I sit in a rocking chair on the second floor balcony, gazing out across my neighborhood and the
eucalyptus trees lining the river. The horizon roars with a majestic pink, slowly fading into a
deep orange as the sun kisses goodbye. I strum away to the tune of Vance’s “Riptide” before
swapping to “Seven Nation Army” on my guitar.
Tomorrow I’ll take Bus 22 over by the stadium to compete in my first Jiu Jitsu competition, after
meeting my German coworkers (In Ecuador of all places) for coffee and a bit of European
culture and language exchange.
Three months ago, or even last month, I couldn’t have dreamed of any of these things
happening; I had never touched an instrument, avoided any sports like the plague (much less
full contact martial arts), and didn’t know any other European students around my age.
I had never painted or taught other people.
I had never worked at a professional bakery to raise funds for a special needs school.
Though I had some experience with people with disabilities prior to my bridge year in Cuenca
(mostly blind or deaf), I had never worked with children with disabilities (both physical and
mental).
I had never taken a public bus, embraced trying new haircuts or speaking to my barber (I look
back and laugh, but it was a genuine struggle, especially in Spanish), or struck up conversations
with Taxi drivers.
I’ve never lived in a household outside my immediate family.
Navigating a foreign country over 3,000 miles away from home: it’s like taking a polar plunge,
diving into a pool of below freezing water. Once you get used to the shock, the world isn’t as
scary anymore. What was “never” becomes a good memory. Our challenges open new doors,
and define us by how we handle them. If we treat our deficiencies as potentials for growth that
we regularly realize, the world is our oyster and we take the reins of our destiny.
Every “never” is a door waiting to be opened, splitting off into dozens more of potential new
experiences.
This year is a launching pad. My first time being independent, my first time in an unstructured
environment, my first time bearing the weight of my adult life upon my shoulders. Everything I
choose helps to define the future me, regardless of the past. I’m reborn from the ashes of my
past self in these nine months.
All the lessons I learn will follow me, and my experience will form a cornerstone for navigating
my future at Tufts with all these wild opportunities I’ve held that many people can’t even
imagine.
I am wet. From the moment I waked out of the air-conditioned airport my body has not yet ceased this overproduction of sweat. I am certain that everyone in India knows that I am not from here, as I feel that I leave a snail-like trail.
I began to wonder “why me” and I awaited the day my body would catch up to my mind, to my new environment. As soon as I would step out of the shower my body would be wet once again, never really feeling clean. It didn’t make sense but how could I judge my bodily secretions when I am confused 99% percent of the time in my new life.
Instead of occupying a space of an adult figure in my household, I have moved away from that role entirely.
Instead of feeling the need to parent a sibling, I gained three.
Instead of trying to accommodate strangers and friends alike, I am in a situation in which people are doing that to me.
Instead of always putting myself on the back-burner of my life, I have been moved to the front flame.
There will only be more experiences that will be completely different to what I have grown accustomed to in my past 18 years of life and no way to see what will come of that. I can only hope that – much like the sweating- time will work its magic and my mind and body will follow suit.
Present Day
I wrote this during my first month in India and looking back there was a lot of…moisture within that first month. I am about to embark on my second half of my journey and I can confidently say that I no longer identify with that statement. Now I only secrete the respective amount of sweat that could be expected in 90-degree weather with 40 percent humidity. Being able to say this means that I have done it. I am more than halfway done with this journey; the journey that shocked friends and family alike when I told them of my plans. Watching their faces changing between worry, happiness, and being proud was a sight to see. I never did understand why my loved ones were so shocked! I was only moving to the other side of the world for a year! However, as soon as I stepped off of the plane, my foreign body was at the mercy of the new climate. Then it truly dawned on me…my life was in India for the next 8 months.
Over time my body has grown accustomed to the sticky sheen that would layer over my skin and drip; my body’s attempts to cool itself were in vain as I stuck to my daily 2 liters of water and attempts to stay in the shade. I could not understand why this unusual conditioned seemed to be prolonged. However, these past three months have taught me that, like everything, time and reflection is needed to truly go deeper in an experience.
