Teaching in Chile

I am volunteering through a church program to work in an agricultural school in rural Chile for two semesters where I supervise a computer lab. The students are Mapuche Indians aged 12-18. I plan to be here from February to December 21 (2004).

Is it fun? No, you must have never seen teenagers in a computer lab before. But it’s a rewarding look at a different culture and it’s work for a good cause.

Prologue

I’ve wanted for a while to volunteer abroad and picked out a position from Volunteers in Mission at http://gbgm-umc.org/vim/indvol/urgent.htm :

CHILE
1. "El Vergel" agricultural school, Angol, invites volunteers in the fields of agriculture, sports, music, computers, and English.

I applied there, but my application was accepted by a similar school first. Why didn’t I get into the school in Angol? Aliens. When I would Google its location – “angol chile” – the number one hit was www.demonhunter.btinternet.co.uk/ufosightings1.htm

THREE ALIENS APPEAR IN ANGOL, CHILE

Three aliens, humanoid in appearance and two meters (6 feet, 6 inches tall) appeared to a group of five people in the roadside park of Las Pinas, overlooking the city of Angol, Chile, in March 2001.

The aliens, "two meters tall and with red lights on their hands, were seen March 16 by five people from Concepcion, at the Las Pinas scenic overlook," located one kilometer (0.6 miles) southeast of Angol, "a place which has become a favorite for extraterrestrial visitors."

I’m not sure why the aliens preferred I go to the other school, but one shouldn’t argue with them. For more about the school, see the blog entry on Sept. 11.

But this school is just as good. Well, the climate is a little more wet and cold but I don’t think it’s anything like Seattle or anything.

Here is the location of the school (click for larger image)

Here is the information I have about my position at the school

FROM: Walt and Betty Whitehurst

TO: Steve Paylor

COPY: Don White

DATE: January 17, 2004

Dear Steve:

We are happy to report that we received an invitation for you to serve at La Granja, located just outside of Nueva Imperial (near the city of Temuco). It was faxed to us yesterday by Daniel Martínez, director of the school. We talked with Daniel while we were there earlier this week. We also gave your name to Nelly Marchant at the Colegio Inglés in Iquique, and you may possibly be contacted by either Nelly or by Becky Harrell, an individual volunteer who is the librarian at the Colegio Inglés, if they are interested in your volunteering there. We did not get to see anyone from the El Vergel Agricultural School.

However, it is our opinion that La Granja would be the ideal place for you in Chile. They serve children from poor families, mostly from the indigenous Mapuche communities surrounding Nueva Imperial. They have a computer room with 30 computers, but except for the time the computer instructor is in the classroom teaching the scheduled classes there is no one there to help the students use the computers. That is what they would like for you to do, and it is something you could probably manage okay with only a little Spanish. (You would have to learn the computer words so you would know how to show the students which things to click on.)

Daniel Martínez asked us to find out whether you know how to repair computers, and whether you do computer programming. Neither is essential, but both would apparently be helpful.

You would share a 3-bedroom house with Don White, another individual volunteer with whom we understand you have already had some communication via email.

Your housing and meals would be provided by the school free of charge. You would undoubtedly be asked to do other things in addition to being in the computer room, depending on your interests and the time you might have available. (Don White might even teach you to do wood sculptures.)

Here is a summary of the invitation form, which came to us in Spanish:

Name of project: Methodist Rural Work

Location: Nueva Imperial, Chile

Description of work: Monitor the computer room at the "La Granja" Methodist Agricultural School

Preferred date of arrival: March 2004

Preferred date of departure: December 2004

I plan to commit for one semester and stay for two if things go well.

I haven’t decided yet about language instruction. There’s a highly recommended school in Guatemala called Tecún Umán and I’d like to go for a month, but I haven’t the time. If I can get instruction in Temuco I think I’ll do that instead.

January 29, 2004

There’s nothing like getting laid off to speed up one’s plans. I’m shooting for a departure date of about February 4th. I’ve been introduced to two teachers in Temuco who are willing and able to teach me Spanish, and in the meantime I’ll try to scare up a cassette player for these Spanish tapes I’ve borrowed from the library.

By the way, here is the write up for the school from the VIM site. The mention of a need for veterinarians means to me that I might be able to adopt a cat.

2. "La Granja" agricultural school, Nueva Imperial, needs volunteers for health care, agricultural experts, veterinarians, teachers of music and English, and a dentist.

Looking at this from the perspective of October 18, 2004: health care? dentist? veterinarian? I have had no idea that they wanted someone with these skills. I should ask about this.

Temuco: Immersion in Spanish

The plan for Temuco is to spend nearly a month learning Spanish in the immersion environment. Here I am staying with a local Metodista familla and that is an experience in itself. It’s great to spend time with people from a different culture and discuss the differences, such as the American practice of a male moving away from home pretty much as soon as he can. In Chile, and perhaps other Latin countries, he stays at home until he gets married. It’s more economical, to be sure, and maybe the sign of a stronger family?

I feel a little like an anthropologist writing about the family life here. I’ve named the Silverback “Carlos”... It’s much like a family might be in the United States. The kitchen is the center, the TV is usually on, and the channels get flipped frequently, unless there’s an exciting soccer match on. Tennis is the #2 sport here. Most of the channels are in Spanish, but there are also US, French, Italian and German channels for a broader perspective.

Elias has named his family after Simpsons characters, and the analogy is a little interesting. His father is Homer, and that fits a bit. His father is short and stocky, a working man not afraid to imitate Chinese speech or pop out his false teeth for comedic affect. His mother would be Marge, the homemaker. She keeps quite busy with the housework, baking her own bread from scratch for example. His sister, Cecilia, is intelligent, an accountant for a local university. Elias calls himself Bart, and he is a little troublemaker with the Spanish-English dictionary, calling his sister names from it.

So far a typical day here is me sleeping late and then wandering downstairs for a very light breakfast of tea and sometimes bread. Lunch might be served at 1 pm or as late as 2 pm and it’s a big meal, maybe soup, a main course and then melon for dessert. Usually a drink made from a powdered mix. Dinner might be served around 8 pm or as late as ten. It’s not unusual to sit around the kitchen table until midnight talking, with a phrasebook and Spanish-English dictionary getting lots of use. Elias will practice his English as well as me my Spanish.

