I like to write with somebody in mind, with a fresh conversation in my head. If you have been following these pages you would have noticed that I drop initials, since not all my interlocutors appreciate to be mentioned in these lines of mine. So I was thinking whom am I going to mention today. But I can’t. If I would mention all of those that have contributed to this lines here under, you will read the whole alphabet of initials, and some will be anyhow repeated. The list, by the way, would start with my parents.
As it happens, I was moved to venezuela when I was 8 years old. In my own recollections my parents never had a great opinion of the venezuelan educational system, but my mother was extremely and exaggeratedly supportive of whatever my achievements were, so I don’t remember to have ever been too concern about my future.
And then of course, I got a kid myself.
I must say that I hate the dutch educational system. It is extremely functional, from a societal perspective. But from the individual one, is horrible. Or so I think. I guess I could write pages and pages about it, and probably some day I will, but let it suffice to say that I think that whatever was the intention of the venezuelan system, the one that educated me, I consider it superior and way better. I frequently wonder about my parents. How did they deal with the inferior venezuelan educational system?
But was it so inferior now?
You know, the alternative hypothesis is that I can only appreciate what I know, what help me to become who I am. And I am doomed to disagree with whatever decisions of this dutch thing. So then is not about the argentinian against the venezuelan, or the venezuelan against the dutch, or the russian or the french against the dutch, the venezuelan against the north american, or the italian, or the german, or even the swiss!!
It might be all about us. The parents that are growing their kids somewhere else.
I suppose that every other parent, anyhow, is doubting and cursing and trying to get their own kid ahead. If they did not know another system, they anyhow knew another time, which might be the same after all. But what I know for sure is that this thing of raising your kid abroad… this thing… this thing is like decide to migrate all over again!
Do we really deserve this hell, all over again?
I believe that people that have not migrated can never know the cost of tearing away our roots, of disengaging with all what made sense to us. Yet we do, because that is what we migrants do. It costs and we expend years wondering and cursing ourselves for the stupidity and the pain of being away. Eventually we settle. We can not go through that discussion with ourselves every morning, so we settle, and we decide that whatever the consequences, we moved. So we will try to make the best out of this silly new country. And then, few years down the road, we get kids, and the whole consideration is alive again. Every one of the decisions that we painfully took, are there again to be made over.
Once upon a time I told my son that he is lucky to have grown in NL, since from here you can get anywhere with little effort. Now I wonder. Maybe I’ll try to get him to stay put.
Maybe.