Self-sufficiency
Daily writing experience - day 10
Self-sufficiency
I’ve always loved going to school, with it's clear structure, learning possibilities, and engaging with people doing similar things.
In Quetzaltenango, my eldest sister, and I had a school start time of 7:15 am. School ended at 1:00 pm. My only brother went to an all boys school, which started later.
Usually, the three of us would wake up at 6 am, wash up, put on our uniforms, hurriedly eat the breakfast our mom prepared, and leave the house with our backpacks by 6:30 am.
We'd walk 0.8 miles (1.3 km) to get to school. The only thing we had at school was a wooden desk. We had to carry all the supplies we needed with us each day, which meant carrying a heavy backpack.
Sometimes we'd get lucky. Usually our dad had to be at work by 8 am. When he needed to get to work earlier, he'd give us a ride to school. Other times, we'd leave our house late and catch our neighbor leaving to drop off his kids who went to our school. He'd give us a lift, or we'd be late.
If we were late, we'd be punished by having to stand under the bell so others would know we had been late. I can now recognize it as a shaming practice.
It really didn't matter why you were late. Once the school doors were closed, you had to wait under the bell until the first bell rang to go to your classroom. So the pressure to get there before the doors closed was very strong. As the youngest of the three eldest kids, I was usually the one lagging behind trying to keep up.
When the first day of school in Las Cruces, New Mexico arrived, we stood in front of a house a short walk from our own home in “regular clothes”, not uniforms to wait for the school bus. We didn't speak a word of English. We didn't have anything in our backpacks.
School started at 8:00 am, and ended at 3:30 pm. The school was set to pick us up at this last bus stop by 7:15 am. We'd arrive at school by 7:30 to allow 30 minutes for breakfast.
When the yellow school bus arrived, the three of us went up the stairs, walked down the middle, and sat all together on the next available seat.
I was surprised to see the green leather seats were all in almost new condition. I'd never seen such high backs. I couldn't see what was happening in the front unless I stood or stuck my head out into the middle corridor.
We weren't moving. And the Black woman bus driver was speaking. We didn't know what she was saying.
Finally, a bilingual Mexican kid sitting in the front walked to where we were sitting, pointed to my brother and told him in a huff that he had to sit on the boy's side. The right side was for girls, and the left side was for boys.
It turned out that this kid was in my third grade classroom. And he never translated for us or me again. As a kid I resented him for not helping me when I knew he could.
As an adult, I now understand that being bilingual was not something to be proud of in that environment. It made him stand out as different, and not fit in with the group. It felt unsafe for him to stand out and help the foreigner. His English skills had probably cost him a lot. He was protecting himself in the only way he knew how, by creating distance.
Have you ever felt lost in a new place?