Tuesday, Tutoring and Octupi

11:25, January 26, 2010

I had another deep, even night’s sleep. Tanisha sleeps sound as a corpse, so I can barely tell she’s there. We had breakfast again, but this time without Francis and Vern. I saw Francis this morning at Holy Cross, but tomorrow they leave for a month to attend medical needs.

At Holy Cross, I tutored a sweet little boy Joshua in the morning in writing. Poor little boy had a runny nose and congested cough, so I gave him a Cottonelle wipe. He was tracing letters like th [they are dotted lines, and have dots where the pencil is supposed to begin the lines] and small words, but it was hard for him. I learned he liked baseball and asked him to think of the dots as bases to run down the dotted line, and that put him on track. As a reward, I drew him as a baseball player, with his black cowlick sticking up in front. I was rewarded with a smile.

The rest of the morning, on and off throughout the day, I worked color-coding books in the library, which was bigger than I’d imagined. However, every minute I spent there I felt like I was missing valuable time with the children [but at least the library had A/C!].

So I went out in search of tutoring and found Liz with three boys [Gabriel, Luis, and Izziahs]. One was very smart at math, so Liz took Gabriel and had me practice the multiplication table with Luis and the younger 12-year-old Izziahs. They were so funny that even I was laughing and Liz had to give me a look. A little girl would walk by and one boy would call out that the other liked her and laugh. When an older woman walked by, they almost called out to her too, and that was funnier. The funniest was when a little wizened old brown man walked by and Luis called him over. The joke was supposed to be, “Izziahs likes you!” but they—we—were laughing too hard to speak! [The old man looked so confused!] Luis won the multiplication contest.

I didn’t get to tutor more after that. We had fish, salad, and rice and banana bread with Kool-Aid for lunch and I taped the spines of a few more books when Liz asked if I would like to paint. They had a whole stack of skinny wooden posts [skinned tree trunks] about 10 feet high that we had to whitewash. Another developer was encroaching on Holy Cross land that is still underwater, and these posts will be stuck around the underwater border to protect our rights to the property.

The best part of the school-day was seeing Meredith again when school let out. I gave her a postcard I bought in San Pedro of an aerial of her hometown, Orange Walk. She thanked me with a hug and shared her red-hot “Takis” with me, a Spanish-packaged hot chip (yuck). She is such a love. She introduced me to her friend, Jaime, a lighter-skinned Mexican-looking girl with soft curls and a Gameboy. Her older sister is Estrella, the young pregnant librarian, who later came to sit with us.

It didn’t take long for Estrella to tell her story. She is 20 [or maybe the ex-boyfriend is 20; Tanisha says Estrella is 17], but her not-much older boyfriend (father of the baby) left her for a 48-year-old woman with whom he had another child in an on-and-off relationship [prior to his relationship with Estrella]. Estrella had been calling him without a reply for days when relatives spotted him in a car with this other woman, holding their baby. [She said he’d told her he was on the mainland on business, but come to find out he was on Ambergris Caye the whole time.] Estrella was so upset when she found this out. They broke up, and she now lives with her mom and siblings, Jaime among them. She is due to give birth to a boy in April. She is a responsible mom, paying $50 Belize each month for prenatal visits. This expense is a burden, and I’m sure it will be much harder when the baby comes. This is her first child, and she’s nervous.

We said bye and Meredith gave me a big kiss on the cheek. I love her. We came back to The Tides to swim and have the devotional before dinner; we tried a little synchronized swimming, too! Diann actually has done water ballet!

Our connection with the Holy Cross students didn’t end at school. For the second night, Alexis (a boy) came to see us at the inn. We went into the surf to find 2 conch shells I’d hidden that morning [behind a grassy bank underwater near the pier]. We found 1, and several for Terry [Alex was her special little friend]. We handed one to Mike Nickelsburg [on the patio] and a TINY OCTOPUS came WRIGGLING out! [Mike had just calmly said, “Oh look, an octopus” and we all leaned forward and it came running out of the shell!] We (the women) shrieked and it fell on the deck. Alex picked it up and we got it into a cup. It got cloudy with ink. We let it go back into the ocean.

While Alex was with us (he brought back our conch shells polished and I gave him a few bucks), he was joined by Lionel, another Holy Cross boy. They offered us jewelry to buy (like always) but was still around to walk Walt and I and Tanisha late to dinner at Caliente’s way up the beach. The whole lot of us (minus Mike Emry, plus Michael, a Holy Cross graduate being sponsored by Roger’s Cursillo group to attend HS) went and invited Lionel up. He has wonderful stories. He told us about the chicken drop we are going to see at Caliente’s tomorrow.

The walk home took us by some jewelry tables, and I bought a goldfish necklace from Harrison from Holy Cross and a necklace from a baby named Francis! [He was a little infant in his father’s lap, holding out necklace and after necklace for me and saying “Buy, buy!”] That necklace is for mom. I have to save money to buy from Alex and Lionel later.

I spent some time by the water talking with Walt and Mike [E.] and was asked to consider joining choir at our church, Emmanuel. I will think about it. For now, I am only concentrating on tomorrow.