Engineers Without Borders OC: Honduras

Guest Post by Steven Mayers

Arriving in Tegucigalpa on Saturday morning, I hadn´t  slept, but felt decent since I was meeting up with the rest of the group for the first time, visiting a new country, and starting off on this project, that is unlike anything I have done.   Carlos, the director of the school district, picked us up in a small bus, with his kids – Mario, John-Carlos, and Andres – and we spent some time in the airport exchanging money and such, before heading into Tegucigalpa.  Here are eleven of us on this trip, six engineers and five teachers on the education team.  The engineers and on their third trip this time, and adding to their work

On the last trip they installed two internet towers and brought the internet to a special needs school (where we are staying at night), and on this trip, they are installing equipment on a new tower that will broadcast the internet to the other schools on this private school system, a middle school, a high school and a University.  As for the education team, we are starting tomorrow the first step of our plan, which is to divide ourselves among the schools and assess the schools´ needs and potentials with technology.  I will be working in the high school, and, after delivering a short presentation tomorrow morning, arranging to interview teachers, students, and staff in order to see what challenges they face that technology could possibly help, and what dreams and ideas they have, and telling them a bit about how we use technology inside and outside of the classrooms.  This school system has never had computers or the internet, so there is a lot of potential.  

On Saturday, we drove around Tegucigalpa, stopping at a lot of department stores and picking up school supplies and running errands that can’t be run in the their smaller town.  Our educational team  bought some basic supplies, including a bunch of two-dollar calculators, to donate to some other under-funded schools in the area that we´ll be visiting on Friday.  We made the three-hour drive to Juitigalpa, where we are working, in the afternoon.  I think I´ve been spelling it “Huitigalpa”… the landscape reminds me of southern Mexico and Guatemala, with a lot of small mountains and tropical trees.  There are Geckos on the windows at night and they make a clicking noise that sounds exactly like someone tapping his keys on the window!  At night, we ate at an outdoor chicken restaurant called Auto-Pollo that is next to a turf soccer field, and drank a couple of Salva Vidas, a particularly appropriately named Honduran beer.   On Sunday, we went to Juitiquile, a tiny village up against some mountains to attend Father Richard´s mass at a tiny church, and had coffee with a family after.   Juitiquile is an especially poor village, but really charming, and the people there were so nice to us and happy to see us.  After that, we walked around downtown Juitigalpa, bought fresh fruit in the main plaza, and ate a huge steak meal at a place called Gordo´s with bull heads hanging from the walls.   Pepe Lobo, the new Honduran president was holding some event in town, and the place was ¨packed¨ this weekend, though it didn´t seem too packed.  Lots of people were in royal blue t-shirts, the color of the National party.

It has been getting up to 100 degrees in the afternoon, and fairly humid, though what is really incredible is the strength of the sun.  The evenings are perfect and I´ve been spending a lot of time kicking the soccer ball with Carlos´ kids, who are super sweet. 

Today our work began, and after touring the schools in the morning and presenting ourselves, I stayed at Cardinal, the high school to observe classes and meet with teachers.  I started by having a long conversation with Marianna, the director of the school, who taught me a lot about the general curriculum in Honduras and how the school has been running.  I observed three classes and had conversations with the teachers, recording them as I went, asking them about their experience with computers and the internet and about challenges they face in general.  Breaking the ice was delicate, and the teachers seemed a bit tense with this new guy observing them, but, I think I did a good job of presenting myself and making it clear that I was not there to observe their teaching, more to think of ideas of how technology could help.  I met with a chemistry teacher, a physics teacher, and a music teacher today.  Meanwhile, the tech team was working away installing the radio broadcaster on the tower, the first step in broadcasting the internet from the special needs school, where we are staying, to the rest of the schools in the district. Tonight, we are going to meet with the education team and write up reports of our observations and ideas.   

It´s been really interesting to learn about Honduras to and meet so many people.  I picked up a book of Honduran short stories, and a book about the 1954 strike if the banana workers, which is really interesting.  The country has a really rocky history with literally hundreds of coups in its relatively short time as an independent nation. 

I miss you all and am thinking of you.  Eric, congratulations on the interview in Billboard!

Steves Blog: http://smayers.wordpress.com/