PASA Workshops off the ground!

PASA workshops have finally gotten off the ground! Read the report about this effort to improve teaching in semi-rural and rural Honduras at pasamaestros.blogspot.com.

First steps...

This is a republication of my first  progress report to the Omprakash Foundation.

In just a few days, PASA workshops (the Spanish acronym for Promoting Improved and Sustained Learning) have gone from being a potential to being an exciting eventuality. Despite some trouble getting to El Porvenir (missing flights) and a day of school closures lost to a teacher work stoppage (in remembrance of the coup three years ago), I managed to turn only three full working days into successful first steps in setting up this pilot project.

It wasn’t easy, and I could not have done it without the wise advice and help of several people from Honduras Children. In all, I was able to:

• meet with and gain the support of the district’s superintendent and several important community leaders,
• arrange for the use of the municipal building as a workshop location,
• visit with teachers at 15 primary schools and 9 kindergartens,
• connect with 3 more primary schools and 7 more kindergartens that I couldn’t visit (several were closed on the days I visited), and
• visit 13 of the 15 townships in the municipality (only missing the last two because of how difficult it is to access them due to distance and poor road infrastructure).

The plan and budget is to work with 30 teachers of kindergarten and first grade in the Municipality of El Porvenir (15 rural townships along the north coast of Honduras) to identify and address common instructional challenges. Interest among teachers is so high that I worry I may find myself turning away participants! I will have to begin looking at options for expanding inclusion and/or which factors to use to decide who gets to participate, with both project objectives and equity being important. After all, the poorest schools may need the workshops the most, but bringing together a mix of schools is part of the plan’s structure to foment change and community building across the demographics.

 My discussions with teachers and observations of classrooms brought home to me many of the challenges the teachers face and that I will be facing in my delivery of the workshops. Honduran culture can be very status-oriented and hierarchical. Education is very much based on the “banking” model, in which students are passive recipients and teachers are the givers of knowledge. Teachers are members of a school culture that follows guidelines and curriculums without often comprehending the reasons why particular aspects thereof may or may not work. Students are responsible for learning, and failure to learn is their fault rather than that of an unresponsive educational system. The realities of child development are poorly understood, motivation is extrinsic, and the usual challenges of any classroom are compounded by poverty and poor health.

All that said, I found many teachers who were eager to improve their practice and gain access to greater knowledge and the potential to change. That is the aim of PASA, keying into that motivation to make a difference and providing the tools to do so in sustainable ways. As I begin the process of laying out a plan for the workshops and for more in-depth work with the teachers, I find myself focusing on how to help teachers get kids more deeply involved in the learning process. This seems to be breaking down into two sub-themes, (1) how to use a deeper understanding of child development to help teachers use children’s learning patterns as an asset rather than a deficit, and (2) how to teach in ways that actually avoid problematic behaviors by children (what I see as a more empowering spin on the idea of “classroom behavior management.”)

I also know that talking about different practices will do little to foment change; instead, the different strategies, from choral response to graphing to using the inquiry process, will have to be built into the workshops themselves, along with opportunities to reflect alone or in small groups. Understanding the cultural nature of teaching and what these teachers are up against in their efforts to improve their own practice is also requiring me to begin mapping out strategies not just for classroom practice but for the motivation and maintenance of the change process, perhaps a simple self-reporting system to help teachers monitor their own progress over time.

I’m excited to keep moving forward with the background research now that I have more exact knowledge of the issues on the ground and the perspectives of the teachers themselves. I’m especially excited to have been so warmly welcomed into the community of educators and I look forward to deepening the relationships I have begun to build.

Experiencing how the political is personal

"The personal is political." It's a beautiful adage from the feminist revolution. And it goes the other way. The political is personal.

Here in the U.S. we often think it odd the way world events can suddenly collide with daily existence. But every time it happens to me, I realize again to what extent the seemingly impersonal political and economic and social issues of this world are actually personally experienced realities. The Honduran teacher strikes are students missing out on their right to public schooling. The economic recession is a child going to live with grandparents when his parents’ house goes into foreclosure. And the strife in any number of countries leads to a family leaving their home and trying to grow and succeed in a place where they don’t know the culture and don’t speak the language.

That’s why I got into international education. My work abroad has allowed me to help students prepare themselves to face their lives with the resiliencies and skills they need, as well as providing them with the chance to comfortably and securely gain cross-cultural understandings and skills. My work here in the U.S. allows me to do the same, with the extra facet of being a bridge for my students to understand and access the culture that surrounds them, hopefully without losing any understanding, access, or membership in the culture of their home.

Today the world celebrates the democratic emergence of a new nation, South Sudan. I reflected on this coming event yesterday while I sat with a young Sudanese girl, L. (Because I respect the privacy of my students and issues of confidentiality, I will from now on refer to students anonymously.) She is attending the summer program at the family literacy school where I teach, although she is not in my class. That day we were on a field trip to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall. We had walked through the Peace Corps themed activity area, where the kids had received “passports” which were stamped when they took part in each activity. We built a wall with bottles like they are now building in Guatemala. We helped paint a world map (that included South Sudan as clearly separate from Sudan!), and we made Malian mud cloth bracelets.

As we recovered from the heat and enjoyed a brief cool breeze under one of the dining tents, L struck up a conversation with me about her “passport.” We talked about all the activities in which she had taken part and I helped her pick out words she didn’t know in the booklet. We came across the blanks in the front cover that called for her name and nationality. I explained that nationality is where you are from.

L: Where are you from?
K: I’m from Texas.
L: I have a cousin in Texas!
K: You do? That’s great!
L: But I don’t know where Texas is.

So we looked at the world map in her passport booklet, marking DC and Texas.

L: I’m from Sudan. Well. (Pause.) Hang on.

She turned to her mother and spoke with her in their home language. There was some back and forth. Her mother, pregnant and tired, was also interacting with her 2 year old brother and 4 year old sister. L was obviously repeating herself to make sure her mother really understood her question. Finally satisfied, she turned back to me.

