| Parents' Night at the
one-room, one-teacher Chimurria elementary school on June 22
proved such a unique experience that I'm going to resort to
the first person to try to tell a little of it. The people of
this one-lane hillside village (also known more respectably
as El Roble) walled in one family's double detached carport
to make the school in 2003. Most Chimurria children still go
to schools in the bigger villages of San Luis |
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| Professor
Oscar Perez and 11 of his 12 students pose in front of their
makeshift school. |
| and Tronadora,
so that teacher Oscar Perez Alvarez has just 12 students ages
seven to fifteen in grades one through six. Six fathers and
a grandfather showed up, a pretty good percentage, and we learned
that this was not Parents' Night but Fathers' Night, Mothers'
Night coming on August 22. The five women present were to serve
a meal of arroz cantonese and soft drinks from a large cooler.
One of them handed to each man a "scroll" tied with
a bit of gold cord. The teacher joined the circle of men at
children's desks, and asked them to undo their scrolls to follow
along as one of the women stood in front and read from the scroll,
which told of a father learning a lesson about spending time
with his son in the evenings, helping with homework and watching
television together. At least two of the men seemed unable to
read, quite unlike their children, who all write very industriously
and neatly in their copybooks. When my wife Laura arrives once
a week to teach English for an hour, they all stand immediately
to greet her, spend the hour eagerly trying to enunciate the
English sounds, and, except for the 15-year-old, hug and kiss
her when she leaves. Also polite, though most more roughly dressed
than their uniformed |
|
children, the fathers
sat patiently as Professor Perez at length exhorted them not only
to do well in nurturing their children but also in helping their wives.
After that, the games began. First was a messy eating game in which
blindfolded teams tried to be first to finish a typical jar of Gerber's
baby food. In the second contest, teams of two tried to be first in
blowing up three balloons and popping them between their vigorously
embracing bodies. The hilarity ended with the serving of the arroz
Cantonese, chips, and drinks in two paper cups, each with Fanta but
the smaller one spiked by rum, another first in my school open house
experience. Before addressing his own plateful, Professor Perez displayed
his musical talent, breaking out his guitar and singing a single song,
which received brief applause from the hungry fathers. Professor Perez,
a man in his 40's with a serious mein, leaves home each weekday on
the other side of the lake at Nuevo Arenal to start class in El Roble
at 7 am. Not long ago he started in the other direction, driving to
San Jose to see why he hadn't been paid in five months.
The restaurant Gingerbread,
located a kilometer or two east of Nuevo Arenal, recently drew several
of us south-siders to the north side of Lake Arenal to enjoy what
is reputed to be the best food in the region. The name Gingerbread
gives no clue as to what's in store, neither on the menu nor in
decor. It's not a version of Marie Callender's. The owner/chef is
Eyal Ben-Menachem, an Israeli who eschews chef's hats, aprons, and
tantrums in the kitchen. Instead, in t-shirt and shorts, the robust
and talkative chef makes a lot of trips to your table, making decisions
for you about wine, appetizers, entrees, and desserts. Entrees are
$10 to $14. It was worth the night-time trip on the twisting, hilly
road around the lake. Gingerbread was not among the desserts.
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