Having a Ball(s)

Mar. 17, 2007

Hi everyone,

Just a quick disclaimer about this email and the photos that follow – you might want to read it and view them after you eat. Sorry in advance!

Yesterday evening, after a somewhat painful day of teaching and getting nowhere working with kids with learning disabilities, I returned to my house amid the excitement a goat castration in progress. Nain and Onan called for me to come and watch, and although I really wanted to see this (just to say I did), my stomach hurt and I felt a little dizzy at the thought of cutting off a goat´s testicles. Seems like it might hurt.

I was asked to hold the head down while they did the deed. Avoiding the bucking horns and snapping teeth as best I could, I wrapped one hand around the goat´s neck and forced the other hand between the horns for maximum leverage. To squeeze a goat's mouth shut while he's screaming that old man scream and sticking out his helpless little goat tongue requires some degree of heartlessness, which I was surprised to find in myself. I actually started to laugh, and couldn't stop. Here was this poor, wailing goat, a visceral reminder of how weird and different my life is now from the one I used to have in the States. How many times in my life have I gotten home from work only to watch a middle-aged woman use a razor blade to slice open a goat's scrotum (which is quite large, FYI) and tear out the huevos (and I mean tear– those things are attached to something in there!)? Niña Blanca, the unflinching ball surgeon, used no anaesthetic. I felt terrible for that little cabro, but in 5 minutes, he was up and walking around as if nothing had happened.

Oh, I almost forgot. As if watching that weren't enough, Caren (my 12 year-old neighbor) then took the nads and washed them off in the pila. I started to think about why she'd be doing that when all of the sudden, she threwthe goat testicle at me. It bounced off of my stomach and onto the ground, leaving drops of blood and a smudge of scrotum slime. She laughed, along with everyone else. Turns out she was washing them because Nina Genia would be preparing sauteed goat balls for dinner, with a little bit of tomato. I wrote a haiku to commemorate the meal:

Sizzling, glistening
As they fried on the wood stove.
Delicious goat balls.

Really, the weren't that delicious. Imagine that. The meat was soft and gelatinous, and tasted like livestock. And I kept imagining all of the little, future goats I was eating. Definitely not one of my more enjoyable dinners here, but I was able to stuff it down quickly and sneak a few bits to Oso the dog. Wonder how many times he's eaten goat testicles? Oh – another funny moment: Nain told me from across the dinner table, with a straight face, that he prefers cow balls. They're saltier, he says. I had to laugh.

I feel like I only write when I've eaten a bad meal or mutilated a goat, or both in this case. It's really not all I do here, I promise. My weeks are packed with activities, some more enjoyable than others. We're still making cards, which were a success thanks to you all, and I'm slowly trying to hand over all of the responsibility to the kids involved. We moved our card factory to the house of the Jovenes en Accion president, Brenda. My role is shrinking, and the kids are willingly taking on the bulk of work I used to do. It's working really well so far.

I'm also co-teaching several English classes in the school (with teachers who don't have any English training) and one adult night class twice a week. The classes in the school are discouraging, because the Ministry of Education only gives us 1 hour each week for English. The kids just don't retain anything, the professors have no English skills (what happens in the communities where Peace Corps Volunteers don't live? Just imagine teaching a Spanish class having taken no Spanish classes, ever) and the pace is excruciatingly slow. The adult class, on the other hand, is fantastic. Everyone in the class really wants to be there, and it's got a rowdy, participatory vibe to it. I love that class, even though someone threw a rock at my head (twice, and hit me both times) from outside the classroom last Thursday. Didn´t like that part so much. Nevertheless, it´s one of the highlights of my week. Even though I try to live in the moment and not think about my friends leaving for the States, it sorta makes me sad to think that everyone's reason for being there is their shared goal of heading north in the future. Odd that, as an employee of the US Government, I'm preparing people for life after they illegally cross that government's border.

You'll see in the photos that I've been doing some hard labor down here, too. My friend Olvin is building a house for himself, and we've been busy making the 800 adobe bricks that the job will require. It's amazing to think that these houses are built entirely from the earth: we put dirt and fine rocks into a pile, throw water on it, mix it with our feet as if we were squashing grapes, and then form it into bricks. The bricks dry in the sun over a period of a few days, after which we'll stack them up and use more mud mixture to stick them together. It's basically a free house!

This time of year, almost all of the men in El Pital and the surrounding communities are involved in what they call the Safra, or the harvesting and processing of sugar cane. There are those who cut the sugar cane, those who collect it and put it into trucks, and those who work at the processing plant down the road. My brother Nain wakes up nearly every day at 4:30 to "rosar cana" (I think it translates as ´raze cane¨…ha.), which means that he walks or rides his horse to a recently-burned sugar cane field, cuts it down with his machete, and stacks it into piles for the collectors. I've been a few times before (to gain macho points, which are crucial here), and I was asked to go again on Sunday to help Nain make his four bucks. We hopped on our horses at 5 amand headed out in the moonlight toward the cane field, my machete strapped to the back of my saddle. Nain gave me the only saddle, so he ended up riding bareback, holding his machete in his hand like a Mongolian raider. We did our allotted work in about 2 hours, as the sun was coming up. I think I came out of it with 10 blisters on my right hand from my machete, and they were popping as I was still working, which really hurt. Silly gringo with his delicate hands.

Aside from that, I've started helping Dany, a Pitalian friend of mine, get his learning center up and running. Our job is to help the kids at the bottom of the rung in El Pital's elementary and junior high school. This means helping kids with severe learning disabilities and, often, behavioral problems. The time spent in this classroom is definitely the most challenging, heart-breaking, and discouraging work that I do here. I start to wonder if this country will ever move forward when I'm working with a group of 6 th graders who can't and don't want to recite the alphabet (much less read), and dealing with parents who could care less about their illiterate kids.

It's frustrating work, and it often gets me down until I step out of the classroom and walk back to my house. Along the way, I usually decide to pick up some fresh bread at the new women's bread-making co-op at Nina Anita's house. As I stroll through town, I have to stop every five minutes to chat with someone for another five or ten. But all of my friends – Don Lolo, Sein, Remberto, Niña Menche, Edwin, Oto, Jane and Gladys – live on this route, so I don't mind the chats. In between stopping and talking, little kids shout out my name from every direction. I think fast and shout their names back at them, getting a smile in return. Another twenty little kids will undoubtedly come up to me and give me five, and sometimes an elaborate handshake. It makes me feel like a movie star.

Well, that does it for this email. Keep in touch, and remember: when someone offers you huevos de cabro, it´s probably best to politely decline.

Adios,

Benjamín