Roatan: Real People, Real Lives

Two years after starting their new life on Roatan, life took a different turn again when Ellen became pregnant. Many women, I would venture to say, would return to their homeland at this point, and the security of family and familiar surroundings. Ellen is calm, common sense kind of person person, not one to freak out, and was quite comfortable having a baby in Honduras – but not on Roatan.

The options five years ago were not many for childbirth; a Canadian midwife or the local hospitals/clinics. So she knew she would have the baby on the mainland where the hospitals and doctors are very good. She found a doctor she was comfortable with, had ultra sounds and all the pre-natal and follow up care she would have received in Holland. She had a healthy, easy pregnancy and birth. Today, there are pediatricians on the island and doctors of all specialties visit regularly.

Their daughter is now 10 years old, and their son is four years old. Their daughter went to a bi-lingual school for the first 5 years of schooling, when there weren’t many choices. Being in school with island children integrated her quickly and she is tri-lingual today; Dutch, English and Spanish. After 5 years there, an alternative school was developing and they decided to move their daughter to this school. They are very happy with the combination of early integration into the local bi-lingual school, and maturation into the alternative school.

Their son is in a pre-school with a Montessori teacher and they are currently deciding whether to have him go to the bi-lingual school first, or go straight to the alternative school. There are choices here! They would like their children to go to university in Honduras as well, but it’s difficult to plan that far ahead.

Ellen’s view of living here is that it’s a simpler life; her children are fortunate to live on this island as they are developing a more global view of life and the planet. She is happy to visit Holland, but two weeks is usually enough until she’s ready to return; “it’s nice not having to check expiration dates on foods!” Like all parents, she is concerned for the safety of her children, but believes in using common sense and a degree of caution. They have no plans to leave, she says this is her home, but always remembers that we are guests in this country and changes happen all the time. In general, her concerns are global, not just Honduras. “It’s a good life; not easy right now, but we still like it.”

The Alternative School that Robert and Ellen’s child attends is run by an energetic, single 33- year old from Duluth, Minnesota. Miriam Hanson was working in a group home for mentally retarded and mentally ill adults, where she says she learned infinite patience. Passionate about education, she had been working toward her thesis, but without direction, when an opportunity presented itself to volunteer in a new NGO called Fundacion Adelante in the city of La Ceiba on the north coast of the Honduran mainland.

She spent six months there developing methodologies, constructing the web site, learning the history of Honduras and surveying the poor communities on the coast to see if there was feasibility for women to receive small loans to develop businesses, and if the men were receptive to micro-enterprise by their women.

Newly inspired, Miriam returned to the University of Minnesota and wrote her thesis on Micro Finance as a Solution to World Poverty. So, what next? Brazil beckoned and Miriam spent three weeks traveling in that country and decided she would like to live there, but first she needed to find out if teaching was a good idea for her, so she returned to Honduras and stayed in La Ceiba teaching a 4th grade class for a year. Toward the end of the year, she was contacted by some ex-pats on Roatan to ask if she would come to Roatan and home school a small group of kids. The pay was good, the hours were shorter, there were less responsibilities and it is a tropical island!

In August of 2002 Miriam moved to Roatan to scuba dive in the mornings and to teach four kids in the afternoons. The “school” started in a not-quite-completed building in West End, but as word got around she found herself with more kids to teach so she moved them into her rented house on the beach in Sandy Bay.

This meant she had to live somewhere else, and, not being able to pay two rent payments, she lived in friends’ houses, slept on couches, whatever it took. By February of 2006 her enrollment had increased so much that she needed more space and the school moved into its current location. Today her enrollment stands at 62 students of all ages, and 17 staff. The school is completely self-supporting; parent involvement makes a big difference. This summer they lost six families who left Roatan because of the earthquake, earlier strikes against the electric company, the political situation or running out of money with the economy suffering as it is.

Everyone else plans to stay. Current events, Miriam says, have made the school stronger, unified and more cohesive; the staff, kids and families are stronger. It’s a huge testimonial to the success of the school when some businesses are closing down and the Minister of Education closed all Honduran schools a month early to save funding. Honduran schools have their long break during the holiday season; they close from the end of November to the end of January.

The Alternative School is specific to the Bay Islands, they have a maximum of 10 kids per teacher and the focus is on English, although Spanish is also taught. Each child has an Individual Education Plan, which Miriam says is the essentiality of their cohesiveness. The parents of the students come from all over the world: Honduras mainland, Bay Islands, Switzerland, Holland, America, Britain, Italy, Germany, Canada, Argentina, South Africa and Garifuna (native to northern Honduras and descendants of slaves from West Africa, they have their own culture).

Miriam’s plan for the future is to present the model of the Alternative School as a real, working, successful solution to the problems of education in the Bay Islands.

