to call themselves Afromix) are a combination of kids from two neighboring barrios. For whatever reason, they tend not to like each other, but they know it makes more sense for them to work together given that they live practically next door to each other. But, at hip hop dance class two weeks ago, one of the girls from one side was making fun of a girl from the other side. So they started fighting, the girls from each side ganged up on the girls from the other. Teenagers!

So we spent the entire next group meeting talking through the matter. No one mentioned for quite some time that the problem had stemmed from dance class. Once that came up, I told them straight up that if this is the result of my classes, the classes will be cancelled. Oh! Anything but that! The guys (who had been all but silent during the meeting) chimed in that this is a problem between the girls in the group, and as far as they are concerned it is petty and they should just get over it. The girls in the group agreed that this fight was not bigger than what they wanted for the group, and that stopping dance classes was not an acceptable solution. So the group will stay together and we will work through it. (I will covertly work on forcing them to work on projects that mix the two groups together...)

After the meeting, I spoke, or tried to speak, with the girl who was getting made fun of. She had left class that day, I was concerned because she is one of my favorite kids, and I didnt know what the problem had been. I asked her how she felt after talking through things in the meeting. She said she felt better, especially because she had come ready to fight, although she didnt really want to. And I am not talking about a cat fight: she had braided up her hair, took out her earings, wore her tennis shoes in place of flip-flops. I told her that she should be a woman about it. She took that to mean that she should be strong, and defend herself with her fists. I tried to explain that a real woman knows the value of her body; and that no other person should be given a higher value than that of her body, not in terms of sex or physical fighting or anything. That a woman would never allow her body to be used in such a manner. Honestly, I am not sure if she was really listening, but at least the words were put out in the air around her. And the fight never happened, gracias a dios.

So there you have it. Things have been, for the most part, pretty good. Until a visitor came...