Jungle Schooling

Coming back around: counter-clockwise

2011-08-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

The hurricane a few days ago...when DC was busy having an earthquake.
Sure feels a lot like Central America 'round here these days!

As Hurricane Irene's counter-clockwise storm clouds continue to keep me homebound, I’ve taken to cleaning out my piles of paperwork, along with taking occasional breaks to watch the storm roll through. I came across a couple of papers I had forgotten about, ideas about education and development that I scribbled onto randomly found scraps of paper—including a shop receipt! Despite the mean writing materials and the disjointed nature of these musings, I found they put themselves together fairly well. And, the ideas are useful to return to, bits of wisdom I was picking up from my experiences at the time.

THOUGHTS ON PROGRAMS

Empowerment has to be a central goal of all development and educational programs.

It is vital to look at the human element, not just at the overall entity. The development industry is made up of individuals, after all. I like to think of this as the gestalt problem.

Programs need to look to the creativity, resources, and needs of the community. What do they say they need? What do they want? What are the community’s goals?

Private charity schools may not be a good idea as a wide-spread structural solution, and they definitely shouldn’t be the only answer. This would prevent the government from being held accountable for providing their population with their basic rights to educational and opportunity.

THOUGHTS ON DEVELOPMENT IN GENERAL

Western development is not the only answer available to us.

Consumerism might just be the enemy of us all. We need to fill our own voids.

Making donations is not enough. We need to change the way we live. There is a beautiful adage, although I don’t know the original source, which says “Live simply, that others may simply live.”

No one is special. No one is worth more than another. No one deserves their good fortune anymore than they deserve their ill fortune. If gain is at the expense of any, it is really a loss.
We are not all born with the same capacities, not any of us. We must do what we can and forgive ourselves and each other for what we cannot do.

Competition is no more natural than is community, compromise, and compassion.

We must not assume that “progress” is something inevitable. We can redefine “progress” as successfully minimizing unnecessary suffering and increasing healthy forms of happiness. And, we need to work actively to ensure that this comes to pass.

Experiencing how the political is personal

2011-07-09T16:18:00.000-07:00

"The personal is political." It's a beautiful adage from the feminist revolution. And it goes the other way. The political is personal.

Here in the U.S. we often think it odd the way world events can suddenly collide with daily existence. But every time it happens to me, I realize again to what extent the seemingly impersonal political and economic and social issues of this world are actually personally experienced realities. The Honduran teacher strikes are students missing out on their right to public schooling. The economic recession is a child going to live with grandparents when his parents’ house goes into foreclosure. And the strife in any number of countries leads to a family leaving their home and trying to grow and succeed in a place where they don’t know the culture and don’t speak the language.

That’s why I got into international education. My work abroad has allowed me to help students prepare themselves to face their lives with the resiliencies and skills they need, as well as providing them with the chance to comfortably and securely gain cross-cultural understandings and skills. My work here in the U.S. allows me to do the same, with the extra facet of being a bridge for my students to understand and access the culture that surrounds them, hopefully without losing any understanding, access, or membership in the culture of their home.

Today the world celebrates the democratic emergence of a new nation, South Sudan. I reflected on this coming event yesterday while I sat with a young Sudanese girl, L. (Because I respect the privacy of my students and issues of confidentiality, I will from now on refer to students anonymously.) She is attending the summer program at the family literacy school where I teach, although she is not in my class. That day we were on a field trip to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall. We had walked through the Peace Corps themed activity area, where the kids had received “passports” which were stamped when they took part in each activity. We built a wall with bottles like they are now building in Guatemala. We helped paint a world map (that included South Sudan as clearly separate from Sudan!), and we made Malian mud cloth bracelets.

As we recovered from the heat and enjoyed a brief cool breeze under one of the dining tents, L struck up a conversation with me about her “passport.” We talked about all the activities in which she had taken part and I helped her pick out words she didn’t know in the booklet. We came across the blanks in the front cover that called for her name and nationality. I explained that nationality is where you are from.

L: Where are you from?
K: I’m from Texas.
L: I have a cousin in Texas!
K: You do? That’s great!
L: But I don’t know where Texas is.

So we looked at the world map in her passport booklet, marking DC and Texas.

L: I’m from Sudan. Well. (Pause.) Hang on.

She turned to her mother and spoke with her in their home language. There was some back and forth. Her mother, pregnant and tired, was also interacting with her 2 year old brother and 4 year old sister. L was obviously repeating herself to make sure her mother really understood her question. Finally satisfied, she turned back to me.

L: Yes. I was born in Sudan. (Her emphasis. I had not asked. It can be a complicated question for any child, especially an immigrant child.)
K. Okay. Let’s look at where Sudan is on the map.

So we marked the general location of Sudan with an X (it wasn’t a big map, thankfully). L wanted to label it the way we had labeled DC, but she didn’t know how to spell it. I spelled it out loud, and at her request I wrote it down so that she could copy it. After spelling it successfully several times in random places on random pages, she finally turned to the front cover and wrote “SUDAN” on the previously empty line for a nationality.

L’s personal experience was a mixture of culture, identity, literacy, and all the underlying structures and skills that support these facets of development. And there I was, to some extent experiencing it with her. The day before millions of her former countrymen got the chance to have a very similar experience.

Education as a right...and responsibility

2011-01-24T20:18:00.000-08:00

Education is a basic human right.

Seems so simple and true, right? But, the first time I really heard this idea actually put into words—I am sad to admit—was within the last two years. The moment I heard it, I thought, “Duh, of course it is!” However, as I began to really delve into this beautiful concept, I found myself in a morass of questions, questions that helped me understand why the idea of education as a human right is so difficult to actually implement.
How much education? Do we all have the right to get whatever level of education we want? Whether or not it is within the resources available? Whether or not we will be employable after receiving that education?

To what kind of education do we have a right? What kind of education best serves the interests of society? A liberal arts education that teaches us to perceive beauty and speak languages and analyze issues? A professional or vocational education that provides us with excellent job skills? An education at a community school near home? An education at a prestigious private institution?

Who is to provide this education to which we each have a basic human right? The state? The community? The family?

What about those who don't want to get an adequate education? Do they have a right to give up a right? At what age? How do we motivate ourselves to complete our education? So, it's not just a right, actually, it's also a responsibility, isn't it?

Obvioulsy, it’s difficult to come to a consensus on exactly how to make education available so that every person’s right to it is honored. But, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy of the effort. So, laying aside the concerns about how, it is important to establish why it is vital to honor this human right, despite the reasons it is so difficult and complicated to provide. This brought me to the following thoughts:

People need education to function in our complex society. People have a right to be able to access skills and information that will improve their lives and give them agency. This includes:
- literacy: the ability to read for in depth comprehension and to clearly communicate yourself verbally and in written form
- numeracy: the ability to solve problems involving amounts and numbers and measurements as well as spatial ability
- health education and basic sciences – to understand the world and the way it affects us as well as to be able to anticipate and resolve problems occurring between people and the physical/natural world

People also have the right to learn the social and psychological skills to navigate and resolve social conflicts and to function positively in the wider society, such as:
- civic education (social values, citizenship, peace, identity, governance, history)
- rights education (gender, human rights)

Finally, people have the right to learn skills that are necessary to secure fruitful and sustaining employment. This can come in many forms:
- professional education
- vocational education
- nonformal (think workshops, GED classes, apprenticeships) and informal (everyday learning)

So, I’ve worked through the why—at least my own personal version of it—but I doubt there are any blanket answers to the questions of how. The point is that the why is important and demands our attention, so it is unacceptable to give up trying to figure out the how(s).

From estadounidense to US-American

2010-11-16T18:03:00.000-08:00

I have struggled with my geographical self-definition for many years now. Ever since I learned the word “estadounidense” in Spanish.

Unitedstatesian.

Finally, I had evidence that there could be a word to replace “American” as a descriptor for a person from the United States. After all, it seems usurping to describe ourselves as Americans, when we are hardly the only nation in THE AMERICAS. Nor are we the largest. Sadly, being the richest seems to make us entitled to taking what we want, at least it has in the past, and so we came to describe ourselves as “Americans,” forcing all the other americans to define themselves differently.

But “unitedstatesian” hardly rolls off the tongue.

I’ve tried a lot of different phrases.

North American. But we aren’t the only North Americans. It could make sense to the extent that Canada and the U.S. are very similar, but there are also vital differences between us. Canadians (and Mexicans, especially) might resent my describing myself and my values and culture as North American.

[Brief geography lesson: Here in the US we teach that there are 7 continents, and Central America is technically part of North America. In Honduras, they teach that there are 6 continents, with the Americas being one continent split into three regions: north, central, and south.]

I didn’t give up. I tried “US Citizen”…but there are many who aren’t citizens who do identify as residents of the U.S.

US Resident…but there are many who reside here without feeling cultural ties here.

And, finally I hit on it. US-AMERICAN. So simple. So clear. Borrowing from the way we structure our self definitions within the US (African American, Irish American, Native American, Latin American, etc.)

I am US-American.

In English.

But in Spanish I am still estadounidense.

Back from Cuba again!

2010-10-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from spending ten days in Cuba doing research with educational specialists there. The island continues to struggle under an economic blockade by our government here in US, one of the results being an extremely limited amount of internet access. I'll slowly add my reflections on Cuba to this site, as I have time to do so. Reflecting on my research experiences in Cuba is never a simple matter. The personal and the academic and the educational become blended in a way that makes articulation difficult, but here are a few thoughts I sketched out as my plane was getting ready to depart Havana this morning...

In his work, the Cuban artist Fuster often uses a crocodile to symbolize Cuba. For my own reasons, I find it an apt visualization. To truly know a crocodile is not only to read about it or to see photos or videos, nor is it only to talk to those who have met one and understand why they love it or hate it. To know the crocodile is not only to touch it when it is gentle, sleepy, or playful or when its thick skin seems smooth and pliable. To truly know the crocodile one must also know it when it is angry or ill, when its skin is parched dry and rough and crackles in the sun, when it bares its teeth even to its babies and closest friends. To really know the crocodile one must form a relationship to it and reflect upon that relationship continuously while passing time with the crocodile.

So it is with Cuba.

My time in Cuba, two and a half weeks over the last two years, has significantly altered my perceptions and ways of being, as a researcher, as an educator, and as a person. Cuba is for me both intellectually and personally reinvigorating. Each time I leave Cuba, I do so with both greater hope and greater realism about what it takes to make this world a better place. I find links between who I am as a person and my work and my research and my role in the world. I more enthusiastically embrace my responsibility to form and demonstrate a link between theory and practice so that each informs the other, to break down barriers to knowledge and inequality, to participate fully in life on all levels. My greatest lesson has been to begin asking more questions, listening more patiently, and embracing and building more integrated approaches to being a life-long learner.

I’ve taken a load off!

2010-09-04T20:11:00.000-07:00

Well, I’ve been back in the States for just over a week. So while I jump back into grad school classes and catch up with friends and slam away on my final reports for Save the Children and look for a job (and that’s just my schedule in the first week!), I’ve started to notice ways in which I don’t quite fit into my DC life like I used to. Not least because I seem to have shed about ten pounds since I left!

I know what most people want to ask first, and the answer is no. I ate plenty in Bolivia. The food was great, and cheap, so I was always willing to treat myself to something sweet or a little snack when I felt puckish.

So what was different? For starters, the choices! At my home (which I miss terribly!) we ate traditional meals centered around meat and potatoes, just like most Bolivians, and most US residents for that matter. But in Bolivia everything was fresh. Almost everything was brought in from the nearby countryside, or at the farthest from the valleys a few hours away. Things were not soaked in preservatives and additives. They were just straight up, plain old ingredients that were also often organically grown because pesticides are unnecessary and fertilizers expensive. Since I got back I’ve been unable to stomach heavily preserved and additive filled foods. I crave fresh fruit (especially the mandarins! How I miss the mandarins!)

What a travesty that in our country eating fresh, organic food has become a privilege of the economically elite! I can’t afford to buy only fresh vegetables here and must settle for using canned tomatoes and frozen peas and canned corn. What a topsy turvy world North America is, when compared to the realities of other continents!

The other reason I think I’ve lost so much weight is that Bolivians follow a different meal schedule. I would eat something small for breakfast, maybe bread and a mug of tea at 7:30 or 8:00am. A little after noon would come the big meal of the day, a three course lunch. First the soup, which would fill me up quite a bit, then a “second” that consisted of a large portion of meat with a large portion of potatoes and/or rice plus a sizeable (in my house, at least, due to my landlady’s health consciousness) portion of vegetables. For desert we would almost always eat mandarins or oranges. After work I would sometimes grab something to eat, but just as often it would be something small like breakfast was. There was usually no formal evening meal. My landlady swore that this was good for body, because digestion slows down at night, especially in the cold of winter and with the high altitude.
All in all, I think they may be on to something. (After all, the Aymaras were forcasting the El Nino effect for millennia and “Western” science only started being able to do that about 20 years ago!) It’s been great to get home to my new-again old clothes that I couldn’t wear when I left. There's all kinds of stuff that I forgot I owned while I was wearing the same few things for three months.

It’s for sure. Sometimes travel isn’t an entirely “expansive” experience. And, I don’t plan on fully returning to my previous DC life. Some changes, like my renewed love to healthy foods and exercise, will just have to stay!

On the Road in Bolivia

2010-08-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

It’s always a good idea to take one’s life in one’s hands now and again, just to keep a sense of the value of life and health, right? Once in a while can be a daily occurrence here, I’ve found. And at times I can feel that my perspective of what is safe and what is really out of the question could become about as fuzzy as three day old leftovers in the fridge.
Cars

I’ve travelled in all manner of ways here (save bicycle and horse), but by far the most common mode of transport is car. This might be in a taxi or a mini-bus (full size buses are only for inter-city transport) or in a colectivo (a larger car or mini-van that travels between the urban and rural areas, and only leaves once full of passengers.)
It is always important to remember that laws (and the accompanying concepts of justice) will change from culture to culture. This includes the concept of “right of way.” Here in Bolivia it seems that it is not the pedestrian who has the right of way, and cars will regularly honk to hurry passengers across the street. I’ve more than once come near to denting the hood of a taxi or mini with my fist when they’ve decided to get too close. (That’s my fight response kicking in when flight would be impossible.)
Cars aren’t always honking to warn off pedestrians. It is also the accepted thing to do in order to cross almost all intersections. You see, traffic lights and stop signs are not terribly common, and rather than slow to a stop to ensure no other cars are coming, it really saves time to just honk and hope any other cars hear you. At least most streets are one way, so that simplifies the number of directions in which you have to focus your attentions.
At night there is less honking, and it is more common that cars will flash their headlights as they approach an intersection. In a fairly well lit town, this makes me cringe, as that flash of light is often very difficult to see. But then again so are many of the cars, because actually using your headlights is not an altogether common occurrence here, either. When I’ve asked about this strange habit (or rather lack of a habit), people have pointed out that the city is quite well lit, so you don’t really need to lose your headlights to see. When I bring up the idea that headlights are also useful as a way to be seen (rather than only to see) this seems to be a new idea for many. I’ve often dodged cars and motorcycles that I didn’t see coming down the street at night.
Headlights are not the only lights I find myself worrying about when it comes to riding in cars here in Bolivia. There are also the dashboard lights to be concerned about, or rather, to try my hardest to ignore, because they are almost always lit. My worst moment to date was when I found myself perched on the middle front seat of a minivan colectivo travelling from Oruro into the rural area of Caracollo. (“Wait,” you say, “since when to minivans have a middle front seat?” Well, a box and blanket squeezed in between the bucket seats is enough to make another fare earning seat, don’t you know!) So there I was, sans seat belt on a blanketed crate, cruising down the highway at highway speeds and trying not to look at the dashboard where the gas warning light, check engine light, the airbag light, and the anti-lock brake system light were all lit. (I comforted myself with the idea that it was nothing more an electrical short in the dash, and when I finally dismounted a half-hour later in Oruro I silently celebrated the fact that I hadn’t had to find out if my comforting imaginings were true or not.)

