Help!

Two SJBS drama clubbers searching for donors

Did you read my blog at any point last year? Did it make you laugh or cry? O.K. that might question  may be a bit presumptuous, but even if my posts didn’t elicit such a strong response from within, I think we can all agree that, at the least, you got a clear idea of what my experience was like.

In doing so you must have seen that volunteering as a teacher at San Jeronimo Bilingual School was the most important, challenging, and rewarding thing that I have done in my life. Whether you saw a video of the middle schoolers that I taught the integrated art class to singing renditions “Home” or “No Woman No Cry” or you were amazed that my  1^st-6^th grade drama club was able to pull off a complete musical production of the Jungle Book,  it is clear that despite the  obstacles that I faced (lack of hot water,  intestinal parasites, malaria etc…) it was a labor of love that was incredibly important to me.

I’m not going to beat around the bush. I am writing this post with a specific need.  BECA needs funds. The organization just opened another school in Vida Nueva, a community close to Cofradia. It is incredibly exciting to be expanding our model to another community in Honduras that has a large population of at-risk kids who are eager to learn. 

This expansion, however, has put pressure on BECA’s extremely limited budget (roughly $100,000 a year).  With this budget, funded almost solely by individual donations, BECA houses and feeds 16 volunteer teachers/yr,  (I was one of them, remember?), a feat that makes these students bilingual education affordable and possible. This budget also allows for 25% of our students to get scholarships to attend our low-cost school (by far the lowest-cost bilingual education offered in Honduras), provides two scholarships/yr to graduating students who are of financial need who want to attend bilingual high school, and provides a minimal salary to our one Program Head (a salary that should be much greater than it is). The program head is the only paid employee of BECA.

I can personally attest that your donation will be put into the most worthy of causes and used in an incredibly judicious fashion (BECA functions on very little overhead). Here are a few ideas of how far your $ could go in Honduras:

$18         You could feed a volunteer teacher for a week (Amazing, right? I can’t remember the last time I paid $18 for a dinner out!)

$120        You could fund a K-9 teacher classroom budget for one year.

$350        You could fund “Libros y Familias”, a family based literacy program that    ends with the  donation of a book to each family (sometimes the only book a family may own.

$650         you could pay for the internet service at SJBS for one year.

$2,100     you could sponsor a high school student to attend a bilingual school after graduation from SJBS.

$5           You could help us work toward any of the aforementioned objectives.

The point of all of this is that your donations truly go so far. Unlike donations to a large aid agency, there are minimal “administrative costs” to run this organization and you know your money will be put to good use.  To donate go to becaschools.org and click on the icon “directly donate to the school.”

Please help this organization to continue to do their oh so important work. The work that it does in Cofradia has transformed the lives of countless families, has unified a community provides incredible opportunities to at-risk youth (who are also incredible human beings,  who also happen to love music and drama  and art and sports and all things kids). Seriously, there is no donation too small.

Thank you for your help and thank you for following my blog. It was a truly transformative experience for me, one that I hope to enable for all of the volunteer teachers to come.

Signing off until I once again have a blog-worthy life circumstance…

-Nathan

* visit becaschools.org to donate!

Stuff That Happened This Year

"Pulapanzak" in  Honduras. It is 112 feet tall. I swam behind it!

     1.     I swam in 9 waterfalls.

     2.     I learned how to make pupusas, baleadas, and pastelitos by hand.    

     3.     I had two intestinal parasites, discovered I have an abnormality in my ear canals, and got malaria.

     4.     I sang and played guitar with 42 middle-schoolers in a performance with Honduran rock-band  Montuca Soundsystem.  

     5.    With the help of Miss Andrea and Miss Amy, I directed a musical with 18 1^st-6^th graders.                               

     6.   I watched a group of teachers get robbed at gunpoint at 645 am on our walking route to school.

     7.       I went to a Honduran funeral, 2 welcome parties, 6 birthdays, and 5 going-away parties.

     8.     I drank more Pepsi this year than I have every year of my whole life combined… and I never really enjoyed it.

     9.     Two SJBS students’ parents were murdered (this year). Prior to this year, I had never known a person whose family members were murdered. Now I know 4 of them: all students

     10.   I discovered how precious hot showers are to me and how I can survive without them.

     11.   I mastered the art of the bucket shower.  

     12.   I was punched in the kidney by a doctor, I peed in a baby food jar at a medical clinic and paid less for medical care for the whole year than my monthly health insurance payment in the states.

     13.   I read 9 books. Don’t judge… this is a big step for me.

     14.  I rode in the bed of a truck approximately 73 times (this is an estimate).

     15.    I almost spent the night in a Honduran jail for not carring my ID. Lesson learned.

     16.   I made dinner with a team once/week for 14 people with $11.

     17.   I discovered that pretty much anything could be sold in a little plastic baggy.

     18.  I taught a whole year of science about topics that I had never learned in school.

     19.   I ran a science fair.

     20.   I was amazed by the depth of middle schoolers in a discussion about the necessity of art in our society. They actually came up with the concept that art can be used as a healing technique. Wow.

