Greetings from chilly, Portland, Oregon! We have spent the last few days up in beautiful Portland, as we work to get our writing workshops back up and running inside the Donald J. Long Juvenile Hall, given our longtime partner, PSU (Portland State University) Capstone is no longer running the groups. The exciting part, probation wants to continue The Beat Within and helped us to arrange a volunteer orientation, which we held the other day. We had over 11 participate in the orientation, many very familiar with doing workshops during their time at PSU. Today, the best part, we are back inside the juvenile hall to run our workshops, as we get the ball rolling. With that said, be on the lookout for Portland writings from all the youth in detention. All right, lets hand over the reins to the very reliable OT.
We would like to welcome back you readers to another double dose edition of great writing from the one and only The Beat Within. This is OT once again, addressing you readers from the hot and humid climate of Managua, Nicaragua in Central America. For many of you reading this, and I would say a good 99 percent of you, fall just ended and the winter season is slowly creeping in. For me, in my country, summer is just barely getting started.
Yeah, you heard correctly, summertime folks! This means, over 100-degree weather and over 60% humidity over here. For most of you who don’t know who I am or know my story, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I am used to that weather, and it’s my favorite kind of weather. I can handle 60’s, 70-degree weather, but not 100, with 65% humidity! This is Florida weather! No offense to you Floridians but I don’t like that weather!
So, I am a little homesick. Even though we are on different climates, I’m always in tuned of what’s going on in your communities, thanks to my friends, colleagues, the news, the internet, and most importantly all you gracious writers that demonstrate great courage in sharing your personal stories each week.
See the truth is, you all keep me up to date on what’s going on in your lives when I read The Beat Within, and I really appreciate that sincerely. I believe it’s important to learn to appreciate people even when you don’t know them, because it’s those people that you don’t know that can be your greatest teachers in life. Let me explain:
I came to the country of The United States at a very young age of four years old. The first couple of years I lived in San Francisco, then the next couple of years I lived in Daly City and throughout my life I kept rotating from San Francisco to Daly City, and eventually, the entire Bay Area. But at the age of four, I obviously didn’t know how to speak English, so I was placed in English learning classes when I was in Kindergarten and the first grade.
I was a fast learner, I managed to learn the English language fast and before you know it in 1st grade I was already reading 3rd grade level, well that was according to my teacher. Who knows how accurate that really was, but I bought into it because that gave me the confidence that I needed to keep wanting to read and learn.
I loved to read, and that was my thing when I was little, so I learned fast. I don’t remember the sweet ladies who helped tutor me, and in my memory bank I could barely and vividly picture an old lady showing me every day after school how to speak English with flash cards, and computer programs. This was when IBM’s were popular, and the Apple computers actually looked like an apple. But I am very thankful to those people who took the time out of their own busy lives to teach me.
May God bless those people who showed me because that motivated me as a kid to set goals for myself. I adapted to the English language quickly because I loved the music. When Dr. Dre first came out I was about 6 or 7 years old, and MTV Raps was the most popular thing on TV. You could have easily caught me rapping the lyrics to “Ain’t Nuttin’ But a G Thang.” It goes like this: “It’s like this and like that and like this and uh, it’s like that and like this and like that and uh…”
Young me, thought he could rap, I’m telling you! I used to listen to Eazy-E, NWA, New Edition, Montell Jordan, some of these artists you may know or not know. I am grateful for this music because this allowed me to adapt to the culture in America quick and it allowed for my English to develop in a real natural way.
I didn’t have an accent anymore by the 3rd grade and I was already speaking slang, and I was slowly losing my touch in my Spanish language. Spanish became my second language even though nobody in my family knew how to speak English, besides my cousins, my sister and me, but that’s because we were the new generation.
Fast forward now, some twenty plus years later, and I find myself back in Nicaragua after spending four years incarcerated, I get deported to a country that I never actually lived in since I was a very young child. I was deported to Nicaragua on December of 2013, in a completely different time and era from when I was first born.
This time my English is “the white man’s English” and even though I could speak Spanish pretty fluently, there were plenty of things I still didn’t know. I wasn’t used to this culture, nor this slang, because for those of you who are not familiar with the Spanish Language know that Mexican Lingo, and Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Argentina, the list goes on, has different meaning to its words. Some words are considered insulting in one lingo and some words considered normal in the other. So, you see how complicated that can be.
It’s November 2018, and I had to reteach myself this culture, meanings of the words, and holidays. I still struggle with certain things, but I can manage, but my point is that when I got here. I didn’t know what bus went where. So, I asked strangers at the bus stops what bus would take me to work.
I appreciate those people who showed me the little things here, because I didn’t know anybody. I appreciate the people who showed me where to go shop for groceries, where to go open my bank account, where are the good clean restaurants, etc. Because guess what? Sometimes we need help from those people that we don’t really know.
Just like some of you who have done, county jail or prison time. When you make some food, or bust a spread, and you have some left over, you always look for someone who needs food to give it away. You don’t give it away to the person that has a lot of canteen and snacks. You look to give it away to the person who needs it.
This is how knowledge works within our community. We all seek it, because we need it. So I need you guys to step up every week and tell me about yourselves, about your problems and how you plan on solving them, because I have kids your age now. I need to learn how you think, I need to learn how the new generation acts, thinks and responds. So, again, I appreciate you all for sharing your poems, your raps, your stories, and your life lessons.
Many of you talk about that you don’t have nothing to do but read. Folks, if you are reading, that means you are doing something super productive. Because in this life, in order for you to learn, reading and writing comes with the territory. By reading you will learn vocabulary, language, grammar, you learn how to read the story, how to tell a story.
Most books have a good moral to their story or a strong positive message. You could read about your history, or you could read about sports. When you are done reading, then do some writing people, because when you write that’s when you really start getting to know yourself. I am thirty-three years old and till this very day I do a lot of writing because guess what?
Many of us forget that we all have a story to tell. Many of us forget the journey that brought us to where we are at today. Many of us don’t realize that others want to listen to our stories, until we actually share them. So, how do we get to where we want to go in life? Well, first you have to know where you come from. Don’t be afraid, to tell me and the world your story. We want to listen, we want to learn from you. So, if you ask me “why do I write?”
I write to teach and I write to learn and I appreciate you all for allowing me to learn through your stories. Thanksgiving is around the corner, so I would like to give you guys a quick holiday shout-out. You’re probably not in the best situation, but you are also not in the worse situation. Appreciate, what you got.
One love to all of you going through the struggle or an obstacle. Remember, appreciate those around you, appreciate your life, and most of all appreciate the struggle. The struggle is what will make you a better person. One Love, OT is signing out! And The Beat keeps going and going…