Tales From a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

You're Telling Me There's Music Other Than Salsa?

This week, I taught what I felt was the most enriching lesson so far to these kids. Seventh graders were learning about musical instruments, so I told the teacher I wanted to do a lesson about musical genres popular outside of Colombia. I started the lesson by asking the kids what musical genres they knew. Of course, they started with the few that are popular here: Salsa, Cumbia, Vallenato, Reggaeton, Champeta, etc. Then I asked them about any others, perhaps outside of here that aren't so popular in Colombia. I got a few responses. One said rock, one said rap, more than one said opera, which confused me. But for the most part, that exhausted their knowledge of "world music." I put many more genres on the board and explained a bit about each one. Although it was technically an English class, I spoke mostly in Spanish. I really wanted the kids to understand and broaden their horizons, if that meant that they didn't learn much English one day. I was a bit dismayed at how unforgiving these kids were if I made a mistake in speaking Spanish. Now, I'm not fluent, but I speak decent Spanish. But whenever I made a mistake, every student at the same time corrected me, in the most condescending tone possible. Hey, at least I'm trying. Despite having 7 years of English class, these kids for the most part can't formulate a simple sentence if their life depended on it, but I'm always encouraging and non-judgmental. I definitely don't get the same in return.

I then described a bit about each genre. When I got to Blues and mentioned slavery in American, my teacher added a few interesting pieces of history. She told the class that back then, slaves weren't allowed to sit in the front of buses until Martin Luther King Jr became president and fought for their rights. After I made the longest sigh ever, I started correcting all the things wrong with that statement. After some American history damage control, I played short examples of each musical genre to the students. No matter what I played, during each song, there are at least a couple kids that get up in their seat and start dancing typical, ridiculous little kid dances, even to Beethoven. I found this fairly amusing. Next, I would call on volunteers to come to the front, where I would play a song and they would have two guesses to guess what genre of music it is. I kept it pretty easy for them, and they performed mediocre to fair in guessing the genre, which is about all I can ask for considering these kids have never heard this music before.

I Have This Crazy New Idea You Should Try: Planning Your Lessons

It is more or less a given that schools in Barranquilla don't really get down to serious teaching until after Carnaval. So that means that kids are in school for over a month before teachers decide that they'll start actually teaching. Good, quality learning time. One of the many focuses of the Peace Corps here is to try to implement lesson planning among the teachers, who prefer the "just wing it" method. I was lucky enough to have my principal set up an hour and a half each week where I can sit down with the two teachers I work with and plan lessons for the upcoming week. It seems perfect. So every week the teachers and I sit down, focus on planning, and get quite a bit done. Hahaha, oh, my crazy imagination. For the first month I was mostly observing classes, which means that I watch a class for a bit, until a teacher calls on me to repeat an lesson they had just done, but in my swarthy American accent. And during this month, the teachers said that it was the time that they do diagnostics, so they don't really need to plan anything. So these first few sessions involved the teachers meeting with me and borrowing my laptop to work on other projects or check their e-mail or, I don't know, shop online for Faberge eggs or something. Needless to say, not much got accomplished.

Finally Carnaval rolled around and people decided that they should, you know, like teach and junk. But not before they celebrated Ash "Thursday." The Wednesday after Carnaval was Ash Wednesday, but there was a school meeting, so that meant no school. But principal nun couldn't let a prime Catholic holiday like that just pass by, so the school celebrated Ash Wednesday on Thursday. It consisted of two two-hour masses, one for each half of the school, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. They should have been hour-long masses, but both times the priest was an hour late.

Once they got that out of the way, I was told that it is time that I start actually co-teaching. Now, the Peace Corps says that I should take at about six weeks to observe before I start co-teaching. This was a month in, so I've done a bit of observing, but I wasn't expecting them to just straight up tell me that I'm going to start next week. I could have thrown a fit, and asked them "Who you think you are, telling me what to do? I'm an American, for pete's sake. No one tells me what to do." But I saw this as an opportunity to actually get these people to get on track with lesson planning and actual teaching, so I complied. Now in our planning sessions, I feel it is a major accomplishment if they just tell me what they are going to teach the next week so I can  be prepared and maybe think of an activity or small lesson. Baby steps.

During our previous planning session,out of nowhere, a counterpart asked me why I don't believe in god. at the moment, I was not expecting the question, but overall I was surprised I was not grilled sooner over this, seeing as I'm an atheist and I'm working in what is basically a Catholic school. Our conversation went as such:

Me: I believe in science. To me, I find it much more reliable than believing in god. Plus, I don't like organized religion.
Her: OK, so you believe in evolution, right? You believe we came from monkeys, right?
Me: Well, apes to be exact, but yes, I do.
Her: OK, well, what about that tree? Did that also evolve from apes?
Me: No, that's ridiculous.

