Shit on My Shoes
by Kelly Kirchner
Teach in Chile
With nervous excitement and anticipation, a few friends and I ventured into the exotic and colorful new city we would call home for the next year. We had walked just one block when I rounded a corner and put my flip-flopped foot down…in the middle of a still-warm horse patty. At the time, standing dumbfounded with the droppings dripping down the back of my leg, I couldn’t fully appreciate what I had stepped into. It would take a year of living and teaching in Chile before I would be able to look back, chuckle, and truly understand my good fortune.
Starting any new job is daunting. Before you can hope to become acquainted with the people, the company, or the intricately-spun web of office politics, there are the more fundamental questions: “where do my documents go when I print them?” or “what was I hired to do again?” My experiences working in sterile, temperature-controlled cubicles had not proven to be the most fulfilling, so I wandered down a different path. However, as I was pulling irreparably crinkled clothes out of a backpack in a dark hostel room (shared with six other girls and a dozen extra-large suitcases to get us through the year), the prospect of my first day teaching English in Chile seemed monumentally more challenging and certainly unlike any job I had before. What did I sign up for?
Having spent only two days in Valparaíso thus far, I left myself plenty of time to find my way from the hostel through the colorful labyrinth of curving, graffiti-lined streets to my school by the ocean. Standing at the front of a cramped, concrete classroom, I was grateful for the lack of attendance. Teaching English was a job for which I had no experience and almost no training, except for a two-week orientation in Santiago and spending the last sixteen years immersed in the American educational system.
By the end of the first semester, I was ready to throw up my hands. I couldn’t understand why my students were so lazy and why they just didn’t seem to care. I had gaggles of students coming to me in the last weeks of the semester handing in late homework assignments—some from the first weeks of class. Many expected to be able to take the three or four quizzes they had missed throughout the semester on the spot. I was fed up with students coming to class without so much as a pencil, and their cell phones ringing in class. During one class, I watched in awe as my student got up from his desk to the sound of a rap song ring-tone, and walked out to answer the call without so much as a permission-seeking glance. After forty-five minutes, he still hadn’t returned. At the end of the period peered into the courtyard to see him playing ping pong. Unfortunately this did not prove to be an isolated incident. I would spend hours preparing lessons and activities, and the students couldn’t be bothered to even bring their books. I was also bewildered by their love of reggaeton music and mullets.
During our winter break I traveled and the distance from teaching allowed for introspection and reflection on my experience thus far. The “light bulb” moment happened while browsing in a store in Ollantaytambo, Peru. My traveling companion and I came across a little boy, likely around six, who appeared to be left alone to tend a jewelry shop (as was the case in many market stalls and even one pharmacy). Sitting on the floor eating rice and vegetables, he looked up and gave us a grin when we entered. Seconds later, the bowl slipped from his hands and spilled onto his lap and the floor. Instead of crying the boy picked up a piece of the fallen food, carried it outside, and returned with a street dog trailing behind him. Needless to say, the dog, tail-wagging, took care of the rest and the boy kept on smiling. The lesson for me in all this was that improvisation, with a smile, is brilliant and, for many, a strategy for survival.
After I returned to Chile for the start of the second semester, I began to gain an appreciation for my students and to grow accustomed to the unpredictability of the place and the capriciousness of life there: the Internet that comes and goes; gas that runs out mid-shower and turns the water from hot to a teeth-chattering temperature; bus strikes; un-scheduled holidays and cancelled classes. This is a country with cell phones, Facebook, and all the gizmos and technology of the 21st century. This is also a country that legalized divorce just a few years ago and is still emerging from the shadow of a long and repressive dictatorship that ended in 1990. Minor tremors are commonplace and major earthquakes leave paths of destruction every decade or so. Many of my students had jobs and kids while they were still kids themselves, yet they still come to class. I was amazed at the ability of my students to improvise, to let things roll off their shoulders, and to laugh, even when they were sitting in English class at 8:30 at night.
One marked difference between Chileans and gringos (the light-hearted moniker given to anyone who doesn’t have dark brown eyes and hair) seems to be that the Chileans don’t seem to get flustered, and they take their time. Things which normally cause anxiety and annoyance in the U.S.—long lines, traffic, deadlines, and being on-time—do not seem to shake them. My students are not nearly as stressed as I was in school. For the most part, they do what they need to in order to get by, and then spend their afternoons playing ping pong or canoodling on park benches. This may come across as laziness to someone looking through a North American lens; however, when I began to view the Chilean-way from another angle, I came to see that what they are actually doing is enjoying life. Life in Chile is unpredictable. Without knowing what tomorrow or this afternoon could bring, why not enjoy the moment you are in right now? Of course there were times when I was frustrated. It would have been nearly impossible to untangle myself completely from my own cultural web. However, what I learned from my Chilean students and co-workers is that while there is nothing wrong with doing a little planning, what you should really plan for is the unexpected.
Stepping in animal droppings on the street is considered to bring good luck. I looked back at my first day in Valparaíso with a grin. In a country like Chile, environmental, cultural, and political forces are continually shifting and making the future unpredictable. Perhaps this uncertainty is why people here learn to view a mess as an opportunity for innovation. Chileans seem to have cultivated a collective wisdom which instructs us not to stress but instead to laugh and feel lucky when life shits in our path.