However, corrugated steel walls are completely light-proof, and there are no windows in the room. The only light that peeps into my room in the early morning is the bright golden circles of light irregularly pocking the wall furthest from the street. These perfectly circular bubbles of light are created by the morning sunlight piercing through the nailholes in the patchwork of steel sheets making up my wall. I lay awake in the mornings sometimes, fascinated by the bright spots of light on my wall. Part of my fascination is the thin sliver of light the sunbeam forms through the glittering fibers of dust in the air. Each pinprick of light where a removed nail has left a hole leaks an unnaturally straight beam of sunlight across my room to form small yellow bubbles of light on the far wall, about two inches in diameter.

Today, however, it dawned on me exactly what each of those little spots of light really is. It is the sun. Not just sunlight, forming a nondescript blob of light on my wall. It is an exact image of the sun itself… and, if you look a little bit closer, you discover that the entire scene outside my room is also projected on my wall, not just the sun. You can see clouds, blades of grass, walls, cars, and sometimes even people! Each spot of light, then, is a sun in the center of a perfect, inverted image of the scene outside my room.

I’ll explain. I pieced this together one bit at a time, and when it finally dawned on me what I was seeing, I spent the whole morning giddy with fascination, realizing that I had just discovered that I am seeing before my eyes a “camera obscura,” a dark room with a pinhole that projects an inverted image of the outside world on the opposite wall. After a month of looking curiously at the light spots on my wall each morning, I finally pieced everything together. Part of the fun was discovering that a childhood science experiment and a lifelong hobby (photography) has been plastered on my wall each morning, but I didn’t put all the pieces together until now.

It helps if you understand how a camera works, or better yet, a “camera obscura.” My entire room is a camera obscura, a “dark chamber” upon which the dawning sun is photographed every morning. This is a bit difficult to explain, I realize as I write this, but absolutely fascinating to see unfold before my eyes. A camera works because the shutter opens a small hole of light that chemically burns an inverted replica of the outside world onto the film that walls the back of the camera. Without that “film freeze,” the inverted image is dynamic and moving, like the way our eyeball works.

I finally drew all the links together when I suddenly noticed that the small circles of light were changing ghostily, with random patterns creating cloudy patterns over the circles. I looked more closely, and suddenly saw that I was seeing an inverted version of the clouds in the sky pass in front of the sun. In some of the projections, the sun was sliced in half by thin black lines, or the top of it had what looked like a spiky “hairdo.” I realized that what I was seeing was the orb of the sun, blocked by powerlines, trees, or clouds. That “hairdo” was the waving grass blocking the bottom of the sun… in the inverted image it looked like waving hair on top.

Each of these pinpricks, then, is projecting the entire scene outside my window onto the walls of my darkened room. Some splay the outside scene across my floor. Because there are ten nailholes letting light through, there are ten projections hitting the wall, all blending together and making it hard to distinguish any specific shapes or images.

To single one image out, I picked up a piece of paper and held it about 6 inches from a single nailhole. That’s when the outside scene really came into focus. I could see a perfect, but somewhat blurry, replication of the world outside my room. It was in color – the sky was blue, and the plants looked green! It was detailed… I could see my upside down car parked outside, and the top of Coyol’s taco shack. From time to time I could even catch a person walking by upside down.

I hear what sounds like sand being thrown across the sheets of steel. I touch one of the nailholes and realize it is wet. Coyol has woken up and he is tossing water on the outside of my room… I don’t know why, but he’s watering down the side of the house.

The images in this post are photographs of a dynamic projection of light. They are taken of the piece of paper I held up to the nailholes of light. The sun and sky are pretty easy to pick out. If you look closely you can see some details – like the tires and frame of my trooper. You can make out some tall grass and shacks on the hill, too.

Entering La Carpio felt that way… like I was, yet again, plunging into a new world. On my first visit to La Carpio you could see the differences, you could smell and hear the differences… but most of all, you could feel a sharp transition between the twisted dirt roads of the shantytown and the straight, mathematically angled neighborhood roads of the middle-class residential area we’d left. Poverty often has a “you know it when you see it” sort of definition, which is actually quite useful given our mind’s ability to identify differences and contrasts. The material differences are quite marked, and are the first things you notice when entering a shantytown. In Costa Rica, unlike the United States, the racial distinctions are not so clearly marked, so to some degree “race” or “ethnicity” is held constant across differing levels of material affluence. This is not the case with nationality nor birthplace, however, as slums will be disproportionately filled with workers from outside the city and from neighboring countries of poverty. I would later discover this nationalistic split and be reminded again of my tight connection with both Haiti and Nicaragua. Nicaragua had always interested me because I had seen it listed as the “second poorest country in the Western hemisphere after Haiti.” After living 10 years in Haiti and seeing the “poorest (and third most corrupt)” country in the Western hemisphere, I had always been curious to see what the “next step up” looked like. It is a stark contrast, but what demarcates it so clearly as “poor” is the jolting difference between the surrounding affluence, especially in Costa Rica.

At first glance and from a rudimentary knowledge of Nicaragua and Costa Rica’s history, the reasons for the contrast are pretty easy to see. The country of Nicaragua has been wracked by civil unrest, foreign interests pursued violently, degradation of the land, instability of the government, and natural disaster. Their “emergence” from violent civil clashes occurred in the 80′s, as opposed to Costa Rica in the late 40′s. This explains a lot of the material inequity between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

What gradually becomes apparent, though, are structural reasons La Carpio appears the way it does, as well as symptoms of political economic injustice. Its plight is a combination of meager material capital from the outset and structural oppression from the surrounding society. This has been documented in various ways through interviews, critical reviews of news sources, environmental justice concerns, and most strongly from issues of unequal education and a growing dual labor market pattern.

My short times here exhaust me inexplicably quickly. Today was better. I actually prayed – God give me energy, help me to not be so tired, and to be able to eat everything. There was no rice, and my body is sick of rice, so I was OK. It was so good, actually. And it actually does not surprise me how tired I get, so quickly. It’s like my first few months of culture shock/adjustment in Costa Rica. So many differences. So much to learn, so quickly. I am in the same country, of the same city, but it is like I’ve moved a world away. It really is, like a world apart. That’s why time here exhausts me so quickly. Plus, the living conditions are pretty harsh, let’s face it.

