Chapter 3 - The Messengers of the Sun

September 1^st. Back to the Funhouse. After a long summer full of graduation, prom, fiestas, goodbyes and bienvenidos I began my volunteer service in the Colegio Educativo Suazapawa on a Monday. Very fitting.

This is my school:

The Colegio is beautifully situated in the hills outside of Duitama. It crawls up into one of these green, rocky, steep mountainsides like a traumatized man in the embryo position. I promised myself that I climb it before I leave, but sneakers won’t be enough equipment. The students come to Suaza, how the school is commonly known, from three different towns: Duitama, Nobsa and Sogamoso. Home to about three hundred students, they are taught in flat white rows of blocks, each row a little bit higher in the mountain than the previous. The school grounds also include two soccer fields, a playground, two tennis courts, a pool, a garden, a pond, a family of ducks, various cows and goats, cats, a library and an auditorium. However, most of the sporting fields are kept in a rather appalling condition and cannot be compared to those in Europe or the States. Suaza is a private school, only twenty years old, whose reputation at the country’s universities is bad; one says that many of the graduates have serious trouble entering higher education.

These are the school colors:

White for Peace.

Green for Nature.

Red for Love.

This is what I do:

I am a teaching assistant for English. What I really do, I have yet to discover. The first weeks I have been a teacher for the kids ranging from kindergarden to fifth grade. In all classes, but with the smallest ninos y ninas, I generally collaborate with another English teacher named Vicky, who has been at Suaza since its founding. The few hours I spend in transition I teach with a wonderful woman named Janeth, who is one of those teachers you simply cannot imagine having chosen any other occupation in this world.

Although the students start very, very early practicing other languages, the standard of English is simply devastating and it seems the older they get they are less and less capable or willing to put two words or more together to a sentence. And I haven’t heard any student speaking two or more sentences in English. All hours also follow the scheme and guidelines of the English book used at the school and there is little room for improvisation. Normally, Vicky and I change the spot in front of the blackboard after each exercise, she corrects homework and I correct homework and I help a lot with pronunciation, spelling, style and grammar. Nevertheless, she remains the person of authority in class. Partly because I am simply too young to be a great person of authority for the kids and partly because my Spanish is in the end not yet sufficient to explain everything or install silence in class by uttering slight hints of intimidation or threats of disciplinary actions.

The following weeks I will start to glimpse into the older grades as well, working closely with two teachers named Sofia and Bijan. Sofia is a very beautiful Colombian woman whose smiles could make any day; Bijan is originally from Arabia and about the most popular and widely respected man on campus. He limps, too. Sixth to Eleventh grade, that’s how many there are in Colombia, have one conversation class a week meant for practicing talking English only. Those I will help teaching. But this is another chapter.

These are my students:

Last Monday Vicky was gone to visit her sick mother in Bogota and in consequence I had to teach all classes myself. Chaos. All the time: ¨Where is Vicky? Why is she not here? She could have explained that to us! In Spanish! ¨. We got to where I wanted the students to be at the end of the day, but my voice became sore and more than once I threatened students I would have to write to their parents (one of them even cried; in a sadistic way a very satisfying emotion). Remember this about students in Suaza: They are never silent. They are never tired. Nobody raises his hand. When students want something from you, they make sure they get it by walking up to you and tearing at your sleeve.

Don’t be tempted to judge too early, there are good times and good students as well. Students hugging you at the beginning of each class just because you are there. Students that don´t care that you don´t understand a word of what they are saying because with the genius of innocence they know that it is such a small part of life and that talking is not equal to communication. Students who show you proudly how they have finished the latest sentence correctly and you must smile at this accomplishment, theirs and yours. There is Camillo in kindergarden who tries to jump up on you every time he sees you. There are five kids climbing onto you while watching a Disney movie because it is just more comfortable. There is Caterina in second grade and her eyes suddenly make you understand why people ever hunted for gold or flowers or any kind of obsession whatsoever. There are the girls from fifth grade who give you a little chicken on Secret Santa which strangely is in September in Colombia. There is Carlos in Eighth who says you look a little like Harry Potter and you grin and say: ¨That is absolutely right! ¨. And on goes the list.

The problem remains, the student do not seem to have a genuine interest in knowledge or its pursuit. I cannot figure out if the solution to this problem is to be found at home or in school. However, it has to be solved one day or this will be a very long year in Suaza.

Those are great moments, too:

When you play soccer in a game of teachers against students, but it is not like regular soccer, it is called microsoccer and the ball is much smaller and the game is much faster. And you wonder why Brazil and not Colombia wins the World Cup and why none of the other players sweats as much as you do. They just laugh.

Or when you go out with all the other teachers celebrating the twenty year anniversary of the Colegio and you drive to the restaurant in a bus with green lights and you feel like a wave in the Pacific is going to swallow you. And all the female professors stand up and start dancing and you are about ten years younger than anybody else and you think to yourself: Has anyone ever counted how much life there is? Out there?

Or when the principal tells you she loves you and you are not sure if she really knows what she is saying.

Or when you eat lunch with the others and you recognize what you already knew. People are not so different after all.

Or when you have the blues and spend too much time thinking about home and realize that you don´t believe in God and are blessed nonetheless.

Or when the bus driver waits for you at 6:55 in the morning.

Or when the school coordinator shows you a picture of the Buckingham palace, a cheesy imitation, and you say yes, you have been there once in a different live.

Or when the school dance teacher asks you if you would like to participate in a dance performance of the teachers during cultural week and you say yes because you didn’t understand everything. And you find yourself practicing with three other teachers some Mexican dance. And then it’s Friday, the day of the performance and you get your clothes and you wear a biblical sombrero and the women look like double-rainbows and then you step on the stage and the entire school is watching you and your third step is wrong but you just don´t care and in the middle of the dance you find yourself yelling with glee because life is so surreal and beautiful and tragic and you are the hero of your own story and you know that life gives you things just to take them away from you and that tomorrow you are vulnerable again but right now you just don’t give a fuck. Those are great moments, you know.

I began my volunteer service in the Colegio Educativo Suazapawa on a Monday. Very fitting. We met the principal in her office. Suazapawa is taken from the indigo language, she tells you and points at the schools banner behind her desk. Sua means sun and Zapawa means messengers.