#13 Jungle School Sunny Side Up

Jungle School has been in session for almost three weeks now and I have learned that I love and hate teaching. It is challenging and fun and active. It is also challenging, exhausting, and frustrating. I love learning and I love helping other people learn, but I am ready to lose my cool at least once a day due to one frustration or another. I could do without the misbehavior and lack of initiative, but they are small prices to pay for making what I think is a real difference in these kids’ lives. I will blog tonight about the positive sides of my work and return later to discuss the less positive aspects.

I am teaching Second and Third Grade, Monday through Thursday, from 7am to 1pm. Julia, a volunteer from Austria, and I trade classes for 40 minutes so that she gets a break from Kindergarten by teaching my classes’ Social Studies and I get a break from my kids and get to play and sing with the Kinder kids. On Fridays I teach music to the 5th and 6th graders; we are learning to play the recorder. Then I stay at the school with the younger kids while the older kids go down to the river with Toshi for karate lessons. I’m not a big fan of Fridays. My Monday to Thursday schedule looks like this…

7-7:20am PREPARATION Transportation is a pain for me and the kids, so this is time when they can finish the homework they forgot to take home, read books from our little library, and we can all finish getting to school.

7:20-8am MATH We’ve been doing the order of numbers and the place names as well as greater than, less than, and equal. The 2nd graders are working with numbers 1-999 and the 3rds are working with 1-99,999. I’m looking forward to getting to addition and subtraction next.

8-8:40am SPANISH I give them 12 spelling words a week that we then practice and use throughout the week before having a test on Thursdays. I am focusing on problem areas like v/b, c/s, h, rr/r and ll/y. It has been fascinating to see how often even adults here spell “hacer” (to do or to make) as “aser” because they are unaware of the silent “h” at the beginning or the fact that “c” and “s” have the same sound sometimes. My other favorite spelling issue is fairly particular to Honduras and is that “b” and “v” are both pronounced as “b”. Many of my kids spell 20 as “beinte” and one kid wrote his alphabet with “…Uu Vb Ww…” These are problems we see with adults too…

[The sign says "Don't vote for trash." They thought they were using the word "botar" which means "to throw out."]

We use the words to practice writing and how to form sentences correctly. We are also currently reading some simple poems and using them to learn how to answer reading comprehension questions.

8:40-9am RECESS AND MILK I have loved watching the kids play a game at recess called “The Lucky Bunny” which consists of standing in a circle and clapping hands with the persons on either side of you and saying a poem about a lucky bunny who comes to visit and kisses the boy or girl he likes best. There is one child in the center who is counting around the circle with the beat of the poem and whoever his or her finger is pointing at when the poem is done is the lucky bunny. This person then moves to the center and chooses who they want to kiss, and then this third kid takes to the center to count with the poem. The gender observer in me noticed right away that while girls kiss girls and boys, boys only kiss girls. Ahhh, homophobia…it starts so young.

9-9:40am SOCIAL STUDIES (aka My time to play with the cute kids who are ages 3-6 in the Kinder class.) It is fascinating how hard it is for a 5 year old who has never been to school to learn to differentiate colors or to recognize numbers or letters.

9:40-10:20am SCIENCE We’ve been working on what constitutes life, the life cycle, how we use things that aren’t alive, and the parts of plants. I’m looking forward to getting to animals soon! The kids enjoyed the chance to look close up at leaves with the magnifying glasses I brought with me.

10:20-11:20am ART, CALLIGRAFY, or HEALTH Depending on the kids’ energy level and attention spans, we usually do one day of art, one day of health, and two days of calligraphy (learning to write in script.) Most of my students’ penmanship is atrocious and painstakingly slow, so it is important to practice and I focus on the words from their spelling lists to help us practice those. Art is very basic. We used white chalk on black construction paper to mimic Lenca pottery (the Lenca are a tribe indigenous to western Honduras.) My plan for Health this week is to teach them to wash their hands for at least the duration of the song “Happy Birthday.”

