Cena Navedeña

In anxious anticipation for her ballet routine. 

Today I experienced the splendor of the SJBS “Cena Navedena” (Christmas Dinner). It was an all day affair that started at 9am this morning with the building of balloon arches, candy cane posts from PVC pipe, poinsettias fashioned from balloons and a near death experience hanging out of the back of an SUV, trying to keep an industrial-sized freezer owned by our lunch-lady Grace (who also drives like her objective is killing pedestrians) from catapulting onto the carretera. Excuse the run on sentence, you might have to read it a couple of times…but there was so much I wanted to tell and periods were going to disrupt my flow. Cena Navedena ended at 8:30 tonight with Grace hauling away plastic chairs  in the back of her pickup truck stacked 5 ft. above her truckbed with her children riding on top of them. It all comes full circle. Needless to say, today was a uniquely Honduran experience.

Being one of two musically inclined teachers here, I played a large role in Cena. Too large, in fact. On guitar, I accompanied the 4^th graders in their remix of Jingle Bell Rock entitled “4^th grade wants.” “Fourth grade, fourth grade, fourth grade wants, presents for us and everyone else.”  I also led my 7^th grade integrado class in  “Home” from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (you can see a rehearsal video here) with the seventh graders and “No Woman No Cry” with the 8^th and 9^th, along with a guitar/piano  duet with 9^th grader Henry who wrote a song about undying love of an 8^th grader who is now dating his best friend. It was intense.

"La Reina"

The largest honor that I was bestowed with, however, was not in the delivery of this message of love, but instead was playing the entrance music along with heartbroken Henry for the “Reina de Cena Navedena.” There is nothing more Honduran than the conception of the Reina. This coveted prize goes to a girl in the school whose family “raises” the most money for the school the year before (Disclaimer: this idea is the brainchild of the parent assoctiation… not of BECA… if you need a catchup on the difference, check here). As a reward for the funds provided, she gets to wear a princess gown and sits on a throne for the duration of the 4.5 hour cena navedena. The idea is essentially: Buy your daughter a crown! This year’s queen was a kindergartener. She wore a beautiful gown, lipstick and eyeshadow. She looked very sleepy. Her mother said that she didn’t get to take her nap, but she learned that beauty is tiring. Isn’t she regal?

The Cena lived up to all of the expectations of a Honduran event: there was chaos, electrical equipment failure, it lasted 2 hours longer than it should have, there was too little food, and too much noise. But this Honduran-ness is really in its own way special. And, lets be real… these kids are ridic cute. I am going to leave you with a few pictures and a link (click here) to a 9 yr old named Derek who is my hero.. and apparently the hero of the girl at the end of the video as well.

The boys.

Feliz Navidad. In seven days I will be at the lookout on Oak Street, eating a Maui Bowl, scratching my head and wondering when I had woken up from the weirdest  5 month-long dream of my life. Then two weeks later, I will go back to that dream, torn between my desire to be back in a world that is filled with things and people that I love, one that mostly makes sense to me, and a world in which I get to sing with kids every day, get them excited about science, learn to play soccer  and experience things that I couldn't dream of.

Oh, and, I almost forgot… in the middle of performing with the fourth graders I looked out to the audience to the fourth row to see a woman with both of her breast flopped out of the top of her shirt and sagging to her belly buttons. No baby in sight. I am hoping that dad maybe just pulled the baby off before I looked up. Even still... both breasts? It was one of those things that you can’t really process in the moment because the experience is so surreal… and you’re on stage.  I think I pushed it into my subconscious until it was an appropriate time to take apart the moment. I will be working through this experience for a bit.

Two favorites. Jahir in the front is in kindergarten and is better at soccer than I am. No Joke.

The Power of Silence

Silence is something that I have seldom experienced in Cofradia. Living  with four roommates and next to the town square makes for a constant barrage of noise, be it from trucks rolling through the square, Reggeaton blaring from the billiards hall of ill-repute that catty-corners our apartment or the shrill “Yoooo hooo!” that comes from a  man who walks by with a cart of novelties goods that no one wants. (This yoohoo is less like a hello from a creepy man and more like a cry from a  16^th century courtesan soliciting services. “Yooooo hoooo!”

On Friday morning, however, we all reached a breaking point with the noise. At 5 am  we were awoken by a man ‘s voice booming from two large speakers in the park advertising $1 toothbrushes and $3 cell phone chargers. 5 in the morning!!!!! He kept at it for 15 minute stretches, until his voice got tired, I presume, and then they played some obnoxious reggaeton at a level that was worthy of making my bedroom a club.  Then the ads started again.

After an hour and a half of our tossing and turning,  cursing this man into the pillows over our heads, our alarms went off. We peeled ourselves off our mattresses  and with stinging eyes,  planned our sabatoge for this man’es operations. Our scheming wasn’t quite as productive as we hoped, though, and the final product ended with my trouncing over and telling the man behind the mic. “This is absolutely ridiculous. There is a community that lives here and you think it’s okay to blast this bullshit about toothbrushes at 5 in the morning?” To which he replied, “Public property.” Somehow it didn’t make me feel better.

I got to school and prepped my room for my 8^th and 9^th grade music class, which was to start at 7:10.  I waited and waited, and 7:18 rolled around and my students were still not lined up at my door. I looked over the balcony and they were all standing beneath me chatting away. I caught one of their eyes with the piercing teacher stare and he queued the others to rush up to the classroom.  Very calmly, I asked, “what were you all doing?” One of my students sneered at me and said, “Mister, we thought you were going to come get us.” I reamed  into them about my expectations for them  to be lined up after the first bell, expectations that have never changed from day one and told them to sit down, get out their materials and turn this day around.

