Political Days

It's been a pretty quiet year so far, politically speaking. We haven't missed any days this year due to unrest. Today, however, there were demonstrations downtown and some of our families at school were a bit nervous. People are protesting the high cost of living. Food prices have skyrocketed in the last couple of months, and for people who were already poor, life has become intolerable. Now they don't know what to do, or where to turn, so some have taken to the streets, burning tires and, in some places (not our city, as far as I know), looting.

We have been getting phone calls asking if school is going to be canceled. In some ways, this is similar to a snow day - the way you sit with bated breath listening to the radio or watching the school closings scroll across the bottom of the TV screen. But political days aren't benign holidays, times to sip hot chocolate and go sledding. They are days of anxiety, often. They are days when we wonder what's coming next, and our students wonder even more than we do because they hear their parents speculating on the direction the country will take, obsessing over the radio news, calling their friends and sharing the latest story they've heard.

It's always nice to get an unexpected day off in the middle of the week, for whatever reason. Even if you deplore the reason, you can't help but enjoy not having to go to work. We've had these breaks in the past for demonstrations, days of reflection called by the government, strikes, times when too many children were being kidnapped, days when foreign troops were arriving, even an attempted coup d'état. People who have lived here longer have had many more, for successful coups, for staying indoors while tanks were rumbling down the street. But as much as we like sleeping in and a change of pace, I hope that this year will end without any political days. I hope we'll have a normal, boring school year this time around, when kids complain about not having enough excitement.