     21.   I gave 9 falta menores (detentions) and 2 Falta Mayores (“major dententions”)
 22.    I taught in pants in a classroom without A/C on numerous days that weather.com marked the “feels-like” temperature at 113.

      23.   I met Dina. This one is special.

      24.   I paraglided  over Lago de Atitlan in Guatemala with Amy Marie.

      25.   I missed down comforters, leafy greens, farmers markets, my puppy, specialty beers, my friends, my family, and my bird. In the process, I came to appreciate them so much more. 

A Class of Orphans

It is the last full day of school today. We just finished our last Integrado class with the 7^th grade and the students presented their “Exploration of Self” projects. For this assignment, they could choose from a number of different project ideas (poems, songs, short stories, dances, bringing in objects that mean something special to them etc.).  The students just left the classroom and I am left here bawling.  Every student in class cried today. I cannot believe the depth of tragedy that so many of our students have experienced at only 12 yrs old. They presented teddy bears to the class, poems, jeans given to them, pictures…  all remnants of  a father that was murdered, a mother that died this year, or parents who have left them to work in the U.S.

So many of these stories, I didn’t even know… I spent an hour and a half with these kids every day and I didn’t even know these some of these hugely important things to them.  I didn’t know that half of my class (or more) was living without one or both parents. How awful. It is our goal to visit every student in their homes, to get to know their families and their homelife, but through this crazy year, I only got around to about half of them, and I didn't even know.

I am left feeling so many things:

- incredible admiration for the courage required of these kids to share these things (in a middle school class, no less, among kids who for whatever reason are in the meanest stage of their lives);

- Anger that that the universe allows for such suffering in such young ones

- helplessness that I can’t rewind the clock and give them all a different version of childhood

- anger toward the parents of these kids who left them behind to pursue a better life in the states (while I know that some of the main motivation that they left was to provide for them…. But kids need parents! They need that above all else).

-gratitude for the amazingly supportive home and community that I grew up in.

- Awe for the maturity of our students.

- A reminder of the terrifying fact that at any point this life that we have been given can be taken away from us and a reminder of the importance of cherishing it.

In writing my final reports and organizing my lesson plans for the next teacher that will take my place, I am seeing that I have taught them a great deal this year. They now know about the reactants and products of photosynthesis, they can spout off the function of villi in the small intestine, and can tell you the difference between renewable resources, nonrenewable resources and ways that we can individually work to slow global warming. In the process of teaching them these things that they might forget (well, probably will forget),  I have also taught them things  that they won’t forget, like the importance of honesty, communication, support, pride in themselves and their work,   responsibility to their work,  their families, their school, their community and most importantly to themselves. While I have been helping shape them, though, they have been shaping me.  They have taught me the importance of follow-through, that using negativity to respond to negativity never works, that students will come up to the standards that you set,  that 12 year-old minds are incredibly complex, that providing structure gives way to creativity, that even I can do whatever I put my heart into (if I want to be an art teacher, I can be an art teacher…. I guess I didn’t choose that role though, it kind of plopped into my lap). 

I have learned so much from this class.  When I say goodbye to Cofradia in 3 weeks, I will leave carrying pieces of all of these kids around with me for the rest of my life.   In the meantime, I have to go run to the cafeteria to get a baleada before the elementary schoolers buy them all… selfish little buggers!

The Feria is Leeching my Soul

The feria has been in the park for 23 days. I have fond memories of the fairs of my childhood... funnel cakes, ring tosses, cotton candy, farm animals, rides that mom wouldn't let me go on because she "didn't trust the crafstmenship of carnival workers".

This fair has none of those things. This fair has ten stands that all sell the same fried chicken, tejadas, and Tecate, a lot of drunk Honduran men, homemade fireworks lit in the midst of crowds, and the music... oh the music. There is a large stage that gets pulled in by a semi-truck on semi-weekly basis.  Performers of  Reggaeton, Ranchero, Bachata, and trance are a-plenty. This stage is about 50 yards from my window. The bass shakes my room into the wee hours of the morning and I scream into the abyss of sound.

This past Sunday was particularly bad. One stand in the park had karaoke. Hondurans LOVE karaoke. I used to love it. Now I hate it. I want to cut karaoke. Here is a little window into my experience with karaoke last night. 26 days and counting.

Meet the Cast

*Photos taken by Norah Tahiri

 Grecia is the only first-grader who was allowed to be in the production. This is no ordinary first-grader. She speaks better English than most of our 9th graders. She is also a doll. She knew everyone's lines and performed with her whole self. She is also known for her great hugs and valley-girl priss.