 Frustrated, and feeling let down, I started my lesson on transferring what we knew about the keys of a piano over to the notes of a musical score. I asked them all to raise a hand and help me fill out the piano chart that I put on the board (something that they all knew and had a quiz on the day before). Silence. In the morning in which I was barraged by noise, I now had silence in the only moment that I had asked for noise. I waited, and waited… still no hands.  Boiling inside, I then sat down in my chair, crossed my hands in my lap and stared back at them for what must have been a minute. They all started looking at one another in confusion, and I said, “Oh I’m sorry, were you all expecting something to happen? That must be really frustrating  to be sitting around waiting for something to happen.” Embarrassed at myself for resorting to such intense passive aggressiveness, I tried to spin it, and looked them in the eye and said, “lets change this right now.”

I got through that painful lesson with mild improvement from the students ending it thinking, “I never want to teach again.” I then went out to the pouring rainy lunchyard for my recess duty, sitting with my raincoat over my head and hoping that no kids would come over and bother me.

A group of 5^th graders came running out onto the blacktop with hands raised in the air and mouth gaping open to catch raindrops. Squealing with delight, they stomped in puddles and sang, “Who let the dogs out!” Omar ran over to me, drenched and covered with mud, and with a wide grin he cried, “Mister, this is glorious.”  Zabdi, an elven creature who is the ringleader of the 5^th grade dumped a puddle out of her shoes, ringed out her socks and said “Mister, I am going to have to tirar these calcetines in the basura!” Bessie then came over and put her hand on my shoulder and said “Mister Greene, you need to stomp in puddles, be kid again!”

The bell rang, these creatures ran to class and I was left sitting on a chair by the blacktop, sopping wet. Silence for the second time today. I smiled, had a chuckle and felt a ping of ouch. This was the first time in my life that someone has told me to be child again. I never knew I had stopped being one. I would like to be more child. And a little more silence would be nice. Most of the time.

Math Songs in 4th Grade

To this day, whenever I need to divide by 3, 4, or 6, I run through times table songs that my dad taught me in 4th grade. He came into my 4th grade class in 1994 and taught my friends these songs and many of them still use them as well.

Since coming to Honduras, I pretend I am many-a-things. I pretend to be a science expert, a yoga teacher, a  drama teacher, an expert musician, and now I can add to the list: elementary-school songwriter. Ok, I didn't write the songs, but like Puff Daddy (ehem P Diddy) did in the 90's, I adapted these little babies coined by the papa Greene and they are way better than the originals. Sorry dad, but you can't deny I have better rythm.

Right after I finished these songs, a student raised his hand and said, "Mister, why don't you have one for 7's?" Another girl raised her hand and said, "8's mister?" implying that I have been lazy in my songwriting.... Back to the drawing board. Sevens and eights are in production.

Sit back and enjoy. My favorite part is clearly my right hand man in the front:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ms6TE6GKM

Movin' on Up: The Saga of my New Classroom

A blank canvas. The globe was the first thing to go up.

For the past 3 months I have been sharing a classroom with my fellow math teacher, Mr. Brian. We are both very laid back about the space, are respectful roommates and we have made a fine pair. I can’t think of an easier class “roommate” to have. We help each other out and use one another to bitch to at the end of every day, kind of like a married couple.

We got word at the beginning of this year that they were going to build a new classroom and one of us was going to get to have our own room. Although a new classroom is not in our eyes a top priority for the school ,we were excited about the prospects of having our own space and having our room free during our prep periods to legitimately prep (we trade off teaching in the room in a sort of chaotic tag-team teaching frenzy).

From its conception,  the evolution of this classroom project has been the perfect microcosm for how things work in Honduras. In order to understand this, first I must explain that there are two parts to our school. There is the nonprofit organization (BECA) who is based in the states and handles a huge portion of the funding from donors in the states, as well as  the hiring and coordinating of the gringo teachers and millions of other things. They work side by side with the “junta”, a parent organization  of Honduras who collaborated with BECA to make the school. The junta has its separate funds and is responsible for a lot of the financial decisions.

It is a really special model in which the community that we work within has a lot of control in the decision-making process: this is great, in theory. There is no denying, however, that anything that comes through BECA is extremely organized, timely, and well thought out and the projects that come from the “junta” are, well, Honduran.

My new classroom project was the perfect example. This summer, the junta decided that building a new classroom was a top priority. Brian and I function just fine sharing the classroom, but they chose this project instead of paying for textbooks, more training for the teachers or technology upgrades that our school desperately needs. It is so representative of a larger problem in Honduras in that Hondurans seem to conceptualize “progress” only in terms of building physical infrastructure.

Building a new classroom is something tangible and provides instant gratification. They fail to see the larger picture of what the students really need. Just to drive this point home, the last project that they proposed was to build a covered walkway from one wing of the school to the other wing so kids wouldn’t have to walk in the rain on the 10 days of the year when it rains during school hours. Absurd.

So anyway, we got word at the beginning of the year that this project might happen and, like most things here, you never know if something is actually going to happen until the day that it does. In September on one Friday, our principle told us that they were going to go ahead with the project starting on Monday. We were still doubtful. To our surprise though, the trucks started rolling through on Monday and for the next month, four men worked from sun up to sundown, hoisting bricks with a primitive pully system, sawing metal, and laying concrete. They worked all day.  Trying to teach through the construction was like hell on earth. It was impossible to teach over the noise and sparks from a soldering   (yes this is how you spell it… weird, right? I had to look it up) were literally flying through my classroom window. For a full account, of the chaos see a past post: here.

