My mum regularly attends a local pentecostal church, and has done since before I was born, the village where my parents currently live having been the locality in question from around my third birthday onwards. Every Sunday that I am staying at home with them my mum asks me if I am going to attend church with her, and from a sense of guilt at the disappointed noises which follow when I say no, I sometimes acquiesce.
The church is a modest affair, the building itself being of noticeably religious orientation only because of the somewhat mutilated cross on the outside of one wall neighbouring the main road. I say mutilated because the cross was "redesigned" some years ago by a chap with an evidently avantgarde approach to traditional religious symbols, who must have thought that the traditional cross in the shape of... well, a cross was a bit old hat and returned said item to the church with one of the arms lopped off, which he had replaced by a bird of some description, which I presume to be a dove.
But I digress slightly. Where was I? Oh yes, I was about to tell you about the interior of the church. Inside the church of course, are the church-goers, which at present seem to be in almost equal measures long-term residents of the village, recent arrivals from East London whose skin is a darker hue than is traditional in these parts, and residents of the local care home for people with various interesting disorders, such as autism and downs syndrome. My brother being one of the current residents, I visited the venerable institution on my return from Bolivia. My brother has a flat which is slightly detached from the main building, but which one has to access through the larger building on entering and leaving. On the way out with mum on this particular occasion a colossus bounded down the stairs, and warmly greeted myself and said parent, asking after my brother and shaking me a bit too firmly by the hand. Upon reaching the street I asked my mum if this goliath (he was comfortably seven feet tall, probably seven and a half) was an inmate or a warden, and was somewhat taken aback when she told me that he was in fact one of the inmates. I asked her what he was in for, and was told that "he has a growth problem". I thought for a moment before asking "is that it?", and my mum replied that he has been interred because of fears that he might get taken advantage of because of his height.
But anyway, back to the church. So this morning my mum and I enter the church and sit down behind the giant. I attempt to focus my sore eyes. Before leaving the house I had been staring into them with the aid of a mirror, after becoming rather fascinated with the pigmentation of and shapes within my iris, and then attempting to discover whether through prolonged gazing of this sort I'd be able to detect a dilation of my pupils. I think I may have strained my eyes in doing so, but I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that they now feel right as rain. The service took the usual form, a bit of singing, some relation from various members of the congregation about how they wish to praise and thank God for something or other that has happened to them or their relatives that week, and then pastor giving a rambling sermon. This was of course interspersed with the intake of bread and ribena and the saying of prayer. When it came to the segment of the service in which audience members share their anecdotes I was prepared - for the first time! - to share something. After listening to an old woman relate how God had enabled her - or it may have been a relative - to recover from some life-threatening illness or other, and then a teenager filling us in on a similar tale, I got up to tell the assembled masses of how pleased and thankful I was that God had, in the form of the financial advisor at the university's student services department, sent some money my way. Obviously, being English and thus having to suffer the unfortunate affliction of irony dripping from every word that I utter, this was a difficult thing to. While the previous two speakers had been holding the congregation's attention, I had been inwardly preparing myself be repeating the mantra "don't try to be funny" to myself. I've sometimes thought it surprising that Christianity ever took off at all in this country, since being religious seems to require levels of sincerity so clearly incompatible with the English psyche. Which is ironic really, since God himself is, of course, an Englishman. After I had sat down, one of the other congregation members took the floor to inform us that he didn't really have anything to say, but wanted to sing, and then began a little ditty which I had never heard before and wondered whether he was improvising. There was just time before continuing the show for my mum to step up, say she was glad that I had spoken because if I hadn't she would have told to story of my windfall herself, and then to thank God for providing the half a duck my dad had spotted in the reductions counter at the supermarket the other day.
When the sharing of personal stories was over with, and we got on with some good old singing, Goliath turned around to me and enquired as to my footballing affiliation. Upon informing him that I was a West Ham fan, he put his hand up for a high five and I winced at the force of impact as his palm hit mine. I don't know if he is a regular attendee. He would certainly be useful to have in the company should productions of the life of King David be performed.
