Tuesday, 3 December 2024: Learning about the petroleum industry and oil spills.

Week of November 4:  When I was first assigned to the science lab at the beginning of my second week at the School of Hope, the teacher, Eunice (pronounced A-OO-NEES-A in Spanish), asked if I could come up with a simple lab exercise related to work I had done professionally.  I thought it over and told her I could tell the students about where gasoline comes from and how oil spills are cleaned up.  She liked the idea, so I put together a short PowerPoint presentation with photos from the internet showing oil wells, storage tanks, an oil tanker truck, and a refinery.  This was followed by some photos of a bird covered in oil, a stream choked with oil from a spill, and guys in hazmat suits cleaning up oily messes at a well site and a gas station.  I wrote out the 5-10 minute presentation and went over it with my Spanish teacher, Oscar, when we had our weekly lesson at a café.  As usual, I had made a few grammatical errors which I fixed with his help.  When will I ever stop making mistakes in Spanish??? 

After my return to the school from El Salvador on Monday, November 4, Eunice suggested we have the presentation and exercise on Wednesday.  I had also come up with an idea for giving pans of water to groups of students and sprinkling drops of oil on the water surface simulating an oil spill in a lake.  They could get an idea of spill control by using cotton balls to pull some of the oil from the water surface.   Eunice’s husband is a mechanic, and she thought he could provide her with some used motor oil to bring in for the lab exercise.  However, we wound up using cooking oil which was not as effective visually but, in hindsight, was a better choice.  We couldn’t pour the oily water mixture down the drain for fear of clogging up the pipe so we dumped it behind the school.  Pouring a bit of cooking oil on the ground was not a big deal but dumping used motor oil on the ground or throwing it into the trash would have set a really bad example in terms of the students’ environmental awareness. 

There was, of course, a dark cloud hanging over me that week.  Fortunately, no one was talking about the election up north, and I was doing my best to tune it out.  I had a feeling of impending doom but combated my anxiety by ignoring all news from the U.S.  I was shocked into reality on Wednesday morning at breakfast when my fellow school volunteer and hostel-mate, Diana, was checking stuff on her phone.  “Trump won?” she blurted out suddenly.  “I don’t want to hear about it,” I quickly replied.  But the unwelcome cat was out of the bag sooner than I’d hoped.

I did not buy a copy of Prensa Libre (Free Press) that morning on the way to the bus as I was sure it would be full of coverage of the Yanqui election.  It was good to get to school and turn my mind from resigned alienation and bitterness to the morning’s presentation and lab work on oil spills.  Two classes heard the presentation and did the lab exercise.  It went well and Eunice filled in my explanations with more detail which I appreciated.  One of the classes even erupted in applause after my presentation – probably the first time anyone has shown enthusiasm for my feeble attempts to communicate in the eloquent tongue of Cervantes.

I was now focused on the coming weekend.  I had purchased a round-trip bus ticket to the Mayan ruins at Copán, Honduras, 7 hours away.  The US$170 price included one night in a room with private bath and a guide at the ruins.  I know it sounds silly but my main motivation for the trip was not so much the ruins but the chance add another country to my list which is now up to about 65.  And of course, I would see many new landscapes from the bus window.