Laura Miller is from Arlington, Kansas and is serving with MCC’s SALT program in Nicaragua. In the photo, Laura is pictured with Reyna Lumbí, the administrator for CINAFE. Photo by Jonathan Charles.
Today, my phone notified me that I have passed the 2/3 mark of my time in Nicaragua. Somewhere along the line, this hot, noisy, wonderful place stopped feeling foreign and became a home. I have family, friends, work, and play. I have a comfortable routine. I’m a regular at a certain fruit stand. There’s a woman who calls me nieta (granddaughter) daily on my way to and from work, and an elderly clothes vender who gives me fruits and sweets when I pass, and tells me stories about her youth. I know what to do when I see a tarantula and how to keep taxi drivers from charging me too much. My host mom and I watch our telenovela together every night, and I don’t use the English subtitles anymore.
Woman in Granada, Nicaragua. Photo by Elaine Faith, Creative Commons License.
When I first arrived in Nicaragua, I didn’t have any way of knowing what my life would really be like. All I knew was my MCC job description – that I’d be working as an educational assistant in a school for the deaf, and a children’s shelter. I figured that the key word was assistant; as a recent high school graduate (who knew no sign language and whose grasp of the Spanish language was shaky at best) I wasn’t really qualified to do more than “assist”. So it came as a pretty sharp surprise when, on my first day of work, I was led to a classroom full of deaf high school students and informed that I would begin teaching English classes immediately.
That first week was bewildering and frustrating. As I rule, I don’t approve of the concept of unqualified North Americans bopping around the world and teaching English, and it was much to my chagrin that I became one of those. I should note that MCC doesn’t intentionally place people in situations like this. In this instance, the school changed the position from what it had been previously without notifying MCC. Nobody at the school seemed to share my concern, however. I’ve learned since that a good few of the teachers are themselves only starting to earn a teaching degree. So, on I went.
The school doesn’t have English teaching materials, so I was on my own to figure out a curriculum. I quickly learned that my best preparation for teaching a foreign language was having studied one myself. It has been helpful to think back on strategies used by various Spanish teachers I’ve had, but there remains one great difference: I teach deaf students. First and foremost, I didn’t know any sign language. Definitely a tricky barrier, to say the least! In the beginning, I got by with the help of a couple of hearing students, and a LOT of written communication. I wasn’t able to take formal sign classes, so I learned on the job: I would teach an English word and my students would teach me the sign.
Another challenge teaching the deaf is that they are not so much “learning English” as we think of it, but learning to read and write it. Teaching those two components exclusively is quite different from coupling them with oral communication. Additionally, many of these kids have a limited knowledge of their native Spanish. Public schools have poor accommodations for deaf students, so many who didn’t start off at a deaf school as young children are often far behind their peers. Trying to teach a foreign language using another which is not well understood is not the most straightforward task.
The children’s shelter often wanted me to teach English classes as well. That group of kids presented a whole different set of challenges. Many of them have anger/attention issues, another area in which I had no experience.
Seven months have passed. My duties at the children’s shelter have shifted to tutoring, something I’m far more qualified to do. I continue to teach at the school, but I now know enough sign language that, with some help from a hearing student, I can teach a class more or less seamlessly. I’ve learned a few things that really work well for teaching a foreign language to the deaf, as well as many more things that really don’t work. I’m no more qualified to be teaching than I was when I started, but I’m much more comfortable.
Bus in Managua
I’m learning that success is not only about transmitting knowledge in the most able and efficient way. My pride pushes me to try to succeed on the levels that are measurable and is rewarded every time one of my kids conjugates correctly. But as I see it, I’m here to Serve and Learn (part of the SALT acronym), and neither service nor learning are limited to the successful transfer of knowledge. In seven months, I’ve learned a bit of sign language, a lot of Spanish, and a ton about how to teach a class, but I’ve also developed incredible relationships with my students and co-workers, and ultimately, that’s what we’ll mutually remember, far more than the knowledge we’ve given to one another.
Apart from my work, life in Nicaragua is pretty fantastic. It is quite hot, and adjusting to living and working without AC took some time. The cool thing is, that’s my only complaint. My host family takes care of me as if I were one of their own. I have three “siblings”, 16-year-old Nahomi, who wants to be a nail artist, and who does my nails every Saturday, 9-year-old Fredd, who is exactly what you would expect of a little brother, and 13-month-old Rosita, who knows four words: “Mama”, “Papa”, “gracias”, and “Laura”. My host father, Nelson, teases me about boys and chastises catcallers on the street. My host mom, Nancy, knows a home remedy for every ill (did you know that fresh oregano boiled in milk helps with a sore throat?), and makes the best gallo pinto I’ve tasted. Nicaraguan food alone is enough to make spending a year here vale la pena (worth it). I’ve eaten everything from fruits I didn’t know existed to a literal pig’s ear (hairs included), and absolutely love nearly everything.
Fruit collected from the field.
It’s been fun to get better at Spanish: to discover parallels to English that I didn’t know existed, to find funny phrases or dichos, to learn fast raps in Spanish that make my tongue feel like a twizzler, and to laugh about the inevitable mistakes I make. I am constantly awed by the incredible diversity of beauty found here. Urban beauty comes in the form of Colonial-style architecture. We have black and white sand beaches. There are rainforests and mountains, and farms which grow edible joy in the forms of chocolate and coffee. Managua will never be ranked among the most beautiful cities in the world, but even here we have glorious trees of life, which can be seen even from an airplane.
I have loved living in Nicaragua. I love my students, my family, friends, culture, food, and the beautiful country itself. It continues to be an incredible blessing to spend a year of my life here, and I can’t imagine not returning in the future.