Dearest Rachel –
Last summer, when I was in Honduras for the first time, it seemed like every night found us dealing with a rainstorm. For the most part, it didn’t interfere with our work during the day (unless you count our interactions with the students on the soccer pitch to be part of our ‘work,’ and given my social awkwardness, especially with those younger than myself, maybe I should); it would just serve to break the heat from one day to the next. The mornings thereafter would smell clean and fresh, like the earth itself had taken a shower.
Not so much this time around, unless it waited until later in the night, after I’d fallen asleep, and I managed to sleep right through it all. Which would be a good thing in and of itself, but only personally; it might be better if the place were to cleanse and cool itself each day. Then again, this allows the freshly-poured pilas from the day before to dry and cure, so this weather certainly has its points for that particular activity.
Which is what I was expecting to do yesterday; I’d already been assigned classes to teach this afternoon and tomorrow morning, leaving Tuesday free for me to actually put in some manual labor, and prove that I wasn’t as old and soft as I looked.
But as we were scooping the cement mixture into the forms that were set up, Mauricio called out to me that I would need to get going. One of the guys who serves as a worship pastor back home was giving a class on computers and their usage, and I had been called on to serve as a sort of backup to him, if need be. So I hopped in the van with him to return to campus; it was weird, being the only passenger in a ten-seater microbus, but that’s how things go.
By and large, the class went… well, smoothly isn’t quite the word for it. The first part of it was meant to show how easy it was to set up a email account, but Michael kept getting an error message once he finished choosing an address and password. Moreover, the error didn’t even so much as explain itself, and what we might be doing wrong and need to correct. Being unable to have the kids walk through the setup process, he had to abandon that part of the lesson, and move on to cloud computing; creating documents and saving them in a place where they would be accessible from any device that they might be logged into (assuming, again, that they had – or could create – such an account at a separate point in time).
My only real contribution to the discussion turned out to be about internet safety, and how they needed to log out and remove their account information from any borrowed computer when they were finished with it, lest someone else obtain access to their data. Moreover, we instructed them never to open attachments in any email from anyone they didn’t trust; to avoid malware and phishing schemes. Not that we used such words, of course; for all we know, there isn’t a Spanish analog to them. As long as they were aware of the principles of what to do and not do, everything should be fine.
At this point, we think that the error regarding setting up a new email account might have had to do with bandwidth; the morning class had some fifteen kids pouring in. Everybody trying at once to do the same thing may have overwhelmed the routers, for all we could tell; we had less trouble in the afternoon with half the kids (only two of which needed to have an email set up – more from having forgotten their old email passwords than not having an email account, which gives you an idea of how often they’ve checked in. It really is a different world down here).
On the other hand, not having that little cloudburst of access issues meant that the second class made a lot more progress into the wonders of Google applications – documents, spreadsheets – than the high schoolers were exposed to in the morning. So it all turned out pretty well in the end.
At the same time, since Michael was leading the class, it felt like I wasn’t doing all that much in terms of doing anything throughout the two classes. Sure, I pointed out a few tips and tricks during the one class about the information one could see in a spreadsheet, but it’s not as if I’m making the sort of connections with them that so many of the other volunteers are. It’s like I’m going through a dry season of my own.
To be fair, the kids seemed to have a great time – and I’d argue that, since we played a couple of them to a 0-0 draw, we weren’t completely awful – but it did feel like this may have been a form of what Paul the apostle had in mind about being “fools for Christ.”
Now, I’ve been raised not to complain about rain, and whether it appears or not on any given day. Which hasn’t stopped me – I’m only human, with specific wants when it comes to weather – it’s just reminded me that there might be other people who might prefer weather that is the opposite of what I’d prefer. Right now, I would assume that there are farmers in the area who would appreciate a solid drenching.
But that’s not what we’re dealing with – or what it appears we’ll be dealing with – for the foreseeable future. The land, while not necessarily parched at the moment, continues to endure something of a dry season; I know how that goes.
In either case, whether the next couple of days bring relief or not (it would be preferable to walk the area tomorrow on dust rather than mud), I’d ask you to keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me well. I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 