Guateca Summer School 2011

Tekuru is asleep, in the other bed. The neighborhood rock band is blasting out "La Bamba" in electric instruments out the back at a distance that makes the volume pleasant. 10:00 PM and they just got started serenading. I had a cup of coffee this morning. My understanding was that there was no caffeine in the coffee here... I drank it last year. Today, I was wrong.... it almost killed Emily me this morning. I was shaking and decided to run up the mountainside to reboot. That was a good idea, but at 10,000', I hacked for the rest of the day.

Ly-Lan arrived 2 hours ago and had dinner with Tekuru. It was a relief. The last weeks, days, hours and last minutes before we left SLO were difficult between us in the fray as Tekuru, the students, and I got ready to leave. In any case, we both seem to be in a different space now, and I’m thankful.

I'm thankful that Jamie is better. She's been very sick and spent about 3 days in bed with what I was beginning to think was Typhoid.

The students are amazing and inspiring. I am doing my best to teach energy in Spanish to students who didn't until yesterday understand exponents. At one point during lecture, Brian stood up in front of me and stated squarely that half my students didn't understand the lecture - and that likely all the San Pablo students didn't. Feeling conflict, I responded that I was going to finish the lecture nonetheless. Afterwards, Brian expressed concern that half the students didn't understand the material and wanted to know what I was going to do about it. I told him that half the students DID understand the material and he had 3 hours in front of him while I was in Tacana opening up a bank account. I returned in the evening to find a chaotic swarm of learning. On one side of the room, Brian was at the whiteboard with a cocoon of Guatemalan students around him gesticulating passionately. Afterwards, he excitedly reported all the energy and physics material he'd covered with them. The other students, especially Wendy expressed excitement with their accomplishment. I shook Brian’s hand and told him that my incompetence had made him a God. Today, I just couldn’t explain the full graph of earth energy flows. When I’m fatigued, my Spanish is the first to go. It was slow and tedious, and I felt empathy for the students’ struggle. I gave up and finished in English. Cami speaks lovely Spanish, and she happily picked up after class with the San Pablo students, and am grateful for her help.

All our students are helping in the local school several hours a week with everything from English to Physics to Dance.

Tekuru is a constant source of joy and inspiration. This is not their summer, so Tekuru is going to school with 29 second graders including Maitay who we live with. She has a school uniform that Joni’s mother made for her and has been teaching English. I noticed that Maitay's notebook had notes taken from lessons that Tekuru gave. The girls put stickems all over the house labeling everything with English and Spanish words. One note on the bathroom door says “bano = kitchen”, and confused poor Jamie in her fevered haze… we laughed ourselves sick. Tekuru found a large toad and scooped it up. All the girls fled, and the boys ran in from the soccer field to see it as she basked in the attention.

I’m grateful for the company and insight of Toby, the Ag specialist we snagged in the eleventh hour. He is learning ferociously about every aspect of the language, life, land and culture, weaving his way into the social fabric of the community.

So, I look around in amazement at what we’ve created by leaving a space, allowing the ambient flow in. As with parenting, I am haunted by the glaring incompetence of my every action. Then I see the result and recognize glorious success. I feel daunting responsibility, but then am aware that I am not responsible for the outcome. I am only here. And I am grateful to be here.