L: Yes. I was born in Sudan. (Her emphasis. I had not asked. It can be a complicated question for any child, especially an immigrant child.)
K. Okay. Let’s look at where Sudan is on the map.

So we marked the general location of Sudan with an X (it wasn’t a big map, thankfully). L wanted to label it the way we had labeled DC, but she didn’t know how to spell it. I spelled it out loud, and at her request I wrote it down so that she could copy it. After spelling it successfully several times in random places on random pages, she finally turned to the front cover and wrote “SUDAN” on the previously empty line for a nationality.

L’s personal experience was a mixture of culture, identity, literacy, and all the underlying structures and skills that support these facets of development. And there I was, to some extent experiencing it with her. The day before millions of her former countrymen got the chance to have a very similar experience.

From estadounidense to US-American

I have struggled with my geographical self-definition for many years now. Ever since I learned the word “estadounidense” in Spanish.

Unitedstatesian.

Finally, I had evidence that there could be a word to replace “American” as a descriptor for a person from the United States. After all, it seems usurping to describe ourselves as Americans, when we are hardly the only nation in THE AMERICAS. Nor are we the largest. Sadly, being the richest seems to make us entitled to taking what we want, at least it has in the past, and so we came to describe ourselves as “Americans,” forcing all the other americans to define themselves differently.

But “unitedstatesian” hardly rolls off the tongue.

I’ve tried a lot of different phrases.

North American. But we aren’t the only North Americans. It could make sense to the extent that Canada and the U.S. are very similar, but there are also vital differences between us. Canadians (and Mexicans, especially) might resent my describing myself and my values and culture as North American.

[Brief geography lesson: Here in the US we teach that there are 7 continents, and Central America is technically part of North America. In Honduras, they teach that there are 6 continents, with the Americas being one continent split into three regions: north, central, and south.]

I didn’t give up. I tried “US Citizen”…but there are many who aren’t citizens who do identify as residents of the U.S.

US Resident…but there are many who reside here without feeling cultural ties here.

And, finally I hit on it. US-AMERICAN. So simple. So clear. Borrowing from the way we structure our self definitions within the US (African American, Irish American, Native American, Latin American, etc.)

I am US-American.

In English.

But in Spanish I am still estadounidense.

Jungle Schooling

I changed the name of this blog a while back. I hadn’t thought about it really. It was an act of instinct. I was no longer writing from the perspective of a volunteer abroad, so “Diario de una Voluntaria” no longer seemed apt.

But today I realized that I did not pick the new title out of the air, or if I did so, it was a lucky pick for I am getting a “Jungle Schooling” of sorts. My senses and intellectual perceptions are beginning to sense past the projected structures we take for granted, allowing me to examine the foundations on which those structures are built.

I can hear the fairly conservative voices of my upbringing whispering “radical” as if it was a dirty word, but I urge readers to shrug off the qualitative label factory that has been installed in our brains. Think as you read this blog, think as you read my sources for yourself, and most importantly think for yourself. And try to find the intellectual freedom to think of things in themselves.

I hope that you will find that we are all “radical” in our own vibrant ways, for if I had to choose be3tween living in a manicured garden or a slightly wild meadow, I would have to choose the meadow hands down. It might be a bit chaotic, yes, but knowing what is going to bloom where would be utterly boring and, in fact, stifling. Even Sir Issac Newton acknowledged nature’s tendency toward entropy.

In the future…
I do not so much have concrete plans for this space, but I do hope some regular features will soon begin to take shape. These will hopefully include return reflections to my sojourns abroad and reading suggestions (novels as well as non-fiction) for those traveling, working, or just thinking in development contexts.

I cannot promise how often I will post. I prefer to let the chaos of inspiration decide. That said, it will be more regular than in the past. I am on a journey of discovery, and I want to send postcards of my travels.

To whom am I speaking?
I say here, now, clearly, that I do not intend to preach but to engage in a discussion, or at least my side thereof (the rest is up to you, readers.) I do not want only readers and comments that agree with me (but devil’s advocates, please keep in constructive!) I want to help us all, including myself, think more than we have about things I happen to think are worth thinking about.

Keepin’ on keepin’ on…

Due to popular demand (about 3 people), I will be continuing to write here at “Diario de una Voluntaria” while I am in graduate school. It makes sense really, given that my work in International Education, founded experientially in my work in Honduras, is still going on, at least on an intellectual level.

Honduras, Jungle School, and HHK continue to be an enormous part of my everyday life. Keeping in touch with volunteers, sending out appeals for donations, and even the occasional call from one of the families in La Herradura. Even here is DC, so far from the jungle, I feel connected to the community in a very strong way. And it is essential, I think, to have this anchor in a locale while studying themes and topics on the macro level. When I feel like I am swimming in a mire of confusing ideas, I can return to my mental home and refresh my perspective.

People like to say that the world is getting smaller, but I challenge that. I fear the idea leaves the world too susceptible to the spread of monocultures. It makes crossing cultural boundaries sound like an easy thing to do, as if it just takes a short airplane flight or a tour of Google News. And then, poof, you are a world citizen. I have learned, much to my own chagrin, that the process is not so easy. I still fall far short of the goal. The danger in feeling that another culture is not distant is that you fail see it’s intricacies and differences, not to mention the ensuing assumption that the people of the other culture should be able to understand you just as easily. No, culturally the world isn’t small at all, nor would we want it to be. Instead, I challenge the human being to grow bigger. It is time for us to evolve and develop the ability to exist on both the local and global levels.

I work in education and I work in development. We take these words for granted but they are loaded and complex. These days, I am taking the time to look at just want they mean and for whom they mean it. Education is learning. But that isn’t enough. Each individual person does that naturally and often without outside direction. If it is the direction of learning in a systematic way then I start to wonder about the goals of the education and whose goals they are, and why they choose a particular system of instruction and organization of the ideas taught.