The neighborhood is residential, with markets and barbershops in people’s homes. The father did not have to take public transit to buy copper pipe when installing the hot water heater, and buying soda is just a walk around the corner. Many families have a dog, and that might be for protection. Most homes are walled up with black iron fencing or cement walls as if security is tight. For instance, their gate here at the house is locked, bolted, braced with wood and then guarded by their 70 kg rottweiler. Even so the car is locked at night.

The downtown section of Temuco is either a 45 minute walk, or a fifty cent fare in either a bus or a colectivo (a taxi that follows a set route, runs more frequently than the buses and just a little more expensive). It’s a city of about a quarter million inhabitants and has both regular department stores and colorful Mapuche street markets. You can find the latest European cars, though nothing as fancy as what I would see back home, and horse-drawn carts are still seen as well.

And milk is delivered by cart. It’s a bicycle-driven cart and the driver has an electronic device which makes a noise vaguely like a cow. He rides through the streets announcing his presence and if you want to buy some milk, you come a-running. One day I saw a horse and cart unloading some wood to the neighbor’s house.

A shame they can’t harness up these stray dogs. There aren’t as many as Kathmandu, but still enough of them to keep the sidewalks clean. Their fights are more fun than the kids’ football games.

Well, I feel I have to mention the shoes. The family dog ate one of my sandals. I found out then that Chile only stocks shoes as big as size 11 and it costs $30 to have a pair of sandals shipped over from REI. Shoes here are easily found for half the price of the ones back home, but it’s no bargain when it’s two sizes too small.

I’m glad that school is starting. I feel like I’ve exhausted most of the entertainment options here. I think perhaps the language barrier is a limitation; also the kids in the house are back to work. I’m watching more television than I’d like to admit. You know you’re bored when you’re watching Waterworld. I’m tempted to travel (but what to do there?) or to visit the new friends in Imperial, but I think I will stick it out here for the last day or two, since I will have a lot of time to spend in Imperial in the coming months.

I went to a football (soccer) game between the local Temuco team and the Catholic University. Temuco won, 1-0, but I almost saw the game to be a tie. I thought it was interesting that the umpires were escorted off the field by shield-toting police in riot gear, but there were no problems. The other thing I thought was interesting was that the time left in the game wasn’t shown on the scoreboard, so we had to look to our watches for that.

From visiting other households in Temuco, I enjoyed the “onces” meal of tea and snacks in the afternoon. Meals here seem to be more of an affair than back home, with more plates and silverware than I’m used to. It’s lends a formal manner to the meals, as does relaxing with a cup of tea after the meal instead of getting right up.

How did immersion in Spanish go? That depends on who you ask. I’ve certainly improved since I first came to Chile, but I’ve been told by experienced missionaries here that because my structured classes didn’t appear that I will never grasp grammar and that if I wait too long for real instruction I will have to unlearn what I know so far. I think that’s correct; it’s hard to learn correct syntax from phrases and I’m not going to wake up one day fluent from immersion alone. I decided not to postpone starting at the school for a month to go to school however and I am going to get books instead and try to learn from them. Learning Spanish would be nice, and in hindsight I should have gone to the school in Guatemala instead of the classes here, but I really only need enough Spanish to get by at the school and I don’t want to delay my start a month just for more instruction.

La Granja Agricultural School

Students

This is a boarding school with just over two hundred students. The girls live in town in a dormitory there. The students are aged 12-18. They are taught typical high school courses and agriculture as well. Most of the students live in the countryside outside of town and it can take hours from them to reach the school from home. A few stay each weekend because of this difficulty.

I am curious as to what happens to the kids after school. From what I’ve gathered, only about 1 in 30 of them will pass the entrance exam and continue their education. The graduating class appears to be about thirty.

The others will largely move to Santiago and find manual work there. The girls will work as housekeepers and the boys in construction. Not many will want to return home to work in subsistence farming. I assumed they would get married soon after graduation, but not until their 20s.

I hear something about mandatory military service for the boys for a year, but despite that most don’t go for some of an excuse, whether it’s because they are continuing their studies or for a medical reason.

There is also turnover in the students. New ones come in and others leave. I’m not sure what happens to the kids that leave or enter. I’m told it could be a financial situation or the family moving.

In the classroom it seems a bit different from the US. I’ve seen what happens in West Philly when fourth-graders have a substitute teacher and it’s not like that, but the practice of raising one’s hand is not practiced here at all. The students call out profe or the younger students use tia (“aunt”), repeatedly until they are answered. That can get annoying when it’s obvious that you are busy helping someone else and someone keeps calling out your name by the way. I am waiting to get promoted to tio; right now I am just “esteef.” That initial ‘e’ makes it sounds like “eh, steef” at first. Chairs don’t get pushed in, now I know why the chairs are integrated with the desks back in the States.

More students have cell phones than I expected, being told they were rural poor. It is kind of funny with a girl tries to look adult with the cell phone, makeup and cigarettes, that’s only one of them though. There is a school uniform, but the kids wear regular clothes often enough. I’ve been meaning to ask about that. (Aug 31) I was told later that uniform standards get relaxed in a rural boarding school because the students aren’t out in public and also I think out of consideration that the kids probably only have one set.

There is a lot of mixing between the students as you might expect with this age. Add in that they live in homes that are pretty remote. The boys seem to fight a lot as a game. More charming is the little kids who fashioned paddles in class to play ping pong outside. A couple weeks ago they just had pieces of wood.

I’m treated pretty fairly by the students I think. I was warned about the girls by P.G. Wodehouse. Mostly the younger ones are dared by their friends to flirt with me. I hear a lot of kissy noises, declarations of love, and the most fun part is the love notes, one written on a leaf. It doesn’t take too much to get them to shriek in unison. Ride with them into town on the school bus and you might want for earplugs. I’m not sure how to describe the boys. I was concerned that my role as a disciplinarian in the computer lab would poison any relationships, but only one seems to have held a grudge. I’m welcome at soccer games and although I’m sure they make fun of me, there is still a lot of curiosity. I’m glad things aren’t too bad because I can time my lunches to eat with the other professors but at dinner I sit at a table with just the kids.

