Last weekend Sam's preschool had another parent workshop. My mother thinks they have an awful lot of workshops; she doesn't remember anything like that from my preschool years. I don't know if times are different, or if this particular school is rare in holding such events.
At any rate, this workshop was much more interesting than the first. Instead of hearing discourses from the director and then talking in our groups, we got a sampling of the different activities our kids go through every week. First there was a puppet show, then a theater class, then a workshop of corporal expression or something, then circus stunts where the kids go on swings and trapezes and stuff (with aid from the designated circus professor). The indigenous teacher talked about music as a universal language (and it continued to annoy me that he speaks of the Andes as if they stopped in southern Colombia, and only the Quechua-speakers are truly Andean). Finally there was a guy doing singalongs with a guitar.
I was really impressed with everything, though I preferred to watch from the sidelines as opposed to directly participating in all the touchy-feely stuff. Caro and Sam didn't catch the puppet show, because the workshop started early and Caro didn't want to go. But once I saw how fun everything was, I told them they should come by, and they did. Sam was initially nervous and tearful (he hadn't been to school for a week because they were worried he had pinkeye), but he gradually loosened up. That said, for most of the activities he didn't seem too involved. He maintained his typical, stern face, and usually fixated on something totally unrelated to the programmed activity, like a nearby woman's earring or a window in the wall high above us. I understood this--when I was a kid I also marched to my own drummer, and though I took in everything, I didn't necessarily ascribe the same importance as everyone else to what was supposedly the main event in a given setting. I did wonder though if Sam was enjoying these activities, both that day and in his normal school routine. Was he totally indifferent? Would he prefer to be in a corner by himself seeing how wheels work? I asked his teacher if Sam actually participated and interacted during these group activities, and she said that he was an enthusiastic participant, especially when the circus people wrapped him in a bundle and swung him around. This made me happy--I understand if Sam's natural tendency is to draw inward and think about things and play on his own, but it's important to expose him to group settings, other activities, social coexistence and interaction, etc. I think the school does a good job of that.
Anyway, all in all I was very happy to get to know what my boy does when he's at school, what he's learning and playing at. It was also nice to see that, beside all the artsy stimulation and post-modern sensibilities of the school, by the last few sessions of the morning the kids had left their parents and were playing in the patio, mainly zooming big wheel trikes and crashing into each other. That's an important thing for preschoolers, too.
Sam is now back to school fulltime after his weeklong hiatus, and he's adjusting better than ever. I think the time away made him appreciate it more, and the Saturday workshop was a good reintroduction. My son's teachers say he participates, he plays, he kisses his classmates, he eats well, and he doesn't even cry that much now when we drop him off. Back at home he's got more energy (though he sleeps through the night), and he is hardly drinking bottles anymore. It's amazing to see the changes wrought by a month at preschool.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Adventure in Peru 3: CIP
One of the big reasons for our my work trip to Peru was to visit CIP, the Centro Internacional de la Papa or International Potato Center. This is a member of the CGIAR network of research centers peppered throughout the world, each one dedicated to a suite of crops. There is CIMMYT for wheat and corn in Mexico, IITA for yams, black-eyed peas, and plantains in Nigeria, ICRISAT for millet, peanuts, and other dryland grains in India, etc. Logically CIP is located in Peru, one of the centers for potato origin and diversity (though the center's location in coastal Lima and not in the high-altitude potato regions seems to be a purely political consideration).
Above is a sampling of a few of the thousands of potato varieties held by CIP in their field plots
and in vitro seed bank (this latter is the largest of its kind in the world).
In addition to potato, CIP's mandate now includes sweet potato
and the so-called Andean Roots and Tubers, many of which we are investigating in our Muisca Garden project.
Above we have from left to right ibia or oca, ruba or ulluco, ahipa, arracacha, and yacon.
In this photo we have, from the left, arracacha, yacon, what I believe is mauka, and achira. CIP doesn't have on display two of the 9 Andean Tubers, cubio or mashua and maka.Of the crops managed by CIP, our Huerta Muisca project is looking at ibia, ruba, cubio, arracacha, potato, and achira. Arracacha and achira are native to and widely grown in Colombia, and in fact they seem a bit neglected by CIP's programs, which focus mostly on yacon and maka. Yacon is a carrot-looking root in the sunflower family, which contains a weird starch-like nutrient called inulin. Inulin gives a sweet, filling flavor, but is not digestible by the human gut, so it has potential for processed diet foods. Maka, on the other hand, is a radish-like root that grows at very high altitudes, upwards of 4000 masl. It has potential as a stimulant and medicinal plant, which is why CIP is also looking into processed forms of it.
The other Andean Root and Tuber crops seem not to be as much of a priority for CIP. For instance, they have fewer than 70 accessions (like a variety) of achira in their seed bank, and these seem not to be kept clean and in conditions to send to other research institutes to work with. This means that Colombia's national collection of achira is about as large as CIP's, and I believe better-maintained. In some ways this is a boon for me, as it means that whatever work our team does on achira will be a real contribution to the field, and not just a drop in the bucket of existing research, as it would be if we were working on potato, for instance.
For visitors CIP has a small exhibit on the history and future of the potato in the world, in addition to the potted samples of their different crops.
Our visit consisted mainly in interviews with different curators of the potato seedbank (or germplasm collection, as it's also known). It was interesting to learn about some of the projects CIP is involved in. They are evaluating the collection of cubio to see which varieties have high levels of anti-cancer compounds. They have also worked on the marketing and industrial angle of their exotic native potato collection to see which native varieties might lend themselves to new uses as fresh supermarket produce or processed chips and starch.
It was very impressive to visit CIP and see the wide-reaching international implications of its work. However, for me it was also heartening to see our project's strengths vis a vis a big center like CIP. Essentially we're working on the ground, collecting information about local crop varieties and farming practices. This may not seem as official or large-scale as CIP's work, but in some ways it's more effective in terms of development impact, because we are seeing problems and possibilities in our area from up close. Furthermore, there is a need for both levels of intervention--the large germplasm bank and research center that maintains genetic resources and lays the groundwork for applied agricultural development, and the smaller, grassroots effort that puts cutting-edge and traditional knowledge to work in a particular local context. We would see a great example of the synergy between CIP and local grassroots groups in our visit to the Parque de la Papa in a few days, which was the original inspiration for our entire trip.
Third World Green Daddy 30: In the club
"O gloria inmarcesible, o júbilo inmortal. De surcos de dolores, el bien germina ya!"
This is the chorus to the Colombian national anthem. It translates to something like, "Oh unwilting glory, o immortal joy. From furrows of sorrows, seeds of goodness at last spring forth!" The rest of the song details the major events of the Colombian independence struggle, and reads like a lesson in the country's history and geography. You can check it out on the Colombian president's official website.
I've always liked national anthems. The French Marseillaise is particularly stirring: "To arms, citizens! Form your battalions. March onward, march onward, that the blood of the impure may water the furrows of our fields." Agricultural imagery, just like the Colombian anthem.
The US anthem is less explicit and striking, but I think its subtle poetry has a lasting nobility that leaves more of a lasting impression on the listener than other national hymns. The Star-Spangled Banner is not about victory or glorious violence, but rather perseverance under duress. It's certainly something we'd do well to emulate in the US, as opposed to the vainglorious boastful harrumphing that has dominated our national discourse for most of my lifetime. Ibidem for the line from America the Beatiful, "Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law." A far cry from the indulgent excesses of a nation of selfish babies.
Anyway, I open this blog with the Colombian national anthem as a celebration. I am now officially and indefinitely a Colombian resident! Prior to this I'd been in the country on a series of "temporary" visas lasting a year or two, by dint of my being the spouse of a Colombian national. But thanks to my now being the father of a Colombian, I have the right to what's called qualified residency. It is an immigration status that lasts indefinitely (saving me the annual or biennial trip to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Immigration Agency to renew my visa and ID card). It still doesn't give me absolute freedom to work; I am only allowed to work as an independent contractor or a self-employed person, but since no one in Colombia is offering full employment status with benefits, this essentially puts me on the same footing as most Colombians as far as work opportunities are concerned.
The process of preparing my application for residency was similar to that which I've followed before for the temporary visa. The difference was that I had to offer proof of my fatherhood of a Colombian national. I brought Sam's birth certificate from our hometown to Bogota, but realized too late that it was the original copy, and not a certified copy from the same notary that had issued it. In Colombia notaries are a big thing, and if something isn't notarized, it doesn't officially exist in most contexts. So much so that the original birth certificate, which is issued by a notary but not stamped and signed by him, doesn't serve as an official document! You need to ask for a certified, stamped copy from the original notary office every time you need to present it to some application.
So my not having the certified copy was an issue of great consternation for me. I was worried that I'd have my application rejected, and my original visa was about to expire, and what if they charged me thousands of dollars in fines for overstaying my visa!? In vain I went to a Bogota notary office and asked if they could certify my original birth certificate of Sam, but they repeated what I already knew; I'd have to ask for the certified copy from the original notary office, back in my hometown hours away from Bogota. It seems that notaries are the only aspect of Colombia's governance system that's effectively federalized, not centralized in Bogota. It's as if each notary's office were a separate republic unto itself!
This put me in a black, worried mood. Damn it, it was easier to buy a notary's office than to get your own son's birth certificate (last year or so there was a big scandal of politicians offering notary office operations to the highest bidder). With all the scumbags who are born into Colombian nationality with no problems, why should I, a decent, tax-paying, hard-working person, be denied residency? I was about ready to send the whole country to hell, if it weren't for the fact that my family and my work were here!
