Sittin' on the Tracks

So last year for my Education and the Polity class, I wrote a paper on educational tracking. For those of you who don’t speak Educationalese, tracking is when you group students together based on ability. Even at my last internship at Franklin High School, students were tracked into academies which focused on obvious directions such as college bound students (Honors and Public Service Academies) and trade students (Engineering! Woot for CREATE!). I realize the theoretical as well as practical arguments for and agaisnt tracking in the States. Little did I know that the tracking battle would following down to the tropics!

Yeah, after Infant 2 (Second Grade) and entering into Standard 1 (3^rd Grade) the students at Claver School get assigned to classrooms based on attendance records. Though no one says it officially, these classes are hereby referred to as either “least, middle, or most focused” behind closed doors. And don’t think that the kids are dumb enough not to notice these groupings. Speaking in terms of efficacy, attendance records may not be the best of tools to decide tracking but they get the job done all the same. For the most part, the differences are stark and have been growing for the last six years.

The “most focused” class was a pain the first week. They have been placed with the least experienced/authoritative teachers because they are seen as self-starters. So, they are used to a certain level of anarchy and being able to do whatever the hell they wanted. Then they met me and realized I meant business for the most part. Now, they realize that if they don’t listen and take notes they’re not going to pass their quizzes. I made four versions of the same quiz to ensure they wouldn’t cheat and they said “Wow, you’re smart, Sir”. For the most part, they are bound for high school. There are even a couple who should be in high school already will easily pass the PSE.

The “middle” class was fantastic compared to the other two the first week. I guess they were just testing me out and looking for week spots, because now they are my worst behaved and least respectful. They openly mock me (my name, my accent, and the fact that I have no power outside of the threat of sending them to the office). They are truly little shits.

The “least focused” class, gave me a ton of trouble the first week, but can be managed with help from another teacher. For the most part I’ve learned to ignore the ones who don’t listen and focus on the ones who do (at least keeping it quiet enough for those students to hear me!). The kids who don’t listen have short attention spans and can’t even take notes from the board without constant supervision. The sad thing about a lot of these kids is that once they fail the PSE they’ll have no chance to go back to school and will be out on the street and forced to be much more adult than they are ready to be. Some of them will get trade jobs, others will wind up on the corner smoking pot at 14 years old. I try to tell myself that these students have far too many problems for me to handle by myself, but I still can’t help but think of them when I see another robbery or murder on the news perpetrated by another kid with no way out of poverty.

Of course, all of these classes have exceptions, especially when the classes are based on attendance. There are students in the “most focused” class who aren’t going to pass their entrance exam unless they work their asses off for the next two months. There are some students in the “least focused” class who raise their hands for every question and get really mad when I don’t call on them every time. I guess the “least focused” group is helpfully removed so as not to provide a distraction for the other classes, but there are goof-offs and antics in every class. So, as I write my lesson plans I have to plan for how I’m going to attack the same lesson in three different ways for the different classes. One thing that I could work on is making sure that the students who will not pass the PSE get something from my lessons. I know that there will be some students in each class who don’t pass. If at least a couple of students from each class pass, though, I will have considered myself a success.

Veggie Burger

The Veggie Burger

So this past weekend the Minnesotans and I finally went to Placencia! It was my first time hanging out with them, but they were actually a great group. It was fun to be with other teaching majors and be able to bond over gripping about lesson planning and the educational system in the States and dorky teacher stuff. Basically we got to talk shop. Beyond being able to find stuff in common, though, they were also a super fun group (as well as individually) in their own right. I had a great time hanging out with them and feel like I’m starting to have a network of friends. Yay for friends!

For us, the weekend spawned a new term that can succinctly describe our entire adventure: veggie burger. On Friday night, we went to a Mexican restaurant called Amigos. At said restaurant Ellen ordered a veggie burger. She asked for it with cheese and the server muttered “cheese on the vegetables…” under her breath. I was the only person who heard it and knew that this was probably not going to be a Boca Burger. When the veggie burger did show up, it was in the form of a hamburger bun filled with a slice of Kraft Singles, two pieces of iceburg lettuce, three slices of cucumber and a giant slab of tomato. We all thought it was hilarious and decided that the term “veggie burger” would be heretofore used for anything that is underwhelming.

Entertaining ourselves any way we can...