Anti-lock brakes? Well that was a newer Toyota minivan, but in reality most cars here are hardly so new. In fact, bolivian cars seem to have more lives than cats. One night I was riding in a taxi and trying to understand why there was a gaping hole in the dash where there should have been a glove box on the passenger side. Only slowly did it dawn on me that the gaping hole was the original location of steering column, which had been switched from the right hand side (British style) to the right hand side (as is used in most of the Americas.) So in essence, the driver was driving through the glove compartment.

Buses

The only ways to travel between cities here (unless one is lucky enough to own or know someone who owns a car) is to travel by bus or train. By far the most common and most thorough network is that of buses. This is how one travels between La Paz and Oruro and Cochabamba. The price is excellent, only three bucks! But for those three dollars, you are to some extent taking your life in your hands. Bus accidents are common, and there have been so many lately that even the Bolivians are remarking on the fact. I actually met a German man whose bus between La Paz and Oruro had been in a head-on collision two days prior. And one of the members of the parent association at a school Save the Children works with was injured in a bus accident in La Paz. Bus drivers will regularly pass slower trucks, and highways are often two lane affairs with nothing that resembles a shoulder, unless one counts either the valley below or the sharp face of the mountain on the other side. So, I always feel a little lucky to have arrived safely, even if the bus ride itself was intolerably nausea inducing.
Trains

I refer to travelling by train as the $15 luxury here in Bolivia. Safer by far and much more comfortable. The tracks extend south from Oruro only and are hardly what most people would call luxurious or smooth, but to me they make a lovely change from the rough roads and alarming driving habits. And the huge windows let you look out at the changing (or rather not changing all the much) landscape of the Altiplano (where I’ve decided that the sparse clumps of grass look like tribbles from the original Star Trek.)
All in all, travelling around Bolivia is easy and affordable, but rarely comfortable or altogether perfectly safe by North American standards. That said, it’s better to travel than to stay in one place. I can’t imagine staying in one place or not experiencing all that the world has to offer.

Blogging on Books 2 – More fiction for the traveler

2010-08-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

My time in Bolivia has been busy and full, but in the evenings I find myself drawn to reading novels as a way to relax and to inspire interesting dreams. I’ve done my best to remain true to my usual intention, which is to read novels that serve to fuel my contemplation of what it is I am doing in my living abroad and working to enhance the potential development of the next generation.
I was “blessed” with a fairly nasty sinus infection, which laid me up for about a week, in which time I was able to complete a more than fair amount of reading (as my feverish brain was incapable of addressing the research tasks I had.) I must commend the existence of the internet and the free program “Kindle for PC,” which has allowed me to continue to access English language literature when I’d read everything I own in print here. I must also commend a lovely little bookshop I discovered in Cochabamba, not far off the Prado, called “the Spitting Llama.” Their wide selection of used books was a godsend.
THE ALCHEMIST by Paolo Coehlo

This is the beautiful story of a young Spanish shepherd who sets out to follow his heart and a magical dream of treasure. Along the way he meets with adventure and the true education that one gains through life experience (if one is open to learning from it.) Although at first I felt alienated by the fairy-tale style of Coehlo’s writing, I found myself sucked into the beauty of the story and truly moved by a number of the quotes, which I think will stay with me for the rest of my life.

“The secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”
“People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.”
“You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say.”

Coehlo’s Spanish shepherd often pops into my head when I am out in the rural areas. Part of his travels take him through the Sahara desert in North Africa, from which he is able to learn a great deal simply by remaining quiet and observing. I find that this is an important part of field work, and an important part of travelling, to remember to shut up and just watch and listen, to learn from all the information that is out there, the great majority of which is written in the non-verbal communication between people and the way the people interact with their envirotnment.

ACTS OF FAITH by Philip Caputo

This long volume went surprisingly fast, and as I read it quickly became obvious why it won the Pulitzer Prize. It is the story of aid workers in Sudan and Kenya, many of them operating under self-induced delusions of what their work really is. It follows both men and women as central characters, which makes it an inviting read for anyone.

This novel is especially apt reading for a “Westerner” just beginning a career in the development industry. You cannot come away from the book without knowing that it is important to question yourself constantly if you are to keep yourself honest and that you mustn’t automatically put too much faith in the goodness of your intentions and actions; we can all have unintended consequences for others and for ourselves.

Another reminder I took away from reading this novel was that one mustn’t leave home in order to run away from what one is. To do truly good work and to be a truly whole person, you want to do your best to leave a home and a past that is sound (or with which you have made your peace) so that you can share that strength with the world.

LOVE AND DEATH IN A HOT COUNTRY by Shiva Naipaul

This novel was a surprise find in “The Spitting Llama” bookstore in Cochabamba. And inside its pages (and its story of a mixed-race woman trying to find her identity as a native of a South American nation closely based on Suriname) was an absolute treasure: a beautiful and haunting description of what might be the internal limits so often perceived by outsiders as an “intransigence to progress” in post-colonial developing countries. I recommend it for anyone travelling in the developing world, particularly the Caribbean. Several quotes moved me greatly.
“Cheated out of a self, the mob would not be cheated out of its anguish.” This quote made me wonder about the application of the grief process to national development in post-colonial and post-conflict regions. I’m sure it has already been done, applying those five steps that begin with denial and anger and finally end with acceptance and the ability to move on. And, following this idea through, this means that development is ultimately a culture’s recreation of its sense of self and purpose, perhaps an identity that has been stolen or that has withered internally due to lack of care. It is a constant cycle of ebbs and flows that takes place in all cultures, but these currents cannot be instigated from outside the source; they must be internally propelled. Colonialism and conflict are both realities under which these internal currents become stymied, creating eddies and whirlpools but lacking direction and flow.
At one point the main character, a woman who has realized that she is unhappy after passively floating along with the currents flowing through her life, expresses “a retrospective disgust for her innocence, her acquiescence.” It reminded me of the unhealthy intra-cultural disgust I’ve seen in Honduras, with people disparaging their own compatriots to their faces. In their desperate efforts to realize their potential, they have ultimately chosen to turn their backs on themselves and to alienate themselves from their own community.
A quote by another character in this novel also started me thinking. The main character’s father explains his seeming acquiescence to the apartheid of the past: “I wasn’t going to run after anybody begging to be admitted to the human race.” It is crucial to remember that those who aren’t openly fighting aren’t necessarily being weak; maybe they are being strong in a different way. We must value and allow space for all kinds of internal strengths, rather than make them out to be weaknesses. If we do that, we are only robbing others and ourselves.
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The beautiful novel was an excellent read for a Latin American journey, and I would especially recommend it for anyone visiting the Caribbean. This story of two lovers who are separated for most of a life time is infused with a sense for the romantic atmosphere that permeates many parts of Latin American culture, as well explaining through story some of the strong influences of tradition and economic classism found throughout the region.
WHO KILLED PALOMINO MOLERO? by Mario Vargas Llosa

This is the simple, straight-forwardly written story about 1950s Peru and two police detectives’ search for justice in the murder of a poor young man. The story unfolds along with itself a sense of the divide that existed and continues to exist between indigenous and mestizo populations. The unexpected love triangle evokes a sense of the importance appearance has in many cultures here (I experienced it quite a bit in Honduras and to a lesser extent here in Bolivia) and the stress this fakeness causes when the sake of appearance runs against the honest desires of the heart. This same romantic plot theme also brought forth a sense of the cultural stress resulting from the gender divide, while the overall story helped remind me (as I often suffer from an overabundance of enthusiasm and fortitude) how impossible it can feel to fight the good fight amidst a culture of corruption and personal interests. I came away from this volume remembering that it is in empathizing with this sentiment that I am most likely to be able to help others overcome it.
MOTORCYCLE DIARIES by Ernesto Che Guevara

I know, regular readers will wonder if my visit to Cuba converted me (and in some ways it must have) but in truth my choice to read this book was far more based on location than anything else. Guevara travelled through South America in the early 1950s, first by motorcycle and then by hitchhiking, as well as on a raft he and his travelling companion built to travel on the Amazon. What I find most interesting is his description of life in places I have visited previously, especially Chile and Peru, and how accurate some of his descriptions continue to be. I look forward to reading his Bolivian diaries, written years later when he was trying to foment a Communist revolution here. Different perspectives, whether or not you might agree with them, will always help to open your own eyes to aspects of life you may not have noticed before.
Safe travels to you all, whether in real life or via the written word!

**Don't forget to check out my post about "Christmas in July!"**

Consumer Concerns

2010-07-25T06:08:00.000-07:00

Inspired by a couple of recent articles on La Gringa’s Blogicito, I thought I would write about what is like here in Oruro to secure those goods one needs and or wants.

Food

Supermarkets are an unknown thing here in Oruro. There are a few in larger cities like Cochabamba and La Paz, but here in Oruro food is mostly purchased fresh in the markets or from small “tiendas” that are more or less Bolivian convenience stores (for North Americans) or newsstands (in British terms…except that you’d never expect to find reading material there.) We have two “mini-supermarkets” just off the central plaza where one can pick up a few imports or less common items like mozzarella cheese and canned beans (as a result I’ve been able to make BBQ Chicken Pizza and Baleadas for my host family and friends here.)

Here’s a good example of solving a problem by purchasing a product: I really wanted to clean my shower head when I first got here, because it was clogged with calcium deposits and rust (the water here is incredibly hard.) Of course, miracle cleaners like CLR aren’t something one can find here outside of industrial applications. After some internet research I came upon the idea of using white vinegar in a baggie tied around the shower head for 24 hours. Well, white vinegar proved impossible to find, so I finally settled on a bottle of the red vinegar that is sold as salad dressing here. Truly watertight plastic bags were also impossible to find, but I finally wrangled three bags into layers in which each bag’s leaks were least annoying and were backed up by the next bag’s areas of strength. So, 1 bottle of red vinegar, 3 baggies, 4 rubber bands, and 36 hours later, I had a well functioning shower head…and a more than slightly vinegar-scented bathroom.

Determination and creativity are ingredients that must never be underestimated.

Crafts

I recently got a crafty inspiration to make jewelry out of plastic bottles, to be sold when I get back to the US as a new line of products for my online business REMNANTS (currently on vacation mode while I am in Bolivia.) It’s taken me a while to collect together all of the necessary supplies, but after spending a Friday afternoon wandering downtown and a Saturday in the “feria” with Nelly, a member of the Save the Children team of educators with whom I am working, I’ve managed to collect all the necessary pieces: translucent paint, wire, round nose pliers, and ribbon. Of course, each and every item was purchased only after scouring for a shop that carried the item in the right size and quantity for my needs and then comparing between shops for the best price.

Although I’m busy and can find it frustrating to say the least, I happy that a single shopping trip allows me to help keep so many different people in business rather than a single large company with impersonal employees. I love getting to converse with all the different people I buy from. They always have suggestions for where I might be able to find something else I’m looking for but that they don’t carry. And, it’s only in Bolivia that you can walk past shops selling magic supplies like dried llama fetuses and other offerings for the earth goddess Pachamama!

Clothing

There are plenty of clothing and shoe shops here, but so far I’ve been able to fill my needs in the much cheaper “Mercado” or the twice weekly “Feria.” On Wednesdays and Saturdays the section of town just northwest of the plaza becomes a whole other world chock full of stalls along the sides of the street where clothing, electronics, beauty products, housewares, and just about anything else you might need is sold for much cheaper rates than in established stores. This is how I’ve gone about finding most of the more traditional Bolivian style cold weather clothing I’ve been wearing here (ponchos, sweaters, shawls, gloves, hats) as well as the universal cold weather gear (like long underwear and turtlenecks.)

Shoes proved a little more difficult…actually a lot more difficult. I brought my warm hiking boots and a pair of black flats that quickly proved far to open and chilly to wear in the office. However, despite the fact that all I wanted were black dress boots or flats (with more foot coverage than mine) like many women wear here, I went to just about every location that sells shoes in the city…the “feria,” the established shoe stores, the “Mercado”…and ultimately found only 1 pair that fit me! Not one pair that I liked, but one pair that was actually in my size! I do often feel like a giant here, it’s true, but that day was frustratingly so!

It does help that many shops of the same kind are grouped together. For example, in town there is a street where most of the sewing shops are, a street lined purely with lawyers, a block with all the shoe shops, etc. If you are a fan of the efficient shopping provided by the concepts of department stores and supermarkets, this system is, I suppose, the next best thing.
Staying warm and thinking development thoughts

The “feria” where I’ve picked up warm clothing is also where I picked up my beloved space heater (which I have since gifted to the office when another one became available in the house.) I’ve had to finally give in and admit that it is bothersomely cold (especially as nights here are now regularly below 0 degrees Farenheit.)

I really can’t understand how people could live here for so many thousands of years and not have developed systems for heating their buildings. The kids have been out of school for a month now because it’s simply too cold for them to learn. Although it’s been a colder than normal winter, this is hardly the first time the problem has occurred. Surely there are simple and affordable solutions. It’s a volcanic region and there are hot springs not far outside of town, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some geothermal sources under the town. By midday the sun has warmed things nicely on the outside, but buildings without much sun remain cold and even those with sun become cold again by sunset. There is quite the market here for development projects related to affordable and ecological heating methods.