I got here at about 2:30 PM. We went shopping in the central market again, which I think exhausts me far more than any time with the family. Shopping is stressful enough; the market is a million times moreso. It’s pretty assaulting – on all the senses – the smells first of all, are nauseating. From the first street we cross, with the unmistakable stench of open sewage in a seething puddle on the corner, to the smell of rotting vegetables, garbage, raw meat, and the intense concentration of people. So many people. So much noise. So many reeking smells. Like I said, it is an assault on all the senses. I thought of my experience shopping with RI in SF2Rios. I could never picture her buying things in this fray. She wouldn’t be able to stand it for long. Neither would I. Give me nice, orderly rows in a clean, spacious supermarket, with shopping carts and no more than 2 people per aisle. Give me fixed prices on the products, meat packaged and unrecognizable, and an attractive cashier to wave a magic wand over my groceries, swipe my credit card, and pronounce my goods SOLD! Shopping is stressful, and time-consuming. Shopping at the market – doubly so, plus half the quality for the same price or more? Heck no.

We head back to the house at about sunset, at 5:30 – no, we go to 2×1 pizza and buy 3 pizzas. I gave 5.000 colones to help with food. However, I note that we are probably spending more than we possibly could at our house in SF2Rios. Probably has something to do with how many kids we’re feeding. In my host family’s house, we are living well, but let’s face it, RI has to budget down to the teja (quarter) how much we spend monthly. I hate to say it, but I will – I assume there are three people working, full-time in these households, and making regular cash. The husbands are working. Full time at least. That gives you enough cash to make ends meet, and buy a few pizzas.

Everyone is estrenando to the T. Cutest little outfits ever, and nice new shoes. Everyone is sporting their best in the streets.

I visit OJ and we look at his computer. The %$”! CD’s I burn never work. I don’t know if he’s scratching them or what. Anyway.

We play games, mostly in the street again. I see them making los muñecos that we will later be setting on fire. No one cares that I am taking photos. ES warms me to put my cell phone away, though, a “chapulin” (gangster, literally “grasshopper”) might walk by and take it. They also warn me that one of the guys RF walks by with is a thief and rapes women. Lord, please protect RF.

Another awkward conversation happens between AL and AK, about AJ, her brother. They discuss briefly, in explicit detail and with no visible emotion, his gory demise about a month ago. It’s awkward to me. It seems normal to them. AV is a listmaker, an astute student and a good memorizer. She makes a list out loud of all the people they’ve lost this year.

At midnight they set the stuffed muñeco on fire and he burns quickly to the ground. Soon the fireworks they’ve embedded in him start going off. People hug each other and kiss, wishing each other a feliz año nuevo. There are a ton of fireworks going off everywhere. Christmas was nothing. This was far more incredible.

I am surprised with how adamantly I support the burning of the doll representing the past year. Let it be gone! Burn the last year to the ground! May the next one be better!

It has been a hard year, this past one. I’ve had a few conversations about God about it, basically asking… what the %$&! was that all about? This year started in Nicaragua, with the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti. Weeks/months of exhaustion and worry, and a renewed sense of uselessness. OJ died in May or around then. Then came Nampa, with Gramma’s death, and the Haiti trip. Then AJ. Most recently, AJ. So much pain, so much strain, on the people so close to me. What the $/&$, God? All I can say is, burn that $%&% muñeco and please Lord may this next year bode better. No more people dying. It is sad, painful, exhausting, and quite disruptive. We’ve had a rough year, God. Many hard, heavy experiences. I’ve not let up. Neither have you. It’s been hard. Gramma’s death, I realized, is both the closest and most natural death I’ve known. It was, in comparison to so many young people’s untimely death, wizened, noble, dignified, and expected. I thought back and realized… my time overseas has exposed me to a good deal of premature deaths. Like AL, I mentally make a list of the people close to me who’ve died… not one of them of old age. It is hard. It is tragic. It is exhausting. Gramma is the first person I’ve known to die of old age, not of violence, freak accident, or sickness. I didn’t even know, until now at 26, that death could be noble and dignifying, solemn and mature. From EK, to W dad, to P’s dad, to F’s dad, to N, to the Haiti EQ victims, to J, to Gramma, to J, then J… it’s a laundry list of tragedy. God? What are you wanting me to learn from this? Because I don’t like seeing people in pain, missing kids they love.

I heard people mumbling at about 5:30 A.M., outside or in an adjacent house. The house is quiet here. I can hear the kids through the thin centimeter-thick sheet of wood separating us. I think ME has the nasty-sounding hack-cough (correction, it’s UL). LO is sleep-moaning or something.

The periodic breath of wind outside can be heard strongly in the street, but doesn’t seem to move the house much. As far as I can tell, the strongest structural element of the house is a few 4×4 beams embedded in the cement, running vertically. Most of the other partitions are made from 1-cm thick wood. I see now that some walls are made of thin wood. Some of tin.

I stumble out to find the bathroom. I see that the kitchen has a light on still. It provides some night light through the top of the house, which is not divided. The soft bulb light is quickly drowned out by the dawn. The center section of the house, the part with the running water (washing machine, toilet area, and spicket) is already lit with gray light from outside.

OM is up. He met me as I left the bathroom and asked if I wanted to watch T.V. I told him I wanted to rest more, and by rest I mean enjoy a few more peaceful moments of solitude before everyone comes alive. I can hear that Sis up, and AD is talking softly with her. This home is like some sort of a suite, partitioned off differently with several shared spaces. I am the only one with a single room. AM and AN sleep here, usually, I believe. AM is 17 and her daughter AN is a few months old. She is in Los Chiles with AC and OJ. She was just born when this family homesteaded here from Nicaragua in 1993. They are one of the first five families here. AM-GM, the matriarch, speaks of how much better things are now – with running water and electricity. Back then, times were hard. Once a week the women would go down to some sort of water source past the garbage dump to wash. They now have a spicket delivering water to the center room. I would call it the utility room.