But once at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I had no problems. They've changed the site of their office in the last year, and it is now a much friendlier, more streamlined operation. I was attended with little wait, and the officer said my original birth certificate would present no problem. Within an hour or so, I had my passport stamped with a new, indefinite resident visa for Colombia. It wasn't as pretty as the intricately embossed temporary visa, but it was worth a lot more to me. As soon as I got out of the office, I called Caro and sang her the national anthem. I said I was willing to illegally wiretap phones, go to the jungle to handle the government's dirty business, whatever they asked of me. Of course I was joking, but I really did feel happy and grateful to be a Colombian resident. I was born a US citizen, and I'm proud and grateful for that, but I acquired that citizenship through no merit of my own. This was the first time I'd really be able to say I earned my residency. I had gone through a process, adapted to a new country, and was now granted almost equal status with its born nationals. I'll probably never become a full Colombian national, because as I understand that would entail my renouncing loyalty to the US, which I'll never do (as long as the US continues to exist as a unified nation and hasn't yet devolved into a wasteland of provincial fiefdoms or something). So this residency is that pinnacle of my recognition as a valid member of Colombian society.
On the same Bogota trip I also renewed my membership to the Luis Angel Arango library. This is Colombia's national library system, run by the Bank of the Republic. It has branches all over the country, and you can have materials from one branch delivered to another free of charge. You have to pay for a membership, though the $50US we pay annually for a family membership isn't bad at all. That said, I got a little pissed off this time, because they wouldn't let us add my nephew to our family membership. Apparently the family membership only allows for three affiliated members, which is stupid since I don't know any Colombian families with only three people, especially not in our provincial region. In the end our nephew will just have to get a student membership on his own.
I also recently renewed my inclusion in the ranks of blood donors. For the year or so that I've been able to (after a two-year residency period in Colombia), I've been donating blood every three months. But last time they used a new machine to take out two pints of blood, centrifuge out the red blood cells, and reinject the plasma. After this procedure they want you to wait six months before giving blood again. So this was my first time giving blood in six months. Everyone at the center knows me now, and they ask about my job as an agronomist. Nevertheless, they always ask me the same set of questions about my history living in other countries. I guess they're worried about blood-borne diseases from Europe, perhaps foot and mouth disease from cattle or something. At any rate, donating blood seems to me an important part of a sustainable lifestyle. Since blood isn't something we can synthesize artificially, and it's likely we'll all need a blood transfusion at some time or another, the most logical thing is to donate as often as you can, so when you need blood, you can know you've put in what you're about to take out of the system.
My son, in contrast, has recently joined a few unpleasant clubs. For one, he's had various iterations of cold and flu ever since he started nursery school. This seems to be the norm, as children who'd previously been exposed mainly to their families enter into contact with society at large, and all its bugs and infirmities. It's a good thing in the long run, as Sam will need to build up resistance to common illnesses just like we all have had to do. Still though, it's ugly having to watch him suffer at times, and getting infected myself with his bugs. In particular last weekend his eyes were all weepy and would get stuck shut with mucus, and it was sad to see him romping about, feeling more or less fine physically but with his face deformed.
The other club I had really hoped Sam would never enter into has to do with Colombia's social ills. One day this week I was working at a branch of my university, when all hell broke loose. Caro, Sam, and I had just arrived, as my wife was going to spend the day helping with some tasks at the museum I work at. We heard explosions in the distance, and my fears were confirmed. Once again a group of idiotic, masked students was provoking the police with homemade bombs, and as we drove away from the campus my sun saw these hooligans lurking about in their hoods and balaclavas, stopping from time to time to hurl an explosive device at a nearby wall. These university students, who should supposedly be the vanguard of progressive thinking, who should be the ones leading us as a nation away from brute, stupid violence, become the tangible manifestation of all that is ugliest about Colombia. I don't want my child to think this is a model to emulate, that this is what going to university is all about.
The ostensible reason for the violence was the 25th anniversary of a student who'd been killed by anti-riot police during a university demonstration. That is to say that these kids lobbing light explosives were in theory avenging or commemorating a death that had occurred before they were even born, and whose circumstances had not repeated themselves since then. Like many naughty actions by young people, I read these manifestations as an attempt to act out our basest tendencies to aggression with some sort of lofty moral justification, at the same time as students are trying to define their values and their way of achieving the world they believe in. If this is so, it's a normal part of psychological development, a play-acting of resistance and insurgence against police that are theoretically limited in the danger they represent to the students (they don't use deadly force, and are even prohibited from entering the campus).
The problem is that I don't want my kid to see other kids play-acting at being violent thugs, even if I know that the real danger to everyone involved is minimal. The explosives they use are designed to make a big noise and a flash, but they don't usually hurt anyone. Usually. This time, it turns out that a group of students was in the midst of the play battle zone, when the explosives in a nearby backpack all detonated spontaneously. Four or five were severely mutilated, losing limbs, and one ended up dying. It made me so sad, and had my wife despondent for a few days. The students of our university are in large part the children of peasants and slum-dwellers, the source of great pride for parents who've worked all their life to bring up responsible children. I am proud of our university's role in educating Boyaca's proletariat class, and consisting a strong middle class that can create a solid nation while not forgetting its peasant roots. What an incomprehensible tragedy it must be for humble hard-working parents to learn that their child was involved in thuggish violence, and moreso that he lost his life for it. That's not what parents have in mind when they send their kids to college.
The easy, callous response is that if you play with fire you get burned, but this doesn't quite work. Part of growing up is indeed playing with fire and getting burned, which teaches lessons about limits and acceptable behavior. But if you die or are maimed for life, you can't go on to apply any useful lesson. These kids who play at being criminals or insurgents or political activists are operating in an area in which the risks are huge--prison, maiming, death, enlistment as guerrilla-fodder. But being young and stupid, they seemingly don't differentiate this level of risk from the small risks that are a normal part of growing up--getting drunk on your dad's liquor supply one night, or getting in a fistfight with a schoolmate, or things like that. Caro was so sad to see young people value their lives so little, expose themselves to death or lifelong difficulty just for a few kicks, not even a noble cause that will lead to something positive.
I'll close on a happy note, a happy entry into a frivolous little club. Last weekend I introduced my wife and kid to Pizza Hut pizza. Of the generic mass-produced pizza chains like Papa John's or Domino's, I find Pizza Hut to have by far the best quality. Their ingredients taste somewhat fresh, and their crust is fluffy inside with a crisp fried outer layer. Plus the chain is from Wichita, my dad's hometown. One day we were in a hurry to get out of Bogota, and we stopped there instead of making our own meal. Both Caro and Sam really liked the pizza, which I got with US-style sausage and pepperoni so they'd get the full experience. I often lament when foreigners think the US is no more than fast food, malls, bad TV and movies, and other mass-produced junk. But at the same time, those things do indeed form an important part of our national culture, so I was glad to expose my family to it, along with the more local, authentic Midwestern culture I always try to share with them.
This is the chorus to the Colombian national anthem. It translates to something like, "Oh unwilting glory, o immortal joy. From furrows of sorrows, seeds of goodness at last spring forth!" The rest of the song details the major events of the Colombian independence struggle, and reads like a lesson in the country's history and geography. You can check it out on the Colombian president's official website.
I've always liked national anthems. The French Marseillaise is particularly stirring: "To arms, citizens! Form your battalions. March onward, march onward, that the blood of the impure may water the furrows of our fields." Agricultural imagery, just like the Colombian anthem.
The US anthem is less explicit and striking, but I think its subtle poetry has a lasting nobility that leaves more of a lasting impression on the listener than other national hymns. The Star-Spangled Banner is not about victory or glorious violence, but rather perseverance under duress. It's certainly something we'd do well to emulate in the US, as opposed to the vainglorious boastful harrumphing that has dominated our national discourse for most of my lifetime. Ibidem for the line from America the Beatiful, "Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law." A far cry from the indulgent excesses of a nation of selfish babies.
Anyway, I open this blog with the Colombian national anthem as a celebration. I am now officially and indefinitely a Colombian resident! Prior to this I'd been in the country on a series of "temporary" visas lasting a year or two, by dint of my being the spouse of a Colombian national. But thanks to my now being the father of a Colombian, I have the right to what's called qualified residency. It is an immigration status that lasts indefinitely (saving me the annual or biennial trip to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Immigration Agency to renew my visa and ID card). It still doesn't give me absolute freedom to work; I am only allowed to work as an independent contractor or a self-employed person, but since no one in Colombia is offering full employment status with benefits, this essentially puts me on the same footing as most Colombians as far as work opportunities are concerned.
The process of preparing my application for residency was similar to that which I've followed before for the temporary visa. The difference was that I had to offer proof of my fatherhood of a Colombian national. I brought Sam's birth certificate from our hometown to Bogota, but realized too late that it was the original copy, and not a certified copy from the same notary that had issued it. In Colombia notaries are a big thing, and if something isn't notarized, it doesn't officially exist in most contexts. So much so that the original birth certificate, which is issued by a notary but not stamped and signed by him, doesn't serve as an official document! You need to ask for a certified, stamped copy from the original notary office every time you need to present it to some application.
