The truck stopped where the track it had been following turned into a path. “Just wait here,” the driver said as he pulled down the back to let us off. “Your squad leaders will be here soon.”
Then he hopped up into the cab. He shouted for us to clear the way, and, with his head out of the window, backed rapidly down the narrow track and disappeared, leaving us standing there in the small forest clearing.
“Does anyone know where we’re going?” one of the older boys asked. The rest of us shook our heads. “Then I guess there is nothing to do but wait.”
At first it felt good to stand and move about after the long bumpy ride, but eventually we began to settle down. There was a fallen tree across the narrow path. The older girls claimed the log, and the older boys lounged against trees or found a rock to perch on. The rest of us put our rucksacks on the ground and sat on them. It was well past noon before we gave up straining our necks toward the path, looking for someone to appear. No one dared start a song. Who might be out there, just beyond earshot, in that dark forest?
We barely whispered to one another as we nibbled our lunch like rabbits. I suppose I should have been comforted by the knowledge that I wasn’t alone in my fear, but I wasn’t. I wanted the older ones to be brave. I wanted my comrades to say to me that there was nothing to be afraid of.
Across the narrow path, a lizard poked its head out from under a rock. It seemed to study us, and, satisfied that we were harmless, slid out and climbed the rock to a patch of sunlight on top. It sat with its head still and erect, but it curled and uncurled its little striped tail as though making the most of the warmth. I don’t especially like reptiles, but that little curly-tailed lizard reminded me of home. They are everywhere — even in Havana. For a few minutes, it made those woods seem less alien.
“Shh,” said Carlos, one of the older boys, even though we were being very quiet. He had seen someone coming down the path. “He has a gun.”
We sat in frozen silence as an armed man came into view. And then we saw that he was being followed along the path by a young man and a young woman. They were both wearing the uniform and badges of the Conrado Benítez Brigade. We all began to laugh out of sheer nervous relief. The soldier was one of our own, protecting the pair who were to be our squad leaders, Esteban, our jefe, or commander, and Lilian, his assistant. We jumped to our feet, eager to follow them into our new life.
I don’t think we hiked more than two or three kilometers before we came to a settlement of sorts. Esteban told us this was our base. The thirty of us would be scattered about at various farms in the area, but on Sundays we were to return to base. “You will report your successes and your failures, and we will try to help one another become better teachers,” he explained.
“And we’ll have fun together, too,” said Lilian. “It won’t be all work.”
I felt a little annoyed when she said that. I had come to work with the campesinos, not to play with other brigadistas.
The thirty of us, ten boys and twenty girls, were divided into neighborhood teams. Esteban carefully parceled out the boys so that each team would have one boy. Juan was the boy in my team, Maria the other girl.
I had watched Maria at lunch, while she sat on the log, eating her sandwich. I guess I always notice the pretty one. She had bright eyes; long, black, glossy hair; and the kind of skin my mother would have gushed over — she was the sort of girl the older boys would notice as well. I guessed she must be a couple of years older than I, and as it turned out she had recently turned sixteen.
Juan was shorter than I was, although he looked to be about my age. His cheeks were pimply, and he had a cockiness about him, but that might have just been to make up for his height. He seemed disappointed that the boys had been separated and that he would have two girls to work with. But he shook his head, as if to say, Oh, well, it can’t be helped, and gave us a grin as he walked over to get acquainted.
When we were all standing about in our little teams, Esteban said, “Look carefully at these two people. Your team members will be the brigadistas you will know best and depend on most.”
Esteban and Lilian began our orientation by sharing some of their own experiences. We knew they had been chosen to be our squad leaders because they had already proven themselves to be excellent teachers, so we listened as they reminded us that we must be respectful of our students, that we must write to our parents — and bring our letters on Sunday so that they could be posted — that we must take good care of the materials that we were given, and that we must keep a diary of our observations, our successes, and our failures.
“With so much that’s new, it will be easy to forget important things,” Lilian said. “You must write them down the day they happen.”
And the same lessons we had been taught in Varadero were repeated in the mountains, step by step.
Step One: Conversation. Look at the photograph in the student book and find out what the students know about the picture. Encourage them to talk and or ask questions about the picture and figure out the meaning of the picture.
Step Two: The Reading. First, the teacher will slowly and clearly read the text beside the picture. Then the teacher and student will read the text together. Finally the student will read the text alone.
Step Three: Practice and Exercise. Seek recognition of a phrase or sentence. Break up each phrase or sentence into syllables. Examine each syllable within an exercise.
The first image in the primer was a picture of a number of men in suits and dark ties conferring together. And the word to be learned was OEA, which is not a word at all but three vowels that in Spanish stand for the Organización de los Estados Americanos, or as it’s known in English, the OAS, the Organization of American States. When I first saw that page in Varadero, I wondered what those initials would mean to a poor farmer in a remote mountainous area of Cuba, but once the master teacher explained it, it seemed quite obvious.