I was quite proud of myself for being able to figure out the bathroom. (People are up now, whispering in the front room. S, M, and D I think). The first rays of sunlight, golden sunlight, slicing into the top of my room.

There are no doors here. The partitions are separated by thin curtains. The bathroom door doesn’t lock. Somehow M knew to wait for me to come out, probably because the door is so rusted and decomposing that you can see into the bathroom. I’m really curious about the protocol for bathroom use. Like in the house with my host family, I feel like a detective putting a puzzle together. I look around for clues as to how to use the commode. What is the wooden hook above the toilet for (it’s the TP holder)? I listen now, from my bedroom to hear how the bathroom is used. I count three bowlfuls for a flush. I only used one. I think I heard 8 bowlfuls for a first washing round. Now I think I hear the big blue plastic barrel being moved. To be refilled? Same as in my host family’s house, I listened from outside the door for clues as to how to bathe and use the toilet.

If I remember correctly, Paul Farmer wrote that poverty is written in the kitchen and the bathroom. That is where you will find the effects of social inequity inscribed. I think that observation is quite astute, as well as the connection to embodiment of the effects of poverty, the link with health and hygiene, clean water, and waste removal, food and cleanliness. That is, where the body is cleaned, purged, the kitchen is where the food that enters the body is prepared. It also seems that men may be involved in the creation and architecture of these key spaces (I’m not sure about that, but I assume it). Women are in charge of its maintenance and use. I also noticed that none of the kids brushed their teeth.

AM-GM mentioned to me she has no clue how to drive. Can’t read, either. She knows her alphabet, though.

The other thing that concerns me is the open containers of standing water. I read about these in an anthropology article about slums in the D.R. Standing water, like those in the huge plastic drums, create problems and higher risk because of mosquito breeding – malaria and dengue, I think, are the two resulting concerns. The mosquito buzzing in my ear this morning more than just annoyed me; it concerned me. It’s actually no different in San Francisco de 2 Rios – an occasional or nightly batch of mosquitos in the room is not uncommon. (Turns out there are several articles about dengue outbreaks in La Carpio). I wonder, though, about the other observation I’ve read about in relation to poor urban settings. It is often the case that for lack of unified organization, lack of knowledge, lack of mobilization, lack of power and influence, and more disturbingly, for deliberate decisions on zoning and city planning, because of prejudice and dehumanization, because of economic pressures implicated in a free-market economy and the need for employment, because of deliberate neglect and oppression of vulnerable, powerless clusters of people not fully recognized as people – for all these reasons and more, it has been observed that lower class sections of the populations are often subjected to the harshest living conditions and most dangerous environmental hazards. They live near rivers, near garbage dumps, on dangerous slopes, in dusty polluted areas, etc.. La Carpio – case in point. All that just to explain… I am more concerned about things like mosquito bite, nail scrapes, coughs, infections, and seemingly benign symptoms here than in a place like San Fran 2 Rios. The concentration of humans and pollution run through worries me as well. All aspect of health and cleanliness seem intensified.

As do pressures on the home and family. I’ll explain in a second. Poverty is a small ax, that can chip away at the strongest, tallest of trees. The religious idea of poverty as a sin, of structural violence, etc… has something important to say here, something people tend to greatly oversimplify and reduce to convenient truths. Poverty may not be the great sin, but it is a sin, a societal sin bringing us all sorts of symptoms of crime, drug use, domestic violence, health issues, depression, work-aholicism, and general issues of societal atrophy that choke the life from sections of our neighbors and fellow believers. All of society is guilty of perpetuating this inequity; it is certainly not a sin centered on the shoulders of the poor. At best they are victims in the situation; at worst they are accomplices, but not likely the main creators of it. Last night we had a worship service in this house. With the booming music outside and cracking of bombas, we sang, read a passage, prayed, and some guy preached. It was the first time I understood the purpose of the mysterious sound equipment in the front room. Which, incidentally, was purposed to either fight the outside ruckus or try and be some sort of testimony to the outside, or sound of joyful noise to heaven in the midst of the chaotic pounding bass.

The house is uncharacteristically void of Christmas ornamentation. Essentially, there is nothing symbolic that points to any trace of the season. Other houses have lights, wreaths, Christmas trees, etc… A friend mentioned to me how fascinating it was to see the myth broken of how the poor are not interested in those sorts of frills, but merely concerned with survival. It’s not true; they are intensely invested in not just survival, but in living well, and particularly in enjoying family time during the holidays. The lack of decorations in the house I’m staying in may have to something to do with a fundamentalist flavor of Christianity, a mentality that I caught a whiff of last night from a comment the visiting preacher voiced regarding the pagan, worldly use of a Christmas tree, which was clearly unrelated to the true meaning of Christmas, but can be tolerated nonetheless. He also talked about how the magi’s visit flip-flopped the normal hierarchy of the day – rich, powerful, learned men kneeling in the home (not stable) of a poor couple in worship and deference and awe of their little, powerless baby. He’d done his homework. Or at least read the passage for what it said.

I have mixed feelings about the presence vs. total absence of traditional Christmas symbols. My view sort of reveals my obsession and preoccupation with commercialism. But it clashes with my enamoration with culture. I like the refreshing lack of commercialist Christmas, and consumerist greed. It is a breath of fresh air. We do not open presents that night nor the next morning (although each child proudly shows me a paper bag of broken second-hand toys they’ve received early on Christmas Eve). But I miss the symbols, the rituals, the customs, the “culture.” I feel like this sort of thinking is what often makes me shut my mouth on my views about things. I feel that to open it, I am bound to say two truths – one that people applaud, and one they will disdain. And, as is the nature of things, they will forget quickly what they agree with me on and remember the differences. I suppose I am ashamed that I also greatly reduce reality to fundamentalist convictions, both socially and morally. I don’t often connect the dots or bother to explain why the commercialist-consumerist-competition-free-market mess angers me. And why I so strongly react to it. I also idealize without appropriate rational critique the fundamental benefit of strong morals, tight families, respect of tradition and custom, and the threat of traditionally feared threats on holy living – addiction, drugs, alcohol, assimilation, etc… And, I love classic Christian practice – prayer, worship fasting, renunciation, discipline, celebration, sharing of things. Anyway, no matter how you look at it, I am bound to offend someone.