It’s not exactly homesickness…

2010-07-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

There’s something so strange about being sick when you are far from your home culture. I’ve noticed it before, but especially here in Bolivia. I’ve had an acute sinus infection over the last week, and as I emerge the other side of it (knock on wood) I feel like I’ve been somewhere else all together. Is it the altitude? I feel like I’ve started all over again in terms of adjustment. Climbing a flight of stairs winds me and sends me into a fit of hacking coughs. Is it the sinus medication? I sleep half the day to constant dreams of wild nonsense that when I’m asleep have seemingly immense Lewis Carroll-like meaning. Awake, I feel like I’ve lost my Spanish…especially verbs. I constantly conjugate verbs incorrectly and am unable to correct myself. Maybe it is the same when at I am at home and speaking English and it is only the lack of familiarity here that emphasizes this facet of illness. The world in which I felt so comfortable just a week ago now feels unfamiliar all over again. I can’t follow conversations, cross-cultural communication that I could work through rationally gets me angry and frustrated and, when combined with sinus pressure and fever, I find myself pushed to tears. The simple tasks of life, like laundry and washing the dishes, usually invigorating times where I can think, are at best exhausting enterprising and at worst insurmountable obstacles. All taste for adventure and new experience has dried up, not to be replaced by a wish for the familiar but a hope for the easy and simple. And like all illnesses and setbacks, this too shall pass, and in the mean time I just keep chugging along, taking care of myself as best I can and taking it easy whenever I can until the energy kicks back in. Life goes on and there is work to do.

Late winter has begun to settle into Oruro. I’ve been warned that August is windy, but the winds seem to have arrived already. When I go to retrieve my clothes hung out to dry on the roof, I must unwind them from around the line and search for the buried clothespins. The air is so dry here that even my tepid wet clothes appear to steam when I hang them up in the bright morning sun. Yesterday was the first precipitation I have seen since I arrived, a lightly falling mixture of snow and icy rain that momentarily cleansed the air of its constant dust. It’s finally begun to feel truly cold, the unrelenting kind of cold that is hard to ward off even when wearing 3 layers of clothing. I’ve been told that I look like I’ve lost weight, but the extra layers of long underwear make my pants fit more or less as always.

Despite the cold, fruit continues to come in from the lower altitude valleys, and I’ve fallen in love with what they call “mandarinos,” a hybrid between a true mandarin and the more common orange. We set them out in the sun on the window sill at the beginning lunch so that they make a deliciously warm dessert. They peel easily and break into perfect segments and are so juicy that I often squirt myself in the face as I go about removing the seeds from a section before popping it into my mouth.

It is excellent to feel myself getting back onto my own two feet after a week of being out-of-it-kinds-of sick. I’ve moved to a room on the second floor of the house and the window provides me a lovely view of the street, from which I watched a small parade this morning. The participants were dancing the “Morenada,” one of the traditional dances for which Oruro is famous. Yes, I’m even beginning to tell the different traditional dances apart. Looking out the window now, however, I can’t tell if the sky is just a dusty dusk or if another storm is coming in tonight. The garbage men are coming soon. I hear their harbinger, a junior employee no doubt, banging his two pieces of metal together as he passes up the street. It’s time to bring in the wash and cuddle up to the space heater with my neglected research materials.

Siempre,
Kati

p.s. Don't forget to check out the "Christmas in July" piece!

Christmas in July

2010-07-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

My friends at Helping Honduras Kids are working hard to make life better for some of the poorest children in the department of Atlantida, along the Caribbean coast. I wish I could say that things were improving for them, but the upturn in the economy has not yet touched them and they continue to struggle with the many economically harsh realities that come along with working in the most needy places.

That's why I am starting my own small drive to try to help raise funds for Helping Honduras Kids. In honor of it being July (and the fact that I am currently south of the equator and high in the mountains where it feels like Christmas should be coming any day now,) I'm calling it "CHRISTMAS IN JULY!"

To give you an idea of the financial hurdles this organization faces, below are a few examples I have witnessed either personally or through other volunteers (everyone except Honduran staff are volunteers):

1. The orphanage program, El Hogar de Amor, was originally a jointly run program between Helping Honduras Kids (who took care of daily expenses, staffing, and upkeep for 25 resident chldren) and the Lisa Lopes Foundation (which provided the grounds and buildings.) It was shot up, while full of children, by a violent gang (likely exported from US prisons...but that's another blog entry all together), forcing the emergency evacuation of the children and staff to a new rented location.That cost $10,000 USD. There continue to be legal and financial costs associated with move, some of which are described below.

2. The local staff (including those who were somehow involved in attracting the violent gang to the orphanage) are required by law to receive severence packages. While I understand the need to protect innocent people from being summarily fired in a culture where that was (and likely still often is) the practice, the idiocy of it's application in this instance dumbfounds me. But that is the reality in many nations still trying to find the balance as they emerge from histories of colonization and racial prejudice.

3. A few of the children in the Jungle School have tested positive for exposure to tuberculosis. I emphasize that it is for EXPOSURE not the active disease. They cannot expose others to TB. In the developed world or in a city, they could receive 6 months of cheap daily antibiotics under supervision, but that is impossible in a poverty-stricken, mountain environment, and to only take some of the antibiotics could lead to a future case of TB that is much harder to treat. So, to ensure their continued health, each of these children need yearly chest x-rays to make sure they are not forming an active form of the disease. This is in addition to covering the regular medical needs of all children in the cloud-forest covered mountains, things like lice treatments, treatments for fungal and parastitic infections, vitamins, eye infections, fevers, dental hygiene, and incidental injuries.

4. Each day at the Jungle School, almost a hundred people recieve a plate of food for lunch. For many of them, this is their only guaranteed meal each day. I can often tell how long a child has been at the school based on whether or not they have blond streaks in their hair due to a lack of nutrition. Rice and beans (and maybe a single corn tortilla) are not enough to sustain a growing child and ensure their proper physical and neurological development. Without proper funds, rice and beans and a single corn tortilla are often all the food that is available.

If hearing about struggles gets you down, there are lots of great, uplifting stories that make donating to Helping Honduras Kids a worthwhile thing to do. Look at my blog entries from 2008 and 2009 or go to their website at http://www.thehogarreport.blogspot.com/ or at thehogarreport.blogspot.com.

So, please, find a space in your hearts [and your wallets] for Helping Honduras Kids. In the next five months, I hope to raise $1,000 USD. When I get back to the states at the end of August, I'll be selling jewelry through my online etsy shop at http://www.remnantcreations.etsy.com/ (and personally everywhere I go!) to augment the donations made through the ChipIn widget below. All proceeds will go to this drive, not just the profits (I am donating all materials and labor.)

If you know me personally and wanted to give me a gift this holiday season, do this instead. If you've just been looking for something better to do with your money than buy another thing online, do this instead. If you've been complaining that your job does nothing to make the world a better place, donate some of that money you earn from it here and prove yourself wrong. If you have no money to give (and trust me that I understand that well) then tell your facebook friends and your email list about this little cause.

A Merry Christmas [in July] to all, and to all [including the kids in Honduras] a good night!

Partying bolivia Style!

2010-07-06T19:16:00.000-07:00

I haven’t written in a while, not the least because I’ve been busy getting to know how to have fun here in Bolivia (and I’ve been working hard too, I swear!)
This past weekend I was in the city of Cochabamba for a teachers’ workshop on creating and interpreting evaluations. Now, the workshops weren’t terribly party-like but the after-hours festivities were a good break from the constant work. And it turns out that Cochabamba has a fairly good nightlife!
One evening I went out with the education team I’m working with. We found ourselves at a bar, enjoying the wide range of cocktails available here (just about anything can be imported for a price!) We ended up playing a dice game called “cacho,” which is best described as something between yahtzee and poker.

I picked it up by the second game and look forward to teaching it to folks when I get back to the states. A basic description is that each person keeps track of their score on something that looks like a tic-tac-toe board (see below) and each game lasts ten rounds. After you roll the dice using the leather cup (and everyone has their own unique style of doing so) you can choose to reroll some or all of the dice once to try to improve the outcome. After you are done rolling, you count the best score you can. If you can’t score in any of the spots, you have to choose to put an X in one of the boxes. Ones are referred to as “balas,” fours are referred to as “cuadras,” a straight is called an “escala,” and a full house (2 of a kind with 3 of a kind) is simply called a “full.” If you turn your cup over when you roll your dice and say “boteo,” that means you can turn one die over and use it’s opposite side if you want to. And of course, you can turn it into a gambling game!

My second night out in Cochabamba I was on my own, taking an extra night to stay in the city after the workshop was over in order to enjoy the warm valley climate for as long as I could. While partaking in a delicious Huari (by far the best of Bolivian beers) and a plate of spaghetti, I met a guy just a couple of years younger than me. He was selling handmade bracelets to pay for his room at an “alojamiento” (a very basic hotel) while figuring out his next move, having come from his native Ireland to travel through South America when he ran out of money in Cochabamba.
I could tell from his accent that his first language was English, so I figured he had to be suffering for lack of beer (especially if he was European or Australian.) We ended up hanging out until the wee hours of morning, both of us glad to have someone with whom we could speak English for a while. Turned out there was an Irish bar not far from where I was staying, so there we were in an Irish bar, drinking Bolivian beer, watching a Flamenco group, and chatting with a couple of Frenchmen who are working in Bolivia for a water sanitation program. This big ol’ world can really come together for a good time!
Previous to my adventures in Cochabamba, I found myself dancing the night away at the graduation party for one of the office interns here in Oruro. I was introduced not just to dancing in the Bolivian style (fairly simple steps thankfully!) but also to a Bolivian liquor called Singani, which tastes fairly lovely when mixed with 7Up.
An undergraduate graduation is a big deal here, as it takes a lot of years and a lot of financial sacrifice. Plus it holds the promise of a securely middle class, upwardly mobile future. Systems engineering, as the IT program is called here, is a really popular major, as it is something desperately needed for development and promises good employment. The graduate’s parents were so proud they cried, and the graduate cried too. I’ve never thought of a graduation party as a sentimental thing, but then again, getting an education was never an enormous challenge in my life, not like it is here. It reminded me that the work I do is important, helping to make sure that kids are prepared to take on the educational challenges that come up for them in their lives, despite the challenges they face.
And I thought I was just going out for the dancing and the alcohol!

The Dancing Bolivianos!

2010-06-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve been able to take part in two different cultural events so far, one a dance festival put on by groups of special education students and the other a costume contest where parents were competing for prizes for their children’s classroom by trying to make the best costume for the traditional dances using only recycled materials.

The special education festival was marvelous. Save the Children hosts it every year, and because the population of special education students is fairly small, they invite some of the high schools to send students to help support the event. They were excellent supporters, dancing in the stands and cheering for the groups dancing.

I was amazed not just by the beauty of the traditional dances but also by how very well they were performed by the different groups of students. I had never realized that I held an assumption that the many problems that accompany conditions like down syndrome would severely hamper the person’s ability to dance. I learned that day how wrong this assumption is. These kids were great!

The other wonderful thing was how space was made for all ability levels. It didn’t matter if soemone couldn’t walk or if a child was too young to follow complicated choreography. There was a role for everyone who wanted to take part and someone to accompany those who needed assistance.

It was beautiful to see these kids get a chance to show off their abilities and to take pride in their own culture while exploring cultures of other countries. There were dances from all over Latin America as well as from Africa and North America (particularly great North American dances included the can-can and “Thriller!”)

The costume contest was an awesome idea to both share Bolivian culture and spread the message about ecology and recycling, all in a celebratory and creative way. Among favorites were the Incas’ costumes made completely from aluminum cans (mostly beer), the colonial/republic era dress made entirely of newspapers, the Flintone’s characters decked out very accurately using only yogurt wrappers, and the dancing ears of corn.

I was ecstatic to combine my experience with crafting from recycled materials with my understanding of how to create a scale to judge the contestants as equally as possible. And I found myself inspired by many ideas of new recycled crafty ideas. Maybe I’ll even do a workshop with some of the kids while I’m here!

He’s got the feva’!

2010-06-20T12:43:00.001-07:00

Well, as luck would have it, the other estadounidense (American) in the house has come down with typhoid fever. For those who aren’t familiar with food-borne pathogens of the developing world, it’s something you can get when you eat food or drink water that’s been handled by someone who has or carries the disease and forgot to wash their hands when they last used the restroom. You get a fever and a nasty case of the runs, which can put you in danger of dehydration. Untreated by antibiotics, it can lead a whole host of nasty abdominal issues. And, it is endemic here in Bolivia.

There is a vaccine, in fact two, but nothing in this world is completely fool proof. I last took it two years ago, and I took the live bacteria form (a week of pills) which I’ve always heard has better and longer results than the dead bacteria injection (which my poor housemate is pretty sure he got before leaving the states.) I’m being very careful, but I also figure I’m the one in the house least likely to get it at this point, all factors summed up together.
I have henceforth exiled the poor chap from the kitchen until he has not had a bout of the liquid poo for twenty four hours. I worry what our older dueños (landlords) would go through if they got the bug, especially Dora who has had a brush with cancer and has diabetes. I’m scrubbing surfaces like a fiend and cooking for the sick boy. It’s amazing how a 17 year old male can still have an appreciable appetite even amongst such nastiness!
I’ve had some nasty run-ins (pun intended) with similar diseases (particulary e.coli and salmonella) so I really feel for the guy. It’s no fun to be sick, and to be away from home in a foreign culture where you don’t speak the language fluently makes it a hundred times harder! And he’s so young to boot!
I found myself offering him some cultural advice last night (day two of the worst of his symptoms.) After all, think of how many kids get this or something like it on a fairly regular basis because they lack basic sanitation facilities. As a result they can’t grow or develop as they should. It’s not the most comfortable way to become sympathetic to the realities of poverty, and it is a little bit like the “offer it up for the soul’s in purgatory” line I heard all the time in Catholic school, but at least it gives one’s suffering some meaning the large scheme of life and personal development.

El Oro que es Oruro (Oruro, Golden Town)

2010-06-17T09:12:00.000-07:00

Due to requests (and the fact that the weekend finally permitted me adequate time) I can now provide you with some visuals of the city in which I am living here in Bolivia.

Oruro is in the Altiplano, which is a narrow slip of flat land high in the Andes mountains. Here are some pictures from one of the highest points in town (a lighthouse built to commemorate the spot as where the current Bolivian flag was first flown.) This will likely become one of my favorite places as it is quiet and the air is clear of the constant vehicular exhaust caught in the streets below. Oruro is nestled against the eastern mountain range, but the western range isn’t far away as you can see here.

Because I’ve been asked to provide more images of my accommodations, here are a couple of pictures…

My two favorite places in town so far are the lighthouse, as I said before, and one of the central plazas where there are actually three fountains that run on Sundays. (It is the only place I have found respite from my constantly dry sinuses.) The beautiful thing about both of these spots are that there are flowers, which, given the cold and the dryness, are like treasures right now.

I have really enjoyed using my first weekend here to wander about town and learn more about the culture here. As always, there are some surprisingly beautiful views amidst the constant construction of a developing country.