She then crossed her arms and gave me this smug look, like she felt she just won. Now, we were conversing in English, which is her second language. Although she is a fairly decent English speaker, much better than I speak Spanish, topics with such gravity and complexity as this require a high level of verbal manipulation to get your point across, which she did not have instant access to. I told her to think about her argument some more and come back to me with some new material for her case.

Carnaval aka Where Did All These White People Come From?

Carnaval is a pretty big deal here in Barranquilla. And saying that is still a bit of an understatement. It's hard to describe how much people here care about Carnaval and how important an event it is for them. To put it in an American perspective, it would be similar to if Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Super Bowl, and Shark Week were all on the same four day weekend. So yeah, kind of a big deal. And it's not just the four days preceding the beginning of lent that it is celebrated. Events for Carnaval start sometime in mid-December and happen every weekend until the end of Carnaval. So by the end of Carnaval, I was glad it was over. A man can only take so much Cumbia and the same five songs that they play on the radio on repeat.

On the eve of Carnaval, many schools have a celebration at the school, where they usually have songs, dances, and elect kings and queens of each grade. I assume that it was because of my novelty that I was chosen as the King of Carnaval at the school. I was excited for this, because I had a few dance moves in my pocket that I was going to bust out Soul Train style and melt these kids faces off. They always play a music called Cumbia here for these types of events and it's not too hard, as a foreigner, to impress locals by learning a couple simple dance moves So I showed up to school the morning of, in my bright orange Carnaval shirt, ready to party. When I entered the school, I was greeted by some odd looks on many gloomy faces. My main counterpart told me that the student who had been diagnosed with Leukemia a week ago, stunningly still has Leukemia. "What?!? How can she still have Leukemia? You have been praying, right?" is what she expected me to say. When I didn't say that, she let me know that the principal, who is a nun, and not the cool flying kind, decided to cancel the school's Carnaval, and instead there would be an hour and a half long mass in the girls honor. Plus, I was told I was told that I need to change my shirt. What was I thinking wearing a bright orange shirt to a mass, you know, considering that the principal didn't tell anyone about the change in schedule until people arrived to the school. I felt bad for the parents that spent money on nice Carnaval costumes for their children only to have it cancelled at the last second. Now, don't think me insensitive. A few kind words and perhaps a moment of silence before the Carnaval celebration would have been perfect. I just believe cancelling this big celebration for this kids is a bit harsh, but hey, what do I know? I'm just a gringo.

With that said, the first day of Carnaval is great. Everybody drinks most of the day. There are parades, including a huge called Batalla de las Flores where, in order to see anything, you need to drop, from what I hear, the equivalent of 30-40 American dollars for a seat in the oppressing hot midday sun. So I caught some great views of the tops of peoples heads in the parade while I stood in the shade, drinking a nice cold beer, and watching people burst into flames in the bleachers.

A very rudimentary outline of Carnaval events consist of parades during the day and small concerts or drum circles at night. A note here, when I say drum circle, it is the exact opposite of drum circles that I, and perhaps you are familiar with. My experience with drum circles usually involved at least 10-20 people, each with their own drum, in a circle, and maybe a few people really "tasting the music" dancing in the center. Here, it refers to an event where there is a small band of about five drummers or less on a center stage, and over a hundred people dancing and doing their own thing around the outside.

An event that some friends and I frequented at night was called The Carnavalada. A city block was blocked off and they had a stage set up where various bands and acts performed all night. We went the first night where I was thrilled to see a band from Belgium to perform. You see, up until then, I had only been exposed to the three or four types of music popular in Barranquilla, every second of every day, whether I like it or not, since the day I arrived here. So this was a great change of pace. And they played great music. Kind of upbeat gypsy-ish. Similar to Devotchka or Gogol Bordello perhaps. It's a good thing there were so many foreigners there, because the locals probably would not have enjoyed it, because it is different.

Speaking of foreigners, I just couldn't grasp how many lighter skinned people there were. Barranquilla is quite homogenous in terms of people. Mostly darker skinned Colombians or even darker skinned Afro-Colombians. Needless to say, I usually stick out quite a bit when I make my way around town. During Carnaval, however, many tourists migrate in since it is the second biggest Carnaval outside the one in Brazil. Many of these tourists are from other, more southern South American countries such as Argentina and Chile. Occasionally I would start talking to a stranger that I was sure was Caucasian in English, only to be returned with a confused stare or confused Spanish. Whoops. Lost that round of  "Caucasian or Argentinian."

Fresh Turds. Get 'em while they're hot.

This guy is basically charging two cents to cross this flimsy bridge. Touche, modern day troll.


Even Star Wars reject Blue Jar Jar Binks is welcome here.

We had it made in the shade.