"Gingo! Ey Gingo!" is the sound I awoke to this morning. That was 4 year old Esteben Benito Frambir (his name is one or all of the above, at least he gets called that by his family). He is of course calling to me, the cultural nuances of British folk not technically being gringos seemingly lost on him. I've explained about 6 times now. I guess 4 year olds don't really get it.
It was funny on Sunday though, at the baseball game, when I overheard some guy saying something possibly derogatory, probably not, involving the word gringo, which I assumed to be about me and not meant to be heard or at least understood by me, given that I'm the only gringo around (I've actually accepted the title gracefully). The funny part was that I then smiled at the chap, and asked him very politely how sir was doing this morning, in Spanish. He spent the next few minutes uncomfortably explaining that he didn't realise that I spoke Spanish as most gringos that come to the village don't. From that reaction I assume his initial comment to be derogatory and I told him I wasn't actually a gringo anyway. Well, I felt good about myself. Maybe it was that I was mildly hungover and had a bit of a grouch on. I wonder if the word gringo bears any sort of significance of cultural laden value, of "political incorrectness" to 'paki' in English.
I had a hangover (not really, I only had a couple of beers) from the night before, going out on the town with my sista - Leyris - who is 17, her cousin, her boyfriend (don't tell her parents), and a couple of others who formed their cru. I say sista meaning adoptive relative, being retroactively sad about being one of 3 brothers. We hit the second fiesta, after the first one (which is next to the Mayor's house) was empty, despite the arrayed stack of speakers that most Bristol clubs would be proud of. I felt kinda bad for them, there was a massive truck outside that had obviously been hired to bring the system. I hope no-one (nor the local council) was out of pocket for that. Having a window from the street inside the club is a recipe for disaster though - who's going to pay to be the first people in? So we hit the second party, which was considerably more populated.
I felt a bit of a granddad, going out with a group of 15-17 year olds. I bought them a couple of beers to share, not being made of money. They concealed them proudly, if such a thing is possible. Yes, I'm a bad person.
The night was fun, then a fight ended in the 3-man police squad for the town / municipality being stationed right in the middle of the club for the rest of the night, which made it less fun. It seems that you have to have a partner to dance, even if it's to house music, which the occasional song is. That mixed (well, played overlappingly, mixing is too gracious) with a bunch of reggaeton, and then 6 really slow tunes all in a row. Weird.
francisco and his grannieAfter returning home, we headed to the outskirts of town, where in a large field lay a profuse network of well-staked plots of land. We went to one of them, for some slash and burn action. Well, the slashing was done, more raking and burning. It doesn't sound as good though, rake and burn. Meanwhile, Francisco and his dad stuck a few more poles in. Clearly these were plots of land for someone, and I thought I heard Virginia explain that they were for homeless people. My thoughts of altriusm were put to rest when Francisco explained later that the land was owned by some teachers, and that all these plots were for teachers. Nice job, nonetheless. It would be interesting to find out if Sandinistan politics had anything to do with it.
The next day, Sunday, I got some great footage for the film at the baseball game, the conveniently timed Municipal Final. I gave a chap a lift on the way up, which only turned out to be 5 minutes away, and later on he brought me a sack full of plantain and oranges. An extraordinary act of kindness that I can't get my head around. Maybe it's the capitalist money-exchange culture I grew up in.
Speaking of which, the film is trundling along nicely. Plenty of footage (in 30 second clips) to work from. I've got the script finalised and a shoot lined up tomorrow with the photogenic and beautiful 12 year old Francis. I'm having to fake the school section a bit, as the schools are all on holiday. The mayor did offer to get them all in for me though, kind chap that he is.
While I was talking to the school principal, an experience as unpleasant at the age of 26 as any other time, I found my niche here though. As soon as the conversation began to sour towards the different things the school wants money for I felt awkward in that position I described before. Par for the course, I suppose, with the now stock response that the best way would be to formulate a proposal through Gioconda, that I'm here to offer practical help but am not the person to talk to about wanting money.
The niche though, is that what seems like at least a year ago, a whole bunch of computers were donated to the school. They've been sat neatly but without use, providing shelter for rodent families, since their arrival. So I spent the day starting an inventory, to build some systems that work, and put Linux on them.
After spending the day getting through half of 'em, I needed something inspirational to get the rest done. That came in the form of the plan to do a one day workshop with a small group of kids, teaching them about hardware and software, and basically how to build computers. It's not rocket science, more like lego, and with some interested kids it'll be fun and also be a team to look after the computers and give the project some sustainability. Well that's the plan anyway. In Latin America, plans tend to change more often than not.
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