Wandering Shepard: Feria de Cientifica

I hadn’t written recently, because to be bluntly honest, things have been relatively low key here in la villa. I have mostly been just dealing with transitioning back to life in a third world country. Physically its been super easy re-adapting to the slow rhythm of life and the “intricacies” of Nica culture. (Read daily frustrations). And what frightened me the most, speaking Spanish, came easy enough as well after almost three weeks of ignoring it. After a day or two, I felt like I was right in the swing of things with my language, or at least at the point where I was before leaving, instead of weeks behind. The image that comes to my mind is the transformation of Kevin Spacey’s character at the end of the Usual Suspects: (spoiler alert) the camera pans to his legs walking, and initially its with a gimp. But slowly that gimp becomes less and less noticeable, until its totally gone. I was a little handicapped at first, but after a little bit of walking, it disappeared. I hope that metaphor didn’t offend anyone.

What proved more difficult was the mental transition that comes with being surrounded by all your family and best friends for three weeks, and then by no one: the feeling of being completely alone. The combination of semi food poisoning and a relatively tough workout pushed me into delirium one night, and there I was in my back porch, panting for breath, surrounded by darkness (the lights had gone out). For the first time since arriving in Nicaragua, a single ominous thought popped into my head: I have never been more isolated and alone in my life. I’m sure it’s a little troubling for you all to hear that, and trust me, it was troubling to think. But after pushing myself farther into my work and a new outside project I’m working on, I soon overcame that ominous feeling, and now find myself back on track.

In fact, today there was a little excitement in my life, a change of pace so to say. Today was the Municipal Science Fair, and yours truly was a judge. I’d be lying to you if I said I had high expectations for my students, but as always seems to be the case, they pull things (minor miracles) together in the last minute, and all of them put on decent presentations. There were five categories: Tourism, AgroIndustry, Industry, Environmental Education, and Transformation of Energy, and each of the 7 high schools in the area could enter up to three teams of each. Lucky for me and the rest of the other judges, only two of the 7 institutes entered more than one team, otherwise we would’ve been there for 12 hours. As it was, I spent 8 hours at this competition where only 11 teams competed. The problems lies in a little thing called time. I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but Nicaraguans work on their own time tables (what is convenient for them), and often don’t arrive to meetings until 30 – 60 minutes after the appointed times. The fair was scheduled to start at 8:30, so naturally I showed up at 8:00 with a newspaper and too prepare myself. I hadn’t received any sort of grading rubric, and wanted to be familiar with it before making any evaluations. Well, the last team didn’t arrive until 9:45, so we started promptly at 10:00 am. That folks, is what we call “Nica time”. Good thing I brought that paper, right? And although the presentations weren’t supposed to last more than 20 minutes, many went well over half an hour. Go figure. And that accounts for why I spent 8 hours judging science projects. But truthfully I’m not upset, because I found the whole event super interesting, and surprised by the insight of some of my students.

Asides from seemingly doing some legit research, what caught my eye was how the students, from all groups, no matter the topic, consistently made comments about protecting and cleaning the environment, and using products that are cien por ciento natural. In the states, that’s a no brainer; we ought to be taking care of the world around us. But down here, the streets are littered with trash, and people are burning plastic in front of their house, and drink soda/use fatty oil to kook every day. In fact, from a young age, kids are taught to throw their plastic snack bags or “juice boxes” out of the bus window. Picture a toddler, standing on his mothers lap on the bus, on his tip toes, trying to throw a Doritos’s bag onto the side of the bus. It makes me cringe. So its encouraging to hear the youth actively taking a stand in their surrounding environment. But at the same time I’m skeptical, because I’ve seen these same kids on the stage shouting for a greener world throwing their snack bags on the ground just days prior. I’m hopeful that this is the beginning of a generational change, and a more conscience Nikaragua generation. But I guess like all change, it takes time more than anything. One plastic bag at a time, right?

More than being an interesting day of presentations, this also probed to be a very good test of my domination of the Spanish language. I guess domination is the wrong word in English, but the Spanish word “dominar” means to master, or strongly know a skill or ability, and I instantly think of dominate instead of master. I guess the proper word for it is a false cognate. So after 8 hours of no English, I was delighted to learn that I understood practically everything stated, and was able to ask some more complicated questions (and be understood). It’s refreshing to know and reflect on the idea that I’m no longer a lost little duckling, wandering around trying to get by on broken Spanish. So at the end of the day, I also got that going for me, which is nice.

And to end on a funny night, almost every Nicaraguan I’ve met cannot pronounce my last name. Despite spelling out my name repeatedly for the Ministry of Education, who hosted the event, I got to my judges seat to find my name spelled out in the following way:

Samuel Chapers, Cuerpo de Paz

Got a good chuckle out of that one. Enjoy the photos!