Coffee’s brewing. They have an electric coffee maker. At the house I live in with the UR’s, we still use the sock filter. Last week a language student finally bought us an electric one. We haven’t used it yet. RI is still making it in the sock (no filters?)

OM comes into my room through the curtain. The doorways to the rooms inside the house are only divided by a thin curtain. AD is washing clothes. Starting coffee. The kids are mostly still asleep in the room beside me. I hear S, M, and V as well. OM just watches me for a few moments, then runs off. What I’m doing is boring. It is also quite meaningless, I feel, until/unless I ever get a chance to share it with someone else, which I may or may not do.

This morning I reviewed the basic layout of the “complex” we’re in. Like I mentioned, I am in a room by myself, where M and N (and the husband?) normally sleep. Next to me through the thin wooden wall are S, O, E, H, and E. Next to them, the “matriarch” (M), her husband, and L, their (severely) mentally handicapped child. Then, the kitchen. The front room space, with a table and chairs. The rooms are each about 4m squared. The front room shared space, about 4×6 meters squared. The kitchen, 4×2 meters squared. The kitchen is shared. The utility room is in the center of the two living spaces. It has standing water, the spicket with running water, a dirt floor, and is about 4×8 meters squared. It has tools, the sink, the 2m squared bathroom, toilet, and barrel. There is no tubed drainage. From the sink, from the bathroom, from all parts of the house, the drainage goes onto the floor and is sort of channeled out the back of the house. The toilet sewage is not exposed… it goes straight into the ground, and I assume is jetted straight out the back of the house as well. We are not exactly on the brink of the riverbank, like Q’s house. There are about 4 living spaces between us and the edge. Next is the living space of D and her family. The front room has a TV and huge speaker system. It’s about 4×8 meters squared. The kids and parents all sleep in bunks in the back – D and her husband, L(12), V (11), E (9), M (7), S (3), and D’s unborn child (she’s pregnant). All 7 of them live in a segmented portion of the house about 4×8 meters squared.

At about 8 A.M. we have breakfast. Before that, the kids are all in D’s section of the house watching T.V. It amazes me, though, how people are able to watch TV in passing. I can’t. It demands my full attention. It’s really hard for me to ignore when it’s on. But while Toy Story 3 is on and all the toys are about to get incinerated in the dump, they loose interest and start talking. M and S walk across the street to a pulperia to buy a little bag of Dorito knock-offs before breakfast. M gives me a bag of them, but I really do not want it. I am so full, but I accept it and tuck it away for later.

I am struck again by the precarious juxtaposition of childlike innocence and adults with impaired judgment. There are 12 people in the street this morning, with wafts of gunpowder (from the fireworks) in the air, and sewage from the milky white stream at my feet. I actually can’t smell any alcohol at all, which is odd because it was (last night) and still is so pervasive in the streets. Six of the people in the street this morning are kids, playing soccer and talking. Six are adults. The group of four in front of the pulperia is what makes me uneasy. A young boy and three men are joking happily, already (or still) nursing huge bottles of Imperial beer. It’s clear that any sense of judgment and forethought and concern has long since been lost to them. I stay close to the door of the house, watching S and M enter the pulperia. S walks through the group of men, peeking at me and yelling something happily from behind them. I realize that the men make me nervous. I feel safer close to the house. S, however, is totally unconcerned. Something about this “precarious juxtaposition” is disturbing to me, but at the same time more truthful. Sometimes, through zoning and different social clusters that we form, we can isolate ourselves and families from the insecurity of alcoholism, drug abuse, youth delinquency, etc…. Well, we think we can, but really, those issues are quite present for many of us. They are inside the suburban fortresses we’ve constructed. Like that Christmas night, those threats were on the street… and they were in the home. Sometimes I was afraid to stray too far from the house. Sometimes I was afraid to go into it. It is the women and the kids that suffer the most from these precarious juxtapositions, which are often the result of careless or violent behaviors of the males. We have got to shape carefully and patiently the behavior of young males, they often seem to be the ones acting out violently. There are lots of groups doing damage control in places like La Carpio. Very few walking, working, and living with those in the community, befriending and discipling them.

My first inclination was to describe the presence of this “precarious juxtaposition” in the slum as a result of how when we live our living standard, we strategically separate the drunken, the dangerous, the decrepit, the “profane” from what is safe, secure, and sacred. We don’t have the problem of trying to protect our kids from the drug dealer next door or the gangsters on the corner, while simultaneously respecting them. But then again… maybe we do. Those problems are never “out there.” If they are present “out there” they are just as present, albeit possibly in different forms, “in here.”

Breakfast is a choice of Nacatamal or “comida” (rice and chicken). I can only barely get through another plate of rice and chicken, and bread, but I make it. My stomach is tired of starch-food. It’s getting harder to stomach it. It’s good, though.

After that the kids took me to track down Q and F. I’m taking them into San Jose for my birthday party. F’s got his earbuds in… he’s pretty stoked, he finally hit 35 wpm, which means he earned the iPod mini I bought him in the States. Q will hit the target later today, and they will both have what they earned by the end of Christmas Day.

*

Christmas Eve was the big day, though, though most of my reflections I recorded the next morning. I got to La Carpio at about 3pm. I met D on the main road with M. We put the car into L’s place and continued to the house. M and D wanted to go buy food, though, so we headed into Chepe once again into the thick of the central market. M and H latched onto me, one on each hand, the whole time. We wove through thin passageways, in and out of different carnecerias and fruit stands. The purchase of chicken was mysterious to me; we bought chicken at three different places. I wondered if they were places they knew, and if so, why we didn’t just buy all three chickens at the cheapest place. On our drive back, M explained to me that she couldn’t read or write a single word – all she knew was the alphabet. I should have been double-checking their math – people here don’t usually rip me off, but but they often make major calculation errors or oversights. I suspect that may happen more if they perceive their client to be illiterate or uneducated, but who knows.

