Clutural Adaptation 1
I’ve arrived in a city called Puerto Cabezas, a day before the opening of the conference that has brought me here and I’ve found myself with the seldom corresponding time and disposition to chronicle my recent goings-on.
So I ask myself, “What’s there to say about what I’ve done since last I wrote?” My immediate response is to list the myriad projects that I’ve been working on or have completed since then. (In fact, this is where such a list was to be found in an earlier draft of the post).
Still, I’m warned to not focus so much on the tangible achievements of my time living in Kukra Hill a) for want of any to point to and therefore an exercise is self-induced depression and b) for fear missing the whole point. So here’s my shot at reviewing a less-tangible hurdle that I’ve faced and strode, jumped, or clawed my way over in the nine months that I’ve lived in Nicaragua.
Cultural adjustment is a process the end to which I believe myself to be approaching. I say this because over the past several weeks I’ve noticed a change in my behavior as I go about my daily routines that has found me less anxious, or apprehensive about my interactions with the various members of my community. Be it at school with other teachers, at home with family members, or in/around other places in the community with the various people with whom I interact, I seem to have developed a means of interacting which, although distinct from how I interact with Americans or Brazilians, has nonetheless become familiar, comfortable, and predictable.
I think that I’ve come to understand with better clarity how and why things get done. Take the example of two weeks ago—time flies!—when I was giving the HIVaids/video-editing workshop the photos of which preceded this post. Tuesday and Wednesday, the two days in which we focused on HIVaids training with the group of youth went off without a hitch and as planned. The presenters that I’d invited to participate all showed up. The space reserved was available—sometimes it gets co-opted by the mayor’s office without regard to conflicting reservations—and suitable for the purposes of the workshop. Even the kids showed up on time.
Come Thursday, the first of the two days dedicated to video-editing training, and it seems that all’s as well prepared at possible. I wake up, open my bedroom windows wide to let in the light, and call the trainer coming from Bluefields and confirm that he and the necessary computers will be arriving in time to set up the equipment. The video to edit is prepared and has already been converted to the correct format. The space is still available (!). Showered and dressed I turn off the light to leave my room but nothing happens. I flip the switch the other way, still nothing. One more time, and still nothing…because the power’s gone out! The computers are useless.
Asking my host mother about the light as I leave the house, she tells me that they’ve just announced not to expect power back until in the evening.
I remained more or less composed as I left the house in spite of the fact that the workshop that I’d been planning since January had hit a serious speed bump. I called a friend who had helped with the two preceding days of training and he confirmed my mother’s report.
Fortunately, the problem wasn’t too difficult to fix. After consulting with my friend, I went from place to place in town to determine if there was an unused power generator to be found and if the proprietors would allow me to use it for free. There wasn’t.
What there was was the generator of the local NGO that consented to allow me to connect the computers for the workshop to their generator. Still, they didn’t have the space to host a group of twenty-plus youths, three trainers, and five computers. Next door, however, the local credit cooperative did have the space and from there it was just a question of finding enough beefy extension cables to set up the computers at the cooperative and connect them to the power from the NGO. Luckily, there were cables to be found and the workshop went off hitch-free.
The part of the series of events that I found myself reflecting upon after the fact wasn’t that we’d managed to coordinate the logistics at the last minute in order to continue with the workshop. Rather, it was that I was able to do so calmly. I didn’t break into a panic, didn’t raise my voice or rouse my temper, didn’t imagine what a failure I’d be seen as, didn’t worry about losing the confidence of the youths. I didn’t even wonder what the hell was the point of all the time that I’d spent working to arrange the whole goddamn thing and jump through all the many hoops in order to request financing from Peace Corps.
Instead, after the second time I that flipped the light switch in my room and the shadow of the idea crossed my mind that there would be no power and therefore no workshop, I understood, maybe for the first time, that sometimes some things work out and sometimes not. Sometimes you’ve got to live with it but here, where things seem to work out less frequently than in the United States or Brazil, it helps to have friends and it helps to be flexible with others for when you need them to be flexible back.
very nice marty – thanks for sharing