Sunday, Sept 12, 2010

Isn’t it weird that September 11 came and went and I never even realized the significance of the date?

So tired even though its only 7:30pm. I have been exhausted lately, not really sure why. Yesterday I slept until almost 10am which is so late for me, then did a bit of work, took a nap, watched Modern Family on my computer, and then was in  bed by 9pm. Woke up tired today too. Today Zach was coming in from La Esperanza so he had me go to his basketball team’s practice for him. It was actually really fun, I was there for 3 hours, just scrimmaging, playing knockout, and just hanging out, and some colegio kids came too. I think I’ll start going in the afternoons when I can, because it is a good opportunity for me to hang out with the kids of the town, and honestly I am always too tired at night to play with the adults. Plus the kids make me feel like I’m good because hey, I can beat a 7 year old in knockout.

I’ve had a good couple of weeks. I have been spending lots of time at people’s houses and have been fairly busy socially, haha. Its been good for me to not leave my site and just be here. Camasca never really has social events, per say, but just having coffee at people’s houses, playing with their kids, and being available in general does wonders for my mood and for my feeling of being integrated. The SANAA guys were back for the week which was fun, since they’ve been gone for almost a month. I always just really enjoy talking to them, even though they work basically all day long so I always feel I’m interrupting them. The power has been out more frequently lately, and one day last week I played basketball with those guys and it was really fun. I was actually fairly good! We just played half-court which I think is better for me because I’m not so exhausted. There have also been people here auditing the mayor’s office and the mancomunidad, and I’ve hung out several times with them. I invited a few of them over for lunch one day when I was making vegetable curry but I think they lied when they said they’d had curry before (and liked it), because I’m not so sure they liked it. Oh well, I think they (and I) appreciated the break from eating at the one diner in town.

My schedule has been taken over by the abstinence project in 5 communities. Two or three days a week I am visiting the students in their communities, Thursdays we have meetings in the morning where I assess their performance and explain the information they present to the girls, and then usually the other day of the week I am taking care of some logistical issue. But I wouldn’t complain at all, I love it. The colegio kids I work with are amazing and give me so much hope for the future of Honduras. I’ve become friends with them too, sometimes they come over for coffee or we play in the bball court. Its also really special to see the colegio boys relate with the girls, watching them write encouraging notes to them or participating in games with them. One of the communities I visited last week is only accessible by foot. The road has been taken out so many times by landslides that the government won’t put more money into it. The community is located straight downhill, which is dangerous because the path is rock and dirt and very slippery. I made the colegio boy in that group walk beside me the whole time so I didn’t fall, haha. So since its straight downhill to get there (about 45 minutes), it is straight uphill to return (at least an hour). I was sweating and breathing so hard, but made it, only fell once. I’m glad we are working in this community even if it is difficult to reach. I was talking to one of the three teachers there and she said that they have a real problem with 12 and 13 year olds getting pregnant. It is interesting enough that the girls in the 5^th and 6^th grade are already 17 or 18 years old, because their parents don’t have them start until they are already bigger. The early mornings (waking up by 6am) wear me out but its worth it. We finish at the beginning of October, trying to look for more work. I’ve thought about an illiteracy project that ended abruptly last year during the coup, and also pushing to start back with the trash project. Supposedly Iris and I are presenting the Project Citizen methodology to the colegio students next week…

In another community I visited last week, I had an interesting conversation with the women making the lunch for the kids (by the way, I learned to make rice pastries with them!). The women I was talking to just had twins six months ago, and while she was still pregnant, the father just left her and moved in with another woman in town, who is already pregnant by him. Unbelievable. Luckily there are laws now that protect this woman, so the guy still has to financially support the kids (if she makes him), but still, what an awful thing to do, leave her pregnant with twins and another kid too. They had lived together for 6 years. I have realized that few people seem to be getting married in my community, they just move in together and call each other husband and wife. I’ve had it explained to me that weddings are too expensive and they cant just sign papers, that’s not the way you do things. I wonder if the woman has rights like a married woman would, to property and the responsibility of the husband to provide for the kids. Tons of people I thought were married aren’t technically, I’ve realized. This Yo Merezco project just isn’t about abstinence, its also about teaching them that they deserve to be with someone special who loves them and is faithful and treats them well. Had a conversation with some people from Teguc who straight up told me that their wives accepted and expected them to have other women but that it was completely out of the question for their wives to have other men. This is machismo, a perfect example, but it still baffles me to have men tell me unashamedly about their affairs. These are educated professionals, too.

