7-8-10
Today, I gave my first charla in Spanish. It went off well, considering I forgot what day it was, forgot my notes, and the cat (chicken?) vomited (crapped?) on my only Peace Corps polo.
But let me rewind a bit here. I’ll get to that.
I spent last weekend in San Salvador with the other volunteers for the 4th of July. I had planned with the school director to give a charla to the school kids about nutrition on Thursday. I figured that gave me plenty of time to prepare, and I had it all mapped out – Monday I would plan the lesson, Tuesday I would go into Chalate and buy the materials I needed, and Wednesday I’d put together the visuals and practice the actual charla. It wasn’t until it was Tuesday night that I remembered that I had returned from San Salvador on Monday, not Sunday, so I had only the next day to both shop for and prepare the charla. Well, at least I discovered this Tuesday and not Thursday. Thank God for small blessings, right?
After getting back from shopping yesterday, I spent the afternoon and evening drawing, coloring, and cutting out different kinds of food to use during my lesson. It took about three hours, but by around 6:30 my lesson was ready (including a puppet named PinPon), and I had time to make dinner and then spend my evening hours practicing. Upon going into my room for something, I discovered – how do I even describe it? A giant pile of SOMETHING on my duffel bag, makeup case, and polo, which I had laid out for the next day.
Once, when I was 18, I was babysitting my then-infant niece, Emmy. In the middle of the night, after feeding her what I thought was a bottle of the special formula that her sensitive stomach could tolerate, I put her over my shoulder to burp her. She promptly vomited the whole bottle onto her, me, and the rocking chair. I had to change every stitch of clothing I was wearing, if that tells you how much that little baby was carrying in her tummy. And there isn’t a mama out there reading this that doesn’t know how nasty formula spit-up both looks and smells.
Whatever I found in my room last night – it was worse than that. It was the nastiest pile of nasty I’ve ever seen in my LIFE.
There was some debate, when I showed it to my family, what kind of animal it came from. Part of it was white, resembling either bird shit or cat vomit. But the other half looked like either bat or cat shit. But I’ve had bats crap in my room before, and they’re tiny little things that don’t produce much. No, if this was either bat or chicken shit (which I’ll admit it looked like more than anything), it was more than one. It was the crap of twenty. Those chickens would’ve had to systematically march into my room, launch themselves the three feet on top of my table, and crap. One at a time. It’s not that I would put it past them to do such thing – those chickens are malicious little bastards, and seem to harbor a particular spite against me ever since I started enjoying them daily for lunch in my soup. But I think I would’ve noticed a full-frontal, chicken-shit assault on my room.
That leaves that cat. I’ve discovered that cat in my room before, snuggling into my duffel bag in that exact spot. Circumstantial evidence, but enough for my family and I to come to the general consensus that she’s the guilty party.
What exactly she did, we still haven’t decided. I’m pretty sure that she both vomited and crapped in the same place, which requires a special kind of bitchy that can only be achieved by a cat or Jerry Springer talk show participant. In any case, I spent the next 40 minutes scrubbing, rinsing, scrubbing, rinsing, scrubbing, and rinsing my shirt and duffel bag. After that, it was already 7:30 and I was starving. I picked this convenient night to begin cooking for myself (I’ve finally tired of the greasy eggs and beans), and I sat down 20 minutes later to wheat pasta topped with a homemade spaghetti sauce of peppers, tomatoes, onion, garlic, oregano, and basil. I’ll admit, such yummy Italian tastes after five months unvarying, over-salted meals (“But it adds the FLAVOR!”) calmed me somewhat. I finally sat down to practice my charla at about 8:30.
I was asleep within the hour. What? People go to bed early in the campo.
I got up this morning at 6:30, determined to have a decent cup of coffee before I headed off to embarrass myself in Spanish. I got to try out my new percolator, and had my first cup of brewed coffee in months. Things were looking up. Even my polo shirt was clean and more or less dry because (miracle of miracles), it didn’t rain last night. I grabbed everything I needed for the charla and left. Except my notes. Those I forgot, naturally.
Fortunately, I’ve done a little teaching, and I’m good at winging things. I did the lesson for the younger students first, and despite my nerves, it went pretty well – in large part because kids are willing to forgive any mistakes in your delivery, as long as you’ve got puppets. It took about 50 minutes, and then the students had a recess/food break. After the break, I did the lesson for the older students, and it went even better. I had loosened up a lot, and I’ve always been better with teaching older kids anyway. Plus, I’m hilarious even in Spanish, which is good news.
So I feel like I’ve started my work here. I’ve been sitting around on my laurels for five months here, but now I finally have something that I can point to and say, “I DID that.” Of course, the kids were still mixing up the food groups at the end of the lesson, but we can work on that. I’m coming back next Wednesday to give another lesson. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.
I’m gonna call this one a win.
