Description of an Incredible, Personal, Teaching or Learning Experience

Carla Gomez-Monroy

Sept 26, 2003

My most incredible learning experiences have been outside of school, when doing social work.

When I have participated in social work projects, I was supposed to be part of the givers ---the teachers, the guides, the mentors. Nevertheless, at the end of the work period, I have always felt I received, learned, and realized so many beautiful things.

Once, in rural Mexico, the kids expected me to know all the trees, flowers, and herbs; all the illnesses, breeding periods, and cares of farm animals; all the methods that they use to process and cook food; and even all the insects.

When they discovered that I didn't know things that for them were so obvious, they were amazed. It didn't take them long to turn my ignorance into fun for them and for me. While walking about the town, the valley and the hills, they would ask me the names of trees and plants only to burst out laughing at my mistakes. They would teach me the names, always by pointing at the objects in question, and the next day they would test me. It was utterly funny for them to see how I got so mixed up with all the different kinds of cactuses. To me they all looked the same. By the end of the month, I could recognize them all.

From the grown ups and the elderly I also greatly received and learned. Some times they insisted I try doing things myself to better understand a process or technique, not to just hear about it nor to just watch someone else do it, but to experience it myself, to truly learn it, though not skillfully because that came with practice.

Once, when I was asking about their corn production process, Don Nachito told me, "It is definitely not the same to hear about how to do something, and to see how to do that something, and to actually do that something." So, he took me to where some people were sowing corn, and invited me to try doing it myself. I had to actually learn the skills of making holes with my toes, dropping the seeds exactly inside the hole, and covering the hole back with the side of the foot while keeping the seeds all inside.

So much knowledge is usually not appreciated. These people are considered ignorant or unintelligent because they don't know how to read and write. Should we be called not-self-sufficient just because we don't know how to grow our food, how to farm, how to kill a goat and prepare it for cooking, how to live with no running water nor soap, how to enjoy nature, people, simple human values, and ourselves?

I learned to receive whatever they offered me because they don't have much. So when they offered me something, it was with all their heart. I learned to respect their customs and to enjoy and adapt myself to their daily life-style: very different in many ways from the ones I was brought up with.

These simple people, in simple ways, showered me with the greatest of lessons and learning experiences.