So my not having the certified copy was an issue of great consternation for me. I was worried that I'd have my application rejected, and my original visa was about to expire, and what if they charged me thousands of dollars in fines for overstaying my visa!? In vain I went to a Bogota notary office and asked if they could certify my original birth certificate of Sam, but they repeated what I already knew; I'd have to ask for the certified copy from the original notary office, back in my hometown hours away from Bogota. It seems that notaries are the only aspect of Colombia's governance system that's effectively federalized, not centralized in Bogota. It's as if each notary's office were a separate republic unto itself!
This put me in a black, worried mood. Damn it, it was easier to buy a notary's office than to get your own son's birth certificate (last year or so there was a big scandal of politicians offering notary office operations to the highest bidder). With all the scumbags who are born into Colombian nationality with no problems, why should I, a decent, tax-paying, hard-working person, be denied residency? I was about ready to send the whole country to hell, if it weren't for the fact that my family and my work were here!
But once at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I had no problems. They've changed the site of their office in the last year, and it is now a much friendlier, more streamlined operation. I was attended with little wait, and the officer said my original birth certificate would present no problem. Within an hour or so, I had my passport stamped with a new, indefinite resident visa for Colombia. It wasn't as pretty as the intricately embossed temporary visa, but it was worth a lot more to me. As soon as I got out of the office, I called Caro and sang her the national anthem. I said I was willing to illegally wiretap phones, go to the jungle to handle the government's dirty business, whatever they asked of me. Of course I was joking, but I really did feel happy and grateful to be a Colombian resident. I was born a US citizen, and I'm proud and grateful for that, but I acquired that citizenship through no merit of my own. This was the first time I'd really be able to say I earned my residency. I had gone through a process, adapted to a new country, and was now granted almost equal status with its born nationals. I'll probably never become a full Colombian national, because as I understand that would entail my renouncing loyalty to the US, which I'll never do (as long as the US continues to exist as a unified nation and hasn't yet devolved into a wasteland of provincial fiefdoms or something). So this residency is that pinnacle of my recognition as a valid member of Colombian society.
On the same Bogota trip I also renewed my membership to the Luis Angel Arango library. This is Colombia's national library system, run by the Bank of the Republic. It has branches all over the country, and you can have materials from one branch delivered to another free of charge. You have to pay for a membership, though the $50US we pay annually for a family membership isn't bad at all. That said, I got a little pissed off this time, because they wouldn't let us add my nephew to our family membership. Apparently the family membership only allows for three affiliated members, which is stupid since I don't know any Colombian families with only three people, especially not in our provincial region. In the end our nephew will just have to get a student membership on his own.
I also recently renewed my inclusion in the ranks of blood donors. For the year or so that I've been able to (after a two-year residency period in Colombia), I've been donating blood every three months. But last time they used a new machine to take out two pints of blood, centrifuge out the red blood cells, and reinject the plasma. After this procedure they want you to wait six months before giving blood again. So this was my first time giving blood in six months. Everyone at the center knows me now, and they ask about my job as an agronomist. Nevertheless, they always ask me the same set of questions about my history living in other countries. I guess they're worried about blood-borne diseases from Europe, perhaps foot and mouth disease from cattle or something. At any rate, donating blood seems to me an important part of a sustainable lifestyle. Since blood isn't something we can synthesize artificially, and it's likely we'll all need a blood transfusion at some time or another, the most logical thing is to donate as often as you can, so when you need blood, you can know you've put in what you're about to take out of the system.
My son, in contrast, has recently joined a few unpleasant clubs. For one, he's had various iterations of cold and flu ever since he started nursery school. This seems to be the norm, as children who'd previously been exposed mainly to their families enter into contact with society at large, and all its bugs and infirmities. It's a good thing in the long run, as Sam will need to build up resistance to common illnesses just like we all have had to do. Still though, it's ugly having to watch him suffer at times, and getting infected myself with his bugs. In particular last weekend his eyes were all weepy and would get stuck shut with mucus, and it was sad to see him romping about, feeling more or less fine physically but with his face deformed.
The other club I had really hoped Sam would never enter into has to do with Colombia's social ills. One day this week I was working at a branch of my university, when all hell broke loose. Caro, Sam, and I had just arrived, as my wife was going to spend the day helping with some tasks at the museum I work at. We heard explosions in the distance, and my fears were confirmed. Once again a group of idiotic, masked students was provoking the police with homemade bombs, and as we drove away from the campus my sun saw these hooligans lurking about in their hoods and balaclavas, stopping from time to time to hurl an explosive device at a nearby wall. These university students, who should supposedly be the vanguard of progressive thinking, who should be the ones leading us as a nation away from brute, stupid violence, become the tangible manifestation of all that is ugliest about Colombia. I don't want my child to think this is a model to emulate, that this is what going to university is all about.
The ostensible reason for the violence was the 25th anniversary of a student who'd been killed by anti-riot police during a university demonstration. That is to say that these kids lobbing light explosives were in theory avenging or commemorating a death that had occurred before they were even born, and whose circumstances had not repeated themselves since then. Like many naughty actions by young people, I read these manifestations as an attempt to act out our basest tendencies to aggression with some sort of lofty moral justification, at the same time as students are trying to define their values and their way of achieving the world they believe in. If this is so, it's a normal part of psychological development, a play-acting of resistance and insurgence against police that are theoretically limited in the danger they represent to the students (they don't use deadly force, and are even prohibited from entering the campus).
The problem is that I don't want my kid to see other kids play-acting at being violent thugs, even if I know that the real danger to everyone involved is minimal. The explosives they use are designed to make a big noise and a flash, but they don't usually hurt anyone. Usually. This time, it turns out that a group of students was in the midst of the play battle zone, when the explosives in a nearby backpack all detonated spontaneously. Four or five were severely mutilated, losing limbs, and one ended up dying. It made me so sad, and had my wife despondent for a few days. The students of our university are in large part the children of peasants and slum-dwellers, the source of great pride for parents who've worked all their life to bring up responsible children. I am proud of our university's role in educating Boyaca's proletariat class, and consisting a strong middle class that can create a solid nation while not forgetting its peasant roots. What an incomprehensible tragedy it must be for humble hard-working parents to learn that their child was involved in thuggish violence, and moreso that he lost his life for it. That's not what parents have in mind when they send their kids to college.
The easy, callous response is that if you play with fire you get burned, but this doesn't quite work. Part of growing up is indeed playing with fire and getting burned, which teaches lessons about limits and acceptable behavior. But if you die or are maimed for life, you can't go on to apply any useful lesson. These kids who play at being criminals or insurgents or political activists are operating in an area in which the risks are huge--prison, maiming, death, enlistment as guerrilla-fodder. But being young and stupid, they seemingly don't differentiate this level of risk from the small risks that are a normal part of growing up--getting drunk on your dad's liquor supply one night, or getting in a fistfight with a schoolmate, or things like that. Caro was so sad to see young people value their lives so little, expose themselves to death or lifelong difficulty just for a few kicks, not even a noble cause that will lead to something positive.
I'll close on a happy note, a happy entry into a frivolous little club. Last weekend I introduced my wife and kid to Pizza Hut pizza. Of the generic mass-produced pizza chains like Papa John's or Domino's, I find Pizza Hut to have by far the best quality. Their ingredients taste somewhat fresh, and their crust is fluffy inside with a crisp fried outer layer. Plus the chain is from Wichita, my dad's hometown. One day we were in a hurry to get out of Bogota, and we stopped there instead of making our own meal. Both Caro and Sam really liked the pizza, which I got with US-style sausage and pepperoni so they'd get the full experience. I often lament when foreigners think the US is no more than fast food, malls, bad TV and movies, and other mass-produced junk. But at the same time, those things do indeed form an important part of our national culture, so I was glad to expose my family to it, along with the more local, authentic Midwestern culture I always try to share with them.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Bioprospecting in the Tenza Valley
With my son we're slowly plugging away at The Autobiography of Malcolm X. We're still in his youth, when he moved to Boston from rural Michigan and learned all the hip slang and dress and picked up vices like alcohol and marijuana. It's incredible to read about happenings from over 70 years ago and feel like they're current. The fast, urban youth life that Malcolm talks about isn't so different from what kids do today, and the country-to-city story is something my wife and I see all the time here in Colombia, with young people moving from towns to bigger cities and totally changing their way of life. I'm also surprised to read about the pathetic attempts of Boston ghetto residents to call their jobs as bellboys or housekeepers by other, professional names. Bank security guards "are in finance", maids "work for an old family", and so forth. It's very similar to our present-day situation of inflated job titles for people who are essentially freelancers in-between jobs.
This reading selection coincides with a coffee-table book that I've been poring over lately in my free moments. It's called "Lost Amazon", and is an account by Wade Davis of Richard Evans Schultes's expeditions to the Amazon in the 1940s. Schultes was an intrepid ethnobotanist of Harvard University who was particularly interested in hallucinogenic plants and their ritual use by indigenous people. As a young man he apparently "re-discovered" psilocybin mushrooms in an indigenous community in Oaxaca, Mexico. Conquest-era texts had referred to hallucinogenic mushrooms used in indigenous Mexico, but these reports had been dismissed by the Western world as mere fabrications, because the actual species used had never been seen by Westerners since that Conquest. Schultes tracked down these mushrooms (and inadvertently contributed to the dawn of the psychedelic age), and thus started a long career of going to remote places and seeking out medicinal plants unknown until then to the Western world.