So we had a veggie burger weekend. Placencia is the beach spot of southern Belize, with possibly the best beaches in the whole country. We showed up having not booked any beds but found that outside of tourist season it was easy to get a cabana right on the beach that we could all split. It was already going to be awesome. Thusly, we were looking forward to sun and sand, especially after last week’s rains. But then, it rained again all day Saturday and we were pent up inside. We took a four-hour nap. We went to a bar with sand floors. We heard a cover band (I still have “54-46 That’s My Number” stuck in my head). We ate pizza. We sang Journey. We played cards. We didn’t tan. We didn’t go snorkeling. We didn’t bring rain coats. Finally, the sun came out Sunday and we were able to sit around and tan at least a little before catching the water taxi back to the bus. So the trip wasn’t a complete failure. The veggie burger, though unexpected, still tasted good.

The Coolie Rebels!

The funny thing about Placencia was the overabundance of white people. I saw more white people this past weekend than the total number of white people since I left Miami. This was a little unexpected since it’s out of tourist season with kids in school and people at work. So there were a lot of older white people, either retirees or ex-pats who owned business that catered to us folks with Yankee accents. Yup, with its actually existent nightlife, wi-fi hotspots, craft shops, seaweed milkshakes, and snorkeling packages, Placencia is the epitome of a tourist trap catering to the needs and desires of ex-pats, kids on spring break, and volunteers like us who are burnt out after three weeks and just want to unwind. Yeah, it’s a Disneyfication of the Belize I know in PG, and yeah its terrible that most of the money that comes into Belize comes in through wealthy foreigners rather than local industry. But yeah, I also needed to unwind, have a drink, listen to Girl Talk, and stick my toes in the sand.

Finally getting sun in front of the cabana

Life in Belize

Last week:
Stefan, Camille, and I were walking back from their grandma’s house on the next street over. The day had already been long and I had had nothing better to do so I had decided to walk over with them. On the walk back we decided to take the other route home. On the corner of Jasmine Street we neared a fence that had completely toppled over in the middle. Across the road, the skinniest rooster I had ever seen was strutting around the yard as a chicken gathered her chicks into the shade from the hot day. Some clothes were hanging on a clothesline. They were not in the sun but rather were sharing the shade with the chicks under a house that had been built on stilts to protect from hurricanes.
As we approached the corner, Stefan absently picked up a rock and looked up at me. “Do you want to get chased by a dog?” he asked with the same sort of glee that I expect he would have had if he had asked if I had wanted to go on a rollercoaster for the 14th time in a row. The sort of glee that only a 10 year old can have after 13 straight times on the same rollercoaster. “Not particularly?” I said, trying to betray my surprise (something that I always find myself trying to do when traveling). Before the “larly” had even left my lips, a dog jumped from over the toppled fence, headed straight for us. Before the “ly” had left my lips, rocks were already in midair, loosed from Stefan and Camille’s hands and on a trajectory for the dog. The rocks bounced around him in some sort of cheap, Belizean reenactment of the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. Only this brown mutt was playing the part of Tom Hanks and the kids were the Nazis. I was Vichy France.
The dog stopped in his tracks, waiting for the barrage to end. “Quick!” yelled Stefan, already running. Down the road we ran, all the way back to the pink house with ‘Nolberto’ over the door.

Last night:
We were having dinner when I heard a sound outside that was strangely reminiscent of a street sweeper. Now mind you our street is a dirt road, so a street sweeper would be completely insane. That being said, I would have been only slightly surprised if I had looked out the window and seen a street sweeper that had been stupidly donated by the European Union or the Republic of China (Taiwan) and emblazoned with the flags of either. What I did see when I looked outside was a street sweeperesque truck releasing clouds of insecticide into the air in order to suppress the mosquito population after our recent rains.

This morning:
In nearly a month in Belize (I’m counting the week I spent in Belize City last year), I saw a fire truck for the first time today. As it drove down the street, water was literally spilling out of its truckbed.

Watching the Inauguration in Belize

I don't have to tell anyone that history was made yesterday. So, in order to revel in it, a couple of the teachers and myself dismissed the preschool students early so that we could use the only TV on the coumpound.

Yes, I teared up.

A Garifuna Weekend

Although it rained all weekend (now they tell me that Toledo has the same reputation in Belize that Seattle has in the States and I’m beginning to think that maybe I’m an unwitting rain god, especially after my recent trip to Tijuana where they experienced the “storm of the century” while I was there. Now we’re having the coldest and wettest weather in recent memory in PG. Douglas Adams anyone?) I had a very relaxing weekend basically being further immersed in Garinagu culture as well as watching movies and football.