Development is harder to wrap my mind around. I like the idea that it is the unfolding of potential (not my own idea but that of scholars Fagerlind and Saha.) But when it is something we are actively involved in, it is the direction of potential in a systemic way. Who is directing the process? Does each person get to choose how to develop their own potential? There is no one system that would work for everyone’s potential, so do some people’s potentials get damaged or quashed in the process of developing everyone else’s potentials? What happens to those who are quashed? If they aren’t able to develop, then maybe the process of Development isn’t really taking place, is it?

Education is involved in Development then if it is the systematic direction of learning in order to unfold the potentials of people. And I am left with a great many questions…Whose potential is developed and whose is either damaged or ignored?...What constitutes developed potentials and who gets to set this goal?...What is the reward for the successful people? And what of the failures?
As always more questions than answers, more of a landscape with relationships between ideas than hard knowledge or cardinal directions on an intellectual map…so I just keep on keepin’ on…

#16 Butterfly in the Sky!

I took my second and third graders out for a pretty amazing Friday field trip…we went to the Butterfly Museum! Now, it probably won’t be exciting to people who think of museums like the Houston Museum of Natural Science or the Smithsonian’s anything. Museums in the developing world usually exist as a result of one person’s incredibly dedicated efforts, in this case that person’s name is Robert Lehman. Robert has been in Honduras since the 1960s, working in community development and teaching…and collecting bugs! He has been a wealth of cultural information for me and he was a wonderfully passionate teacher for my 16 kids, which he kindly did all for free. (That’s him in the headscarf in the pictures.)

Now, another note about museums in the developing world. There is not a plethora of expensive, hands-on exhibits or floor upon floor of displays. The butterfly museum is a large room built onto the back of Robert’s house here in La Ceiba. Three whole walls and 5 displays in the middle of the room are covered floor to ceiling with glass faced display cabinets holding over 13,000 insects, as well as informational displays about Honduran ecology, the life cycle of insects, where in the world all these crazy bugs come from, and where in the world all the crazy people have come from to look at them. 10,000 of the beautiful (and ugly) bugs come from right here in Honduras, many (maybe most) of them caught by Robert right here in the La Ceiba area.

My kids not only learned about bugs but also got the chance to see just how amazing the natural wealth of their country is. The largest moth in the world (1 foot wingspan) was found in my neighborhood! The Rio Cangrejal where my kids live hosts beautiful Blue Morphos and tricky Owl Eyes and the butterfly with the longest proboscis in the world. It was also a great chance to reinforce the idea of there being other countries and other places, as we got to see samples of insects from 6 of the continents including the world’s largest scorpion (Thailand can keep hosting that one…the ones in my classroom here in Honduras are big enough for me.)

The kids got to handle live bugs, too. There were two tarantulas, one of whom had just molted so we got to see her old “dress” as Robert called it. There was a Harlequin Beetle (the one with the ridiculously long front legs.) There were also Honduran rhinoceros beetles (which apparently live in the bathroom at night so that they can fly around.) Outside he was breeding grasshoppers (who happily munched away on his plants) and butterflies. He went out early that morning to some of the empty lots and collected with two nets which he then used to describe the collecting process to the kids before emptying them onto a sheet and letting them go at it finding insects, identifying what they knew and asking about ones they didn’t know.

My kids were wonderful. Other than a bit of watchful eye for running or absconding with crayons in their pockets and a pause for orange juice to get energy and attention going again (although I had brought an orange and a hunk of bread for each for breakfast…but they probably didn’t get much if any dinner the night before.) It was a typical Honduran day in that the electricity was out (due to repairs we are told…it’s been happening a lot lately.) Robert ran some lights off of two small gasoline generators he has, so we were without air conditioning and the day is forever mixed a bit with the smell of gasoline exhaust, but we were able to see all the exhibits and a good time was had by all (including two visiting US university students…who were hung over and not big fans of bugs but made a good face nonetheless.)

My favorite game of the day was “Catch the Cockroach” which Robert collects in order to feed the live scorpions and tarantulas. My kids showed no fear whatsoever and deftly caught it and got it back into the jar for him. (At which point the two US students agreed to descend from the chairs upon which they were perched.) It was great to have someone help to reinforce the idea of catching and releasing bugs (especially at school because the chickens will eat them!) My kids laughed at some of the myths that Robert said other people held and easily answered many questions that he said most city children couldn’t answer. It was amazing to provide them with such a wonderful educational experience and I can’t wait to do it again in the future with another couple of grades.

#16 A Word to Those Who Might Think They Are Wise

Honduras seems rife with international aid. There seems to be no lack of government programs, mission groups, and volunteers. I hear English spoken and meet new gringos almost every day. But for all the gringos and groups of gringos passing through, so many of them seem to leave no wiser than they arrived. Only here for a week, at most two or three, they never get the chance to see the full picture that is Honduras. After four months, I feel like I have only begun to scratch the layers lying just below the surface. I want to offer some humble advice for those who want to help by coming to visit or sending aid.