After our successful revolution, the United States began to put pressure on the governments in the OEA (or OAS) that had been allies of our former dictator to oppose our new government. We needed the campesinos in the remote areas to understand that because of this situation, we were unable to import many needed goods, including medicine, tools, and machinery, even trucks and tractors. These outsiders were determined to ensure that our revolution would fail, so that the old order could return in triumph.
The initials OEA, our teacher said, were a good way not only to convey a political lesson, but also to introduce three vowels to people who had never heard either of the OEA or the concept of a vowel. So, ironically, our enemies proved a great help to the literacy campaign, without even knowing it.
Step-by-step, students then would move from learning vowels and consonants to learning words, short phrases, then sentences. At the same time, the lessons would help our students understand about our country after the revolution — about land reform, cooperative stores, the conversion of buildings that once belonged to the rich into homes and schools for the poor.
But our primary goal was literacy. Our leaders knew, and we knew, that in order to become a strong nation, we needed strong citizens. And to be a responsible citizen, you must know how to read and write.
We learned a lot in those three days. Although I never got to know Juan as well as Esteban had predicted, my friendship with Maria began that first night at base camp. In the late afternoon, Esteban gave us hooks and told us to find a place to hang our hammocks outdoors. There wouldn’t be room for thirty of us to sleep in the small houses surrounding the clearing.
“C’mon,” said Maria. “There aren’t that many good places, but I scouted out a spot earlier, and if we hurry, we can grab it.” Maria’s place was at the edge of the woods. Two giant ceiba trees stood side by side, about a hammock’s distance apart. There were no blossoms yet. It was too early, but the foliage, even the thorns, was magnificent.
“Perfect, don’t you think?”
“Perfect for one hammock,” I said. “A
s long as you avoid the thorns.”
“No worries. I’ll make it work. You hand me the hooks.” She found a safe spot and screwed a hook into one of the ceiba trees. Then I handed her a second hook and she screwed that in the other ceiba. “Now, give me your hammock.”
I unbuckled my rucksack and took out the books on top to dig down into the bag to get my hammock. She watched me, clearly amused. “Loaded down with books, I see.”
I blushed. “I couldn’t live without something to read,” I said.
“Well, you’re the one who has to carry the extra weight. Here, give me that.”
I handed her my hammock, which she quickly stretched between the two trees.
“But what about you?” I asked.
“Don’t worry,” she said. She took a third hook and screwed it into a nearby pine. Then she hung one end of her own hammock on the same hook holding one end of my hammock and stretched the other end to the hook on the pine tree. “See?” she said. “Nice and cozy.”
Although we had been squashed tighter than peas in a pod in the truck, our rucksacks and lanterns poking each other, sometimes painfully, it was that first night at base camp that we really became a squad. Esteban and two of the other boys had made a fire in the center of the tiny village. We gathered there after dark, and Lilian asked us each to introduce ourselves — where we were from and what we hoped would happen this year while we were brigadistas.
I didn’t learn too much about my comrades through those self-introductions. All of us were students. Most of our parents had been reluctant to let us join. All of us wanted to know at the end of the year that we had successfully carried out our mission.
But Juan said he hoped to be eighteen centimeters taller by December. And Isora’s story was the big surprise. She was only twelve — the only person in our squad younger than I.
“My papi signed for my sister Adria, who is fifteen,” Isora said, “but he wouldn’t sign for me, no matter how much I begged. So, what could I do? I copied his signature from Adria’s permission. It was perfect. I’m a good writer. And Adria would never tell.” She giggled. “Adria sneaked my bag on the bus for me, and Papi didn’t know what had happened until he saw me waving good-bye from the bus window.”
Everyone, including me, clapped, but I really didn’t know if I was impressed or horrified.
Carlos had a guitar, and after the introductions, we started to sing songs we all knew by heart. At first Carlos played comic songs of the street, but as the embers began to die, the songs grew more melancholy — songs of lost love and far-away home. It was hard to sing past the lump in my throat. “I miss the sea already,” he said, and sang a song I’d never heard of stars above the water.
We were all quiet for a long time and then Lilian said, “Look at the stars.”
I bent my head back to look up. I thought I’d seen stars before, but it had always been in the city, with all its lights. And in Varadero we’d been in our dorms soon after dark. So I drank in the sight that first night in the country. Where there are no lights, and even the moon is hidden, the sky is like a bucket of diamonds thrown across black velvet.
Later as we lay in our hammocks, our toes close to our shared hook, Maria told me how much she had hoped we would be teamed with Enrico. “You know who he is,” she said. “He’s the good-looking one. With the beautiful smile.”
Enrico was tall and quite dark — admittedly the handsomest one of the four older boys. He did have very white teeth and a lovely smile. “He’s nice looking,” I said.
“Nice looking? He’s fantastic,” she said. “Which one do you like?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m really not old enough to be thinking about boys.”
“Pooh. I bet your mother told you that.”
