On our previous trips to Tela, we’ve loved getting to know many of the amazing people who work in the tourism industry in the resort town. Among them are Maria Leonard and Yamilet Caballero, who are the visionaries behind the boutique hotel Los Olingos. This hotel is the only property where you can stay in the Jeanette Kawas National Park on the western side of Tela Bay. To get there you must take a boat through Los Micos, a huge mangrove lagoon where the birding is spectacular. It’s like arriving in paradise.
Maria’s family owned the property where Los Olingos is well before the national park was established. She and her father, who was a farmer, would come to this spot on weekends to fish and enjoy the incredible natural beauty of the land. Maria went to grade school in the nearby town of Agua Chiquita, which at the time didn’t have a high school. She had to move in with a family member in town to continue her education and received a scholarship to college in the U.S., where she studied to become a teacher. She taught geography for two decades in Pennsylvania before returning to build Los Olingos with her sister-in-law Yamilet.
On the last day of our August expedition, Maria and Yamilet arranged for me to give a talk to students in Agua Chiquita, which now has a high school called CEB SAT Dionisio de Herrera. From Los Olingos, Yamilet’s husband expertly steered a four-wheel drive truck along a dirt road that climbed up and down steep hills and dips, across the Agua Chiquita creek, where there is no bridge. Noting the impending rain, Maria said with a laugh, “If it floods, you can’t cross it just have to wait. And we have had to wait many times!”
After a half an hour, we parked in front of the two storied school. Two dogs, mascots, rested among a parking lot of mopeds in the courtyard. The classrooms were all open to the outside, but clever insulation and architecture kept the inside comfortably cool.
The teachers led me to the presentation room on the second floor and the students and teachers quickly transformed it from an open space with just a blackboard into a lecture hall, complete with seating, a projector, and wifi. I’ve given talks in universities where the technology was more problematic. About 40 students assembled, and Maria introduced me.
I took the floor, apologizing for my toddler-level Spanish. I’ve been taking lessons since I started working in Tela, but I often grasp for words and get befuddled in conjugations. So Maria graciously offered to help translate for me.
But something magical happened. I began talking about my career in marine science, how I got interested in jellyifsh and then corals, and it was all coming out of me in Spanish.
I paused. Could the students understand me?
They nodded, yes, and Maria encouraged me to continue. So I did. I kept talking in Spanish for an hour. I was shocked. I felt so much gratitude to the students for putting up with what I’m sure was terrible accents, messed up articles, and horrific grammar.
When it was time for questions one student asked me why I cared so much about the ocean. It’s a hard thing to answer, but the best I could say was that I was in awe of the underwater places that are so different from our own, but at the same time so very much part of our own world.
There were a slew of questions about how we could tell if there are baby corals in Tela, about how you know if a jellyfish is a girl or a boy, and how they reproduce. I asked if any of the students had been to see the coral, either snorkling or swimming. Only a few had. It is strange, I acknowledged, for me to fly from a different country to see something that’s so close to them. But that’s how special Tela’s reefs are. Also I know that you rarely go to see the treasures you live near. It just becomes part of the background of your world. I hope I left them with a sense that the treasures they live near are incredibly important.
Before I left, we did the big group shot. You can see Maria and me kneeling in front of the kids. And that’s Jamilet’s hand holding our Tela coral sticker.
¡Muchas gracias al CEB SAT Dionisio de Herrera por invitirme! I hope I get to visit with your lovely students and terrific teachers again. I promise I’m going to keep working on my Spanish!