Week 6

(My buddies and students - math stars in the making)

I believe that consolidation must accompany progress. Every now and then, time must be spent evaluating your current performance and reevaluating your goals. Otherwise, it is easy to become scattered among too many tasks. This past week was epitomizes this approach. The fundraising for the security wall at Pedro Atala had come to a close and it was time to reflect on my performance. It was also time to begin considering my next projects. My options have been narrowed down to three possibilities. They are: addressing the water systems in Pedro Atala, Nuevo Paraíso and Flor Azul (part of Sociedad), as well as in Nuevo Esperanza and San Jose (two adjoining towns that are affiliated with La Sociedad), working to secure funding to pay the teachers at Reyes Irene Valenzuela (a school teaching 400 working maids/girls who have had to give up school to work), and to secure funding to provide food for Flor Azul. All three of these projects are of importance and I hope to address each one.

While it has been exciting to expand my understanding of the needs of SAN, my true gratification remains in teaching math five days a week at Pedro Atala during the afternoons. I now help two classes and we have successfully had two math competitions. Every day I am challenged to present such a dull subject to children and trying to find ways to keep them both engaged and excited. I think a story that epitomizes my work with the children is the following: There are four houses at Pedro Atala and in each house, one room is designated a classroom and there is a teacher for each room. Every day the children go to one of the classrooms from 1:30 to 4pm to complete their homework and practice reading and math afterwards. I help in one of the houses with the older children (Grade 4). On Wednesday, a teacher from another house saw me working with the children and asked if I would help her class the next day. I agreed and spent Thursday practicing multiplication tables with her students. On Friday, I returned to my regular class, where the teacher had decided she’d let the kids spend the day coloring. Rediscovering my subdued passion for coloring, I happily joined in. Well, when I walked out of the room I was greeted by four young students from the other class demanding an explanation as to why I was in there coloring while instead we could have been practicing multiplication tables instead… I was dumbfounded to say the least, but I was also left with a sense of accomplishment that they children are excited about math.

Probably the most exciting part of my week this far would be going to a market with one of the Hondurans from the office. This market was however located in one of the very poor areas of Tegucigalpa and it gave me a fresh taste of Honduran life. An Australian came with a group earlier this week and he was telling me of his work in Cambodia. It was very interesting and I told him that I wanted to hear about his comparison between the two places. I think that a lot of people initially come to Honduras and after the initial freight of a developing country subsides, they feel like it isn’t so bad. I felt this way, but I now am coming to see the small nuances that make life difficult. Gangs are a huge, huge problem here. I wonder if there are problems with gangs in Africa, not militias, but gangs. A few nights ago, Tuesday I think, I was woken up by gunshots, clearly audible outside. This was initially a bit disconcerting, but I figured there were gunshots in Harlem too, or maybe nicer places than that. But Colonia Miraflores is a relatively nice part of Tegucigalpa, so I’m sure it is much more common in other places.