Former Students
Read what Michael Benanav, Travel writer for
the New York Times had to say about his Eco-Escuela Spanish
School experience or Click
here to read comments from other former
Eco-Escuela Spanish
School students.
Learning Spanish In Life's Classroom
By MICHAEL BENANAV
Situated in the Petén, Guatemala's lowland rain-forest region,
San Andrés is a humble town of pastel-colored houses stacked
on a lakeside slope. Chickens and pigs and battle-scarred
dogs freely roam streets that are cobbled or, in places,
just dirt, and women shuttle between houses with tubs of
masa (corn dough) balanced on their heads. It's a half-hour
by boat from Flores, a popular destination that is the base
for trips to nearby Tikal, the ancient Maya citadel whose
stone pyramids tower over a jungle canopy alive with howler
monkeys and tropical birds. Though tourists swarm in Flores,
serene Lake Petén-Itzá insulates San Andrés from their influence.
At $175 a week for one-on-one classroom instruction, including
food and lodging with a local family, the Eco-Escuela is
expensive by local standards. But its promise of housing
with Guatemalans and its community volunteer projects convinced
Karen and me that it was what we were looking for. We made
reservations for a two-week stay from home by e-mail.
COMMENTARIO -
Our prices have been reduced. See Tuition
Costs
We crossed the emerald waters of Petén-Itzá in a lancha
(a narrow wooden boat with a canopy and outboard motor) on
a Sunday afternoon, the sky a quilt of stratocumulus with
sunlight seams. After landing in San Andrés, we checked in
at the school and were escorted to our assigned home.
Our room was a simple, free-standing casita, covered by
a traditional palm-frond roof, with ample space for two double
beds, a dresser and a desk. Vistas of the lake, framed by
banana trees, greeted us whenever we opened our door. Like
most Guatemalan homes, it had whitewashed walls adorned with
calendars depicting pastoral European scenes. Prepared for
life in a developing country, we were not dismayed by sporadic
losses of electricity, or the cold-water shower and the well-kept
outhouse used by the whole family.
For the Quitz family, our hosts, the outdoor kitchen was
the hub of daily life; the stove was a table of packed earth
upon which a low fire was perpetually burning. Black beans
soaking in enamel pots perched on wooden bancos. Corn tortillas
were freshly cooked for every meal.
Lucidia Centurión, the 62-year-old matriarch of a family
consisting of her husband, José Quitz, their three sons and
one daughter, and two grandchildren, had mahogany-bark skin
and a nearly toothless grin. She took undisguised pleasure
in watching us adapt to her way of life, whether we were
mangling tortilla dough with our inexperienced hands or helping
to cut and carry firewood. The family had been host to students
for six years, and two of Lucidia's three sons were training
to be teachers. They practiced their fledging techniques
on Karen and me while we dined family style on eggs, pasta,
chicken or deep-fried cauliflower in salsa. Purified water
and fruit juice were served in plastic pitchers.
Classes began Monday morning at 8, in a spacious one-room
schoolhouse, with sunlight pouring in through a wall of paneless
windows overlooking the lake. Idle ceiling fans hung above
rows of identical wooden tables, each flanked by two hard
chairs and an erasable white board.
Fifteen other students from the United States and Europe
milled about the lime-green room, adhering to the standard
traveler's dialogue while waiting to meet their teachers.
I was introduced to Elga Tut, a 25-year-old instructor,
and shown to one of the desks. Before long, every student
had a teacher and was settling into a workstation.
Elga slid a 45-question assessment exam my way. I was baffled
by the first blank.
''Fecha?'' I asked.
''The date,'' she replied, using two of her few English
words. After fumbling through 10 questions, I looked up pleadingly
and managed to muster a complete sentence: ''No comprendo
nada.''
Elga mercifully put away the test and began with the basics.
Like all the instructors, she was a high school graduate
and had a teaching certificate and additional training in
teaching Spanish to foreigners.
I found myself swept up by the palpable swell of concentration
in the classroom. The chorus of student-teacher pairs produced
a chantlike hum, laced with laughter. Elga's easygoing style
and playful personality coaxed me through an avalanche of
verb tenses. Though I copied the words and phrases she wrote
on the board, we spent most of our time talking, compelling
me to use the vocabulary I was learning.
By the time class adjourned each day at noon, my brain was
supersaturated. I needed not to think about Spanish for a
few hours. Fortunately, the school-sponsored volunteer activities,
which began after lunch with our host families, were a complete
contrast.
Students who chose to participate -- no more than six volunteered
from our group on any given day, it turned out -- were sent
into nearby forest preserves with machetes to clear weeds
from trails. Not, I thought, the most valuable contribution
we could make to the community, but great for exercise and
the thrill of swinging a lethal blade. Students with functional
knowledge of Spanish can help out in the village's clinic,
primary school or children's library.
Friendships formed while we hacked at the unruly jungle,
and I became acquainted with a Dutch accounts manager, a
Swedish college student, a businesswoman from San Francisco
and a Colorado environmentalist, among others.
Samuel Ribera, our crew boss, a flat-faced former chicle
harvester, knew the trees like cousins. He led us through
the woods, pointing out plants and explaining their medicinal
and commercial uses. Plucking and crumpling a leaf, he invited
us to sniff. It was pimienta, or allspice.
Samuel was proud of his job with the school, which uses
profits to maintain the hundreds of acres of forest preserves
surrounding the town. ''I used to cut the trees,'' he said
in Spanish. ''Now I protect them.''