I’m especially intrigued by religion here, especially the combination of Christianity with Andean religions. The patron of Oruro is “La Virgen de Socavon” (The Virgin of the Mineshaft) whose church is built over an abandoned mineshaft just west of the city center. Also worshipped within the mines, however, is “El Tio” (Uncle) who looks much like the Christian concept of the Devil and who is said to own all that is below the ground but will allow it to be taken safely by those miners who offer him libations and gifts (coca, burning cigarettes, and alcohol.)

Mining is what made Oruro rich in the colonial and republican eras, until the collapse of tin prices in 1985. Miners here have also had a lot to do with the liberation movements experienced in the Altiplano. There are dramatic monuments depicting their valor.

One of the things I’m loving most here is a cultural spirit much like that in Cuba, to enjoy and celebrate life despite hardships and to combine fun into as much of life as possible. This is the only context in which I can make sense of one structure I came across…a long concrete slide that is part of the grounds of the Church of the Virgin of Socavon.

People were having a lot of fun. I did not feel up to climbing all those stairs in order to try it for myself, but I will one of these days!

The plot thickens...

2010-06-10T14:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve been in Oruro four days now. I’m trying to wrap my head around my work and wrap my hands around the documentation I need to do it, which isn’t easy in a busy office with lots of events and meetings and when some of the documentation is only in print rather than being on the computer.
But the work I have been able to do has been energizing. I’ve been able to sit in on meetings and teacher workshops and am getting an excellent sense for the details behind the structure of the education program and how the index I am helping them work on fits into that scheme.
I came from La Paz to Oruro in a Save the Children truck that was delivering furniture to a rural project in this department. It was amazing to see the altiplano. It is incredibly flat and arid, but people are eking out a living everywhere, ranching and farming. It is the same as Peru in that there are no fences in the fields really, so as you drive down the highway you pass livestock grazing along the side of the road. We even passed wild vicunas, an endangered relative of llamas and alpacas, grazing in a field!
I am hoping that I have rounded an altitude corner after having been in Bolivia a week as of yesterday. The climate here is very dry and already pretty cold (although I am regularly warmed it will only get colder.) The regular joke is that Oruro only has two seasons, not-so-cold and winter. The mornings are the worst, especially when I am passed on the street by a vehicle belching exhaust; carbon monoxide + less oxygen than I am used to = immediate headache.
I am living with a Bolivian couple, Dona and Emilio. There is also an volunteer here from the US, whose name is Ben. Dona and Emilio have two dogs, a sweet little guy named Suki and an energetic 5 month old puppy named Peki (but who I call “trapo” because she reminds me of a mop.)
I live on the first floor where I have a room that faces the street and my own bathroom. It’s a bit rugged, but I have running hot water so it is already a lot better than some of the places I’ve stayed in Honduras! The shower caught me by surprise…it’s just hanging out on the wall of the bathroom! I haven’t taken a shower in there yet, but that’s only because I thought the hot water wasn’t working so I took a shower upstairs. Turns out the handles on the faucets (“pilas”) are all backwards in my bathroom. I keep meaning to ask what the switch on the mirror is for; I think it might actually be a heater!
I used the morning yesterday to go to the “feria” downtown to pick up a few things to make myself feel more at home in my room. The first of these was a space heater, which made sleeping last night much more comfortable! I also picked up a mirror so that I could sit at my table to get ready in the morning, a lamp to read by at night, and a power strip (2 outlets just aren’t enough for me.) All told, I spent less than $40, including my two new ponchos (one a beautiful Bolivian knit and the other an huge fleece body blanket with a scarf attached.) I forgot to pickup slippers, which are very necessary here, so I’ll have to pick those up when the “feria” happens again on Saturday.
Now, you might say, why not just call it a market? Well, the market is what sells food and is open 7 days a week (more or less…I have yet to see what Sunday really looks like in this rather sleepy little city.) The “feria” occurs only two days each week, Wednesday and Saturday, and it sells everything! I was sad I didn’t have my camera with me to take a picture of the sign outside a chicken stands that said “Hay cabezas” (There are heads.)
Everyone here is warm and welcoming, although also fairly shy (especially compared to me!) I’m not complaining, however. It’s been wonderful to walk the streets without “piropos” (cat calls) from every male I pass (which is what it’s like in Honduras.)
The food is excellent, simple and focused mostly on meat and potatoes (just like I like it!) I do eat at least one orange a day, though, after lunch as a desert. They come in from the Amazonian lowlands and the valleys in eastern Bolivia. Emilio puts them outside on the window ledge so they get nicely warmed up by the sun and they are delicious!
I’m off to sit in on the second night of a teacher workshop on “educacion descolonizador.” It’s an important theme in the newest education legislation here in Bolivia and I’m very curious to learn more about it. I had to bow out early last night due to exhaustion. It’s very strange to sit in room filled with people learning about un-colonizing education and realize that to many of them I am likely a representative of one of the biggest colonizers. Thankfully I’ve been to Cuba already, so I am mostly over that hump!
Some final observations that I have made over the past few days:
--No stoplights in town (except in the very center of downtown) so everyone slows down and beeps as they come to an intersection.
--No supermarkets! You buy food from small shops or fresh at the market! Yummy!
--I prefer Pepsi to Coca-Cola here…the Coca-Cola is actually too sweet for me!
--No one else here seems to think the idea of the children’s book “Llama llama in Red Pajamas” is funny. Oh well. I’m still a fan!
Hasta luego!

Kati

El Mercado Negro

2010-06-05T20:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, it wasn’t really the black market, but that is the nickname for one traditional outdoor market area where you can bargain and compare prices much more easily than in the formal stores found in middle class neighborhoods like Sopocachi (where I am staying). Nora, the housekeeper from the apartment where I am staying took me and another new Save the Children employee’s wife, Amanda, to the market today to buy groceries for the house and some things Amanda needed for herself, her husband Doug, and their (adorable!) 17 month old daughter Sally.

So for once, this is more of a photo essay, rather than the long-winded prose to which I am usually so prone.

We started by buying fish. White fish and trout from Lake Titicaca.

Nora and I switched between Spanish and English, as we both need practice. She helped me learn a lot of new vocabulary for local fruits and vegetables that I’ve never seen before.

The fishmongerista (that’s my spanglish, not the actual word) cleaned the fish very deftly right there in front of us. Which I found surprisingly fascinating, but maybe I’m just drawn to gore.

We also bought shrimp. These come in from the Peruvian coast.

Foods that were new to me included a sweet fruit called chilimoya…

…and eggs from a small bird called cocornes.

Men kept stopping us to ask if we needed someone to help carry our things. We didn’t need the help, but here is one more nicely dressed gentleman taking advantage of the service.

Everything was there in bulk. From produce like potatoes to snacks to meat to soap!

We took a minibus up to another part of the market where we could find the things Amanda needed. These included cell phones for herself and her husband, as well as a high chair and portable crib for her daughter. The minibus will likely become a favorite transport of mine if they have them in Oruro (and they go where I need to go.) Each one has a conductor who yells out the route and crazily cheap price (one boliviano…1/7 of a dollar).

The altitude is still catching me short of breath or with a racing heart rate now and again, but it really isn’t too bad just now. I’m surprised to find I have an appetite and was able to make an lengthy physical excursion today. And of course, I’m staying hydrated, sometimes with the cheap bags of water you can buy and drink by tearing off a corner…ah, it’s good to be back in Latin America.

Estoy en Bolivia!

2010-06-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

I have arrived safely in La Paz, Bolivia. I flew in on an overnight flight from Miami, arriving this morning and then more or less going straight to bed until mid-afternoon. I can definitely say I've flown into the highest airport in the world (the little sparklies around my eyes whenever I walked too quickly were definite confirmation of that one.) Now I've eaten a bit, had a cup of coca tea, and am headed back to bed.

Democracy in a Microcosm: Now I understand how it can go so wrong…

2010-06-03T12:45:00.000-07:00

The microcosm in this story was an intercity bus between Washington, DC and New York City. I’ll kindly let the company remain anonymous, but suffice it to say, I’ve travelled with them before and one of the things I enjoy most about them is their remarkable choice to ask the passengers to vote on whether to stop or drive straight through and which movie to watch (or to not watch a movie at all.) In this case we voted to watch It’s Complicated with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin. And critical to this particular story, the clear majority voted to drive straight through with no pit stops (unless the driver needed one.)

The story really begins when the bus driver made a pit stop in New Jersey. No one complained; we all understood, I think, that the driver can’t get up to use the restroom and simultaneously perform his professional duties. So, at two minutes past the hour we pulled in to the rest stop and the driver stated that we would be taking off at 10 minutes past the hour.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that 7 or 8 minutes is nearly nothing. I was starving, so I scrambled in to the restaurant section, made a hasty choice of a Burger King chicken sandwich, and rushed backed out. And then, as promised, at exactly 10 minutes after the hour, the driver started to pull away.

People began to speak up that not everyone was back, but the driver continued the slow process of pulling out. One guy even got off the bus to go get his girlfriend, after which the driver continued pulling away! The man in front of me started to speak up that the person next to him hadn’t returned either, but his English was limited. And, as he continued to pull away, the driver said that he was doing this because of our earlier vote! He was just doing what we said we wanted!

There were groans and the fits and starts of protests, but no coherent statements. I couldn’t believe that I was watching democracy be turned into a reason to be cruel to a small minority of our microcosm. Small, local community is where democracy is supposed to work best, right?

I finally loudly said, “Previous vote or no, I think the majority of us at this moment would prefer to risk getting into New York late rather than knowingly leave our fellow passengers behind.” The small, but committed, vocalizations of support (and the lack of any dissenting voices) was enough to get the driver to back up and wait for what turned out to be 4 people in all.

So, LESSON #1 here was: IN THE FACE OF APATHY, MISUNDERSTANDING AND/OR THE NEED FOR SOCIAL CHANGE, RESOLUTE AND CLEAR VOICES FROM WITHIN THE POWER STRUCTURE MUST SPEAK OUT ON BEHALF OF THAT CHANGE. This cannot always come from those being directly affected by the policy in debate, nor can it necessarily come from those working tirelessly to help those being directly affected. Those of us who have the time and come from the unaffected groups, who can see the injustice and utilize vocabularies and abilities to address our own constituent group, need to do just that.

Once the situation was resolved, two other things caught me off guard as well. As I said before, I found it shocking that the driver would use our vote as an excuse to act so unjustly. Then, as we pulled away with all passengers in tow and only 5 minutes after our scheduled departure, the driver changed tactics and used democracy to CYA (cover your “anatomy”). He announced that this had all been taped as per company procedure and would be referred to should anyone try to lodge a complaint about arriving late.

This leads us to LESSON #2: IN THE ABSENSE OF A COLLECTIVE SENSE OF JUSTICE AND A VOTING PUBLIC ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN OVERSIGHT, DEMOCRACY CAN BE DISTORTED IN THE MOST UNDEMOCRATIC WAYS. That is to say, it can be used to exclude those who cannot or do not understand how to exercise their voice, as well as to excuse and protect those whose actions are questionable. And this can all turn on a dime given the right circumstances, so a fluid and flexible mind is vital to dealing with it.

I’m sure that not everyone walked away from the experience feeling as I did. After all, I am my own particular internal milieu of influences and social forces, a large number of which have recently been geared in this direction.

I doubt if, for example, the woman who castigated the latecomers felt the same way I did about the experience over all. This woman scolded the four tardy passengers as they boarded and took their seats, saying that they should be grateful that “we” had spoken up for them, that they should apologize for “making” us wait, and that they were “rude, just rude” (complete with disapproving tongue-clicking for emphasis.) No one gave the apology she asked for or even acknowledged her statements.

So thus we arrive at LESSON #3: IF YOU WANT TO BRING IN UNNERVED, FRIGHTENED, AND PREVIOUSLY EXCLUDED SOCIAL GROUPS, ONE OF THE LEAST EFFECTIVE AND LEAST DEMOCRATIC WAYS OF DOING SO IS TO BE PUNATIVE, TO POINT OUT THEIR DIFFERENCES OR “FAILINGS” OR TO BRING UP HW MUCH THEY OWE THE MAJORITY FOR ALLOWING THEM IN. I would bet money on the idea that if they had been greeted instead by voices happy to see them, there would have been much gratitude expressed, and warmer, more open microcosm community would have resulted.
Now, my quantitative side is scolding me for extrapolating from such a small sample size (1 experience) but my qualitative side is winning out with the argument that this is how one learns, how one arrive at and assimilates new knowledge. It is the basis for democratic schooling and other movements that strive to remind us that terms like justice, democracy, voice, and choice do not occur only on the grand scale but also on the local level. And it brings me around to embrace once again the idea that “the personal is political.”

BOLIVIA! Vengo…casi! (I’m on my way…almost!)

2010-05-27T04:15:00.000-07:00

For those few fortunate souls who haven’t heard me shouting it from the rooftops for the last few weeks, I am going to be spending three months of my summer in Bolivia! I will be working with Save the Children in the Department of Oruro, studying their educational programs and looking at the effects of out-of-school factors, community engagement, and teacher training on educational outcomes. But there will be plenty of time to talk about the study itself and the methods, discoveries, and challenges I’ll encounter. Let’s just lay out some geographic and cultural facts for those who try to keep track of where I actually am in the world.

I will be living in the city of Oruro, Bolivia. It is the capital of the Department (like a State in the US) of Oruro. Bolivia itself is the size of 1 and a half Texas-es and has a population size akin to that of Michigan (a little under 10 million people.) Oruro is in the western portion of the country about 3 hours south of the working capital La Paz. That’s right, geography buffs, I’ll be living in the Andean altiplano. 12,000 feet high! (That’s twice as high as Denver,CO…hence my new dedication to working out and getting more cardiovascularly fit…I want to use whatever oxygen I get as best I can!) I’ll be taking a medication to help with the altitude adjustment and I’ll stay in La Paz for a couple of days before heading up (altitude-wise) to Oruro.

And, yes, right again, geographic wizards! I will indeed be moving to the other side of the equator, so it will be winter (but thankfully a dry climate!) Freezing temperatures. Less air pressure. Yet I can’t wait to go!

Oruro is central to the mining industry, which is one of Bolivia’s biggest exports. The city itself has about 400,000 people (according to some estimates). I’ll also be travelling out from Oruro to visit schools and talk with teachers and community members in outlying towns in the region as well.

The Bolivian currency is the boliviano, and there are currently 7 bolivianos to the dollar. The international abbreviation for the boliviano is BOB and I’ve already started to call them “bob” in my mind, in a east London accent no less (silly brain!)

I’m looking forward to getting back to the birthplace of the potato. And cuy! (Yep, guinea pigs are an Andean delicacy! Before you judge, remember this is where the little dudes came from in the first place. If you didn’t have cows or chickens or fish or beans, where would you go for your protein? Even in pet-friendly Western nations, in times of hunger the cat population plunges.)