11:20-Noon LUNCH Ahhh, rice and beans and either pineapple or plantain… the rice is from a program called “Kids Against Hunger” so it is specially formulated with soy protein and vitamins. I can’t say I’m a fan, but I always eat a little to make a good show of it. We also try to make sure the kids brush their teeth and take a children’s vitamin.

Noon-1pm TUTORING While Toshi, another volunteer from the US, and Julia teach English to the older kids, I keep myself available to the younger ones to help them with homework and basic skills. I have one second grader who is new to the school this year. He is very capable in math class but completely unable to read, so I am working with him at a very basic level to get him understanding phonics so that he can catch up more quickly to the other kids in terms of language.

I then go down to the road wait for the bus to pass by (which can be at any time between 1:15 and 2.) I try to stop by a house just down the road where one of our first graders lives. His grandmother has asked me to help him with his homework when I can because she can’t…she’s never been to school.

We have two Honduran teachers at our school. Angel is the director and is in charge of 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, although most classes for them are taught by the volunteers Maria (from Spain) and Toshi. Those three grades (about 25 kids in all) share one classroom. The other classroom is headed by Iris, who really only teaches first grade. Also in that room are 2nd and 3rd grades, with me. In total there are around 25 kids in 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Julia teaches about 5 Kinder students in the roofed space in between the two buildings.

We have approximately one textbook for every two kids, so there is a great deal of sharing. I have mostly given up on using textbooks, as sharing is not an easy thing and the time taken up in fighting over who will have the book on which side of the desk is precious learning time lost. I spend my own money to pay for copies so that the kids can have actual worksheets for math and science and a small book of poems that we use for Spanish class.

My biggest goals in my work over the next few weeks is to help set some foundations for these kids to learn HOW to learn, so that they are not completely dependent upon inconsistent and poorly trained teachers for all of their knowledge. I want to instill in each of them at least a kernel of self-esteem. I want to model consistent adult discipline and appropriate behavior. And I want to provide them with a sense that everything they learn has a practical, and maybe even enjoyable, use.

Part of me can’t wait to come back and teach some more. I love the work. Most days, I really love the kids and will miss them terribly and am trying not to think too heavily on that approaching departure date.

#12 Las Cascadas Bejuca, Pico Bonito, Honduras

I am currently lying on the couch with my slightly battered left knee elevated on pillows, but it is entirely worth it. The other three volunteers and I spent the last two days hiking and camping in Pico Bonito National Park along the Cangrejal River outside of La Ceiba. A Honduran friend,Queso (yes it is a nickname and, yes, it is the Spanish word for cheese) offered to take us up to the top of the waterfall and camp there for the night after our failed attempt to reach the falls on an afternoon hike last Monday.

Lessons learned on that Monday hike:
Lesson #1. Do not count on a dog as your guide. Tonki, the pudgy Rottweiler who belongs to the owner of a lodge along the river, decided to tag along with us and would run ahead on the trail and then wait for us to catch up. No one informed us that we were actually looking for an offshoot of the loop trail, so we missed the turn, and although we found some lovely smaller falls, none of them were the 180ft falls we were expecting to find. Whenever we see Tonki now we call him “Mal Guia” (bad guide.)

Lesson #2. Water droplets on a carpet of moss look like liquid emeralds.
Lesson #3. You don’t have to reach your destination to have an incredible journey.
Lesson #4. Leafcutter ants will go one hell of a long way down the mountain to find good leaves to carry back to their colony. And they form their own little highways as they traverse back and forth by the thousands. Also, smaller ants will hitch rides on the leaves being carried by the larger ants. I could watch them for hours.
Lesson #5. Sitting in front of a water fall and listening to it is like sitting before a wise teacher who speaks in poetry, so that you must take in everything you hear and await the day that you will understand it. And all the time you are listening to your own inner voice.