Sunday, 23 June 2013
Saturday, 22 June 2013
How not to respond in a job interview
My downfall in job interviews in general that I am far too honest (a good example of this is when I was being interviewed for an Assistant Warden job at university a few years ago, and upon being asked why I was interested in the role, responded that it was because of the free accommodation). The following are some of the responses which I gave to questions in a recent interview for a job teaching English as a Foreign Language in London.
On being asked what I know about the company, I told the interviewer something like: "To be honest, I looked at the company's website when I applied for the job (a couple of weeks previously), and I don't know if I can remember anything now". Her response was "well, that's honest, I suppose". Upon realising (as the words left my mouth) that I had shot myself in the foot, I attempted to recite to her the school's social programme, which I had seen on the wall of reception on the way in. I suppose I was hoping that I'd at least get some brownie-points for short-term memory and observation skills.
She asked me what kind of a teacher I am. I told her I was a "facilitator" - the first word that entered my head, without being able to tell her what I meant by the description, and instead gibbered somewhat.
By the time she asked me to do a 5-minute demonstration lesson (which she gave me 5 minutes on my own with board pens and a piece of paper to prepare), I knew that the game was up. My mind went blank, and I spent 4 of the 5 minutes staring at the piece of paper without any idea of what I was going to do when she came back in to the room. The last minute I spent drawing a plan of town on the board, and when the interviewer returned, I proceeded to teach her an elementary level class of giving and asking for directions. It seemed to go OK, some things worked, and others I clearly could have done better, which was exactly the feedback I was given. If I was judged on the class alone then perhaps I would have been offered the job.
Before the interview was over, the interviewer had one final question for me. "Are you familiar with phonetic symbols?", she asked me. "With what?" was my devastating reply, somehow not having heard her words clearly. I don't think that then telling her that it was the way she pronounced "phonetic symbols" that was the problem helped my cause very much.
I wasn't surprised, a few days later, to receive an email telling me that "at this time [I] have not been successful in my application."
On being asked what I know about the company, I told the interviewer something like: "To be honest, I looked at the company's website when I applied for the job (a couple of weeks previously), and I don't know if I can remember anything now". Her response was "well, that's honest, I suppose". Upon realising (as the words left my mouth) that I had shot myself in the foot, I attempted to recite to her the school's social programme, which I had seen on the wall of reception on the way in. I suppose I was hoping that I'd at least get some brownie-points for short-term memory and observation skills.
She asked me what kind of a teacher I am. I told her I was a "facilitator" - the first word that entered my head, without being able to tell her what I meant by the description, and instead gibbered somewhat.
By the time she asked me to do a 5-minute demonstration lesson (which she gave me 5 minutes on my own with board pens and a piece of paper to prepare), I knew that the game was up. My mind went blank, and I spent 4 of the 5 minutes staring at the piece of paper without any idea of what I was going to do when she came back in to the room. The last minute I spent drawing a plan of town on the board, and when the interviewer returned, I proceeded to teach her an elementary level class of giving and asking for directions. It seemed to go OK, some things worked, and others I clearly could have done better, which was exactly the feedback I was given. If I was judged on the class alone then perhaps I would have been offered the job.
Before the interview was over, the interviewer had one final question for me. "Are you familiar with phonetic symbols?", she asked me. "With what?" was my devastating reply, somehow not having heard her words clearly. I don't think that then telling her that it was the way she pronounced "phonetic symbols" that was the problem helped my cause very much.
I wasn't surprised, a few days later, to receive an email telling me that "at this time [I] have not been successful in my application."
Conference
So yesterday I gave my first presentation of my research at a conference. Writing the presentation was a great way for me to structure my own thoughts about the topic at hand into an argument, and perhaps just as importantly, to think about what I needed to present to an audience of people who had only a passing knowledge about Bolivia, in order for them to be able to understand what I was talking about.
