I remember when I was learning to play the oboe, many years ago, that in order to learn the proper placement of my fingers on the small metal keys I had to practice those placements over and over again to remember how to form the note that would then be added with other notes to form scales and later, songs.
I’ve found the same to be true with learning words in another language. Only by constant repetition am I able to remember the new words I’m learning daily.
With that in mind, I thought I’d share with you a few new words and phrases I’ve learned since being in Honduras.
“Quesadilla.”
During the week, while conducting surveys in rural mountain villages in Honduras, I stay at the small dormitory built by the organization with whom I’m working.
One night, while waiting for dinner to be prepared by the caretaker’s wife, the caretaker’s daughters invited me to eat quesadillas that they had baked. Thinking that this was perhaps an early dinner, my thoughts immediately went to the flour tortilla-encased, artificially colored cheese product that many of us would call “quesadilla.”
Then I realized that cheese in Olancho is not sold in individually wrapped, thin, yellow squares. It is a course, white, crumbly concoction of milk and salt. I also realized that the tortillas I had eaten were not made of refined flour; rather, they were made from a mixture of freshly ground corn and water.
As we left the dormitory grounds and walked to a nearby house across the road, I wondered exactly what “quesadillas” meant and how they would have been baked since there is no electricity in these communities nor had I seen an oven.
My question was partially answered when I saw a large clay structure that looked more like a petrified version of the papier-mÄché volcano I had constructed in the third grade than what I would consider an “oven.”
And inside this “oven” was not the cheese-filled flour tortilla I had expected but a baked mixture of corn flour, Olancho cheese, black pepper, eggs, sugar and cinnamon that strongly resembled an English scone.
The caretaker’s daughters prompted me to try one, so I did. And the taste? Too good to describe.
“Esta cerquita.” It’s really close.
Since my research involves surveying parents of school children in the rural mountain communities, it is necessary to make a visit to the home of each child that has been selected for the study, and usually these visits are made by walking.
One day, we had already visited several houses and it was nearing midday. We stopped at a house to ask directions to our final survey site.
By this time, my breakfast of beans, tortillas and coffee had long been burned off under the hot, Honduran sun. When the response to our inquiry about directions was “esta cerquita,” I was relieved to learn that we wouldn’t have to walk very far.
We started up a narrow dirt path which led us over two mountain ridges, through a cow pasture, past a field of corn, and 45 minutes later we arrived at our last survey site.
I was tired and hungry, but I couldn’t help but notice the view as we started our hike back after finishing the survey.
We were in the middle-of-nowhere (I still haven’t found an equivalent phrase in Spanish) surrounded by an endless view of mountains, only interrupted by a few fields of yucca and some cattle growing on a nearby slope.
The feeling of tranquility that resulted from being on top of a mountain in the middle-of-nowhere Honduras made me forget that it was past lunchtime, that we still had three more hours of hiking and surveying planned for the afternoon, and that I had forgotten my sunscreen and that my skin was turning the color of the red clay path beneath my feet.
And as I temporarily forgot these things, I remembered that the strenuous hike I was about to complete was the road to school that this family’s children walk.
They, and many others, made the walk every day, sometimes with the only guarantee of a good meal being the healthy snack they would receive at school, sometimes in green plastic flip-flops, the cheapest footwear available in Honduras, and sometimes not at all, especially if the river was too deep or the teacher had decided not to make the two hour journey from Catacamas that week to teach.
Thinking of these things as we hiked down the mountains, I reminded myself never to consider complaining when I had to park on the opposite of campus from my class or about my professor’s teaching style.
So I continue learning new words, meeting new people, and visiting new places. For now, my latest two words are:
“Semana Santa” or Holy Week, my unofficial spring break. Hasta pronto.

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