beginnings

My name is Mister Chris. Often just Mister, Mister! I teach eight attention-hungry, rambunctious fifth graders math, science, social studies, art, health, and physical education. We read stories. I explain action verbs, direct objects, and proper nouns. I also teach evolution to seventh graders and atomic bonds to eighth graders.

My life revolves around the pila, my source of water.

I shower from a bucket, sometimes in the backyard. I wash dishes outside. Clothes outside. I am constantly dirty. I don't look in a mirror for days. I flush the toilet from the same bucket I use to shower. I splash water on my hands, my arms, my face. Always from the pila. The pila tries to keep me clean. I return the effort.

Dust is everywhere. It's impossible to avoid it. Grubby feet, greasy hair, sticky skin.

Clicking geckoes in my room at night sound like a key tapping on the door. Tonight they chirp like reptilian parakeets. Cockroaches scamper through the cracks beneath the doors. Step on them, shrug it off. No big deal. Sometimes I sleep in the floor.

Horses, cows, chickens ramble the potholed dirt roads. Scrawny, filthy dogs bark, answering another's bawl all day, all night. The racket stops as they claw open a black sack of rubbish and stick their muzzles into the fresh pile.

Tonight it's storming and raining, a rarity during the dry season. There are only two seasons in San Marcos de Ocotepeque: a dusty season and a muddy season.

My address contains no numbers:
Chris Young
Green Valley School
San Marcos de Ocotepeque, Honduras
Central America

This job, this life, this country will surely try me. And I love it.