Dust and Books

It has been two weeks already with Amy finishing her second week in front of the students. Her anxiety is waning and she is doing well. The students are starting to warm up as well as they have been through a couple of teachers this season. One who didn't work out and a substitute filling in until Amy came in, so it stands to reason there will be some adjustment period. Escuela Mayatan is the only private not for profit, non religious, bilingual school in all of Honduras with 300 students and they will have their first graduating class in 2012. Every Monday morning All students and staff gather around the perimeter of the outside basketball court for an assembly to sing their national anthem, sing a song, recieve anouncements then head off to class.

The grounds here are beautiful, nestled into the side of a hill with many various tropical plants and trees. The windows on the buildings are gridded with screens and with no means to close them, so at times it can be very noisy. Espesially during shop and music classes.The cafeteria is a small walk up to and pick what you want building serving chicken, beef, pork, totillas, salad, cake, ice cream and drinks. Some days might have a bit different menu. There are some very large trees here with air plants growing on there trunks and branches. Another fun feature is the cherping of the gecko.

My first task at school, which I suggested I would do, was to clean out and organize all the books in the store room. Now, this room had text books, teachers' resource books, novels, magazines, old spiral binders with old "stuff" in them. Loose books, books in boxes, books on shelves mixed with papers, books on the floor mixed iwht papers, books in English, Spanish, even a book or two in French and German, and, what?!, even romance novels? Oh, and a couple of books the kids shouldn't be looking at. C'est la vie. So in I went.

As I dug in, I found hidden under the rubble and dust bags of Christmas decorations, years-gone-by lost and found clothing items, paper school projects and a couple of mummified tree frogs and dried beetles. One day, the librarian came in and looked through some work books and said with her Honduran accent, "My god! This was my daughter's grade school book. It has her name in it and now she is in her second year of University!"

I sorted and stacked and sometimes I sorted and stacked a stack again until I had multiple copies of the same books together and books with like books. Next, the books were surveyed and some made the grade while others received an F for being too F-outdated, too F-damaged, too F-useless, or too F-many of the same copy. We promptly stacked these books outside in the breeze way so teachers or students could gander at them to see if there was anything to their liking.

Next thing I knew, the hoards of students descended like flies on....well, you get the idea. Papers were flying, books were flying. You would have thought it was gift time at Christmas. It was a sight to behold. The kids were so excited and it looked like a hurricanito came through. Small boys had stacks of books as tall as themselves were carting them home at the end of the day. Girls put books in boxes so they could team up and each take an end to get them home. I failed to mention that within the rubble was an old fax machine, an old computer moniter, a disassembled ceiling fan and an old overhead projector. One girl asked me, referring to the fax machine, "Can I take this home?" "You need to ask your teacher. I don't think it works," I said. She replied, "I just want to play with it." Another boy took the moniter home and the disassembled fan just disappeared. By the end, all that was left were a few books that also received an F from the kids and some bags of used up paper. I enjoyed the whole ordeal. It was a treat to watch the case of the disappearing books, especially as Amy and I left at the end of one day to see one of the primary students, probably no more than 10, clutching his new Biology book.

I don't know whatever happened to the overhead projector. It was gone, then it was back, and then it was gone again.

PS Being in Honduras, our computer has automatically switched to Spanish. Google in Spanish, Blogspot in Spanish, even Spellcheck in Spanish. Please forgive our typos in an effort to get home before dark.