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I am sitting at our little wooden table in front of three open windows. The air tonight is cool and crisp, and the concrete feels cold on my bare feet. I have the fan in front of one window sucking the fresh air into our otherwise dank basement apartment. The scent of our mulberry candle and my licorice spice tea make me feel warm and familiar – like a clean bathmat when you exit the shower. It is always the little things that make a place seem homey to me.

My mind has drifted back and forth today between my here home and my there home. Everything becomes a reminder of change – the last time to wash the shower curtain, last time to clean the shower, last time to clean the porch. Earl called us “short-timers” on Friday. “You only have a short time left,” he said, in a way that made me think he was used to the sound of it. By now he’s been here long enough to see the coming and the going.

Though we’ve been rounding up for the past month, tomorrow marks the official year anniversary of our coming to Honduras. One year of life lived in this cuenca, one year of life spent and gained. How fresh the arriving still seems to me – like honeysuckle wafting through the late spring air. We were stepping into an adventure and a calling from God. “Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.” The excitement was dripping out our pores. It was a time of looking forward and anticipating – what did God have for us in this land?

Now the time of looking backwards has begun for me. A new stage has been reached of breathing deeply, stepping sure-footedly, slowly, heavily. Another change is coming and time no longer protects us from the reality of our decisions but begins hurling us towards them ever faster and faster.

Yet we are not blind, nor are we walking blindly. The Great Shepherd has kept us in his fold and we trust He will continue to do so.

Today the bus to school was about ten minutes late in coming. Kelly, Chris and I looked at each other as we stood outside the campus waiting. “What’s keeping Flacco [our bus driver]?” Then we heard the sound of tire and engine, and Chris started to the road. “I’ll take a jalon [hitch a ride] if Flacco’s not coming.”

We hurried out to the road to look. It was a milk truck, about the size of a small moving truck, with an enclosed bed of wooden slats. The driver beeped his horn on seeing us, and as they neared we saw yellow shirts and students’ faces through the spaces in the sides. “Whoah, that’s us!” Chris exclaimed. And we climbed in obediently. Cesar turned to me and said in English, "With Flacco, happens anything!"

I wished again that I was about two inches shorter -- as I could not quite stand up without banging my head on the roof, which is inevitable on this rutted road. But the students were laughing merrily and having a grand time, and even Flacco seemed to appreciate the humor of the moment, dressed as he was in only an unbuttoned shirt, blue jeans, boots, and cowboy hat. Inspired, Chris sang out (to the tune of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot):
“Keep low, you big gringo
Going to Rio Viejo…”
And with the thought of the milk truck as our chariot, and me as the gringo too big for his chariot, I laughed out loud and joined in:
“Se queda bajo, gringo grande,
Si no quieres golpear tu cabeza.”

When we arrived at the school, Chris called out, “uno, dos, tres!” and started a corporate “moo”. Our bovine chorus was greeted with laughter by the other students walking in the gate. And we laughed back.

On Friday before classes, Ester let me know that she was expecting to meet with the mothers of Ever and Erick, two of my seventh graders from Rio Viejo. “They will come at about nine or ten, I think.” I looked at her questioning. “They not gonna come back to this school. Everyday they wants to fight.” And she listed a few of their many misbehaviors. She tells me Erick even picks fights with the tenth graders, along with many others. She relates how Ever´s father drinks, and how one time in their fighting Ever raised a machete against his father.

Each student is told upon arrival at Instituto El Rey that if they exceed fifteen demerits, they lose the right to return to the school the following year. Erick and Ever each had close to twenty already – for everything from saying “f--- you” in class to swinging shovels at each other to indecent exposure. Worse, they made barely any movements toward changing their attitudes or comportment.

Probably it will be easier for the other students with them gone. And maybe they will use this time to reflect on their lives and the choices they’ve made. I hope so. I told Ester that I think she is wise and brave to make this call. They’ve had chance upon chance to make better, and they haven’t.

But I hate to see them go. Although he almost never does his homework, Ever is a quick study. And although he almost never passes, he is one of the most talented soccer players in the schools. He ran well in the half-marathon. Erick had one of the best ears in any of my classes and walked around calling out, “What do you want!” “What is your name!” “Look at the board!” “Sit correctly!” and “I’m fine you!” He was also one of the most popular dancers in the school, as his limbs didn’t seem to have the same limitations others did.

And in each of them, there were moments when I wondered if there were some deep hurt inside. Ever’s boasting could be a cover for never having felt loved by his parents. The other kids often called Erick “loco”, and his clown act could give way almost instantly to a wounded rage.

So farewell, señores. I will miss you.
Erick

Ever

My roommate Ben went out walking, trying to get to know this strange old neighborhood that was now ours. He walked down 39th Street, steering clear of the projects across the road, and took a right near the Sweetland Market, scarcely two blocks from our little one-bedroom bungalow.

It was there that a young white police officer pulled his car up next to Ben. “What are you up to?” he asked as if he were simply making conversation.

“Going for a walk. I live over there,” Ben explained, pointing.