I look forward to picking up a few words of Quechua or Aymara, the main indigenous languages of Bolivia, and getting to spend some real time in a culture that is new to me. I’ll be staying with a family, I think, so that will help me to adjust. I’ll be expanding (exploding!) my quantitative and qualitative research skills and hopefully proving helpful to educational programs in one of the poorest nations in Latin America. This is really a dream come true (I acknowledge having what many people think are strange dreams, okay?)

June 2 – August 24, 2010…Kati en Bolivia! Esta listo? (Are you ready?) Esta lista Bolivia? (Is Bolivia ready?)

Blogging on Books

2010-04-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

So you are off on an international adventure, off to spend some time in the developing world. You will likely find that you have more time on your hands than you expected. Of course, you should spend as much time as possible getting to know the community in which you are living, but on those rainy days when you can’t leave the house or just need a break from all the stress of your own “otherness” and want to read something in the language of home, it’s good to have some books around to read.

I’m not a fan of reading stories set in places like those I’ve travelled to get away from. I’m a big fan of using books to expand my consciousness rather than escape from it. And, no, exotic romance novels set in historical or far away locales don’t count (not because the writers weren’t accurate in their research, but because the use of the romance genre plot undoes the whole idea of breaking out of mental limitations and social roles.) Now, of course there are a number of non-fiction volumes one can read on development, education, policy, travel, etc. And I will eventually cover some of my biggest recommendations of such volumes, but first I want to start a list I’d like to call “Narratives for the Non-Resident,” namely novels.

Fiction? But that just screams escapism, doesn’t it? As a matter of fact, it doesn’t have to, and it can be a great way to both relax and at the same time open up your mind and your experience to new perceptions. [And I am assuming that this is why most people leave their comfortable first world existences to experience life in developing nations. If you are going in order to place your perspectives upon the people there…well, I doubt you are reading my blog, anyway, but if you are, I beg you to reconsider your motives.]

Now, of course your best bet is to pick up some narratives from the region or nation to which you are travelling. I am going to put most biographies with fiction as well, not because they are untrue but because they fall into the same narrative mode of story-telling in which the reader can lose themselves (if the book is well written, of course.) So, for example, anyone travelling to Honduras should read Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart, which is the story of one campesino woman, Elvia Alvarado, as told to and translated by Medea Benjamin. Going to Guatemala? I, Rigoberta Menchu, now a contested classic of autobiography, should definitely be on your list. When I travelled in Chile, I found that Isabella Allende’s The House of the Spirits really helped me identify with Chilean culture and history.

But there are many books that make excellent reading abroad in any developing locale (or just to read and reflect on such travel.) I’ll start the list in just a moment but first a quick note about what to do with books once you are done reading them. If you are still abroad, especially if you are in a non-English speaking nation, ask around to find out if a hotel, hostel, restaurant, volunteer organization, tourism board, or other group has a foreign language book exchange. You can usually find one somewhere in a large town or city, and you will really enrich another person’s travels by sharing your literary gold with them!

So, with no further adieu…(drumroll, please)…I present the debut of:

Novels & Narratives for the Non-Resident

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The story of the daughters and wife of a Baptist preacher who leave the US for a mission in the Congo is the 1960s. They encounter a world unlike any they have ever known, filled with challenges, sorrows, and joys they’d never expected. I read this novel while in Honduras and it was an excellent companion, like having a friend with whom I could discuss the difficulties and wonders that one experiences working and living in the developing world.

The God of Small Things by Arundati Roy
For me, this novel opened up a new perspective on the colonization of histories, the enriching and maddening realities of diversity, and the importance of considering children’s perspectives as rich and nuanced realities. Roy writes beautifully of a well-to-do Indian family straddling their own colonized realities. Written from the perspective of fraternal twins as they face the many experiences life can bring and must decide what to accept and how to move past the pain of cultural shames and ambiguities.

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Buck’s story of life in a small Chinese village is a classic, a well-written and engaging story that reminds us how universal the human experience really is. For a beautiful discussion of the Chinese perspective on this novel, go to
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125682489.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith
This story is set in England (and I read it while living in London) but it is a wonderful, humorous and humble account of two cross-cultural families trying to make their marginalized identities work while living in the metropole of London. The struggles and foibles of both the first-generation and second-generation characters had me in stitches at the same time that I was thinking about and laughing at my own self as a foreigner abroad.

Did I miss something?
Obviously this is a short list, just the beginning of a returning feature, I hope. If there is a biography or novel you think should be added to this list, please leave a comment below for others to see. Make sure you give the book’s title and author and a brief description of the story line and why it fits with the theme of “reading to expand” rather than “reading to escape.”

Maintaining Your Inner Activist

2010-03-30T06:44:00.000-07:00

I have meant to write on this subject for quite a while. It is a subject that comes up regularly when I am speaking with someone not in the international development field. How can you keep your awareness of world realities alive when buffeted by and enveloped in the daily life of a wealthy, technologically-advanced nation?

You tend to forget. We all do. Maybe you travelled abroad or travelled domestically or even just read something that awakened in you an awareness of an issue about which you had deep feelings and intentions to help. Maybe someone tells you about a charity or social cause and you may look into it once or give a couple of donations, but then a week of the daily grind pushes it from your mind.

I won’t say don’t feel bad, because you need to feel a little bad about it. Instead, don’t feel too bad. What you need to feel is just bad enough. Just enough to cause you to make a positive change and start making room for the cause or issue or issues you care about. You need to feel just bad enough to motivate you.

Now I know the first thing you’ll say. It’s what I hear in those conversations I find myself having all the time. You think you have no time. I assure you that you do. Here are a few things you can do the keep current on and active in your favorite causes:

1. Use the internet. You can set up a Google News page with headings for your particular interests. My Google News page has sections for World News, US News, DC News, Honduras, Cuba, Venezuela, Education, and Brain Science, just to name a few. I can scan the top headlines and see the first couple lines of a story. I may not get to spend time reading articles in depth, but events are far less likely to occur completely unbeknownst to me. The same thing is possible with a Google Reader, letting you see the most recent postings to your favorite blogs and online periodicals.
Bookmark a few websites that you can look at while waiting for a large file to download or for a document to print. Especially useful are the news pages on websites for your favorite activist organizations or websites for the networks of those interested in a particular cause.
Finally, sign up for email newsletters. Receiving a newsletter once a month or once a week really isn’t such a big deal, right, and they can be chalk full of unexpected informational tidbits and opportunities to become involved in a cause close to your heart.

2. Go old school, too. Read print materials. Subscribe to a magazine or newletter that focuses on the issue you want to be involved in. Read books on the subject. Especially great are coffee table books that will become conversation pieces with visitors so that you can help spread the word about your cause. My favorite activist print material, besides the newsletter, is the calendar. You look at it every day. You keep your cause in your mind that way. And you usually make a small donation in order to get it.

3. Make it a social experience. Find group volunteering or informational activities that you can do with friends and family. Or take part in such activities on your own to make new friends with whom you share this particular cause. Activism means engaging with your community, so you can’t just stay in and read about it. Make sure you get out there and do, even if just once every six months. Getting out of your own head and opinions so that you are listening and witnessing the lived realities of a cause keep it present in your life.

4. Use your particular talents and skills. Do what you do well, do it for free, and do it to advance the cause about which you care. This might be the ability to write grants, bake bread, to file papers, to babysit children, to construct flower beds, or to hold the hand of someone who is struggling. It doesn’t matter. Every little bit helps. In the end, no one effort is more important or valuable than any other.

5. Donate. Don’t deny the fact that your money can go a long way. You don’t have to give a lot, just what you are capable of. $5 $50 $500 It is up to us all to do what we can. You are more than your bank account, so prove it by giving up a little of it to help someone in need.

6. Talk! Tell people what you are interested in and working on and how they can help. Listen and ask questions. Start conversations about your cause. Keep it present for more than just yourself. We often process our knowledge and expand upon it by talking about it with others, especially those we might at first meeting think would have no interest in our subject. Those are often the people who can bring the most insight and the most chance for you to make your own insights, all at the same time that you are spreading the word about your particular cause!

The point I’m really trying to make here is to not give up, to not say, “We’re all just cogs in the wheel anyway.” We don’t have to be. And breaking out of that habit isn’t a matter of grand gestures or overwhelming change. Do what you can and don’t berate yourself that it isn’t enough, because that just shuts you off from the good that you do. Ask yourself if you are really doing all that you can, and if the answer is no, then think about some ways you could do more. Hopefully some of the ideas I presented here will be helpful.

Jungle Schooling

2010-03-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

I changed the name of this blog a while back. I hadn’t thought about it really. It was an act of instinct. I was no longer writing from the perspective of a volunteer abroad, so “Diario de una Voluntaria” no longer seemed apt.

But today I realized that I did not pick the new title out of the air, or if I did so, it was a lucky pick for I am getting a “Jungle Schooling” of sorts. My senses and intellectual perceptions are beginning to sense past the projected structures we take for granted, allowing me to examine the foundations on which those structures are built.

I can hear the fairly conservative voices of my upbringing whispering “radical” as if it was a dirty word, but I urge readers to shrug off the qualitative label factory that has been installed in our brains. Think as you read this blog, think as you read my sources for yourself, and most importantly think for yourself. And try to find the intellectual freedom to think of things in themselves.

I hope that you will find that we are all “radical” in our own vibrant ways, for if I had to choose be3tween living in a manicured garden or a slightly wild meadow, I would have to choose the meadow hands down. It might be a bit chaotic, yes, but knowing what is going to bloom where would be utterly boring and, in fact, stifling. Even Sir Issac Newton acknowledged nature’s tendency toward entropy.

In the future…
I do not so much have concrete plans for this space, but I do hope some regular features will soon begin to take shape. These will hopefully include return reflections to my sojourns abroad and reading suggestions (novels as well as non-fiction) for those traveling, working, or just thinking in development contexts.

I cannot promise how often I will post. I prefer to let the chaos of inspiration decide. That said, it will be more regular than in the past. I am on a journey of discovery, and I want to send postcards of my travels.

To whom am I speaking?
I say here, now, clearly, that I do not intend to preach but to engage in a discussion, or at least my side thereof (the rest is up to you, readers.) I do not want only readers and comments that agree with me (but devil’s advocates, please keep in constructive!) I want to help us all, including myself, think more than we have about things I happen to think are worth thinking about.

Cuba #3, Los Cubanos

2009-11-27T19:41:00.000-08:00

It has been impossible to post since we left for the provinces on Tuesday, and we have been so busy and so consumed with the interchange of ideas and philosophies that there has been little time to write and reflect. I expect to be slowly processing this trip for some time and will write about my experiences as the opportunity arises, even after I get back to the States on Saturday night.

I do not want to leave. I often feel this way about returning home but this time it is especially strong. I have been presented with so much to think about and to take in and it seems unjust and incongruous that I will be processing much of it outside of its context. I have learned here in Cuba that context is vital to the truth of everything.

That is not to say that truth is relative, only that each truth can be lived differently by different people without sacrificing the fidelity to that truth. Freedom, what it means to be liberated and free, is one that is perhaps most apt to the Cuba/U.S. dichotomy. The Cubans I have met openly acknowledge many of the difficulties that they face and many of the contradictions of their society, but they embrace these not as handicaps but as challenges. I have never witnessed people so ready and willing and capable of working together for a common goal. My new friends are joyous and engaged in life.

I do not say this wearing rose colored glasses. Nor do the Cubans portray themselves through an idealized light. In fact, this is the only place I have ever been in Latin America, maybe anywhere in the world, where I have witnessed profound humility and honesty rather than a strong dose of hubris and bravado. The system here is not perfect, but they seem dedicated to working towards a perfection bit by bit as best they know how. I am inspired by much of what I have seen and although I readily acknowledge that it would not be applicable to the United States, that does not negate its ability to be applicable to my own self.

One Cuban professor who participated in this conference worded it so well..."We Cubans are a people who love peace...We are living as we have chosen...We do not have more than we need. What we do have we are willing to share with the world."

As I said today in a presentation to my fellow conference participants, one of the greatest things I take away from this experience is a deeper understanding, an understanding as a result of actively doing, of my own ability to see and live beyond the black and white paradigms we establish in our minds when faced with difference. Establishing and truly embracing the context of any event or idea does not make it less applicable but rather encourages appropriate and effective applications in other contexts. Ultimately, as a result of this conference, I think I have connected with a basic human love for learning and for engaging in a social learning process, and I have done so in a context unlike any other I could have found.

And here I have also found colleagues with whom I expect to work again in the future, among both the U.S. and the Cuban delegations. I have found other students, scholars, and policy makers who are following the same life of questions as I am, who readily share their research and finding with me, and who encourage my interests and my identity as an individual in a diverse world.

No, I do not want to leave, at least not yet, but now I know that I will most certainly return.

Cuba #2 La Habana, First Impressions

2009-11-24T08:10:00.000-08:00

I am back in Latin America, but it is so different, too. It feels so natural to be here, and yet not at the same time. I can not integrate into daily life here, and there are certain parts of reality that I can only glimpse.

The jet took off from Miami. About a half hour late. That didn't bother me; I already felt like I was in Latin America. Time had started to become ephemeral again. I forgot how much I missed that. And then it dawned on me...the jet is off the ground, it's really off the ground, and this is really happening!

Walking through Old Havana isn't like stepping back in time. Realities are still present. The old 1950s cars drive past the old Soviet cars driving past the newer buses from China. I passed by the Hotel Ambos Mundos where Hemingway so often stayed. The bar there was playing a latin pop song I recognized.

As we flew over the brief but expansive waters of the Florida Strait, I kept thinking I was seeing a man in a skiff being dragged by a marlin, but just when I thought I'd seen them, they would disappear into the horizon again. Ironic, huh?

I stopped to play ball in the street with a few boys. I hitched a ride in the side car of an old motorcycle. I saw castle walls that have stood for centuries and old men and women stooped with age and hard work.

And then we were over the island's coast and I was looking down at agricultural fields. Fields were laid out in orderly, right-angled plots of land. What appeared to be a hay harvest had taken place in several of those plots, but I could see no sign of a single important crop. Here and there a few trash or brush piles were burning, but everything seemed well laid out and orderly.

I sense immense differences here from my experiences in Honduras. People of all colors mingle. A man takes a break from fishing off the seawall to write something down. The few time I am asked for money, it is done with a certain grace. I glimpse well cared for homes inside the run-down exteriors. I watch parents playing and laughing with their children.