From what I pick up in the book, Schultes was remarkably open-minded when it came to learning about and appreciating indigenous culture, but on the other hand he was a stolid social conservative in terms of domestic US politics. It's funny to think that Schultes's expeditions to the Amazon basin coincided with Malcolm Little's years partying and picking up bad habits in Boston. I wonder what Malcolm would have thought of Schultes, both prior to and after the former's conversion to Islam. I wonder what Schultes would have thought of Malcolm.
This weekend I felt a bit like Richard Evans Schultes. As part of the Muisca garden project I work in, we are going to carry out an agronomic experiment. It will be a varietal evaluation of the achira plant (Canna edulis), which means we'll take five or so different varieties of the crop, grow them under the same conditions, and then compare them in terms of final yield, nutritional content, and animal feed quality (there will also be some more pure science measurements such as photosynthesis rate and morphology). In an agrarian diagnostic we did in the Tenza valley in December 2011, we identified four widely different varieties of achira. This is amazing, considering that the CIP research center in Peru, which is supposed to be the worldwide repository for achira, has only some 70 varieties of the plant. I wish I had photos to show how cool these varieties are, but since we're at the beginning of the planting season, there are no mature plants to show the difference between them.
We're already running late on the experiment, because the rains have come and we should be planting, but we hadn't acquired yet the seeds (really rhizome bits, in the same way that what you plant of a potato isn't a true seed but a piece of the mother plant). So I had to go to the Tenza valley and track down 150 seed pieces of each variety. Because of our late start, my contact there hadn't been able to obtain the seeds without me, because most of his neighbors had already harvested last year's crop and immediately re-seeded this years, so there weren't seed rhizomes readily available.
I and my superiors had been putting off this trip, and now I was somewhat fearing it. What if I couldn't get enough seeds to do the experiment? I'd been looking forward to this experiment for years now, and I was on the verge of blowing it. I had finally scheduled my bioprospecting trip, but the night before I had a heavy heart. Reading about Schultes inspired me though. In my own way, I was carrying on his legacy of tracking down little-known plants for the general benefit of humankind. Only my plants of focus are food crops, not his medicinal and hallucinogenic species.
I got an early start, leaving Bogota by 5:30am. I made good time, getting to the remote rural area of Guayata, Boyaca by 8am. My contact's mother made me a typical milk and egg soup while I waited for him to arrive from some errands he was running. It was a warm welcome, but I was still nervous about how our search would go.
It turned out I had little to worry about. After asking around at a few farms, we found a guy who would sell us 150 rhizomes of the Gigante or Gruesa variety for very cheap. He was milling cane when we arrived, driving two oxen in a circle to turn the press wheels that crush the cane. He gladly showed us a sample of his giant achira, which he hadn't processed yet. Anyway, thanks to him we set up a purchase for next week of the giant seed we needed. This was a real coup, because that variety is one of the rarer ones in the zone.
From there we went to Somondoco, a nearby town, and asked around at the house of a guy who reportedly had seeds of the Bambu variety. This is an even rarer variety, unknown outside of our area of study, and little-known even among the local farmers. Instead of the wide, banana-like leaves of normal achira, this plant is a low-growing bush with small, bamboo-like leaves on woody stems. I'm not even sure it really is the same species as achira, as not only its form is very different but also its starch behaves differently in the artisanal extraction process. Until that day I'd thought only two or three people in the area had plants of it, and they had already told us they had no seeds to spare. But we tracked down the brother of the guy who supposedly had some plants of the Bambu variety. The brother and his mother said the original guy no longer planted that variety, but that they did. They'd harvested late, and so the plants had died back in January and they couldn't find where they were to dig them up. This was a lucky strike for us, because now the plants had re-sprouted, and the family was willing to dig them up to sell to us. With that we'd secured supplies for the two most rare varieties we needed.
From there it was no problem to get the two remaining varieties, Blanca and Negra, which are the traditional, most widespread varieties of achira in the area. We talked to a major achira producer in the town of Guayata. He had a big supply of Negra, but not so much of Blanca, which he'd been gradually giving up due to its poor agronomic performance. Still, he is going to ask around in these days to get together the 150 seeds of Blanca that we need.
In the end I secured a supply of all the varieties I needed. We will be able to carry out our experiment, which as far as I know will give a more detailed analysis of different achira varieties than most other scientific work that's been done on the species. Furthermore, our varieties are relatively ignored by the few people who work with achira. Most researchers focus on the Huila region of southern Colombia, or on Peruvian varieties. Boyaca achira has received little attention from the agro-science establishment. So I really did feel like Richard Evans Schultes, going to somewhat remote regions to recover plant wealth that others had ignored the value of.
This reading selection coincides with a coffee-table book that I've been poring over lately in my free moments. It's called "Lost Amazon", and is an account by Wade Davis of Richard Evans Schultes's expeditions to the Amazon in the 1940s. Schultes was an intrepid ethnobotanist of Harvard University who was particularly interested in hallucinogenic plants and their ritual use by indigenous people. As a young man he apparently "re-discovered" psilocybin mushrooms in an indigenous community in Oaxaca, Mexico. Conquest-era texts had referred to hallucinogenic mushrooms used in indigenous Mexico, but these reports had been dismissed by the Western world as mere fabrications, because the actual species used had never been seen by Westerners since that Conquest. Schultes tracked down these mushrooms (and inadvertently contributed to the dawn of the psychedelic age), and thus started a long career of going to remote places and seeking out medicinal plants unknown until then to the Western world.
From what I pick up in the book, Schultes was remarkably open-minded when it came to learning about and appreciating indigenous culture, but on the other hand he was a stolid social conservative in terms of domestic US politics. It's funny to think that Schultes's expeditions to the Amazon basin coincided with Malcolm Little's years partying and picking up bad habits in Boston. I wonder what Malcolm would have thought of Schultes, both prior to and after the former's conversion to Islam. I wonder what Schultes would have thought of Malcolm.
This weekend I felt a bit like Richard Evans Schultes. As part of the Muisca garden project I work in, we are going to carry out an agronomic experiment. It will be a varietal evaluation of the achira plant (Canna edulis), which means we'll take five or so different varieties of the crop, grow them under the same conditions, and then compare them in terms of final yield, nutritional content, and animal feed quality (there will also be some more pure science measurements such as photosynthesis rate and morphology). In an agrarian diagnostic we did in the Tenza valley in December 2011, we identified four widely different varieties of achira. This is amazing, considering that the CIP research center in Peru, which is supposed to be the worldwide repository for achira, has only some 70 varieties of the plant. I wish I had photos to show how cool these varieties are, but since we're at the beginning of the planting season, there are no mature plants to show the difference between them.
We're already running late on the experiment, because the rains have come and we should be planting, but we hadn't acquired yet the seeds (really rhizome bits, in the same way that what you plant of a potato isn't a true seed but a piece of the mother plant). So I had to go to the Tenza valley and track down 150 seed pieces of each variety. Because of our late start, my contact there hadn't been able to obtain the seeds without me, because most of his neighbors had already harvested last year's crop and immediately re-seeded this years, so there weren't seed rhizomes readily available.
I and my superiors had been putting off this trip, and now I was somewhat fearing it. What if I couldn't get enough seeds to do the experiment? I'd been looking forward to this experiment for years now, and I was on the verge of blowing it. I had finally scheduled my bioprospecting trip, but the night before I had a heavy heart. Reading about Schultes inspired me though. In my own way, I was carrying on his legacy of tracking down little-known plants for the general benefit of humankind. Only my plants of focus are food crops, not his medicinal and hallucinogenic species.
I got an early start, leaving Bogota by 5:30am. I made good time, getting to the remote rural area of Guayata, Boyaca by 8am. My contact's mother made me a typical milk and egg soup while I waited for him to arrive from some errands he was running. It was a warm welcome, but I was still nervous about how our search would go.
It turned out I had little to worry about. After asking around at a few farms, we found a guy who would sell us 150 rhizomes of the Gigante or Gruesa variety for very cheap. He was milling cane when we arrived, driving two oxen in a circle to turn the press wheels that crush the cane. He gladly showed us a sample of his giant achira, which he hadn't processed yet. Anyway, thanks to him we set up a purchase for next week of the giant seed we needed. This was a real coup, because that variety is one of the rarer ones in the zone.
From there we went to Somondoco, a nearby town, and asked around at the house of a guy who reportedly had seeds of the Bambu variety. This is an even rarer variety, unknown outside of our area of study, and little-known even among the local farmers. Instead of the wide, banana-like leaves of normal achira, this plant is a low-growing bush with small, bamboo-like leaves on woody stems. I'm not even sure it really is the same species as achira, as not only its form is very different but also its starch behaves differently in the artisanal extraction process. Until that day I'd thought only two or three people in the area had plants of it, and they had already told us they had no seeds to spare. But we tracked down the brother of the guy who supposedly had some plants of the Bambu variety. The brother and his mother said the original guy no longer planted that variety, but that they did. They'd harvested late, and so the plants had died back in January and they couldn't find where they were to dig them up. This was a lucky strike for us, because now the plants had re-sprouted, and the family was willing to dig them up to sell to us. With that we'd secured supplies for the two most rare varieties we needed.
From there it was no problem to get the two remaining varieties, Blanca and Negra, which are the traditional, most widespread varieties of achira in the area. We talked to a major achira producer in the town of Guayata. He had a big supply of Negra, but not so much of Blanca, which he'd been gradually giving up due to its poor agronomic performance. Still, he is going to ask around in these days to get together the 150 seeds of Blanca that we need.