Academic conferences are a great way to see cities around the country I might not otherwise travel to. This one was in Liverpool, and outside the conference at Liverpool University I managed to acquaint myself with the interiors of a couple of pubs. It was a three day conference, and my talk was on the last day, which was good because I got a chance to get to know my audience members before presenting my paper to them. Actually, I knew almost all of the audience members of my talk, the audience numbering only three (not including my fellow panel members). It was a slightly odd, but very stress-free way of giving a presentation, after having been rather nervous beforehand, and then spent the night before creating extra slides for my power point presentation, to find that the people listening to me would have been able to fit into the back of a taxi together.
After my presentation, I was then morally obliged to go and listen to the talks given to by the two women who had listened to me (though I would have gone anyway). After their presentation ended, we enjoyed a wine lunch which we then took with us to the following panel, and which made it rather difficult to follow the arguments of the presenters. Throughout the day - aided perhaps somewhat by the wine - I became more and more enamoured with a pretty blonde woman who had been nearly half of the audience for my presentation. Towards the end of the day, in a moment alone with her in one of the aforementioned pubs, I told her how incredibly pretty I thought she was, which she seemed to take with slight embarrassment. Five minutes later, a friend told me that the girl, in addition to being beautiful and charming, was also married. It felt like an unexpected (and unwanted) sign of my own ageing, that a woman I like is no longer unavailable merely because she has a boyfriend ('why do all the pretty girls seem to have boyfriends?' I often seem to have mused to myself), but rather because she has a husband. I'll have to start checking out women's fingers for rings, from now on, I suppose.
Academic conferences are a great way to see cities around the country I might not otherwise travel to. This one was in Liverpool, and outside the conference at Liverpool University I managed to acquaint myself with the interiors of a couple of pubs. It was a three day conference, and my talk was on the last day, which was good because I got a chance to get to know my audience members before presenting my paper to them. Actually, I knew almost all of the audience members of my talk, the audience numbering only three (not including my fellow panel members). It was a slightly odd, but very stress-free way of giving a presentation, after having been rather nervous beforehand, and then spent the night before creating extra slides for my power point presentation, to find that the people listening to me would have been able to fit into the back of a taxi together.
After my presentation, I was then morally obliged to go and listen to the talks given to by the two women who had listened to me (though I would have gone anyway). After their presentation ended, we enjoyed a wine lunch which we then took with us to the following panel, and which made it rather difficult to follow the arguments of the presenters. Throughout the day - aided perhaps somewhat by the wine - I became more and more enamoured with a pretty blonde woman who had been nearly half of the audience for my presentation. Towards the end of the day, in a moment alone with her in one of the aforementioned pubs, I told her how incredibly pretty I thought she was, which she seemed to take with slight embarrassment. Five minutes later, a friend told me that the girl, in addition to being beautiful and charming, was also married. It felt like an unexpected (and unwanted) sign of my own ageing, that a woman I like is no longer unavailable merely because she has a boyfriend ('why do all the pretty girls seem to have boyfriends?' I often seem to have mused to myself), but rather because she has a husband. I'll have to start checking out women's fingers for rings, from now on, I suppose.
Tuesday, 28 May 2013
Time Travel
I'm now back in the UK from Bolivia and adjusting to the strangeness of life in Britain (e.g. neon lights everywhere; my first week back I waited for the bus on the wrong side of the road). While I was away in Bolivia for most of the previous eighteen months, my mum was supposed to clear out the house ready for my parents to try to move. I get back and nothing in the house has changed. My sister and I, finally fed-up with the prevaricating, decide to take matters into our own hands. Last weekend we stepped boldly into the world of the drawers in the hall; a world which, by the looks of its contents, no intrepid explorer had ventured into during the modern era. Catalogue after catalogue came tumbling out. Great Universal 1993 being the oldest. Oh, the shell suits! When we were finished, the two sets of of cheap draws were taken out into the garden and smashed up. A cathartic experience.