These men worked nonstop for a month and bam, there was a new classroom upstairs, with a roof and glassless windows and everything. Our principle came to me and said, “Mister, the room is done, you can move in now.” Excited, I went upstairs to find an empty classroom with open sockets for electricity without the accompanying wires, no desks and no whiteboard. I said, “Miss, there is no electricity, and no, whiteboard, and no desks, it will be difficult for me to teach here.”

My new classroom! It's.... blue!

She looked to one side, a little confused, and said, “la cosa es que…. (the thing is)” the junta only has enough money to finish the construction and now the money is gone. Are you sure you don’t want to move in anyway?” I gave the perfunctory pause, pretending to consider it, and judiciously said, “I would prefer to wait until the room is really ready.”

After men blitzed to get the room finished working all throughout the schoolday disturbing classes for a month, the room  just sat there empty, waiting for funds for another month. Well finally that day came. The junta somehow wrangled up the funds just in time to get it ready for “Intrega de Notas,” a day when all of the parents come to school to collect their students grades.

I just had my first class in the room today and it is awesome! It is upstairs away from the rest of the school, it’s quiet and well ventilated and is bright blue (awkwardly so, in fact). I asked them to paint it blue because the rest of the classes are of a sort of puke yellow. I was originally requesting to have them paint the inside of the building as blue, but instead, they painted the whole top story blue… lost in translation somehow. It is like teaching in heaven, on a cloud. I have a beautiful view of the mountains of Cusuco out my window, it gets an awesome breeze and the best part is that I have my own water cooler, a prized possession reserved only for principles and “Don’s” in these parts.

So, true to Honduran form, it was built a bit haphazardly. At many points I had my doubts that it would actually go to completion, but, alas,  Honduras has surprised me yet again with the delivery of this beautiful classroom that from its inception only really took 2 months. And I don’t even need to get up from my desk to fill my nalgene with cold water. Awesome.

The view of the mountains of Cusuco from my window.

Candy? How About Alligator Eggs, Kid.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. If any of you out there have experienced an Oak St Halloween, you can understand why. If you haven’t experienced it, close your eyes for a moment and imagine a world (oh wait, you have your eyes closed…. These two tasks are mutually exclusive). Okay, open your eyes, soften your focus and imagine a world where an entire street is closed down due to the sheer number of babies in winnie the poo costumes hobbling down the streets. Imagine a warm house where families, friends an neighbours (spelled the British way because it is magical) all come together in ridiculous getups, a night in which we are all actors, and we eat chicken tortilla soup (a Corinne specialty), drink spiced cider and mulled wine, and all of the action is over by 9pm.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to experience that marvel this year. Halloween here is seen by most members of Cofradian society as a celebration of the devil, and our kids did not come to school in costume, and no candy was flowing. In fact, I just heard today from one of our students that they don’t trick or treat because there is an old woman in town who somehow implants alligator eggs in the stomachs of kids who go trick-or-treating and rumor has it you can be fine for years and years, without knowledge of any danger, until one day the eggs hatch and alligators claw their way out of your stomach! I guess for the kids, the candy doesn’t really justify all of that hassle. I had a bout of malaria (another story for another day), and multiple experiences with “#4”, the other pottie term (like the term we use with little kids when they have to go to the bathroom and we ask “#1 or #2?” ). Having weathered these trying experiences, I can say that I understand why these students would want to avoid the trick-or-treating.

Once again, I digress. Back to Halloween… We knew that there would be no Halloween celebration in town, but the thought of letting Halloween just pass on by seemed depressing to us teachers and for the past couple of weeks we were trying to figure out how we could honor this American holiday. Finally we figured it out. There is a very nice private American school in San Pedro Sula (the big city about 45 min from us) called EIS. They have 50 international teachers and we have a good relationship with their school because one of our program directors used to be a teacher there. One of their teachers called one of our teachers and invited us to come out and play ultimate Frisbee on Saturday, and then stick around for their Halloween bash.

We jump at any opportunity to leave Cofradia, and excited about our new plans we whipped up some great costumes in a few hours. We took a bus into San Pedro and then a taxi up to their school, which was tucked away in this beautiful mountainous region of San Pedro with a massive wall that surrounded the school like a presidential palace. The armed guard flagged us in and the massive school stood in front of us, with beautifully kept grounds  and new buildings (with windows!.... something we don’t have at our school). This place is the nicest set of buildings I have seen in Honduras and it looked more like a private university than a K-12 Honduran school.

We played Ultimate Frisbee all afternoon on their beautifully trimmed field (I had to take frequent breaks because my lungs aren’t quite up to snuff from the malaria recovery). Afterward, we went back to an apartment complex where 25 of the teachers live. This complex had a 20 foot wall around it, an armed guard, and an electric fence. The apartments were immaculate and had A/C marble countertops, cable and internet and showers with hot water… and it is all paid for by their school! The cofradian volunteers walked into this other world that felt like Disneyland and  wide-eyed like pauper children, we eyed their nice refrigerators and microwaves with a mixture of envy for what we didn’t have and gratitude that we could call these teachers our new friends.. Then we all took nice long hot showers and put on our costumes.

Magical

We had some great costumes. 6 ft 6 Profe Matt found this really incredible unicorn costume that was about 7 sizes too small, but accentuated his nipple ring nicely… a piece of jewelry that all of us have yet to become comfortable with. We also had a nice group of ninja turtles, a Chiquita Banana,  a group of Chilean miners, and I was “Hurricane Mitch,” the hurricane that devastated Honduras 11 years ago. My costume was mildly offensive, but the Hondurans there seemed to enjoy it and nobody punched me in the face. We partied with a group of Gringos and Catrachos (Hondurans) on the patio of this apartment complex to the wee hours and got to pretend for a day that we were not in Honduras.