I blushed in the dark, because I did know which one I liked — Carlos. I loved his playing and his singing. He had the heart of a poet. I was sure of it.
“No boyfriends, eh? Just books. So, what are all those books of yours about?”
“Only three,” I said. “I just brought three books.”
“Well, what are they about?”
“One is a collection of poems by José Martí. The fat one is an English novel. I need to work on my English while I’m here.”
“And the other?”
“I had to bring my English-Spanish dictionary so I could look up words in the novel.”
“Oh,” she said. “You must be quite the scholar.” I wondered if she thought I was trying to show off. I hoped I didn’t seem to be one of those snooty intellectuals my mother had been afraid I would become.
“What’s your novel about?”
“It’s — well, I guess it’s a kind of a love story.”
“A romance novel?”
“I never really thought of it that way, but . . .”
“North American?”
“No, English. It’s set in the early nineteenth century, so —”
“Really old-fashioned European stuff, then.”
“It doesn’t feel so old-fashioned.”
“And Martí? You like him?”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I guess everybody’s supposed to, but I could never really get into him. The teachers were always telling us what everything meant — everything he ever said. I got a little tired of it.”
If I had hoped Maria would be another Norma, I realized quickly this would not be the case. Nor would she be a wise and sisterly Marissa. She turned out to be just Maria, and, in the end, that was enough.
I never even tried to talk to Juan about literature. He and the other young boys seemed to think about nothing but war and politics.
The three nights we were together at base camp, we ended every evening with Carlos leading us in song. The next two nights we danced as well. On the final night, the nearby campesinos emptied their houses and joined us — even the little children, who should have been long asleep. They taught us a dance of the mountains that none of us had ever seen before, and Maria and little Isora, who had television sets at home, taught everyone the Twist, which was the newest craze from North America. It seemed strange to be dancing like our enemies, but I have to admit it was fun. Even solemn Esteban was twisting with delight. “I don’t care if it did come from them,” he said. “It’s better than bombs.”
It was time to leave the base camp and go to our new homes. Even if there were still jumping beans in my stomach, I felt reasonably prepared, and I truly wanted to start my assignment. The three of us — Juan, Maria, and I — were going to an area not much more than a half hour’s walk from base. Lilian took Juan to his place, but Esteban felt it was important for him to introduce us girls. I suppose he wanted to indicate to any reluctant men that he, as a man, had approved us to be teachers of men.
We stopped first at Maria’s farm. Everyone rushed from the house or from across the field to welcome her with open arms. They were so excited, they said. They had hardly been able to wait for their very own teacher. Maria, in turn, was almost jumping up and down as she expressed her own pleasure that she had been permitted to come to their home and be with them. She just knew it was going to be a wonderful time all around for everyone.
I watched her and, I must say, I was impressed. She didn’t seem a bit anxious. In fact, she acted so happy that I felt a pang of envy watching her. Any feeling of superiority I might have developed at base camp melted on the spot. Maria wasn’t going to have any trouble relating to illiterate campesinos. She was practically a member of the family already — long before she had even opened the primer to page one. At any rate, I would soon realize that I had been so preoccupied with watching her interact with her new family I had not even looked at the house she was going to live in. If I had, the first look at my own new home might not have been such a shock.
I hope I was able to conceal my dismay as we approached the house where I was to stay. It was a two-room shack, not a proper house at all. The walls were built of rough planks with palm thatch for a roo
f. At least there was a real door and not just palm branches across the entrance.
The farmer was out in the field, but he spotted us coming through the trees. He came to us, carrying his hoe, and spoke a quiet greeting to Esteban, whom he seemed to know, then smiled shyly at me. Esteban told him my name. He told me his — Luis Santana — and started to extend his hand but realized how dirty it was and simply wiped it on his pant leg.
“Welcome,” he said formally, and walked hurriedly away to the house. I supposed he was telling the rest of his family that we had arrived. Esteban and I waited outside the door. It may have been a few minutes. It seemed like hours. We could hear some talking inside, but not what was being said. There were the high-pitched voices of little children, objecting, as I imagined, to having their faces washed before they met the strange visitor. I smiled at Esteban, trying not to show how anxious I was, but he sensed it and patted my shoulder.
The family finally straggled out of the door, following their father, who now offered me a clean hand and repeated his name. Then he stepped aside and presented his wife, whom he called Veronica. The three children were tiny, so I guessed that Luis and Veronica were perhaps younger than they looked. Their faces were as dark and leathery as dried tobacco, and their hands, when they shook mine, were very rough. The little boy stood stiffly beside his father, and the even smaller girls hid behind their mother.
“You must meet the teacher,” Luis said. “Tell her your names.”
The boy whispered something and then the little girls did as well, but their hands were covering their faces, so I had no idea what any of them had said. I knelt down close to them. “Excuse me,” I said. “I didn’t hear your names.” The boy looked at his father for help while the tiny girls giggled behind their hands.