A second wind

I have a confession to make.

Since returning to Bogotá two weeks ago after three amazing weeks away, I have had a tough time readjusting. Prior to vacation, I was struggling to maintain my morale and when I got back, the problems I left behind were here waiting for me.

The bulk of my frustration is directed at the multiple organizations involved with me being in Bogotá in the first place. Nearly eight months into my service, my role in the classroom is still fraught with ambiguity. Since Nueva Esperanza already has Colombian English teachers, nobody seems to really know the purpose for me being there and there are days when I feel useless.

Although I came here because I wanted to teach English, I feel that I am being denied the opportunity to achieve this goal. Especially when I see that many of the other WorldTeach Colombia volunteers have been given greater freedom to make a real difference in their schools, I feel like a racehorse stuck in the starting gate while the other horses are well on their way to the finish line.

Of course, this only serves to compound the other struggles I face in Colombia every day.

I won’t equivocate; I miss home.

I miss seeing my family and friends; kicking the soccer ball around with my dog; real Mexican food.

I miss the taste of the San Francisco air, the comforting sight of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the familiar expanse of the Central Valley.

A year is a long time to be away from all of that.

Life in Bogotá is also not easy—for those actually from here, much less a gringo. The city is overpopulated, polluted and dangerous. With no real community to integrate with, I find myself trapped in the lonely caverns of anonymity.

A year ago when I sat in my cubicle thinking about how great it would be to go teach English in South America, what has come to pass is hardly what I imagined.

But if I have learned one thing in my short time on this earth, it’s that you can’t always get what you want; and even when you try sometimes, you don’t always get what you need; but you must nonetheless find the will to carry on.

Many nights, I've laid awake wondering if I’m just not cut out for this; if I should throw in the towel and hop on the next flight back to San Francisco. I imagine that no one would really blame me—that I showed enough guts sticking it out in Colombia for as long as I did. I would settle back into a comfortable American life, find a job, and do just fine. But I know that if I were to do so, every time I looked in the mirror, I would be dissatisfied with the person looking back.

Arthur Golden writes in his novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, “Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears from us all the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.”

Although I face a long list of difficulties in Colombia, how I respond to them will ultimately reflect the kind of person I am; one who resigns when faced with adversity or who stands fast and endures?

I am making the decision, here and now, to be the latter.   

I will not turn my back on Colombia.

I will endure.

When I came to Colombia, I made a promise to myself, as well as to the children of this country, that I would give a year of my life in the service of something greater than myself. Although day-to-day it is difficult to see that I am making any significant difference, I know that I am part of a process of positive change that will, in the aggregate, set the foundations for a better world.

Whether I like it or not, I am and always will be an idealist. Just as I will always believe in such quixotic things as inherent good and romantic love, I will never stop believing that a better world is possible.    

Because just as a new day’s sunrise brings with it renewed light and warmth, so does it bear a new set of opportunities and, through them, hope.

Video: My Time in Colombia So Far

The other day as I was perusing my laptop for something to occupy my idle gringo mind, I stumbled across Windows Live Movie Maker. After playing around with the program for a bit, I got the novel idea of creating a video about my time in Colombia thus far.

I figured you guys could use a break from my perspicacious prose, anyway.

So, grab a bowl of popcorn, sit back and enjoy what could quite possibly be the greatest display of cinematic excellence you’ve ever witnessed.

Oh, and one more thing.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading to Manizales for Semana Santa, so there won’t be any updates for at least another week.

  

I know, I know.

Look on the bright side—now you will have plenty of time to catch up on all of my posts! When you’re done with the video, take a peek in the Gringo Archives (right sidebar) and dig in.

To Help the Homeless

Plaza Los Mártire in Bogotá.

Bogotá’s Plaza Los Mártires has seen better days—what was once a center for commerce has since deteriorated into an emblem of the capital city’s pervasive poverty. Today, the homeless wander the plaza in search of handouts from passersby, willing or otherwise. Colombian soldiers stand guard around the clock in the center of the plaza, protecting a large obelisk resembling a miniature Washington Monument. If you planned on venturing there during the day, people would say you need a flak jacket—if you decided to go there after dark, they’d suggest you try on a straight-jacket.