So I was supposed to be going to San Salvador this week, but not sure I’ll get to do. I called Joel, my friend I was going to visit, and they’ve been having bus strikes for days, because of gang activity (the bus companies pay a fee so the gangs don’t target them, and I think they haven’t been paying or something), and I would be needing a bus to get me there. Its annoying because I had to submit a request which is logistically complicated. If I don’t go then maybe I’ll try to go to San Marcos de Colon to visit my friend Patrick who is finishing his service next week.

Kid’s Day was Friday, and it was a huge deal. Each school had piñatas, the teachers cooked lunch for the students,and the mayor’s office gave a goody bag to every kid in the municipality. Oh yea, I got to help stuff the 1000+ bags. I went to La Hacienda, where I had done the Yo Merezco project, and the girls were so excited to see me. Of course when I show up, the teacher asks me if I have some games I want to play with the 75 girls…until lunch is ready. At this point it was 9am so it would be 3 hours of games. I showed them a few games but really they were unmanageable. At the end, they put on music, and one of the teachers was trying to pressure me to dance. I refused because I just had a bad feeling about the men there and didn’t want them touching me. But it was funny because I told the teacher that I would if she would, and she said, oh no I’m Christian, I don’t dance. So I guess she wanted me to dance, because after all, Elizabeth “isn’t a Christian”…

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Just a few months and I’ll be in the USA for Christmas. Can’t wait. It’s probably hard for you folks in the USA to think that August is close to December, since the weather changes drastically, but here in my town in Honduras, I can expect almost identical weather in December as right now. Nonetheless, I’m sure it will be a shock to my system to get off the plane in December to cold weather. I can’t wait for cold weather (but no snow, please), Christmas lights, Christmas music, apple cider and hot chocolate (can have those things here, but really, who wants hot apple cider when its hot outside?), seeing all my family and friends, seeing McKayla’s baby Blair, watching Christine get MARRIED, and seeing my little niece, who isn’t very little anymore.

Ok, so until December rolls around, I’ll update you on life in Camasca. We haven’t had school in Honduras for three weeks. Why, you may ask? Teacher strikes. Oh yes, our teachers have been on strike for almost a month. They actually have some legitimate complaints—all their retirement  money for the last decade has been stolen, supposedly. Corruption is an everyday occurrence here, but that is still pretty outrageous. The teachers have some other points too, which keep changing, but the economy has been hard-hit, as the teachers have all been in Teguc in the streets, not allowing cars to pass by on the highways, which prevents business transactions that pass through the capital. They have been sleeping in the university, so university students haven’t had class either. I feel for the teachers, it’s a tough situation, but the fact is that there is no money to give them back, and that the current president just came into office and isn’t responsible for what is going on.

This has created immense difficulty for me, as my main project right now is the Yo Merezco abstinence program in the community schools of my municipality. In three of the five communities, the girls are coming (in one of those schools the teacher is actually giving class), but in the other two, the girls don’t come if there isn’t class. Its hard because the colegio students doing the project can’t just wait until the issue is resolved, since they have limited time to work on their practicum. And so we may have to switch communities depending on what happens this week, which is sad for these 2 communities that will miss out. The problems in Honduras seem to compound on each other. The corruption leads to teachers not working which leads to the inability to carry out potentially beneficial projects that could change these girls’ lives. The students are all asking me what to do, since I’m the coordinator of the project, but often I am just as clueless as they are. How can we make decisions when day to day things are changing? The director of the schools in our municipality was asking ME which schools were having classes. That’s how confused everyone is. No one can give you a straight answer about if there will be class the next day. They may say one thing on the news, but then even within a municipality some teachers will give classes while others won’t.

