Where in the World is Darien?
"This
one here is India, and it has the most people in the world," 16 year old
Ediberto told 20 year old Ramiro, "Even though it is smaller than Russia
and China,"16-year-old Gelido chimed in. "Actually Antartica is the
biggest, but it isn't a country," 16 year old Dionel added. I had been
mixing paint but froze when I heard their conversation. I couldn't stop
grinning.
It
is moments like that- tiny, anticlimactic moments that you could easily miss if
you weren't paying attention, that make my job so awesome. To someone living
outside of the Comarca, the conversation being had probably seems mundane and
unremarkable, except maybe to scoff at the 20 something who didn't know where
India was. Let me fill you in on the miracle here.
On
July 1st, I sat down with a blank world map on a piece of paper and asked the 5
16-year-old seventh grade boys to show which one was Panama. They pointed to
Russia. Over the course of a month, we spent our afternoons together at the
school, painstaking bringing a large world map mural to life. One boy dropped
out of the project after the third day, but the other four were there in the
scorching sun and pouring rain to the end. One day the bugs were so bad I was
wearing my pants taped to my socks and bundled up in a hoodie to keep out the
morongoi. I expected the boys to want to quit early, because I certainly did,
but they talked me into continuing, reminding me just how close we were to
finishing.
To
take this map from a piece of paper to a 6'x12' mural took about 45 hours of
work. First we did the math together to figure out how big to make the
rectangle, then we painted the ocean. We sat down one day and I taught them how
to draw from a grid and practiced doing that on paper for different parts of
different continents. We colored a key out of the small grid but my list of which
color goes to which country was only in English, so we practiced our English
too. We made a grid on our ocean of nearly 1,600 two inch squares, and then
drew out every country. Every time I found a missing tiny island or country, I
jokingly yelled about how upset those people would be if they found out they
were forgotten. By the time I checked the islands for Antartica, Dionel was
ready for me. When I told him he had a couple islands missing he replied,
"Yea but nobody lives there!" We painted all the red countries, the
white ones, the yellow, pink, blue, green, orange, and ligt green countries. To
mix the colors we talked about the color wheel and what colors mix to make
what. When we tried to mix purple and failed the 5th time, we decided to mix
teal instead. Finally we labeled each country, territory, island, and large
body of water.
I
am no expert on social studies, and living in the jungle I am definitely out of
touch with world news. I admit that in the 30 minutes a week average I spend
with the internet, about 26 of those minutes go towards Facebook and Gmail,
while the other 4 go to whatshouldpcvscallme or my blog. Regardless, the boys
and I talk about global issues, on an incredibly superficial level. I ask them
if they have heard of a country, if so, why they have heard of it, and then
more than likely, try to undo their knowledge. For example, when I said
Pakistan. They said it was full of bad people who wanted lots of war, and that
Osama bin Laden was from there. It feels a lot more like doing damage control
than educating, but it is something.
Harrison,
Gelido, Edilberto, and Dionel not only stuck it out to the end, they made the
map their own by spending all 4 hours of the last day- which I had allotted for
an hour of work and the rest of it eating cookies and soda celebrating the end
of the project- taking rulers to make this edge straight, going over this line,
double checking the spelling on this country. When I presented them their
certificates they gave them back, asking me if we could paint something else. I
told them to keep the certificates but that Monday at 2pm I would be there and
if they showed up we could start planning our next project.
Comments
Post a Comment