Teaching is the Most Important Job in the World

Villa Verde is a small bilingual school, sans electricity, tucked into the forest of Mount Celaque, right off the beaten path used by backpackers and campesinos, hiking their way up to the peak of the pristine cloud forest. The mountain and school are part of a village, also called Villa Verde, that forms part of the colonial city of Gracias in the department of Lempira. Gracias is one of the many hidden treasures in Honduras that are often overlooked by most tourists whose only knowledge of this country are it's Carribean coast and the Bay Islands, where many people conveniently speak english, dollars can be used, and the abject poverty is more obscure.

In Gracias you have your modern conveniences, such as high speed internet, KOB's ice cream, some air conditioned restaurants, and Hotel El Capitan, which offers good food and cold beer while you lounge poolside or take a dip. But Gracias also has to boast it's traditional charm, such as the amazing nautral hot springs nestled in the middle of the woods, perfect for relaxing your mind and muscles and gorgeous on a cloudless night. There's also Fort San Cristobal, elevated enough that it overlooks most of Gracias as well as Mount Celaque. And if you look close enough at just the right spot you can see a waterfall high up in the forest. And if you walk down from the fort, back towards the city, 3 blocks south onto the cobblestoned main street, take a right past the chinese restaurant, you will encounter a quaint house with its doors wide open and if you walk inside you will be faced with a dizzying amount of jars of veggie and fruit encurtido, or pickled, and if you walk towards the back, behind the rows and stacks of jars, you will find three large freezers and if you lift open their doors you will discover 30 or more flavors of homemade popsicles. I recommend the guava, strawberry, peanuts with milk, and tutti frutti. For five lempiras each (about a quarter) you, too, can have your own smidgen of heaven.

It is this very popsicle and preservatives shoppe that we (Kate, Ryan, and I) chose as our reward for trekking down the mountain from Villa Verde while we were there for a week as guest teachers giving various health presentations to each of the classes, pre-kinder through 6th grade. Villa Verde isn't the typical Honduran school. It's at the base of a famous mountain, instead of 35+ kids per class there are about 15, they cultivate vegetables on campus, the developer of the school is a Dutch lady named Frony, and the students learn english and spanish from national and foreign teachers, which enables them to become accustomed to seeing different faces, skin colors, and learning more about the cultures in the World. My hope is that when these kids see a gringo, or any other foreigner, in the street or on the bus they won't blatantly stare like most Hondurans do. Fortunately for me, due to the genes i received from my latina mama, I don't suffer this habit as do most other Peace Corps volunteers. I've seen people make a 180 degree turn on the bus just to stare at Kate, for the entire trip. She's often asked people "tengo monos en la cara?", which sometimes helps but usually doesn't.

With me Hondurans aren't sure what to think. I love the confused look they give when I speak english. In Corquin I've been called Doctora so often that I've stopped correcting people; they think I'm one of the 200 or so Cuban docotors in Honduras doing their two year social service. Often, just this very weekend by two different taxi drivers in fact, people think I'm Spanish. That always makes me laugh because they confuse me for someone from Spain due to my lifelong speech impediment. What is the spanish translation for lisp, and does it also have an S in it?

During the week we spent at Villa Verde we taught classes about nutrition, hygiene, the importance of exercise and stretching, self esteem, values, STI's and HIV, and drug abuse. The presentations were very interactive and colorful, tailored specifically for a young audience. The students were generally excited to have us there and responsive during the classes. The prekinder and kindergardeners were extremely hyper and the three of us had to be in the room in order to calm them down, which never worked anyway. I really have no patience for young children. I do not find them cute or funny. I find them annoying and repulsive, rolling around on the dirty floors and sticking everything and anything into their mouths with their dirty hands. For those of my readers who are mothers I implore you, how did/do you handle it? Will my perspective change once I have my own gross and crazy offspring? I don't mind them before they can verbalize and after they're seven but what am I to do those 5 and a half years in between? Does anyone remember when I worked at a daycare center in Austin for a summer? Every afternoon I felt that I needed a drink just to unwind. I eventually and inevitably lost my mind and quit that job one sunny afternoon by yelling at all terrible children and my boss and then storming out the front door and slamming it behind me. I'm sure I celebrated that night...

Either way, the weeklong youth health workshop was a success and I had a good time. I even spent a couple of nights with two of the teachers, Marta and Omar, who live right across the street from the school. It was an interesting two nights because as soon as the sun set everything was done by candlelight. We cooked lentil soup, drank Ron Plata, and used the toilet with the romantic glow of fire.

I want to wish everyone a happy Easter and safe travels. I will be making my way down to Panama the next couple of weeks. Wish me luck!