IF THERE IS SO MUCH AID, WHY IS THERE STILL SO MUCH POVERTY AND STRIFE? To put it bluntly, our meager efforts to help usually feel like spitting in the wind. Government aid dwindles as it passes through filters of corruption, not just in the Honduran government but throughout the hierarchy of contractors and personnel. You might send a container of computers, but unless there is someone here to fight tooth and nail with Aduana (Customs) you may not see your complete shipment come off the dock. Perhaps you are paying a seemingly well meaning Honduran couple to run your orphanage, but without close supervision you may find yourself losing supplies. It happens all the time. Many people have given up and just put up with this enormous, malignant problem. And, in a way, I can understand it. When you are poor or economically insecure (and very, very few people in Honduras are rich or economically secure) you see the riches as more than any one program needs and you feel you deserve more for you hard work and somehow it doesn’t seem wrong to take a little. Who would even notice? And it gets easier and easier to take over time, especially as you watch many around you do the same.
It is also easy to steal when you see so many people doing things much worse to earn an easy buck. Honduras is fairly well-known now for narco-trafficking. I have been told by multiple sources that as Columbia has buckled down on its drug traffickers, they have moved operations here. Many people are very suspicious of the small airports springing up on the Bay Islands. With the drug rings come the guns, the violence, the ridiculous wealth that springs up overnight, and people are trapped in a dangerous world they can never leave if they want their families to survive. The big cities and even the small ones have gangs, even more dangerous than the ones we know in the States. Without enough un-corrupted police, it is impossible to battle the crime adequately.
Many of the reasons poverty is so rampant here are the same reasons poverty exists in the US. People who do have money want to hold on to it, especially given the lack of social security here. They have earned their money and want to enjoy it. They believe the poor are meant to be poor due to stupidness, laziness, or both. I have certainly gotten to see that the poor are sometimes less cognitively developed and far more likely to be mired in hopelessness. I might easily be in the same shoes if my mother had lacked adequate nutrition while pregnant and nursing with me or if I had to face their same life obstacles, I too would feel hopeless. But I haven’t met any more people who are poor and stupid or poor and lazy than I meet who are rich and both.
The average age of first birth here is 15. That’s right, many Honduran women are around the age of 15 when they give birth to their first child. One mother in the school is 29, like me, and has 6 children, one in highschool. With a baby and the only available childcare your own poor family and no more than a 6th grade education, out the window go your job and educational prospects, unless you can develop some kind of a home based income like sewing, making charcoal, baking bread to sell in a roadside stand, growing fruit in your garden, etc. Child and domestic abuse are common. You might fear your husband, but you fear hunger and being alone supporting your several children more. Kids work most days, after school and on Saturdays especially, and even the young ones have duties around the house. This, too, impedes educational development. You cannot ask them to do essays or much homework to make up for the short school day. They simply won’t do it if it comes down to homework or money earned to stock the family’s paltry pantry.
It really feels like spitting in the wind if you only see the big picture. This isn’t to discourage people helping, but to give them an idea of what they are up against. Don’t think your coming here or your aid will change the world. It may change a life, even maybe just for a day or an hour, and therefore it is worthwhile. It is the little steps that end up making the difference. One group donated the money for us to build the last of our steps up to the school. It will make a huge difference in rainy season to have the foundation protected from being washed away and to have a smooth and sizeable outdoor surface where the kids can gather. They also donated a week of their time to get the first third of the project done. It may not seem like much, and some people would say it is better to send your airfare money instead, but I disagree. It changed those university students’ lives to spend a week with the kids, doing many science projects that succeeded (as well as a few that didn’t…but that’s life and learning!)

WHAT SHOULD I DO WHILE I AM THERE? For starters, learn some Spanish. Do not expect people to speak English. But don’t expect that everyone speaks Spanish. There were many peoples and languages here before the Spaniards ever stepped foot here. There is Garifuna, Chorti, Moskito, and the Island version of English to name the ones I’ve personally run into.
Second, resist the urge to talk. Listen instead. Find out what people already know. Ask questions of the people. Find out what people need before assuming they want your help. Learn what their values are. Ask questions of yourself. Do you really know the “truth?” Are you sure that your life is better than theirs in all respects? Did you know that those pretty light streaks in that child’s hair are really a sign of protein deficiency? Did you know that the toddler’s teeth are rotting out because he gnaws on sugary roadside plants because there is not food at home most days? Remember that everyone is an individual. The people here will not all like the same music or the same foods as all the other people. Even vocabulary and basic slang can change just moving from one side of the city to the other.
Concrete help is always good and can often be completed in a concise period of time. Projects that don’t require upkeep are especially a good idea. If you want to plant a garden, fine, but will there be anyone who is going to be able to keep it going? Did you choose plants that will grow here throughout the year and into the next? You can send a huge number of vitamins, but even if the label is in Spanish, will the people be able to read them and understand what they are for, how often to take them, etc.? Sustainability is a problem here. People do not always know how to fix something that has broken or has developed a problem. Look for the simplest solution you can provide. Nine times out of time that is what you need to do. If you do not have a specialty, consider funding the trip for a specialist that is needed here. Sanitation, health, education…these are all the bases from which the poor can improve their lives. A surgeon, a civil engineer, a special education evaluator…these people can make huge differences in many lives in a concise period of time if given the right kind of support.