With such obvious dedication to the school and her students, I asked Miriam about the rest of her life here. Easy, she said, she swims, dives, does the annual triathlon, yoga and is totally in love with the sea! This is home. She keeps a wary eye on the political events as they unravel, but focusing on the kids all day long she becomes removed, so she doesn’t focus on the politics, just follows what’s happening.

You’ll find the Alternative School at www.sandybayalternativeschool.webs.com.

The fifth person I talked with is my husband, Ron. Now why, you might ask, would he be of more interest than what I had already written about in July and August? So here’s the rest of the story……

About 2 ½ years ago, Ron’s mother, then 80 years old, was living back in Illinois in an assisted living apartment, taking care of herself, or so we thought. Ron spoke to her by phone at least once a week and became concerned about how she sounded on the phone, so he took a flight back to Illinois, fortunately. He found his mother dehydrated, disoriented, not eating and not taking her medications. He immediately called an ambulance and she spent some time in the hospital before returning to her apartment with Ron.

It was apparent that she could no longer take care of herself. So now we were faced with a decision many people face, what to do with Mom? Difficult enough if you are in the same country, not an easy decision when you’re not even on the same continent. Ron agonized over what to do; our life is in Honduras and returning to the U.S. would not only be extremely difficult to start over at our ages, but not at all what we had planned on.

After many discussions with her doctor, with me and with his remaining family in Illinois, he decided to bring her to Honduras to live with us. Surprisingly, it didn’t take too much convincing for her to agree, although she clearly had no idea where Honduras is and had never traveled much further than St Louis. We subsequently realized, after much agonizing over the decision that all she really wanted was to be with her son – location didn’t matter.

There were many concerns that Ron had, as you can imagine; the heat, medical care, our relationship, the environment outside the U.S., recognizable food availability and the different lifestyle most of all. And the biggest obstacle for Ron – Roatan is not suitable for a frail, elderly woman who has no concept of anything foreign.

But, there are solutions to every question, and his solution probably wouldn’t work if we were 30 years old, but we’re not, and we live apart for now. I live in our home on Roatan and Ron and his mother live in a large apartment in La Ceiba. For many people, this concept would be unacceptable, unthinkable, but for us it works. I hop on the ferry about once a week and visit them, or occasionally Ron comes to Roatan if his Mom is up to an overnight absence.

She seems to handle one night very well. The apartment is on the ground level so Mom can sit outside where there is a garden to look at and a swimming pool, although she doesn’t use the pool! Ron parks the car right beside the front door so she has no need to climb any steps or walk any distance.

MEDICAL CARE IN LA CEIBA IS VERY GOOD, WITH MODERN FACILITIES, AS WELL AS OLDER HOSPITALS. RON FOUND AN ENGLISH-SPEAKING DOCTOR FOR HIS MOM….

Medical care in La Ceiba is very good, with modern facilities as well as older hospitals. Ron found an English-speaking doctor for his Mom and she likes him a lot. When she needs to see the doctor, he gets up from behind his desk and sits toe to toe with her, looking her in the eye and speaking softly and slowly. He takes as much time as they need and walks her to the door.

Unlike Roatan, La Ceiba has lots of fast food places which are familiar to Mom and they have satellite television so she sees the U.S. networks and news, all the shows that are familiar to her. She even watches the Cubs baseball games!

If there is an emergency and she needed to get back to Illinois, access to an international flight is easier on the mainland, although she shrugs off that possibility.

Once a year they both travel back to Illinois and have annual check ups; Ron at the V.A. hospital and Mom with her doctor there. He prescribes medications for her and arranges to send them down to us every couple of months.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not, her health has improved, she is happy and can do more. She washes dishes, hangs clothes out to dry, dusts the apartment and has a dog that idolizes her. She has no desire to move back to Illinois and surprisingly again, she loves the heat; it turns out that she cannot tolerate cold.

Ron has a Vonage phone and she talks to family whenever she wants to, which is more than she used to when she lived there. She is happier, content and life is more suitable for her – that was a big surprise to us. One more surprise; although she doesn’t meet a lot of people and speaks NO Spanish, she likes the Honduran people. When Ron takes her to a restaurant, they treat her like the most important person in the restaurant, and always remember her the next time.

Ron and I talk about the political situation in Honduras, especially since he is living on the mainland – I feel perfectly safe on Roatan and most likely they wouldn’t be affected in La Ceiba either, but we have an emergency plan if they need to leave the country. We don’t for a minute think we’ll need it, nothing much is happening outside the capitol, but it makes sense to be prepared.

So Mom is happy, but we know there will be another hurdle to face not too much into the future, one we all reach with our aging parents. For now, life is good. And what more could we ask for?