Tania is a precocious youngster who breaths drama club. One day I was sick and had to cancel drama club. I heard about it for weeks. As "Old Monkey" Tania gave her line with gusto: "Presenting King Louie, king of the Monkeys!"

 Irma is our 6th grade rock. She played Bagheera #1 and wowed the crowd with her awesome voice and dancing skills. She's super positive and a born leader.

 Fabiola grew leaps and bounds in this role. Initially bummed that she couldn't play something girly, she had her hesistation about the role. We turned Shere Khan into a wicked-witch sort of character, gave her some gloves with nails and the tranformation occured!

 Giselle saved the show. She played Mama Wolf, Kaa 1, Elephant Soldier and Monkey. In every number all children looked to her for the next line or dance move. She is Grecia's (little wolf at the top) sister. They were always ready for drama club.

 Lucia has tons of energy. We ran into trouble at the beginning of the year channeling that energy, but she grew hugely! She shined as a part of the snake body.

Johny is featured here in his Papa Wolf costume, but is better known as Colonel Hathi, the elephant. He has a fierce march  and I will forever remember his line delivered in deadpan yell (think Austin Powers unable to control the tone of his voice) "A MANCUB IN THE JUNGLE? THIS IS TREASON! SABOTAGE!"

 Alex shared the role of Mowgli with Erick. Both were equally awesome so we had them trade off. Every time they switched, we had them tag one another out. We tried to place the tag-outs at super awkward moments (ie-mid-line) so we could accentuate the awkwardness that two boys are playing one character.

 Anahi played Shanti (the girl who lures Mowgli away in the end... kind of suggestive, right? a little weird). But nonetheless she did an awesome job! She was among 5 girls who made up Kaa the snake with huluhoops.

 Angie is a born-performer. She's got the magic. We gave her every solo mid-process that we possibly could.

Eduardo played King Louie with gusto. This kid has mad energy and we put it to use. He flipped over the back of Karen (Baloo) in "I Wanna Be Like You" and walked on his hands!

 Erick played the other Mowgli and did an awesome job. My favorite moment was in Mowgli Runs when Mowgli has a montage running through the jungle. Erick thought it a good idea to have Mowgli run in slow-mo. He did it as a joke in rehearsal and it was the best idea anybody had in the whole process. He is hilarious.

 Karen played Baloo and she stole the show! Another born performer, she was fearless in playing a role that she initially wasn't too excited about. Girls want to be girls, right? This girl rocked it. I am so proud/

 Josselin is in 2nd grade. I don't think she ever learned any lyrics. But she sure looked cute.

 Viviana was an incredible little bee. She is now a drama kid, for life.

Michelle played  a monkey!

Moises.... Ah Moises. You can see the mischief in his eyes. We put that mischief to good use though. As a monkey and an elephant he lit up when that performance came around!

Reina was born for the stage! With the best work ethic and great attitude she was one of my sh..... favorites. She is an excellent dancer and a great singer too!

Directors Miss Andrea, Mr. Greene, and Miss Amy!

Healthy Living: Honduras Took My "M" Card

I am gradually approaching the end of my year term here and I realized that I forgot to write about 2 of my most fantastical stories from my experience here in the Hondu. So here goes one.

In October, I woke up one morning feeling like a train had hit me. My body ached and I felt exhausted and there was a grumble in my tummy. Thinking it was probably another instance of Honduran fury (see past post for an explanation…) I decided to go to school and wait it out (it is really hard to miss days at school; we don’t have substitutes). I made it through the day, but by the end of the day, I had this headache behind my eyes that felt like my brain was going to pop out through my eyeballs, and my joints ached something fierce.

I went straight to bed when I got home in hopes that I could sleep it off. The next morning I woke up and I felt even worse.  I had diarrhea all night,  and serious chills. I decided it was time to go see the doctor that lives across the street (he gives us free consults). I called him up and he said, come outside. I slowly moved myself downstairs and met him in the parking lot. He asked my symptoms, looked at my throat, checked my glands, touched my back and then he punched me in the kidneys.  I screamed in agony, felt so dizzy that I was going to fall over and instantly vomited. He replied, “yep, you have malaria.”

MALARIA?!! Images raced through my mind of refugee camps in Africa, and the ebola virus, and flesh-eating bacteria. I knew nothing about malaria, except  that mosquitos gave it to me, that it was bad news, and that  there wasn’t supposed to be malaria in Honduras. I sat down on the steps with my head in my hands trying to stop the world from spinning in my intense fit of nausea, and then I asked, “what do I do? Is it treatable? Etc.” The doctor didn’t seem too worried. He said it wasn’t a problem and I just needed to take some pills. This is the same doctor who had just punched me in the kidneys and made me vomit, though, so I felt my trust in him waning a bit.

