9/21/05

I just can't imagine living in the same place my whole life. I can't imagine never having any dreams I could chase down. I was talking to a Catholic nun tonight at the school here in Campo Gallo, she was saying that she has the same problem I did in Nicaragua as a teacher. The kids don't care to learn. She teaches English but finds a whole lot of apathy there. She said that the reality is - these kids have no incentives to learn anything. It is rare to go to college for them, so why pay attention in school if you're going to make the same wages as if you don't know English. There is no point. I wonder sometimes what I am fighting for. Am I a rare thinker that wishes all children could have a chance at a decent education so they can have more options than doing what their father did? Is it a pointless dream to have? I think of kids like Palao and imagine if in 50 years he'll be living in the same basic lifestyle - torn shirts and dried skin hoping to survive. He doesn't know any better than the life he lives but should he be taught there is better and he can have better? But then I must define the word better - for surely I cannot mean become a part of the proletariat class. That is where I put my pencil down and claim I cannot solve this equation. Maybe I should sit down and think, what do I really want these kids to have? Is my mind so cluttered by scenes of kids in the middle of toy stores. Sure I would love to take Palao to Toys-R-Us but what good would that really do, except place in him a mindset of how materialism brings happiness. Love. Opportunity. Intelligence. Heaven. I suppose those are the things I want for him and for Junior and Anibal and Gabrielle and Celene and Ronaldo....