I made some proclamations that first month that rung true, but I have come to see that the truth they held at the time is now more complex. Having to acclimate to many different new realities- new family, new job, new language, new everything- has made me really want to envision the adult person I want to be.
I want to be adventurous and exist in the world with a hunger to know more.
I want to love others while remembering that there must be the same amount and kind of love for myself.
I want to take charge of my life and allow myself space, while I give space to others.
I want to be able to think about the future while continuing to live in the present.
Slowly but surely everything follows suit with time. You just can’t sweat it.
“Mr. Mike, look at my sentence!” shouted a squeaky voice from across the buzzing classroom. I weaved through a maze of desks to the other side of the room. Sarah, an adorable pint-sized 1st grader, waited eagerly. She was kicked her legs back and forth excitedly. I looked at her whiteboard, where she had strung together many letters, but what was on her board was not a sentence.
“Let’s keep working on this okay?,” I said, kneeling next to her. I carefully cleared the board. I smiled at her encouragingly as she threw her head back in frustration.
“I-I-I can’t spell!” her DC accent rang through the room.
“How about we start with something simple, like the cat is red?” Before I had even finished speaking, Sarah dove back into her writing. I attempted to move her along quickly; in a few moments a timer would ring and the class would soon be filled with a flurry of students swarming downstairs for lunch. Frustration gleamed in her eyes. Sarah twisted her braids and palmed the beads in her hair (a telltale sign of confusion.) She sputtered a stream of letters at me like a machine gun firing bullets. I took a deep breath trying to contain my own frustration. This wasn’t the first time we had tried to write this very sentence. When I worked with Sarah we took very small steps, rather than huge leaps.
I stretched out my arm, making a careful O shape with my thumb and index finger. She instantly mimicked the action, stretching her arm out like she was trying to pop it out of its socket. I carefully broke down each and every syllable in the word. My mouth made hard and clear sounds for each letter. With each sound I tapped my fingers, demonstrating the pacing and pronunciation of the word.
I then stepped back and watched Sarah write a sentence. It took several tries, and in end it wasn’t perfect. The C in cat was backwards and she spelled Red as “Rid”. But after watching her work tirelessly like an artist perfecting her craft, it was fantastic in my eyes. She was still taking baby steps, but she had climbed a mountain doing so.
Later as I walked around the room, telling kids to erase their whiteboards, Sarah, whose eyes were lit up like Christmas lights, shook her head and simply said, “I don’t want to erase it”. Not being able to argue with her sweet eyes, I let her keep it. Throughout the rest of the day, all she would talk to me about was her sentence.
Last week, during a brief encounter with Salmonella, I came downstairs to divulge myself in the arroz con pollo that I’ve grown so accustomed to while being ill. Upon reaching the bottom floor, I saw a white glow coming from the corner of our living room. I looked down and saw that my host sister, Mary, had fully assembled our artificial Christmas tree and draped it with flashing lights that should have come with a seizure warning. Mary was proud of what she had done. For the past two weeks, she had been waking up at the crack of dawn and going to bed at 2:00 AM to finish her thesis for her Master’s Degree. Assembling the tree was merely a distraction for her to step away from what I’ve been referring to as La Tesis de Horor.
A few nights after that, Mary came pounding on my door demanding that it was time to string lights on our banister. I followed Mary downstairs; she immediately sat in a mountain of Christmas lights and tacky garland. My 35yearold host sister was legitimately the biggest fiend for Christmas.
She assigned me to taping a semihazardous looking extension chord to the wall so that we could plugin the lights running up the banister. I reached into my pocket; how could I possibly be decorating for Christmas without playing a tacky Spotify Christmas playlist. I hit play and by some miracle, All I want for Christmas is you came onto shuffle. Instinctually, it was my duty to perform the musical genius that was this masterpiece. The room went silent, the lights felt like they dimmed, and the spotlight was on me. At the end of exactly four minutes and one second, in a tremendous act of selfexpression, I had completely killed the performance— I also had certainly reinforced a number of negative stereotypes surrounding Americans.