In my last few days here I talked with the custodian while he was cleaning the bathroom. I knew the kids would often ‘forget’ to turn off the water, turns out they also have trouble remembering to flush or to aim while urinating in the stalls (instead of the trough). Disgusting of course; he said the girls were actually worse. I was just happen that Dario excused me from shaking his hand as I left.

Many of the students have nicknames. Some are just beyond translation, apparently bird noises like tick-tick, mimi or tok-tok (two different kids who don’t hang out together). Any trace of red in your hair earns you a name like carrot, raspberry or the twins Bilz & Pap (reddish soft drinks sold here). There was also hare, fox, monkey, cannon and the two least desirable ones, urinal and diarrhea. I was told that urinal got his name from the shape of his haircut which was a relief.

Technical notes of the computer lab

There are about eighteen computers in the lab, ranging from classic Pentiums to couple-year-old AMD processors. They run different operating systems, from Windows 95 to Windows XP. They are networked, but apparently in two different networks. Currently (March 8), none has Internet access. Later this month (March) the lab is supposed to get broadband access and does have ISDN equipment, but it doesn’t work right now. There is one printer that works and a few without toner. There is at least one scanner that works. I found a digital camera; it works but is very cheap, maybe half of a megapixel.

So far the students come in to play games and I am to keep track of usage: who, which class and which computer for what times. There is some problem with theft and also configuration problems. Since the computers all use a single login, anyone can accidentally delete an important file. More often, the wallpaper gets changed to an album cover and the shortcuts end up all over the place. Fixing that has gotten quite old.

There aren’t a lot of games to be played on these computers, so it’s not unusual to see someone just playing around with the start menu. I think you can see how easily someone could change an important setting without being malicious. I do have educational CDs that are asked for on occasion. I get a little concerned when more than one is lent out to be sure to get them back.

It turned out that kids were cutting class to come in to play computer games so right now I keep kids out unless they promise to have permission from a professor to work. Then they would claim to have permission from the teachers and do work, but not all of them actually had permission. I got awfully suspicious when one of them claimed to have permission from the English teacher to print out the lyrics to a Metallica song. OK, here’s a hint for any dishonest students: don’t claim to have permission from the one teacher on campus that is fluent in English; it’s all too easy for me to confirm your story. For now the students must have written permission or be with a teacher.

It’s kind of a sad situation for the students because the only time the lab is open is during classes. It’s not open during any of their free time for either school work or games. Their classes run until dinner time so I don’t know when the extra time could be found, or if it’s a priority for the school. I don’t feel real bad about turning away kids without permission during the day because it means they are supposed to be in class.

I’ve done a little maintenance work on the computers and I’m in the middle of trying to install Win98 on one the older ones. I think a lot of their problems are because they are using a lot of cheap components so the quality is bad. Judging from the number of voltage regulators, they might also have some trouble with stable electrical current. (Later I noticed the gauge for incoming voltage snapping back and forth and making noises like an apocalyptic Geiger counter so I think there are problems with their electricity.)

The computer lab is heated with a woodstove and on rainy days there is a pile of sawdust by the door to absorb the moisture and keep the floor dry. Do you often see that in the first world?

I’ve had one of the newer computers already fail; I think it’s a problem with the master boot record. That makes five computers broken and fourteen in service. I thought it was interesting that the computers claim to be assembled in the USA, with the brand name of Alaska, whose website appears to be based in México. I don’t think you saw that coming.

The Internet access is here; 115 Kbps shared between about a dozen computers. That’s tolerable when those computers are unoccupied and pretty slow otherwise. Using Outlook for mail helps a lot over a web interface. I am still looking for a good way to keep the surfing away from uh, non-Christian web sites. I found another digital camera and this one is good for about two megapixels so I can produce digital photos worth viewing. I see a lot of scary error messages when booting some of the older machines that usually go away when you reboot.

Update (June 4): the cooling fan for the CPU on the server failed. About a month ago a technician came in and replaced about six faulty CD drives. We also have problems with diskette drives not working and keys sticking on the keyboards. I’m a bit astounded at the poor quality of these newer computers. And the older ones are not that much better. A couple do not boot reliably, and three more require the user to push F1 to confirm problems when booting. But we manage; their needs aren’t that sophisticated; a Pentium 90 with Win 95 and Office 97 would serve their needs.

Observation (June 12): the students are often impatient with the computer when booting and start hitting keys on the keyboard to accelerate that process. Sometimes this strategy backfires because it brings up the BIOS menu, but no drastic changes made therein yet. Once I taught a student that when you want to load a PowerPoint file, it doesn’t help to open five copies of Word (when it doesn’t open fast enough they try again, and open another instance of the program). I also demonstrated that moving the mouse in a vigorous back and forth motion (think sandpaper) doesn’t compensate for a slow processor and insufficient RAM.

Rumor (June 30): broadband (banda archa) access might be in the future

Update (July 2): broadband arrived last night, unexpectedly soon after the rumor. Well that’s not true: nothing surprises me anymore. This is a regular aDSL connection shared to the other computers with fixed IP addresses and no need for a server so that will free up another computer for the kids. It doesn’t make a huge difference in sending email but means it’s a lot easier to download files. No need to wait overnight for that anymore. In other news I think I’m losing the debate with the boss as to whether it is better to put McAfee virus protection on all of the computers. He argues the protection isn’t worth the loss of performance. I’m not sure how to value that.

Update (July 15): PCs are often borrowed by other classes, usually so they can watch a pirated movie on CDs. (Yes, pirated media is watched often here in a school setting and yes they get away with watching Hollywood films like 2 Fast 2 Furious as a classroom exercise.) But the fun part is when they try to plug the devices back into the PC. You know those pins? They get bent all which way. The center piece in a keyboard plug that helps keep things aligned? Broken off. My boss spent about an hour with one essential plug and actually had to remove the bent pins with pliers to straighten and then reinsert.