As I mentioned briefly before, Friday was a celebration of the life of Andy Palacio who died a year ago on Sunday. Andy was a world-respected artist who was born in Barranco, the Garinagu town just south of PG. He actually taught Marion in Secondary School when Marion was growing up in Barranco although he was apparently pretty mean to Marion for being too poor to afford textbooks. As an artist, though, Andy P (as he is affectionately known here) was a cultural activist who was inspired as a young man on a trip to Nicaragua where he met an old Garifuna man who had slowly seen his culture die around him there as young people lost more and more of their Garinagu roots. Andy returned to Belize where the Garinagu traditions were still thriving from Barranco through Placencia, Hopkins, and PG, up to Dangriga. Andy decided to use music to create cultural awareness about this small population found throughout Central America and quickly gained recognition as a young Caribbean musician in the early 90s. In 2007, he released his landmark achievement: an album called Wátina that pulled together Garifuna artists from Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras to celebrate their culture through song. The album is a fantastic production and within the next year earned Andy a spot at #1 on the World Music charts (apparently there is such a thing), an award from BBC as the best World Music album from the Americas (2007), and recognition from UNESCO as an Artist for Peace. Needless to say, Andy was the biggest thing Belize has seen at least since being an independent nation and one of his Garifuna friends purportedly told him that he could die knowing that his dream had been fulfilled. Within the year, the 48 year old died of a complication of his brain.

The Celebration Friday night

Fr. Perl cutting a rug

The Garifuna presence in Belize is very strong, and is particularly strong along the southern coast in places like Barranco, Dangriga, and PG. The Garifuna story began when the Arawak tribe moved from South America up the Caribbean island chain. Their path was followed by the Carib tribe, who killed the Arawak men but married the women. The hybrid culture thus began, with men speaking Carib and women speaking Arawak (and passing that language to their children). According to a documentary I saw last week, these people were followed by African merchants who had crossed the Atlantic long before Columbus, settled in the Guyanas and also moved up the island chain. I haven’t heard anything like this before, so I need to fact check, but I still think that it is pretty damn awesome (anything to take more steam out of Columbus’ sails [pardon the pun]). Either way, whether they were merchants or escaped slaves, Africans eventually met this hybrid tribe and became a part of it (Garinagu actually means “Black Carib”), bringing many African survivals with them. Because of this, it is hard to physically tell Garinagu apart from Kriols. The Garinagu were exiled from their home island of St. Vincent to Roatan and eventually were exiled from there to Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. They quickly set up a thriving and independent fishing and farming community that was never enslaved despite the fact that the logging industry fueled by slavery was already well underway just a few miles north. In order to keep the slaves from trying to escape to these free communities of people who looked very similar to themselves, slave owners began to spread rumors of cannibalism among the Garinagu, saying that they ate babies and children. These rumors and fears have survived into the present day as there is a lot of racism (especially from Kriols) directed toward the Garinagu in modern day Belize.

But the Garifuna community continues to thrive and embrace its heritage and language. Marion is very proud of his roots and is actually the former President of the Garifuna National Council, PG Branch. There is a Garifuna language mass every month at SPC. When Josh asked me what songs were popular here, I told him that I have probably the same four or five Andy P songs about forty times already (either by the original artist or covers). The celebration was fun, by the way, if not long. At least the music and dancing were good. Although all of the Garinagu in town are staunch Catholics, they also hold strongly onto traditional spirituality, constantly asking for the intercession of their ancestors, especially through the medium of sacred drums. Lots of children speak Garifuna and there is actually a Garifuna cultural retrieval program at school. I knew that there would be a strong Garinagu presence here, but I don’t think I was ready for how much I would be immersed in that culture other than Maya or Kriol. I even had a traditional Garifuna meal on Saturday thanks to another vice principal. Delish!

Another cultural note of interest: There is a small Indian (here called East Indian) population in Belize and PG. They seem to all be in construction, which is very different from any Indian people I know in the States. Also, on Saturday night Marion was talking about how the Garifuna like listening to traditional Garifuna music, the Mayans like listening to punta rock (a popularized take on Garifuna rhythms), and that for some reason the East Indians love country music. The next morning, I woke to the sounds of a buzzsaw and hammering next door accompanied by “I’ve Got Friends In Low Places” and other country hits unknown to me. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of county music, but I’m still open to the idea and wouldn’t say that I hat it either. Maybe I can make friends with an East Indian and learn to love country.