But I felt like I was back home. Despite my Jewish heritage, I bought the equivalent of a Christmas shrub last year with my friends. I had been living primarily alone and had thought that the tree would be the perfect companion to my sometimes lonely apartment. After a vigorous game of Monopoly, we decorated the tree and later named him Abe, an extremely Jewish name— a pretty hilarious slap in the face to my own Jewish heritage.
At home, I spend Christmas with my dad in his house in Maine. His house lacks many things that I’ve become accustomed to: hot water, electricity, internet access. My first Christmas staying there, I asked my dad about having a Christmas tree. He left the house, and within an hour, he came back with the most hideous tree I had ever seen. It was smaller than I was, only had only a few stray branches sticking out, and was made up of dying needles falling off of it: a true Charlie Brown Christmas tree.
Anyway, I had almost exhausted my entire Christmas playlist but looked up to see the banister glowing with Mary’s lights. She had beautifully wrapped them around the different plants and decorations that we keep in the corner of the room. The house felt different— a Christmas tree, Christmas music, tacky decorations— I felt like I was home… and I was.
I was exhausted. I looked down to see my phone glowing— 1:30 AM. Drained, Mary and I went to sit on the couch to marvel over the work that we had done. After making a few jokes about my host brother, Paúl, coming back late to find us sitting there, just staring at a wall, we both went silent.
Silence doesn’t require language, it’s about sharing a space and a feeling with someone else. We started at the lights, flashing and glowing and illuminating our living room. I thought back to how I’d spent Christmas in the past and that this would be the first time in 18 years that I was spending the holiday without both of my brothers. I thought though of Mary and how much she means to me; despite only spending three short months with her, I couldn’t imagine being back in New York without her. I thought about having slap boxing matches with her in the middle of the mall. Or keeping her updated on the latest program gossip. Of how she laughs when I talk about the terrors of teaching fouryearolds. How she’s patient with me despite my troubles speaking her language. I thought of the crazy idea that this woman takes time out of her life to go off and hang out with me— the foreigner— when she could be doing literally anything else. I thought about how grateful I am that she was in my life.
I stated at the tree and thought about how much I love Christmas, and how being in Ecuador doesn’t change that at all; after all, Mariah Carey is not just specific to the United States. As Mary put it, I might not be with my two brothers at home, but I’m gonna be with my four new siblings that I have here.
Of the 400 students at Moten Elementary school, 99% of the students are black. I saved 1% for a few outliers: Anna1, a fifth grader of Chinese descent, and a caucasian student in preschool. In the United States today, school segregation is still a reality, rooted in unfair government policies and creating disadvantages for students that come from poorer backgrounds. So what is City Year, and what can City Year do to alleviate the dire reality of school segregation?
In 1954, a groundbreaking Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, ruled that school segregation is unconstitutional, which offered hope for school integration. However, about 60 years later, the outlook of integrated schools doesn’t look so hopeful. Black students living in the South today are less likely to attend school with a majority-white student body than 50 years ago2. It’s a result of government policies that are attempting to keep neighborhoods white-only. Beyond this being a race issue, economics are at play as well. Black communities are being pushed into poverty-stricken neighborhoods, with black children more likely to grow up in poor neighborhoods than they were 50 years ago3. This uneven playing field that children are placed on affects everything – from their quality of education to their life span. And if it isn’t already obvious, the playing field is not in favor of black and Latin children.
So what is City Year? And what can a non-profit organization do for an issue that has its roots informed by decade-old racial prejudices and embedded in government policies? City Year is a force of young individuals, dedicated to providing children with the opportunities that their living circumstances cannot offer to them. As near-peer mentors, we lift our students up in an attempt to give them a more even playing field. Together, we serve communities by coming to them, joining their schools and becoming a part of their classrooms. We seek to address the needs of students that schools are not designed to meet, such as behavior and socio-emotional skills. We analyze student scores to determine what we need to re-teach students to get them on grade-level. We work with the school to create after-school enrichment programs, so that we offer the most that we can to our students. As City Years, we are the first in school and the last to leave, dedicating 10+ hours a day to children that society sometimes forgets.
