Ian’s Visit Santa Barbara

Thanks to the good advice of my grandfather, my cousin Ian was able to stop by Honduras on his way home from El Salvador after a high school trip. He arrived on Monday July 7th from San Salvador and I went and picked him up from the airport in San Pedro Sula (which was the only international airport in commission since they were reminded that the runway at the Tegucigalpa airport was too short when a plane ran off the end of it and crashed into a highway killing several people). We had lunch at La Canasta de la Vida (The Basket of Life), my favorite vegetarian restaurant in town.

Tuesday we woke up early and went with Rosita, my landlord’s daughter, to a rural school about an hour away from Santa Barbara. Rosita has been a teacher there for 12 years. At the beginning of this school year she had 51 kids in six grades all in one classroom and she was the only teacher. Just last week she got another teacher to split the class and take three grades, so they put up a divider in the room and each teacher now has only three grades. She ias a phenomenal teacher, full of energy and patience while dealing with three grades at once; they were the most well behaved kids I have ever seen in Honduras. We mostly just observed and talked a little bit about our projects and showed the kids where we are from on the map. Ian gave a very impressive speech about the things he likes to do (eat and swim) and the members of his family.

Ian at the school

Katie at school

Classroom

That afternoon we stopped by the prison in Santa Barbara and Abelardo, one of the inmates that I work with, give us a tour of the facilities. It was actually a great opportunity for me because I usually just go straight to the classroom and have never had a chance to see other parts of the prison. The prison is divided into 9 cells, or dorms which each houses about 50 inmates (one of the cells is for two women inmates). The beds are stacked four high and the ceiling is full of clothes lines to hang stuff. I can’t imagine how that many men live in such a small area. There are however a few lucky individuals who get deluxe accommodations. The director of the education (himself an inmate) has his own personal room with a TV, radio and fan. The religious leaders have their own room and there is one room that can be rented (I’m not sure if I understood this part correctly, but it sounded like if you had money you could rent your own room). There is a large common area where people make goods such as hammocks, fishing nets and food and play billiards and cards. There is also a little store that sells pop, snacks and toiletries. There is a stand for haircuts and there are 7 conjugal visit rooms. Abelardo pointed out that 7 rooms isn’t enough for 361 inmates. In the end Abelardo explained to us how each dorm has an elected leader that is responsible for communicating with the administration. He said that this was a very good system for maintaining control and that it is used all over the country. I wish I had pictures, but I didn’t really think it was that appropriate. Ian and I both felt secure on the tour, comforted by the fact that everybody knows and respects Abelardo, since he is a teacher, the health coordinator and a religious leader.

The next day we visited the new Agua Pura filter workshop that is just now getting up and running. We had problems with leaks in the filters in the previous workshop and the owner was going to raise his prices substantially, so we switched to a new owner, hopefully we will have better luck with him.

New filter workshop

Santos (middle) came from Choluteca, another Agua Pura site down in the south, to train the health promoters and the workers at the new shop.