So I’ve been going with the students to their schools to visit and supervise. I’ve visited two schools thus far. One school I visited twice last week because there were some parents that didn’t allow their daughter to participate, so we went to their house to try and convince them to allow her to come. I’ve obviously heard about the taboos of talking about sex and pregnancy here, but it was really interesting to see it first-hand play out in a Honduran family. The mother said that the father didn’t think it was fit for the daughter to know about “these things” and that she was innocent and it would be better to know later. That would be understandable if girls weren’t getting pregnant at 11 years old here, but they are, and a lot of times it is the “innocent” ones, because they have no idea of the consequences nor really understand their bodies and the changes they are going through. We determined after returning to talk to the dad a few days later that he had been to a talk about sexually transmitted diseases that was really insensitive and children were present, and he felt it was really inappropriate, thus not wanting his daughter to be subject to the same type of talk. It’s a shame when these bad experiences affect future opportunities to learn and share information. But after talking to both parents on separate occasions, we convinced them to send their daughter. The whole time we talked to them, I thought about how respectful they were to us. I just imagine doing this type of family talk in the USA and how defensive a family would probably get. At the end of our conversation, they were saying how thankful they were that we had taken an interest in their daughter and made an effort to talk to and convince them.

I’m not the cook I thought I was becoming. The preacher’s wife asked me over the other day to show her how to make banana bread. I knew it would be easy because I’ve made banana bread many times here. Well I didn’t account for the oven that was only in Celsius (so we had the heat way too high), and the trays within the oven that had the bread very close to the bottom and top of the oven. Long story short is that the bread burned and was still a bit raw in the middle. How embarrassing, especially since she had asked me to show her how to make bread, and this happened. Tried to make wheat bread the following day at my house and it didn’t rise at all. I think I had the water for the yeast too hot and it killed the yeast. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if I was in my own kitchen and it was just me realizing these blunders. But no, I don’t have an oven within my house so I am always at other people’s houses when these experiments go badly. Was going to try the banana bread again today but the power was out most of the day, oh well.

Two weekends ago I was in Comayagua for Peace Corps Prom and Olympics! Friday night I spent the night at my friends Victor and Karla’s place, although I was super tired and I think I fell asleep at the restaurant they took me to. (I was also so tired that I apparently climbed in the bed with Karla’s sister that was sharing the room with me. In the middle of the night I woke up because the baby in the bed threw up on me, and I was really annoyed, and then started to realize that I was in the wrong bed…I promise, it was not alcohol-related at all, just being super exhausted. What made it even more funny/strange was that the family didn’t think that was weird at all, and her sister said she had just moved over in the bed when I got in because she thought I really wanted to sleep in that particular bed). Saturday morning I was so exhausted and in kind of a bad mood when the hotel I was staying at in Comayagua wasn’t ready to check in. Oh, that was also after they denied having a room for our group of people for at least 10 minutes until, oh wait, there’s the name, just like I had spelled it out for them. Anyways, I basically got all my stuff together in the lobby and went to the soccer field where we were to have Peace Corps Olympics. It was so muddy, so everyone playing soccer was covered, but it was fun to see H15ers and also meet people from other training groups. We did water balloon tosses, and Alicia and I were one of the last pairs, and made it until one hit me right in the face, haha. We also did three-legged races and we made it to the finals! It was a lot of fun. Afterwards we all ate at Pizza Hut and I splurged (5 dollars) on the salad bar, which was amazing. We then went back to the hotel, which is probably the nicest in Comayagua, and the coordinator of the event had gotten a special rate for us, so we only paid like 10 dollars each. Too bad the hot water wasn’t working. But the beds were super comfy and we had lots of space and it was just nice to be somewhere that felt clean. Well worth 10 dollars. That night we got all dressed up, took lots of pictures, and hung out at the nice bar that is attached to the hotel. We danced some, but mainly it was nice to just talk to other volunteers that I rarely see. Didn’t go to bed too late, and then left the next morning for Camasca.

Last weekend we had a goodbye party for Lauren, who was a volunteer in La Esperanza. We just had a few folks from our department there to see her off, and of course we went to El Fogon. I mean, Lauren knows everyone that works there and is quite the regular, so it only made sense. I had a good time dancing and just relaxing, a break from Camasca. Like most goodbyes I’ve done recently (I’m getting used to it now), I say goodbye and it doesn’t really hit me until later that the person is gone and I won’t see them for a long time. Unfortunately, I only really got to know Lauren a few months ago, but I always enjoyed going out with her and just talking about life in general. I don’t know what will become of us Intibuca folks now, since we used to crash at her place. I have a Honduran friend I can stay with, but I often like to go out when I’m in town, and she rarely does that anymore. I could always stay at a hotel, but as Sarah says, we could just ride the bus a bit further and stay with friends in a bigger, actual city. I guess we’ll figure something out. But no doubt that is the end of an era in La Esperanza L

