Designing teaching to teach design
Tonight I will have to settle for another night at La Cassona, which will inevitably involve dancing sweatily to a lot of Reggaton, too much beer, a few shots and a 2am Baleada.
It seems that the country changes, as does the music.
But for the most part the weekend habits stay the same.
It’s been a tough week for free rides. So I’ve actually found myself having to take the bus a couple of times. When I say bus I actually mean mobile discos. Except if they were discos, they would surely be closed down by environmental health for their ear-splitting decibel levels. Obviously they only play Reggaton, and it appears that Reggaton can only be played REALLY LOUD. Seemingly to detract from the fact that it is not really music, just the same drum beat over and over with various obscene things babbled over the top in Spanish. Curiously, it’s quite charming.
I am gazing around at all these little tiny islands and they are almost exactly what you’d draw if someone asked you to draw a desert island. They’re just little mounds of sand with coconut trees on them, and they were everywhere. But the best thing by far is that one of them was OURS…for the whole weekend.
I decided not to brave the shower. Showers in Honduras are called ‘widow makers’, and
with good cause. I only use electric showers when I can see what I am doing and I didn’t fancy dying naked in a dark wooden hut from an electric shock.
First of all, you may be as happy as I am to know that I have finally started to speak in the preterit. That’s the past tense to you and me. To give the grammatically ignorant amongst us some idea of what that means I am going to write the next paragraph in the present; my preferred mode of communication for almost two months now.
Last weekend we are going to go to Cayos Cachinos, but again it is raining. Therefore we cannot go. We are staying in the house and we are watching movies most of the weekend. I am bored. We go next week instead. I am happy about this.
So you will see I have in fact been speaking like an idiot since January. Therefore I am quite relived to finally be learning progressive tenses. Add that to the past and present participles and the preterit and I am already sounding at least three years older. Meaning I now sound like a nine year old instead of a six year old. All we need is a bit of the future and there may be some hope for me.
I am a bit happier with it all as now I am thinking in English and Spanish at the same time a lot more, meaning I can usually piece together how to communicate most things I am thinking albeit with a few bits of vocabulary missing. Now all I need to do is learn to put it all together with enough ease that people don’t fall asleep when I am speaking to them. At the moment I speak at the pace of someone who took too much acid in the 60s and never quite remembered which field they left their brain in. So, for the most part my afternoons are taken up with memorizing bits od vocabulary written on small cue cards. These little pieces of paper inevitably get everywhere and I do wonder if people are starting to fear for my mental health every time the find a little piece of paper with to die, to be lost, knife, or rope written on them.
I have to say I am developing a bit of love for grammar and in turn a small loathing for my own language. The more you learn in Spanish…irregular verbs aside, the more you realize that there is hardly any rhyme or reason to the English langauge. There appears to be more exceptions to the rules than there are rules. In this way I am starting to wonder a) how anyone manages to learn the bloody thing and b) why anyone would want to and c) if our lnguage is so damn hard how come we don´t speak manymore like the Dutch or the Germans?! This is partly inspired by my ew friends Anna and Steph (dutch and swedise repectively) who have no problem being amusing in any one of three langauges simultaneously…bloody show offs. But enough of grammar and my own feelings of incomptence. Despite my current fascination with it it’s still in the most part spectacularly dull. Back to the other stuff…oh wait, there is no other stuff. Just bits of paper and grammar! Balls.
No seriously though, I think I am at that stage where I feel, language aside, I have adjusted to life here. The tell tale signs are when you stop wondering how like you are ever going to make this bus journey alone and survive, or whether this time you will be able to successfully ask the nice lady for a banana. This time and you start thinking that maybe you are not getting enough exercise, or maybe you would to rearrange the furniture in your room a little. I’ve almost stopped gawping at all the amazing scenery with awe, I jump in the back of pickups without a care in the world and I have stopped worrying about the fact that I am almost constantly sweating profusely. I think all of these are probably signs you feel settled. Do not think though that that is it. One thing I have discussed at great frequency in the worst Spanish imaginable is that just when you start to feel good something inevitably happens to slap you round the face and warn you not to relax just yet. For example, my memory card in my camera has a virus, meaning I have lost a couple of weeks of photos. Also meaning some additional vocab is necessary, namely, can you please help me, my camera appears to be fucked. Strangely, I still can’t swear in Spanish. However, for the time being, I am embracing the opportunity to become a little more ladylike. Its a strange rollercoaster I find myself on.
I have been doing a bit of work for the organization recently on updating their communications and their membership services and I have enjoyed that a lot. It´s nice to work in a currency I understand for once. The teaching plans are almost done and next week I start the laborious task of looking up all the vocabulary I could possibly need to teach kids how to turn on computers and other such things. Next week is also Semana Santa, Easter week and a big holiday in Honduras…for everyone but me! However I am hoping to hike up a massive waterfall in the cuenca and all being well I might be able to blag a memory card to take some photos and share the results. Until then, take care.
Nos Vemos pronto
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.
There are buses down to town but no one wastes their 20 Lempira on what is inevitably an uncomfortable ride in a bus full of sweat and watermelons. Most of the time we take rides up and down in the back of a pick up truck for free. The dirt track down the hill is in such unbelievably bad condition and at intervals it disappears completely so the ride is always a rocky one.
My first week, I clung to the side of the truck like a limpet. It wouldn’t have even occurred to me to stand. However, I find I am starting to master the art of balancing on the side as we swing around bends. I often stand up and watch the road over the top of the cab. By the time you jump out at the bottom of the hill you’re covered in dust and have ‘Bridget Jones hair.’ It´s certainly not a look for the vain, but everyone here travels like this. Sometimes you find yourself sat in the back with a whole family, chatting away. All while you cling on for dear life.