Well, it was well after dark and that was precisely where I was headed.

Sorry, mom.

My triceps and forearms burned under the strain of pushing a large cart loaded with enough soup to feed five hundred people. I was accompanied by a diverse group of men, women and children as we walked through the centro’s dimly-lit streets. Although to walk there alone at this hour would have been tantamount to suicide, our small army of good Samaritans—led by the tallest priest I had ever seen—walked unopposed through the darkness. Every now and then we would halt our advance and a few people carrying guitars would begin to play, spurring the whole group to break into song.

The homeless in Plaza Los Mártire.

When we finally arrived at Plaza Los Mártires, there was a huge line of homeless people forming in anticipation of the nourishment we wrought. Happy to be relieved of my burden, I helped to carefully set the cart on the pavement. A few people who had been lugging bags filled with sandwiches plopped them on the ground next the soup. The group fanned out and linked arms to create a protective circle around the food, as a few people began ladling soup into small Styrofoam cups.

A few heavily-armed soldiers meandered over to make sure nobody bothered us, but it didn’t appear to be necessary—volunteers freely mingled with the homeless, chatting up a storm as they waited (more or less) patiently in line for what was likely their first real meal in days. My friend Zach and I watched over a group of children volunteers as they conversed with an old man sporting a rough, gray beard who smiled warmly with all the five teeth he had.

When the children volunteers spotted a pair of homeless children waiting for their mother to get them soup, they swarmed the unsuspecting pair like paparazzi. Although the two initially looked immensely uncomfortable with the attention they weren’t accustomed to receiving, they eventually opened up and began chattering with their admirers in rapid-fire Spanish I could barely follow. One of the homeless boys disappeared for a few minutes and returned wearing roller blades, proudly displaying his roller talents to the group.

Homeless man sitting in Bogotá.

I looked around to soak up the scene—volunteers not only hard at work passing out food to the hungry, but also socializing with them as if they were old friends. I watched the homeless boy attempting to impress the young girls with his mad roller blade skills, only to hit a crack in the cement and come crashing down in a blaze of glory.

My time in Colombia has compelled me to reflect a lot about the gross inequality afflicting this world. While I concede that, given our choice of economic system, there will always be a degree of inequality; however, we cannot progress as a species until we can guarantee that at the very least, those dwelling at the bottom of the economic barrel can live humanely and, more importantly, have equality of opportunity to better themselves as human beings.

Homelessness is an epidemic that many of us who are better off chose to ignore. We justify our ignorance by dehumanizing the homeless, rationalizing that they are solely to blame for getting themselves into their plight. Serves those lazy drug addicts right, we argue. But after speaking with the homeless first-hand—albeit in my spotty gringo Spanish—it was impossible not to see their humanity. These were not people to be reviled nor pitied—although through a series of unfortunate events, they had found themselves at the absolute bottom of society’s barrel, they were nonetheless, still human. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: “Why should there be hunger and deprivation in any land, in any city, at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life? There is no deficit in human resources. The deficit is in human will.”

Helping the homeless at night in Plaza Los Mártires.

We owe it to ourselves as well as to those who come after to not only imagine a better world, but to also do whatever is within our power to make it so.

We cannot continue to make excuses not to act.

Time to get to work.

A Candle in the Darkness

During my senior of high school, I attended a leadership camp at Stanford University for student leaders. The camp was filled with seminars and workshops designed to teach us to develop leadership skills to better ourselves, our schools, and the community at large.

One night, they took us outside to a large grassy field, where we stood in silence in the darkness.  The camp’s head counselor, whose name now escapes me, passed out a small white candle to each of us. After we all had candles, he lit his own, holding it closely as he looked out at the group of forty-five student-leaders before him.

