IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 64

Yes. I believed them. I went through primary and secondary school, attended a college
prep school and the university. I got degrees
in both majors for which I signed up. Not
having money for taking the bus didn’t
bother me; I stopped listening to my belly’s
protests during extremely long periods of
study and going without any food at all,
because inside I felt so very hopeful for A
Better Future. But it wasn’t just about studying; we also had to comply with all the
demands, among them repeating a slogan
that should always sound the same, strong,
and as if coming from one, unified, living
voice. These slogans traveled with us
through stints at Rural Schools, of which
there were six, each one period lasting 45
days. There were three years in secondary
school, three in college prep, until one
reached 18 years of age. All these stints
were at very similar agricultural camps, in
terms of their construction and living conditions. They were mixed camps, generally
units, one for females, and the other for
males.

ly, I always had a nylon sack to wrap my
mat in, or else my allergies would have
gotten really bad and I wouldn’t have been
able to sleep on it all.
There’s not much good to say about the
dining hall: it had long benches, generally
in twos, often forming table-bench ensembles or, occasionally, a block. I’d really
rather not talk about the food. At breakfast,
for example, there was always old bread
and powdered milk that tasted scalded and
had lumps. It could take them up to 45 days
to learn how to prepare it properly. Those
of us from poor, working families, with few
economic resources, depended on this
breakfast to sustain ourselves. The rest of
the meals were a bit more elaborate most
times, but even if you ate them, you were
still hungry afterwards.
If you didn’t have any food stored in your
suitcase, or some friend offered you some
of their food, you could get a little bit of
sugar and mix it in a glass of water, and
resigned yourself to waiting for the next
meal.

The walls of these units were made of wood
or masonry, had a palm or concrete fiber
roof (it was quite rustic), and one or two
doors. Of course, there had to be metal
bunk beds with frames measuring about ¾1 inch in diameter. They also had something like hard cardboard berths (the material was made from sugar cane bagasse).
They were joined together with a soldered
bolt that maintained a 60-70 centimeter
separation, creating a space that only one
student could occupy. The bottom was
about 50 cm above the floor. The height
between the two levels of the bunk bed
allowed the lower occupant to sit up in bed
with his or her head just a few centimeters
from the upper berth. A wadding-filled mat
served as a mattress. They were very well
used, so much so that they couldn’t absorb
even one more speck of dust. They smelled
old and musty and had little wadding pills
that made it difficult to rest on them. Lucki-

I remember the bathrooms well, both the
showers and latrines. The showers were just
water spigots about ½ inch in diameter.
They were joined together by a wider pipe.
The cubicles were in a row, shared dividing
walls and bare had enough space for one to
use one’s feet and spin around without
touching their ugly, dark walls. They had
no doors; in their place a few black nylon
sheets or sacks were hung, or sometimes it
was a friend’s towel. They shared a common drain, so we’d stand on a wooden grating to not put our feet in the run off from all
our ablutions in the showers, both females
and males. Often, there were six or eight
cubicles that might be placed in rows facing
each other. From the outside, it looked like
a small unit that was divided in two, with
an entrance on either end: one for females
and another for males.

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