I know I always yammer on about the beaches near my house, but seriously! Best part of my life! Actually, I’m not sure which is better—having several beautiful beaches within a 15 or 20 minutes’ bike ride of my house, or getting paid to ride my bike down to said beaches and calling it “work.”
I got lucky twice this week:
On Tuesday, the 5th and 6th graders from S’Alqueria (and me!) all rode bikes down to the Parc Natural Mondragó, where we went on a short nature hike with a park employee and then played on the beach for half an hour.
As with many things in the elementary school, there wasn’t much planning beforehand, and none of the teachers had thought to ask the kids if they actually knew how to ride a bike (or if they had a bike. One girl didn't have one, and nobody thought to borrow one from somebody for her, so she ended up having to go with the younger kids, who came down to the park on a bus). Most of the kids could ride their bikes, but there were a few that struggled with keeping their handlebars straight, and they constantly wobbled dangerously close to their neighbors as we pedaled down to the coast in a big pack. One kid, when turning around to shout something triumphant at a girl he’d just passed, crashed into a bush by the roadside. Another girl couldn’t figure out how to change her gears, and ended up throwing off her chain each time she went up a hill. Another boy’s pedal fell off of his bike.
We all arrived more or less in one piece at the natural park and had a lovely walk through the carob and almond groves before getting to the beach.
On Thursday (today), the 7th graders from Santanyí (and me!) all went walking down to the natural park with the kids that are visiting from Santanyí’s sister school in La Seu d’Urgell (in Catalonia—mainland Spain). I didn’t want to walk the 6K down to the beach (because that would mean walking 6K back up at the end of the day), so I rode my bike down. I thought the kids were going to leave the high school between 8:00 and 8:30am, so I left my house at 8:45 expecting to cross paths with them on the road, but I saw no sign of them. When I got to the beach, it looked like this:
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| This was the first time that having a beach NOT full of 13-year-olds was a bad thing! |
They eventually arrived about an hour later (I guess they got a late start), and we frolicked and lounged and had a good time all around. The five teachers from Santanyí and the two teachers from La Seu d’Urgell hung out in a group and chatted away in Catalan. If I listened very hard, I could follow most of the conversation, and a few times I chipped in. My Catalan level doesn’t have much to show for itself after being here for over 7 months, but whenever I’ve been in a group that speaks slowly and clearly enough that I can follow the conversation, I usually realize that I don’t want to join in on the conversation. One of today’s topics, for example:
Teacher A: “So, the PQPI students have finished and are doing apprenticeships now…”
(OK, pause the story for a second so I can explain PQPI. For students that don’t finish or fail out of the obligatory secondary education, or “ESO,” which lasts until students are 16 years old, the school offers an alternative last-chance vocational program that teaches the students to function in the restaurant and bar business. Click here to read about the program in Catalan. Students spend most of the year in classes and the last month or two in apprenticeships in local bars and restaurants. So, back to the story:)
Teacher A: “So, the PQPI students have finished and are doing apprenticeships now. I was talking to [a bar owner] saying that we were looking for a place for [Student X]. The bar owner said, ‘[Student X’s name]? But, that isn’t a Spanish name!’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘The girl is from Morocco,’ ‘Ah, well then, we don’t have room for an apprentice.’”
Teacher B: “That’s normal. Imagine if you have a business, and you could either hire someone who’s from here, and you know their parents and you know their history, or you could take a risk and hire a foreigner. The Moroccan or the black guy might be fantastic, but it’s a risk,”
(conversation about immigrants continues for a minute or two.)
Teacher A: “Someone else told me that because of their religion, these [Moroccan] students can’t drink or touch or smell alcohol. And there are two of them in the PQPI bar & restaurant classes!”
Teacher B: “You know, they have to adapt. You’d think that they’d be more open-minded, after being here for so long…”
Hwa-what? I think I just got whiplash from rubbernecking that mangled mess of a contradiction.
It was great being down at the beach instead of at school for the day, but after sitting through the above conversation, and a conversation about how much better the school was last year because Crazy Teacher M and Witchy Teacher N are there this year, and a conversation about how foreigners are ruining the traditional Mallorcan society (honestly—WHAT can I say to that? Errr… sorry your government brought me here? Sorry your government is giving me your hard-earned tax Euros for me to help YOUR children? Sorry we don’t all live like hermits isolated from all outside influences?) I think I left the beach more tense than when I got there.
The thing is, I know there are close-minded, racist people in the US. I know I probably have bigoted viewpoints that I don’t recognize in myself (and I do privately think that the school would be better off without Crazy Teacher M and Witchy Teacher N, who spend most of the class periods SCREAMING at their students). However, I like to think of myself as an open-minded person, and because we all surround ourselves with people we like, almost everybody I spend time with at home in the US is a loving, warm-hearted person who wouldn’t EVER say (and I hope they would never think it, either), “You know, there are some people that just look threatening. Like indigenous people,” (quote from my host mom in Ecuador), or “[Black people] just have a different mindset. You know, a black man will dress up with all his nice clothes, his chains that look like gold but aren’t gold, of course, and with his huge, nice car—but then you see where he lives, and it’s just a dump! Everything is uncared-for and dilapidated. It’s that blacks don’t care if they live in dirty places!” (quote from my host dad in Ecuador), or “Those girls are covered in dirt and have straggly hair—they look just like gypsies!” (quote from a teacher here), or “Be careful that you always shut the door to the apartment building well. There are lots of Moroccans that live around here,” (quote from my roommate here).
I don’t even know how to react to comments like that. I usually keep my mouth shut and hate myself afterwards. To my host dad’s comment about black people not caring “if they live in dirty places,” I actually tried to stand up for, well, some sense of right and wrong, but he interrupted me and said, “Ah, bonito! The way you speak is very pretty. You just sound so sincere,” and then he continued on.
***
Sorry for the jump from beach-paradise-blah-blah-blah to arrrgh! racism!, but, seriously, ARRRRGH!!! I AM SO MAD! I’m even angrier that there’s nothing I can do about it! I can try to be open and flexible, I can try to show an appreciation for other people’s cultures, I can try to be a good example of a loving person, but RACISM WILL STILL EXIST. Should I combat every comment head-on and have people pat me on the head and say “You sound sincere”? Every time I have the urge to angrily open my mouth to tell somebody off, I think of MLK, Jr.’s “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” I try to show love in everything I do, but sometimes I wonder if it’s enough.
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