Cultural Night

Our school held a cultural night last night, Friday. Students sold tickets to friends and family members, who all showed up at the local museum/cultural center for an evening of Honduran culture. Having experienced many ‘cultural programs’ in the Philippines, I wasn’t super excited about this evening, but it turned out alright. I drove there with my host family, which means we arrived 45 minutes after the ‘start time’ of the event. The first part of the program was the national anthem, a short flag ceremony, and introduction of the five nations of Central America. Although it seems weird to feature El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica in a Honduran cultural night, it’s very important to their history, because the five countries used to be one. So Honduran history is also the history of the other 4 countries.

After this, the third grade came out and said the Lord’s Prayer in English. We have been practicing this for about 2 weeks, and they had it down okay, but not great. Then when we all showed up for the cultural night, I discovered that one of my students, who knew his part and was the leader for his group (I split it into three parts to make it easier to learn), wasn’t coming. Well, when the kids got up in front of all these people, parents and guests, the Lord’s Prayer came out kind of funny, with some parts said twice, some skipped altogether, and some words changed for other words. But it was okay, they looked nice, and I don’t think their parents could really understand what they were saying anyway. But one of my girls, who made the biggest, loudest mistake was sobbing on our way off the stage because she knew she messed up. It was sad, and I tried to tell her it didn’t matter, but she was still upset.

The rest of the night was pleasant. Some of the older students did traditional dances, there was a band and a modern dancer, there was a clown/poet, and a speaker, and food. The students were told to dress in traditional clothes if they had them. For the girls, these are big colorful dresses with colorful trim. For the boys there are two ‘traje tipico’: there are bright colorful shirts and pants with the same trim as the girls’ dresses, and there is the campesino look. I think this is really cute, the boys will dress in jeans with big patches all over them, and flannel or other worker-type shirts, with cowboy hats. So this traditional clothing is the clothing of the poor farmer or cowboy.

After the cultural night, the teachers went out, and some of the peace corps volunteers joined us, as did some of our local friends.