Laura Knight

The temperature has dropped as we have made the sudden transition into some sort of pre-rainy season. We are now doing daily power cuts and most days water cuts too. AT nights we fulfill our little ritual of putting out all our pots and pans outside to catch the rain. This way we have water with which too cook, wash up and empty the toilet.

In the late afternoon most days this week the heavens opened and the water comes down in buckets. Not children’s sand buckets either. The sheer volume of rain is amazing. At the beginning of this week we gave up being exasperated with the power situation and just moved the classes out to our garden. It seemed like every class was 30% work and 70% diving for cover from the rain. Sods law, the moment you think its safe to go out it will chuck another 10 minutes worth at you.

Apparently there is some sort of hurricane in Honduras right now, I am told we can expect no less than 18 this year. Whether this is some wonderful Honduran exaggeration or an actual climatic certainty is anybody’s guess.

I have been flooded with emails from people I know asking what it’s like and if it’s really ‘rough out here.’ My answer would be no, it’s just a bit wet. A lot wet. We are all good, alive, safe and well. Just a bit soggy.

It seems to be a trait of the Hondurans to suck it up and make the best of most situations. In this way the rainy interruptions and increased power and water outs seem to be passing with few grumbles.

I am starting a lot of conversations about the weather.  “Odd weather out isn’t it?” I think it’s funny that wherever I am in the world I can’t seem to resist the temptation to talk about it.

For all my woes about missing the British Festival Season I had of course been forgetting the more local of pleasures; the Latin American Festival. It is said that a quarter of a million people descend on La Ceiba every year for the week of Carnival. Making it the hardest week to find a hotel, buy a reasonably priced drink and…well, sleep I suppose.

There is close to a whole week of celebrations, culminating in a huge parade on Saturday. Almost every major neighbourhood in the city has its own small carnival. We were duty bound to attend the carnival in our own adopted neighbourhood, Colonia El Sauce. The air was heavy with the smells of fried chicken, candy floss and thousands of sweaty bodies dancing in the streets. As we weaved through the crowds from one stage to the next we saw DJs spinning Latin hits and bands with scantily clad dancers; all shaking it down to the sounds of Reggaeton, Punta, Salsa and Meringue. Between different roadside stages there were Nicaraguan transvestites selling gum and cigarettes from huge baskets.

Although, dancing horses, scantily dressed women and huge sound systems aside there seems to be only one motive for attending carnival.  That is to get your hands on as many cheap plastic necklaces as possible. They are thrown from every float and balcony in their thousands and as the crowds dive for them it all gets a bit competitive. I saw grown men wrestling each other on the floor and adults snatching necklaces from small children. Further down the road sleazy politicians throwing 1 Lempira notes off the balconies of seedy looking flats, draped in garish banners. Vote Pepe for President. Strangely, I think the competition for the necklaces was bigger.

Of all the things I thought I would miss I can’t say I thought the seasons would be on the list. Honduras is a land of few seasons. One part of the year is hot and the other is hot and wet. Asi es la vida.

It’s hurricane season right now and there’s a thick dust in the air, the type that will only disappear with rain. Everybody is waiting, listening, anticipating the rain. There’s excitement for it, like the arrival of a visiting friend. We’re just waiting for that change in the air. 

For all that I am living in the land of few seasons we appear to be in season of the electricity failures. Twice in the last week I have had the computers die in the middle of class leaving me with rows of disappointed little faces. The locals here just accept it in a way that I can’t help but admire.

I remember hearing something amusing about the Honduran people recently. It said that even though the Honduran government is the worlds best caricature of corruption and incompetence, miraculously the country has escaped any form of civil unrest for decades. I think it’s a testament to their natural disposition to be accepting and laid back about things over which they feel they have little power to change. In the case of their government it feels like a failing. In the case of the weather and power supply, it’s probably wise

I am now I full resident of El Pital. I have discovered that the one downside to being a resident is the 5.30am wake up call. It’s not exactly a call, it’s just that Cuencan real estate does not really afford such luxuries as gardens and fences and designated space. What this essentially means is that I have to wake up at the same time as my neighbors, which happens to be at 5.30am. Lucky me.

I am finding that I quite like this time of the day and for the most part it is cool and quiet. I also like to think of it as a trade off of compromises. I get up at 5.30 without a grumble and they don’t complain too much at the fact that I fall asleep to the Sigur Ros album most nights, which no doubt sounds like strange news from another star to my Reggaeton and Bachatta loving neighbours.

I suppose there has been quite a few times since I have been here that have been ‘pinch me’ moments. By that I mean moments when you’ve taken a look around at where you are, what you’re doing and if you are actually here. This week has been full of such moments. The fact that my room is now finished has gone a long way to giving me a sense of place in Honduras. This is great because a sense of place has really been the only thing standing in the way of me completely enjoying my time here.

It’s been a tough few weeks and there have been times when I felt like there was no end in sight. However, between teaching class, making tortillas and now having a place that feels like home it I think from now on things can only get better for me here in Honduras.

Every home on the north coast of Honduras seems to have at least one gecko. At Las Mangas they have two. It’s a strange thing to get used to at first. They have a habit of scurrying up a wall when you’re least expecting it. Sometimes you’ll open a cupboard and one will fly out at you or occasionally you will wake up in the middle of the night to see one making it’s way across your window. Of course you don’t see the gecko, you see the twelve foot shadow on the gecko on the opposite wall – which is usually a little disconcerting. They click and quite often in the night you’ll wake up to them clicking or having a fight in the light fitting over who is going to get the bug. Despite these moments they are welcome guests and by far the best way to keep your home bug free. Today I found a gecko in my new classroom.  He was miniscule and almost transparent. ‘Every building needs a gecko’ I thought, now mine has one and he’s growing up quick. I expect this sounds like madness to you, but I really cannot imagine how I ever lived without a gecko in the house and right now I swear they are keeping me sane.

