Friendship Bracelets Fixing the Wrong Kind of Friendly

Friday 7/30/10

My final friendship bracelet making class just ended and it’s starting to become real to me that I’m going to have to leave the Center soon. Over the past three weeks I’ve been having two-hour friendship bracelet making classes on Friday afternoons in the Crafts Corner of the library thanks to the librarian Arlen and the support of a scholarship student Ariel. I brought 2 giant bags of friendship bracelet string down here with me, and “Knots for Nicaragua Part 2” was actually supposed to be an afternoon dedicated to friendship bracelet instruction and construction for the youth in the center. Alas, that one time event happened to occur on an extremely hot Wednesday 5 weeks ago hours prior to a hospitalization caused by dehydration and a stomach virus. I thought the event was a loss, because I was having difficulty instructing the kids in Spanish and I had to rush out on them after only teaching them one bracelet pattern. However, weeks after I found myself being constantly bombarded with the inquiries of kids (especially a pair of sisters Stefany 9 and Juelkis 11) in the community about when the next class was going to be. I decided to take action and met with Arlen to schedule the class as a weekly activity. The class size and make-up varied every week, but there were always between 20 and 30 enthusiastic kids ready to learn about friendship bracelets. For those kids who attended every class, they made it from your basic Chinese Staircase all the way to the Cherokee and I was so proud of their work ethic. I even found out that Gerardo had students that were arriving an hour late to his painting class because of friendship bracelets- oops!

The classes were certainly tiring though, with just Ariel and I running around to the constant yell of “¡Muchacha!” and “¡Muchacho!” Which to me translates as “Hey lady/guy!” and I still don’t know how I feel about the fact that I respond to that title. Reflecting on levels of respect and politeness, I think today’s class was particularly stressful and frustrating. The class consisted of twelve boys between the ages of 10 and 12 and four young girls. The boys were consistently making snide remarks and side comments about me, even to the extent of addressing me directly as “Gringa”, telling me they “love me” in English, and asking me if I will move to Nicaragua for them. It was not all twelve of the boys, however, the fact that even within the walls of the Center a few young boys feel that is acceptable to act in this manner makes me ill. Even though my summer in Nicaragua is almost over, I still cannot get over the way that men treat women here. There is a bright spot though. Each time a boy would call me “gringa” or “chela” (“white girl” or “light-skinned girl”) Ariel- who is 17 and very shy- would chastise, “Her name is Hollis so call her Hollis.” Having Ariel help me out with the class has made me realize how important the scholarship students are as role models in the center. Ariel has an important role in the lives of the kids in the library- far more important than me- even though he may not fully recognize it. (That is why I think the personal narrative project is so important and I can’t wait to see the final results this week!) Rudeness and all, I think taking the time to do the friendship bracelet classes were worth it even though some of my other projects, like the Google Map project, have been put on the backburner because of time constraints. It’s great to be able to share a skill as simple as making bracelets with string, and see that kids are enjoying themselves and getting something positive out of the class.