We camped at the top of the falls, about 200ft above the valley floor. From our fire we could see far up into the Cuenca (Spanish for “watershed” and used to describe the valleys formed by the river and its tributaries.) As the sun set and lights in houses below were turned on, we could sit at our fire and look south into the mountains. We could see that electricity has not yet been installed far into the Cuenca, and as night fell it became an inky black void. From our tents we could see north all the way to the city and where the river meets the sea. Sitting near the edge of the falls, I was far enough out from under the canopy of trees to see the eastern sky filled with more stars than I could count. As the clouds began to form yesterday afternoon (this is after all a cloud forest) they were actually below us, we were so high up! This morning we hiked down to the base of the falls and then to the river valley floor, stopping along the way to enjoy a dip in a beautiful swimming hole.

Lessons learned on this weekend’s hike:
1. The floor of a cloud forest is a loose, peaty dirt mixed with dead leaves that is more than willing to give way at any moment beneath your feet. The only things holding it in place are the tree roots. It really brings home the fact that this soil is not meant for agriculture or ranching and that deforestation is the worst thing you can do.
2. Trees, their roots, and thick vines are my nearest and dearest forest friends. My fall this morning would have been much worse were it not for the strong vine I was able to hook my arm across and thus stop myself from going down the steep slope below the trail. My bruised armpit is a small price to pay for not having to figure out how to get down a steep mountain with broken bones. (Big Honduras lesson: Life hurts sometimes, so get over it. Keep your eye on the positive.) I have endless respect for my students and their hikes to get to school because I know some of their paths aren’t much better.

3. Soaking in cold river water is as good as ice when your knees are hurting.
4. The Cuenca is a beautiful place, full of vibrant life of all kinds, and I really feel like I am a member of the community sometimes. Coming home in the back of a pickup, we were greeted by many of our students playing along the road or in the yards of their homes.

5. Sleeping in a tent with the other 4 volunteers just doesn’t compare to having Lempira, my pygmy jaguar friend, wake me up in the morning by biting my nose.
6. I am definitely closer to 30 than 20 and my body knows it. I should listen better.
7. Caterpillars come in all shapes and sizes.

8. If you crush termites and rub them on your skin, you won’t get bug bites. (I already knew that they taste like carrots.)

9. Mountain spring water tastes delicious!

#11 Solares Nuevos

I spent my Friday afternoon and Saturday morning helping to organize and deliver food to the campesino village that Helping Honduras Kids has become involved with. Campesino is the Spanish word for peasant, and village is a polite description of the terrible conditions these 250 people are lucky enough to live in. They have chosen for their group name Solares Nuevos, Solares being the Spanish word for plots of land, often referring to tenement homes and Nuevo being new. That’s right…the “new tenements.” They first lost their homes and belongings in Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Then, two years ago, they were forced off the land that they had been living on for 6 years and where they had managed to build adobe homes. A humanitarian group was able to purchase this hectare of land for them just outside the town of La Bomba where they have managed to build wooden shacks and establish something of a home around the one-room concrete building and the well that have been built for them. There was a donor helping provide food until a few months ago, when they had to or chose to stop buying food. Agriculture is next to impossible on this land and completely impossible in the enduringly severe rainy season we are still at times experiencing.

Here are some figures to help you imagine. A hectare is 10,000 square meters, equivalent to a little less than two and a half acres. The average US home is 2,330 square feet. This means that there would be about 47 average US homes back to back and side to side without yards and in each house there would be about 5 and a quarter people. That is one person to every 435 square feet. Sounds livable until you start including shared space like paths, roads, the well, community center, and most importantly the subsistence agriculture these folks so desperately need. The land is low and gathers mud and water easily but is slow to release it and become dry. Even if it was suitable for successfully growing crops, it is not adequate for the variety of foods necessary to ensure nutrition. That would include corn, beans, plantains, and chickens at the very least.