When the airplane's wheels touched down my heart skipped a beat. I nursed my cough all the way through immigration and into backage claim with constant cough drops. The nurse in a classic, white uniform took my flu symptom checklist (which I had dutifully marked “no” to every symptom” and must have confused my strained look for fear rather than a strained resistance to a deeply needed coughing fit. She smiled warmly at me and said, “Pase, amor.” I forgot how much I love being called Amor by old ladies. I waited for my bag to come out on the conveyor. They must have checked it thoroughly but there was no X on the tag, so customs lets me right through. At the airport to greet us was not only transportation directly to our hotel but a small contingent of some of the highest representatives of the Cuban Teacher's Association, the group hosting us. They welcomed us so warmly and were so genuinely glad to have us there.

They have bookstores here...whole stores devoted to nothing but the sail of books! I always miss bookstores when I am in Honduras. I found an original copy of the Great Campaign for Literacy's manual for teachers and a book on Che Guevara's thoughts on pedagogy. I've never seen some of the photos of Che I see everywhere. He's incredibly handsome. I wonder how many young Cuban girls secretly dream of Che. Papa Smurf looked good too. No wonder the Revolution succeeded.

I've met the US and most of the Cuban participants. We met this morning to register and go over the schedule. Our Cuban coordinators have gone to great strides to involve as many of the top thinkers in the fields of our individual interests. Tomorrow morning I will be visiting the Institute for Pedagogical Research and in the afternoon we are all going to visit the Medical College.

Things are clean but nothing is fancy. In most places the paint is chipping but the basic structure seems sound. Just from the graffiti I can see that art is taught in the schools. Kids ride down the blocks long Paseo de Marti on hand-crafted scooters and two sisters share a pair of skates, each wearing just one. It strikes me that, at least for some, the joi de vive isn't “in spite” of the Revolution but is part of it, perhaps. No one's life is markedly better than that of anyone else. No one is seems to be suffering so that the life of someone else can be unjustly easy. The people I see are literate, articulate, and in decent health.

There are two worlds here and I can feel it when I pass by Cubans on the street. Two realities that slide past each other silently and push tentatively back against each other, too. I use the Convertible Pesos or “kooks,” which are roughly valued at 1 to 1 against the US dollar, but Cubans use Moneda Nacional, the non-convertible pesos, which value at something more like 20 to 1. My dinner tonight cost 20 “kooks.” That is what most Cubans make in a month.

Meals are beautiful but limited. Butter and hard cheese are sliced thinly and served frugally. One nurse drives an illegal taxi to make ends meet. But people seem proud of who they are, rather than ashamed of what they are not. There is meaning to say, “Soy cubano,” that I have never heard in the phrase “Soy hondureno.” Cubano means flamenco dancing and breathtaking art and salsa music and baseball prowess and beautiful poetry and scientific research standards.

The propaganda posters really don't feel so strange to me. They really feel no different from the advertisements that blanket our senses in the U.S., and I respect their forthright honesty, at least in comparison to the ads, which I frankly do not miss.

Cuba #1 - Fatwas from Camp MIA

2009-11-20T22:16:00.000-08:00

Dong dong. The. current. local. time. is. twelve. o'clock. am.

I can't decide whether the 15 minute reminders of earth's rotation are making time go faster or slower here in Camp MIA.

Camp MIA was originally the the row of chairs that Tiesha, my equally frugal classmate who also refuses to pay for a hotel room, and I had commandeered in Concourse G of the Miami International Airport. With a blanket kindly but unknowingly donated by American Airlines, I formed a bit of a bed for myself with my feet propped up on the seat of a chair and my head resting on a lumpily comfortable carry-on bag, I was good to go for at least the first portion of my FIFTEEN hour layover.

Yes. 15. Hours. (said in the always chipper voice of the time lady). That is what happens when one is expected to start checking in at 8am for a 1pm flight. A one hour flight across a fairly small strip of water takes 5 hours to check-in apparently. I'll let you know more about that tomorrow.

After an hour and a trip to the far away ladies' room, I discovered an even better location for Camp MIA, so Tiesha and I went M*A*S*H (Mobile Articulate Smart Hotties.) We now have upholstered benches upon which to lounge.

I am enjoying the airport's nightlife. We are hardly the only people here for the evening. Airport staff, security, a number of other travelers. The old dude who drives the mini-zamboni back and forth to polish the floor taps out a great rhythm to go along the jazzy elevator music that intersperses the many safety reminders and “Nombre apellido, venga a un telefono blanco de cortesia, por favor.” I have seen a couple of stylish camoflauge outfits (but distinctly not military camo...think ooh-I-wish-I-was-as-tough-as-this-stylish-black-and-white-camo-outfit-makes-me-look styles.) Dunkin Donuts is open 24 hours and they start putting out fresh donuts at 4am. Currency exchange opens at 5am. TerminalDR (yes there is a doctor's office in the terminal) opens at 7am. I've found the free wireless network and nearby outlets to charge my electronics. Now that I'm not trying to relax on the cold floor, Camp MIA is darn good for the price of NADA.

I am enjoying where my mind wanders to at these late, sinus-congested hours. Nothing is sacred, I'm afraid. I might start telling people I have a frontal lobe disorder that has damaged my ability to inhibit saying my thoughts aloud. It's pretty much at that point.

As I've indicated, I'm still getting over my head cold from earlier this week. It is on the exceedingly gross “evacuation” stage. Several people have made an exceedingly wide berth of me when I've been coughing. Given that swine flu jokes are definitely off limits (don't want to jinx myself...a news article said that Cuban immigration was quarantining people with swine flu symptoms) I've settled for drug resistant TB jokes instead.

Then there's the actually Cuba related thoughts. My mp3 player has provided some good fuel for my cerebrum. “Children of the Revolution” from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack takes on new meaning. And when the Muppets song “Manamana” comes on I like to imagine that it is Fidel and Jose Marti singing back up with Che (in his signature beret) being the beat-nick dude in the middle who wants to improvise on the song.

The current fatwas coming from Camp MIA are:
- “Al Queda is ruining my life.” --Tiesha (This is a long story having to do with how the airport is not as convenient as the bus terminal in an old movie where Madonna went to jail.)
- Fidel's code name for the rest of this trip will be Papa Smurf, or PS. --Kate
- 4am donuts will be written off as educational expenses on this years taxes, and calories from tax write offs don't count. --Kate

Off to a benadryl induced slumber now.

Dong dong. The. current. local. time. is. one. fifteen. am.

Me 'n Che, man! We're tight!

2009-11-06T09:24:00.000-08:00

That's right! I've been granted permission by the US government to do research in Cuba! So, for eight days, over the week of the arguably capitalist holiday of Thanksgiving, I will be observing and researching teaching practices in one of the last Marxist strongholds. It's been an iffy process at times, getting all the documents put through, but its all finally approved and tickets have been purchased.

My research is going to center around how Cuban teachers choose to teach students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Cuba has the highest achieving primary level students in Latin America, and I want to know more about why this is when they have faced so many material disadvantages.

I've chosen to travel through Miami, FL, even though I could have gone through somewhere even warmer (like Cancun, Mexico) but I want to document what it is like to go through the US Customs and Border Control directly before and after being in our estranged neighbor nation.

I'm busy researching socialism, socialist education, children's cognitive development, compensatory teaching methods, etc. A big issue will be how to define disadvantage...material, health, intellectual, cultural, lingual, nutritional, etc. etc. Hopefully this research will be able to be combined with research in Honduras (and maybe Brazil?) and DC Public Schools to become my Masters thesis.

I promise to keep you all apprised and to post pictures and impressions of a land so many North Americans aren't allowed to visit.

Keepin’ on keepin’ on…

2009-09-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

Due to popular demand (about 3 people), I will be continuing to write here at “Diario de una Voluntaria” while I am in graduate school. It makes sense really, given that my work in International Education, founded experientially in my work in Honduras, is still going on, at least on an intellectual level.

Honduras, Jungle School, and HHK continue to be an enormous part of my everyday life. Keeping in touch with volunteers, sending out appeals for donations, and even the occasional call from one of the families in La Herradura. Even here is DC, so far from the jungle, I feel connected to the community in a very strong way. And it is essential, I think, to have this anchor in a locale while studying themes and topics on the macro level. When I feel like I am swimming in a mire of confusing ideas, I can return to my mental home and refresh my perspective.

People like to say that the world is getting smaller, but I challenge that. I fear the idea leaves the world too susceptible to the spread of monocultures. It makes crossing cultural boundaries sound like an easy thing to do, as if it just takes a short airplane flight or a tour of Google News. And then, poof, you are a world citizen. I have learned, much to my own chagrin, that the process is not so easy. I still fall far short of the goal. The danger in feeling that another culture is not distant is that you fail see it’s intricacies and differences, not to mention the ensuing assumption that the people of the other culture should be able to understand you just as easily. No, culturally the world isn’t small at all, nor would we want it to be. Instead, I challenge the human being to grow bigger. It is time for us to evolve and develop the ability to exist on both the local and global levels.

I work in education and I work in development. We take these words for granted but they are loaded and complex. These days, I am taking the time to look at just want they mean and for whom they mean it. Education is learning. But that isn’t enough. Each individual person does that naturally and often without outside direction. If it is the direction of learning in a systematic way then I start to wonder about the goals of the education and whose goals they are, and why they choose a particular system of instruction and organization of the ideas taught.

Development is harder to wrap my mind around. I like the idea that it is the unfolding of potential (not my own idea but that of scholars Fagerlind and Saha.) But when it is something we are actively involved in, it is the direction of potential in a systemic way. Who is directing the process? Does each person get to choose how to develop their own potential? There is no one system that would work for everyone’s potential, so do some people’s potentials get damaged or quashed in the process of developing everyone else’s potentials? What happens to those who are quashed? If they aren’t able to develop, then maybe the process of Development isn’t really taking place, is it?

Education is involved in Development then if it is the systematic direction of learning in order to unfold the potentials of people. And I am left with a great many questions…Whose potential is developed and whose is either damaged or ignored?...What constitutes developed potentials and who gets to set this goal?...What is the reward for the successful people? And what of the failures?
As always more questions than answers, more of a landscape with relationships between ideas than hard knowledge or cardinal directions on an intellectual map…so I just keep on keepin’ on…

The Slingshot Effect

2009-08-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

I am packed and ready to go. As per Honduran style, my arrangements to spend the night in San Pedro Sula fell through at the last minute, but being prepared for the (inevitable) eventualities is part of living here. So instead, I have my ticket for the butt-crack-of-dawn bus that will get me to the airport in time for my noon departure. All is settled.

Except my mind. Or my heart. Upon leaving last time, I could see the differences I had made. I had contributed to my kids’ intellects and had found some paths for resolving a few day to day issues in their lives. After 4 months here I felt at home and full of purpose.

The past five weeks have not been the same. We covered one unit of math in my class and when it came time to take the test most of the children failed rather miserably. Five weeks wasn’t enough time for them to intake subtraction with borrowing (2nd grade) or basic multiplication (3rd grade.) Faced with their life obstacles both physical (living far way, being hungry or sick) and mental (low self esteem, poor motivation, and inadequate self-discipline or parental support,) the basics continue to elude them. A child might have a good day, but for the most in need of educational support they are few and far between.

I am not built to be a band-aid. It simply isn’t enough for me. I cannot say with comfort that I did what I could. That is the bandaid I have to put over my own heart, knowing that I will be back, and that I am returning to States to get the education I need to come back and make a real difference. Some may be able to come for a month or two and leave feeling like they have done enough, and that is okay. But I am not one of them.

The time has proved very useful, and my influence has been positive for many other here, I know. For the development workers who are always here, who are faced with the endless stream of problems and tears, we who are here for short times can bring great energy and renewal with us. We bring fresh eyes and minds to the problems. We bring the patience and hope that have begun to dwindle in the face of daily difficulties.

I did help to collect, organize, and compile growth and nutrition data on almost 600 children from the Cuenca Cangrejal for Dr. Black’s malnutrition study. A few children are significantly more advanced in their Spanish, Math, Health and English abilities after my time here. Most interesting was the observation I made that in all my conversations with Hondurans about the development of their own country, they almost unanimously (but independently of each other) described their culture as selfish and unconcerned with helping others. I have been able to network with a number of other people in the world of volunteering and development, as well as continue to uphold the friendships I began over the winter and spring when I was here before. And being here during the “coup” has brought me truly first-hand knowledge of just how little we can understand the world through the pinhole cameras of the mass media. I know this was not a waste of time.

As usual, I am left with more questions than answers, more anecdotes than measurements, and more philosophy than faith.

I find my mind going towards questions of the efficacy of foreign volunteers in the education field. Who are we? Why do we come here? What backgrounds do we bring with us? What impact do we have on the children and their community? Do we really help? If so, how so? What do we do that is harmful? What styles of volunteer programs work best? What kind of training do we need to be most effective? Perhaps there is a Master’s thesis in there somewhere…

As always, my mind and heart are open, looking for the path that is for me. It is here somewhere, the special thing that I can do to make the most good out of my energies and abilities…

And for now I will continue to research and investigate and learn. How do you motivate children to learn? Especially when the family cannot motivate them? How do you awaken that part of the soul in them that wants to engage and face their challenges and responsibilities? How do you help them grow to be giving, caring, responsible adults that can make a positive change in their selfish, self-destructive, corrupt culture?

WHERE THE CHICKENS ROOST IN TREES AND THE STARS COME DOWN TO DANCE AT NIGHT

2009-08-12T18:28:00.000-07:00

I spent a lovely evening and morning with one of the families from the Jungle School this past Friday. And although I have a cold and a case of laryngitis as souvenirs, I am immensely glad I went.

The Castro family has a finca, what we would call a small ranch, high in the mountains. It is a two hour walk to reach the nearest road that is passable by car. There are six children (3 boys and 3 girls, ages 15 to 1), seven cows (including the bulls and the newest calf), 3 sheep (including the newest lamb), 2 burros, 3 dogs, and the usual uncountable population of chickens.

They are growing a little corn right now, mostly for feed I think, and right behind the house are a number of fruit trees, including recognizable things like coffee and oranges as well as distinctly Central American fruits like wild apples, patronas, and nances.

The house is very simple, with a pounded dirt floor and wooden walls. The main room is partitioned into two bedrooms, one with two double beds and a hammock and the other with one double bed and one single bed. Luz, the oldest, kindly gave up her bed for me and crawled in with her sisters for the night in the other room. It seems that Jose, the father, and Fermin, the baby, vie for rights to the hammock, as it is the preferred sleeping spot for both. (Many babies here sleep in small “baby hammocks” in which they can be gently rocked to sleep.) There are shelves on which to store clothes (mostly in bags and boxes to keep out critters.) The windows and doors all have tight shutters to keep out the rain and cold night air.

The kitchen is attached, with a traditional wood stove and oven, shelves for storage, a few handmade stools, a small table, and a sink made from a piece of flat metal installed at an angle and with a hole for drainage. The family pipes in water from up the next mountain, another 15 minute walk away, but it is always fresh and abundant. There is an outdoor shower and an outhouse with a rather comfortable bench seat (no splinters in my bum!)

