The Honduran principal of our school is named Amarylus. She is a smiley woman in her 30’s who loves to dance (which we found out at the welcome party thrown for us by the Honduran equivalent of the PTA) and whenever she talks in front of a group of three or more people she always uses a formal presentational voice that is just a little too loud. She doesn’t come from Cofradia (the small town where I am living) and that is apparently very important to me because she has points it out frequently. I like her a lot, but mostly just because her name is Amarylus, which makes me feel like I teach at Hogwarts.
We had a meeting with her today in the volunteer apartments. The twelve teachers crammed into the little hot, sticky living room of one of the apartments for this meeting after having been in training for 8 hours on what has been the hottests day yet in Cofradia. Sticky and smelly and totally burnt out, we were not the most receptive audience for a meeting on school discipline policies.
Amarylus started the meeting by stressing the importance that we follow rule that there is no food or drink allowed in the computer room. She explained that the computers have all been donated, they have had many problems with them breaking, we need to set positive examples for the students. Great, totally makes sense, got it. Then she reemphasized the importance of this rule. Then she repeated herself. And repeated herself again. For 20 minutes she talked about food and drink in the computer lab.
As our eyes began to sink into our skulls, she suddenly brought up the issue of alcohol. “Hmm… a cold beer sounds good,” I thought. She told us that in the past they had a problem with a teacher coming in drunk to class! Wow. She then conceded that it’s something that happens occasionally and all she ask is that if you come in to school drunk, just come to her office and let her know so that she can cover our class for the day. We get a thirty minute talking to about having a nalgene bottle in the library, but we have one free pass to come to work drunk?!
Then she went onto the subject of marijuana. Surely, I figured, this cannot be ok. She explained to us that there is a cultural difference here in Honduras. Hondurans, Amarylus told us, don’t know how to modify their consumption like Americans do. If they smoke, they will smoke at 7am 8am 9am and will pass out by noon. She said the she realizes that Americans, on the other hand, have self control like to smoke just to relax. She said that is totally fine with her, just be careful that none of our students are over at the apartment when we do it, because it is a bad image for the school.
The most mind-numbing meeting of our lives took the most unexpected turn. The happenings in this town succeed in shattering my preconceptions on a daily basis.
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