Grapes are about $3/kilo. Chicken – I forget, about $8 for the entire chicken. And we bought 3. We bought a huge jug of ketchup, and I cringed at the realization that ketchup would be the base of the sauce for the chicken and rice. They way people use mayonnaise and ketchup as sauces makes me nauseous.

I took out my cell phone at some point discretely to reply to a text message. D warned me later not to take it out in the central market. I never take it out in San Francisco de Dos Rios, either. In La Carpio, I do, though. There is some security dynamic that seems lost to people. There are no hard-and-fast rules, but I can “intuit” a different set of rules for caution. In places like San Francisco de Dos Rios or the central market, I’m at risk because I’m a target (on the street), I’m alone (in SF2Rios), or I’m anonymous. In La Carpio, there is always the possibility that a vagabond youth might mug me, but less likely because there I am not anonymous. They usually hang out on the corners, and will probably only mess with people they don’t know, or don’t respect. Anyway, my point is, it amuses me to think of how many gringo missionary friends I have that walk in fear in their middle-class SF2Rios neighborhood, with good reason, yet, if they were going to some the marginalized places like La Carpio, they very well may be safer. That is, not targeted, if they learn the rules.

We head back at 5pm. We play games and stuff until our little church service at 7pm. There are 15 people total – most of the kids, the three moms and I, Grampa, and a stranger preacher man. The service is uneventful, except that I finally discover the purpose of the mysterious sound equipment in the corner of the room. Of course, I don’t think sound amplification is necessary for a small group of 15 people in a room so small. It helps us compete with the cracks, pops, and incessant dance music from the street. In fact, I think the sound system is a competition thing… or a witness thing, announcing the presence of godliness in an otherwise quite disorderly context.

The service is not long, only about 45 minutes. The chairs are then cleared and the table brought out. The next couple hours we rotate between table games, firecrackers, and games like tag and hide-and-go seek in the street.

At some point right after the service, two of the kids take me over to L’s area so I can find Q. His mom invited me for some cake. That visit got uncomfortable quite quickly, partly because I saw lots of our guys largely wasted in some form or another in or around the pulperia across the street. The larger fireworks continue for a few minutes, but the actual midnight changeover is a bit anticlimactic for me.

We don’t stay up much longer. I can barely keep my eyes open. I’m in bed by about 12:30. The street, separated from my room by merely a thin sheet of deteriorated plywood, is still alive far late into the night; for some, clear through to dawn. But the ruckus doesn’t bother me. Whether it’s sensory overload, or my own internal body clock, or culture shock, or what, I am out by 12:45, and I don’t wake once until dawn.

That was a good Christmas.

The next night, Christmas Day night (25th), I brought Q and F home at 10pm. The streets were vacant. The place was asleep. The lights were off. It was totally silent, except a small group of thug teens up by the public telephones that Q and F told me to avoid.

A last comment – at no point did we “open gifts” or gather around the Christmas tree. Early the day before, the kids shyly showed me some small gifts they’d received – broken dolls and stuff… some looked very nice. And they showed me their new clothes they were “estrenaring” (“presenting” or “breaking in”). But, for example, even the gifts I brought we did not open. I encharged M with them. I had no idea what the protocol was for gift-giving.

And now, having finished the book, I wake up and I feel a sense of loss. I want to pick it up again and read more, but the book has said what it was written to say, and left it at that. Now it’s up to me to follow the advice and actually put into practice some of the disciplines it recommends.

In a sense, though, it is so tempting to me to just want to read about them, think about them, and praise their effectiveness. That would be far easier.

It is amazing to me how refreshing and liberating Foster writes about these disciplines. It is toward that spirit of freedom that I am so strongly attracted. I understand why he describes these practices as “disciplines,” which seems a stronger word than necessary but is a crucial reality check in today’s world. Does the fact that contemporary society seems so hostile to these disciplines make them even more attractive to me? In a sense, perhaps they are attractive partly because they feel revolutionary, subversive, and a mockery of what modern society suggests is so important. Incidentally, because Christianity is so closely tied with Western culture, many of these disciplines run contrary to popular Christianity as well. That is, you may find Christians being the most discouraging in your attempts to put them into practice, often offering polite corrections to what they see as threateningly zealous, yet misguided and antiquated practices. In any case, I’d like to think they are attractive because they are a refreshing alternative to the exhausting demands and expectations that our modern lifestyles demand of us. Once put into practice, these disciplines become familiar and they are missed!

On my list of most impacting writers, including Brueggemann, Richard Foster, Dostoyevsky, etc…, now goes Jonathan Kozol. The past four months I’ve been taking classes on multiracial education, which have been largely quite stale except for some alarming statistics and interesting perspectives. The chapter on class was certainly the most moving.

However, the two books we read by Jonathan Kozol were the most impacting. I was totally engrossed in each one, compelled to read from cover to cover. His writing is good, his interviewing technique is of the highest quality, and the themes he explicates throughout his books are deeply impacting. And deeply religious, incidentally. He states his ambivalence to formalized religion repeatedly, however, his two books have undoubtedly been the most intensely religious writings I’ve read in a long, long time. He communicates a sort of subtle spirituality without being preachy.

The themes he deals with probably explain why I am so obsessed with his writing… the way he describes the insights of the children he interviews is eloquent and fascinating. He combines this with social commentary on poverty and racism, and mixes these with a sacred reverence for the teachers and priests working in the South Bronx. The religious theme running through the book about communion, holy water, heaven, etc… is right on, something I’ve striven to describe in my journals in relation to some of the places I’ve worked. So basically, he mixes religion, education, poverty, racism, and the insight of children in a self-reflective way that is poetic, piercing, and as Brueggemann described it, “summoning.”