We remained quiet as he lit the candle of the person standing next to him. That person then lit the candle of the person next to him and so on and so forth until the combined might of our tiny candles illuminated the night with a brilliant, flickering light.

The head counselor went on to tell us the meaning of the exercise—that we all carry a flame which we can share with others. When we do so, we empower others to perpetually pass it on until there is no more darkness.

I have always interpreted this as meaning that each and every one of us has the power to change the world for the better. While most of us won’t end up in the history books, this is beside the point—we don’t act to be physically rewarded, but simply because it is the right thing to do. Although we may individually lack the ability to single-handedly save the world, each of us has the power to save someone’s world.

I challenge you, as I challenge myself, to strive to be a sharer of your personal flame—not a hoarder. Make it a personal goal each and every day to commit one random act of kindness, whatever that may be, even if it is inconvenient. The opportunities to do good every day are as plentiful as the stars are in the sky.

Only when we share our light with those who lack it, do we ourselves truly begin to live.

Nueva Esperanza

Driving up the hill

The underpowered engines of my host family’s Chevy Spark roared as they struggled to propel the vehicle up the steep incline towards the school. Jorge, my host father, maneuvered the Getz to avoid steamrolling a host of neighborhood dogs who slept haphazardly on the increasingly rugged road.

“These dogs never move,” he said as he carefully navigated through the mammalian minefield, “It’s like they don’t care if they live or die.”

I grimaced as we narrowly missed crushing the skull of a sleeping Scottish terrier. We turned a sharp corner and continued up a narrow road, passing pockets of scattered refuse as we chugged along like the Little Engine That Could.

Although we were technically still in Bogotá, the neighborhood could have fooled central Baghdad for one of its own. Poorly-constructed buildings and half-paved roads stretched out in all directions—a stark contrast to the booming modern buildings of Northern Bogotá.

As we reached the top of the hill, a structure came into view that could not have been more out of place. The modern building was tall and wide and had the words, NUEVA ESPERANZA written above the main entrance.

Nueva Esperanza.

New Hope.

My school assignment for the year.

Jorge dropped me off with my host mother, Maisa, who teaches music at the school. She took me in to meet with the principal and showed me around the facility. From one of the balconies I spotted another building across the street of similar construction.

View of the Primary School from the Secondary School

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The primary school,” Maisa replied.

Nueva Esperanza is really two schools in one; a primary school (elementary school) and a secondary school (middle/high school). The school suffers such a high demand for enrollment that they divide the day into two halves—there is a morning group that goes from 6:30 a.m. to noon and an afternoon group that goes from 1:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

We left the secondary school building, crossed the street and approached the primary school’s gates. When I saw the primary school, the first thought that crossed my mind was prison. Hordes of chattering children loitered inside the main courtyard between thick, metal gates. Security guards patrolled the main entrance—to keep people in or out, I’m not completely sure.

Mis Estudiantes!

Passing through the gates, I felt four hundred pairs of little eyes catapult to me. I followed Maisa through the sea of uniformed little humans to meet the other English teachers milling about in the courtyard. Children looked up at me with awe as they wondered how a human being could possibly be so tall—I might as well have been André the giant to their curious eyes.

We stopped in the courtyard and Maisa introduced me to an English teacher I would likely be working with in the upcoming year. As if on cue, a company of third, fourth and fifth graders swarmed me from all sides. They asked me if I was from Los Estados Unidos (The United States), if I really was going to be their teacher and a barrage of other questions in Spanish I couldn’t comprehend.

I wasn’t supposed to let on that I knew Spanish, so I nodded, pointed to my chest and said, “My name is Teacher Mike. Tee-chur Mike.”

“Tee-chur Mike!” the kids screamed as they jumped up and down with glee, slapping each other on the back and smiling as they looked up at me.

Iron Man or Hannah Montana might as well have just landed in their courtyard.

At that moment, every doubt, every fear I had ever had about coming to Colombia was instantly extinguished. This was why I was here—why I had passed up a promotion, quit my job and traveled thousands of miles to a country where most Americans wouldn’t dare venture. The euphoric feeling generated by four hundred hopeful little souls was worth a thousand years of missed corporate paychecks.