But despite the hope that City Year’s mission provides and the energy that City Year fellows bring to the table, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed as a City Year. It sometimes seems like nothing ever changes. With a nonexistent disciplinary system, Andy and Alan4 still come to school even after getting caught smoking weed in the bathroom. Teachers struggle to do their jobs with very little support. Students with good behavior are overshadowed by the few who are disruptive in class and prevent teachers from teaching.
However, just as the good students are harder to notice, so are our efforts. It’s easy to overlook the good that is being done since some problems still persist. Doing City Year requires an enormous amount of hope and love. I firmly believe that slowly but surely, my 12 focus list students are going to catch up to grade level as long as I patiently encourage and teach them past the meltdowns they will have when faced with a challenge or their inability to focus due to their high energy. I believe in my students who I work on behavior skills with. After weeks of setting goals to improve social, emotional, and academic skills, they will go from shy, unconfident children to students with a renewed awareness of their strengths and positive thoughts for the world. Ultimately, we “do it for the kids” and their futures, and the smiles and energy that they emanate in exchange makes everything – long hours, little pay, numerous deadlines, and unseen results – all the more worth it.
1 Name changed for privacy
2 https://www.vox.com/2018/3/5/17080218/school-segregation-getting-worse-data
In a flash, over two months of my bridge-year odyssey has passed. This period will forever be rememberedas a significant milestone, a time when I succeeded in the enormous task of settling myself into this new life abroad. Being an American living in Brazil, an individual invested in two distinct societies, this month has been especially tumultuous regarding two events that have dominated the news networks as well as community conversation. With political polarization, media sensationalism, and cynicism aside, these two particular events have affected me extremely deeply, compelling me to write this article to emphasize a specific component that these two events share, a component that endangers our respective democracies. I further reiterate the crucial role we all have as citizens to protect and defend the integrity of the institutions that govern our livelihood.
THE FACTS:
BRETT KAVANAUGH AND CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD
For the past month, American politics and people were intensely split over the Senate confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, to replace Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. Initially, President Trump’s selection to the highest court in the land seemed guaranteed: Kavanaugh had an impeccable education at Yale Law School, a prestigious career at the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, and was rated “well qualified” by the American Bar Association, their highest rating for Supreme Court aptitude. Yet, what seemed like a certain confirmation took a sharp turn when three women came forward and accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault during their high school and college years. The first woman, Christine Blasey Ford, was called to testify before the U.S. Senate.
The nation watched as Ford gave her calm yet powerful recount of what Kavanaugh did to her on that night in 1982. The nation watched as Kavanaugh gave his fiery and passionate defense,primarily accusing the Democratic Party of conspiring to ruin his reputation. Ultimately, the nation watched the Senate confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in the second narrowest margin in U.S. history (50-48, split predominantly along party lines). His accession to the highest court in the land has created one of, if not the, most conservative Supreme Court in American history, defining precedent for years to come.
JAIR BOLSONARO AND FERNANDO HADDAD
Meanwhile, political tensions in Brazil have been amounting in the past four years, exacerbated by (but not limited to): the largest economic recession (with thirteen million people out of work), the largest corruption scandal (Operation Car Wash, with over R$3.6 billion [~$1 billion USD] in misappropriated funds), and the most violent year (with 2017 a record year, with over 63,000 homicides nationwide), in their entire history. The nation is desperate for an alternative to the notoriously corrupt left-leaning political establishment, one that has ruled the nation for decades. And many citizens believe they have found their answer for the 2018 general election: Jair Bolsonaro, a former paratrooper and congressman who has promised to lead Brazil under his nationalistic Christian right-wing ideology.
Bolsonaro has promised to purify the corruption in Brasilia through a crackdown of left-wing economic policies as well as to combat the escalating crime through strict police reform. Yet, he is notorious and controversial throughout the country for his views on same-sex unions/marriages, the equality of women, and civil rights. He has mentioned he would rather his son “die in a car accident than be gay”, stated that his daughter was produced “out of a moment of weakness”, as well as stoked hatred of refugees by calling them “the scum of the earth.” Most of all, Bolsonaro is a proponent of returning Brazil to a military dictatorship, which ruled the nation two decades prior and was infamous for its egregious use of torture. Despite an entire nationwide movement uniting against his presidential campaign, #EleNao (hashtag “not him”), Bolsonaro has led the polls for most of the race.
