Blessed are those who see beautiful things in humble places where others see nothing.
-Camille Pissarro
I was heading out the door for a weekend trip to the volcanic island Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, the large lake that marks the division of east and west in Nicaragua. My host mom asked if I needed anything and brought my two-year-old host sister to wave me off. But the little girl had something to tell me first. “Cuídate, Becky!” she warned me, telling me to be careful. “Be careful of the snakes, Becky! Be careful of the monkeys!” she cautioned, shaking her tiny finger under my nose with a serious expression on her face. My host mom and I both laughed as she continued to warn me of the dangers of Ometepe, and as I walked down the path to meet my site partner I heard her parting reminder to “Be careful of the snakes!” behind me.
I laughed and shared the story with my friends and co-workers, but the two-year-old's warnings showed that she understood something: I was a stranger in a strange land with very few of the skills necessary to survive there, even six weeks into my stay. This was brought home to me again and again by my host family’s amusement at my reactions to things they found mundane. The geckos on the wall and the toads in the kitchen evoked my mild concern, to which they would reply, “Don’t worry, they’ll leave when the rain stops.” They sought me out to show me the severed head and still-twitching body of the small but venomous snake my host dad had killed in our backyard, watching me carefully to see if I would freak out. Cockroaches, bats, and giant moths in my room all required a call to my host mom for help in their return to the outdoors. I watched in awe as my other host sister deftly picked up cicadas and giant chocaron beetles by the wings to thrown them outside. I elected not to look in the pot where the head of the pig that had lived in our backyard for a day was simmering. As much as I tried to play it cool, there were some things I just wasn’t ready to deal with.
I laughed and shared the story with my friends and co-workers, but the two-year-old's warnings showed that she understood something: I was a stranger in a strange land with very few of the skills necessary to survive there, even six weeks into my stay. This was brought home to me again and again by my host family’s amusement at my reactions to things they found mundane. The geckos on the wall and the toads in the kitchen evoked my mild concern, to which they would reply, “Don’t worry, they’ll leave when the rain stops.” They sought me out to show me the severed head and still-twitching body of the small but venomous snake my host dad had killed in our backyard, watching me carefully to see if I would freak out. Cockroaches, bats, and giant moths in my room all required a call to my host mom for help in their return to the outdoors. I watched in awe as my other host sister deftly picked up cicadas and giant chocaron beetles by the wings to thrown them outside. I elected not to look in the pot where the head of the pig that had lived in our backyard for a day was simmering. As much as I tried to play it cool, there were some things I just wasn’t ready to deal with.
I was a stranger in a strange land with very few of the skills necessary to survive there, even six weeks into my stay. |
I was less protected from nature than I ever had been before, and nature was different and less tame than my Midwestern small-town upbringing had ever shown me. The dust and heat were relentless, and there were far fewer machines to do things like wash my clothes and dishes and floor. But I learned. I learned faster and harder than I ever have in my life. I learned how to fry plantains, eat a whole fish, and wash my clothes by hand from my host mom. My older host sister taught me to use my mosquito net and survive a tsunami (I explained proper tornado survival technique in return.) I knew I had come to learn, but I had also come to help, and the balance felt very heavily shifted toward learning. Hoffman says, “I still feel as though I am taking away much more than I am giving back, and I have no idea how to remedy this situation. I now finally know why anthropology has been perceived as a tool of colonialism, and I am often wracked with guilt over the inequality created by difference between what I take and what I give back. At the same time, I think perhaps I am helping to reverse the colonial process; in many ways, these people have more to teach me than I have to teach them” (in Gardner and Hoffman, 29).
This came back to me again and again throughout my eight weeks in Nicaragua, which is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Somehow, the inequality of the privilege I had been born with and which had brought me there on a fully funded learning venture was equalized when I had to be taught how to do my laundry, especially knowing that Nicaraguan women my age already have families for whom they cook and clean daily. The exchange was constant throughout my summer. I learned, but I also taught. I taught exercise classes to diabetics for my internship. My host dad helped me with my Spanish, and I helped him with his English. I shared books with my host sisters and got them excited about reading. Reading with one’s children is not common in that part of Nicaragua, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. But reading was an essential part of my childhood and is very meaningful to me personally, and I was able to share that with my host sisters. Drybread discusses how fieldwork does not just observe, but also creates culture (in Gardner and Hoffman, 46). I shaped my host family’s culture, not because I wanted to improve their lives with my American customs, but because I wanted to give them something that I loved. It is still entirely possible that I was an agent of paternalistic neocolonialism; after all, I’m sure the missionaries who forcefully baptized Native Americans could have used a similar argument that they were sharing something they loved. But the fact remains that all of us create or perpetuate culture in our own small ways in our daily lives, no matter where they take place. |
Globalization is a powerful force that is growing daily. While it has caused many adverse effects for the poor of the world (Wolf, xx), it has the potential to be a force for great good in the world, and because of my privileged position I have been able to participate in a small way in this great global exchange. My little host sister would often ask me where my family was, and although I doubt that as a two-year-old she understood the concept of the United States, there is value in knowing about places and people outside of those in your immediate vicinity and culture. Hopefully I played a part in that for my family and community. Particularly in a country like Nicaragua where U.S. meddling has had long-lasting negative effects, the exchange needs to be even more pronouncedly positive. I cannot know if I was part of a positive exchange for them, but I know the exchange was positive for me.
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I knew I had come to learn, but I had also come to help, and the balance felt very heavily shifted towards learning. |
How can I continue to be part of that exchange in the most positive way possible? And how can I express that everything I learned from them is as important, if not more so, than what little I was able to teach?