WHAT SHOULD I BRING OR SEND? Barring natural disasters, we really probably don’t need your old clothes. We sometimes feel we are swimming in used American clothing. We always need shoes, but only shoes that are going to last. We always need new underwear. We always need quality sheets, towels, and light blankets.
Durability is a big issue. What you send needs to survive the rainy season, being worn in the jungle or under the hot highland sun, being worn every day. Kids use everything, especially shoes, harder than adults will. There are no washing machines and rarely soap, so clothes are washed by being beaten against the rocks in the river. It always makes me smile to see a small, shoeless girl in a worn-out velvet dress on a hot day…such an oxymoron…but it makes me wonder what the donator was thinking…where would a poor Honduran child wear a winter party frock? How hot that poor babe must be!
Don’t fall into the trap of “They’re poor. They’ll like whatever we give them.” If toys are cheap or not age appropriate, if clothing is of poor quality, it will not be kept for long. People may smile and say “Gracias” but if it were you, wouldn’t you be thinking “Do they think I’m stupid? That I have no pride?” If you wouldn’t wear it on the street, why would you subject someone else to wearing it? (Look into recycling it there in the States, Europe, or Australia…the companies do exist.)
Consider where the item will go when it wears out. Consider the packaging. This is especially a problem with plastic toys, or as one friend here calls it “Junk for Jesus.” When it breaks in the States, we send it to the trash bin on the curb where the city picks it up regularly and takes it to the dump where it is sequestered and made at least somewhat sanitary. Here there is no one to pick up the garbage in many places outside the cities or people may be too poor to pay for the service. Here people live on the trash dumps because they can’t find anywhere else to live. Here people burn their trash in their stoves to cook their food. For the same amount you spent on the toys, you could likely have found school or art supplies, nutritional snacks like dried fruit in paper boxes, or educational games that can be shared and used for years. Why send things in easily broken plastic bags when you could splurge just a bit more on cheap plastic boxes with lids that can be used for years? Can something be wrapped in another useful item? One church group gave out stockings to the kids at Christmas, just a regular sock filled with candy, pencils, erasers, pencil sharpeners, rulers, etc. It was great except that they didn’t think to stuff the other sock in too. What is a child going to do with one sock? People send cardboard puzzles in cardboard boxes…what do you think happens to those in the humidity? Also, most kids are not patient or cognitively advanced enough to do even a 100 piece puzzle. Think simple and multi-use as often as you can.
If you are coming to visit a project, avoid bringing candy or sodas. The kids can usually afford a little candy each week. It’s cheap even here where it is almost always an import. Bring chocolate milk or juice or drink mixes rather than soda (consider the lack of refrigeration and air conditioning.) Bring fruit or vegetables, especially fruits that the kids have never seen or been able to try. My second and third graders are crazy for broccoli now, which I brought to school in order to show them that it really is possible to eat flowers (we were studying parts of the plant.) And unlike the candy wrappers, the peels and trash from fruit and vegetables will be nutritious for the environment, not toxic. If you are bringing a drink of some kind, bring some quality plastic cups (these never seem to last at the Jungle School but slowly filter away to be used as shovels or other toys on the playground.) If you are visiting a family in poverty, bring dry goods or a frozen chicken (which can keep for at least 24 hours without refrigeration…most people don’t have electricity.) These gifts seem ridiculously cheap to us but they are well out of the family’s price range. Simple toys, like balls or Frisbees, are great if you have a chance to play with older children. I took one family two chickens and a sock filled with rice to make a ball. We had hours of fun.
Carry a cheap notebook, nothing you’ll be sad to lose. You can record what you learn, your self-reflections (if you trip is any kind of success, you’ll have lots of them), and you can tear out pages to give away. I don’t know how many pages of the basics of English vocabulary and grammar I have given out in my short time here. (Although this is something I only do if requested; I never force English on anyone.) And I am going home with more notes and drawings from children than I will ever know what to do with.

ONE LAST ITEM ON THE PACKING LIST: The last and most important thing to bring is your humility. Check your arrogance in your North American airport (for those travelling from other continents, you are still likely to go through Miami, so feel free to leave yours there.) You may think you won’t have it, but it will creep up on you without your realizing (it happens to me frequently.) Whatever you do for these children, it was only a drop into their very deep well of need.
I’m not saying this to discourage you but rather to encourage you to do your work with a sense of reality. I met one young man who had been here a week and was overly proud of the bookcases he had helped build at an orphanage. Don’t get me wrong, the kids needed them and I appreciate that someone came out to put together 25 bookcases. At the end of a morning of teaching in the Jungle, I’m wiped and not about to be putting together bookcases in the afternoon heat. And we won’t be able to find Hondurans willing to do it for free. But don’t get too crazy with the pride. After all, they were just bookcases. They were not an end to poverty or child abuse or malnutrition. I would have preferred to hear, “Well, we made bookcases, and when we come back we will do something even better.”
I don’t think that I have done so much I should be arrogant, either. Please don’t think that. I go to bed each night thinking of all the things I could have done better. I keep thinking of projects that I should have done while I was here. I keep thinking of ways I could have phrased things better to improve the children’s understanding of a topic or their sense of self-esteem. I’ve been spitting into the wind, too. I’ve just been here long enough to start learning how to aim a little better, maybe, I hope. I will learn more each time I come back. It is all about perspective. I don’t fault the folks demanding more of me or lying about having received their gift and wanting me to give them more. To them I am enormously wealthy (even as I have watched my net-worth dwindle to less than half its size amidst our economic woes.) I politely explain that no, I am sure I already gave them a soup packet so no, they cannot have another one as this means someone else would have to go without. I also explain that in my culture (and amongst many middle class Hondurans as well) it is customary to preface and/or close any request with the word “please,” and that they should keep this in mind for their future requests as it will help them get what they need, but no, my answer isn’t changing. [Okay, that is a bit of wishful thinking really…by the end of a day I am so tired that I am just as likely to give them another soup packet if no one is looking.]

I remind myself every day that justice is not a natural phenomenon. The life of the gazelle or blue jay or wild mongolian horse is not fair. It could be eaten by something stronger, bigger, and faster. It could succumb to a nasty disease. It could be washed away in a flash flood while drinking from a river. It lives very much in the present. Poor children are much the same and I have learned a great deal from them about how to keep my wider perspective. But in the same way we see animals in the shapes of clouds or constellations of stars, we have developed this concept of Justice, a deeper concept that we feel should be there even when it isn’t.
It is we, all humanity, together, who must carry it out, we who must create Justice with our own hands and sweat and cradle it like a precious child, keeping watch as it learns to walk that it not falter and injure itself permanently. It will grow very slowly. We may never see it take more than a few baby steps within the generations walking the earth right now. But why should that mean it is impossible?

#10 Approaching Bilingual

I know I have achieved an amazing level of comfort with my Spanish now that I have started making up funny songs just like I do in English. Enjoy (especially when imagining me on a bike going up a mountain and singing these at the top of my lungs to keep my spirits up!) The kids particularly enjoy the Monkey song.

