Meet Celino (pronounced sell-EE-no). He is 13 years
old, and in ninth grade. Last year, he was in the class I was in charge of, and
he was our class leader. He is usually quiet, but intelligent, organized, and
sometimes even businesslike. His backpack even looks like a briefcase, and he
always tucks his uniform, a white button-up shirt, into his floodwater pants.
He used to not talk to me
one-on-one much, but one day last year he came up to me and started a
conversation, and suddenly a flood of questions was pouring at me. Our
conversation went something like this:
“In America, do you carry
buckets on your head?”
“No, we carry them with our
hands. And we don’t use buckets as often as we do here.”
“And, Miss Teacher, are you
married?”
“No. Are you?”
“I’m not married, I’m only 12
years old!”
“How do you get to America?
By car or by bike?”
Another day, he and a girl in
his class were hanging out on my porch, and when she disappeared for a moment,
he whispered to me, “Miss Teacher, that’s my wife!”
He also wanted to give me
his money so I could bring him back a toy plane when I went to visit the US. He
tried to save up, but apparently it didn’t go so well:
“I got some money together,
but then a mouse carried it off.”
He was a big fan of the way I sometimes rewarded students during class:
"Miss teacher, you know those little paper things you gave out during class?"
"Yes Celino."
"I need some."
"You need some stickers?"
"Yes, those. I am needing some stickers."
And, the one that made me
have to squeeze my lips together to not burst out laughing:
“What church do you pray at?”
“Catholic church.”
(without pausing at all) “But Miss Teacher…I’ve never seen you eat sugar cane.
Do you?”
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