"The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us" (John 1:14). Jesus was a learner of language and culture. Therefore, I must be unAmericanized. To be unAmericanized, I have to hang out with the students, teachers, and leaders a lot to learn more about them just like how Jesus hanged out with us to be among us. I ate with them breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I talked with them during their free times. I joined staff for their morning meetings. I aided mathematic teacher and study hall supervisor. I went to church on Wednesday night with the students. I blogged some details of what I learned here.
Free times:
There are blue and yellow Gallaudet Intramural jerseys, that lived in Nicaragua for a year, on those boys. I learned that they sew some jersey to make them smaller and fitting. Last year, Jon Vaughan, athletic trainer at Gallaudet University, went on board with the last year team to provide some athletic equipments. The first thing we noticed was that the brand new soccer ball didn't exist anymore. Where was it? After few questions, I learned that the ball went out of the boundary over the fence, probably at the nighttime. Therefore, they couldn't retrieve it and barely play soccer games with the flattened ball, but they didn't care. Monday to Thrusday, they played after the breakfast- 6:30 AM to 7:30AM, during the 30 min recess- 9:15 AM to 9:45 AM, 15 min recess- 3:15 PM to 3:30 PM or during their free time- 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM. They go to bed at 8-9 PM and get up at around 4:45-5:30 AM from either on the top of the bunk or below. Whenever they are not playing, they will sit in the cafe or outside to chat or to simply enjoy the sun. Few of them will stay in the cafe to watch the non-captioned television news. Few of them would sneak out beyond the fence to grab some mangoes from the tree nearby and wash them before sharing them with everyone. Even they gave some to me and I munched some and then spit the skin out. I also heard few stories about worms within some mangoes on the dark spots. We don't need any knives to eat. We pretty much ate beans and rice for all meals along with some meat and sides, and we had mangoes for the afternoon snacks along with some purchases from the snack booth.
Leaders:
Escuela Cristiana de Sordos en Nicaragua have several wonderful Deaf leaders who led the kids in the school, especially Janeth and Genaro. In the picture, Janeth wore the traditional Nicaraguan Costume, dressed on long embroidered white dress and red ribbons, to dance along with the rhythm of the music. Genaro, seeing that everybody wanted him to dance, relcultantly joined the rhythm. He's a comedian and a storyteller who will make one laugh till the face turns red or entice one into his story as if one's watching a movie.
Janeth is currently taking some courses on Saturday to become a certified teacher and she aims to enroll in an university after this. She's a hard-worker. Beside the class, during the week, she's volunteering her time as a dorm and study hall supervisor at the school and as a teacher aide for the kindergarten- non-paid. She also teach the LSN (Nicaragua Sign Language) to the Assembly of God missionaries at the missionary school nearby the school (under the same Assembly of God board) once a month or so. She has the heart of the teacher and she is pursuing it. She is the one who patiently taught me some LSN before I came to Nicaragua with the team, enabling us to communicate with the students efficiently.
Genaro is currently a high school student at the school despite of his age. He was enrolled in the school when he was already an adult in 1998 when the school was founded. He knew how to joke about his age and strive to break himself away from the restrictions. Some rules are exception for him, he also supervise the students even though he's a student himself as well. He works at the school library in the mornings, except Wednesdays when he had to take high school classes. All high schoolers take classes in the afternoons, so he was able to work when his classmates do their homework. His heart beats for the evangelism. Part-time job, school, and responsibilities tarry his dreams. He waits and prays patiently before he is able to fully pursue his dreams someday. As of now, he would grab every opportunity to get out of Managua during the weekends to do the evangelism. He showed me some of his visually artistic-evangelistic works on the posters that are being rolled and stacked into his office like the scrolls.
One of them illustrate the verse in John 1:29, "the next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!'" in espanol (Juan 1:29) and the artwork.
It's easy for us to fall in love with them! They are very patient with everybody. They are butterflies around the team, they will try to talk to any visitors and welcome them to the school even those who don't know any signing language. They reminded me of Watoto who came to National Community Church on the Valentine Day in 2009. I think it was the best Valentine Day I ever had beside the 2011 Valentine Day with the El Camino in Nicaragua.
I just learned that there are 111 students enrolled as of now and only 10 of them are hearing. Unlike America, Nicaragua allowed some hearing students to enroll into the Deaf school. There are only 40 students living in dorm, the rest went home after school on the bus at 12:30 PM for K-6 and 5:30 PM for 7-10. They don't have 11th and 12th grade as of now, but they plan to add 11th grade to the school next year. As the result, the math teacher doesn't have the 10th grade math textbook, to work effectively with the math teacher, I had to grab the 9th grade book and look for some 10th grade work that was being taught in the 9th grade book as well to plan the lesson. With the insufficient funds, they couldn't buy the 10th grade curriculum.