Update (August 31): One good project is that I’ve fixed a computer from the a/v room so that it can play movies. This should reduce on how often they borrow a computer from the lab to do this. I tried to install a video card but I lose video when it is installed. I tried to move the hard drive to a different machine but the screws were rounded out. Sometimes I feel that I’m trying to do something that has already been tried. I was able to uninstall IE 5.5 and remove Media Player – not without difficulty – and get media player reinstalled from a Word 2000 disk that has IE 5.0 on it. That still didn’t play SpiderMan 2 however, so I burned a CD with the latest versions of the media players that run on 98; that’s all I can do. BTW, the machine also rejected a flash memory card (aka USB memory key). The highlight of that machine is that the video card is cemented into the board with silicone glue. I was told it was sold to the school as a new computer. I am definitely sticking to name brand computers when I return to the States.

Alas (September 7): When you find paper folded up and shoved into a floppy drive…

Update (September 20): Well the paper in the floppy drive gets easier the second time. Installed SP2 for XP home, so far no problems. Another person here had trouble, apparently it checks for invalid licenses. Recently, I also added some javascript to my active desktop to calculate how many days I have left in Chile.

Update (October 27): According to the impartial folks at www.tie.cl/bw we nearly have a 1 Mbps connection in the lab. I never suspected it was that fast, but it is certainly what I am used to from a DSL connection at home or office LAN.

Update (December 10): A couple weeks ago I was surprised by some new computers. The new ones (1.5 GHz) are total brand X, not even a made-up name on the case. One has a pirated version of XP on it so I can’t download SP2; the other has a problem where the light for NumLock doesn’t go out when you turn off the computer. Longing for better quality equipment, I’ve recently found out that IBM has sold off the ThinkPad line.

Then the next day some PIII computers with Win98 showed up. I haven’t had as many problems with those. But what’s important to note is that no one bothered to give me advance notice of any of this. It’s hard to take oneself seriously as a supervisor of a lab if the communication is this bad. For another thing, I’m not sure I would approve of spending money for brand new equipment when all the kids need is a version of Office and Internet Explorer.

School day

The school day varies. On Mondays we start late in the morning at 11:30 but classes run until 7:15 pm. Most days classes start at 8:30 and run until 6:30, and then on Fridays classes end at 1:30 pm. There is a fifteen minute recess about every couple of hours and lunch is given 75-90 minutes which is a great break in the day.

Sometimes it’s quiet. If no one is using the lab I’m allowed to lock up and take a break. The challenge has been when there are a lot of kids in the lab. It’s hard to help some bored looking kids in one end of the room if it means not watching who else comes in. But really it’s a problem when the kids refuse to leave during the recess between classes. That’s the time when they don’t have much to do and the lab looks appealing (for all of fifteen minutes) but it’s also my own guaranteed break during the day. The first time I had a problem I realized that the kids knew they were supposed to leave but wanted to spend every possible second there before I turned off the monitor in front of their face. The second time they started turning the monitor back on and I dragged them out. But they enjoy this too. I can’t leave the room to get help and I don’t know what their names are. Perhaps I will know them better when the process of documenting who is using which computer gets better. But now the kids move around enough that there’s a chance I would be turning in the wrong name.

On weekends it seems like nearly all of the kids leave for home. About a score stay on campus because it’s sometimes difficult for parents to pick them up. There is a schedule for each weekend which involves work and study, but also a trip to town for shopping and games and movies here on campus.

Although the school is known as an agricultural school, it doesn’t limit itself to farming. I would say that agriculture is one of the classes taught and that it doesn’t receive anymore emphasis than mathematics or chemistry. Which makes me feel better about there being a computer lab. I had openly (but discretely) wondered about the value of teaching PowerPoint to kids who would return to a farm back home, but I now see that those kids might just find an office job elsewhere. Judging from what I’ve seen them doing as homework, they get a good understanding of Microsoft Office by the time they leave here. Robert Schilling, who provides money to this school and other projects around the world through his foundation, told me of some success stories of kids who started their own business selling produce and used computer skills from the lab therewith.

Animals here

We have 120 hens. I helped feed them one day and decided they aren’t the smartest birds in the world. I’m not sure if they stay in that building all of the time because I didn’t see anyplace for them to lay eggs.

We also have cows and pigs but I haven’t seen much of them. The cows might spend all day grazing in the fields.

We currently have two stray dogs (April: five that come and go). One arrived the same morning I noticed all of the trash cans had been knocked over, the other a couple days later. They are very affectionate for some reason. But on the other hand, when I fed one it seemed pretty lazy and he didn’t even get up. He must have been digesting a lot of meat at the time.

Nueva Imperial

About half a mile up the road is the town of New Imperial (old Imperial being another town down the road since renamed Carahue). The population is I think about twenty thousand, which makes it just big enough to have a small video rental store. There is a stately old town square and one traffic light. It has nearly all of the services that I need as far as shopping or a church service or a haircut. It’s not unusual to see ox-drawn carts on the streets. I like the character of the town better than Temuco, perhaps because Temuco was big enough to have franchise stores (including Pizza Hut, McDonalds, a VW dealership, etc) and Imperial seems to have kept its small town feel.

I don’t know if it would offer much to tourists except a few hours of diversion. It does have hospedajes – a homestay hotel – restaurants, and a small museum (based in a residence) of wood sculptures and historical items from the Mapuche and Spanish.

Mail

The mail service here hasn’t been that bad. Some packages arrive in less than a week; what you might expect from the domestic post in the States, other times it takes much longer. But at least nothing has been lost yet. It seems to take quite a while for mail I send here to reach the States. Not sure why one direction takes longer than another.

Mail in a small town: you can call the post office to see if your package has arrived.

English class

I visited an English class, one of the first classes. It’s interesting that the students learn British English. I haven’t recognized any of their Received Pronunciation yet, but it’s said to be easier to learn than American English. I had wondered why all of the textbooks I had seen were from England. It’s mostly noticeable when they learn their alphabet and pronounce Z as “Zed”, just like our Canadian friends.

I’ve returned but it doesn’t seem like I am of much use there. When I get a chance I’ll try to stop in again, but it seems that they are still on basic vocabulary.

Strangest thing seen yet

One of the kids had pierced his fingernails, with rings and chains attached to them. Really wish I had a picture of that.

I’ve seen people mix a soft drink with wine on different occasions. The wine here is supposed to be good, so I don’t think they are trying to improve the taste.