He sent me to his “clinic” across the street to get a blood test from the nurse to confirm, but he was pretty sure. She drew my blood and I peed in a small recycled baby-food jar… sterile of course. He wanted to rule out a kidney infection. Then I hobbled back across the street to our apartments. I started walking up the stairs, but my strength left me completely. Malaria is marked by these episodes when the parasites get super active breeding and it freaks your body out, giving you really intense chills and fevers. As I was walking up the stairs it overtook me and I felt like I was going to pass out. I laid down on the stairs to regain my strength and was wishing that someone was around, but all of the other gringos were at school. I waited it out and laid down for 5 minutes and got back up and tried again. My legs felt like jelly, but I made it up to the metal gate and fumbled with my keys, needing to lay down one more time.

On attempt #3, I got into our apartment and laid on the couch and called the director, to see if she could go across the street to get my test results. She came home from school and brought the nurse over. The nurse gave me a really painful shot in my booty and some anti-nausea meds and I slept for 2 hours. When I woke up, I felt a bit better (the pain meds from the shot kicked in) and I started doing internet research, to try and figure out what the hell was going on. It turned out that the doctor was correct, that the type of malaria I had was totally treatable and not life-threatening. In my search, though, I was looking up the medication that he gave me, and I discovered that the medication is banned in the US for causing inner ear damage and kidney damage. Shit.

I decided that I was freaked out by this doctor experience and I wanted to go to a real hospital in San P.  Andrea, our program administrator said, lets go for it. I hobbled down to the bus-station and waited for a chicken bus. We rode into town, on the sweaty bus and got to a beautiful hospital! I went into the ER, told them the sitch and they sent me to the lab to get tests. The lab peeps were super nice, very efficient, I got my results in an hour and they confirmed that I had malaria. They told me the meds I needed to take (no prescription needed), and they sent me to the pharmacy across the street. They didn’t charge me an intake fee, a consult fee, the only thing that they charged me was $20 for the blood test! In and out in 2 hours.  Can you imagine what my experience would be like in the states? I have never been in an ED for less than 6 hours at a time. And the price for uninsured care? I don’t even want to think about it.

Feeling happy about our efficient and positive experience at the hospital, we hailed a cab to go back to the Cof. We found one and were halfway home (it was now 6pm) when we came upon a line of cars that was stopped for as far as we could see ahead. Apparently there was a huge accident ahead of us. On the tail end of the longest day of my life, one in which I got punched in the kidneys, vomited in a parking lot and collapsed on my stairs, this traffic was the LAST GODDAMNED STRAW. We waited in it as it stopped as Honduran assholes maneuvered around eachother going nowhere. People were creating lanes on hillsides and there were three cars across going in one direction on a one-lane highway.

Soon we discovered the problem. Cars, in their attempts to maneuver around one another had gotten stopped on the wrong side of the highway, and were facing one another 3 lanes across on both sides of the crash, boxing one another in with literally nowhere for any car to move for miles.  Cars facing one another, for miles. Only in Honduras… We were now trapped and couldn’t even turn around. We sat stopped for  3 hours, getting nervous as it was getting very late and people were all out of their cars walking toward their destinations. Our car was surrounded with people on foot

Knowing that we aren’t supposed to be out after dark,  feeling like sitting ducks for robbery, we slinked down in our seats, trying to remain low-profile. It felt like I was in a zombie movie. After a full 5 hours in that taxi, some geniuses finally figured out how to untangle the jigsaw a bit to at least get cars moving in some direction, but our taxi driver had had it. He said he was turning around to go back to San Pedro. Without any other option, we headed back to San Pedro and found a hotel. A day that started with a punch in the kidney that provoked spontaneous vomiting and ended at 1130 with me resting my achey malaria ridden body on the comfiest sheets I had ever felt.

I slept for 10 hours that night and made my way back to Cof for 5 days of recuperation and then back at ‘em at school. I should have taken 2 weeks… But there are a lot of decisions that could have been made that would be more healthier choices than living in Cofradia. 

I can say with pride that, after 3 months of intermittent rounds of medication, I am finally malaria-free. Honduras, you took my M card. You bastard.

"But Mister, I'm Honduran": Stories from the Pila

This is a pila. It is a large deep tub that is a staple in every Honduran home. It stores water and is a place where many a Honduran woman spends a great deal of her day, scrubbing clothing, washing dishes and occasionally dunking a child for a dip. It has many purposes. Like a spork.

Our pila at school is gross. Our children wash their grubby hands in it everyday and when I have been using it to clean my beakers and testtubes for science class I have often noticed that there are some sort of unidentified crustaceous- phytoplankton like organisms swimming in it.