Only at night are the doors and windows all shut, so during the day there are regular visitors in the house…chickens and dogs mostly, but one burro was quite determined to join us for breakfast s well. He finally relented to go outside but only after taking a piece of cardboard that was leaning against the wall for a snack!

As the sun goes down, things do get dark, but the family has a couple of wind-up flashlights as well as a car battery they use to watch a small television. The flashlights explain a lot about why this family in particular are such good students…they can do their homework and read for pleasure after dark! Jose is quite taken with the idea of exhausting the kids by putting them to work on a bicycle driven generator…apparently I am not the first visitor to suggest such an idea. I got the kids (and I think the parents too) interested in a Spanish novel I am reading at the moment, which I read aloud while Luz (apt name at this moment) kept the flashlight wound up.

I looked out my window as night was falling and saw a most strange sight…there was a chicken in the tree! This was not something I had ever seen before. But, no, these are not special chickens that can fly or climb…they have a tree trunk leaned up into the branches which they climb to take refuge in their tree/chicken coop. The kids took me to the top of the mountain after dark so that I could see Ceiba and the sea in the distance. In addition, we got to watch a huge thunderstorm building over the ocean, which was quite spectacular to watch. And where it was so dark that you couldn’t see where the sky stopped and the tree line began, the fire flies made me think the stars were coming down to dance. During the day you can see Ceiba in the distance on one side and nothing but tree covered mountains on the other.

It may seem so simple and perhaps lacking in some ways, but I also witnessed a life rich in relationships, compassion, and self-knowledge. I cannot say that it struck me as any harder or easier than any life I’ve witnessed in more developed nations. Luz, her mom Lorena, and I passed the afternoon and most of the evening, learning to make pizza from scratch in their clay oven. The pizza recipe was new for them; the cooking apparatus was new for me. For my last day this Friday, Luz and Lorena are going to help me teach the other moms the recipe and make pizza for all of the kids for lunch! Jose asked me many questions about the US and was quite surprised when I said that I preferred life here in Honduras, where I am not constantly bombarded with the need to have more and achieve more for the sake of proving something to someone else. Luz wanted to know what kids are like in North America (she is being sponsored to study in a Canadian high school next year,) and I said that they were pretty much the same as here. The only negatives I could think of were that they are perhaps at times a little more selfish and sometimes surprisingly lacking in knowledge of what the rest of the world is like despite access to education and media.

As I said before, Luz is preparing to study in Canada after she graduates the sixth grade here in November. She is bright and kind and an all around amazing young woman. We have been reviewing some of the more difficult parts of English grammar together and also talking a bit about some of the cultural differences she’ll likely encounter. She is so excited, and rather scared (but refuses to admit it even to herself…she’s very emotionally strong!) I’ve promised to send her a pair of my flannel pajamas and my full length down coat, because her biggest fear is of the cold winter.

She asked me how long the trip was to Canada, and I said I didn’t know but that I live a little more than half way to Toronto and it takes me six hours to get home, plus whatever time I have between flights. (Her eyes got big.) How long would it take to drive, she asked. I said that with stops at night I figured it would take a little over a week, given that one has to get out of Honduras, through Guatemala and Mexico and the US. (Her eyes got even bigger.) I tried to explain that just in Texas, the state that I am from, to drive from the Mexican border to Oklahoma would be pretty much the whole day of daylight. She said she’d never imagined the whole world was that big. I laughed and hugged her and said, Luz, your world is going to get a whole lot bigger than you can probably imagine. I know mine sure did when I came to Honduras.

Is this progress I’m experiencing?

2009-08-01T06:34:00.000-07:00

It is amazing to watch a child make a big step in a developmental or educational direction. Even more amazing is when they manage to do it as a group. This past week I’ve had some real breakthroughs with my second and third graders, and I feel now that when I leave in two weeks I will have helped them achieve some very important academic improvements.

My third graders are rocking it out in the world of multiplication. Because I know that when I leave they will go back to writing and rewriting the multiplication tables under the eye of the Honduran teacher, I am focusing my efforts now on making sure they understand how multiplication works. They can now all find the answer to a simple multiplication problem that they do not have memorized and cannot see on the wall, such as 15 x 3, because they know this means there are three groups of 15.

My second graders are really coming along in subtraction with borrowing. They get so excited when it is time to borrow because they get to yell “Prestame porfavor!” (Lend it to me, please!) We still have a ways to go to achieve consistency, but major improvements are happening. As a result of some of my reading in child development, I realized that my kids didn’t understand how to count up from the number to find an answer in subtraction. For example, given 17 – 9, they are more likely to guess at the answer than to start counting on their fingers at 10 and seeing how many fingers they use to get to 17. We’ve taken a couple of days to go over this skill and there is real improvement in their accuracy now.

On Wednesday, both the kids and I got a treat (although I think mine was even bigger than theirs!) Their Spanish homework the night before was to read the recipe for making play dough from flour, water, and salt. Then they had to answer two questions for reading comprehension. Not only did my kids do the homework (breakthrough #1!), they answered the questions correctly (biggest breakthrough to date!) So we spent Wednesday morning making and playing with play dough in the classroom. What made it such a big treat for me is that they all followed directions closely and accurately, cleaned up and behaved well the entire time, and then showed off their creative minds with the play dough afterwards (and this from children who always tell me they don’t have any ideas in their heads!) The best moment was when we all put on play dough mustaches to look like deposed president Mel Zelaya…play dough gave us a chance to talk about social studies, even! And each child got a ziplock bag of homemade play dough to take home.

I’m still consistently stumped by some of their behaviors. My third grade girls especially are very apt to cry over a frustration or break into arguments so vehement I can’t understand what they are yelling. I’m always at a loss as to whether to intervene closely or just let them feel their way back out of the quagmire. Both methods have proven equally effective and ineffective. I know that I must make things worse when I don’t understand what they are saying, and some of the issues seem so very irrational to me that I feel they must really be stemming from something the child is unwilling or unable to communicate. Similar is the problem that when I ask a child to correct a mistake, they just shut down sometimes and refuse to work at all. I worry that there is something in the way I say it that makes them feel bad, but the more I watch the culture here, the more I see it is an issue for many adults as well.

So I have given up on the Honduran government’s lesson plans for Social Studies and Sciences and have spent the second half of the day working on self esteem and social skills instead. We’ve talked about self-esteem and imagined it as a bucket that can get holes in it that we then have to patch up. We’ve talked about the difference between a positive comment and a negative comment. We’ve taken stock of what we can do and can take pride in by coloring piggy banks full of coins on which our skills are written. We’ve created a post office “correo” for the classroom and written positive messages to each person in the room.

This coming week we’ll start a project in Spanish class about letter writing, which will culminate in each child writing a letter to a former volunteer. I’ll mail them when I get back to the States. The kids are excited for this, and I look forward to using it as a chance to practice writing CLEARLY using the posters I am making that address the kids biggest problems in letter formation.

Each step is so small, it may seem like no big deal, but I can see how at this point in their education, each step for these kids is a potential leap in the future. I feel so lucky to get to help them achieve it!

Interesting Conversations

2009-07-27T18:24:00.000-07:00

A great deal of my time lately has been passed in conversations with an array of people. And as I have come to expect, the more I learn and witness and discuss, the more questions I have rather than answers.

There are such enormous cultural and socioeconomic barriers. It can seem like an enormous brick wall without a door to pass through. I have faith that somewhere there is a passageway that I just haven’t learned to see yet. So I continue in search of the passageway and the secret password that will encourage those on the other side to open the door and let me pass through.

A good example for this inner conversation of mine is the solar oven program that Toshi, a volunteer friend of mine, helped the families with before he left in April. He purchased the materials, helped the families construct them, showed them in great detail how to use them for many dishes…but I have so far only found one family using their solar oven. So the families continue to struggle to find enough fuel wood, and mothers and babies continue to suffer the effects of smoke exposure. Some families say they don’t understand how to use them. Others say that it is easier to do what they have always done. Where was the secret password we missed? Should the families have purchased the materials at a very low rate? Should each family have gotten a home visit to help them use it in their exact location? How does one rectify what was missed and see the problem ahead in future efforts?

My other inner conversation is the one I have daily with my child development textbook, which I brought with me to Honduras. Reading ahead for class is helping me understand better how to address my children’s learning needs. Even the most talented and clever child needs heavy remedial help to understand how to follow directions, how to go about choosing the best answer, and overcoming the incredible difficulties of hunger and low self-esteem while trying to learn. I’m making posters that show which letters “touch the roof” and which ones “show off their tails” to help them write more clearly. I am making sure they understand how to do the math rather than just memorizing the most common answers. Encouraging creativity, the use of imaginative metaphors, using positive words and phrases…I believe these will serve these children just as well as memorizing their times tables.

Then there are the conversations I actually have with other people. As no one who knows me would be surprised, one of these conversations involved sexual education of the students in the school 10 years and older. We spent half a morning in split-gender sessions, reviewing anatomy and the anatomical processes of both men and women, exactly what the sex act is (sometimes left out of sex-ed here I’ve been told,) how pregnancy happens, the myriad of STDs (because the only one people talk about here is AIDS,) and how to protect oneself from pregnancy and disease. Then we took a break, let the kids write questions and put them in a box, and after the break we presented a little skit about how boys and girls can talk openly and honestly about sex, and then sat down and answered the questions the kids had put in the box and talked about making decisions about dating and that it is okay and maybe even preferable not to date while you are still in school.

I’ve been happy to see that both in this session and in a small assembly we had with the kids about the political crisis, Angel, the Director of the school, has been careful to tell the kids to listen to their own hearts and minds, not to blindly follow the words other people. It is so good to see someone telling these kids that they are smart and reminding them to think and use them noggin’s! I must remember to praise Angel for this.

On Thursday the kids were accidentally granted an extra long recess, because Angel, I, and another volunteer Nick became engrossed in a conversation about religion and god. A couple of the older boys from sixth grade, who are usually among the most atrociously behaved, were very enrapt and followed the conversation closely and respectfully.

It all started with a classic Angel question (he’s a very evangelical Christian,) “Kati, do you have Jesus in your heart?”

I said no and that he didn’t seem to be in pocket or behind my ear either. (humor did not deflect his intentions.)
“But who is your god?”

I don’t have one. I’m agnostic. I don’t know if there is one and I’m not going to spend my time worrying about it because I can’t prove it one way or the other.

“That breaks my heart. It breaks Hondurans’ hearts when people don’t have Jesus in their lives.”

Why? It is my choice.

“But you will go to hell if you don’t accept Christ.”

At this point Nick pointed out that in many parts of the world Jesus is not god or even a prophet and that other religions say Angel will burn in hell for believing what he believes. (This was news to Angel…not that the whole world isn’t Christian, but that they don’t accept his truth as their truth.)

I presented the idea that there is a seed of truth from which all religions grow like trees, and it depends on the soil it grows in, the needs of the people it serves, as to how it will develop.

“But I know Jesus is the only God. The Bible says he is the only God. And the Bible is the word of God.”

I suggested that maybe rather than historical fact that sometimes the Bible is a fable instead, a story to deliver truth through fiction. When I presented the possibility that evolution might have been God’s way of creation, that seven days for God might be millions of years, I’m pretty sure Angel’s eyes crossed trying to think it over.

“But aren’t you scared you’ll go to hell?”

I pointed out that I wasn’t closed to the idea of god, and that any god who would turn me away for having used the heart and mind he gave me wasn’t a god I wanted anything to do with. If that was the case, I’d have plenty of friends to have a “fiesta” with in “el infierno.”

The lack of sophisticated information Angel possesses is astounding to me, given that he is in charge of so many children’s educations. For example, at one point one of the boy’s asked if Toshi has god. Angel said, “Oh yes. Toshi is Buddhist.” I had to explain that actually Buddhists don’t necessarily have a god, that it is a philosophy and life way rather than religion, that Buddha is a prophet to be emulated not a god to be worshiped. (Sorry, Toshi, you’ve been outted!)

What made it a successful conversation for me was to have those two boys witnessing use discuss such a possibly heated discussion without attacking each other’s beliefs, without insulting Christianity or Agnosticism, without threatening our ability to work together and do good in children’s lives. I complimented Angel and explained why I was willing to have this conversation with an Evangelical Christian: that he did not, not once, try to change my mind. He did not forget that I live a good life, full of giving and love despite my lack of religion.

And it is goodness that brings us together ultimately and most productively. While helping collect and document data for an informal nutrition study with Dr. David Black of Project Esperanza here in La Ceiba, I have had to opportunity to meet other development workers and to brainstorm and discuss with them what they are working on. I have found other folks who hold a similar interest in the possibility of networking amongst projects, to share mental and physical resources, to support each other through the hard times and to keep frustrations in perspective, and to maybe even (maybe I’m dreaming, here) helping the people the groups serve to access others people in other parts of the country.

I can’t overstate how important talking is to my work here. The willingness to listen is most imperative. I have to take notes sometimes to remind myself of phrase that I want to mull over later when the afternoon heat keeps me within a five foot radius of the nearest fan. There is always time to think here and to keep the conversations going and always questions to fuel the thinking.

Jungle School Video

2009-07-18T21:28:00.000-07:00

Finally! I have finished a video of my experiences the first time I came to Honduras to volunteer at the Jungle School.

HHK is always looking for sponsors and volunteers, so tell your friends and love ones and strnger on the street to come watch this video and fall in love with these kids.

It’s a Jungle out there…including the politics!

2009-07-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

I have returned to La Ceiba, Honduras to volunteer as a teacher in the Jungle School in the rural Cangrejal River valley. There is all the same beauty, and all the same dirt, as when I left three and a half months ago. It is amazing how fast things change until you realize that they really don’t change at all.

I am once again teaching 2nd and 3rd grades, although I have fewer students than before. Apparently many students haven’t come to school for the last few weeks due to a variety of concerns, which are really just easy smokescreens for not feeling that school is particularly important, if you ask me. For starters, there has been the political crisis since the end of June and there was also a robbery at the school and the robber was associated with a couple of families, so those children are not coming to school to avoid the gossip and social reactions. Most of my students, however, have trickled back, and I have eleven of the original sixteen on a fairly regular basis. I have no reason to really fear for my safety as a result of either of the above situations, so I see no reason to deny these kids a decent education while they can get it.

I’m sure people want to hear about the situation here because from the news it looks like people are sporting strong feelings and are very polarized. I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of a demonstration. The loudest voices (besides the kids at school) is the cat in heat outside my house right now (…I’ve been joking that I am going to start going to bars and yowling to see if it helps me get a boyfriend.) The Ceiba area public school teachers have finally agreed to stop striking in support of Zelaya and are returning to their classrooms this Monday. I don’t know if that agreement extends to the rest of the country or not.

