In December Working Waterfront published my article on “Lobsters in Retirement,” an account of the seminar my husband, Jim, and I ran for our local Learning in Retirement organization. I was subsequently contacted by Amherst College: could I give a lecture on some aspect of U.S. culture to 15 indigenous Bolivian university students who were spending January in this country on a State Department program? Few of them had ever been outside Bolivia and most spoke no English, but all had been selected because they were leaders in their communities. As a professor of Spanish-American literature I could certainly speak to them, but I am no expert in U.S. culture — except for what I knew about Maine’s lobster culture. As the students are economics/political science majors, I could stress the importance of lobstering to Maine’s economy and remind them that the industry’s self-regulation is a world model for sustainable fishing practices. Amherst College accepted.
Vocabulary presented some challenges. Dictionaries don’t have Spanish equivalents for “to lobster” or “to stern,” for example. Our Power Point show of Friendship harbor, however, was a hit, as was the calendar of Maine Lobsterwomen. Bolivia lost its Pacific coast to Chile in the late 19th century, so the students had little idea of ocean fishing, but some of the men were avid freshwater fishermen. One fished in Lake Titicaca, at over 12,000 feet the highest navigable lake in the world; another was from Bolivia’s eastern jungle region, where there are 3-foot electric eels. “If you drink the blood of an electric eel, Profesora,” he said solemnly, “it will charge your body and make you very strong. The only trouble is that lightning will pursue you ever after…” Right. Seems there are good storytellers in Bolivia, too.
Since the students had never eaten lobster, I asked Amherst to serve lobster salad at the break. To make it the chef had boiled up a six-pounder, and here I had so stressed Maine’s policy of preserving large specimens for breeding.
“You are consuming what would have been a great progenitor,” I announced.
They had some more.
I asked the students what had been the best part of their visit. “American girls and lobster!” they said. One spoke to me privately after class. “What I most like is getting to know real American people. They aren’t a bit like what we hear from the Bolivian media.” Let’s hear it for more student exchanges.