Last week, I was sitting next to the pila, holding post for my recess duty of ensuring that a child doesn’t do something that would overtly endanger himself or others (in reality my main job is to serve as a mediator of disputes between children over whose turn it is to use a ball or a soccer field…. Really fun stuff). So I was sitting next to the pila, when one of my 7^th grade girls came to use the pila. She is one of the stylistas of the class and is generally a sassy girly girl. While we were talking, she scouped up some of the pila water and filled her mouth with it, swished it around a bit and spit it out on the ground.

A chill went down my spine and I almost threw up a bit in the back of my mouth. My head was filled with the image of what I had seen in that water and also the image of Astrid, the 5 yr old daughter of our lunchlady who peed her pants and was dunked in the pila just one months prior. I asked Francis, are you SURE you want to clean your mouth with that water, there is some nasty stuff in there…

Francis looked at the stuck up gringo in front of her, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Mister, you don’t understand. I’m Honduran.” BOMBA! She got me. In a massive role reversal, I was left feeling like the prissy 7^th grade girl. But let's get real, I will take stomach health over pride any day. 

Radioactive Fear Grips SJBS

School Director, Miss Amarylus is known for her strong words during Monday Actos Civicos (flag salute). In a voice slightly louder than it needs to be, she imparts weekly threats upon the students for their misbehavior: threats that could send a chill down a 1st grader's spine. 

One of her go-to threats, for example is the threat that if the students continue to treat the bathroom poorly (writing mean things about students, smearing their feces on the wall etc..), then the school administration will place surveillance cameras in the bathroom. Mind you, we don't even have enough money at my school to buy fans for my room (more on that later). I don't know where we would acquire these funds for the cameras or the outcry that would come from the Honduran ACLU (if one existed). Clearly these threats are empty... a fact of which students and teachers alike are aware.

This week brought us an entirely new and tenfold more outlandish threat than the old camera in the bathrooms go-to. Whenever it rains, the students turn into banchees, splashing in puddles, sliding on their knees and creating all sorts of sheninanigans (See past post here for a description of one of such events). This week, Miss Amarylus, tapped into a current event and  preyed on the fears of these young children (and the fear that has gripped an uninformed Honduras populus at large) regarding radioactive exposure. She told our students that they must stay out of the rain, because the news in Costa Rica says that there is a radioactive cloud traveling toward Central America and if they are exposed to the rain, it could burn their skin and cause cancer.

When this new threat was posed, the Gringo teachers' jaws dropped in unison. I couldn't refrain myself from letting out an audible guffaw of disbelief. The students turned around. Oops. I don't mean to undermine the school authority but, SERIOUSLY?! A radioactive cloud?!!!!

I told all of my students in my science class that Miss Amarylus had been misinformed and they were relieved. I left from this experience feeling a bit confused, though. I am not sure if Miss Amarylus made this statement as an intense  "boogeyman" method of maintaining order, or if she actually believes that the rain is radioactive. I'm not sure which concept is more frightening.

Stay Classy Cofradia

This crowd is assembled to watch a parade. 

or a funeral. or a fight. The distinction is subtle.

Last night I heard a raucous crowd of Hondurans cheering from the park. Hondurans aren't known for their vivaciousness and it is common knowledge that only two events could elicit this volume of  Honduran emotional expression: futbol or a fight. Not really caring to find out which of the two it was, I closed the window.

This morning I asked Andrea, our administrator what was going on yesterday. Trying to give my neighbors the benefit of the doubt, I asked, "Was it a celebration of Dia del Padre?" (it was Honduran Father's Day this weekend). Andrea told me that she drove right through it and that it was a fight between two women that were goaded by 50 of my countrymen's cheers. It was weird that there were so many people in the park in the first place at 9pm on a Sunday night and I asked just that question. It turns out that they were all there for a wake. Honoring the dead.  And cheering on a fight between women. Apparently these two events are not mutually exclusive

Stay classy Cofradia...

Montuca, Marley and Middle-school Oh My

Portraits from Margarita, 9th grade... completely unrelated, but cool nonetheless.

The  SJBS middle school integrado class has been gearing up for their big debut with Honduran reggae/ska/world legends, "Montuca Sound System."Montuca Soundsystem will be playing a benefit concert at EIS (the large private school in San Pedro) and will donate all of the proceeds to BECA!

The best part of this deal though (to the middle schoolers at least...) is that they invited the middle school to sing "No Woman, No Cry" with them. Most students are pumped, a few are terrified, and a small enclave could care less (but lets be honest, some of them don't experience true forms of excitement that don't involve fire or soccer).

Here is a little  video preview into rehearsal with the 7th graders:

7th grade rehearsal


Here are the 7th graders singing "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros if you haven't seen it yet:

Home- 7th Grade

Jungle In the Jungle

This week, we had our first rehearsal for the SJBS’s first (annual?) spring musical, “The Jungle Book”.  I already know that this 90 minute production  put on by twenty 4^th-6^th grade kids whose second language is English will be the most challenging massive beast that I have brought upon myself to date. I am fearful. And also incredibly pumped. But not quite as pumped as the kids. Okay, maybe as pumped.

