Thought of the Day: Change is Hard

This does not have to do with Obama.

There are lots of people trying to change things here in Guatemala. The other day, driving through lowlands of Guatemala my friend Galan pointed out to me villages where they had placed hundreds of dry latrines. These latrines with a steady supply of human waste and ash from their cooking fires would eventually make great fertalizer for land which now really needs it (the land used to be rainforest, so it doesn´t stay good very long) . The latrines have the added advantage that when it floods (which it fairly often does) the waste doesn´t come floating tothe surface. Hardly any of these dry latrines are being used today. There happend to be a lot of flies around when they were placing them and many believed the latrines caused the flies. Rabbits, which make great fertilizer are becoming more popular here in Guatemala, but, if it´s sucha good thing, why isn´t everyone realeasing themself from taking on debt everytime they fertilize and having to work another job to pay it off? Well, I guess it´s just because change is hard. Besides who knows why your crops seem not to be doing as well year after year. Some ancient elder sayd its because the people don´t ask permission from the mountian gods anymore to plant, they aren´t doing the ancient rituals anymore. Or maybe it´s because you don´t have enough faith in God... you only go to church twice a week, or because you still hold onto some ancient traditions along with your Christian faith. Saber (who knows in Guatemalan spanish).

Reading is not a strong tradition with Qe´echi´, it will be part of my job to try to get students to think critically and independently and reading can only help with this. But why would you read if your dad hardly does... or anybody else in your family for that matter. And simply working seems alot more profitable. What can I show a student to make him believe that learning to read well could really be advantagous for him or her? I don´t think trying to explain why I enjoyed Unamuno´s Niebla will work and reading el senior presidente would beway to hard. Even in the states, to try toget us to read, we resort to tricks like a pizza party for students who read so many pages.

I was thinking discouragingly about Guatemala.

But I then realized how hard it is for usto change to. My old soccer coach used to always try to get us players to understand that stretching actually isn´t a good warm up. Studies show no drop in injuries and a loss in power with stretching. Dynamic stetching is theway to go. The players never believed him and stubbornly kept stretching. I just read iin the NY times just how right Sieber was. I still strethc a litte bit though too. How long have we known about global warming? And how long have we hardly done a thing? How long have alternative energies been around? Read Moneyball to learnabout how stubborn baseball execs are to changing how they evaluate players. Cigarettes will cause cancer. We will have shortages of water. Race is not a scientific reality. Women are equal to men. We´ve known these things for a while.

So that´s the thought. Change is hard for human beings. Even when the writing is on the wall.

Jordan