The kids often wear just one glove. I was told that they leave the right hand exposed to preserve their dexterity.

Apparently it’s considered rude to point at people or things with your fingers. So they use… their lips. It looks almost as if they are trying to kiss the object in question. I’ve gotten in the habit of doing it, but I think I will get beat up if I don’t stop when I return to the States.

Today, August 19, I was offered a pig’s tail by a student as an additive for my coffee. I think it might actually improve Nescafé but I declined.

Conversely, the kids think me wearing sandals in the fall (and early spring) is really crazy.

Great 220v Experiment

I really thought that the AC adaptor for my IBM ThinkPad laptop would work with both 220v and 120v. IBM thought so too. But it didn’t, so I went almost three weeks without being able to charge the battery in my laptop. IBM wouldn’t sell me one because of arrangements they have local retailers here. Fine, but you can’t buy one from a website in Chile. I was referred to a retailer in Santiago, who could sell me one, but not with a credit card. I would have to go to their bank (twenty miles away in Temuco), fax them proof that I deposited the correct amount in their bank account and then they would process the order, which would take twenty days. Instead, I risked the customs fees which delayed my Chacos and found a US firm (Westworld Computers www.westworldcomputers.com) with quite reasonable shipping fees and got them faster and cheaper. I recommend them to anyone needing parts, especially overseas.

Although this new AC adaptor is also rated for 220v I think I will keep using the 220-110 adaptor as well. For one thing, it gives me an additional (and easily replaced) buffer against the fluctuating current here. The downside is that I draw too much current if I charge the battery when the laptop is on or watch a movie and cause the converter to overheat and shut down. I’m not sure how many hours in a day I should use something that is marked “not for continuous use” so I’ve just been going by the heat of the device.

The converter I bought at Radio Shack for twenty bucks. I’m told they sell here for a fraction of that cost, but judging from the quality of the other electronics I’ve seen here I think I’m glad I went ahead and bought it ahead of time. It converts 220 to 110 for up to 50 watts which isn’t much, but it’s a clean current suitable for electronics. Some of the other converters will allow a lot more wattage but aren’t suitable for electronics. It is also more than capable for charging my toothbrush, razor and ham radio. Chile recently changed their electrical outlets, but luckily this is the right size.

Update (September 15): I finally gave in and ran my laptop with 220v with the new adaptor. No problems. I wanted to watch a DVD and the 220-110 converter would overheat with that much use. I figured this new adaptor would run on 220v but found it so hard to plug it in after that experience last time.

A typical day

I try to get out of bed before the school bus leaves for its second load of the girls who live off campus. It roars past my bedroom window so I don’t really need an alarm clock. Don, my housemate, showers in the evenings so there’s no competition for the bathroom. I have to go into the kitchen first, however, to light the hot water heater. It provides continuous hot water, but we aren’t supposed to leave the pilot light lit. I often forget to turn it off afterwards.

Breakfast is at the cafeteria, usually the ubiquitous rolls (nearly all of the bread (“pan”) in Chile is the same sort of flat roll) with hot milk or coffee. Both beverages take a while to drink because of waiting for them to cool. Fortunately in Chile, one never need be on time. Also, beverages aren’t considered portable here. It’s rare that someone takes a drink with him, it’s expected that you sit and enjoy it properly.

Then it’s off to the teacher’s lounge unless I’m running late enough to go right to the lab. At the teacher’s lounge there is occasionally coffee or breakfast if someone brings in, yes, pan. Also, they don’t like you to eat bread alone, without jelly, butter or something else.

At the computer lab the mornings are usually slow. This is the time to catch up on music from home at www.xpn.org or www.cartalk.com; anything like that. There is a recess about every 90-120 minutes, when I am guaranteed a chance to get out to the bathroom or drink more coffee, anything like that. I am allowed to take unofficial breaks if no one is in the lab, but usually whenever I try this, some kids show up before I can escape.

The kids need permission slips to get in; most of my job is acting as a bouncer to enforce this. They usually come in small groups to work on projects in PowerPoint or Word, usually about agriculture. I have to watch where they surf on the Internet and prevent them from playing music or games. In the earlier days of the lab, it was pretty much a free-for-all, and a lot quieter now.

There are also classes in the lab. I don’t teach and I’m kind of glad for it. I tried to fill in for one class and was unable to hold their attention with my limited Spanish. For the classes that teach how to use the computers, the teacher sounds very exasperated so I’m glad to avoid that. I can help one-on-one, but I have to be careful not to do their work for them. It’s a slight challenge also to figure out how to do something in PowerPoint when all of the menus and help files are in Spanish.

I’m often assigned or take it upon myself to work on the computers in the lab. This is where working with older systems can be frustrating and yet nostalgic. I have vowed to never buy a cheap computer after seeing so many hardware problems here.

The recess is fifteen minutes long, barely enough time to let that coffee cool and drink luxuriously. The students are slow to leave the lab, but I think is the Latin American attitude towards time more than anything else. I usually open the lab five minutes late to compensate (also before permission slips, this helped reduce the number of people who would run in the lab for a few minutes of pinball before class).

Lunch starts at 1:30 but I usually wait until 2:00 so it’s easier to find a seat. Also, this is when the teachers usually go, although the downside is there is less time for a nap afterwards. This is also the time when I take my daily vitamin to thwart the usual communicable diseases that make their way around schools. No one here can believe that I am still wearing my Chacos; they ask if I am cold or warn me that I will get sick. I think the ones who wear shoes and are already sick are a bit jealous. If it’s a nice day, I like to walk out to a market and buy a fresh chili pepper to eat with lunch.

The afternoon usually sees more kids than in the morning. I help with technical problems, and check email. I try to keep something to read in the lab as well, either the current issue of the Economist or the Message Bible.

Dinner is like lunch, not only is it often leftovers, but that it’s a good idea to try for the second shift of the meal. But this can be tough because if you’re late you officially miss the meal. I have somewhat elevated status and have been able to get into the kitchen (even when I have to ahem scale a stone wall because the gate is locked) to get something to eat.

Sometimes there are activities at the school after dinner, like intramural soccer. I like to stop by those when I can to see the kids in a different setting. Other times I just go back to read my serious book, Jung’s five hundred page dense Psychological Types, or rest.

