23 - 31 October 2024: My first week at The School of Hope

Some of my readers may be wondering about my experiences at Escuela La Esperanza (School of Hope) where I’ve been volunteering. 

Getting to the school and back from where I’m staying is a bit of a commute.  The school assigned me to a room on the southeast side of the city of Antigua while the school is in Jocotenango which adjoins Antigua in the northwest.  They did so because of my veggie diet. And yes, Violeta and Fernando have been feeding me good veggie meals.  It’s about a two-mile walk to the school but it takes me 45-50 minutes because parts of it are a bit of a challenge:  narrow sidewalks that are 6+ inches above the streets and where there’s scarcely enough room to for two people to pass each other; cobblestone streets that are tough for walking (I wouldn’t dare try to walk them in anything but hiking boots); and heavy, crazy traffic – big American school buses converted to city and intercity buses which belch diesel fumes (a year of being around them would leave me with the lungs of a Kentucky coal miner); tuk-tuks (Indian three-wheel motorized rickshaws used as taxis); all manner of trucks; lots of motorcycles; and, of course, cars struggling to get anywhere at more than a crawl.  Every time you cross the street you hope your guardian angel is on duty.   Fortunately, the crowded, bumpy streets keep traffic moving relatively slowly and the drivers are very aware of pedestrians, of which there are many.  Unless someone is careless enough to step right in front of a vehicle or not pay attention to turning vehicles, he/she soon learns to be a bit bold but very careful.  There is definitely a rhythm and flow to the process. 

Calle segundo (2^nd Street) in Antigua looking south toward the Volcán de Agua (Volcano of Water).

Making repairs to the cobblestones on the Calle Santa Lucía in Antigua.  Many Guatemalan buses are mobile works of art.

 

After two days, I’d had enough of the long, stressful walk and took a tuk-tuk part of the way.  However, these glorified tricycles cost between 3 and 7 dollars per ride.  I found a cheaper alternative.  I take a one-mile morning walk on a relatively quiet street to the central bus pick-up point and along the way pick up a copy of Prensa Libre (Free Press), Guatemala’s best daily paper.  Once I get to the buses, I can usually find a Jocotanango-bound bus within 5 minutes.  They are never crowded.  Costs me 4 Quetzales (about 52 US cents) As the bus bumps and lurches along the cobblestone streets, I get to scan the headlines about local politics, business, crime, and social and environmental issues, while avoiding the sports section and stories such as “EE.UU. - Posible violencia electoral” (United States – Possible Electoral Violence).  Like I said in my previous post, I’m doing everything I can to avoid news about the U.S. elections.  Anyway, after about 10 minutes, the bus drops me off in the center of Jocotenango and I have a couple minutes walk to the school, a sprawling, blue, 1-story concrete building with two paved play areas in the center, surrounded by classrooms, offices, and a large kitchen (all students get a free school lunch).  Not fancy, but comfortable and functional.  

A copy of Prensa Libre.  The headline reads “They (the national legislature) approve law that guarantees availability of vaccines.”

 

I’m at the school for the 4-week vacation program which is intentionally relaxed.  Starting at 8:30, they have about 20 minutes of games in the classroom, followed by five forty minute informal classes.  For the first three days, I was with another volunteer (a university student from the U.S.) doing a program of simple ecology lessons in English.  The aim of the lessons was to improve their English vocabulary rather than go into ecology in-depth.  The kids got about 10 minutes of information (mostly in Spanish) and English/Spanish vocabulary (topics such as “green” cities, animal habitats, and the life cycle of plants).  For the rest of the class, they did individual art projects related to the lessons.  I got involved by putting together PowerPoints with pictures and cartoons of animals and their environments, etc. that I lifted off the internet.  Our five groups included 2^nd & 3^rd grade, 4^th grade, 6^th grade, 7^th and 8^th grade, and 9^th grade and ranged in size from two to six students.  One of the tricky parts was adapting the material to each group as the little kids know very little English while the older ones seem to have had a few years of English although most of them found It tough to put sentences together.

Central recreation area at the School of Hope.  Sorry about the finger in the upper right corner of the photo!

 

The kids?  Nice but rambunctious and unfocused, especially the little ones.  The little girls are very sweet.  Two of them came up to me after the third class and gave me hugs – gee, I guess they like me.  The older kids did some rough housing or were bored.  But I think they were learning something.  The fourth graders played a vocabulary game on computer tablets on the 4^th day and I was surprised at how much English vocabulary they knew.  These kids, at least the older ones, recognize that this school is giving them an opportunity for a better life.  And given the kind staff and volunteers, I think most of them are happy at the school.

This past Monday morning, the director of the English program told me that some of the kids thought my stuff was too hard.  I showed her the power point that I had prepared about different types of trees:  pines (evergreens for the older kids), trees with leaves and trees that lose their leaves every year (tropical broadleaf and temperate deciduous for the older students).  I had pretty pix from Colorado of aspen in the different seasons.  She agreed that the material was not too difficult.    But later that morning, she and the volunteer coordinator came to see me.  They wondered if I would like to help out the local science teacher in the lab.  At first, I had the impression that it was just for the rest of the day but it appears that it will be for the rest of the vacation school.  I met the teacher (named Eunice but pronounced “A U NEECE A” in Spanish).  She is very nice, early 30s maybe with a pretty smile.   Eunice encouraged me right away to come up with some presentations and exercises to do with the class which is all in Spanish.  I immediately found a short Spanish video to show them on volcanoes (very relevant in a metro area surrounded by volcanoes, one or two of which are active).  I suggested doing something on dinosaurs since most kids are into dinos.  She was all over it including an idea for them for them to make dino bones out of a mixture of flour, salt, and warm water.  She will bring in some sand, we’ll bury them in trays, and the students will have to carefully excavate them with brushes, etc.  We only have two groups every day so there is time to prepare lessons and lab exercises.  

This was a drawing I pulled off the internet for the ecology students.  I added the Spanish translations.  Does it look too hard? 

 

My big challenge is hearing and understanding.  My hearing sucks and even with hearing aids I’m having trouble hearing given the bad acoustics in the building and the constant student noise.  And understanding – despite my many years of studying Spanish, I find it hard to get what people are saying to me in Spanish.  And Guatemaltecos (Guatemalans) are not exceptionally fast talkers like Puerto Ricans, for example. 

A three-day holiday (All-Saints and All-Souls days) starts tomorrow and I’m off on a 5-hour ride by mini-bus to a beach in El Salvador.  Back here on Sunday.  

 

A School of Hope student pours liquids of different specific gravities one at a time into a graduated cylinder in the science lab.