Sunday, October 30, 2011

Leaving Fingerprints


When I woke up on Thursday morning I already knew there would not be school. I had been warned that very little happened in Costa Rican schools from October to December (the end of the school year) but I was completely unprepared for showing up on Tuesday and finding out that it was a half day, and that we had the entire rest of the week off. To combat the sudden and frequent lack of school, the principal has begun to organize a group of students who come together on some of the days off and do things to help the school. The group is called 'Dejando Huella' which is correctly translated as 'Leaving a Footprint' but I like much better as 'Leaving Fingerprints'. One day they cleaned up the schoolyard, another day they designed a logo for the school, and on this particular day I was coming in to organize a group of students to sing Christmas Carols at graduation. The principal came up to me outside of the classroom and told me to make a list of all the students who had come, and then whittle it down to those who did best at English and would not act out. After about an hour of sitting in the meeting working on the list I had failed at my task. As I told the principal, if I limited it to the students who were both good at English and didn't misbehave I would have no boys in the chorus, so we decided to present the idea to the whole group, and then hope that the number of participants did not drop below 8. Before I could present the idea of the chorus though, the students were sent out on their project for the day.*

That day the students had come to walk door-to-door to raise money for a school garden. When I found out that one group of students would have to walk with the physical therapy teacher all the way back to my neighborhood (about 6km there and back) I volunteered to accompany them. I was supposed to make sure that the students each took turns asking for money at the houses, and that they stuck within the parameters of the basic script. Also, I was supposed to save them from peril, and from early on the fearsome visage of a massive dog haunted my mind. Luckily, the first large dog we encountered was a labrador I knew. While the kids cowered behind me I strode up purposefully talking in a "good doggie, thats a goodboy, youaresuchagooddog!" sort of voice. Chester (the dog) immediately waddled forward happily and let me pat him while the kids went through their spiel. The delicate balance I had established between man and nature nearly collapsed however when the jittery children decided to sprint back to the street past the dog. Chester was confused, but some sweet words from my end convinced him not to chase the kids. This experience early on had the unfortunate effect of making the kids believe that I wasn't absolutely terrified of dogs, so at several other houses I was suddenly left alone facing large dogs while my pupils scurried past me to safety. Since I am in the Peace Corps, and am supposed to model good behavior, I thought it would be bad to simply throw rocks (the Costa Rican response to most dogs), but also bad to just run away. This left me frequently in a wobbly kneed stance trying to convince the dogs that I was their friend using the voice mentioned above. The dogs were rarely convinced. They were confused though, and generally seemed to shake their heads in wonder and trot away. The physical therapy teacher, for each of these encounters, and for most of the walk, stayed back dawdling and generally being unhelpful.

Aside from dogs, the other major problem we had was mud. It is the rainy season in Costa Rica (otherwise known as October) and most of the streets are covered in several inches of muck. In another miraculous victory over nature, not a single flip-flop was broken, and not a single shoe lost, although not a soul escaped without very muddy feet. By the time we got near my house they had already lost one (empty) change box in a large mudpuddle, so I walked in and brought out mine, with about 6 months of collected change in it (I have periodically rooted through it and pulled out all the 500 colon coins for bus fare). Being wise panhandlers they promptly emptied out all the change from my see-through jar into the remaining box so that it would seem like they were having a rough time and get more pity.

I did have some moral qualms about the whole process, especially because I live in the poorest neighborhood of my town, and going door-to-door at times felt like shaming people who have next to nothing into giving money to an abstract cause they had no interest in. This came up only once in conversation amongst the students though, and they quickly convinced themselves that it did not matter. On the way back to the school we stopped and I bought everyone popsicles, which proved to be an excellent decision, because it relieved thirst and made it so that not even the two little third grade boys complained. They had enough energy left to race me the last 100 meters to the school.

When we got back and counted the money our group brought back I was staggered to see that it came up to 29,000 colones (about $60). In total, all the groups raised about $160. I was still not sure what we had raised so much money to do, and the students were not too clear about it either. When I asked, the principal told me that the money was to pay for concrete and cinderblocks for the garden. Concrete and cinderblocks do not quite sound like a recipe for a garden, but then again in Costa Rica it is impossible to keep any spot of land free of plants, so brick and concrete are probably just as good as soil, and fit better into Costa Rican aesthetics. The Costa Rican 1,000 colon bill ($2) had a concrete building on the back. The bill was gorgeous, the building less so. Now they have changed it for a deer and a tree (the national animal and tree) which is a little less revealing about the culture.


*There will be more about the chorus if it actually happens, the first practice will be on Tuesday, another inexplicable day off from school.