In the end I secured a supply of all the varieties I needed. We will be able to carry out our experiment, which as far as I know will give a more detailed analysis of different achira varieties than most other scientific work that's been done on the species. Furthermore, our varieties are relatively ignored by the few people who work with achira. Most researchers focus on the Huila region of southern Colombia, or on Peruvian varieties. Boyaca achira has received little attention from the agro-science establishment. So I really did feel like Richard Evans Schultes, going to somewhat remote regions to recover plant wealth that others had ignored the value of.
Official trailer for Hands that Feed
I'm excited and proud to share with my readers this video. It is the official trailer for a documentary film I served as research director for. The film is called Hands that Feed, and it's about Haiti's food system.
Working Trailer from Hands That Feed on Vimeo.
Monday, March 12, 2012
RIP Sr. Carmelle
I just learned that Sister Carmelle Voltaire of Fondwa, Haiti, has died. She was a founding member in Fondwa of the Little Sisters of St. Anthony, a group of nuns that dedicate themselves to children through an orphanage, a grammar school, and a health clinic. When I first visited Haiti ten years ago, it was she who received me, who fretted about my eating well, who loaned me her cellphone to receive calls from home. She also constantly said that I had something of her patron, St. Francis of Assisi, in me, I guess for my skinny vegetarian frame, unkempt beard, and crazed eyes.
Sister Carmelle frustrated me often too, as an overbearing mother might. She wasn't always respectful of the boundaries between different development projects in the larger organization she worked for, Asosyasyon Peyizan Fondwa, and her own priorities. I remember when the guest center got a solar panel installed to run the batteries during the day, and she also had it wired to her nuns' quarters so they could have light. If someone in the convent forgot to turn off the light during the day, it sapped all the electricity from the rest of the residence! She considered her mission very important, sometimes to the exclusion of others, and she was probably right.
At any rate, Sr. Carmelle was my introduction to the dilemmas and difficulties of working in a poor country, where dedicating resources to one worthy cause necessarily diverts them from another. She taught me to live with the joys and the helplessness and the frustration and the victories of poverty, to coexist with them and embrace the sometimes unpleasant but always exhilarating reality of Haiti, and of the world. Most of all she started me on the path to a healthy balance between pure values and ideals on the one hand, and ambiguous, treacherous reality on the other. She seemed to maintain the former while surrounded by the latter.
I haven't been in touch with Sr. Carmelle in years, but I will always remember her mix of boundless joy and an existential gravity, almost a sadness that lay underneath. She truly was a disciple of St. Francis.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Third World Green Daddy 29: First day of nursery school
In a past post I talked about the general preschool options for our son in Bogota. We were hoping to snag a spot at one of the public preschools in our neighborhood, but we had no such luck. While we were waiting for the verdict from one of those public centers, my wife had been investigating the private options in our area. There was one place that bragged about teaching computers and math to one-year-olds. That wasn't too appealing to us. Another place was a bit more relaxed, and had fun activities like arts and stuff, but the building had a lot of stairs, so they kept the little kids Sam's age in one room all day so they wouldn't fall and get hurt. Caro liked the environment there, but a big part of the reason we wanted to start Sam in school was so he wouldn't be confined to our apartment all the time. Having him cooped up in a room in another place would hardly be an ideal alternative.
The choice we finally settled on is a sort of alternative school, but not so much that it offends me. The professors seem loving yet not afraid to lay down the law. Caro was sold when she went to visit the place and saw a dance class of cute, clumsy 1-year-olds. The dance instructor was telling them to touch their hips, and some were touching their knees, some their noses, and others were just sitting on the ground after falling down. I think it was this combination of ambitious activities (dance, singing, playing with dough, etc.), and a recognition that the little kids aren't all going to follow the plan exactly, that attracted my wife to this school.
All of the options were equally expensive (over $300US monthly as opposed to the $50-100US we'd be paying back in our small hometown), so in the end we went with this last choice that my wife liked the best. I scheduled my work so I could be in Bogota to take Sam to his first day of school. This was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and I want to be there for his first and last day of school.
On the big morning Caro and I packed Sam's bag and the three of us walked hand-in-hand the three blocks to the nursery school. Caro's mom and her husband also accompanied us. When we got there most of Sam's cohort had not yet arrived, so we put him near the bin of balls (you know those plastic balls in a pool-like enclosure like they have at Chucky Cheese) with the group just above him. Sam was fascinated by the balls and the other kids, and he tentatively approached some of his colleagues to request the balls they were holding. A few obliged, but in general the other kids sort of ignored him. It made me wonder how my son will be as a social being. Will he be awkward, afraid to introduce himself to new people, as I was for most of my conscious childhood? Will he be forthright and charismatic? As I watched him teeter about ignored by the others, I dreaded the third option, that he might be very earnest and direct, only to be rejected by cooler, cynical kids. I didn't get too worried though; my mother tells me I was very outgoing in my preschool, even on the first day, which seems to have had little bearing on my timid behavior later on in life. Perhaps Sam's experience on his first day of nursery school at one year of age will not definitively determine his social success for the next 80 years.
Something I noticed as Sam hung out with the bigger kids (from 22 to 28 months or so) was that they weren't much bigger physically than he is. I wondered if this was because he is such a big kid, but when we finally put him with the kids his age, he wasn't much bigger than any of them, either. I posited that maybe the second year of life is a time of much developmental growth, but not such large physical size increments.
We left our son with the kids of his group in the school's patio, where he played on big wheel tricycles and ignored the other kids. The group's teacher took us to the office, went over some paperwork with us, and tried to prepare us emotionally for this milestone in Sam's life. She warned us that for the first few days his sleeping and eating patterns would change, and he'd sometimes be cranky or sad or even have nightmares. She told us that he'd be going through a sort of mourning process, as he got accustomed to new routines and more time apart from us. It struck me that much of childrearing (perhaps much of life in general) is subjecting your child and yourself to increasing periods of separation, of letting go, and dealing with the emotional turmoil of it. First is kicking them out of the womb, then you no longer let them sleep with you, then you send them off to daycare, school, college, and adult life. The ultimate separation is death (hopefully yours first and not the kid's). But all of these are part of life, and they let us know that we're not abandoning each other, but rather bringing the parent-child relationship to a new level.
Accordingly, Sam was doing just fine when we finished talking with the professor, but when he caught a glimpse of us as we were leaving, he burst into tears.
It was really nice to have that day to ourselves--one of the first times that my wife and I could relate to one another as friends and lovers and not just the administrators of a grand logistical parenting enterprise. She missed Sam a lot, though it wasn't that hard for me to be without him. I truly believe that I've some autistic current in me that somehow allows me to forgot someone or something if it's not in my sight. I'm like a baby; I get really anxious at the prospect of separation, but once the deed is done I have a hard time realizing that the person or thing that is away continues to exist without me. That said, a few times as we returned to our apartment between errands, I expected to hear a stomp-stomp-stomp running towards the door as I entered the house, and I missed Sam in its absence. Likewise, my morose reflections all day on separation and death were a clear indication that I missed the boy a lot.
Finally it was time to pick up our wonderful boy. They'd recommended we pick him up around 3pm the first day, and gradually stretch it out to their normal schedule of 7:30am to 5:30pm. When we got to the school Sam was crying. The teachers explained that he'd finally started to eat his snack of some sort of cake, when they picked him up from the table to move on to the next activity. So he was pissed off, but he calmed down when he saw his mother. That said, after some intense hugs and kisses, he proceeded to walk around the lobby and lie down on the rug, as if to say, "Don't get too excited, guys. I wasn't that anxious to leave."
The professors gave us a rundown of how he'd done his first day (slept a lot, ate a little, didn't interact much with the other kids), and gave us some practical requests. Mainly they didn't want us to pack glass bottles for Sam's milk. Of course we prefer the glass bottles because they leach out fewer chemicals, but we understood their concerns of dangerous broken glass, and agreed to find some plastic bottles that weekend. On the other hand, they had no problem with using our cloth diapers for Sam. I'd heard of preschools in the US using only bulk-bought disposable diapers, and refusing to accommodate people's requests for cloth diapers. I understand this policy, as it would seem very difficult to me to manage different diapers for every kid. But apparently in our preschool they manage each kid's stuff separately anyway (diapers, bottles, packed snacks, clothes, etc.), so it wasn't a problem to keep him in his own cloth diapers. Likewise they didn't mind sitting him on the potty to crap after lunch, even though they normally don't start sitting kids on the potty there until they're 22 months old. In general the staff seemed very considerate of our requests, as if we were neither particularly demanding nor particularly lax compared to what they were used to dealing with.
Since that first day we've noticed many changes in Sam. He is more self-assured and doesn't mind being on his own sometimes, and he is much more vocal. I imagine that seeing the other kids walk around and talk helps him to realize what he's capable of. At the same time I'm sure there will be some things that he's been doing precociously that he might regress in. If no one else in his group is using the potty or drawing with crayons, he might stop doing these things himself. A sort of early peer pressure normalizing influence!