The Freakout

On Tuesday, when the last student left my classroom I sat in the empty room for a couple of minutes, contemplated the day, and almost broke down. Nothing was going right. My lessons were not well planned and I ended up having to drag them out to fill the impossibly long hour and a half slots, leaving both myself and my students bored with the material. The three classes are at vastly different levels and I had no idea how to cater to three different groups in a single day. My students were openly disrespectful to the point of laughing at me literally behind my back when I was writing on the board. Meanwhile, I was wracking my brain to figure out how to plan culturally competent lessons in reading comprehension without anything for the class to read! Not only were there no textbooks, there were no books of any sort that were suitable to what I needed. How the hell do you teaching reading without books?! The straw that broke the camel’s back was when my supervising teacher was unexpectedly called into another meeting and left me with the most rambunctious class again. They walked all over me, and I spent the next hour playing crowd control rather than teaching.



So there I was with my head in my hands and my entire world crumbling around me. What the hell was I doing? I was not only looking forward to, but praying for, the final bell almost within the first fifteen minutes into the school day. This was no way to lead a life. I want to feel good about what I do with my life, not be terrified by it and left crying every day. Even since my last internship in Seattle, I had gotten a feeling that teaching is not necessarily my forte and that my passions and talents are more geared towards trying to make education more effective through research, theory and policy work. Even so, I planned on teaching for a couple years before heading down that path just to get some worthwhile experience. By the end of Tuesday I doubted with all of my being that I could survive even a year in a classroom on my own. Who was I kidding? I was terrible at this. Maybe, if I gritted my teeth hard enough, practiced enough self denial, and counted the days until April I would possibly be able to make it through my entire internship without quitting on the spot and taking the next plane straight back to LA.



Luckily, I’ve learned from the Jesuits never to make an important decision during or immediately after a time of desolation. I spoke to Mr. Nolberto about books and he said, “Of course! All you have to do is ask!” and pulled out a crate of “New Caribbean Junior Readers” full of relevant short stories for me to photocopy and make worksheets. He then told me that since one of the Language Arts teachers begins University classes in the mornings next week that from next week on we will only be working in 45 minute sessions in the afternoon, giving me smaller blocks to fill and the entire morning to plan and grade.



Two of the three classes are still terrible toward me. However, I had a successful time having one of them do group work on Wednesday and will try to build on my success. In the other class, I had to yell at them that they were behaving terribly and once I finally had most of their attention, found (smelled) that one of the students was lighting paper on fire underneath his desk. Mr. Nolberto said he is going to have a talk with them today which is likely to put the fear of God into any class.



So, back from the brink of the abyss, things are looking up. I’m feeling much more confident about my lessons for next week, and feel like I have the materials to back me up. If there is one thing I’ve learned about the life of a teacher so far, it is that it is a rollercoaster ride to say the least.

This place is crawling with volunteers

Mike at the gardening workshop

For being such a small town, this place is crawling with volunteers. About a third of the twenty people at the gardening workshop were from the US. I guess they were PeaceCorps people since one of the presenters was a guy from the PeaceCorps named Mike. Mike is actually the one who told me about the workshop, and works on gardening projects at several schools in PG, including Claver School. He’s one of the first people here who introduced himself to me, and has been really great in making sure I feel welcomed and not alone (although that so far hasn’t been a problem, thank God). He also invited me to hang out with a bunch of other PeaceCorps volunteers in Toledo on Saturday night. Although I haven’t met the other groups in PG yet, I had some funny observations about this one. Individually, they are all awesomely cool people but as a group, the PeaceCorps folks seemed particularly sexually frustrated and relished in the opportunity to talk about anything from the States from movies to football (Sidenote, now that the Chargers, Panthers, and Titans are all out in one fell swoop I yet again have nothing to look forward to on Super Bowl Sunday except commercials). I guess having been here so long, you just need to take your mind off of Belize for a little while. Altogether, though, they were a fun group.