I have been working with these kids once a week on Tuesday afternoons teaching them physical work, voice work, concentration, listening, and storytelling. And of course, we play games, lots of games. As a little trial run, I taught them a little choreographed number to “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” from the Lion King and they drank it like KoolAid (see the clip below for some cuteness).

There are so many questions I have in taking this on. Will I be able to put up a full production meeting with elementary schools for an hour and a half per week? I don’t think I could do that with a group of my friends. Are all of my kids going to drop out before we get to May? And also how will I be able to fund this? It is going to be low budget, but I do have to pay for the scripts that I  had copied, fabric to make masks and  some minimal costumes and materials to build a few set pieces.

Some parents mobilized already on the fundraising front… in Honduran fashion. They made choco-bananos to sell at school, which pissed off Grace, the lunchlady, because she can’t sell sweets. Two moms made 80 choco-bananos  and sold them at lunch. I was really grateful and it got me really excited about fundraising. Until they tallied up the money. In selling choco-bananos, we made the equivalent of $5.75 for the drama club. The moms told me that bananas are really expensive right now. But the truth is that fundraisers cannot function here in the same way that they do in the states. In the states, in a fundraiser, people pay more than they would pay normally pay for something because it is, well, a fundraiser. Children at our school really can’t pay more than 35 cents for a chocobanano, though.

Which brings me to my next point. If you would like to donate any sort of funds toward the SJBS production of the Jungle Book, let me know.  A little goes so far here. If I could raise $150 even, to get materials, we could do so much. Just think, if you donate $6, you would double what we have fundraised making and selling 80 chocobananos. Okay, I’m done. I promise I won’t pressure anymore. It is going to be a special thing regardless of funds. We might perform it on the grass in our school uniforms and it will be one of the most special event to these kids and parents to date.

I leave you with our little preview (click on the link) and a few pics from drama club! Stay tuned.

Nice mirror.

Brushing hair.

My Love is Complex, Mister.

"Confusion" by Margarita Isidora 

During integrado class (the integrated art class that I teach with the middle schoolers), we are now in the visual art quarter. This has proven to be the most challenging quarter for me to plan (the other two being drama and music). I don't know a whole lot about art. It might have helped if I had taken an art class at some point in my life.  I have been managing ok with the class.  I think I have them fooled into believing that I actually know something about art, when the truth is that everything I know has been learned from watching youtube clips over the past 3 weeks. 

We started doing continuous line portraits. Many of them sucked (because the kids didn’t take the project seriously or didn’t follow the rules to continuous line drawing, not because they don’t have talent). Some of them ended up really coming out great though. In continuous line drawing, the artist cannot lift the hand from the page from start to finish in the drawing.  It is a great exercise for the brain and causes an interesting abstraction of a portrait when you have to figure out how to get frm the eye to the ear without adding lines that will make your picture look like crap.

This past week we started color theory. We made some  nice color wheels, talked about primary, secondary, tertiary  and complementary colors. We also talked about the emotions that we associate with color and the ways in which we can use color in our paintings to our advantage. We looked at pictures from Picasso’s blue period and then I asked them to choose an emotion and try to paint a representation of that emotion using strictly warm or strictly cool colors.

 When I was circulating around the room, I noticed that one of my students was crying. I went over and checked out her painting and it was of raindrops falling on a dark, stormy sea. At the top was painted in black ink “sad.” I wanted to comfort her. I really wanted to give her a hug, but am always aware of my limitations as a male middle school teacher. I put my hand on her shoulder, got down to her level and told her that I really loved her painting, asked her if she was alright and if she wanted to step out to get some air. She nodded implying that she was fine and wanted to stay.  This student lives a very modest life in a very small house with her grandmother and has no parents. I have gotten the feeling that her home-life is not the best. I felt bad for her, wondering what the depth of the sadness was that she was experiencing in that moment. At the same time though, I felt filled with a feeling of happiness, with this being one of the few instances that a class lesson so clearly had actually reached and affected one of my students. I told her I was around if she decided she wanted to talk and told her that sometimes when we express ourselves through art, it can stir up some emotion and that this release is so important. Then I let her be.

I walked around the class to some other students and came across one of my sassy 8^th grade girls. She was painting a red-orange heart with green trim. I asked her what emotion she was expressing, while I already had a bit of an idea (despite the cryptic symbolism). I said that it looked great, but explained that for the assignment, I wanted them to use explore using either only warm colors or only cool colors. She rolled her eyes at me, gave a middle school girl huff, and said, “Mister, my love is incredibly complex.” I’m sure. Lots of feelings today. It must be art class.