One thing I was briefly worried about was when a professor implied that Sam was having trouble adjusting to not being the center of attention. This had me wondering if he was a spoiled kid, and if so, I felt frustrated at not being around enough to fix it. It's true that we have a lot of people in our house (grandparents, babysitter, cousin, sister, parents) that all pay a lot of attention to Sam at various moments. That said, I think that for someone who's growing up with seven other people in the house, he's pretty independent and unspoiled. At any rate, this comment raised the specter of something I dread, which is the Colombian tendency to baby little (and big) kids and not imbue them with a sense of responsibility. This is something I'll discuss in another post. For the meanwhile, my wife has counseled me not to worry too much about it. Sam's still only on his third week of school, and the inevitable flu he's been hit with has had him wanting a lot of attention and cuddling.
Another adventure we just had this weekend was the first parents' workshop. It was certainly not my kind of gathering. The ambiance started off very alternative, with a professor playing Afro-Colombian drum songs and encouraging parents to dance. To me this smacked of the overly-earnest privileged bohemian classes, and I have an innate aversion to outward shows of privilege. Also the school director gave a few discourses on how flawed the mainstream educational system was, and it was all just a bit too self-congratulatory for me.
This year the school's educational theme is race and skin color, and so they are trying to expose the kids to different cultures, for example through weekly classes in Afro-Colombian songs and Inca music. It was surprising to me, because it seemed as if the treatment of race and culture was as something foreign that the kids should learn to appreciate. I might understand this at an all-white school in the US, but it seemed forced and inappropriate in Colombia, world hotspot of racial mestizaje. They even passed around a little black doll that would be circulating from house to house over the course of the year. The parents' attitudes were as if it were some special totem to banish racism from their hearts, and they passed it around in a way that, if I were black, would have made me feel even more self-conscious than I already was.
Anyway, it was really shocking to be in this environment that was so different from our small town north of Bogota. In our area, people recognize their indigenous heritage. No one speaks Muisca, and no one would call themselves Indians, but from the simplest peasant to the most effete intellectual at the university, everyone considers themselves to be the descendants of Muiscas. People talk about the customs of the ancestors, and indeed our food, music, names, and dress are very influenced by indigenous culture. I'm not just saying this because I work in the archeology museum; people really identify with their indigenous heritage. Even private companies have names referring to Muisca mythology. More than just Muiscas, people recognize a distinct regional identity. Boyaca culture is a very distinctive stamp, and it's worn with pride by people of all ages. Even for those who don't realize the strong Muisca component of it, Boyaca's culture is seen as a very unique and special thing.
In Bogota, on the other hand, there seems to be a real disconnect, at least among the young professionals we've met. I assume everyone must know factually, historically, that they are descended from Muiscas and Spaniards, but they don't relate to this, or if they do, it's as some self-conscious effort to recapture the past. People seem to consider themselves as post-cultural, as cosmopolitan citizens of the world, or at least of a modern nation divorced from ancient traditions. I've seen this before in Bogotanos; in my work on the Muisca Garden we're constantly trying to find other groups working along the same lines, but in Bogota many groups that are supposedly recuperating their indigenous heritage are bringing in crop varieties from thousands of miles away in Peru, and consequently using the Inca names for these things, names that we've never used in Colombia. So even in their recovery of indigenous culture, they are looking abroad, feeling more connection with distant Bolivia than with nearby Boyaca.
Hence the feeling at the preschool parents' meeting was much as one might expect at an East Coast private school in the US, with WASP parents oohing and aahing at the exotic cultures their children were being exposed to through courses in ethnic dance or weaving or whatever. There was even one father that wanted the kids to have daily instead of weekly classes with the black professor, so they could see him more (and presumably imbibe his ethnic aura). It's ironic, because any non-Colombian would have looked at the group of bronze-skinned and dark-haired parents and thought of them as a bunch of exotic mestizo Latinos.
Anyway, my wife and I tried to bring this up in the comment-sharing section. We said it was good that the kids were learning about cultures from different parts of Colombia, but that we didn't want the kids to think that culture and ethnicity and heritage were things that only belonged to the Other. This is an especially important point for me, because in my politically-determined public school curriculum we studied about minorities and the Holocaust and all the other cultural issues that were deemed important, but it left me thinking something like, "Gee, I wish I were a minority or a Jew so I could have a heritage, too." We didn't learn about the German influence in Midwestern cuisine, or how my family's pastimes of hunting and outdoors-y stuff are an inheritance from our indigenous and pioneer forebears, or that Europeans don't eat lots of peanut butter like we do. Only upon leaving the US did I realize all the unique and fascinating things that my ancestors have given me and that make me who I am.
The school director, who is at the age where my wife says that women stop listening to others and just blather on with their own discourse, responded to us that the kids learn songs from all over Colombia, not just from the black or indigenous areas. And among other things, they learn about the Muiscas and local mestizo culture. That's fine, but the Muiscas and their mestizo descendants aren't just one more culture among many. For people from central Colombia, they are the culture that has shaped them, the culture that defines them. If you want to instill a sense of diversity and tolerance in children, I think it's important for to start by defining which culture is theirs, so they can appreciate others too. For instance, I feel that schoolkids in Chicago should of course learn about Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians of the Pacific Northwest, or about Italian immigrants to New York's Lower East Side. But first they should learn about Blackhawk and the Potawotami, about the Underground Railroad routes leading through Chicago, about the 1893 World's Fair, about Polish and Jewish and Appalachian and Mississippi immigration to Chicago. Without that central reference point, everything melds into a mass of mildly interesting information that has no direct effect on one's self, one's identity.
Caro was as surprised as I was at the parents' lack of identification with an ethnicity, a sense of a culture of their own. Granted, her situation is different from many people's because her ancestry includes blacks, Indians, whites, and everything in between. So for Caro it feels very forced to make a big deal of these different cultures as if they were something we don't all bear within ourselves. A lot of our fellow parents looked very European, so perhaps they didn't have a sense that culture isn't just the exotic Other, but rather that each of us is fascinating and ethnic.
After the meeting there was a potluck, and a black fellow parent recognized Caro from their shared college years. She remarked, "Hey, isn't your grandmother black?" Perhaps she too was a bit exhausted from all the ruminating on how important it was to expose our kids to those exotic blacks and Indians, and relieved to find someone in the same situation.
Despite my initial dismay at what I feel is a mistaken focus for the school's treatment of race, I left the meeting feeling good. I would wish for people to have a better idea that indigenous culture, local songs and dances, and ethnic identity are all a part of them, that they just need to realize the roots they bear within themselves. I would wish for a more natural, authentic approach to race. But I understand that middle-class people in Bogota are coming from a different situation than peasants or the children of peasants in Boyaca. Maybe this way of doing things that seems so artificial to me is the path they need to take to appreciate their own culture and that of other people. At any rate, I am pleased with Sam's pre-school, but I'll also be pleased in a few months when he goes to a less cutting-edge school in our provincial, Muisca backwater, where he can receive all sorts of exotic, authentic cultural experiences at a much more modest price!
The choice we finally settled on is a sort of alternative school, but not so much that it offends me. The professors seem loving yet not afraid to lay down the law. Caro was sold when she went to visit the place and saw a dance class of cute, clumsy 1-year-olds. The dance instructor was telling them to touch their hips, and some were touching their knees, some their noses, and others were just sitting on the ground after falling down. I think it was this combination of ambitious activities (dance, singing, playing with dough, etc.), and a recognition that the little kids aren't all going to follow the plan exactly, that attracted my wife to this school.
All of the options were equally expensive (over $300US monthly as opposed to the $50-100US we'd be paying back in our small hometown), so in the end we went with this last choice that my wife liked the best. I scheduled my work so I could be in Bogota to take Sam to his first day of school. This was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and I want to be there for his first and last day of school.
On the big morning Caro and I packed Sam's bag and the three of us walked hand-in-hand the three blocks to the nursery school. Caro's mom and her husband also accompanied us. When we got there most of Sam's cohort had not yet arrived, so we put him near the bin of balls (you know those plastic balls in a pool-like enclosure like they have at Chucky Cheese) with the group just above him. Sam was fascinated by the balls and the other kids, and he tentatively approached some of his colleagues to request the balls they were holding. A few obliged, but in general the other kids sort of ignored him. It made me wonder how my son will be as a social being. Will he be awkward, afraid to introduce himself to new people, as I was for most of my conscious childhood? Will he be forthright and charismatic? As I watched him teeter about ignored by the others, I dreaded the third option, that he might be very earnest and direct, only to be rejected by cooler, cynical kids. I didn't get too worried though; my mother tells me I was very outgoing in my preschool, even on the first day, which seems to have had little bearing on my timid behavior later on in life. Perhaps Sam's experience on his first day of nursery school at one year of age will not definitively determine his social success for the next 80 years.
Something I noticed as Sam hung out with the bigger kids (from 22 to 28 months or so) was that they weren't much bigger physically than he is. I wondered if this was because he is such a big kid, but when we finally put him with the kids his age, he wasn't much bigger than any of them, either. I posited that maybe the second year of life is a time of much developmental growth, but not such large physical size increments.
We left our son with the kids of his group in the school's patio, where he played on big wheel tricycles and ignored the other kids. The group's teacher took us to the office, went over some paperwork with us, and tried to prepare us emotionally for this milestone in Sam's life. She warned us that for the first few days his sleeping and eating patterns would change, and he'd sometimes be cranky or sad or even have nightmares. She told us that he'd be going through a sort of mourning process, as he got accustomed to new routines and more time apart from us. It struck me that much of childrearing (perhaps much of life in general) is subjecting your child and yourself to increasing periods of separation, of letting go, and dealing with the emotional turmoil of it. First is kicking them out of the womb, then you no longer let them sleep with you, then you send them off to daycare, school, college, and adult life. The ultimate separation is death (hopefully yours first and not the kid's). But all of these are part of life, and they let us know that we're not abandoning each other, but rather bringing the parent-child relationship to a new level.