Other volunteers at Claver alone are Chica, who is here from a Japanese program and teaching computers (note: efficiency crazy Japanese people are really out of their element in laid-back Belize) and a Jesuit Volunteer in the Library (yeah, Josh, it’s an old water tank for sure) who I haven’t met yet. The JV’s live in a house together next to Claver. If you count all of those groups with me, Lauren, the Minnesotans and all those folk I haven't met or heard of (apparently the TIDE office is volunteer central)that means there are a ton of volunteers here. Oversaturation? Possibly, even though I don’t think you’d notice much difference in the way PG operates as a town if we all up and disappeared/were extradited/got malaria/took-the-ferry-to-Guatemala-and-were-never-heard-from-again one day. Yeah, the places we all work for would be hurting and missing the free labor, but I don’t think the average Punta Gordan would notice anything different. Does that mean we don’t do much as volunteers? I don’t think so. I like to think that means that PG would do alright on its own without us. And we do do pretty awesome things like teaching kids how to garden, use computers, and use the word “steal” (if I do say so myself).

The rest of the weekend:
Sunday was a fantastic opportunity to go to Garifuna mass at St. Peter Claver. Briefly (I’ll talk more about the Garinagu after Friday), the Garinagu are a group in Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras descended from Arawak and Carib Indigenous and escaped African slaves who were able to blend all three cultures. Marion (who is Garifuna) had spent the previous night teaching me a couple of the songs and dances for the mass. I ended up wearing one of Marion’s Garinagu shirts (which everyone loved) and sitting next to Patricia, who sang a little (quietly) and didn’t dance. Marion’s brother Kenny made fun of me for not dancing but I told him I would work on the lyrics this mass and the dances next time in February. Fr. Perl (the Jesuit who set up my contact with Claver School in the first place) presided and mass was fairly well attended. Marion is the lead of the choir which is mostly drums. I’m excited for this upcoming Friday, because there is going to be a celebration of Andy Palacio, a Garifuna artist who died last year suddenly and at a very young age. Next to Marion Jones (who is of Belizean heritage), he is by far the most famous person to come from Belize. That means that the celebration is going to be one hell of a shindig and a really unique opportunity. Marion even said that Paul Nabor (a fellow artist who is now probably the most renowned in Belize) may or may not be there, an awesome possibility indeed.

Marion rehearsing with the children in the choir

Me in my Garifuna shirt!

Other notes: I finally had mollyapples over the weekend. They're basically bland apples that you have to eat with chili powder to get any sense of satisfaction or sense that you actually ate something. Also, I just got done teaching my first lesson. The students actually grasped onto the material very easily and were well behaved while my supervising teacher was in the room. Now we just have two months to teach them how to put all of their lessons together into writing.

Another Thing I have in Common with Belizeans

Belizeans and I both love chicken. Of the 13 meals I have eaten, 7 have been chicken dishes. That's even more crazy if you think about the fact that we only have Johnny cakes for breakfast (subtract 4 meals). That's 7/9! And it turns out that Marion is an amazing cook and on Thursday night he made fried chicken. Now, if you know me at all you know that my favorite meal on earth is fried chicken. And this chicken was good! I'm talking about "it's possibly tied with Ezell's" good. And that is seriously good. This trip keeps on getting better by the day.

I just got done with a workshop on organic gardening for schools. It was hot as hell and now I'm contemplating never leaving this Internet cafe because it has a/c.

Contact infos!

Apparently there aren't any phone lines in Indianville, our neighborhood in PG. However, Mr. Nolberto has a cell phone that you can call if you ever miss the soothing sounds of my voice.
011(501)627-3659 is the number
Please call after 8:00pm (Central Time) to ensure that we're done with dinner.

My address is:
Matt Salazar c/o Marion Nolberto
Jasmine St.
Indianville/ Toledo Hope Area
Punta Gorda Town
Toledo District
Belize, Central America

Unfortunately, I don't think skype is going to work as I'm working with a 56k since the first time since the 8th grade and am having a hard enough time posting pictures.

Drop a line!

Thiefing some Mollyapples

Belize City Bus Terminal

So I finally got into PG at 9pm on Tuesday after taking the regular through Belmopan instead of the Express straight down the coast. Despite the length of the trip, we actually ended up going down the Hummingbird Highway through the Maya Mountains, which was terrifically scenic when I wasn’t sleeping. In PG I got dropped off at the University of Belize where Mr. Nolberto picked me up.