The teachers that we hung out from the other school were very welcoming and fun people. It was amazing to meet other teachers living in Honduras with such drastically different experiences. They all have cars, live in this beautiful modern place and they complain about their students and their families being spoiled rich and stuck up. We don’t have that. Any of that. And I don’t judge them for it. They are just two really unique experiences. It  did make me start to think about teaching at a nice international school next year. The money is great, you can teach without a credential, you still get to be living in another country, and the life is pretty cushy. This has been a great unique experience for me, but its financially unfeasible to volunteer for more than one year.

Hurricane Mitch

Ok, last blog I wrote about the other side of the river and how I was moved to action. I just want to write a disclaimer that I haven’t forgotten about that experience. But I do think that there is a middle ground that one can meet, making a difference and still acquiring a level of comfort. My godparents, Steve and Lisa are educators in a really nice international school the Democratic Republic of the Congo and just last week they told me of an opening at their school and I am starting to look into it for next year.

So, all in all I had a pretty great Halloween. No babies in costumes, no chicken tortilla soup, no jack-lanterns, but a fun night nonetheless. Luckily, the alligators haven’t started crawling out of my stomach. Yet. But I’ll keep you posted.

Is that a unicorn with a nipple ring over there?

Watch it with that Bible!

In preparation for finals for my science classes, I was nice enough to create a comprehensive study guide of necessary material for the quarter final. It included relevant topics, vocabulary, practice problems, and “things you should know how to do.” It took a ridiculous amount of time and I wanted to make it clear to my students that they must use it (partly because I want them to succeed and probably more so because I needed to justify to myself that the three hours that I spent on them was worth it).

I imparted upon them my intense desire for them to use this study guide by threatening a middle school form of death (aka- a full day of dentention) for not completing the assignment. This was a little heavy handed, but I wanted them to know that it was just THAT important. I gave them this threat and it didn’t elicit the look of fear I was hoping for. Weird. I chose another tactic, and re-emphasized the importance of the packet, telling them, “under no circumstances shall this packet leaver your side. This packet is your bible!”

A look of shock and disgust befell the class as students gasped in unison, “No, Mister!” as if I killed a puppy. Oops, apparently  comparing my worksheet to the bible not an appropriate analogy to be used with a group of 12 year-old Jehovas Witnesses and Evangelical Christians. After realizing my blunder, I backpedalled and said, “ok, ok …. It’s not your bible, but it is your science bible.”

I scanned the room for acceptance and I saw looks of trepidation and a bit head shaking. Then Cecilia nodded with acceptance, “Ok, mister, science bible is ok.” The rest of the class was brought back to baseline. Phew… got by with that one. Somehow through the outrage, I got the point across though. All 41 of my science students successfully completed and turned in their study guides… Something that has never happened for me with any piece of homework I have assigned.

All week I was waiting for the calls from the parents but they never came. I just can’t wait until I get to teach them evolution. Their heads might spontaneously combust. 

"The Other Side of the River"

As part of the 8^th grade “civica” class the students are required to do a community service project. This year’s class did a clothing drive and got donations of bags and bags of used clothing. They needed an extra chaperone today to go with them to deliver the clothes to  a school “on the other side of the river.”

“The other side of the river” is a both literal and figurative phrase for a place on the outskirts of Corfradia of which I don’t know if it actually has a name. At 9:45 this morning (45 minutes after we were supposed to leave… right on time by Honduran standards) the eight graders and I piled into the back of a truck with bags and bags of clothes and stuffed animals and headed to the other side of the river.  We  literally had to cross a flowing river in this truck that was about knee deep, a passage that would not be possible in your average sedan.

This part of town is where the real poverty is and the shift is clear. Houses are no longer made with the Cofradia standard cinderblock, but instead with whatever the residents of the “other side of the river” can get a hand on… wood, a piece of metal siding, some mud. Almost all of the students had never been to this part of town and they too were surprised by it.

We rode in the back of the truck (a liability which no American school would ever take) for about 15 minutes up a winding dirt road until we came upon a little two room school that was probably about the size of my living room in Laguna Beach. The public schools in Honduras only require education up until 6^th grade and due to limited space and resources, kids only go to school for 4 hours in either a morning, afternoon, or evening session. We were there for the morning block and there were kids sitting around the dark rooms with one administrator, not seeming to be doing much of anything.

Our kids were expecting a warm reception in their do-gooding and were disappointed not to have a hero’s welcome. After getting over that initial disappointment, they started passing out clothes to the surrounding kids, trying to match the kids with the right sized clothing. These kids clearly only had one pair of clothing and seemed a bit confused about their sudden luck and they took the clothes and held them in a way that I can’t really describe: as if they were given something sacred, They did not fight over clothing and were not in any way pushy. None of them balked or complained about the colors or the styles, they just held them close to their hearts with a little smile behind their eyes.

Soon the word got out that we were handing out clothes and kids started literally coming out of the forest over to the school. These kids were even poorer than the students at the poor school that we were giving the clothes to. Matted hair, shoeless, with rotting teeth and big eyes, they stood around waiting for us to invite them over to the truck.

I noticed a boy lingering on the outskirts clearly hoping to get something, but too timid to ask. I asked him how old he was and he said 9. With an eye infection, wrinkly skin and a small frame due to malnourishment he looked more like a 6 year old. I was searching and searching for something for him, with no luck. We had a lot of girls clothes, but were severly lacking in the boys clothing. I dug throught the clothes and finally found a striped t-shirt and a matching pair of striped socks. It was a little small, but I thought it would work. I gave it to him and his eyes lit up. He put on the striped socks and gave this incredible smile and said “I have shoes but I have never had socks!” And I smiled back and said, “now you do.”