MONO /MONKEY
(sung to the tune of Farmer in the Dell)

Soy el mono en el zoo
El mono en el zoo
No me molestas
Te golpeo con mi pupu

I’m a monkey in the zoo
A monkey in the zoo
Don’t you dare to mess with me
I’ll hit you with my poo


CULO ROTO/BROKEN BUTT
(sung to the tune of This Land is Your Land)

O si mi culo
Es muy roto
Porque mi bici
Es muy duro
Porque la calle
Es muy mala
No me gusta montar en bici

O yes my bottom
Is very broken
Because my bike seat
Is very darn hard
Because the road here
Is really horrible
I really hate riding my bike today

#9 Another Day Another Dolor

I know. I haven’t written in ages. I appear to be absorbing whatever it is in the air here that saps one's work ethic, energy level, and general ability to give a shit. That’s not completely true. I am working hard and I care deeply. Energy, well, that’s definitely lacking. I have fully embraced the siesta culture. Sometimes I embrace it twice a day! This makes it hard to plan my lessons and write my blog.

Although a million things have happened, it also feels like little to nothing has occurred since I last wrote. It is all becoming routine daily life and I forget what might be of interest to those at home. However, here is a recap of my last couple of weeks.

I went to Copan Ruinas, the largest Mayan archeological site in Honduras. The ruins and my reflections deserve an entire blog entry unto themselves, so I will leave that for a later date.

New Year’s was lovely. I chilled with friends here in El Sauce, my barrio, drinking and listening to music, and then making lots of noise when the clock struck midnight. (Well, when it got close to midnight. As usual, exact punctuality is not regarded as necessary here…and for once something actually started early!) I reflected, as is my wont, that my video of the neighbor’s fireworks could be mistaken for Aljazeera coverage of Gaza.

Otherwise my vacation time was quiet. I saw some movies…Madagascar 2 is funny even in Spanish…Red de Mentiras (the Russell Crowe, Leonardo di Caprio CIA flick) was excellent and has made for some interesting arguments around the dinner table. Julia, a new Jungle School volunteer, arrived from Austria. Lempira learned to climb the Christmas tree.

Lempira is also learning to pounce and play rough. His favorite playtime is at about two in the morning. His favorite toy is my face. As a result, he is also learning the word “no” quite well and getting used to sleeping in the bathroom.

We’ve been back at school for almost a week. For the most part, I have adjusted back to the bike riding. It has been blessedly free of rain for over a week, so for the first time the road is truly dry. And thus I’ve discovered the downside to the dry season. The road is now a hard-packed, jarringly rocky ride that creates a dust-flavored mucus-shake in my sinuses and incredibly sore backside by the end of each ride.

Watching Julia adjust to the school this week has put my own experiences in perspective. I feel rather jaded now, although I am also more determined than ever to give these kids everything I can. Who would have thought, before Christmas at least, that I would ever threaten a group of hungry misbehaving first graders with no milk if they didn’t shape up? And to watch them test poor Julia’s patience, seeing how far they can go with any particular thing, gives me a gauge of how much the kids have changed their attitudes toward me since I arrived. I have earned their respect at last, I think. I gave a slide show presentation about why it is bad to leave the trash on the ground, and they were all well behaved and attentive throughout the program. It was an incredibly pleasant surprise. I have gotten a hold of three metal barrels to use as trash cans, which I will paint with some of the artwork the kids have done. Here are some of the kids’ winning artworks (there are so many good ones that I want to combine them rather than pick just three!)



Apparently we are being treated to a missionary group teaching Bible stories next week. As my devout agnostic self, I am looking forward to the opportunity to work on painting my trash cans because I am not about to teach Bible stories (unless I am also allowed to teach the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the Popul Vul, of course.)

In general I have lost my feeling of being a visitor here. I can’t really imagine that March 24th will arrive and I will go back to DC. It just seems unreal. I can’t say that there aren’t things I will look forward to once I get on the plane, especially given that I am currently soaking my swollen, bug-bitten ankle in an attempt to bring the swelling down and perhaps by some baking-soda-miracle relieve the itching. More and more I am less and less thinking about all that I don’t have here and as a result I am not so frustrated. It hasn’t changed my drive to solve the problems here, but rather honed it, like a surgeon learning how to use a scalpel more precisely. I don’t stop to mourn what is lacking because that just delays the solution and enough has been delayed in these kids’ lives.

On Friday I treated several sisters for what I believe is the contagious skin infection impetigo. The children have bug bites all over their legs which they scratch open, inviting in the staph or strep germs which then spread their sores over the kids’ legs. So on Monday I must start working to show them how to wash off the scabs and put antibiotic ointment on the wounds. I would like to tell them to wash their sheets and not brush up against each other, but given that they likely share a bed and don’t have a spare set of sheets, that would just be cruel. Like I said, you have to use the scalpel to cut away at the problem where you can and hope that what portion of the tumor you do excise will help the rest of it to diminish over time.

#8 Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night!

Ah, my first Christmas in the Developing World

It’s been different than I ever expected, far more calm and sane than I thought it would be. It did not even feel like Christmas at first. There are some lights up here and there...we even have a Christmas tree in our house here in El Sauce, but something was missing…maybe it is the 80 degree afternoons, or the lack of consumerism…

Our Christmas Tree…and my roomies

The Sunday before Christmas we had a big party at the Jungle School, put on by a local Catholic group. It was really great…presents, sandwiches and sodas and cookies, and 2 pinatas! They taught the kids songs and dances to go with them, which the kids sang for the rest of the week.

Kids and Adults Dancing

Kids at the Pinatas

Dave Ashby, HHK founder, at the Pinata

Kids with Presents

I appreciated the work done by this group, especially in comparison to another—Evangelical Christian—group that came the week before. They had stopped in just briefly, given cheap plastic gifts that were often not age appropriate, and there had been no food but lots of prayer, laying on of hands, and Jesus-talk. That group barely interacted with the kids and then they were gone.

