To Teach or To Learn?
Originally written on August 5, 2009
Dear Readers,
After my one post in July I decided it was high time to update my blog again. I spent a lot of time last month traveling and didn’t have time to write as much as I thought I would, either in my blog or anything else that I am writing. I read Stephen King’s memoir “On Writing” and it among many things it inspired in me, it inspired me to take another stab at a story I’ve been working on for months and I’m making progress in it, yet I didn’t even have much of a chance to work on that this past month. But that’s not meant to be a complaint; for the most part July passed very well.
I spent a few days with some other friends from my Peace Corps group in Ancash, a region in Peru that is famous for its Andean landscapes, including the mountain Huascaran. It’s also one of the places in Peru where the ancient language Quechua is still spoken. Some of my fellow volunteers have told me that the Spanish they’ve learned before swearing in has gotten worse because they are surrounded by people who either speak no Spanish or speak broken Spanish. I don’t necessarily envy them anymore, though. I still am interested in learning Quechua if I can, but I’m no longer in a rush to devour languages as fast as I can. I want to enjoy them because I have learned something about myself. It was actually something I already knew but was never able to explain until I heard someone explain the same feeling. Although I enjoy using the languages I learn – for years I wanted to be an interpreter – it is in the actual learning of languages that I find real fun. Sometimes people ask me why I want to learn such and such a language, from Finnish to Norwegian to Klingon, and it is because each language is unique and presents new challenges and new adventures, new constructions, new grammar that I haven’t seen before. A story might be the same story over and over, but each new language finds a new way to tell it through its unique grammar and the way its vocabulary is put together: Are the words self-standing, or are they compound constructions that give an insight to how the culture that uses that language sees the world. And what are the roots of those words? How can they take back into time to when the language was being formed out of mixtures of other tongues? Anyways, I owe thanks to the Hungarian polyglot Kató Lomb, who expressed in her book Így tanulok nyelveket (Polyglot: How I Learn Languages) the same passion about not just using languages, but actually *learning* them. I would probably do good not to forget that language was a huge reason why I joined the Peace Corps in the first place.
But I actually didn’t want to write just about languages in this entry. Although the truth is I’ve been wondering for the past few days what exactly I *should* write about. Yesterday I helped my family and my two counterparts put some of the major touches to my garden. The idea to do a garden was mine, but I know very little about what goes into gardening. I know a little bit about composting, to even there I’m still a novice. I have ended up learning far more about this project than I feel I’ve contributed. I’m ok with that because the next time I can help more actively. But I believe this will probably be a theme throughout my Peace Corps career, and I would be wise to keep a healthy degree of humility about myself. I think that I will probably more often than not be learning more than I will be actually contributing. I’m sometimes baffled by how the Peace Corps expects people to come in and introduce something to a community. Even after training I don’t really feel like an expert in water systems or environment matters. We may have more technical knowledge about why or how often a person should boil water or wash their hands, but in lots of things the people who have lived in the community for generations have a wealth of knowledge they could give us if we wanted. I’m reminded of an exercise we did during Staging in Washington DC where we divided the group into anthropologists and natives. The “natives” were instructed to react to the anthropologists in a very consistent manner that was supposedly the way they would react to each other in their own tribe. The “anthropologists” were told that the natives have a problem that the anthropologists and to identify. The natives had no idea that they were being diagnosed with a problem at all; indeed they were simply acting what to them was normal. We can’t always approach a group of people with the belief we know better than them and have more to offer.
I’m not saying we should just leave the people alone. If a person can help someone, I think they should, and there are plenty of opportunities to help in the Peace Corps, in terms of education and literacy, health, and environmental matters. My town alone, a small little isolated village of some 400 people or less has all of these. And also, I think the volunteers, or at least some of them, have the idea that we can’t really change a group of people, we can only offer suggestions and try to persuade the people in our communities to adopt them (digging dumps instead of littering or burning garbage, for example). It’s easy to see littering as a problem and nothing but a problem. I actually can’t think of how it cannot be a problem, as a matter of fact, but getting down to the cultural level is where the real work is. It’s easy to say that to cross a river you need to build a bridge. But it won’t be a usable or practical bridge unless you first familiarize yourself with the river bottom so you know the foundation you’ll be working with.
I guess that’s all I have for now.
Take care of yourselves.
Tristan
PS – Some people have been asking me what I would like to have from the states in care packages. If you are one of those folks, let me give you a short list here. It’s basically food I cannot get here or food that is too expensive for a poor lowly volunteer like myself.
Salted, unshelled sunflower seeds (like David or some brand like that….I like salted better than BBQ or Ranch)
Salted pumpkin seeds (see above)
Crunchy peanut butter
Candies like Snickers, Butterfinger, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (or other products by them, like Reese’s Pieces), Almond Joy
Beef Jerky, like the smoked, original or teriyaki flavors are my favorites, not so much the spicy flavors.
I’m also very interested in certain pops (or sodas, if you prefer) like Cherry or Vanilla Coke, Root Beer, and Dr. Pepper. However, sending liquids is a quick and easy way to make a package heavy and there might be rules about sending liquids, so I’m mostly writing these down to complete the list I have in my American food-starved brain at the moment, not because I really expect pop to be sent. However, if you feel the need…
To those of you who have been asking and are thinking of sending me care packages, my heartfelt thanks to you. A little piece of home is always nice out here.