Bolsonaro carried 46% of the vote during the election on October 7. Although it was significantly higher than his competitors, it was not enough to break majority and win the presidency outright, prompting a second-round runoff election. On the October 28th election, Bolsonaro defeated his opponent Fernando Haddad, the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) candidate. He carried 55% of the vote nationwide. In my home state, Santa Catarina, alone, Bolsonaro carried just over 75% of the vote. His inauguration will take place January of next year.
THE ANALYSIS:
My aim in writing this article is not to impress my political leanings to those who read it. Whatever “side” you think I am should not be important to you and should not affect how you see the issue I am addressing in this piece, one which requires a multiparty solution.
A diversity of views is the crucial basis of a functioning democracy. Politics, at its root, is the discourse of varying beliefs relating to how the government should be run to best benefit its constituents. Simply put, it is where numerous ideologies/beliefs/opinions clash in deciding what would be best in making people’s lives better. Political discourse is an essential part of maintaining the integrity of the democratic system that both America and Brazil share. This is not what I am contending with.
Yet, the reality is that politics is never so pure-intentioned, clear-cut, and idealistic. Politics is complicated, dirty, and corrupt everywhere; it only varies to relative degrees between differing nations and bureaucratic levels. In spite of this, as civilians in a democracy, we have the power of the vote. It is this power of the vote that places a check on politicians and government that can so easily become misconstrued. It is this vote that we must use wisely, as it is all that most of us will ever have.
The issue I am trying to address in this piece is to reaffirm our commitment in working together in deciding the direction that is best for the nation to go. We all have a superordinate goal to form a “more perfect Union” through civil dialogue and critical thinking, to make our countries better for ourselves and the generations that follow. In that obligation, we all, whether you are left, right, or center, have a crucial role in protecting our democracies from those who use hatred and fear as a platform for power
A platform of hatred and fear promotes tribalism, where we ignore those that challenge our beliefs, only associating with those that affirm our beliefs in antagonizing those on the other side. Tribalism makes an easy situation for demagogues to rise to power, as it permits scapegoating of the opposition as a guise for the leader’s true motives. A diversity of beliefs in a democracy only works when the opposing parties listen and construct, rather than turn away and accuse.
This is the fact that many of us have neglected when we allowed Kavanaugh and Bolsonaro, and many others, to rise to power. Americans have neglected to realize this when our politicians permitted Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court, the highest seat in the land in a position that is rooted in impartial constitutional analysis, despite his accusatory scapegoat rhetoric towards the opposition party. Even more, Brazilians have neglected this when they placed their hopes in Bolsonaro for the presidency, a man who loathes and seeks to undermine anything that is not himself: asylum seekers, minorities, the poor, the LGBT community, non-Christians, women.
In our obligations as active and engaged citizens, we must, at the very least, be skeptical of those who use hatred and fear as a promotional platform. Regardless of the side one is on, when discussing the policies that govern our lives, it is crucial that we assess them in an pragmatic sustainable manner, rather than getting swept up in fleeting emotion. We must first ask ourselves this simple question: why are they making us fear and despise?
In the best interests of our country and its future, we must be extremely careful of what kind of alternatives we select for power, especially those that proliferate on a basis of tribalism. We have to remind ourselves, even in the most desperate times, to truly think rationally about the choices we make, as the most popular alternative may not be the right alternative. Most of all, we must reconcile and settle our grievances, paving a new of path of collaboration towards a goal higher than our differences. We must reject the means that numerous politicians have used to divide us and create chaos. They do it to advance their ends, not ours.
A house divided cannot stand. Especially during times like these. Especially in the system we have.
Sources:
Stolberg, Sheryl Gay. “Kavanaugh Is Sworn In After Close Confirmation Vote in Senate.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/us/politics/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur.
Watts, Jonathan. “Operation Car Wash: The Biggest Corruption Scandal Ever?” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 1 June 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/01/brazil-operation-car-wash-is-this-the-biggest-corruption-scandal-in-history.