This experience was powerful. Here I was side by side with the “poor kids” that I came to Cofradia to help, handing out clothing to poorer kids.  It was heart-warming to see these kids who I had perceived as poor giving their things away. The kids at our school, with the exception of a few, are by no means rich. But next to this little boy who has never in his life worn a pair of socks, they live quite lavishly. Poverty is truly relative.

This experience left me feeling sad, inspired, and overwhelmed. I am here trying to help these kids get an education in town when meanwhile there are kids outside of town who don’t even own socks. The number of people in this country that need help is shocking. It feels like we are here shooting a squirt-gun at a forest fire, and it is frustrating.

Above all else, though, what I experienced today was a feeling of supreme gratitude for the life that I have been born into. Why does the universe work in this way? Why was I born into my life and they were born into theirs?

Though I don’t have answers to those questions, I know one thing that is clear: My life has to be about using this status that the universe for some reason or another granted me to help children like the boy with no socks. I think it’s important that we all periodically take trips to “the other side of the river.”

Finales del Primer Parcial

Finals are coming. Next week. I think (I know) I am more stressed about them than my students are. Finals were much easier when I was a student then they are as a teacher. When I was a student I just had to make sure that I knew the material. Now I have to make sure that 41  twelve-fourteen year olds know that material: this task is proving more difficult. I can’t control their studying and I like being in control.

I feel so invested in their success. When they don’t do their homework, I feel so let down. I need to let go of that personal aspect of it. If they don’t do their homework, they probably haven’t been doing their homework for their whole lives. I shouldn’t take it personally. It is just so frustrating because I only have 45 minutes with them every day. The material falls on their shoulders and if they don’t want to learn, then they won’t. That is what gets me.

I have two kids in my 7^th grade class who have D’s. They don’t do their homework. Ever. I sent notes home. I have had the sit down talks. I have taken away privileges, I have tried reward, systems, they have gone to the resource teacher, and I send them to detention. Nothing works. It is so hard not to give up on them. I don’t think they are going to pass this quarter.

This week I am scrambling. I am making review sheets. We are playing Jeopardy review games. I am trying to seek out the subjects they are still struggling with and drive them home.

 Some things they have so much trouble with. My eighth grade Physical Science class is particularly difficult. The material I have been teaching so far (metric system and measurement) has been pretty dry. Okay, it's really dry. I try to make it as fun as possible, but lets be honest, converting units sucks. We all hate it. This class is so hard to teach though. They are a stereotypical middle school class. Laziness, attitude, and apathy plagues them. They are chatty and are always touching one another. They drain me so much.

Today I was teaching a difficult concept in density. 4 of the students totally have it and the rest are struggling. I have been teaching around this concept for  3 days and these kids are struggling translating the science into the the math. They have never combined these two things before. I have taken this subject from many different angles and today I totally got burnt out on it. I was doing a problem on the board, stringing them along, asking them questions as I went and they were slouched in their chairs giving me a blank stare (“Bueler…. Beuler?”). Silvia whined out in that “No, meeeester…..” voice that makes me crazy “I don’t get it.” Exasperated, I yelled, “Yes you DO get it!” Wow, really helpful, Mr. Greene. Nice one... I took a step back, took a breathe, and said, “we’ll take a stab at this again tomorrow. Lets play review jeopardy.”

Finals next week… crossing my fingers.

A Busito, 2 Chicken Buses, 2 Truck Beds and 3 Boats

 

Every three months, the volunteers have to leave the country for 4 days to renew our tourist visas. It’s a bummer that we aren’t awarded work visas for volunteering here, but the good news is that, because of this little problem, we get to leave the country for 4 days.

Cofradia has a special place in my heart, but lets face it, this little town is never somewhere where I would chose to live. Any chance we get to leave makes my heart flutter. Plus, for this visa trip, we not only got to leave but got to go to Belize and lay on the beach for four days. BECA, the organization that we work for paid for it and I have been looking forward to it for months.

We started our journey at 5am on Thursday morning, the 14 of us crammed in a small busito driven by a parent of the school (think of a very small minivan from circa 1983). We rode in this busito for 2 hours, crossed the Guatemalan border, and reached a bridge that was destroyed by the tropical storm that tore through Guatemala 2 weeks earlier. There were buses stopped and parked at the edge of the broken bridge and we waved to the group of  crafty Gautemalans on the other side  offering rides to the port where we were headed. They were clearly taking full advantage of this bridge incident.

Meanwhile we looked down to the rushing brown water and there were men hanging from the bridge pilons, cutting up the tree that took out this massive bridge with machetes. No chainsaws, no cranes… Needless to say, it will probably be a while before this bridge is functioning again.

There is a boat under there, somewhere.

In the meantime, a few locals were making a small fortune, charging people to cross the river. There were only 2 guys with little wood motor boats and we didn’t have too much bargaining power, they grossly overcharged us, we piled in this little boat with 4 other travelling gringos and eased across the river. The edge of the boat was inches above the rushing water and we were careful not to lean too far to one side.

When we got to the other side we were rushed into a busito for a small fee,  and were told we would be taken to the port. After 5 minutes travelling in this busito, packed like sardines with this farmer and his wife, we came upon a stretch of road that had a small river flowing through it. Ahhhh, get sus to Belize.  We were told to pile into a truckbed for another fee! We were sick of being had so we said, screw it, we will walk across the river. It was only about knee deep, but it stretched about 100 yards. We rolled up our pants and took a deep breath, and then a nice guy in another truck told us to hop in the back and he could take us for free for a bit.Twenty minutes later, he took us as far as he could, we hopped out and waited for a bus. Then another truck arrived offering to take us standing up in the bed to our port. We haggled a bit and got onboard.

The day continued this way…. Crossing boarders, fording rivers, haggling with drivers, and paying entrance and exit fees in three different countries. Two more boats later and a chicken bus we arrived at 4:35 pm, travelling no more than 250 miles over the course of twelve hours.

