Patience

Patience is a virtue, I suppose.

A week ago, this admission would have seemed almost irrelevant—a mere cliché. But a week ago was before last Monday. A week ago was before I learned that patience is hard, harder than waiting through a dull class, or out-lasting the mischief of bothersome younger siblings, or any number of other things I mistook for patience during some twenty-or-so odd years.

A week ago, that is, I lost my patience.  A week ago I brought an activity for the children at Fundación Ñeque that I knew would be challenging—perhaps, even, I precipitated its certain failure—but I went for it anyway. It was a game, after all … it seemed fun. Furthermore, I had played Memory with my five-year-old host brother just months before and thought perhaps the children at the foundation (although somewhat less well-behaved) would understand and enjoy it. I had no illusions, really, but even the small expectation that it wouldn’t end in complete disaster was, apparently, a little too much.

Everything went wrong. I spent $7.30 printing the game in color. (Apparently color copies cost 1100 percent the cost of ordinary black-and-white.) And later, after I had already arrived at the foundation and was helping a student with her homework, the teacher interrupted our work and ordered—yes ordered, not asked—me to begin the English lesson. Which means that before I even found myself in front of their many expectant faces I was already feeling extraordinarily out-of-sorts. (Teaching while grumpy is something that, with my limited experience in the classroom, I have not yet mastered. Few teachers, I would add—even with lots of experience—ever master that one.)

And then, then: the children. Some ten or twenty kindergarten and first-graders and all wonderfully affectionate; unfortunately, they match their degree of affection with an equal degree of disrespect, disobedience, and an impressive ability to defy instruction. Needless to say, the game was a royal fracaso.  The children couldn’t sit still, couldn’t wait their turn, couldn’t listen to my explanation without touching the Memory cards, couldn’t wait for me to give instruction without interrupting with something totally irrevelant, needed constant contact … in short, the children just couldn’t do it.

And that’s when I lost my patience. That’s when I yelled, and clapped my hands, and my voice became oddly metallic, and I didn’t like the hard-water taste of it in my mouth. That’s when I frightened myself a little bit, and I nearly walked out of the foundation crying.

And frankly, I’m still not sure whether I was in the wrong, or oddly in-the-right. (I did apologize to the students the next time I came in.) But I wonder, when is patience passivity? When is patience merely enabling their disrespect? (Because frankly, that’s what it is). When is caring gentle, and when is caring firm? And how, how do I get through to them?

In the three or so months that I spend here, is it even worth it? (Because it's certainly not viable...)

Or is that merely giving up? 

Muisne

We lingered on the wooden benches, absently pressing sticky grains of rice—unintentional leftovers—onto our fingers and eating them slowly … rubbing itchy arms, and failing to notice the red welts of fresh mosquito bites blooming like so many morning flowers on trellis-arms. We talked beneath the thatch roof of the restaurant-cabaña, and, surely-unnoticed, night descended on us thickly; however unspoken, we delayed the necessary exodus. 

But we did, eventually. We left the patio-restaurant and, still animated, there was hardly a hiccup in our conversation as we parted the seamless night.

We didn’t remember that no one knew the way.

We didn’t realize, even, that we were following.

We didn’t notice, in fact, the two slender figures that preceded us, walking us back to our primitive Island lodging.

 One of the figures, I was soon to learn, was named Mateo, the other Achli. In the four or so days that I spent in their community, they became friends. Probably their mother, or an aunt, or perhaps merely a neighbor was one of our cooks, so they spent a lot of time at the restaurant. In any case, every time I walked back to where we ate that first night (and where we would continue to eat for the next four days), I encountered them, sometimes buried in a hammock underneath the fountain-foliage of a low-hanging tree and rising to follow our group to its next meal, or hanging on the wooden rails of the restaurant as we entered. I encountered them, and others, nearly every time I ate, and I fell in love with their shy smiles and timid greetings.

Some memorable moments:

• After breakfast one morning, a group of youngsters sat down with us at our table and, as we smiled along, dipped dirty fingers into the jelly-jar, taking turns, faces and laughter alight
• Another night, the tide rose to the raised beams of the restaurant, such that a boat had managed to enter the once-dry stream-bed and was moored to the rail on one side of our restaurant. The kids climbed in, then I climbed in with them, and we briefly played at “sailors”—my first time in a long time!
• On our last evening in Muisne, some of the townspeople prepared a traditional dance. We all sat in a group in the middle of the cement court to enjoy the spectacle; the kids from the community also came, dragging plastic chairs from home or sitting, like us, on the hard cement. I fear their appreciation was far more evident than our own: their laughter was raucous and infectious, and I think many of us didn’t know whether to watch the dancers or the children watching the dancers.

I fell in love with Muisne because I fell in the love with the people of Muisne, its ragtag children. Really, I can’t imagine a more perfect childhood—albeit shadowed by poverty or want or uncertainty at times.

 It was evident, it was obvious, that the children in this community were loved—by parents and neighbors and the microcosm of their tiny barrio—and that’s what I wanted. It’s what I want for the rest of my life: these people, this place, this pace … Tranquilo, they call it.

The word, oddly, has no English counterpart: tranquilo, regrettably, doesn’t translate.