The Eco-Escuela, in fact, has fostered positive changes
in San Andrés since its founding in 1992. Jobs created by
the school, now owned by residents of the community, mean
that fewer people in this town of about 6,000, whose hardware
store stocks five styles of machetes, need to eke out a living
as field hands or woodcutters.
Women, who run the households, supplement their husbands'
wages by being hosts to foreign students, so their own children,
once fated for menial jobs at young ages, are now more likely
to graduate from secondary school.
Profits from the Eco-Escuela buy school supplies for youngsters
in the community and finance the cheerily painted two-room
public library, its shelves stocked with Spanish versions
of popular American children's books.
Rather than join the volunteers, Karen often commuted to
Flores, where she stayed in touch with her business back
home on the Internet. Other students made the trip when they
craved fancier cuisine or more bustle than San Andrés offered.
But to me, Flores felt too much like an Epcot pavilion.
If I needed a break, I wandered over to the secluded Ni'tun
Eco-Lodge, where I relaxed and swam at the clean, peaceful
lake-front dock. A mile down the shore from San Andrés, the
simple but classy hotel can accommodate up to 12 people in
four separate cabanas with polished hardwood floors under
beautiful thatch roofs. The open-air bar and kitchen, offering
espresso and dishes such as seafood paella and chicken Milanese,
are rarely crowded.
Some afternoons I participated in the school's extracurricular
activities, such as cooking demonstrations by local women
or field trips to experimental farms. But usually I preferred
meandering around San Andrés, fascinated by vignettes of
daily life. Women scrubbed clothing by hand in outdoor sinks
or in the lake. Children kicked soccer balls and played with
firecrackers. Men struggled beneath huge loads of firewood.
Gardens of flowers and fruit flourished between homes and
trash piles.
Since San Andréseños, who speak almost no English, are easily
approachable and endlessly patient, the town itself became
my classroom. Dictionary in hand, I posed questions to everybody
I met and received some surprising answers.
Monkeys, said a woman who owned one, prefer tacos to bananas.
Marriage, I was told, requires no paternal permission, but
the courtship ritual demands that a young man visit with
the family of a young woman on Sundays, rather than take
her out.
An 84-year-old hammock weaver warned Karen about El Duende,
a supernatural midget with a giant white sombrero who abducts
women and chains them to a wall in his secret cave, where
they spend the rest of their lives guarded by an enormous
serpent.
After he described a few more evil beings, I asked if any
beneficent spirits lived in the area. ''No,'' he said, ''There
is only one good spirit -- Jesus Christ.''
By the end of our second week of study, Karen and I were
able to form sentences, conjugate common verbs and grasp
most of what was said to us, if spoken slowly. After our
schooling, we spent three weeks traveling on the cheap in
Guatemala. We traversed the rutted roads of the highland
states in the back of pickup trucks, on horses and in overcrowded,
flamboyantly painted old school buses, seeking out remote
villages before ending our trip in the vibrant Spanish Colonial
city of Antigua Guatemala.
Along the way, we chatted with shepherds tending flocks
high in the mountains, laughed with women selling produce
in the markets and learned firsthand about the terror of
Guatemala's civil war, which ended in 1996, from those who
had lived it. Though our grammar was flawed, Guatemalans
were forgiving, and our dictionary became dead weight in
our bags.
If You Go
Reservations at the Eco-Escuela, telephone and fax (502)
926-3202, www .ecomaya.com/ecoescuela.asp, can be made by
phone, fax or e-mail. The process requires patience; the
office often lacks
an English speaker.
COMMENTARIO - You
are on our new website and our experienced staff will be
glad to answer all your questions about Eco-Escuela Spanish
School in English.
The program costs $175 a week for five days of class, four
hours a day, morning or afternoon; you can start any day
of the week, and longer hours can be arranged. The price
includes a week's stay with a local family, with three meals
a day. Cash, traveler's checks and MasterCard and Visa are
accepted; there is a 7 percent surcharge for MasterCard,
4 percent for Visa. The nearest banks are in Flores and Santa
Elena.
COMMENTARIO - Our School-Homestay tuition
cost is currently US$ 150 per week. See Tuition
Costs for more information including
specials and discounts.
The Eco-Escuela operates year-round. March through May is
infernally hot. Summer (which is humid) and fall are cooled
by rains; winter is temperate and drier.
Immunizations are not required, though hepatitis A and typhoid
are recommended. Some travelers choose to take malaria pills.
Getting There
San Andrés is reached by boat or local bus from the towns
of Flores, Santa Elena and San Benito. There are flights
to Flores from Guatemala City or Belize City (50 minutes)
and Cancún, Mexico (30 minutes). First-class bus service
to Flores is available from Guatemala City (eight hours).
Accommodations
The Eco-Escuela strives to meet students' needs within reason.
You may request a family of smokers or nonsmokers, with children
or without, even one of a particular religious denomination.
Vegetarians are easily accommodated. Some homes
have separate guest houses, others a room in a shared house.
Few have flush
toilets.
COMMENTARIO -
All families now have modern flush toilets.
Ni'tun Eco-Lodge, (502) 201-0759 or 414-5780; www.nitun.com.
There are four thatch-roof cabanas, accommodating up to 12
people. Rates are $40 for a single, $60 for doubles. Dinner
at the restaurant, including a drink, runs about $10. Reservations
are required for the restaurant. |
