Dreaming of America

I often catch myself daydreaming about America. These dreams are usually not made up of anything fantastic, just something I miss about the States. Sitting at Tracey’s Tavern on a Friday night with friends. Watching the Bears. Driving a car. Going to a restaurant.

In the beginning, there were often days were I found myself saying, God, I cannot wait to be back in America.  Days when a class would drive me crazy, or when I wouldn’t understand what someone was trying to say, or when I felt I couldn’t express what I wanted to say.  These days are happening less and less frequently now, but I still sometimes think about what a relief it will be to be in a country where I can understand what everyone is saying; not only understand, but understand without even trying to understand. 

But there are also days when I think, How will I ever be able to handle America again?  I have never been in a traffic jam in São Nicolau.  Never.  There aren’t enough cars.  There is, more or less, only one road.  I have everything I need within walking distance.  And I think that I have achieved a level of independence here that I will never be able to achieve in America.  I have come and lived in place where I knew none of the language (and for those of you that have never experienced this, it is a truly humbling, terrifying thing) and I have made friends and successfully worked as a teacher.  Most likely, never again will I report to work and confuse people trying to ask where my classroom is.

You learn to laugh at yourself here.  I think I’ve always been able to do that, but here you learn to do it on a different level.  You make mistakes everyday.  You say something like “Today were are going to learn a new thing” in Creole because you don’t know the words for ‘material’ or ‘topic’ yet, and the entire class starts to laugh uncontrollably and you are left to wonder if you have just made an inadvertent sexual reference or just not made any sense at all.

I confused words like crazy in the beginning and often still do.  One day I was teaching my 8th grade, level two English students how to write Haiku poems.  I tried to explain the structure in Creole, and did a pretty good job, but I ended up switching two words.  I thought I had said the following in Creole:

“When writing a Haiku poem, the most important thing to remember is the syllables.  The first line is made up of five syllables.  The second line, seven syllables.  The third line, five syllables.”

I noticed my students laughing and trying to hide it–covering their mouths with their hands, looking down into their notebooks–but then someone started to laugh out loud and the entire class lost it. 

“What’s so funny?” I asked.  And then I realized I hadn’t been saying the word for syllables–silabas–I had said cebolas–or in English, onions.  I started to laugh pretty hard, and the class, seeing me, lost it.  People were practically on the floor with laughter.

But slowly, with time, I started to understand more and more.  One day, halfway through the year, I noticed that when I told a specific student to be quiet and pay attention he was not responding “Yes, sir” like I had thought he had been.  Instead, he had been saying all that time, “Yes, mam.”  

Another day in class I noticed the kids teasing a girl and saying that she had just farted.  I went to tell the kids to stop, but before I could the girl picked up her ruler and threw it across the room and hit one of her tormentors in the face.  I had to kick her out of class (the common form of discipline here), citing the rule about not throwing things inside the classroom, and when she left I turned to the entire class and said in Creole, “Don’t say fart.”  They uproared with laughter.  Me saying fart in their native language…well, I think it was too much for them to handle.

And if I’m not switching words in class, I’m doing it in the grocery store.  Asking for a can of pineapples when I really mean mushrooms; a bag of sugar when I really need salt.

And even though it is often tiresome, and my mistakes often seem endless, there is an incredible reward that comes with the language barrier–that moment in which you break it, that moment in which you finally express your point or understand what is being said to you.   And even though there are days when I think, I cannot wait to be back where I understand everything, that is probably one of the things I will miss most about that experience.  Everyday there is struggle, and often, because of it, there is reward.  It makes this experience a roller coaster, and a rather intense one.

We were told at somepoint during Pre-Service Training that studies have found that stress levels for a Peace Corps Volunteer during his\her first three months at site are on par with getting a divorce or losing a loved one.

I have no real comment on that, I just found it interesting and wanted to relay it forward.

Readjusting to life in the States is supposed to be just as hard or even harder than the initialadjustment here.  And I’m sure part of that struggle has do withthe sudden lack of intensity volunteers grown accustomed to living with abroad.  From what I’ve read, another part of it has to do with what was once home, is suddenly foreign.  Washing machines, traffic, the American hustle and bustle, more than three beers to choose from–all these things will be new to me.

Still, I like to think about the States, and little by little, I think I am preparing myself for my return home in August or September of 2010.  I sometimes find myself listening to the song “Homecoming” by Kanye West and daydreaming about my return (Can you say Chi-City?  Chi-City?  Chi-City?….I’m coming home again).  I like to imagine a summer afternoon spent at a bar downtown–beers on tap, cheeseburgers, the lazy him of the Cubs game being broadcast over the television in the background, that stifling Midwestern heat, etc.  I’m trying to think about what I want to do when I get back and right now my two favorite ideas are composed of the realistic–going back to school to become a special ed teacher–and the fantastic–a cross-country bike trip (Seattle to Miami or Maine to Arizona?).  But there is plenty of time to figure these things out.  After all, there are more immediate plans I need to make.  Like which islands I am going to try and see this summer and what on earth I am going to do about that classroom of 30 screaming 15-year-olds.