Teacher's Pet

November 20, 2012

Bruno’s aim in life is to be an empregada (laborer.) His sloped baseball cap masks the brilliant sheepish walnut shell brown downturned eyes. Red-rimmed drippy snuffling nose takes away from his charming pixie face followed by a dramatic pointed chin. He daren’t meet my severe eyes as I lectured Marlon the what to and where for’s of my displeasure. The swaggering teens are 39 minutes late for class. Deplorable. I sternly suggest they must not be interested in learning English. Marlon is an avid chess player so I inquired how he became such a respectable player…he mourned in silence. I think they were all stunned to silence since they had never experienced this obituary tone from me. I lectured them on taking their lives more seriously and pressed them to make a decision to either learn or leave. I am willing to support them in any way possible as long as they do their part. Homework is not an option. When pressed Bruno finally opted for the aspiration to be an Engineer living in Curitiba.  All is relative in a lived experience.

My classes commence with comfortably familiar words and lead into new fairly simple vocabulary and undemanding concepts such as time of day. Repetition is rapid-fire to prevent them from second-guessing themselves. Cristiane benefits the most since she is decidedly devoted and has superior English skills. She is sixteen and wants to find a stimulating secure position that obliges her to speak English. Not wanting to appear disingenuous nor disheartening I encourage her to be creative. Cristiane won an Achievement Award and was granted a semester of gratis English classes. The teacher is persistently inaccurately changing her grammar homework and mispronouncing the vocabulary words. Sigh. There is a University in town where she might be able to take some language classes or uncover a program to enhance her studies. Problematic to say the least.

As the four moderately animated rejuvenated and boisterous students meandered across the verandah I unsuspectingly glanced up to witness a hefty white-bellied snake vehemently wrapped around the sturdy surmising beam above. Paulo insisted on repetitively poking it with a thumb-sized deep green freshly cut bamboo branch and it slithered into his home in the sizable gap between the slats of ceramic tile roofing and the cement block wall. Three quarters the length of my body and perhaps an inch and a half around delicately shimmered with a black diamond pattern and fortunately non-venomous!

I cannot help but wonder the outcome of these innocent raw insolvent most-likely inopportune youths. A tenderness defined by necessity overwhelms me. To seek passion demands absolutely everything of me yet who am I to say they need to be driven as well?  I cannot write my truth without having a witness.  Every single day I am acutely aware that I live in the rich poverty of pain. Is there such a disparity between “them” and me?