That’s a typical day.

Update (December 10): I wanted to update this. As I write this, there don’t seem to be any more classes, just a teacher taking the kids somewhere so she can work while they play. But as spring arrived, my schedule did change. I had been sleeping until 8 am or so, then rising to take a shower and show up for the 8:30 class. At 10 am there is a breakfast in the teacher’s lounge of bread and usually something else. I used to take each recess in the teacher’s lounge as well, usually with a cup of Nescafe.

The earlier light of spring got me awake earlier, and the time off with real coffee made me reluctant to return to the instant Nescafe. I could get up at 7 am and take breakfast with the male students (same fare really, bread and something else, with hot milk) and come back for a shower and still have time to brew coffee with a French press.

Since it is late in the school year there hasn’t been many classes. I have been quite lazy, probably from waking up so early and just lie down in the fields. When there were classes but they were starting late, I could recline in the grassy areas near the lab and wait to see if a teacher would show up for a class.

The other volunteer

The other volunteer here is Don White, a sculptor in clay and wood. He was living with the host family in Temuco when I arrived and had been teaching at the school in the prior semester. He’s seventy (as of March 30, 2004) and a Nazarene minister. He’s spent a lot of time teaching kids in a reformatory and also in a prison. At the school he has made a life-size statue of John Wesley and another figure with an owl out of wood and the head of an ape out of clay. His big project for this fall was a giant Mapuche woman with a drum for the town of New Imperial. He left it just about finished and had an assistant who is to put the finishing touches on it. He returned to the States (Springer, NM) on May 30.

Before Chile, he also worked in Palestine, Estonia, El Salvador, México, Russia and Navajo reservations. Probably more locations, but those are the ones I remember.

Sometimes when I get discouraged I remember about the problems he had with students stealing tools that he bought himself. Other students would come into the classroom and dull the knives on metal tables.

Don returned November 8^th. I’m hoping to hear what changed his mind; he had mentioned that he was quite ready to retire when he left in May. He is currently working on a small project and is supposedly to start and run a school for sculpture that is to be housed in a school building that burned down over the winter. Yet there is no sign of activity there for rebuilding. Don said that he might make this his permanent residency. I’m sure he’d appreciate a note from you: dondwhite@hotmail.com.

So how’d you learn Spanish, anyway?

Funny you should ask. I had classes in Temuco, but my expectation was that they would be classes about every day for several hours. Instead, it was a couple hours several times that month. I was disappointed about this because I thought learning the language was essential and that I would be severely handicapped without good classes my first month. So I did what I could, learning from the host family and the phrasebook I had brought with me.

After a conversation with some other long-term missionaries who warned me that I would not learn the language with simple immersion although I would be continually told I was improving, I decided to try to find a textbook and have it shipped over. I asked for recommendations from my college, but ended up with something that sounded good on Amazon. The trouble is that Amazon never shipped it. After waiting about a month for it to leave the warehouse (said to be in-stock), I went to Barnes & Noble and bought two. They arrived when expected and I started on the first one, Margarita Madrigal’s Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish. I’m about halfway through it now (June 16) and enjoy it, mostly due to an occasional bit of fun like “and the last two verbs are irregular in their own sweet way” (p.266) or “Remember that if a noun is feminine it is followed by a feminine adjective and if a noun is masculine it is followed by a masculine adjective. Boys don’t mix with girls grammatically as they do in real life” (p.188). A laugh in the middle of studying is a great break.

But what’s more gratifying is the feeling I get when I can sense that my grasp of Spanish is growing and I learn something that I find myself using on a daily basis. I should have brought a book like this with me, but one advantage of starting late is that I feel that I have a better grasp of pronunciation. While I have any number of people around who can help, I’ve been studying alone and that involves reading a lot aloud. It doesn’t help to practice incorrect pronunciation.

(Aug 31) I don’t like the second textbook (Living Language’s Ultimate Spanish) however. I have to drag myself over to work out a lesson even though the lessons are short. I think it’s because there are frequent errors and I lose confidence with some of the answers. Also (nearly finished, Oct 26) there isn’t enough practice for the concepts. I don’t think I noticed this in the beginning because it was review from the first text book. But I am now firmly into new territory with the different forms of the subjunctive and it’s frustrating.

A church service in the countryside

The churches in the countryside have services every week, even if the pastor only makes every other Sunday. He has five churches (or capillas, “chapels”) in his jurisdiction and has a schedule for visitation; three each Sunday.

The pastor doesn’t run the service but only gives the sermon. Someone else in the congregation handles that; I assume that there is a rotation schedule.

The services run from about an hour and a half to nearly three hours. The sermon is about half an hour and there are a lot of hymns (from a hymnal) and songs (memorized by the congregation). Usually they have some musical instruments, whether it’s a battered drum or electric guitars and a keyboard. The congregation can be from about five people to twenty. Sometimes their prayers are more emotional than I am used to and often someone will switch from Spanish to Mapadungan, the indigenous language.

Volunteering at La Granja compared to Iquique

Seeing how volunteers live in Iquique has been an interesting comparison with life in Nueva Imperial. Here there are several volunteers and a much richer social life. They have cell phones, modern housing and social lives. I feel very isolated in La Granja now and also aware of the primitive living conditions in the rural south. I don’t lack anything at my house that the school could readily provide; I believe that it’s just the difference between the city and the country, just like volunteers in Manhattan (are there any?) would have a different experience than someone in a rural section of upstate New York.

I approached the conditions here with what I considered a “Peace Corps” mentality of flexibility and it’s been fine. I do feel a bit funny though after calling the house where I live “quite nice” to some people, and then seeing the apartment building in Iquique, I feel like I should modify my description as more of a shack.

I am a bit tempted to move up to Iquique because they have the things I lack in La Granja, but someone has to live in La Granja to fill their needs and that means living in similar conditions to what I have. Also, I prefer living on campus to eliminate the commute from say Temuco, even though Temuco is about the same size as Iquique. It’s hard enough to get up in the morning to walk to breakfast; it would be awful to get up an hour earlier for the bus ride.

Advice for the next volunteer here

On the house:

I would buy an electric heater that you can run all night (the gas stove puts out harmful fumes), and a radio.