The Nolbertos are a cute little SPCS family. Marion is the director of Curriculum and Supervision, which makes him the chief disciplinarian. That means that about 80% of his day is occupied with my Standard VIers. Not only are they the most rambunctious, but they also have Secondary School placement exams (English in March, Math in May). Patricia is a quiet Keckchi Maya who teaches Infant II (2nd Grade). Stefan is 10 and Camille is 8. They’re both adorable. The whole family is adorable.

The Nolberto home

My first day at SPCS was anticlimactic enough. The Standard VIers had to come to school early today to write essay exams. When I arrived, they were hard at work, so I said hello to the teachers went to the office and stapled some worksheets together. Guess who got to grade the essays.
My second day afforded me and the two other interns an orientation on SPCS from Mr. Nolberto (more on SPCS later). Yes, there are two other interns here, although both of them are in Infant II. Kristie is from U of Minnesota, Duluth with 8 other teaching interns spread all over PG. She was originally supposed to be at St. Ben’s but they accidentally dropped her off at SPCS and here she is. Lauren is from University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada (to find out how amazingly ridiculous this is, ask Josh Lee) and is actually in Patricia’s class. We’re very grateful to be in such an organized school that knows what to do with interns, especially since the other Minnesotans are at places like St. Ben’s and Toledo Community College (despite the name, it’s a secondary school) were just put in classrooms on their own with no supervision, no introduction, and no direction. Meanwhile, my lesson plan on subject-verb agreement is due to Mr. Nolberto on Monday.

Yeah, it looks like Standard V Confirmation is out, with the PSEs (Primary School Exams) looming on the horizon (sorry, Kathy). I now appear to be the lead Reading Comprehension teacher for the 100 or so students in the three Standard VI classes. Of course, I will constantly be under the watchful eye of Mr. Nolberto and the three Standard VI teachers. However, it was only in my third class that my supervising teacher was called into a meeting and I was stuck with a classful of students and a short Spanish lesson. The kids played all the usual “test the sub” tricks (“Sir, Ms. Martinez lets us walk around the class” “My name is Banana, sir”) and I played my usual hardass who would rather come across as condescending than be fooled. I hate doing that and yet I know my three months would be down the crapper if I let the students run all over me on the first day. Also, don't worry, being left on my own is not going to be a regular occurance.

Thus, the teaching adventure begins. Thanks for joining me.

Claver school STD V and VI block

Yeah, my classroom looks out onto the Gulf of Honduras

Reflection:
It’s funny how much you can learn about someone from their writing. As with any class there were some standouts and some stinkers among the essays that I graded. The most common mistake was incessant shifting of tenses but what nagged me the most were the words Mollyapple and thief (pronounced "teeve"). The prompt that a vast majority of students chose to use was to write a story based on a picture of a boy picking red fruit out of a tree over a “No Trespassing” sign. While most students agreed that the fruit were apples (with one obstinate cherry dissenter), quite a few students called the fruit Mollyapples (or Moliapples or Marlyapples). I’ve never heard of Mollyapples but enough students referenced them for me to figure that they are not just some made-up fruit. I hadn’t been at school for an hour before my first hurdle with cultural competency. Awesome.

The second big word was the use of thief as a verb such as in “I thiefed the Mollyapples from the tree”. While I assume that the proper verb to use in this context is “stole”, these students have probably only ever used or heard thiefed except in movies. I didn’t invent the English language and I’ve only been using it about seven years longer than my students have, so who am I to tell them that a word in their everyday vocabulary isn’t a real word just because some white guys in Oxford said so? Yet, I know that the placement exam is in Queen’s English, not Kriol.
Is that unfair? Mostly. Did I make the rules? Hell no. Am I playing into the system? Yes, I marked thiefed wrong every time I saw it. I wish I didn’t have to, but for these students to make it to Secondary school I have to.

I think it’s really important to understand and try to work past all of this PostColonial theory crap (the whole purpose of my blog) because the world is still reeling from colonization and has taken for granted most of its bs systems and ways of thinking as the way the world has always worked. However, I’m not going to bear the entire burden of that horrible legacy. I’m a soldier against this crap, not the messiah. I don’t have the answers. By playing into the system I help to prop it up, but I also can be instrumental in tearing it apart from the inside. That’s what I think understanding is all about. Tearing it apart from the inside doesn’t mean I’m not going to ignore all the thiefeds. For me, at this point in my life, I don’t know what it means exactly. But it sure means something good (or bad if you are a colonial oppressor or elite educator).

Whatever the case, if I have to read one more essay about apples, I’m going to thief a gun and shoot myself.