What does surprise me about both groups is that the presents they gave were very impractical. Toys are fun, don’t get me wrong, but these kids need so much more. They each got a sock full of candy from one group…one sock…why not make it a pair of socks? Given that the kids are registered with the school, we really need to be collecting the information about each child that would allow and encourage the groups to purchase clothes, shoes, and age appropriate educational toys. We all know Christmas is coming once the calendar says “Octubre”…maybe the older kids could each take on the responsibility of putting together the information for their families. Just a thought…

But back to my own Christmas. Things did start to feel like Christmas when I went to a party at David’s Great Aunt’s house. We ate dinner and listened to a local musician who was coming around the houses and playing a few songs at each one for a few lempiras or a plate of food or a beer. Apparently he is quite famous around La Ceiba and is known as “El Canario.” They were traditional Ceibena songs…beautiful…I could have listened all night but we returned to the Aguero’s house, where we at Midnight we ate a small meal and wished each other “Feliz Navidad.” The next day was calm, full of relaxation, and Honduran tamales (sweeter and cooked in banana leaves rather than corn husks.) Tamales and fireworks, that’s what Christmas is about here it seems…I’ll be glad when our neighbors here in El Sauce run out of fireworks and stop firing them off in the front yard. Tamales, fireworks, and—now that I’m here—baked goods…I’ve made brownies and cookies over the last couple of days. I used too much water in the cookie recipe, and the eggs are small so I had to use two, so I guess I actually made brownies and a cookie cake.

Tomorrow I am off to Copan for a few days to learn more about the Mayans and see a bit of Western Honduras…

#6 E. coli? Sure I’ll try anything!

DISCLAIMER: This blog entry includes decorative discussion of my bowels, so readers beware. If you don’t want to know what it is like to have a horrid digestive infection, then don’t read this entry…

It’s been a while since I’ve written, right? Well, it’s been a couple of days since I left the house or ate solid food, too!

I awoke on Sunday morning with the most watery diarrhea of my life. I had been out partying the night before and I thought, “Okay, fine, I’ve done this to myself. This must be my version of a Honduran hangover.” Alas, no. Things headed downhill a couple of hours later when I added to the hourly diarrhea regimen the companion activity of vomiting. That’s right…both ends…sometimes at the same time!

I have nothing but the upmost empathy for babies with diaper rash. I thought I had somehow given myself a chemical burn, I swear. Thankfully, skin heals quickly.

My favorite moments were:
1. After cleaning myself up, going to my bed where I had thrown my water bottle on the way to the bathroom…well, I hadn’t gotten the bottle fully closed so there was a nice huge puddle of wet in the middle of my bed! I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening curled up in a ball, perched on the edge of the mattress until the worst of the wet had dried.
2. The expat Dr. Black came over after I had emailed him to please help me as my Imodium wasn’t doing a damn thing. He took my pulse and told me, “Well, you’re not in extremis.” I nearly cried…I was thinking, this is pretty extreme! He gave me anti-nausea medication in both pill and suppository form and told me to take both so that at least one might stay in. He then came back later after I had fallen asleep with the injectable form of the medication just in case neither the suppository nor pill stayed in or did the trick.

I had decided that at that point, if the only way to stop the pain was through injected medications, I was going to the hospital. (Don’t worry, that would be the nice, clean, private hospital not the scary, dirty, public one. )

I think I scared both David and my mother a little. I was fairly out of it when they called to check on me. Monday fared a bit better. Dry toast in the morning and afternoon and chicken soup with rice in the evening. I didn’t even try to go to school. Dr. Black and Cynthia had me drinking a powdered drink called Gastrolyte to keep my electrolytes correct. I started antibiotics yesterday once I was fairly certain of keeping them down.

So I now continue to repair myself. Lots of naps. Chicken broth with white rice. Lots of water. More naps. More water. It’s not quite all systems normal yet. Things are gurgling in ways they never have before and my abdominal muscles are sore as the dickens.

I managed to get to school today although I was incredibly ragged by the time we arrived. The road has been severely damaged by the latest rains. One section was completely blocked by a landslide but has been somewhat cleared by a bulldozer. It is now a large mud puddle, ankle deep and iron-rich red mud. But I was okay. After all, I’d seen grosser. Recently. In my own bathroom.

One of the older kids was riding his bike back from the store and kept me company as I tended to lag behind Cynthia and Brooke. I must not have looked too good but I held my own.

My sweat tastes like Gastrolyte. I hate the taste of Gastrolyte.

#5 It’s raining! It’s pouring! I’m bored and snoring!

So yesterday morning I awoke around 2am to the sound of pounding rain. It had not let up when we left the house at 7:30am to bike to school. It had not let up when we stopped to shelter under a corrugated tin awning. It did not let up for the hour we waited there, reviewing the US state capitols, the capitols of Central and South American countries, and the names of the Australian territories and their capitols. At 9am we gave up given the high possibility of mudslides and road outages further ahead where the road becomes dirt or gravel and runs right above the river along the valley slope.) So we headed back home, slogging through water up to our thighs (and this on the paved part of the road!) Oh, my brave willies, they tried so hard but were no match for the water, and once I got home I learned just how hard it is to removed your foot from knee high waterproof boots that are completely filled with water!

I filled my day with a nice long nap, a lot of snacking on anything I could muster from the fridge, translating three children’s books into Spanish, and researching ideas for teaching practical math skills in an enjoyable way.

Reports this morning are that there is at least one small landslide between us and the school and likely the road further past the school into the mountain is even worse, so Cynthia has declared it a day off again for us. The rain has yet to let up for more than an hour at most, but we hope it will let up soon and that things can dry up a bit over the weekend.


Brooke and Me…

Brooke and Cynthia…

This is what we waded through…

#2 Setting the Scene...Los Estudiantes

I begin again and again in my mind to describe my first impressions of the children I’m teaching here but there is so much to say and so many more questions come tumbling in with every thought that I keep erasing and starting over. These children are wonderful, exhilarating, and awe inspiring as are all children when you truly connect with them. But at the same time, their situation feeds my wrath at humanity’s apathy and strums a low chord of terror for their future. It nips at the heels of my enthusiasm.