I spent much of my time there talking with the children. They have many of the same problems as the kids at the Jungle School, living in fatherless homes, staph infected bug bites on their legs, light streaks in their hair from malnutrition, trouble learning and staying at grade level in school. However, their problems were all markedly more severe than the ones I encounter at my school. The wounds on their legs were actively bleeding and deeply eaten into the skin, making divots into their shins. I met multiple children who were in grades far behind the average for their age, for example eleven year olds in second grade. I also saw evidence of severe birth defects, including one girl with Down syndrome, a baby with a slightly but obviously oddly shaped head and a boy with the wide set eyes that I have often heard associated with fetal alcohol syndrome. My thoughts today have often strayed back to the girl with Downs, wondering what her future will be, especially should she outlive her parents and siblings and especially in a culture where she is vulnerable to predatory men just for being a girl, let alone developmentally challenged.

The kids taught me the Spanish words for bike seat (monturo) and swing (culumbrio). I taught them the concept of “thousand” in English, so that they can now count up to 999,999 in English. I also taught them my Monkey Poo song, which was a big hit with the kids and the woman driving the delivery van for us.

And now I sit with the information I have gathered and attempt to digest it…looking at it from the personal story angle, the statistical angle, and finally the philosophical angle…trying to see the truths through the mixed muck of poverty and social prejudices and enduring disadvantages in these peoples’ daily lives. Whose fault is it that they are poor? The society at large does not offer them much in the way of opportunities and lives in such ways that demand that someone be poor so that they can be rich. But nor do these people help themselves, instead perpetuating much of their poverty by giving up in the face of such enormous odds and being self-destructive with alcohol and other behaviors. For example, we seriously considered not leaving the unclaimed bags of food for the absent families because it was so likely that someone else would steal them before those families returned. We eventually left the bags under the security of the woman they have chosen as their community representative, but it was with minimal hope that the intended families will actually see all of the nutritious goods intended for them.

Each bag contained a pound of pasta, a pint of tomato sauce, a pound of coffee, a box of milk powder, a pound of shortening, two pounds of beans, two pounds of rice, and two pounds of coffee, and two pounds of sugar…in short, enough to stave off starvation for a week. The kind couple from New Mexico who was donating the food bought enough for us to deliver this for at least two weeks, possibly three. It cost them less than $500. $2 per person in the village.

It seems so easy to help. At the same time it is so difficult to solve. So I am embracing the famous Rilke quote:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved...and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them...Live the questions.”

That is what I am doing here, I think, living my way through the question and hopefully in some small way living the answer whether or not I am aware of it.

#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…

#7 I’ve gone and done it now…

I got myself hitched. He’s a real cutie. His name is Lempira. He’s about six weeks old, I’m guessing. He’s got a few fleas and a swollen belly likely full of round worms and, don’t worry, Dad, he’s a kitten…No…a real kitten. He’ll go to Brenda, one of the students at the school, when I leave in March. I am just trying to see him back to health and vigor, which includes keeping him away from homicidal toddlers.

It isn’t uncommon in India, Bangladesh, and many impoverished places, for younger children to attend school with their older siblings. The only difference here is that many of the older siblings show little to no interest in their toddler hermanitos. We don’t have volunteers or space for these guys but we aren’t about to turn them away from a reliable source of nutrition.

But I think we need to draw the line when the toddlers bring along their small, starving, dirty, flea-ridden kittens to play with. This was the second cat I had to watch be tormented by a homicidal toddler in the last two days. Homicidal seems a strong word for a three year old, doesn’t it? But this three year old was hurling the kitten to the ground with all the force he could muster, then picking it back up while it was still stunned and doing it again.

And, yes, this was while I was trying to teach geometry.

I know that I have limitations. I am one woman and cannot single handedly wipe out endemic poverty and its woes. But I could do something in this situation.

So I took the kitten away from the three year old. To him it was a cute ball of fur with no more rights or feelings than most people attribute to, say, a three year old. There isn’t any reasoning or explaining that can change a very limited mind. So, I stopped teaching geometry and took the role of the responsible adult…and ten minutes after I took it away, he seemed to have forgotten it completely and had started playing with a plastic bag over his head (which I also took away despite the urge to let nature run its course.)