These two books and his writing have helped me in articulating the complexity, contradiction, hope, and mystery that these themes hold for me. Here are some quotes:

“What is it like for children to grow up here? What do they think the world has done to them? Do they believe that they are being shunned or hidden by society? If so, do they think that they deserve this? What is it that enables some of them to pray? When they pray, what do they say to God?” (5)

“Why do you want to put so many people with small children in a place with so much sickness? this is the last place in New York that they should put poor children. Clumping so many people, all with the same symptoms and same problems, in one crowded place with nothin’ they can grow on?” (11)

“Evil exists…. I believe that what the rich have done to the poor people in this city is something that a preacher could call evil. Somebody has power. Pretending that they don’t so they don’t need to use it to help people – that is my idea of evil.” (23)

“We came here in chains and now we buy our own chains and we put them on ourselves. Every little store sells chains. They even have them at check-cashing…” (24)

Maybe once a year they [think of us]. Some of them have parties around Christmas to raise something for the poor…. What’s goin’ to happen on December 26? Who is this charity for? In a way, it’s for themselves so they won’t feel ashamed goin’ to church to pray on Christmas Eve.” (44)

Often during times like these I have to fight off the feeling that I am about to cry. I do fight it off because i do not want to be embarrassed…. When I leave, I sometimes give in to these feelings, which I never can explain because they do not seem connected to the things we talk about. It’s something cumulative that just builds up during a quite time. (46)

If the police are scared to come there, why does the city put small children in the building? (53)

The notion of the ghetto as a ‘sin’ committed by society is not confronted. You will never see this word in the newspapers. (72)

Many here are a great deal more devout than people you would meet in wealthy neighborhoods. Those who have everything they want or need have often the least feeling for religion. (78)

“There’s something wrong. There’s something sticky dripping from the elevator.”

“My mother said, ‘It’s only grease.’ But the woman said, ‘It looks like blood.’ So my mother was afraid and went downstairs to check, and it was blood, and it was coming through the ceiling of the elevator, which was on the second floor. So then my mother came upstairs to make sure that the children were all right. We found the other children but we could not find Bernardo.” (104)

[Fourth grade rapid drill where the children respond in unison]:

“What are these holes in our window?”

“Bullet shots!”

“How do the police patrol our neighborhood?”

“By helicopter!”

“What do we do when we hear shooting?”

“Lie down on the floor!” (122)

“In heaven you don’t pay for things with money. You pay for things you need with smiles.” (Anabelle, 129)

Being treated as a friend this way by children in the neighborhood feels like a special privilege. It seems like something you just wouldn’t have the right to hope for. Why should these children trust a stranger who can come into their world at will and leave it any time he likes? (130)

There is a golden moment here that our society has chosen not to seize. We have not nourished this part of the hearts of children, not in New York, not really anywhere.” (131)

Prisons, schools, and churches, many religious leaders have observed, are probably the three most segregated institutions in our nation, although the schools in New York City are quite frequently more segregated even than the prisons. (147)

I worry about speaking too much of the triumphs that such people and communities achieve without positioning these stories in realistic context. (161)

“Mr. Mongo sells drugs. I don’t feel sorry for him any more. He tried to get my brother.”

“What did he do?”

“There’s an old trick they have,” he says. “It goes like this.” He holds out both hands wrapped into fists. “Choose one.” I pick one hand. He opens it up and looks in his palm and smiles. “It’s your lucky day, my friend!”

“What’s in his hand?”

“White powder. Whichever hand you pick, there’s powder in it.”

“You’ve seen him do it?”

“I was there. He did it twice. I saw it.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Please, God, don’t let him do it to my brother.’” (219)

If you ever visit my Adams grandparents house on 616 Chestnut, you will see a cool little digital picture frame with photos cycling through on it. It’s quite large – a 14-inch screen. And if you look closer, you will see that a mouse runs out in front of it, and you can browse the internet on it. And if you bend over to inspect the back, you discover that it’s not a digital picture frame at all… it’s a laptop with the base pointed backward and stuck to the LCD screen, nicely enclosed by a homemade wooden frame I assembled in my dad’s woodshop across the street.

There is a USB extension poking out the front as well, which you might assume is how the photos got on there. Well, that is how the first batch of photos got on there. But if you know the internet address of the computer and the name and password, you can upload your own photos right onto her computer, from anywhere in the world.

That’s right – members of our family, from wherever they now live, can send photos from our computers straight into hers so that the picture cycle is always kept fresh and active. And here’s the kicker… my brother and I can now take photos with our iPhones, and upload them immediately into the queue.

I’m quite proud of this little digital picture frame I made my grandparents. I think I gave it to them on their anniversary three years ago before I left for Costa Rica. I remember it quite well, because I got the satisfaction of having given a gift so special it made my grandmother cry she was so excited. Which to me, evidences a total success. Without even knowing the ridiculous amount of work I’d put into installing Ubuntu over the network and fine-tuning it to receive files by FTP, and without knowing how many hours and careful calculations I’d put in across the street with my dad helping me in the workshop, she was still so impressed with the end result that she couldn’t keep back the tears. The first batch of photos I loaded was scanned slides of her and my grandfather when they were engaged and during their first year of marriage. That may have been part of the shock… I don’t know if she’d seen those scanned into a computer yet.

So the project was a total success. It challenged my server-side programming capabilities. It got me into some remedial woodworking classes with my dad in the shop. It squeezed some tears of joy from my grandmother’s eyes. She even says she catches my grandfather up late at night with all the lights off, sitting there watching the photos roll by on the screen. And now, as her grandsons and great-granddaughters are heading to all parts of the world, we can send them surprise photos to show up in the picture frame. Total success, on all counts.

The big losers, in this story, are the huge commercial corporations that screwed me over and treated me with utter disdain and contempt throughout the long, tedious process of trying to get them to honor the guarantee and pathetic product they sold me. It may seem like I’m extrapolating too much here, but it gave me a great feeling of pride to wield the impotent bundle of malfunctioning circuits that the smiling, lying salesmen had dumped on me, craft a piece of machinery that was better than what they’d sold me, and rub the final product in their faces. I know he’s not programming any digital picture frames for his grandparents, because he was to dumb to know a single technical detail about the products he was selling. After countless confrontations pleading with them to fix it, replace it, or honor their warranty, I was beginning to feel helpless. Now, I was not no longer the one getting shafted. Buya best buy!

Paperless study. C’mon, you know you can do it.