These kids are incredibly poor. Many of them have only one or two changes of clothes, I’ve noticed. My first day was a Monday and I was terrified by the students lack of attention or discipline and overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of them (over forty) that were awaiting our arrival at 8am…then one of the other volunteers reminded me that many of these kids had little to no food since leaving school after lunch on Friday. Many of the girls have light streaks in their dark hair, which I’ve learned is a sign of malnutrition. At the morning break we provide them with milk, which is powdered milk mixed with hot water and maize flower and a little sugar for taste. For lunch they get rice and beans and a bit of fruit, usually pineapple or banana. The rice is regular rice to which we add packets of soy-and-vitamin-fortified, chicken-flavored rice from a program called “Kids Against Hunger.” Sometimes there is meat or tortillas but not often. Often my kids have come into class having pulled up chunks of a leafy plant they call “canya,” the stems of which they strip of leaves and then proceed to eat. It has an acidic, lemony taste but is likely they closest these kids often get to a leafy green vegetable, which isn’t even all that common a food type among more well to do Hondurans.

There are many large families of kids attending the Jungle School. Some are the usual stories of basic poverty and then some are even worse…children who have lost their parents to AIDS and now live with extended families that couldn’t support their own children in the first place.

There is no set curriculum at the moment. We are in what is called “Vacation Care” as the school year ended with November and starts up again in February. We have been asked to work on their Math and English skills and to teach them Christmas songs to sing to the children at the Helping Honduras Kids Hogar (Orphanage) a few towns over. All three tasks are proving incredibly difficult. I’m teaching Math in the morning in two groups, one grades 4-5, the other grades 2-3. The 6th graders have graduated and the kinders haven’t started yet. That said, our students currently range in age from 3 to 22. The toddlers run about with minimal supervision and little interaction. When they fall down and cry, their older brother or sister leaves class to care for them. If there is an extra volunteer to keep an eye on them or if the toddlers want to settle down with the first graders while they color and talk about language skills all the better, but you can’t count on either, of course. Dilcia, the 22 year old, is actually one of the toddlers’ mother, who is coming when she can during vacation care to improve her English skills. In the afternoon I take a group of kids and work on music, science, or social studies. Teaching music is surprising difficult. For many of the kids, listening to music is an incredible luxury, so rhythm and harmony are fairly foreign concepts.

These kids lack so much, rhythm is really the least of my worries. In math last week we worked on money…practicing how to add it up and subtract it and then with the older kids I’ve also added figuring out how long you would have to work at a certain wage to earn that much money. They can do sums and long division like pros for the most part, but the moment you go to apply it to a practical task, it is completely beyond their imagination.

But they are catching on quickly. Not a soul among them is not in some way a clever problem solver. And they love learning. I have never been so heartened as to see a child sitting, studying my math problem on the board, and choosing to go late to a vital lunch because they want to understand it better or ask a further question. It is not lost on them that these are important skills. When you get past the part where they sometimes miss a basic step they should have learned years ago, something as simple as lining up their numbers in a sum, they are willing to take on more than most children I’ve met. They all want to hold up their sheets of loose leaf paper for me to check and they laugh when I step back and say “Yo soy sola una mujer…uno por uno…” (I am only one woman…one at a time…) When I am sweaty and gritty from biking uphill to the school and they run to me for hugs I can’t help but hug them back despite my grubbiness. And, when I have to fake my enthusiasm for math after trudging up from the road to the classroom, their responding enthusiasm makes for a fabulous feedback loop of positive energy.

Still classes here are not what I could have imagined prior to my arrival here. Trying to teach twenty children who are hungry and who have never in their life been given the kind of supportive, consistent structure to which we were accustomed is much like teaching a room of children with severe ADHD. Tempers flare in a moment, things are thrown, attention is distracted and sometimes they even just walk away from the lesson entirely. If I set something on the table, it is jumped at with the feeding frenzy of sharks. Sharing nicely and waiting one’s turn are not common skills. Anything they hold goes into their mouths in a moment’s notice, an oral fixation that I attribute to both the hunger and the lack of parental guidance to discourage it. I am slowly pushing the basic classroom skills like sitting quietly, raising your hand, and keeping attention on the teacher, but it is an uphill battle. I am earning their respect, however, which means a lot, both personally and for their willingness to agree to my rules. They want to show me respect, I can tell, but as few adults have shown them what that means by respecting them, they don’t know what to do.

We have to lock up everything at night and nothing can be left on or near the window sills where hands could reach in through holes in the window screens. But, I really believe that stealing anything that isn’t locked down, even things they have no use or value for like pencil sharpeners, is just a part of the hoarding behavior typical of someone trying to fill enormous wells of emotional and physical need.

Imagination is the hinge to my current thoughts on my students’ intellects. When Vacation Care started two weeks ago, apparently, the children would only use pencils to draw, crayons and markers were just left to lie there. With a little coaxing, they have taken off with the crayons and markers, and with a little coaxing and practice they start to see that they can solve these practical problems I put before them, but it is an extraordinary task for all of them. I think it goes back to their basic starting places, where there is so little interaction with them while they are forming their early minds and language skills. Their families have so little time to tell them stories or work with them on their colors, numbers, shapes, and letters or even basic motor skills. It occurs to me that imagination is a skill that we teach to tiny children. When you have toys to manipulate and parents to interact with, you form the ability to imagine that those blocks are a castle you are building. These kids have the difficult task of forming the ability to imagine well after the best age for the brain to do so. It isn’t about dreaming big; it’s about solving basic problems in life.

I believe they can do it. I feel incredibly blessed that I can help them with it. I feel sad that we didn’t get there sooner for them and worried that we aren’t doing enough for the little ones who still have the greatest chance.