The end of my second month here approaches and I find myself without internet for a whole week. At first I am a little panic stricken, my links with the outside world are all but gone. I think back to days in the office at UAL Arts when the terminally doomed ´system´ (a loose term at best) would crash and we would all find ourselves stuck for work. There, at least we had London. Here I have only the radio and my legs to connect me with anything outside of Las Mangas. However a parcel arrives from my Mum in England packed with some new clothes. It reminds me of simpler pleasures before the internet! Thanks Mum.
At this point I am less panic stricken and more inspired. The last week has brought trials far greater for the project than a little dodgy internet connection. The first was the 5ft Boa that lived in our house for a week. They kill snakes here…all of them. If they don’t kill them they bring them to GUARUMA, where Mac tries to find a safe place to deposit them away from the machete wielding locals. Machetes are probably the weirdest thing to get used to. Everybody has them, a machetes or a gun. They use machetes for everything from basic carpentry, cutting the grass, chopping down trees to chopping snakes (poisonous or not) in half. Generally I am petrified of snakes, but as with most things since arriving here I find myself much more relaxed (discounting my standards of personal hygiene, they remain at ´British standards´).
Secondly, and more importantly, Orlin, a student of ours, won a scholarship to go to the States for two weeks to attend a photography conference. Last week he, his mother and Mac had to travel to Tegucigalpa to gain a visa for entry to the states, something few Hondurans are ever granted. I know few people who have had pleasant experience with US Immigration (except Americans), but however bad your experience, times it by a million and you have the experience of a Honduran trying to enter ´the land of the free.´ God Bless America and it´s deep rooted fear of Immigrants. They would make the writers of the Sun so proud. Orlin´s chances were so slim we really had little hope. Countless pieces of paper verifying animal, mineral, vegetable, inside leg measurements of him and every member of his family and still the ordeal was a long one for all of them. We sat here in Las Mangas eagerly awaiting the first radio contact to confirm whether he had been granted the visa or not. It was the longest day here so far. Thankfully he was finally granted it and he and Mac left for Florida late on Friday. It’s hard to put into words what an opportunity this will be for someone like Orlin but it´s one of those fantastic tangible results and it feels so good to know that he has achieved this with the help of the project.
It’s now Monday, and once again I was woken up at some obscene hour by the Kindergarten. Like most things, I just accept it. It´s hard to be angry with toddlers for long. The kids from Tucanes photography class (the smallest) are outside frantically scouting around for their next picture. There’s a religious retreat house across from us (a denomination I have never heard of) and unfortunately we have to put up with a week of screaming and wailing, this is apparently how these people pray and it’s a little unnerving. Quite what is wrong with a quiet reverent and silent conversation with your maker I have no clue, however, each to their own. Lizzie and Simon have bought a puppy so most of our time is taken up with trying to teach it to fetch, swim and bark…standard puppy stuff. I have spent most of the morning talking to Camillo, one of the students and I am rather pleased at having sustained such a lengthy conversation spanning such a range of topics without having to ask ´como se dice en español´ too many times. Having no internet to distract me this week I have completed my six month class plans and given them to the director for approval as the completion of the classroom at EL Pittal is drawing ever closer. Imagine devising lesson plans to teach computers to groups of children who have never even seen a computer let alone used one. It’s really quite difficult to cast your mind back to that time in your life, as most of us have inevitably grown up around computers. Even since coming here I have no trouble using the computers in Spanish as I instinctually know where everything is in the operating system and which message boxes flash up when without having to read them. That’s a product of life spent with and around technology. Here it is different. SO far I am enjoying the challenge of thinking of creative ways to explain abstract concepts such as file systems and information transfer to the kids. Putting things in terms they understand is the best way, using nature, things they do everyday and physical activities. I have never taught before, planning I can do in detail and abundance down to the most anal of details (I wonder where I learnt that) but I really hope that in practice I will be a good teacher. Of course communicating all of this in Spanish will be the biggest challenge of all, but I feel that slowly but surely that is coming and perhaps the pressure of teaching will be the catalyst that helps it all slide into place once and for all.
Recently I spend more and more time down at the river, in fact I have a new favourite place called the hammock rock. It’s right in the middle of the river and is just big enough for three people to lay out, watch the stars and chat. As we do. This week Simon, Lizzie and I watched the eclipse from the garden through a telephoto lens and cooked a barbeque. Yesterday we hiked up to a secluded waterfall with a plunge pool, just one of the hidden gems you find everywhere here. I find I take less and less photos of these things because I am literally falling over them on the way to the shops, they’re everywhere and unless I carried my camera about with me constantly there’s just no way to capture it all. In the evening we cook food and chill out at the river or sometimes we watch Planet Earth, which sounds geeky but we have the DVD box set and we all love it!
It’s a very small community here and you quickly get to know all the kids, their parents and the other gringos volunteering and living here. Life is really simple and it amazes me how quickly you can feel at home in a place and how soon all the things that you thought you’d never get used to – like riding around in the back of pick up trucks, being constantly sweaty, being eaten alive every night and jumping (falling if you´re me) between rocks in rivers – become second nature to you. I literally cannot believe how far away the daily commute on the tube seems to me now! I really didn’t think I was quite so adaptable. But, probably one of the greatest things about volunteering here is the freedom you are allowed and the responsibility that is entrusted to you. Nothing here happened by chance and the success of the project is down to the dedication of the volunteers who come to work here. I have quickly realised that there is much to be done and plenty that I am able to help with and even lead on outside of teaching hours. If you can spot something that would be good and are resourceful enough to make it happen you can do it. Already I have cheeky plans involving more Graphics based classes, inevitably spreading my obbsesison with typography and layout to Latin America! They have such a good eye for framing pictures I am not sure it will be too bigger leap for them. We have talked about me making recycled paper with the kids and showing them how to bind simple books for their photos. We have also spoken about the need to develop the membership services for tourists and there s talk of marketing the images as some sort of stock database…which probably all sounds dull as dishwater to you but you will have to keep checking back to see the results. I can guarantee they will be less than boring, there’s nothing boring about local development here I can assure you! However, I am eternally reliant on inspiration from home, so if you have any ideas, do mail them along…
So, I guess its a rather business like one this time. I hope it will not put you off reading further. The horrors of getting lost in strange cities and thinking I may have some incurable necrotising skin disease seem far behind me, altogether everything feels less extreme. Ahead of me I can see a few more challenges. Namely not dying of malaria (against all odds and the many beasties I seem to share a room with every night), teaching in Spanish, expanding my vocabulary to the level of a 12 year old (at least), learning to dive, training my stupid gringo skin out of reacting violently to the slightest hint of sun, overcoming my fear of jumping off very high rocks (my status as honorary Honduran is hanging on this one) and, well, probably a few more.