What else? I got really emotional tonight watching the news. I just heard about the massacre of the 70 or so folks in Mexico, trying to cross the border. I haven’t heard the details of who did it, although I got the impression that it was people trying to take advantage of them and get money? Regardless, it just really affected me for some reason. There were at least 14 Hondurans in the group, and it made me think of so many families I know in my town who have relatives illegally in the states, and if it had been one of them killed. I mean, these people are doing it because there is no work in a lot of places, and they just want a chance at a better future for their families. In really poor areas, the families that are making it by almost ALL have family in the USA. You can easily see who has family in the US and who doesn’t, and not because they have a flashy car, but in some of the aldeas, just the people who have an adequate amount of food. So to see that they were murdered so brutally just hurt me so much. I don’t know what can be done to prevent this type of thing from happening again, but something HAS to be done. Those are real people, with families.

Thursday, August 24, 2010

As I write this, I am enjoying a cold horchata and am waiting for a chicken burrito at the local cafeteria. I think I’ve had this meal several times in the last week or so and it still is delicious. Its such a great deal—a dollar fifty for a delicious tortilla filled with chicken and veggies, with salsa and cheese on top, and the drink. I’m trying to motivate myself to update this blog but I realized I’ve been kind of a dull blogger lately. One reason is that Ive been gone and busy, but I think that I have started not to notice things like before. I’ve gotten used to the randomness, to the things that don’t make sense, and so maybe I notice them for a second but then soon forget when something equally strange and unexpected occurs. Trying to work on that.

So I never really talked about the feria. I think ferias get way too much hype for what they actually are, but they are a fun way to spend lots of time with people from your town, see people that are studying or have since moved away, and eat lots of typical food (but really, Hondurans in my town eat that kind of food all the time anyways). The first few days of the feria I was really busy with the Yo Merezco training. The colegio kept changing details on me, but at the end, we had 12 high school participants, 1 teacher, and 2 UNICEF employees attend. The first day and a half, I (with a little help from another teacher) presented 4 different chapters from the book, acting as if the students were the 6^th grade girls who would eventually receive the talks. This is to teach the material, but more to teach the methodology, which is new. My sitemate and Sarah were a lot of help in the logistics, and Sarah also helped with one of the lessons. The second part of the second day, Tuesday, the students worked to prepare the practice charla they would give on Wednesday. I had worked with the director of the local elementary school, and half the group would give talks at that school with the 5^th and 6^th graders. This seemed to be an easy thing, but it turned out there was no class that day (even though I had asked the week before and it appeared there WOULD be class), so the director last minute called and said they couldn’t, and then called back and said they could, because he had talked to the teacher and she was going to have the students come even though there was no class. Complicated much? And then in the colegio the students did it with 7^th grade girls, which was kind of difficult because it was in a classroom in the middle of the school and all the boys walking by just stopped and tried to join in (most classrooms here have windows that are permanently open, since there is no a/c). The plan was that Zach and I would start out monitoring the elementary school groups, and then halfway through, Sarah, who was monitoring the colegio groups, would switch with me. Zach would stay at the elem school and the teacher helping me would stay at the colegio. She supposedly had some meeting so she just left and the group at the colegio was left alone for a while. But overall, we had good feedback for the teens that I feel will be good for them. Wednesday in the afternoon we talked about what went well and what they could improve, and then the next week they came and I gave them more info on the project they would be doing in the communities.

Later in the week of the feria, there were soccer games between schools and communities (kids and adults), lots of typical food, cultural nights (super painful with strange skits and weird costumes and lipsincing), and dances. Friday and Saturday night they had dances in the salon municipal. Saturday night was a lot bigger. I thought Zach was going to come with me but he changed his mind, so I found some friends from site to go with, but it was too much tecno and smoke for me. Saturday and Sunday there was a rodeo in town which was a lot of fun. They had a ranchera/nortena group from El Salvador playing music and there was bull riding, horses dancing, and singing. I went both days because I liked it so much. It was 100 lemps each day but worth it to me! We don’t have this kind of entertainment in Camasca very often. Sunday night I got to hang out a bit with the radio announcers that had come from El Sal, they were really fun and crazy and I wish I had gotten to know them earlier. I think they come every feria, but also told me I should call them when I go to San Salvador so we could hang out. Could be fun, not sure if that will ever happen.

Ok my food is here, will write more later.