Paperless Study and your Portable U

I did it, and you can too

What’s Covered in this Article:

• Intro: Paperless Study

• Intro: Portable U

• How to Highlight and Annotate Scanned PDF’s

  • PDF-Xchange
  • Skim
  • Yooper
  • Note-taking

• Organize and Customize it. Personalize your U

• Enrolling in Portable U – Going Mobile

  • Downloading and Installing the Portable Apps bundle
  • Recommended Portable Apps

• Still looking for more?

(click here to download a PDF of this file)

Paperless Study

There are hundreds of ways to make your online class a better experience. Studying online is an increasingly available option – it’s cheaper, and in many ways, better. There are lots of articles explaining how to create on-line learning communties and get a sense of belonging with your classmates far away. By far, this is the most important aspect of on-line learning.

But second comes the technology, and that’s what this article is about. Unfortunately, teaching hasn’t quite caught up to the possibilities digital study has to offer. What this means for you is that you’ll have to make obsolete resources match more rapidly-developing technologies. Until the education system  catches up, you’re going to have
to make some accomodations.

If you have any interest in tools and techniques to save paper, money, and consequently do your part in preserving the environment, this tutorial is for you. For two semesters of on-line grad school, I had 1589 pages of assigned reading in PDF format. I only printed 47 pages of that, because I had to present on those particular readings and wanted something I could refer to in my hand. That’s 1542 pages I didn’t print by doing my readings all on the computer. That’s about $77 at a nickel apiece. But more importantly, that’s a considerable chunk of tree I saved. Plus, those annotated readings are stored electronically in folders on my computer where I can refer to them as necessary, and review the notes I took embedded in the PDF files.

Portable U

Given the increasing popularity of
on-line courses and abundance of internet cafés around the world, it’s completely feasible to get a degree on-line while on the go, doing all your reading, posting, and research at internet cafés along your journey. All this can be done from a portable thumb drive. I’m now nearing the end of my 2nd semester in a master’s level on-line applied anthropology degree, and I’ve done both semesters entirely using a 4 GB portable flash drive. I used this trusty knowledge store in Internet cafe’s in Nicaragua, an AOL dial-up connection in the home of a gracious old couple who hosted me in Florida, international calling centers at the beach, restaurants on Costa Rica’s east coast, and just between home and the office. You probably won’t go the full gambit and try to balance an on-line degree while backpacking through Central America. But at the very least you might want to keep your on-line class portable so you can carry it around with you on a flash drive instead of being tied to a specific computer. The other reason for doing this was that I walk to and from work in an area notorious for armed theft, and I tried to minimize the risk of being robbed and loosing my laptop by carrying my course in my pocket instead of my laptop in my backpack.

If it’s your goal to keep your on-line studies portable by creating a flash drive you can carry around with all your studies on it, this tutorial will help you do it.  Granted, most of the work will be up to you to personalize and contextualize your “Portable University” for your own on-line classes, with links and folders set up specifically for your degree. But aside from that, this guide will suggest some helpful tools and bare necessities you’d probably want to include in your Portable U.

Now let’s get on it. Let me first introduce you to the tools you’ll need for your paperless classroom, whether you choose to make it portable or not.

How to Highlight and Annotate Scanned PDFs

First of all, many of your readings will be sent to you on-line, as PDFs scanned from journal articles. Wouldn’t it be nice to read them on a Kindle, netbook, or digital reader? Won’t be easy, because the PDF’s are probably double-columned scanned images with no real text information so you can’t reflow the text. And most frustrating of all, you can’t highlight, annotate, or add comments to the readings. This is a problem.Two programs will allow you to do this… all digitally, and for free. They both require the same tweak in order to work to do what you need them to.

PDF X-change for Windows

“PDF X-change” is a free program for Windows that will let you highlight and annotate PDF documents for free. Download Full Free Version | Download Portable Version | More Info PDF X-change is my prefered program for reading and annotating PDFs. The changes are saved within the file and can be opened in any other PDF viewer. Read on for how to tweak “PDF X-change” to let you highlight scanned PDF’s that have no embedded text information.

SKIM for Mac

“Skim” is a free program for Mac that will let you highlight and annotate PDF documents for free. Download Full Free Version | More Info Changes are not embedded in the file, though, so my preference is PDF X-change for the PC. In fact, I use WINE on my Mac to run PDF X-change on Mac OS X instead of using Skim. Read on for how to tweak “Skim” to let you highlight scanned PDF’s that have no embedded text information.

These programs will allow you to highlight and comment on all text-based documents for free. But what about scanned articles that are all catty-whompus, crooked, and won’t let you highlight them with the default highlight tool? This is because the files are scanned as images and have no real text information. What to do?

You have to create a thick, semi-transparent line, which you can then drag over the text in any direction, just like a normal highlighter. Here’s how you do it:

Skim Creating a highlight tool

Open a document and use the “Line” option from Tool Mode on the toolbar to draw a red line. Right-click the line and click “Note Color”. Change the color to a good highlighting color (I use teal). Set the opacity to 30%. Save it. Right-click the line again and click “Note Line.” Change the “Line Width” to “10″ and the “Line Ending Styles” to squares. Close the Dialog box and your line tool will now allow you to highlight.

Next, you need a way to highlight webpages, and snip parts of your reading lessons into a notebook. Can’t a computer make that process easier for you?

It can, thanks to a recent Firefox add-on called Yooper.

Yooper Firefox add-on to highlight webpages

You can install “Yooper” as an add-on in Firefox. It allows you to highlight webpages (INCLUDING portions of webpages deep within on-line classrooms like WebCT and Blackboard!) If you install Firefox portable on a flash drive, you can install this add-on and use it on any computer you use.

One last utility you’ll need is something to take and organize notes with. There are lots of options for this… you just have to pick one with the features you need. Of course, you could use Microsoft Word – but the problem is that it is really tacky when you try and paste your text from Word into an on-line discussion thread. Your best bet is to go with a program with a “WYSIWIG” HTML editor where you can cut and paste the source. If that last sentence sounds like gibberish, just realize that if you are going to write your discussion board posts offline and then try to paste them on the discussion boards, you might have to experiment with different note-taking applications.