We stayed in little bungalows on the beach and first thing we did when we arrived was drink a cocktail and jump in the water. At that moment the journey was all worth it.

Placencia, Belize is not very far from Cofradia, Honduras, but they could not be more different. White sand beaches, perfect weather, delicious food and friendly open people greeted us and I felt instantly at home. Placencia is a touristy town, but it is the off-season and was quiet and mellow. There were no roosters, or dogs to wake us up, the homeless men there didn’t harass us and the streets were free from trash. It is almost eery to walk into Belize from the rest of Central America, like you have opened the other side of a portal.

I ate a Carribean fish stew, homemade icecream from a quirky ex-pat and laid on the beach for 2 days. For all the negative aspects of colonialism, it makes for a nice place for a four day weekend. But then there was the journey home….

Josh and Norah, a bit slaphappy.

Matt and Josh, mid-journey

Things That Make Me Feel Safe

Safety has become a hot button issue here. A string of scary and upsetting events that has occurred in the last couple of weeks, including some teachers from the other school in town being robbed at gunpoint on our walking route to school and the owner of a local restaurant being murdered, has made everyone in our program on edge, to say the least. So much so that one of our teachers told us tonight that she feels so unsafe that she has to go home.

We are trying to tackle the gravity of this news. It is very disheartening and all of us are feeling such a wide range of emotions concurrently. At the root of it all, we feel a sense of loss. We spend so much time with one another and to lose a piece of this of this puzzle is very disorienting. This teacher has been living in a great deal of fear (more than we realized) and hit her breaking point. We are sad for her, and sad for us. She clearly feels incredibly guilty for making this tough decision and it is not one that she has come to lightly, nor is it one that anyone would like to have to make.

Above all, though, I feel most sad for this teacher’s students. Many of these second-graders have parents in the states, are being raised by grandparents, aunts, or whoever can take care of them and consistency is seriously lacking in their lives. For some of them, school is the only thing in their lives that they can really depend on and in their little world, that consistency has been taken away.

I also feel angry. I’m angry that we all have to fix this with such little notice. We don’t have a lot of time to make this transition (two days in fact). We all feel overwhelmed already and are just finally starting to feel comfortable in our positions, learning what this whole teaching business is really about. At this moment, this added challenge feels sort of like being kicked while your down.

In times like this it is important that one feels safe. That is the root problem here, right, safety? I am taking the obvious necessary precautions (not taking my laptop on my walk to school, staying alert, avoiding travelling alone, we are trying to arrange a bus service), but there are other, more fundamental ways that I have found to help me feel safe. Most of these things are rooted in my “other life”. For example, my sister just sent a care package with dried mangos and Trader Joe’s trail mix. These make me feel safe…  As does peanut butter, following my friends’ lives on facebook, doing yoga on the back porch of the house, escaping into season 2 of Lost and finding new places to go swimming.

For example, two weeks ago, a past student of SJBS took me to a beautiful waterfall in a town nearby. That made me feels safe. Even more exciting, I just recently discovered that there is a pool in Cofradia. The fact there is a pool at all in this little town (where the only places in town with A/C is the evangelical church and a suspicious chinese restaurant) is incredible. It is no normal pool. It is an incredible pool equipped with beer and snacks. It is built from rocks and makes me feel like I am in the Neverland of “Hook”, the movie of my youth with Robin Williams. Roofio, roofio, roo-fie- oooooo… If you don’t know that reference, go rent that movie. Immediately.

Waterfall #1

I digress.  My point is that I am really trying to get in touch with these little reminders of the “real” non-Cofradia world. This town can feel isolating, and these reminders are kind of like the charms in “Inception,” helping me believe that I am real, and that something exists outside of this alternate universe that I have fallen into where I pretend to be a teacher and everyone stares at me. Okay, that might be a little ridiculous.

Today was a hard day for our team. Losing a member of this team (or family, really) plants the tiniest of seeds in all of our minds that packing up and going home is in the realm of possible choices. When down comforters, warm water, and bock choy seem so tempting already, that seed of doubt can undermine the work that we are doing here. Maybe, though, this whole thing can pull us closer together. Either way, I will grasp on to these little roots with all my might.

The new "spot."

Construction and a Coati Bring Terror to Earth Science

Monday was tough.  I arrived at school at school at 6:45 to print out all of my worksheets for my day and the school printer wasn't working (note- this is a common occurrence here. Technology has a very short life due to the heat, humidity and dust). I had 3 lesson plans to print and two worksheets. Panic… a bit of anger. I worked all weekend on these plans!

I ran across the street to the Zelaya’s house (the wealthy and very generous family who built the school) to print in their office. Their 35-year old son Andres helped me with the printing. In the process of helping me told me he is having an oral test for his English class tomorrow and asked me to help him after school.  I am very behind on lesson planning, I feel super-overwhelmed, and I have a list of things to get done after school. The last thing I want to do is go over to his house after 7 hours of school and teach him English… I said yes.  I then cursed under my breath, and marched over to school to make the necessary copies.

I got my copies made and rushed to teach my earth science class. They are  sawing metal 5 feet away from my class. They are welding a stairway for my new classroom that they are building (more on that later) and there are sparks flying in through my open window into the classroom.The noise is racking on my brain,  and no-one can hear me. I do my daily homework check and half of my ninth graders didn't do their homework!!  Not only did they not do it, but one of my ninth graders excuses was “I was in San Pedro (the big city) all weekend.” This was the last straw, I yelled “Digna, if you think that going to a big city and enjoying yourself for a weekend is an acceptable excuse for not doing your work, you are sorely mistaken! You are a 9^th grader and you need to take responsibility for your actions.” Deep breath.

