From here to there back to here

            I went to one of the local schools this morning in Cuhol, a ten minute walk up and through meandering mud and trash paraded roads, cows standing in filth, tied to posts with six foot ropes, kids in doorways who smile or look at us with complete aw, past a pila (a three foot walled bath like sink fed by rainwater) where women and young children wash their clothes and hair.  I say “Buenos dias” in the sing-songy Comalapan way and they sing it back.  Sometimes they say it with emphasis on the last syllable of “buenas” and “dias” like a church bell.  Sometimes it comes out only “bue-dias,” sometimes only “dias” and sometimes all muffled and melted together in a gurggly duck call.

            We helped an English class today.  I started by going through the class and saying “good morning, how are you,” and they would reply, “good morning, I am well” or “I am sleepy” in a slow concentrated way, where you could see they were trying so hard with an eagerness to learn not familiar to my experience in teaching American kids.  They’re faces would light up like roller-coaster’s when they knew that they got a word or a phrase right.

            “My name is Kyle” I would say, “O en Espanol, Carlos”, “or in Spanish, Carlos”.  “Cow” they would reply.  Almost.  I would then ask them their names and how old they were in English, “My names is Antony.  I am twelf,” “my name is Fedlia, I am fourteen.”

            I was working with sixth graders, ranging from ages 11-14, some dressed in traditional colorful traje, some dressed in American Eagle, some dressed in whatever clothed coverage they had.  The sixth grad is the last grade of the school and this will be the end of 95% of their academic careers and the beginning of their lives carrying corn and digging trenches and pounding tortillas.  It breaks my heart.  They all want to learn and this is all made more painful in contrast to American kid’s mirrored philosophy towards education.

            These kids are tough as sledge hammers.  Recess began and the teachers gathered for a meeting and it was on.  They went bezerk.  The courtyard/basketball court turned into a running pulsating cackling smile torn war-zone.  Kids colliding into each other, running in every direction at once, about 15 basketballs flying around in all sorts of unpredictable trajectories, boys fighting for money, girls pummeling and tackling each other for possession of one of the many basketballs.  They were having the time of their lives, smiling and laughing uncontrollably.

            I played basketball and soccer and tag with them.  “Me amos es Carlos” and I would spin the ball on my finger and I’d quickly have a group of 20 of them surrounding me, hypnotized by the way the multi-colored ball transformed into one undulating color as it spun suspended on the tip of my finger.

            In the 7^th grade we had two lesbians visit class to talk to  us about alternative sexuality and to these kids I was probably just as exotic, not in the sexual referent way, but different to anything they’ve seen so far in their lives.

            I saw at least five kids just get completely taken out, hit in the face or head by these cannonball projected basketballs that flew in every direction, sometimes knocking them of their feet, and they would just get up like was nothing and start marauding in gleeful spasms again.

            They would call “Colocho” and want me to flex my muscles for some reason.  I felt cool.  Some little girls would take my hand by the finger and bring me no place in particular, but just walk with me.  Some boys would throw balls or shoot tiny pebbles out of straws at me like snipers from rooftops, I’d feel one hit me in the back and turn to locate the assailant and there’d be nobody there.  Sneaky.

            And they’re going to carry corn for the rest of their lives.

            All these kids happy like nothing else, running in extacy with ragged boots and scandals, eating simple tortilla or fruit snacks, smiling smiles that will melt your face, free-wheeling around, intoxicated by this brief moment of unsupervised mayhem.

            There is a missing demographic in Comalapa.  It is nearly impossible to identify young adults or the entire decade of 20-30 for that matter.  You’ll se a mother with a couple of kids on her lap and another older kid carrying the third youngen’, and the mother’s glazed eyes which resemble stoicism betray her youth and you realize you’re not looking at an older women but you’re looking at an underclassmen, younger than I am, surviving in the way only humans slowly survive.

            The people are beautiful here, but of course I notice the women first.  There are a lot of beautiful young women but the locals talk about something that happens to this beauty in the twenties, it just somehow goes away.  But then something more profound and undetectable and really, to my brooding, un-analyzable grows within to replace the exterior aesthetics.  Something that is beyond words like music.  Something that you can catch it’s presence, like a dim star, but disappears when you try to look at it.  The slow survival, the memories of boundaryless playground mayhem, the wick of a child’s smile seem to be the waters to the growth of this ethereal something.  It is smoke.  It has images.  It imagines what it can define as it’s boundaries.  It imagines it’s childhood and muddy toes and just projects, that’s it.

            And the kids will carry corn for the rest of their lives.