Tortuga - A step back in time

09/07/09 - 25/07/09

On the 9th July we set off for Tortuga, where we had agreed to teach English voluntarily for a month, not knowing what to expect, but full of curiosity and excited at the prospect of living with a local family and experiencing real life for a change, instead of just being tourists. The father of the family, Hilario, works at a hotel about 5km from Tortuga so we met him there and Vic and I both squeezed into the only passenger seat and held on for dear life as we made our way along the bumpy road. It didn't even occur to us at the time that one of us could have ridden in the back of the truck, although we have done it a few times since.

Hilario is married to Angelica and they have six children: Anika (14), Luzita (13), Idalia (12), Adan (7), Samuel (5) and Ismael (2). Ismael is actually a nephew of Hilario's who they adopted at birth and is not yet able to speak, but he understands almost everything you say to him. He certainly knows when he is going to be punished and often manages to run away just in time :) (Here they still punish children and animals with a belt or whip, which is heartbreaking to watch, although thankfully they do not hit the children very hard). Ismael can be a bit of a pain and he has the tendency to hit or bite people, but he's also completely adorable. The younger ones seem unable to sit still for even one minute and one of their favourite toys for a while was an old computer keyboard that they would throw on the floor and stamp on. I don't think they have ever seen what a computer is actually used for, but for us it was quite funny to watch them doing such things to it. Their latest interest is a bicycle wheel which they run up and down the garden with. I have seen a complete bike as well, but they seem to prefer just the wheel :) They also enjoy playing marbles or games using a pen and paper, and just recently Vic taught us all a new game called bolidos, which involves moving around a race track by flicking a biro from point to point (it's a great game but quite difficult to explain without diagrams so sorry if you don't understand what I'm on about). It is a world away from the mass of computer games and toys that the majority of the children in Europe are used to, but they are very happy children and a pleasure to be around. They had never even heard of Disney until we bought home Ratatouille on DVD after spending last weekend in San Juan and deciding to treat them to a small present. They have watched it once a day ever since :)

The older girls, especially Anika, are often left in charge of the house and the younger children while the parents are working, which involves cleaning, washing and doing all the cooking. Again, it's so different to the lives we are used to back home, but they do not know any different and they actually enjoy doing all these chores. They are some of the few things you can do to keep busy, as they do not appear to go out much or have many hobbies. And they have very few hours schooling a week. The older ones only go three times a week for about 3 hours a day, and the younger ones go every day, but for fewer hours. There are only four teachers and they receive all the material from teachers in San Juan, which they seem to simply dictate to the students. Last week, the primary teacher didn't turn up once as he had got drunk. Apparently it has happened before, and when it does happen, he doesn't return to school until a week later, meaning that the students that he teaches don't come to school either, as there are no replacement teachers. There is no timetable for the lessons either. When we arrived, we asked when the English lessons were, but they told us we could do them whenever we wanted, so we drew up our own timetable, but even that gets changed sometimes. We end up giving about 2-3 hours of lessons a day, which also includes Vic's history lessons, which I enjoy sitting in on. He is very good at it and I think he would make a great teacher, but he doesn't seem that keen, at least I don't think he'd like to be a primary or secondary teacher. Children of that age are just not that interested in history, but he does a good job in making it more fun and interesting and gets a few laughs out of the students :)

The family also own several animals, that are constantly underfoot and making lots of noise. They are especially noisy at about 6 o'clock in the morning :) There are three pigs, one of which is cute and pink and another of which is big and black, and who I'm afraid to say, is soon to be killed. Angelica keeps telling us that we will have to help her, Vic with an axe and me with a knife, but we politely refuse each time she mentions it. They also have several hens and some little chicks, who are surprisingly quick when you try to pick them up, a cat called Simia, and a very sweet-tempered dog called Cubana, who only gets leftovers to eat and who is constantly chased out of the house, even when she is not causing any trouble. We feel sorry for her and often give her food. Sometimes Cubana is a godsend, as she provides an easy way to get rid of unwanted food. The principal diet here consists of rice and beans, which we are given at almost every mealtime. If I'm particularly hungry, I can usually manage to eat it, but it does get a bit boring after a while and sometimes I can't face eating it, especially for breakfast, so we often just eat some bread. We really enjoy our weekends away where we can eat whatever we want :)

The house itself is very simple with most of the rooms having dirt floors - the bedrooms and bathroom have tiles, however. There is no sink in the bathroom, just a shower with cold water and a toilet, so we either have to clean our teeth in the shower or out in the sink where we do the washing, and where they also do the washing up and prepare the food (Vic is slightly worried about the standards of hygiene, but there is nothing we can really do about that). And to get to the bathroom, we have to walk through the two bedrooms, where the entirely family sleeps, sharing four beds between them. They have a gas oven in the kitchen, where they do a lot of the cooking, but they also have a big oven for the bread outside which is heated using wood, and another area where they also cook over a wood fire. They seem to only use this to make tortillas out of corn flour, which are also a regular accompaniment to the rice and beans.

With so few hours of teaching a week, we do get bored at times. Tortuga is home to about 100 families, making a total of approximately 600 inhabitants. It consists of one long dirt road, which a small river crosses at several points along the way. In most places you can find a way across, but sometimes you have to get wet. In what I suppose you would call the centre of town, there is the school, the church and a small shop, where you can buy drinks, bread, some cans of food and some toiletry products. When I say shop, I really just mean a window, because the shop is actually the room of a house. Other people also have similar businesses, but this is considered the main one. There is also a bar in town with some pool tables, but only the men go there. And in the church, the men and women sit separately, with all the men on the right-hand side and all the women on the left. Vic and I failed to notice this when we first went there, so we sat togther in the middle column :) The principal religion here is Evangelist and Angelica is very firm in her beliefs and goes to church often, reads the bible most evenings and whenever she sings, she sings about God. Also, the only other DVDs they own seem to be of religious ceremonies or concerts, and the same goes for all of the CDs we have heard them play.

New experiences we have had so far include milking a cow, riding one of the neighbour's horses and making bread for the school. The family also have land near to where the live where they grow corn and beans, and one day a few hours were spent cutting the weeds away with big machetes. Hard work but a lot of fun. We also spend a bit of time washing our clothes as they do not have a washing machine, so everything has to washed in a big sink outside. It really does feel like we are living several years in the past. The other week, we also went to the inauguration ceremony of the drinking water system that has recently been implemented. Up until now, the families have relied on water from wells in their gardens, which is not purified and can lead to illness. But I think even now, the tubes do not take the drinking water all the way up to the houses, so I'm not sure how it is supposed to work. Maybe time will tell. In the next couple of weeks we hope to visit a nearby corn mill and go fishing for shrimp in the river, so more to come in our next installment.