The next day, it was the turn of the wardrobe inside my brother's room. If the past is a foreign country, then perhaps I should have had my passport on me. Inside there were such treasures as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle kite-string, cassettes recorded at a meeting in 1982, and a 1980s style microphone. I was forced to repeatedly turn to my mum and ask her: "What is this?". At the bottom of the drawers was a West Ham United scarf knitted by my grandmother around 50 years ago, which I never remember seeing before, and which my dad said that he hadn't set eyes on for about the last 20 years. I managed to liberate many dozens of women's magazines held captive in the cupboard since the mid-90s, with one magazine (Best) having evidently been incarcerated since 1989. I was even joyously reunited with a Shoot magazine from 1988. The front cover of said magazine had the banner headline on the front cover: "Champions EVERTON", and below the title, on the right of a picture of Ian Rush playing for Juventus, we are teased by the intriguing words "Trevor Francis - Why he's angry".
Updates to follow on the rest of the de-cluttering project...
The next day, it was the turn of the wardrobe inside my brother's room. If the past is a foreign country, then perhaps I should have had my passport on me. Inside there were such treasures as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle kite-string, cassettes recorded at a meeting in 1982, and a 1980s style microphone. I was forced to repeatedly turn to my mum and ask her: "What is this?". At the bottom of the drawers was a West Ham United scarf knitted by my grandmother around 50 years ago, which I never remember seeing before, and which my dad said that he hadn't set eyes on for about the last 20 years. I managed to liberate many dozens of women's magazines held captive in the cupboard since the mid-90s, with one magazine (Best) having evidently been incarcerated since 1989. I was even joyously reunited with a Shoot magazine from 1988. The front cover of said magazine had the banner headline on the front cover: "Champions EVERTON", and below the title, on the right of a picture of Ian Rush playing for Juventus, we are teased by the intriguing words "Trevor Francis - Why he's angry".
Updates to follow on the rest of the de-cluttering project...
Monday, 15 April 2013
Public Transport in Bolivia
Travelling around in Bolivia can often be a bizarre and confusing experience. There are few working train lines in Bolivia (the only ones currently running link Bolivia with Brazil and Argentina, rather than connecting Bolivian cities internally), because during the neoliberal period the government sold off the railways to a Chilean company, who promptly decided that none of the train lines linking the Bolivian cities with one another were viable, and closed them down. For that reason, travel between one city and another in Bolivia is undertaken exclusively by coach. This is a much more pleasant experience than travelling by the same method in the UK, where extreme discomfort and often inflated prices (if paying on the day anyway) are the norm; in Bolivia there are three types of coach: normal, semi-bed and bed, with the price depending on the level of comfort you pay for. Before your trip starts (and often during it) you will often be offered a range of wares to purchase from men and women boarding the coach. Apart from drinks and snacks, over the years I have got used to the same man getting on the bus before I depart Cochabamba on the coach to offer travel pillows (he's been doing this for possibly ten year now!), students getting on to the bus to sell the products of their health-food related studies, and people selling books. Leaving La Paz for Charazani, I got used to the same two men getting on, one to sell books, and the other to sell medical pamphlets and medicine. It occurred to me that selling medicine to Kallawayas was like trying to sell freezers to eskimos, but he did seem to get some takers nonetheless. On certain bus routes the journey is livened up even more by small children getting on with musical instruments and unmusical voices. They sing at you and then ask you for money.
In the cities there is a bewildering range of buses on offer: Micros, in which you have to pay the driver when you get on, minibuses and trufis, in which you have to pay the driver when you get off, and something called a coaster in which the rules seem to vary. Oddly, given the name, the micro is the biggest bus cruising the streets. The mayor's office in La Paz has come up with a plan to bring in London-style bendy-buses, which would be able to fit in more people than any of the options currently available to bus-users. The bus-drivers have been up in arms at this proposal, carrying out strikes and marches on the streets of La Paz, because the implementation of this plan, as they see it, would lead to a loss of their jobs, as there wouldn't be a need for so many bus-drivers, and even those that continued to drive their current vehicle fear that passengers would prefer to board the new buses, and therefore they would get squeezed out.
