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Manfred unfinished notes... From around 2005 -- Last week I met an 18 year old named Manfred. He lives in a small town in Peru. Yesterday as we sat in the middle of a shallow river he told me that he has tried to kill himself two times. Once he took pills and another time he tried to shoot himself but the gun didn't fire. He said he was also going to try again by taking poison and he had written his goodbye letter to his family, but his younger sister came in and said "When you get older I want you to take me to Cuzco." Cuzco is one of the more beautiful cities in Peru. Here are a few notes about Manfred. I want to tell you about him to help destroy the myth that suicidal teenagers have a genetic chemical imbalance which needs to be treated with medication. When I think of all the people who have been told such... well, maybe it is more healthy for me to try to express my feelings right now. I feel frustrated. On a scale of 0 to 10, 9. I feel sad. The tears start to form in my eyes. I think of some of the suicidal teenagers I have known. Steff, Sarah, Nicole. I think of the university student in Indonesia who tried to kill herself when she was 8 or 9 years old because of the pressures in school and the lack of emotional support at home. I think of Rosmery yelling at 9 year old Luis Manuel the other day when she was trying to "help" him with his math. I think of everyone in Luis's class getting hit by the teacher because she was angry at them for their low math scores on the test. I think of throwing my laptop off the side of this cliff and starting my engine and driving. Driving. Without any destination. Just to try to get away from the pain. But everywhere I go I feel the pain of what adults do to children and teenagers. The other day someone said it is something like masochism. Maybe. But I can't just leave and stop writing. Stop trying to do something to wake people up. To educate them. Really educate them and not just brainwash them like what is being done in so many schools, virtually all of them really I suppose, around the world. But here it is worse than in a lot of places. The young people have to wear uniforms. The girls in this little town have to wear these stupid little ribbons in their hair to make them look like they are 5 year olds and dolls that their mothers bought to play with. Not only the 9 and ten year old females have to wear them, but the teenage females all the way up to the day they get out of high school. The children have to stand in lines and obey commands like soldiers.
Manfred
Spreading out in the line. This is done each morning. A stiudent was issuing the commands. There are four commands to get them in line. They are something like this: Spread out. At ease. Stand straight. Attention. The student yells out the commands and the students all snap into their positions. All of this takes place so fast it was hard to get pictures. I would say it is about 3 seconds or less than one second for each command.
. It hurts so much to look at these pictures that I can't work on them. I have to take a break from looking them. But I come back to write more about Manfred... His mother said "he was obedient when he was young". Then later the mother told him he couldn't go with me to Trujillo because he needed to stay home and help make dinner. His father: Steve. Steve. Steve. Take it to the technician. Take it to the technician. Take it to the technician. Why did you take out that screw? Why did you take it out? Where does it go? Don't you remember? Don't you know where it goes? You have a problem with your memory. You shouldn't have taken it out. I told him that we didn't need that screw for it to start up. I knew that it had already started up once before with it out. he was there watching it but didn't notice. But he told me "No, it won't start without that screw. You have to put that screw in for it to start. It won't make the power connection without that screw. You need to put that screw in for it to start." Everything was a battle with him. Trying to get him to understand. Trying to explain what I was certain of. His father asking us: Do you have a plan? Then telling us: It would be better to have a television show. You should make a plan and a schedule and a projection of what resources you will need, monetary resources, human resources, physical resources. (this was like the Catholic school in Quito when I said I wanted to use the Internet in the afternoon when no one was using it.) Manfred was also telling me what to do and trying to take it out of my hands. Then he eventually took the diskette and forced it in and bent the part that reads the diskette. Then his father tried to straighten it out and broke it. Then his father put it all back together thinking somehow it would work. He kept shouting at me nearly the whole time. Talking to me as if I were stupid and couldn't hear. They are used to people shouting back I suppose. But I said nothing. At one point I said "I don't have much confidence in a technician." Then he tried to debate with me about that too, saying "But we will watch him." Yeah, we will watch him break it, I thought. Eventually he figured out