3 Free Apps for Note Taking and Typing up Posts off-line
Evernote Download and More Info	Codetch Firefox Add-on Download and More Info	Kompozer Download | Portable Version | More Info

Organize and Customize it. Personalize your U

OK, most important is on-line solidarity with your classmates. I lied about the next most important thing being the technology. It’s not. On-line study makes YOU go the extra mile in staying organized and on top of things. You gotta find creative ways of staying on track in the course, or you WILL get lost, you WILL get behind, and you WILL fail.

There are tons of good ways to do this. Again, I will suggest to you what I used, because it’s practical and it worked. You can start from here but you have to find something that works for you.

• First off, print off the syllabi for all the courses you’re taking. Most information you’ll need is in there. It helps to highlight important due dates for large projects and special events
• Usually your week-to-week schedule will be more or less the same. If you’re working full or part-time, I suggest you make a weekly schedule and set apart specific times to work on your on-line course. Base it off the syllabus.
  • I wrote a weekly schedule up on an Excel spreadsheet: sample_day_planner.xls
• Keep your files ORGANIZED, into classes, “readings to do” and “readings completed” within those classes, and “special reports” within those classes. Download all the readings at the beginning if you can, so you aren’t constantly having to log in and hunt down the readings. Prefix each reading with the Week number you’re supposed to read it on, if you really want to be on top of things.
• Let your browser save your passwords. Or use KeepPass (more info. below) to manage all your passwords.

• Make quick links to everything you use – on-line classroom, the library, your e-mail account, etc… Make everything as easy to get around as possible. If you find yourself doing repetitive tasks, see if you can find a way to streamline or make shortcuts to make things go faster.
• Start a document for each class with random notes that you can add to throughout the semester.
• Start a document for each class where you can write the post prompts and responses before you paste them in your on-line classroom

Enrolling in Portable U – Going Mobile

All right, keep reading if you’re going to go the extra mile and make your course truly portable so you can carry it around on a flash drive. First, should I outline the benefits of making your on-line study environment portable? I designed my studies to be portable and it suited me well because my situation is a little more unpredictable than most people’s. I adhered religiously to keeping all my course information on a portable flash drive because of security reasons (walking to and from work where theft is rampant), because of frequent travel, and because I work with learners who don’t often have their own personal computer and I wanted to live the experience and approximate it as best I could. Interestingly, I found the versatility of my Portable U extremely useful, and more robust than limiting myself to one computer, and it really payed off to keep everything running from the flash drive. I may just do my whole degree this way.

Let me mention as well that mobility was not just important for my job, but for my course of study. Studying applied anthropology is awesome in and of itself, but it takes on a new life when your bus breaks down and you have to hike through the very banana plantations Philippe Bourgois writes about in the textbook you’re reading. Or when you spend a week in the home of someone who traveled with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and get a whole new perspective on political economy theory. Or when you write a report on the settlement and history of Costa Rica’s Afro-Caribbean East coast, and then visit the very towns you’re writing about and know the community struggle behind the run-down schoolhouse in the corner of town. You know what you’re seeing when the kid asking you for a lighter has small burns on his fingers and lips, and you see the effects of how racism and “modernization” have transformed a fishing community into a place locals are afraid to visit. This is one of the opportunities that on-line study offers – the world is your classroom. Why do it any other way?

So anyway, besides your course readings and files, what tools will be useful to have on your Portable U?

Here’s where you’ll get the tools for your Portable U:

Step 1 – Downloading and Installing the Portable Apps bundle

1. First, head over to http://portableapps.com and download the
   Portable Suite Standard. This bundle will automatically load most of what we’ll need.
   • Install the Portable Apps Suite to the root folder of your flash drive. It will take a while.
2. Trim down any applications you know you won’t use. I’m going to delete CoolPlayer Plus. You can also delete Pidgin, Mines, and Sudoku.
3. Next I’ll list some tools you will find useful. Downloading and installing these is very straightforward.

Step 2 – Recommended Portable Apps

• Firefox Portable

  • Installing Firefox portable enables you to customize your browser specifically for your class add-ons and
  • Delete default links from top bar, add your university links.
  • Make sure pop-ups can display on your university website.

• PDF-XChange Viewer Portable

  • • I recommend you replace Sumatra PDF reader with this. Sumatra is a great light-weight PDF Reader. But if you’re taking an on-line course, you’ll be doing extensive reading and marking up of documents. The lightweight PDF reader “PDF-XChange Viewer” will allow you to read and markup PDF’s.
    • Unzip the PDF-XChange Viewer file. Create a folder on your flashdrive in the PortableApps folder, and move the program into it.
    • Remove Sumatra PDF Reader if you aren’t going to use it.
    • Now you can read your PDF papers, and if they were scanned properly, highlight and annotate them!

• Evernote

  • Evernote is a handy note-taking utility with the ability to tag and organize random notes. With free registration you can sync your notes on-line, amongst different computers. It also allows you to snip notes from the web and organize them within Evernote. Very cool. Very useful.
  • To install, download the most recent version here. Install it into Windows, run the program, sign up for a free account, and then go to “Tools->Install Evernote Portable.” Install it to a subdirectory of your Documents folder on your flash drive.
    • After installing, run the program once and sync it. Exit the program completely.
  • Copy the “Program Files” Folder into your Portable Apps folder. Delete, or at least rename the suffix of, the file EvernoteTray.exe (unless you plan to start this feature from your Portable Apps menu)

• KeePass

  • KeePass will keep track of all your passwords and you only have to remember one master password. Very useful.

• VLC Player

  • Guaranteed, your biggest headache even on your own computer will be coming to a standstill when trying to play a media file (video or audio that you don’t have the program for). Flash, quicktime, Real Media player… whatever,  one of your best catch-all solutions is an open-source video player called VLC Player. It plays everything.
  • Download the most recent version here.

Still Looking for More?

• 100 Free and Useful Portable Apps for College Students
• 24 Killer Portable Apps for your Flash Drive

updated March 28, 2010 by Brendan Blowers