"Calm" by Moises, 8th grade

Continuous line drawing by Keneth, 7th grade

Continuous Line Drawing by Edgar, 7th

Continuous Line drawing by Henry Salomon, 9th

Continous line drawing by Andres, 8th

Public Enemy #1

The perpetrator, hiding in the ruins of Copan.

My sister and dad came down to visit me last week. I was so excited to have them come and experience firsthand my funny life here. Char barely made it out of New York due to an impending snowstorm and arrived in San Pedro at 10pm on a Tuesday night. I hired Don Will, the father of one of our students and a man with a good heart who talks more trash about the people of Cofradia than anyone I know. After a 45 minute ride of listening to Don Will’s griping and giving the customary nods, trying to diffuse the shit-talking fest, Don Will and I arrived at the airport in his 25 year-old pickup truck of questionable functionality (one that he starts by hotwiring and he insists that he must keep it because new cars get stolen).

We arrived at 10pm and waited and waited as the rest of the passengers on her flight came through immigration. Finally Char came through, escorted by an immigration official, and I could tell by the look on her face that something was not right. I gave her a hug and said “what’s happening?” She explained  that her passport is due to expire in February and that Honduras has a law that doesn’t allow people to enter the country if their passport expires within 6 months. They told her that she couldn’t legally be here and they were going to send her on the first flight back (at 7am the next day).

We were furious! Why wasn’t this something that the airline told her in the states, or why didn’t American Airlines even catch this when she booked her flight online and put in her passport information? We pulled out all of the stops with immigration, I repeated “this is ridiculous” a bunch of times to the woman from American airlines.

This tactic was unsuccessful.

We wanted to talk to the American consulate to see if they could give her some sort of extension to her passport. The woman behind the desk was not very sympathetic and said she would have to leave on the first flight out. We pleaded with her to put her on a later flight so we could at least talk to the consulate and she said there was nothing that she could do, but to come to talk to the boss-man at 5am the next morning.

Frustrated, we realized that there was nothing that we could do at this point. I hugged Char, not knowing if I would see her again in Honduras and she went off with an immigration guard to a hotel that the airline was paying for. The female guard slept in her room while I went home and scrambled, emailing our program directors, my dad who I hoped would have some consulate and I called the American Consulate’s “Emergency Line”.  A US Marine Corps Sargeant answered the line and I stalled and said, “uh…. I am not sure if this is an appropriate emergency, but my sister is in San Pedro Sula, and is having problems with her passport etc...” The sergeant said, “Oh, bummer, we might be able to help, but can you do me a favor and call me right back. I picked up a phone in the other room and I can’t transfer you from here.” Um, ok, sure, I’ll call you right back. So I called him and he said, “Oh, ya, I remember now  let me transfer you”, and then he hung up on me. SHIT! I called him back, “hi, it’s me again.” “Oh, sorry sir, let me try again.” This time the call went through, rang twice and a tired old man cleared his throat and answered the phone, “Hello.” This was clearly his home phone. I apologized for waking him up and explained the situation. He was very reassuring and said, “I think we can help you, but I can’t do anything at this moment. Call us at 8am tomorrow.” A glimmer of hope.

Meanwhile, my dad called his embassy contacts and I got a list of peeps from our BECA program director. Then I went to bed. It was 1 am. While this was going on, Char was shuttled to a hotel near the airport and accompanied by a female Immigration guard who slept at the hotel with her… in the bed next to her. Char then woke up at 4:30am and went back to the airport. She pleaded with the “Jefe”

to move her flight back to 1pm so she could have an opportunity to speak with the embassy. He finally gave in at 8am she called the embassy.

Fast forward to fourteen hours later, 10 hours of riding buses to and back from the capital city of Tegucigalpa, a purchase of a Honduran cellphone, a fire-drill in the embassy that almost made getting a new passport impossible, a frantic state of running around Teguce in attempts to find an ATM because their credit card machine was down and a teller that would only accept exact change and Char made it to my doorstep with a new passport.

While this was the most ridiculous day for sis, (one filled with stress, little sleep, and reeking with bureaucracy) when all was said and done, Char got into Honduras, my dad joined her  and we had a really fun couple of days together. Plus, Char became really close with the immigration guard that slept in her room (I hear they had great pillow talk) and the guard actually ended up helping her out a lot to make this whole thing work out. She let her use her cell phone, pleaded with her boss, and helped Char buy a Honduran phone for herself. Char won her over, no doubt. This was clear when I went to the airport to pick up Char’s bag for her,  and I needed to get into a secure area and I shouldn’t have been able to do so being that I wasn’t a passenger. But Char’s guard, gave me her security badge, gave a wink to her friend in security and shuffled me on through the employee entrance. This surely would not have happened if TSA were in control of the situation.

At the end of all of this, though, I am left thinking…. Really, Honduras? Really? Why would a small, blonde, Jewish girl from New York City want to be sneaking into your country? Or why would anyone for that matter. Give us a goddamned break.

