Saying Good-bye to Carmelina and Jabel Tinamit February 13, 2016
Our formal Spanish lessons at Jabel Tinamit Spanish School here in Panajachel came to a close yesterday with a Valentine's Day fiesta. The vivacious owners of the school, Candelaria and Gregorio, had organized a pot luck party. All of us, students and staff, had been invited to bring our favorite dish to share. On an open, airy third story area, the table groaned with typical Guatemalan dishes, such as guacamole & chips (our offering), tamales wrapped in banana leaves, chuchittos wrapped in corn husks, enchiladas, chiles rellenos (stuffed sweet peppers), pepian, fresh fruit, fried bananas in chocolate sauce, cookies, homemade raspberry ice cream - and always, tortillas. What a feast!
It was also the last day with my young teens learning English. They lapped up this wonderful meal with gusto! Great kids. I will miss them, too.
After a month of daily lessons, Bruce and I had been looking forward to the last day of school with a typical end-of-school stew of emotions: relief that the daily work was over, excitement at what lay ahead, and sadness at letting go of this experience. For Bruce, it was mostly relief, truth be told. For both of us, it's been very satisfying to have a growing ability to communicate. But also, para mi, it's the relationship that has made me look forward to school. For four weeks, I have sat with Carmelina for two or three hours every day, Monday through Friday, discovering Spanish conjugations and vocabulary and trying to plant them in this aging mind. I have amassed a total of 50 hours of one-on-one time with Carmelina. She and I know each very well! Her patience and good-humor are enormous! She has waited respectfully while I have sifted through my mental backlog of words and endings and expressions in order to put together a thought. She has racked her brain asking me questions about my life, questions that would allow me to practice my skills by responding. We have laughed together at my mistakes that inadvertently have communicated some really silly ideas. All of this has occurred while we have shared the very real aspects of our lives and our little every-day events.
It has not been one-way, by any means. I have loved hearing about Carmelina's life in a small pueblo with the delightful name of Buena Vista (good view), high up on a plateau that overlooks Lake Atitlan. I've learned about her Mayan family, her schooling growing up and her on-going studies to become a certified teacher at a nearby university, which she attends on Saturdays. She has told me about her burgeoning business creating lovely purses to sell, about her family's struggle to earn a living and to progress toward a better life. Her family has no refrigerator, which means that her mom goes to market 2-3 times a week. In between these trips, her mother creates lovely woven textiles with a backstrap loom and sells them at the market. One day Carmelina brought a loom to school (they're very portable), and let me try my hand at it. As fellow teachers, Carmelina and I have shared ideas for teaching English to my little group of young teens. Over time, it's been like a daily chat with a good friend, structured skillfully and seemingly effortlessly by Carmelina to include verbos especiales and two types of past tenses and various other intricacies of the Spanish language.
Studying at Jabel Tinamit has given Bruce and me a welcome structure and purpose for our days here in Guatemala. I still have years of study in order to even begin to approach fluency. But I can make myself understood in a rudimentary fashion - and I can understand even more of what I hear. School has also allowed us a social life through meeting other students and has certainly offered us a deeper understanding of life in this beautiful but difficult land. Muchas gracias, Carmelina y Jabel Tinamit!
Please let me know any thoughts that you have about this post - or any other, through my email: lwebb34@gmail.com. Thanks!
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