They wouldn’t replace the washers in the bathroom; so currently (9/22/04) the water runs nonstop in the shower and somewhat in the sink. But other than that, the staff was quick to fix problems with the house.

Mice live upstairs and scurry around in the walls but are easy to ignore if you live downstairs.

During cold mornings, the gas won’t work until you go outside and switch it on and off a few times. Another trick if you can’t get the pilot light lit in the morning but you can hear the gas running is to turn on some hot water at the sink. This will increase the flow of gas enough to light from a match.

I enjoyed living in the house because I could sleep until eight and still make my 8:30 class. But on the other hand, you are now stuck in the area. If you instead choose to live in Temuco you will have the commute but a better chance at a social life. There are hospedajes in Imperial but they are said to be dirty. You might be able to rent a room from someone in the church in Imperial.

On the school:

I was never asked to personally financially contribute to anything but I heard the previous volunteer was. The advice seems to be that it’s better to just serve your post and not become a philanthropist. Towards the end there were lots of questions about whether I knew of churches that could support the school and many references to the money problems.

It’s easy to get discouraged with the kids. I think the only advice I can give here is to not let the bad kids keep you from appreciating the good ones.

No one tells you anything. Look forward to that. Well, things did get pretty bad, so I would like to champion the idea of having a ‘buddy’ at the school who would be responsible for communication about what’s happening and could also help with any problems you may be having.

Rules do not seem to be rules here. Well there are rules like “no smoking” that are enforced, obeyed and yet not told to volunteers, and then the rules for your job (see Oct 26 entry).

On the work:

(this was the work in the computer lab) Oh, it’s so boring. The maintenance is gratifying at first; it had been so long since a lot of the work had been done, and when you fix something that had been broken it always feels productive. But showing up just for the classes means there’s very often little to do. I either hang out at my laptop and surf or write email, or lean against the wall and read my magazine. The students don’t really like it when you openly watch what they are doing even when it’s too help. I would not recommend taking this particular position full-time unless you have a hobby you’d want to indulge in. It’s one thing to be available for problems as they arise and another to wait at a post for them.

On the town:

I was told many times it was dangerous but never had any problems. The risks are muggers, and of course to watch for traffic on the main road. It’s been a pleasant diversion to walk into town even for a quick errand.

On the host family:

They were awfully fond of that rent money and weren’t able to resist a few persuasive statements comparing life at the house to life at school. They told me that I wouldn’t be able to learn Spanish at the school nearly as well as living there with them and that the food at the school was somehow worse than the food at their house. Neither of those statements was true, so don’t trust anyone who is receiving your rent money. For price comparisons, the rent was $250 a month or $290 including lunches for that immersion month in February and included laundry.

In general:

I would get a cell phone that you refill with a card for minutes. It’s a bit of an initial investment, but not a monthly fee (like in the States) if you don’t use it. I’ve had several instances since I’ve been here when a cell phone would be great. You can sometimes borrow the phone at the school but only during the day and pretty much just for local calls.

I decided that I would buy a motorcycle if I could do it over again with more money or had another year. The transportation goal is Temuco, 30 km away. I think you could do it on a road bike, and but might have trouble securing it there in town. Either way you could probably resell the bike at the end of your time without too much of a loss. A car is safer of course, but it’s hard to find a good used car here from what I’ve heard. Maintenance is not a regular habit here, but perhaps even a Lada would get you around. One of the professors bought a 2-cylinder Daihaitsu for 300k pesos (about $500).

What next?

So far I plan to return to work with computers. I might switch later to being a schoolteacher or social work, but if nothing else I’d like to save up money, for example to pay for a return to university.

I don’t have any plans to return to a volunteer post like this. If I did, I think I would want to take a more measured pace and insure that I had a tenant for my house instead of rushing down.

Becky Harrell explains how to get a Chilean ID card

first, he goes to the office of "gobernacion"...and takes a letter from the Church saying he is a volunteer...also, they will need the official government paper that says the church is a registered agency in Chile (Bishops office has this), take your passport, have a paper notarized that says you are supporting yourself while here and make sure it has your banks name on it (no account number), have the school he is appointed to write a letter saying what he is doing there and that they do not pay him for his work, that it is volunteer. After all of that they will give him another 3 or 4 months...then he goes back and they will ask for a bunch of other stuff, then they will give him another year....then as soon as they give him the one year visa he has to go to the police department of investigation and they will "investigate" him, and he goes down and gets his Chile rut carnet....at the end of that year when he returns, THEN he gets permanent residency...whew....it is tiring but nice when you are done

Some prayers said at mealtime

Por esté pancito / con rico sabor / te comemos a diario / muchas gracias Señor / amen

Por esté pan, por esté don / te alabamos, te alabamos / por esté pan, por esté don / te alabamos señor, amen

Llego el día con amor / gracias te damos hoy Señor / amen

Padre nuestro cariños / hoy bendice esté alimento / cinco panes y dos peces / como allá en el desierto / amen

School fight song (autora letra y musica, Sra. Heroína Valenzuela Vda. De Conejeros)

El liceo Agrícola La Granja

Invitándote esta

La novena región te necesita

Estudiante de Imperial

Juventud, tesoro incomparable,

Flor que besa el sol primaveral.

Al maestro, al amigo, al compañero,

Nunca, nunca, olvidaras.

Muchachada, estudiante,

Adelante, sin temor.

En tus manos, el futuro,

Cielo, fe, ideal y amor.

La espiga dorada esta madura

Y los campos en verdor

Las estrellas y Dios en tu camino,

Te señalan lo mejor.

Juventud, la patria te reclama.

Ideales fraternos y d acción.

Al maestro, al hogar a la familia,

Dale siempre lo mejor.

Blog

I’m going to switch gears here and start a daily journal. I wanted to get the basic topics above fleshed out for the reader, but I’ve run out of things to post there and I want to keep this current somehow. By the way, feel free to email me for photos or anything else. I usually have time for email, and it’s good to also hear what you are doing and not just talk about myself.

4 February

Left Philly. I’ve already realized I’ve forgotten some things that will be sent later.