Accordingly, Sam was doing just fine when we finished talking with the professor, but when he caught a glimpse of us as we were leaving, he burst into tears.
It was really nice to have that day to ourselves--one of the first times that my wife and I could relate to one another as friends and lovers and not just the administrators of a grand logistical parenting enterprise. She missed Sam a lot, though it wasn't that hard for me to be without him. I truly believe that I've some autistic current in me that somehow allows me to forgot someone or something if it's not in my sight. I'm like a baby; I get really anxious at the prospect of separation, but once the deed is done I have a hard time realizing that the person or thing that is away continues to exist without me. That said, a few times as we returned to our apartment between errands, I expected to hear a stomp-stomp-stomp running towards the door as I entered the house, and I missed Sam in its absence. Likewise, my morose reflections all day on separation and death were a clear indication that I missed the boy a lot.
Finally it was time to pick up our wonderful boy. They'd recommended we pick him up around 3pm the first day, and gradually stretch it out to their normal schedule of 7:30am to 5:30pm. When we got to the school Sam was crying. The teachers explained that he'd finally started to eat his snack of some sort of cake, when they picked him up from the table to move on to the next activity. So he was pissed off, but he calmed down when he saw his mother. That said, after some intense hugs and kisses, he proceeded to walk around the lobby and lie down on the rug, as if to say, "Don't get too excited, guys. I wasn't that anxious to leave."
The professors gave us a rundown of how he'd done his first day (slept a lot, ate a little, didn't interact much with the other kids), and gave us some practical requests. Mainly they didn't want us to pack glass bottles for Sam's milk. Of course we prefer the glass bottles because they leach out fewer chemicals, but we understood their concerns of dangerous broken glass, and agreed to find some plastic bottles that weekend. On the other hand, they had no problem with using our cloth diapers for Sam. I'd heard of preschools in the US using only bulk-bought disposable diapers, and refusing to accommodate people's requests for cloth diapers. I understand this policy, as it would seem very difficult to me to manage different diapers for every kid. But apparently in our preschool they manage each kid's stuff separately anyway (diapers, bottles, packed snacks, clothes, etc.), so it wasn't a problem to keep him in his own cloth diapers. Likewise they didn't mind sitting him on the potty to crap after lunch, even though they normally don't start sitting kids on the potty there until they're 22 months old. In general the staff seemed very considerate of our requests, as if we were neither particularly demanding nor particularly lax compared to what they were used to dealing with.
Since that first day we've noticed many changes in Sam. He is more self-assured and doesn't mind being on his own sometimes, and he is much more vocal. I imagine that seeing the other kids walk around and talk helps him to realize what he's capable of. At the same time I'm sure there will be some things that he's been doing precociously that he might regress in. If no one else in his group is using the potty or drawing with crayons, he might stop doing these things himself. A sort of early peer pressure normalizing influence!
One thing I was briefly worried about was when a professor implied that Sam was having trouble adjusting to not being the center of attention. This had me wondering if he was a spoiled kid, and if so, I felt frustrated at not being around enough to fix it. It's true that we have a lot of people in our house (grandparents, babysitter, cousin, sister, parents) that all pay a lot of attention to Sam at various moments. That said, I think that for someone who's growing up with seven other people in the house, he's pretty independent and unspoiled. At any rate, this comment raised the specter of something I dread, which is the Colombian tendency to baby little (and big) kids and not imbue them with a sense of responsibility. This is something I'll discuss in another post. For the meanwhile, my wife has counseled me not to worry too much about it. Sam's still only on his third week of school, and the inevitable flu he's been hit with has had him wanting a lot of attention and cuddling.
Another adventure we just had this weekend was the first parents' workshop. It was certainly not my kind of gathering. The ambiance started off very alternative, with a professor playing Afro-Colombian drum songs and encouraging parents to dance. To me this smacked of the overly-earnest privileged bohemian classes, and I have an innate aversion to outward shows of privilege. Also the school director gave a few discourses on how flawed the mainstream educational system was, and it was all just a bit too self-congratulatory for me.
This year the school's educational theme is race and skin color, and so they are trying to expose the kids to different cultures, for example through weekly classes in Afro-Colombian songs and Inca music. It was surprising to me, because it seemed as if the treatment of race and culture was as something foreign that the kids should learn to appreciate. I might understand this at an all-white school in the US, but it seemed forced and inappropriate in Colombia, world hotspot of racial mestizaje. They even passed around a little black doll that would be circulating from house to house over the course of the year. The parents' attitudes were as if it were some special totem to banish racism from their hearts, and they passed it around in a way that, if I were black, would have made me feel even more self-conscious than I already was.
Anyway, it was really shocking to be in this environment that was so different from our small town north of Bogota. In our area, people recognize their indigenous heritage. No one speaks Muisca, and no one would call themselves Indians, but from the simplest peasant to the most effete intellectual at the university, everyone considers themselves to be the descendants of Muiscas. People talk about the customs of the ancestors, and indeed our food, music, names, and dress are very influenced by indigenous culture. I'm not just saying this because I work in the archeology museum; people really identify with their indigenous heritage. Even private companies have names referring to Muisca mythology. More than just Muiscas, people recognize a distinct regional identity. Boyaca culture is a very distinctive stamp, and it's worn with pride by people of all ages. Even for those who don't realize the strong Muisca component of it, Boyaca's culture is seen as a very unique and special thing.
In Bogota, on the other hand, there seems to be a real disconnect, at least among the young professionals we've met. I assume everyone must know factually, historically, that they are descended from Muiscas and Spaniards, but they don't relate to this, or if they do, it's as some self-conscious effort to recapture the past. People seem to consider themselves as post-cultural, as cosmopolitan citizens of the world, or at least of a modern nation divorced from ancient traditions. I've seen this before in Bogotanos; in my work on the Muisca Garden we're constantly trying to find other groups working along the same lines, but in Bogota many groups that are supposedly recuperating their indigenous heritage are bringing in crop varieties from thousands of miles away in Peru, and consequently using the Inca names for these things, names that we've never used in Colombia. So even in their recovery of indigenous culture, they are looking abroad, feeling more connection with distant Bolivia than with nearby Boyaca.
Hence the feeling at the preschool parents' meeting was much as one might expect at an East Coast private school in the US, with WASP parents oohing and aahing at the exotic cultures their children were being exposed to through courses in ethnic dance or weaving or whatever. There was even one father that wanted the kids to have daily instead of weekly classes with the black professor, so they could see him more (and presumably imbibe his ethnic aura). It's ironic, because any non-Colombian would have looked at the group of bronze-skinned and dark-haired parents and thought of them as a bunch of exotic mestizo Latinos.
Anyway, my wife and I tried to bring this up in the comment-sharing section. We said it was good that the kids were learning about cultures from different parts of Colombia, but that we didn't want the kids to think that culture and ethnicity and heritage were things that only belonged to the Other. This is an especially important point for me, because in my politically-determined public school curriculum we studied about minorities and the Holocaust and all the other cultural issues that were deemed important, but it left me thinking something like, "Gee, I wish I were a minority or a Jew so I could have a heritage, too." We didn't learn about the German influence in Midwestern cuisine, or how my family's pastimes of hunting and outdoors-y stuff are an inheritance from our indigenous and pioneer forebears, or that Europeans don't eat lots of peanut butter like we do. Only upon leaving the US did I realize all the unique and fascinating things that my ancestors have given me and that make me who I am.
The school director, who is at the age where my wife says that women stop listening to others and just blather on with their own discourse, responded to us that the kids learn songs from all over Colombia, not just from the black or indigenous areas. And among other things, they learn about the Muiscas and local mestizo culture. That's fine, but the Muiscas and their mestizo descendants aren't just one more culture among many. For people from central Colombia, they are the culture that has shaped them, the culture that defines them. If you want to instill a sense of diversity and tolerance in children, I think it's important for to start by defining which culture is theirs, so they can appreciate others too. For instance, I feel that schoolkids in Chicago should of course learn about Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians of the Pacific Northwest, or about Italian immigrants to New York's Lower East Side. But first they should learn about Blackhawk and the Potawotami, about the Underground Railroad routes leading through Chicago, about the 1893 World's Fair, about Polish and Jewish and Appalachian and Mississippi immigration to Chicago. Without that central reference point, everything melds into a mass of mildly interesting information that has no direct effect on one's self, one's identity.
Caro was as surprised as I was at the parents' lack of identification with an ethnicity, a sense of a culture of their own. Granted, her situation is different from many people's because her ancestry includes blacks, Indians, whites, and everything in between. So for Caro it feels very forced to make a big deal of these different cultures as if they were something we don't all bear within ourselves. A lot of our fellow parents looked very European, so perhaps they didn't have a sense that culture isn't just the exotic Other, but rather that each of us is fascinating and ethnic.
After the meeting there was a potluck, and a black fellow parent recognized Caro from their shared college years. She remarked, "Hey, isn't your grandmother black?" Perhaps she too was a bit exhausted from all the ruminating on how important it was to expose our kids to those exotic blacks and Indians, and relieved to find someone in the same situation.
