New! The latest excuses for skipping school! (From the teachers’ end…)

• Last Friday the teachers of the public school went all together to say goodbye to the former director of their school who apparently is dying. Beautiful, and a great gesture of compassion. But did the 1,000 or so students really have to lose yet another day of school because of it? Couldn’t the teachers have visited him on a Saturday????
• New this year: the rainy season has started and as usual it rains (hard) between 3-5pm. The director has decided that whenever it starts raining, the kids of the second shift (noon-5pm) should leave as soon as the first raindrops hit the roof. The idea behind this is that the kids won’t get wet. Reality is that they DO get wet, but wouldn’t if they’d stay at school till 5pm. The kids have already been dismissed four times at 3pm since Monday last week.
• And the best of all: Today the sun was at its full zenith, in other words, at noontime the sun was directly overhead and shadows were at their smallest. The children of the morning shift (7am-noon) were dismissed at 10am because they would surely get cancer if they would walk home at noon. Right…

Carin Steen

Let’s talk about the weather…

Compared to my home country Holland, everything here in the tropics is incredibly intense: the colours (vibrant green mountains against a clear blue sky and bougainvillea so pink, it hurts your eyes), the smells (seducing fragrance of tropical flowers and rotting garbage), passions (love, envy, anger and frustration), the music (whatever the style, it’s always LOUD!) and yes, the weather too. Hardly ever do we have a day that is “just nice”. It’s either extremely hot; so humid that it feels like you breathe pure water; or so dry that your skin screams for cream or oil. We even have amazingly cold days that, with a feeble 12°C, might not quite live up to the winters up north, but still, without any heating system, the chill creeps into your bones and make your fingers turn blue when working on the computer. The last few months have been far too dry and the green mountains faded from vivid green to a washed-out yellow. Cars passing by blow up thick clouds of dust that cover the whole world with a greyish film of dirt. The Copán River, such a freighting mass of water in the rainy season, is nothing more than a pathetic little stream. Gardens look miserable, harvests are ruined and potable water is so scarce that in most neighbourhoods there’s only water every other day.
But all that changed overnight last Sunday. Although a month too early for the rainy season, the first real storm broke over the valley of Copán around 8pm and made me realize yet again to be careful with what you wish for… For half an hour, the lightning was so intense that the sky was almost constantly lit up, treating us humble people to an impressive show of waving palm trees and rain falling down in thick curtains. Of course there was a black-out too, which made the whole thing all the more dramatic. And then, just as suddenly, the storm was over. The power came back on which was helpful while I was sweeping about two inches of water out of my house. But it wasn’t until the next day when I left for my morning hike that I realized how much damage the storm had caused: trees were uprooted all along the road, signs blown over and lamina roofs lifted from houses and stables. All throughout that day I heard stories from people from town and the surrounding villages about damage done. Some of our students in La Pintada were so frightened, they hid under the mattress. In El Tigre, where we run our Health and Sport Project, about 300 pine trees fell down and the roofs of several houses were completely blown away (see photo). Some of our students not only lost their roof, but also part of their livestock. One boy told how only six of the two dozen of chickens his family owns reappeared after the storm.
Since Sunday we have had two more rainstorms, but luckily none as hard-hitting. Hopefully it stays that way when the rainy season starts for real. Rain is still much needed. But so is a roof over your head. Especially when it rains.
Carin Steen

My job description

Some people think my job consists of being out in the villages all day, teaching, painting and having fun. It’s not. Fun, yes, teaching and painting all day, no. Being a director means I actually do a lot of directing. Besides directing, my job is mostly about writing reports, grant proposals, important emails, silly emails, annoying emails and unfortunately also a lot of spelling corrections in the reports of my darling employees whose native language is Spanish while mine isn’t, but who need my spelling check way more than I do theirs. And then there’re tons of evaluations; updating of websites and blogs; some more directing to do; even more orthographic disasters; and yes, occasionally I do conduct a workshop.
Anyway, there are also burdens I don’t have. I’m more than happy that we do not run a scholarship program or provide material aid to the community, so at least I don’t have to drag drop-outs back to school; deal with long lines of people who want just anything as long as it’s free; or dreadful inventories of goods received and distributed. But every once in a while there’s a person or family or even a whole community that touches your heart and makes you want to do something special. Maritza from the village of El Triunfo is one of those people and I’m glad we got the funding from Join!forkids to fix up the school (see a few posts back). We recently received some crates from Angela Rivas and Howard Rosenzweig that were used to transport marble for the bathroom in their new hotel and with some plywood, paint and imagination we transformed them in bright and colourful furniture for the “Carin Steen” Kindergarten in El Triunfo.
Another few of our favourite people are Ángel and Darwin Fuentes, two boys we have helped through school for the last few years (thanks to the support of our friend Cesar Borregón). The family’s just got a piece of land assigned and their biggest wish is to be able to build a small house. Not much is needed, but more than the family can afford. I said I’d try to find help and posted a request on our Facebook page. Less than two weeks later, helps is on its way: an ex-volunteer from Canada, Allison H. decided not to ask for any gifs for her upcoming wedding, but for donations for the Fuentes family instead. I can’t wait to bring them the good news! You see, not really my job, but a lot of fun.
By the way, Maritza Dubón came to town yesterday to register her month-old granddaughter. The little girl’s name is Carin Maritza. Poor thing, named after a Kindergarten!
Carin Steen