The kitten stayed, quite happily, in a box on the table in the corner of the room. Anyone who approached it was threatened with no milk or lunch if they so much as touched the box. The kitten curled up and went to sleep. He awoke when I brought in a little of the milk mixture we give the kids, which I diluted with water and he gobbled down hungrily, then crawled onto my hand and fell asleep again.

It was the kitten version of a kidnap victim’s response. Food! Sleep!

So, I made up my mind that he wasn’t going back to the toddler. This child comes from the poorest family. They don’t have enough food for themselves. This little guy wouldn’t last but another two incredibly miserable weeks at the very most. After lunch I convinced the oldest child in the family (she’s six) that it was sick (and showed her the distended belly to prove it) and that there was no way they could care for it, so she gifted the kitten to Brenda, another girl of about ten or eleven. This I found acceptable, as Brenda seems in good health and, even better, sane mind. As I was leaving, Brenda ran up to me with the kitten and asked me to have it.

It is amazing how when you have nothing, it causes you to see value in nothing…or everything. The toddler’s sister couldn’t care less about the cat. It would likely die anyway. There would always be another amongst the limitless hungry, unsprayed and unneutered population. Brenda valued what the cat needed, that I could provide it, and what caring for the cat might mean to me. She and I had bonded over her great work in Geometry, and she wanted to show me how much I mean to her. I asked Brenda if she could take it when I have to go back to the US, by which time it will be bigger and healthier and won’t need so much constant care, and she said yes.

Crap. No more excuses. And how could I say no to those green eyes?

So, feeling a little bit like the Wicked Witch with Toto in the bike’s basket, Lempira and I came home to Ceiba. Together we learned online that he is indeed likely a he (it’s hard to tell at this age,) that he is likely about 6 weeks old (his baby teeth are almost all in but he is too small to be a full two months,) that most likely his belly is swollen due to roundworms (for which I am trying to find a treatment here,) and how we would go about litter box training, etc. At the store we found Kitten Chow, some yummy treats, Ivory Dish Soap, Combs, and a large plastic tray with sunflowers that will be serving as the litter box. Cats here are always outdoor cats. David says they just pee everywhere and hates them, but I am determined to succeed with the plastic tray and the fine silt that I collected at the side of the road.

Lempira has now eaten his fill (which took two platefuls of Kitten Chow.) He has had a bath (which he did not enjoy but which seems to have killed most of his fleas) and lots of cuddle time to warm back up from said bath. He has explored the room with gusto and discovered a feisty enemy in the form of my backpack. I can see that his fur and gait have already begun to improve a bit just from a bath and the sense of safety. I am laying on my bed, and he has curled up in the crook of my neck (he wants constant contact) and gone to sleep purring.

At least I will have succeeded in positively touching one life here…

#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…

#4 Cultural Encounters of the National Geographic Kind

In addition to the numerous human Hondurans I have met, I have now also had close encounters with:
…the hen and rooster that live at the Jungle School (and whom I have named Lunch and Dinner in Spanish…)
…the enraged version of said rooster who had accidentally been locked into one of the classrooms over night,
…the puppy named Punky who likes to sleep in the kitchen trash at the school,
…the weevils in the school’s maize flour that must be sifted out,
…a large scorpion (okay, it wasn’t that close, but 10 feet was close enough for me…)
…numerous El Sauce guard dogs that love to jump at you through the house fences,
…lots of roadside livestock including skinny cows, skinny horses, and incredibly fattened pigs (there’s lots of roadside trash…)
…a grey 8 foot long but dead venomous snake by the side of the road,
…the six foot boa constrictor that was trying to eat the 8 foot long venomous snake when it was run over by a truck (so, yes, it was dead on the side of the road too…)
…and thousands of vicious sand flies and mosquitoes (and, trust me, the mosquitoes are to be preferred.)

And, here is one last close encounter that I can’t help but share…