 I walk to the board write out the warm up and suddenly get a whiff of a really awful smell. I lookdown and there is  a disgusting pile of unidentified excrement. Is it vomit? Is it poop? Is it the entrails from an animal. The only possible culprit could be a coati (a Honduran rodent that looks like a raccoon). It must have come in through my window (there is no glass on our windows…. Allows for better air flow in rooms without A/C). Whoever left it, whatever this pile is  it is right where I am supposed to be teaching. I get a broom and shuffle it out of my class. Maybe I should start teaching something today, I think to myself.

Enemy of the State #1. The likely culprit.

This is a little window into the challenges  that we face as a volunteer teachers in a bilingual school in Honduras. The littlest thing (like a non-functioning printer, your kids not doing their work, a construction site 5 feet away from your whiteboard, or an animal shitting on your floor) can throw you over the edge. Add a bit of heat, no A/C, and waking up at 5:45am, and you have the perfect recipe for a crappy Monday pie.

We have a phrase among the group of volunteers that is a sort of mantra when we are faced with challenge and adversity. And that is "Embrace it or it will crush you!". 


There is only so much one  can embrace in the period of an hour on a Monday morning... before you start crushing children.


*Disclaimer- There were neither children, nor coaties harmed in the preceding events presented in this blog.

5th Grader With a Crush

On Friday, we celebrated "Teacher's Day" in Honduras. It was pretty special that the first "Teacher's Day" that I have experienced in my life is as a teacher. It is a holiday that we must adopt in the states and the  fact that we don't have it is a reflection of a larger issue: the teaching profession is neither respected nor compensated sufficiently in the states.

But enough about the states. You want to hear about Honduras. I ended up getting a few cards from some kids on Teacher's Day and it really made my week. It's amazing how when you are having a shit week something so small can really lift the spirits. I teach middle school and while they may like you as a teacher and think you're pretty cool, they would never tell you. They don't idolize you, smile, and give you hugs in the same way that the elementary kids do. 

I didn't get anything from my own middle school students for "Teacher's Day" but I
did get a card from Johny, a 5th grader who is one of my favorites. Johny has a lot of energy and likes to learn. He is very active, loves speaking English and is intense. I taught him science in our 2 wk summer academy and one of my favorite parts of teaching of my day was watching the wheels turn in Johnny's head when he thinks. He thinks really hard.  Johnny is pretty popular with the teachers and plays soccer with all of us every Friday afternoon. He also makes some pretty sweet cards...

Johny deep in thought

I also received a nice note from 5th grader, "Naomi". She is a little fashionista who is a stellar student and loves science. I taught her as well in summer academy. She gives me cards on a semi-weekly basis. She might have a little crush and with every note that she delivers she becomes more emboldened. This was the most recent card that she gave me:

The part that confuses me is the bit about my walk. The only thing that I can imagine she would be referring to my awkward swagger that I have adopted because I am so sweaty  due to wearing pants in 95 degree weather. I never want my legs touching one another.

The Leg Cramp

Things have improved vastly since my last post. On Friday, after Dia Del Nino, I left with a group of teachers on a bus to Tegucigalpa, the capital city, to see a group of guys that we have befriended who are part of a band called "Montuca Sound System." This group of guys is very special. They are very politically minded and worldly and really fun to be around. Their frontrunner, Carlos, looks like a young Francis Ford Coppola is one of the most generous, and easygoing guys I know. Carlos has brought music to the school and has started a drumming class after school on Fridays. The kids are enthralled with him. They think he is a god. Wait a second, he might just be.

SIDENOTE: I had no idea Carlos's band, "Montuca" was such a big deal until we went to see "El Origen" (Inception), at the movie theater and there was an ad for "Claro", the biggest cell phone company in Honduras with Montuca Soundsystem playing in it).

I digress.... So anyway, we packed our bags, excited to get out of the heat and dust... and crime for a weekend. We stood in line to put our bags under the bus, when we noticed that the guy in front of us was checking a silver 45 mm handgun! And then another man, separate from the first, checked a black 45mm. In these situations one is not sure whether to be relieved that the weapons are being checked, or terrified that two of the men on our bus are strapped in the first place.

Six hours later, I had long forgotten the ordeal with the guns and we arrived in Tegucigalpa. "Teguce", as the locals call it, is in the mountains where the air is much crisper (well, as crisp as the air of a city that houses 4 million people can in fact be), and the temperature is cooler. The streets are serpentine. They rise and fall, and made me ache for San Francisco. The city has a great deal of history as well and it shows in the  architecture varies from the standard cinder-block structures that we have been used to seeing.

On Saturday, we went to the free outdoor concert  for the  Festival Orgullo Catracho (Honduran Pride Festival) in central park and enjoyed some sunshine. We spent the afternoon in the oldest bar in Teguce where the back porch may just be your neighbor's garage,  had a clothesline  with old rags drying on it and a tree growing through the middle of its ribbed metal roof. Their signature drink is an unidentified pink beverage called "el calambre,"  which roughly translates to "the leg cramp." Two "calambres" later and the origin of its namesake was clear.

That night, I ate one of the best meals of my life at a little restaurant called, "Habia Una Vez"  (There Was a Time). It was a real restaurant and I felt like I was in Manhattan. The restaurant also serves as a gallery for local artists and had incredible paintings and drawings. One of the owners is Peruvian and one is French and they feature a contemporary international cuisine that blew our minds after having spent months eating refried beans and baleadas. Highlights included: smoke salmon wrapped around cream cheese and a slice of peach, a spicy ceviche, and bacon wrapped shrimp with apple glaze. Delish.