Dear Readers,
After my one post in July I decided it was high time to update my blog again. I spent a lot of time last month traveling and didn’t have time to write as much as I thought I would, either in my blog or anything else that I am writing. I read Stephen King’s memoir “On Writing” and it among many things it inspired in me, it inspired me to take another stab at a story I’ve been working on for months and I’m making progress in it, yet I didn’t even have much of a chance to work on that this past month. But that’s not meant to be a complaint; for the most part July passed very well.
I spent a few days with some other friends from my Peace Corps group in Ancash, a region in Peru that is famous for its Andean landscapes, including the mountain Huascaran. It’s also one of the places in Peru where the ancient language Quechua is still spoken. Some of my fellow volunteers have told me that the Spanish they’ve learned before swearing in has gotten worse because they are surrounded by people who either speak no Spanish or speak broken Spanish. I don’t necessarily envy them anymore, though. I still am interested in learning Quechua if I can, but I’m no longer in a rush to devour languages as fast as I can. I want to enjoy them because I have learned something about myself. It was actually something I already knew but was never able to explain until I heard someone explain the same feeling. Although I enjoy using the languages I learn – for years I wanted to be an interpreter – it is in the actual learning of languages that I find real fun. Sometimes people ask me why I want to learn such and such a language, from Finnish to Norwegian to Klingon, and it is because each language is unique and presents new challenges and new adventures, new constructions, new grammar that I haven’t seen before. A story might be the same story over and over, but each new language finds a new way to tell it through its unique grammar and the way its vocabulary is put together: Are the words self-standing, or are they compound constructions that give an insight to how the culture that uses that language sees the world. And what are the roots of those words? How can they take back into time to when the language was being formed out of mixtures of other tongues? Anyways, I owe thanks to the Hungarian polyglot Kató Lomb, who expressed in her book Így tanulok nyelveket (Polyglot: How I Learn Languages) the same passion about not just using languages, but actually *learning* them. I would probably do good not to forget that language was a huge reason why I joined the Peace Corps in the first place.
But I actually didn’t want to write just about languages in this entry. Although the truth is I’ve been wondering for the past few days what exactly I *should* write about. Yesterday I helped my family and my two counterparts put some of the major touches to my garden. The idea to do a garden was mine, but I know very little about what goes into gardening. I know a little bit about composting, to even there I’m still a novice. I have ended up learning far more about this project than I feel I’ve contributed. I’m ok with that because the next time I can help more actively. But I believe this will probably be a theme throughout my Peace Corps career, and I would be wise to keep a healthy degree of humility about myself. I think that I will probably more often than not be learning more than I will be actually contributing. I’m sometimes baffled by how the Peace Corps expects people to come in and introduce something to a community. Even after training I don’t really feel like an expert in water systems or environment matters. We may have more technical knowledge about why or how often a person should boil water or wash their hands, but in lots of things the people who have lived in the community for generations have a wealth of knowledge they could give us if we wanted. I’m reminded of an exercise we did during Staging in Washington DC where we divided the group into anthropologists and natives. The “natives” were instructed to react to the anthropologists in a very consistent manner that was supposedly the way they would react to each other in their own tribe. The “anthropologists” were told that the natives have a problem that the anthropologists and to identify. The natives had no idea that they were being diagnosed with a problem at all; indeed they were simply acting what to them was normal. We can’t always approach a group of people with the belief we know better than them and have more to offer.
I’m not saying we should just leave the people alone. If a person can help someone, I think they should, and there are plenty of opportunities to help in the Peace Corps, in terms of education and literacy, health, and environmental matters. My town alone, a small little isolated village of some 400 people or less has all of these. And also, I think the volunteers, or at least some of them, have the idea that we can’t really change a group of people, we can only offer suggestions and try to persuade the people in our communities to adopt them (digging dumps instead of littering or burning garbage, for example). It’s easy to see littering as a problem and nothing but a problem. I actually can’t think of how it cannot be a problem, as a matter of fact, but getting down to the cultural level is where the real work is. It’s easy to say that to cross a river you need to build a bridge. But it won’t be a usable or practical bridge unless you first familiarize yourself with the river bottom so you know the foundation you’ll be working with.
I guess that’s all I have for now.
Take care of yourselves.
Tristan
PS – Some people have been asking me what I would like to have from the states in care packages. If you are one of those folks, let me give you a short list here. It’s basically food I cannot get here or food that is too expensive for a poor lowly volunteer like myself.
Salted, unshelled sunflower seeds (like David or some brand like that….I like salted better than BBQ or Ranch)
Salted pumpkin seeds (see above)
Crunchy peanut butter
Candies like Snickers, Butterfinger, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (or other products by them, like Reese’s Pieces), Almond Joy
Beef Jerky, like the smoked, original or teriyaki flavors are my favorites, not so much the spicy flavors.
I’m also very interested in certain pops (or sodas, if you prefer) like Cherry or Vanilla Coke, Root Beer, and Dr. Pepper. However, sending liquids is a quick and easy way to make a package heavy and there might be rules about sending liquids, so I’m mostly writing these down to complete the list I have in my American food-starved brain at the moment, not because I really expect pop to be sent. However, if you feel the need…
To those of you who have been asking and are thinking of sending me care packages, my heartfelt thanks to you. A little piece of home is always nice out here.
posted by Tristan | 2:33 PM
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