My most memorable journey in Bolivia is probably the trip I once took from Charazani to down Apolo. The bus starts in La Paz and I got on mid-way between there and Apolo. There was only one seat left, next to the driver's assistant. The journey was supposed to take around 8 hours, but must have taken closer to fourteen, because the condition of road meant that all of the passengers had to get out to pull the bus with a rope around five or six times. The problem was that the bus kept getting stuck. Every time we got out to pull, my feet would sink into the gloriously wet mud, my sandals becoming caked in the stuff. At times the mud would become noticeably damper as rain poured down on us. Luckily, at least, it was warm mud.
In the cities there is a bewildering range of buses on offer: Micros, in which you have to pay the driver when you get on, minibuses and trufis, in which you have to pay the driver when you get off, and something called a coaster in which the rules seem to vary. Oddly, given the name, the micro is the biggest bus cruising the streets. The mayor's office in La Paz has come up with a plan to bring in London-style bendy-buses, which would be able to fit in more people than any of the options currently available to bus-users. The bus-drivers have been up in arms at this proposal, carrying out strikes and marches on the streets of La Paz, because the implementation of this plan, as they see it, would lead to a loss of their jobs, as there wouldn't be a need for so many bus-drivers, and even those that continued to drive their current vehicle fear that passengers would prefer to board the new buses, and therefore they would get squeezed out.
My most memorable journey in Bolivia is probably the trip I once took from Charazani to down Apolo. The bus starts in La Paz and I got on mid-way between there and Apolo. There was only one seat left, next to the driver's assistant. The journey was supposed to take around 8 hours, but must have taken closer to fourteen, because the condition of road meant that all of the passengers had to get out to pull the bus with a rope around five or six times. The problem was that the bus kept getting stuck. Every time we got out to pull, my feet would sink into the gloriously wet mud, my sandals becoming caked in the stuff. At times the mud would become noticeably damper as rain poured down on us. Luckily, at least, it was warm mud.
Saturday, 23 February 2013
A community meeting
Sometimes the most mundane of events can become surreal happenings through the course of the day. Just such a day was the day before yesterday.
I often sit in on the community meetings of whatever community I happen to be in at the time (I`m not just doing my reserch in one community, as would probably be easier, but over several communities), and am almost always bored stiff. This is partly because the meetings tend go on and on, with no topic exhausted until everyone who wants to have their say has done so, and partly because the language of the meeting is almost always predominantly in Aymara or Quechua (depending on the language of the particular community in question), neither of which I am particular fluent in (though my Quechua is a lot more developed than my Aymara). For a few days I`d been staying in the house of the mallku of one particular community, and had told him that I would like to attend the community meeting, as the topics he told me he was going to raise sounded pertinent to my area of research. The mallku´s (8-year old) son incidentally makes for an interesting conversation partner because he pronounces the consonant of every word as the sound "n", so for example the question "what`s your name?"becomes "non no nane". But I digress.
Anyway, we arrived at the meeting at around 11, I shook everyone's hand as I went in, and was prompted by my friend, the mallku, the introduce myself. Although I probably could have adequately introduced myself in Quechua, my mind went blank, and I spoke in Spanish; I panicked a little bit and as usual on these wanted to say far more than I needed to. I could see the various members of the community were looking at the floor, and in any direction rather at me and I got the hint that I should probably just shut up and sit down. I sat down on the floor, where I had had to sit when I came in because there were no available seats. I felt a bit odd sitting on the floor, and was aware that I may have been thought odd for doing so, as all of the men were sitting on chairs and as was customary, only the women were sitting on the floor. The morning part of the meeting didn't last for too long though, and at 12.30 we went back to the mallku's house for lunch. He acted as interpreter, while his son spoke to me in what to all intents and purposes was complete gobbledygook.