that I wasn't going to take it to the technician. It is really hard for me to believe that a person like this is a teacher. And has so much respoinsibility and power. And influences so many young people's lives. The father also said "It doesn't want to obey" when he was telling his wife that the drive wouldn't work. No one asked me how I felt when it was clear that it was broken beyond repair. Manfred never apologized. I am not sure whether he realized what he did or not. But I didn't want to lecture him or make him feel any worse about himself. Not after he had just told me he has tried to kill himself. --- Yesterday xxx told me her father was drunk one night and smashed her 2 year old brother's head against the wall and killed him. The neighbors later confirmed this. Also - Manuel was yelling because Luis M didn't ask permission and he has done that 2 times (so I guess the parent is not learning) and he stayed out a long time and he lost his sandals. -- Have to write about adding math fractions. see charito1 and about understanding - mejor is cold water. --- nov 24 - last night daniela wrote and said she
was thinking of going to college and she was getting
along better with her mother. sure cuz her mother knows
daniel can leave soon. -- when i asked manfred why he had to be the one to make money to buy the christmas presents he said "because it is necessary." he said it as if he resented me asking the question, but he probably resented more the fact that his father was pressuring him into doing it. my questions only remiinded him of his pain. so he wanted me to stop asking them. he didn't want to face the reality that his father is using him, manipulating him and his father doesn't care about how manfred feels. i realize now that his father used the idea of manfred making money for school to manipulate him more. his father probably doesn't really give a shit about whether manfred goes to school. his father wants money for christmas presents so he won't feel so guilty for not being able to buy them himself. there is so much pressure to do what everyone else does here. like the pressure i used to feel to buy stupid fucking christmas cards. now it is a huge business. Daniela -- here are a few pics. A high school i visited:
-- When I look at the picture below I start to cry. I see the person in the middle posing for me. He kept looking up at me, trying to get my attention. He is so attention starved. People told me later he has problems at home. But I didn't need them to tell me that to know it. And I look at the person with the book on his head trying to block the hot sun. I think of the teachers and director standing in the shade. And I remember the Catholic school in Indonesia where the students told me they had to stand like this in the hot sun for two hours for two days the first week of school. And I think of the men walking around hitting the people with sticks. I think of how little I can do to change things. How little I can do to help meet the emotional needs of the young person who needed so much attention. I think of Daniela and hope that she will come and help me. Because I know with her help I could do so much more. With her I feel so alive, so awake, so motivated and inspired. Yes, D, it is chemistry. It is a chemical reaction. Talking to her last night helped give me the motivation to look at these pictures again. To select some of them to send to her. Now I look at the old man again. And think of how totally out of touch he is. He could barely speak English and what English he did speak was with a Chinese accent. But he knew his grammar rules. And of course that is more important than being able to say "What's your name, where are you from?" Almost no one in any public school in either Ecuador or Peru can say such simple things. They can't say "How old are you" or "Are you married or single or do you have a girlfriend." It is so discouraging to think of all the children and teenagers who are being hurt so much everyday around the world. And Daniela doesn't really understand why I want to kill myself sometimes. She can't feel the pain I feel, she can't know the intensity of it, because first, she is not me, second she has not seen the things I have around the world. She hasn't met as many young people who are being hurt everyday in schools and homes. Who are being treated like second class citizens, like slaves, like prisoners, like idiots incapable of thinking for themselves. But I have gotten some support lately from Manuel and Manfred. And I have met others who want to help even though they are trapped in the system. Anyhow here is the picture..
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.. bored students having to stand up and say
"good morning teacher"
.. a student helping me teach the english
class
.. when i asked them how many had messenger.
shows how exited they were to think of chatting with me
later.
... when i was leaving
.. the ancient professor trying to explain
some grammar rule about past possesive. the students had
no idea what he was talking about. none of them could
make a sentence using the grammar rule. and he had no
idea that they were totally lost. he was so completely
out of touch with them.