5 February

From the airport in Santiago, I took a bus into town and got off at the train station where I immediately got on a bus to Temuco. I think that was about ten hours, but it stopped in towns along the way for enough time to stretch my legs and buy snacks. After a long time traveling, I was glad to arrive in a house. I’m staying with a host family that the other volunteer met at the Methodist Church in Temuco.

7 February

I went to the beach in Lican Ray with the host family and got my first sunburn of the season. It was a nice beach on a calm lake with great views of the mountains around us. We had a picnic lunch there as well.

23 February

I just had a great day at Imperial and La Granja.

It started way too early. I remembered that I had not yet figured out the alarm on my travel clock so I had to wake up in time to get to the school the hard way, but that worked out fine. I got up around seven thirty and had a light breakfast.

The bus ride to school was crowded bus, and I realized that it can be tough to find the bus stop when you can’t see out. Don, the other volunteer, told me about the landmarks and what it’s like in the winter when the windows are fogged up, but we had no problems this time. Don’s been taking the bus daily for the last five months so he knows the routine now.

I saw Don’s sculptures in wood and clay and was impressed. Hope to get some pictures later.

I met with Daniel Martinez, who runs the school, and got a brief introduction to the school and computer lab. The room has about twenty computers, some new and others didn’t look so new. My duties are to be in the lab during the day when the teacher isn’t there to answer questions. On the surface, this might be tedious just because it entails so much time in one room indoors, but I’m holding off judgment until later. It’s also exactly what I was told when I accepted the assignment, so I definitely can’t complain.

Don and I went on into Imperial and found a plain clean Mapuche (local Indian tribe) restaurant for a complete lunch that cost about two dollars. Imperial is celebrating its 122^nd anniversary this week. It’s a pretty quaint quiet town where horses can be seen walking down the street and hogs are tied up on fences.

At the post office, a package from the US that had been sent in December had just arrived. I’m not sure what that means for packages sent to me. Don got some of his in a week or so. Anyhow, no mail for me had arrived yet.

Don started talking to two girls at a cement store, trying to get them to speak English and then went on to two guys working at a tire vulcanization shop. Then we get invited in and to my amazement, the house is full of wood sculptures and a Mapuche museum. I agree to look at their computer and agree to come back later with a system disk to try to fix their problem, although I really think the computer is trashed.

Don & I walked back to the school (15-20 minutes away) and I used my laptop to produce the disk I needed while he returned to Temuco to wash up. We’ve an appointment for tea that night in Imperial with another family he met. As I start back to school, one of the workers gives me a ride and offers to show me the countryside. We head off out of town through gentle pasture lands to a farm where he is digging a well. He stops the truck at one point to pick wild blackberries. We drop off some pipe (and pick some apples) to return to Imperial.

The emergency repair disk I created doesn’t fix the BIOS problem for the sculptor’s computer (as I suspected). I’ve two hours to kill, and expect to spend them on email in the plaza hoping my laptop doesn’t attract any attention, but the sculptor’s son is ready to entertain me, so we go off for a walk and then return for “onces” (Spanish for elevens, a British tea hour) including some bread straight out of the oven coated with icing. Incredible.

Then another one of the brothers invites me to the river. It works out to pick up Don at this point (the two hours are gone) and we have just enough time to walk out to river to see the paddleboat that he’s got ready for a race this Friday in town. I manage to take my laptop out on a rowboat for a spin without any problems.

Don and I get to the house for tea a couple minutes early. The house is incredible, big spacious rooms. Heavy solid wood doors (I don’t know if that means anything to you, but I’m so used to the lightweight doors in the US that this just really spoke of quality to me; this house really demonstrated to me the luxury that someone might feel would justify a move from Spain). The family is from Spain and seems very educated. The two sons are both engineers for example. We have a dinner that I can barely stuff in onto top of the snack I’ve just had of great food. The table was full of food, and I was very glad to see the second son show up to help eat the empanadas, olives, figs, peanuts, walnuts, chips, apple pie and cherries.

I’ve been invited out to hike up a volcano in a couple weekends with one of the sons.

Now that I’m home it’s midnight and I’ve promised to sleep until noon. I start at the school next Monday March 1 and will be able to move into the rather large house then as well.

1 March

It was raining quite hard early this morning, but lessened to a drizzle for the bus ride to the school, and then stopped altogether. I got a key and moved into the house; it’s exactly what I hoped for. It’s rustic sure, and had the musty smell of an old house as I walked in, but was adequately furnished with a table, chairs, couch, etc. Don picked the upstairs loft for his room so I’ll take the first floor bedroom, with a window that looks out onto the driveway and beyond that, a greenhouse and field. It’s heated by a woodstove and has a small kitchen and bathroom.

There was an orientation that lasted about an hour punctuated with prayer and singing where I was introduced and then a second meeting that was equally incomprehensible to me. I did find out that they have a problem with attendance which has dropped from three hundred to two hundred in the last year.

After that I was led to a third meeting in sort of a faculty room where we had Nescafé (instant coffee, but better than the instant coffee in the States) that I much needed to cope with the early arrival (I didn’t sleep much after the rain started in the middle of the night). I found out that there are some faculty members who speak a little English and also a little about the computer courses here. They are very basic and seem to focus on Microsoft Office. The faculty seems fun, and thus far I am looking forward to the year here. But first, lunch.

21 March

I went to the Conguillío National Park with Claudio and Rodrigo, friends from town. It wasn’t a bad drive, but nearly all on two lane roads, sometimes gravel. The drive in the park started out as a primitive but smooth road through the assorted volcanic rock left over from the eruption of Volcán Llaima in 1957. The landscape was all black from this eruption, with trees poking out from the rubble and a few lakes. One was especially eerie with green colors underwater and trees visible at the bottom. We parked the car and started a hike for a few hours up one of the mountains. That was an incredible hike: the landscape was varied from forest to volcanic rock, and the forest was all native Chilean plants, a marked difference from the imported trees which are now all that is seen in most of the region (that said, many of the trees are from countries like Australia so they still look different from the USA, just not authentic. The colonists burned much of the trees as they cleared the land). There were waterfalls coming from the snow at the top of the mountains and we had a chance to refill our water bottles from one of the streams.

We retraced our steps back down the trail and went