Me with my students!

It was at that moment I realized I had more than just the power to teach English to the children of Nueva Esperanza. As corny as it sounds, I also had the power to give them hope—new hope.

And I promised myself I wouldn’t let them down.

  

Pre-Departure: Learning How to Teach

Roaming the long, cluttered halls of Washington Elementary School, I couldn’t help but feel thrust into an episode of LOST. Flashbacks to long-forgotten memories hit me like landmines at every corner.

Nearing the girl’s bathroom, I recalled a time when a small squad of fifth grade boys and myself mounted a successful rescue operation to save our captured comrade from a band of malevolent fifth grade girls. We ambushed them just as they were about to drag him into their cootie-infested bathroom lair. After a short but fierce battle, we managed to sweep him away to the sanctuary of the schoolyard basketball courts. Needless to say, it was a great victory in our struggle against the nefarious Washington School girls.

Little did we know it was all in vain; puberty was destined to make us their slaves.

But I digress.

Lisa Jaffe at work with English Learners.

This time I wasn’t there to engage in counter-insurgency operations; I was there to learn how to teach children English.

Prior to departure, WorldTeach requires all volunteers to accumulate twenty-five hours of experience working in an English Learner classroom. I chose to complete this shadowing Lisa Jaffe, an English Learner teacher at Washington School, my old elementary school.

Although I had acquired a modest amount of teaching experience over the years from coming in to help my mom in her first grade classroom, I had never worked with English Learner children. My experience shadowing Lisa was, in a word, awesome.

Since she works with EL students from multiple grade levels, I was able to work with a wide range of students, ranging from kindergarten all the way up to fifth grade. The majority spoke Spanish, but there were also kids who spoke Turkish, Russian, Japanese and Korean. Most of the kids spoke at least a little English, so our focus was on improving their pronunciation and reading abilities.

Artwork provided by Yours Truly.

Typical lessons were engaging, hands-on and fun—something I learned is very important to the learning process when working with children. For example, we were teaching one group of students about parts of the face, so we gave them a large piece of construction paper with the outline of a face and had them draw eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc.

We gave another group of students a piece of paper and had them write a few sentences about what they would sell if they were a peddler (yeah, it’s a politically correct term) and then illustrate it. I displayed my own artistic brilliance by illustrating my own scene as an example for the children. Unfortunately, this said brilliance hasn’t evolved much since the second grade, but it was apparently good enough to impress my students to the point of fighting over who got to take the masterpiece home.

As we worked on our art projects, the students asked me how old I was. I asked them to guess. They said 65. I asked them why they thought I was so old, to which they responded, “Because you are really tall.” Go figure.

van Gogh ain't got nothing on me!

 The highlight of the week came when I got to take a group of underprivileged students to participate in Operation School Bell, an annual charity event that provides school clothing to over 900 children in San Mateo County every year. The program's goal is to provide the basic need of clothing to enhance the self-esteem of underprivileged children and help them succeed in school and beyond.

The kids were thrilled because they thought of the outing as a field trip (and were too young to understand their situation). Lisa and I took the kids to the Operation School Bell location a few blocks from Washington School. The site resembled a mini Goodwill and each child was able to pick out new t-shirts, pants, a jacket, socks, underwear and a pair of shoes. In addition to the clothes, every child was also able to choose a book to bring home, which I thought was particularly awesome.

I had a relatively awkward moment when one of the elderly volunteers operating the site asked me if one of the children was my son, but other than that it was an unbelievably rewarding experience.

Operation School Bell Facility

For kids used to worn hand-me-downs, the prospect of having a new wardrobe to call their own brought a mile-wide smile to their already-excited faces.

As I watched the kids proudly clutch their newfound spoils, I remembered why I am taking this crazy chance in the first place; to help children like them have a shot at a better life—because no matter what station you are born into in this world, everyone deserves a chance to dance.