After lunch I was surprised to find that the meeting had resumed outside, rather than in the village hall. I was surprised chiefly because for a good portion of the morning it had rained, and I suspected that in the afternoon it might very well do the same. My suspicions bore fruit within the hour. However, I was surprised to find that despite the rain, the authorities, who were conducting the meeting sat at a table in the field lying in the middle of the community, continued despite getting increasingly wet, one of the curling up almost into a ball in a futile effort to protect himself. As the rain showed no sign of abating, more and more or the community members, and eventually the authorities as well, took refuge by standing on a ledge under the overhang of a roof. Before too long every one of the members of the community was standing underneath the roof, with the backs to the wall, facing the rain. This was how the meeting was conducted from then on. One person would speak, as if addressing the rain, then another to his left or right would reply, again as if giving a discourse towards the weather conditions. I thought it seemed like something from a Monty Python sketch. When the meeting was eventually over (after about two or three hours of soggy debate), I asked the mallku why they hadn't just gone inside the hall. "The authorities wanted to take advantage of the rain in order to finish early" I was told.
I often sit in on the community meetings of whatever community I happen to be in at the time (I`m not just doing my reserch in one community, as would probably be easier, but over several communities), and am almost always bored stiff. This is partly because the meetings tend go on and on, with no topic exhausted until everyone who wants to have their say has done so, and partly because the language of the meeting is almost always predominantly in Aymara or Quechua (depending on the language of the particular community in question), neither of which I am particular fluent in (though my Quechua is a lot more developed than my Aymara). For a few days I`d been staying in the house of the mallku of one particular community, and had told him that I would like to attend the community meeting, as the topics he told me he was going to raise sounded pertinent to my area of research. The mallku´s (8-year old) son incidentally makes for an interesting conversation partner because he pronounces the consonant of every word as the sound "n", so for example the question "what`s your name?"becomes "non no nane". But I digress.
Anyway, we arrived at the meeting at around 11, I shook everyone's hand as I went in, and was prompted by my friend, the mallku, the introduce myself. Although I probably could have adequately introduced myself in Quechua, my mind went blank, and I spoke in Spanish; I panicked a little bit and as usual on these wanted to say far more than I needed to. I could see the various members of the community were looking at the floor, and in any direction rather at me and I got the hint that I should probably just shut up and sit down. I sat down on the floor, where I had had to sit when I came in because there were no available seats. I felt a bit odd sitting on the floor, and was aware that I may have been thought odd for doing so, as all of the men were sitting on chairs and as was customary, only the women were sitting on the floor. The morning part of the meeting didn't last for too long though, and at 12.30 we went back to the mallku's house for lunch. He acted as interpreter, while his son spoke to me in what to all intents and purposes was complete gobbledygook.
After lunch I was surprised to find that the meeting had resumed outside, rather than in the village hall. I was surprised chiefly because for a good portion of the morning it had rained, and I suspected that in the afternoon it might very well do the same. My suspicions bore fruit within the hour. However, I was surprised to find that despite the rain, the authorities, who were conducting the meeting sat at a table in the field lying in the middle of the community, continued despite getting increasingly wet, one of the curling up almost into a ball in a futile effort to protect himself. As the rain showed no sign of abating, more and more or the community members, and eventually the authorities as well, took refuge by standing on a ledge under the overhang of a roof. Before too long every one of the members of the community was standing underneath the roof, with the backs to the wall, facing the rain. This was how the meeting was conducted from then on. One person would speak, as if addressing the rain, then another to his left or right would reply, again as if giving a discourse towards the weather conditions. I thought it seemed like something from a Monty Python sketch. When the meeting was eventually over (after about two or three hours of soggy debate), I asked the mallku why they hadn't just gone inside the hall. "The authorities wanted to take advantage of the rain in order to finish early" I was told.
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