“Well,” the officer said, “this is a really dangerous part of town. You don’t need to be going for walks around here, ok?” It was clear in his voice that this was not just friendly advice.

“Ok. Thanks,” Ben replied thickly, more out of courtesy than gratitude. He turned back toward Kirkland Avenue, ignoring curious (or were they hostile?) stares from the loiterers at Sweetland, and thought, “This isn’t my stinkin’ community!” all the way back to the supposed safety of the house.

We understood the meaning of Ben’s words when he shared them at the next house meeting. We were five college students living in Alton Park, a neighborhood that had more than its fair share of problems: drugs, prostitution, thievery, promiscuity, deadbeat dads, and so on. In fact, if I remember correctly, it wasn’t too long after Ben’s warning that the police made a major drug bust at the Sweetland Market. On the face of it, our own communities – the people we grew up with and went to college with – were very different: white, middle class, respectable, as opposed to black, poor, crime-ridden. What had Lookout Mountain to do with Alton Park? It was a feeling many of us never really shook.

Now I’m married and living in a mountain village in Honduras. Last week, some hidden gunmen sprayed a round of bullets into a mixed group of people walking up the road. Among the victims were two children not yet teenagers. The boy died almost immediately, and the girl’s arm was so torn up that it had to be amputated.

My unit on Study Skills was finished -- I was excited about the changes that were to take place in the study habits of students, and I had even created an outline in Spanish, called "Tecnicas de Estudios", that they all copied into their notebook.

It was time for the quiz.

I handed out the half sheets of paper, 5 questions each. Then, an explosion of raised hands and cries of "Teacher!" "Mister!" In one of my groups, I think almost every student asked a question about nearly ever problem. What I had planned to be a 20 minute open-notebook quiz turned into a war of comprehension that spilled over into lunch for most students and into an afternoon period for others.

Grading and discussing them was not much better, and I am grateful now that we are past that unit and into the Alphabet -- something concrete, familiar, and musical.

This week we have continued our review on ordinal and cardinal numbers and the English Alphabet. I have about 7 new students in my second and third year classes. The gap between what they know and the students who have been coming to Instituto El Rey since seventh grade is huge. It is not a gap in learning ability, but merely in achievement. The old students had studied the English Alphabet and numbers the previous years, had been taught by native English speakers, and remembered a significant amount of the material. The new students were completely learning from scratch and had a long way to go to keep on pace with the others.

This has been a week of learning, grieving, and growing. Last Friday the second and third year classes began their unit on Classroom Commands. Thus unit has been very fun because it involves a lot of listening (as learning another language usually does) and responding. We have been learning common classroom commands like “stand up,” “raise your hand,” “look up a word,” “circle the answer,” etc. Overall the classes have been great and really enjoyed the involvement. I have been assigning more homework to make up for their general lack of studying, and some don’t realize how much not doing their homework is affecting their grade.

Today was a little more organized than yesterday, although morning ceremony is killing our first class. We had less than 30 minutes for our first class again today and they are getting so far behind (and its only the second “real day” of school).

It’s interesting, but I feel like Tom has an automatic command of the class that I can’t attain because he is male, he is very tall, and he has facial hair. I really think that does it for him. He can be much more soft-spoken than me and maintain discipline and order, but I feel like I have to project more and be more strict to maintain the same level of discipline. So, I applaud all those aspiring male teachers. I know male teachers can have the reputation of being push-overs too, but I think it’s easier for a male to attain respect simply by their appearance.

Already I’ve had one student tell me an assignment was unfair (“all the other teachers said we could have the entire week to number our notebooks and you just gave us one day”). On the other end of things, I’ve also had a student invite us over for dinner this weekend (which we refused because our weekend is full of visiting already).

We gave our first grade today: a graded notebook check. About 4/5ths the students had it done and received a 2/2, and no one received lower than a 1. So, hopefully people will see that we are serious now about grading homework and quizzes.

Today is what you might call the first “real” day of classes. The schedule was created and we had all five of our classes back to back, starting at 7:30 and ending at 11:25. 6th period is our “free” period and since there is no one here to prepare the teachers’ lunches at present it is left up to the teachers. So, our free hour is spent helping prepare the lunch and drinks for the teachers and collecting our thoughts.

Tuesday, February 3

The long holidays are finally over and we have returned to school for in-school teacher seminars. I like the schedule of going to school from February 10th – November 20th and then having an extended “holiday.” I guess it works well here because there’s not much descrepancy in the seasons – it’s only wet or dry. So the idea of having a “summer” break isn’t as important since it’s pretty much summer year-round.

"Diligent hands will rule,
but laziness ends in slave labor." (12:24)
"All hard work brings a profit,
but mere talk leads only to poverty." (14:23)
"He who works the land will have abundant food,
but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment." (12:10-11)
"One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys." (18:9)

These are just a few examples of Solomon´s wisdeom that is really visible in the river valley area. These farmers must stay on top of things if they want to survive year to year -- much less get ahead. If they don't plant their beans at the right time, their family will not eat. And there is no other way to plant on this steep slopes but to walk with your chuso and your bowl of beans a go hole by hole. And there is no way to harvest but to go plant by plant...