Despite my initial dismay at what I feel is a mistaken focus for the school's treatment of race, I left the meeting feeling good. I would wish for people to have a better idea that indigenous culture, local songs and dances, and ethnic identity are all a part of them, that they just need to realize the roots they bear within themselves. I would wish for a more natural, authentic approach to race. But I understand that middle-class people in Bogota are coming from a different situation than peasants or the children of peasants in Boyaca. Maybe this way of doing things that seems so artificial to me is the path they need to take to appreciate their own culture and that of other people. At any rate, I am pleased with Sam's pre-school, but I'll also be pleased in a few months when he goes to a less cutting-edge school in our provincial, Muisca backwater, where he can receive all sorts of exotic, authentic cultural experiences at a much more modest price!
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Ag development on the home front
For the past few months now my cousin has been working at the Salvation Army in a small city in Wisconsin. As I understand it, she's in charge of lots of general activities, but a big focus is on the meal center where those who are on hard times can come and eat. She's been battling with the status quo of pre-packaged junk food that forms a major part of what the kitchen serves. Recent victories include the cheap bulk purchase and successful preparation of cabbages in the form of cole slaw, which was a big hit among the clients. Anyway, she's just gotten into the idea of growing vegetables in soil-filled burlap sacks, as demonstrated in this video:
My cousin would like to create a Salvation Army garden to provide fresh produce for the community kitchen, as well as building skills and confidence for clients who can work growing the food that they and their peers are consuming. Since they don't have a lot of garden space, this burlap sack idea is an appealing alternative. They could implement it on a parking lot, vacant junk-strewn lots, wherever. For me the sack idea is one of a plethora of possibilities for getting a lot of food out of a little space. Other possibilities include raised beds created from railroad ties, bucket gardening, hanging soil bags, etc. On top of that, they have access to a far-away lot where they could grow lower-value veggies like lettuce in plowed rows, a strategy that produces a lot per hour of work but uses a lot of space.
My cousin may or may not find the burlap sacks or these other possibilities to be a useful tool in bringing better food and food-growing skills to her clients. But for me it's thrilling that she's embarking on this quest. Right now terms like food security and urban farming are becoming a lot more current in mainstream society, certainly more so than when I was toiling on a small urban garden in Chicago's ghetto and receiving little societal validation for the project. This is a good thing, but often what one reads about are sort of pie-in-the-sky ideas, or projects that mainly cater to progressive, big-city liberals. If my cousin gets this thing off the ground, it will be an application of these exciting concepts in a context that really needs it--the down-and-out in a small Midwestern post-industrial city.
My cousin and her husband are foodies in the most positive sense I can think of. They do not go to high-end experimental fusion restaurants, or follow the latest elite food trends. Despite Wisconsin's abundance of local, trendy microbrews, as far as I know their drink of choice is returnable-bottle Leinenkugel's consumed on lawn chairs in front of their garage. But they love good food, and cook high-quality, mainly vegetarian meals, using the produce from their backyard garden throughout the growing season.
Being a self-centered jerk myself, a big part of the excitement I get from my cousin's new endeavor is the thrill that I may finally be able to find meaningful, useful work in my own country. I left the US some six years ago, largely because of frustration with the society and my job prospects. My training and my passion is agricultural development in favor of the poor. In 1990s and early 2000s US, a land of feigned abundance, debt-driven excess, and the ever-present trappings of complacent, bourgeois prosperity, my line of work was neither needed nor respected. I longed to be able to help people who needed it by applying my particular set of skills, but no one seemed to be interested in using hard-core agronomy to improve well-being in the US. What I was proposing was to teach people how to be successful subsistence or commercial farmers, or at least well-fed scavengers, and this was not appealing to the arrogant, post-peasant world I grew up in. Even the urban gardening and food security initiatives seemed to me to be tinged with a sort of fuzzy, feel-good charitable aspect to them. No one was actually proposing that people make a living, or at least improve their physical well-being, by farming.
But things have changed in the past few years. I believe that in the present economic crisis more people are aware that staying alive, not to mention having a real economy, is dependent on certain cold, hard realities. You can't eat packaged debt derivatives, or shoddily-built exurban houses, or Facebook apps, or any of the other nonsense our economy was based on until recently. For instance, my cousin's superiors at the Salvation Army are receptive to the idea of growing some of the kitchen's own food on-site, as well as things like capturing rainwater in barrels, or composting the kitchen scraps. Who knows if in the year 2000 they would have found such basic, peasant-y practices offensive to the collective aesthetic of sterile, manicured lawns and strip malls?
This all has me very enthusiastic about my prospects when my family and I go to live in the States in about a year and a half. I finally feel like I might find a place for myself, professionally and culturally, in this new country that resembles more the humble, practical, proletarian culture my parents taught me from their upbringing in the pre-prosperity 1940s and 1950s, as opposed to the garish Gomorrah that my generation grew up in. Hell, in objective terms, the people my cousin works with are worse-off than the peasants in the war-torn Tenza Valley that I work with. When you have to go to a soup kitchen, that means you have no food for yourself. First World or Third World, having no food is the ultimate measure of need. So if I'm aiming to promote economic development and help the needy, the US could really use my contribution.
And so suddenly it seems to me like I might be able to make a living for myself, get some respect, and most importantly contribute to the well-being of my fellow citizens in the US, by doing what I've always wanted to do and until now have had to go elsewhere to practice. I can finally be useful!
Watch How to Grow Food in a Burlap Bag on PBS. See more from The Wisconsin Gardener.
My cousin would like to create a Salvation Army garden to provide fresh produce for the community kitchen, as well as building skills and confidence for clients who can work growing the food that they and their peers are consuming. Since they don't have a lot of garden space, this burlap sack idea is an appealing alternative. They could implement it on a parking lot, vacant junk-strewn lots, wherever. For me the sack idea is one of a plethora of possibilities for getting a lot of food out of a little space. Other possibilities include raised beds created from railroad ties, bucket gardening, hanging soil bags, etc. On top of that, they have access to a far-away lot where they could grow lower-value veggies like lettuce in plowed rows, a strategy that produces a lot per hour of work but uses a lot of space.
My cousin may or may not find the burlap sacks or these other possibilities to be a useful tool in bringing better food and food-growing skills to her clients. But for me it's thrilling that she's embarking on this quest. Right now terms like food security and urban farming are becoming a lot more current in mainstream society, certainly more so than when I was toiling on a small urban garden in Chicago's ghetto and receiving little societal validation for the project. This is a good thing, but often what one reads about are sort of pie-in-the-sky ideas, or projects that mainly cater to progressive, big-city liberals. If my cousin gets this thing off the ground, it will be an application of these exciting concepts in a context that really needs it--the down-and-out in a small Midwestern post-industrial city.
My cousin and her husband are foodies in the most positive sense I can think of. They do not go to high-end experimental fusion restaurants, or follow the latest elite food trends. Despite Wisconsin's abundance of local, trendy microbrews, as far as I know their drink of choice is returnable-bottle Leinenkugel's consumed on lawn chairs in front of their garage. But they love good food, and cook high-quality, mainly vegetarian meals, using the produce from their backyard garden throughout the growing season.
Being a self-centered jerk myself, a big part of the excitement I get from my cousin's new endeavor is the thrill that I may finally be able to find meaningful, useful work in my own country. I left the US some six years ago, largely because of frustration with the society and my job prospects. My training and my passion is agricultural development in favor of the poor. In 1990s and early 2000s US, a land of feigned abundance, debt-driven excess, and the ever-present trappings of complacent, bourgeois prosperity, my line of work was neither needed nor respected. I longed to be able to help people who needed it by applying my particular set of skills, but no one seemed to be interested in using hard-core agronomy to improve well-being in the US. What I was proposing was to teach people how to be successful subsistence or commercial farmers, or at least well-fed scavengers, and this was not appealing to the arrogant, post-peasant world I grew up in. Even the urban gardening and food security initiatives seemed to me to be tinged with a sort of fuzzy, feel-good charitable aspect to them. No one was actually proposing that people make a living, or at least improve their physical well-being, by farming.
But things have changed in the past few years. I believe that in the present economic crisis more people are aware that staying alive, not to mention having a real economy, is dependent on certain cold, hard realities. You can't eat packaged debt derivatives, or shoddily-built exurban houses, or Facebook apps, or any of the other nonsense our economy was based on until recently. For instance, my cousin's superiors at the Salvation Army are receptive to the idea of growing some of the kitchen's own food on-site, as well as things like capturing rainwater in barrels, or composting the kitchen scraps. Who knows if in the year 2000 they would have found such basic, peasant-y practices offensive to the collective aesthetic of sterile, manicured lawns and strip malls?
This all has me very enthusiastic about my prospects when my family and I go to live in the States in about a year and a half. I finally feel like I might find a place for myself, professionally and culturally, in this new country that resembles more the humble, practical, proletarian culture my parents taught me from their upbringing in the pre-prosperity 1940s and 1950s, as opposed to the garish Gomorrah that my generation grew up in. Hell, in objective terms, the people my cousin works with are worse-off than the peasants in the war-torn Tenza Valley that I work with. When you have to go to a soup kitchen, that means you have no food for yourself. First World or Third World, having no food is the ultimate measure of need. So if I'm aiming to promote economic development and help the needy, the US could really use my contribution.
And so suddenly it seems to me like I might be able to make a living for myself, get some respect, and most importantly contribute to the well-being of my fellow citizens in the US, by doing what I've always wanted to do and until now have had to go elsewhere to practice. I can finally be useful!