We have internet here but it’s desperately slow on occasions. Aside to that there is no mobile coverage and no landlines. At times the total lack of available communication is interesting. Of course the upside is that you do not have to tolerate the almost constant twittering of idiots on mobiles here that you do in England. You can also go about your day largely uninterrupted and you quickly rediscover the lost art of planning ahead.
Predictably I am being eaten alive. This is pretty much par for the course whenever I leave England and you quickly become accustomed to being red and ´bumpy´ from the
bites of the hordes or insects that try to eat you alive every second of the day. It takes a bit more time to get used to the way locals laugh out loud at you and make comments
about gringos whenever they see you applying repellent or suntan cream. However
they’re right, I am a gringo and I do look a tad out of place.
WSeriously. Las Mangas, my home for at least the next month is beautiful. The other people volunteering, so far have been ´interesting.´ For a start Scott and Elly claim to be Mormons. A slightly worrying discovery and even more so when they invite me round for ´readings.´ Suddenly I am panic stricken by the idea that I may spend the year dry (they don’t drink) and trying to avoid conversion to the Mormon faith. Mac is the campest Man I have ever met and Simon doesn’t speak to me for the whole of the first day. Apparently he is a bit moody. It’s not until the evening that Mac and Simon confess the whole thing has been a bit of a practical joke. No Mormons, Mac is not gay and Simon is as nice as nice is. Thank God. Sods.
We’re up bright and early for a workshop led my Scott on the future of education at GUARUMA. Evidently I am a bit of a novice on the subject area but it´s enlightening insight into the politics of the project, peoples teaching styles and some thinking on education generally, particularly as Scott has an education degree.
The second part of the workshop takes place the next day in the form of a five hour hike. Just for a change on this trip I feel like a fish out of water. The team are all experience hikers. I am not. When I say hike I am not referring to a bracing walk up a hill either. I am taking about swimming up current in rapids, climbing up and sliding down huge waterfalls and generally falling over a lot on slippery rocks. Albeit through breathtakingly beautiful cavers and gorges. I return bruised, battered and knackered with the headache I woke up with in the morning., Joy. If this is the long and short of GUARUMA Staff days out give me a year though and I think I might be Tarzan.
I spend the afternoon in contrast in a meeting of the kids involved in the newspaper project. A new drive to produce Eco Cangreal; a paper about life in the Cuenca and Environmental issues. From what I can make out I am going to be interviewed. Which will be fun. Everyday I meet more and more children from the project and I am enchanted. I can´t wait to work with them.
GUARUMA has two bases currently. One in Las Mangas and one in El Pittal, the El Pittal project is new and only just getting it’s first buildings and round of volunteers. Scott and Elly currently work at El Pittal and there’s every chance that I will when the new computer room (and my house) is finished and its here Mac and I walk up to (half an hour with night vision) to have a curry and a few beers (you can do that when you´re not a Mormon) in Scott and Ellys very basic house. Looking around it’s a far cry from my relatively luxurious little pad down the hill. In fact it’s a completely different flavour all together and in the next few weeks I too could be living in a wooden shack with an outside toilet…we’ll see.
Today is Friday and I have spend half of it trying to translate my teaching manual for the classes next week and half of it turning the room I sleep in into a home. I have to confess myself pretty happy with both sets of results. It´s sad to think I may have to leave this place soon. If the new volunteer is better suited to this project then I will have to go to El Pittal. However, for the mean time I´m unpacked and my photos are on the wall, I have a new fridge, a hot shower and for once I feel at home.
I start classes next week and I am petrified. It’s hard for me to even think what to teach, I am so painfully aware of the lack of vocabulary I have to express it. It would be difficult to try and sum up my first week in the valley. It has been an intense mix of emotions. Elation at finally being here. Awe at the sheer beauty of the place. Exhaustion at the heat and the humidity and blind fear of what lies ahead of me. The ball-park figure given by most volunteers is two months, this is the time you finally get your head around the language and cease to feel like a fish out of water. As I approach that marker at rapid speed I am starting to hope that they are right.
I wait at the corner of Puente Saopin staring up a long dirt road. I have made it safely out of Tegucigalpa and have spent a relaxing evening in the town of La Ceiba. I am now about to hitchhike to my new home in the mountains of the Cangrejal Valley.
This is my first experience of hitchhiking and I am relying on the expert advice of Scott and Elly; two fellow Guaruma volunteers and seasoned hitchhikers. A pickup truck pulls up, my foot goes on the top of the wheel and with a clumsy stumble I bundle into the flat bed. Scott and Elly stand up and take the wind in their hair. I cower in the corner clinging to the sides for dear life, attracting many strange looks from the locals. Balance is not my strong point
After ten minutes and countless bumps along a potholed track I realise I am entering a completely different world. We drive through lush green forests, slowing down occasionally for the trickle of a waterfall across the road. I fall out of the back of pick up at GUARUMA in Las Mangas. I am immediately stunned. The place is amazing. I feel, for the first time since arriving in this strange country, that I have made the right choice.
Two students arrive to take me hiking on the GUARUMA trail. I say little and understand even less of what they say to me. As we pass over the bridge at the end of the tiny village we see another boy jumping from the highest rock I have ever seen into the white waters below.
“How long until you do that? They ask me in Spanish. ¨Give me two weeks¨ I reply. They grin. ¨In two weeks¨ they say, ¨you´ll be Honduran.¨
I smile and laugh…no way I think.