The weekend was a much-needed break from Cofradia and left me feeling really recharged. Plus, we got to stay in a hotel with, just wait, HOT WATER! Taking my first hot shower in months made me feel reborn....like, in the way that the Christians talk about it. Plus, I got my money's worth from that hotel. I took 5 showers in a period of 2 days. Wasting water.... maybe. Feeling of entitlement... for sure. I  do believe, however, that  I have paid back the universe enough in free labor for the benefit of Honduran children. Ya, I deserve five showers.

A Hard Week

A visual representation of my insides.

This started off as a very difficult week. I received my second bout of “Honduran Fury,” leaving me hugging the pot at 3 am on Monday night with violent fits of vomiting and diarrhea. I ended up unable to leave the 10 yard radius my bed and the toiled and had to miss school on Tuesday.

Missing school is a big strain on the staff here. We don’t exactly have a list of substitutes that we can call up when we are in a bind. Thankfully though, I am surrounded by an awesome group of roommates in “manpartment” and before I could even ask for help on Tuesday morning, they came into my room and told me they already had my whole schedule covered between the 3 of them. Good guys.

I started to feel a bit more functional on Wednesday and tried out going to school. At 6:25 am, while I was en route to school, I saw a group of gringo teachers from the other bilingual school in our town about 100 yards ahead. This is the same route that we take every day. I saw a  black SUV pull up to them and three men jumped out and robbed them at gunpoint. They came away safely, but the thieves got away with a good portion of their funds for the school.

This robbery has been among a series of sketchy experiences that we have had in the last week (including my 3 yr old running shoes being stolen from the balcony as well as some of the teachers’ food money stolen out of their house).  When a gun is involved, though, it really hits you hard. This experience really freaked us out and made us re-think the way that we travel to school. I have been taking my laptop every day to and from school. That has now stopped. More than anything though, it just made us really angry and fed up. It’s hard not to want to say “screw this place” after something like that happens. We have been able to accept the lack of hot water, the “different” cuisine, and the intermittent diarrhea, but being robbed at gunpoint is something that none of us can wrap our head around.

My week then got worse with my sickness coming back and causing me to miss school again on Thursday. I finally went to the doctor’s house across the street (who is also our landlord and one of the originators of the school) and I got antibiotics. This is my third time taking cipro in 3 months…. Can’t be healthy

The good news is that the Cipro got me back up and running just in time for “Dia del Nino” (Kid’s Day). It’s like Mother’s Day… for kids. We had parties at school, broke open piñatas and the teachers performed, which included the male teachers doing a choreographed dance in skirts to “Put a Ring On It” by Beyonce.  And I got some pictures of some ridic cute kids. Enjoy the photos. The next post is more positive, however, I feel that as an active member of “manpartment” I must follow our cardinal rule every once in a while and “keep it real.”

"Welcome to my day...."

Really proud of her headband.

Matt with Josue, his pet monkey.

Wrangler's ad.

Twilight and Wild Boars: My First Home-visit

The view from my balcony. Completely unrelated, but nice, nonetheless.

Last week, I had my first introduction to a ritual that I will complete fourty-two times in this upcoming year: the home visit. Home-visits are something incredibly unique to our school and one of the aspects of the program that drew me to the school.

BECA tries as much as it can to integrate itself into the community that we serve and at the foundation of that is the relationships that are developed between the students, parents and teachers. This relationship is fostered by each teacher visiting every one of their students in their home.  By doing so we get to have a better idea of the conditions in which our students are living and have a better understanding of the dynamics of their families.

The middle school team is composed of Mr. Brian (a math teacher who taught with BECA last year) Profe Matt  (the 6 foot 6 congenial English teacher who doesn’t speak much Spanish) and I. We decided that being that Matt doesn’t speak Spanish and that Brian already knows the parents from last year, it would be best if we travel in a  small gringo herd to visit our students.

I didn’t really know what to expect from our home-visits (except for the presence of refried beans, tortillas and mantequilla, which was later confirmed). The Hondurans that I have encountered so far in Cofradia have seemed grateful that we are here helping out their community, but on the whole are not particularly warm people. We are seen clearly as “others” and the stares that we receive whenever we walk past a group of people is a bit, well, uncomfortable. The lack of warmth was really surprising to me, after having spent so much time in Colombia and Argentina, where I have found people to be almost overwhelming in their warmth and hospitality.

The three of us sat in a small living room at our first home visit, two couches facing one another, with the student next to me and her grandfather sitting in a chair watching the news, which was showing gruesome images of twelve Hondurans that were killed in Mexico en route to the states. Terrifying images and awkward silence. Our student was texting on her phone and showed me an image of her dad that she had taken when he left to the states a year ago, on the same route that the twelve Hondurans took and met their death. My own discomfort with the images on the television at that moment seemed trivial.

We tried to make small talk with our student while her mother and aunt were preparing dinner. We talked about her one true love, Twilight, the vampire series that has enthralled teenie-boppers worldwide. Then dinner was served. Refried beans, plantains, mantequillla, scrambled egg and meat adorned the table. Her mother sat down and joined us and we started talking about her daughter, and we praised her as one of our best students (which was entirely true).

As we were eating we noticed that the grandfather was still sitting in the chair watching us intently with a grin. Kind of weird, we thought. After about a minute of that, he asked us if we were enjoying the meat. Yes, it is quite good, we replied. Then he asked if we knew what it was. Um, beef? I asked, with a bit of trepidation. He beamed with pride and said, “It is wild boar. I shot it on Friday. Here is a picture.” He handed us his cell phone with a pixilated picture of, sure enough, a fat wild boar laying on its back, tongue hanging out of his mouth, with his feet in the air. We all started laughing and the conversation lightened up from there. One home visit down, forty one to go.