Enjoy some pictures of my dad and sister’s stay with me…

A free woman, enjoying coffee in Copan.

Dad taught a seminar for the teachers.

And he did a little magic.

Char and I with some friends at snacktime.

Drama workshop!

Drama workshop  #2!

Fam.

Copan Ruinas.

Mom paid a visit.

A loss for SJBS

It was a difficult week for the SJBS community. Miss Sandra, one of the Honduran teachers at our school, has been very sick for the majority of the year. None of the American teachers really knew what her condition was but we believe that it was complications with lupus. She teaches the preschool and kindergarteners and has two boys who are in our 7^th and 8^th grade class.  On Friday afternoon,  when we were playing our weekly soccer game, Andrea,our Program Administrator gathered us around and told us she had news. In the past when we had uncalled meetings like this it was when our 2^nd grade teacher was leaving, and when the teachers from the other school were robbed at gunpoint, so these types of meetings make us nervous.

She told us that Miss Sandra was due to get surgery today and that she had died before the surgery. We were shocked. We all knew that she was sick and having troubles, but none of us knew the extent of her illness.

My heart collapsed for her boys. They are very attached to her, are behind others in their class in terms of individuation and are not fully formed people yet.

I was the same age as Andres (8^th grade) when my mom was diagnosed. This experience brought back so many memories of that time. Sitting in the hospital doing my homework and receiving that news, failing to understand or believe it. Trying to live a normal 8^th grade life when I was facing these huge fears and circumstances that were larger than I could take in.

What hit me the hardest with the news is knowing the different ways that they are going to have to cope with this loss. There is so much that they aren’t even aware of yet. All of the “firsts” that they are going to have to face in the next year:  the first birthday without mom, the first time that they will go to call her cell phone number out of habit, the first time that they will wake up, forget that she is gone and then remember. They don’t know that their whole family dynamics are going to change, or that they will never actually be able to believe fully believe that she is gone, that the ache will lessen, but it will always be there, that the grief becomes less angry, less painful, and that they will change their relationship with it and the way in which they process it, but that it never really goes away. I don’t want them to have to know that.

We went to the funeral the next day. We loaded into a school bus with some of the Honduran  teachers and some of the SJBS families and rode to the cemetery where she was to be buried. The cemetery was unlike any that I had been to. It was much less clean, much less tranquil than the cemeteries that we know, there were cows grazing and walking over the graves and the grounds were unkept  and seemed more like a landfill than a cemetery. Her plot was in the very back of the cemetery, surrounded by dense brush, that they would most likely cut away later as the cemetery would expand. It was hot and we stood with a group of maybe 50 Hondurans crying as we sweat.

The service was short. A few prayers from a priest,  a eulogy from our principle, a hymn sung by one of the mothers of our students, and a few words from Sandra’s brother. Then they started the burial. The mound of dirt that they were shoveling into the grave was filled with plastic bags, aluminum cans and other items of trash that had accumulated layer upon layer over the years. It was really difficult to watch Placing that dirt on a grave felt so far from sacred.  I remembered how hard it was watching my mother’s casket lowered into the earth, and couldn’t imagine what it would have felt like to see her covered in dirt filled with trash. I would have been so angry. It didn’t seem to affect the Hondurans, though. I can only think that it is so common in this country to see trash in the earth here that they don’t even see it anymore; in the same way that I don’t really notice anymore the piles of trash along the route that I walk everyday to school.

We hugged our two students and told them that we were here for them, feeling like we wanted to do more, but knowing that there wasn’t anything else that we could do.

When we got to school on Monday, we honored Miss Sandra at actos civicos (flag salute) and held moments of silence for her in all of our classes. On Tuesday, when I arrived at school, Astrid, a 3 yr old who is the cutest thing ever and is the daughter  of one of the lunch ladies told me in her little voice that Grace’s husband (Grace is our head lunchlady) was murdered the night before. Thinking that Astrid got confused with her words, I asked our Andrea, our administrator, about what she told me and found it to be true. The man who was murdered is also the son of a 6^th grade boy in my drama club.

With this news, the whole BECA team felt we were kicked when we were already down. It was so difficult to process both tragedies at once. The students were also somber, but were functioning just fine. I have never in my life known someone who has been murdered, but it is not so uncommon here. I have at least seven students who have parents or siblings who have died early or been killed. Death is as normal as birth here. It seems to leave Hondurans with a different relationship with death.

After this experience, I am left wondering if the normalcy of death here makes the way that they experience grief any less severe.  As we can only truly know our own experiences, I  guess I will never know.  Although this was an incredibly hard week, it was a very important experience. While I stood surrounded by Hondurans in the baking sun, sweating and crying, with a hand on Andres and Gabriel’s shoulder, I felt for the first time in Cofradia that I was not an “other.”  I felt like I was part of a community, grieving together.