I am a tad emotional when I discover that the team have bought me a china tea cup and a pack of English tea for my birthday. I had pretty much cold turkied on tea since I arrived here. I hate the way this sounds but no one really knows how to make it here. Or rather no one makes it English style (with milk). It’s just one of the many things (the majority of my English vocabulary being the other) I had always regarded as normal before I came here. I have since been made to feel however that I am either delusional or the only person in the world that does it like that. So now, armed with my new teacup I can rediscover the joys of English style tea and become a living cultural stereotype.

This week I turn 25 and I confess I am feeling a little philosophical. Here they call a birthday a cumpleaños. An año is a year and the verb cumplir means to fulfill.

So I suppose when people say “Feliz Cumpleaños” it’s like saying “Well done, you survived.” Right now it seems quite fitting.

Personally and culturally humour plays a huge role in my daily interactions. At the moment I lack the sufficient command of the language to express all the things I usually rely on. I haven’t made a sarcastic comment in four months, and it’s killing me

I have always known that Honduras is Spanish for depths, however I learned an amusing thing this week. The term ‘en Honduras’ means, quite literally to be out of ones depth. Unwittingly I appear to have found a phrase that works on just about every conceivable level for me right now. It’s not so strange that I should learn this phrase the week that I start teaching. My experience thus far has proved that most vocabulary seems to find you precisely at the time you have the experience to understand it. 

So anyway, teaching. I emerged from the weekend covered in paint and I have to confess that I remain this way until now. Cold showers are not the best for removing paint from your skin, and after copious amounts of scrubbing I am not convinced I am yet completely clean. I was pretty pleased with the aula (classroom) and somehow, between painting and generally busying myself with readying the aula I had managed to get the first week’s class plans almost ready. I confess I had an easy start. The Zompopos, my youngest group were so wide and glassy eyed the moment they entered the aula I could have stood there silent, holding a sign saying welcome for an hour and they would have enjoyed it. Still I was bloody nervous. It went well. Sort of. They learned about some of the things we can do with computers mainly by jumping around. I learned that an hour is a lot longer than I thought and that speaking Spanish only really gets interesting when you have to improvise. I left for Las Mangas that night feeling pretty chuffed with myself. However, my second lesson was a completely different story.

Feeling as if I never have enough vocabulary to properly express myself is a reality I have had to accustom to since being here but my second class brought a slightly different and much scarier reality. Faced with the oldest group of students, after a 40 minute walk up a hill in midday heat, somehow I managed to completely forget every single word I knew in Spanish. I was also teaching on my own, which meant I had to mumble my way through an hours worth of class with a bunch of unimpressed teenagers. The first three weeks in Tegucigalpa had nothing on this. It was horrific.  I pretty much decided straight after that class to throw out the class plans.  Translating an entire class beforehand is not good idea. They lied to me…you can be TOO prepared. It makes you default to reading it of the paper and not teaching it.  Or worse, and I did this too, it makes you default to English with a group of people who can’t speak it. Bloody idiot.

I suppose it would be easy to let this sort of thing get you down, but I am finding since I came here that both my pain and humiliation thresholds are getting higher and higher. The first thing that tends to run through my head is ‘It could be worse’ which is a very English thing to say I know, but when you are living in communities with people who live in mud huts and have no clean drinking water it suddenly all seems very fitting. So I ventured back up the hill the next day and got on with it and I am happy to say it went swimmingly.

As the saga of the lazy builders continues I have had to commute from Las Mangas to El Pital everyday I can’t really say that I feel part of life up there yet. Last week I spent a few nights at Scott and Elly’s house which meant I got to cook with some local families and spend time getting to know some of the 200 people that live there. It’s very friendly and very small and I feel like everybody knows my name. There has been something very nice about entering and leaving the village everyday before or after my sweaty trek up and down the valley with every other person saying hello or goodbye to me. I feel very welcome. Although it’s been nice to retreat to Las Mangas every night I guess I have been a little restless for them to attach that toilet to the damn floor and put in my kitchen sink so I can finally settle there. So today I can confess to having an irrationally happy moment when Tonio my landlord flushed my toilet for the first time! It doesn’t sound like much but that flush was like the go signal and I immediately started painting the room and unpacking. Tonight will be the last night I sleep on Victor’s floor in Las Mangas. It appears my El Pital experience is about to start for real and now I won’t have to say goodbye to that community every night. I am really excited, really excited. I say that now, it’s always lovely at the start isn’t it? Lets just wait for the “Help I feel like I am stuck in an episode of Cheers” blog that will inevitably follow later on in the year.

If I remember Ceiba for one thing it won’t be the mad dogs, the disco buses or the perverts. It will most likely be for friends. I have made some really good ones here. Again when you are travelling you meet people all the time who are just passing through, you have a good time and then they are gone and you may casually take their email but generally it’s not likely you will stay in touch.

The difference is quite special when you meet people who are doing the same thing as you at precisely the same moment in time. This way you have someone who understands the subtle little things that make it hard sometimes. I think that the most important thing is they help it feel normal whilst reminding you how special and sometimes crazy it all is. Friendship can be a struggle when you live up a mountain.

No internet or phone access means having to make plans really far in advance, which is contrary to the spirit of my generally spontaneous nature.  However my weekends in the city are a great chance to catch up and bore everyone with my teaching horror stories…I am going to have them. It’s inevitable. When you think about it I am a teaching computers in a second language to kids up a mountain in Honduras. How could I not?