Otherwise things are quiet here. People would have to actually rely on their government for consistency and support to make them terribly concerned about the situation. In San Pedro Sula (3 ½ hours away) and Tegucigalpa (7 hours away) there are demonstrations still going on by Zelaya supporters which aren’t violent but do close down the highways. According to the polls, half the people don’t like Zelaya and half the people don’t like Michelletti, but what the polls leave out is that only a tiny fraction of people believe that at the end of this anything will change. Here the situation is not called a “military coup.” It is called a “political crisis.” As I understand it from the Honduran press and people I have spoken with, it is widely understood here is that Zelaya’s arrest order was issued by the Supreme Court prior to his ouster, that the military chose to exile him to keep the country from erupting in violence, and that Michelletti does not intend to hold on to the presidency but pass it to whoever wins the previously scheduled elections in November. Politicians do awful corrupt things here all the time and you just have to keep going about your day, it seems. People’s main concern seems to be that things at least not get any worse.

So everything is the same, if not actually quieter than before. There has been a curfew on and off. You never know what time it starts, so the bar scene is lots of people asking everybody else “a que hora es la toque de queda?” And a lot of shrugs in response. On the bad side, it isn’t feasible nor just to keep such policy in effect. On the good side, there has been far less crime here as a result of people not being out on the streets at all hours of the night. The curfew has been lifted for the last few days but is going back into effect again as the rhetoric heats up in the approach to the next set of political negotiations mediated by Costa Rica’s president. It effects me less than not at all because I fall asleep by 9:30 each night, absolutely exhausted after a day at school and an evening of planning the next day.

But now the important things…my kids! They are doing quite well most of them. Their classroom discipline has gotten a bit slack since I left, but without adequate volunteers the Honduran teachers often leave them fairly unsupervised to copy pages from their books. The thinking here is that reading and writing the material will help them learn it. But for a second grader, only semi-able to read aloud at all, copying the material is a slow . word . for . word . process . and . they . can’t . keep . track . of . what . they . are . reading . you . get . the . idea? I can’t entirely blame the teachers. If there aren’t volunteers, they are faced with teaching up to 4 grades by themselves. It is impossible to lead even two classes at the same time when they have completely different materials provided by the government and the kids are incapable of following directions on their own. (Don’t get me started on the fact that the government textbooks are way too complicated for their intended grade levels…WAY too complicated.)

So, I have come to a very seemingly simple concept for my time here…to get the kids following directions and reading for content. Crazy ain’t it? Actually finding the solution in the paragraph above the question? But this is almost entirely beyond many of my kids. This weekend I’ll be researching the process for reading comprehension in American schools and start culling or creating materials and strategies to use with my kids. I’ll keep you posted on my successes (if there are any.) If nothing else, my following directions curriculum can involve a fair deal of games like “Mother may I?” and “Simon Says…” (except they’ll have to be more like “¿Papá puedo?” and “Diego Dice...”)

Worry not, those who know my penchant of activism, I am not involving myself politically in any way. It is not my country and none of my business ultimately. I don’t even entertain the thought of asking questions about the situation even with those I already know quite well. That said, I was struck by the hilarity of third world politics today while teaching Social Studies to my second graders. We were reading about public services: drinking water, electricity, phone and postal service, streets and bridges, trash pickup, waste removal, basic education, and health services. My kids do not have access, at least not on any regular basis, to a single one of these things. They live without running water, without electricity, without postal service…they burn their trash…they go to a private charity school because they can’t afford the “public” education…they walk miles on difficult mountain paths to get to school because there are no roads to their houses…they only go to a doctor for an emergency…the family might have a cell phone but they rarely have minutes to make calls and the kids must bring it to school where there is electricity to charge it…and here is the government telling them what they should be providing…I MEAN REALLY GOVERNMENT TEXTBOOK PEOPLE!!!! I can’t help wondering who wrote the book (blind conservatives or ironic liberals perhaps?) The poor kids just looked at me like I was crazy…didn’t I know what life was really like? I assured them that I do know. We talked about how many of these things aren’t true in the valley where the school is and the kids live…and that some of the things aren’t true in the cities, either. And I presented the question for them to think about, should the government provide these things? I assured them they didn’t have to answer in front of anyone but encouraged them to think about it. I’ll see if we ever get around to the discussion again.

So, maybe I should retract my statement about not getting politically involved, but I will hold to the fact that it was not my fault. It was on page 42 of the government issued 2nd Grade Social Studies textbook!

Coup be damned!

2009-07-08T19:27:00.000-07:00

Yes...that’s right…I’ve decided to go back to Honduras! By tomorrow evening I’ll be happily ensconced with the fabulous Aguero family in La Ceiba. I fly Continental to San Pedro Sula and take a bus right from the airport to La Ceiba.

What’s that clamor coming from the south central region of the US? That’s my family in Texas…some of them think I’m crazy, but I say…

Yes…twelve days ag0 the President of Honduras was, via military escort, unceremoniously put on a plane to Costa Rica while still in his pajamas...

…and…

Yes…there has been unrest between the ex-President’s supporters and the military but…

…that’s in the capital, Tegucigalpa, which is a LONG way from where I work.

…I know the layout of La Ceiba well and can avoid crowds should I need to do so.

…and…

Yes…I am a little concerned, which is, as I see it, a good sign that I’m not seeking adventure nor being blind to the realities but taking seriously both the work to which I’m committed and my personal safety.

I’ve had my ear to the ground, as it were, reading several sites regularly as well as talking with my friends there in La Ceiba. For those interested in a non-CNN take on things (as much of their information comes from Telesur, the Venezuelan state run channel) I recommend BBC, Associated Press, and Reuters. I’ve been heartened by the more open opinion pieces in Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. For those who can read Spanish, there are three Honduran daily papers online: La Prensa, El Heraldo, and La Tribuna. (You find those at www.laprensa.hn, etc.) I’ve also checked in regularly with the US Department of State so that I can know what it is I’m representing as a result of my passport. Google News carries the headlines from all over the world and the Cuban papers serve for a particularly good hoot from time to time if you find overtly propagandized statements to be funny.

As for myself, I am abstaining as much as possible from opinion. It is not, after all, my country. I am curious and open to learning the viewpoints of Hondurans from all sides of the argument(s). What I want is to get back to teaching incredibly disadvantaged kids who deserve better than the world is currently giving them, to help them gain the skills of language and mathematical literacy and critical thinking, and to let them know that they are loved, even if it is only by a gringa voluntaria.

#16 Butterfly in the Sky!

2009-03-22T18:59:00.000-07:00

I took my second and third graders out for a pretty amazing Friday field trip…we went to the Butterfly Museum! Now, it probably won’t be exciting to people who think of museums like the Houston Museum of Natural Science or the Smithsonian’s anything. Museums in the developing world usually exist as a result of one person’s incredibly dedicated efforts, in this case that person’s name is Robert Lehman. Robert has been in Honduras since the 1960s, working in community development and teaching…and collecting bugs! He has been a wealth of cultural information for me and he was a wonderfully passionate teacher for my 16 kids, which he kindly did all for free. (That’s him in the headscarf in the pictures.)

Now, another note about museums in the developing world. There is not a plethora of expensive, hands-on exhibits or floor upon floor of displays. The butterfly museum is a large room built onto the back of Robert’s house here in La Ceiba. Three whole walls and 5 displays in the middle of the room are covered floor to ceiling with glass faced display cabinets holding over 13,000 insects, as well as informational displays about Honduran ecology, the life cycle of insects, where in the world all these crazy bugs come from, and where in the world all the crazy people have come from to look at them. 10,000 of the beautiful (and ugly) bugs come from right here in Honduras, many (maybe most) of them caught by Robert right here in the La Ceiba area.

My kids not only learned about bugs but also got the chance to see just how amazing the natural wealth of their country is. The largest moth in the world (1 foot wingspan) was found in my neighborhood! The Rio Cangrejal where my kids live hosts beautiful Blue Morphos and tricky Owl Eyes and the butterfly with the longest proboscis in the world. It was also a great chance to reinforce the idea of there being other countries and other places, as we got to see samples of insects from 6 of the continents including the world’s largest scorpion (Thailand can keep hosting that one…the ones in my classroom here in Honduras are big enough for me.)

The kids got to handle live bugs, too. There were two tarantulas, one of whom had just molted so we got to see her old “dress” as Robert called it. There was a Harlequin Beetle (the one with the ridiculously long front legs.) There were also Honduran rhinoceros beetles (which apparently live in the bathroom at night so that they can fly around.) Outside he was breeding grasshoppers (who happily munched away on his plants) and butterflies. He went out early that morning to some of the empty lots and collected with two nets which he then used to describe the collecting process to the kids before emptying them onto a sheet and letting them go at it finding insects, identifying what they knew and asking about ones they didn’t know.

My kids were wonderful. Other than a bit of watchful eye for running or absconding with crayons in their pockets and a pause for orange juice to get energy and attention going again (although I had brought an orange and a hunk of bread for each for breakfast…but they probably didn’t get much if any dinner the night before.) It was a typical Honduran day in that the electricity was out (due to repairs we are told…it’s been happening a lot lately.) Robert ran some lights off of two small gasoline generators he has, so we were without air conditioning and the day is forever mixed a bit with the smell of gasoline exhaust, but we were able to see all the exhibits and a good time was had by all (including two visiting US university students…who were hung over and not big fans of bugs but made a good face nonetheless.)

My favorite game of the day was “Catch the Cockroach” which Robert collects in order to feed the live scorpions and tarantulas. My kids showed no fear whatsoever and deftly caught it and got it back into the jar for him. (At which point the two US students agreed to descend from the chairs upon which they were perched.) It was great to have someone help to reinforce the idea of catching and releasing bugs (especially at school because the chickens will eat them!) My kids laughed at some of the myths that Robert said other people held and easily answered many questions that he said most city children couldn’t answer. It was amazing to provide them with such a wonderful educational experience and I can’t wait to do it again in the future with another couple of grades.

#16 A Word to Those Who Might Think They Are Wise

2009-03-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

Honduras seems rife with international aid. There seems to be no lack of government programs, mission groups, and volunteers. I hear English spoken and meet new gringos almost every day. But for all the gringos and groups of gringos passing through, so many of them seem to leave no wiser than they arrived. Only here for a week, at most two or three, they never get the chance to see the full picture that is Honduras. After four months, I feel like I have only begun to scratch the layers lying just below the surface. I want to offer some humble advice for those who want to help by coming to visit or sending aid.

IF THERE IS SO MUCH AID, WHY IS THERE STILL SO MUCH POVERTY AND STRIFE? To put it bluntly, our meager efforts to help usually feel like spitting in the wind. Government aid dwindles as it passes through filters of corruption, not just in the Honduran government but throughout the hierarchy of contractors and personnel. You might send a container of computers, but unless there is someone here to fight tooth and nail with Aduana (Customs) you may not see your complete shipment come off the dock. Perhaps you are paying a seemingly well meaning Honduran couple to run your orphanage, but without close supervision you may find yourself losing supplies. It happens all the time. Many people have given up and just put up with this enormous, malignant problem. And, in a way, I can understand it. When you are poor or economically insecure (and very, very few people in Honduras are rich or economically secure) you see the riches as more than any one program needs and you feel you deserve more for you hard work and somehow it doesn’t seem wrong to take a little. Who would even notice? And it gets easier and easier to take over time, especially as you watch many around you do the same.
It is also easy to steal when you see so many people doing things much worse to earn an easy buck. Honduras is fairly well-known now for narco-trafficking. I have been told by multiple sources that as Columbia has buckled down on its drug traffickers, they have moved operations here. Many people are very suspicious of the small airports springing up on the Bay Islands. With the drug rings come the guns, the violence, the ridiculous wealth that springs up overnight, and people are trapped in a dangerous world they can never leave if they want their families to survive. The big cities and even the small ones have gangs, even more dangerous than the ones we know in the States. Without enough un-corrupted police, it is impossible to battle the crime adequately.
Many of the reasons poverty is so rampant here are the same reasons poverty exists in the US. People who do have money want to hold on to it, especially given the lack of social security here. They have earned their money and want to enjoy it. They believe the poor are meant to be poor due to stupidness, laziness, or both. I have certainly gotten to see that the poor are sometimes less cognitively developed and far more likely to be mired in hopelessness. I might easily be in the same shoes if my mother had lacked adequate nutrition while pregnant and nursing with me or if I had to face their same life obstacles, I too would feel hopeless. But I haven’t met any more people who are poor and stupid or poor and lazy than I meet who are rich and both.
The average age of first birth here is 15. That’s right, many Honduran women are around the age of 15 when they give birth to their first child. One mother in the school is 29, like me, and has 6 children, one in highschool. With a baby and the only available childcare your own poor family and no more than a 6th grade education, out the window go your job and educational prospects, unless you can develop some kind of a home based income like sewing, making charcoal, baking bread to sell in a roadside stand, growing fruit in your garden, etc. Child and domestic abuse are common. You might fear your husband, but you fear hunger and being alone supporting your several children more. Kids work most days, after school and on Saturdays especially, and even the young ones have duties around the house. This, too, impedes educational development. You cannot ask them to do essays or much homework to make up for the short school day. They simply won’t do it if it comes down to homework or money earned to stock the family’s paltry pantry.
It really feels like spitting in the wind if you only see the big picture. This isn’t to discourage people helping, but to give them an idea of what they are up against. Don’t think your coming here or your aid will change the world. It may change a life, even maybe just for a day or an hour, and therefore it is worthwhile. It is the little steps that end up making the difference. One group donated the money for us to build the last of our steps up to the school. It will make a huge difference in rainy season to have the foundation protected from being washed away and to have a smooth and sizeable outdoor surface where the kids can gather. They also donated a week of their time to get the first third of the project done. It may not seem like much, and some people would say it is better to send your airfare money instead, but I disagree. It changed those university students’ lives to spend a week with the kids, doing many science projects that succeeded (as well as a few that didn’t…but that’s life and learning!)

WHAT SHOULD I DO WHILE I AM THERE? For starters, learn some Spanish. Do not expect people to speak English. But don’t expect that everyone speaks Spanish. There were many peoples and languages here before the Spaniards ever stepped foot here. There is Garifuna, Chorti, Moskito, and the Island version of English to name the ones I’ve personally run into.
Second, resist the urge to talk. Listen instead. Find out what people already know. Ask questions of the people. Find out what people need before assuming they want your help. Learn what their values are. Ask questions of yourself. Do you really know the “truth?” Are you sure that your life is better than theirs in all respects? Did you know that those pretty light streaks in that child’s hair are really a sign of protein deficiency? Did you know that the toddler’s teeth are rotting out because he gnaws on sugary roadside plants because there is not food at home most days? Remember that everyone is an individual. The people here will not all like the same music or the same foods as all the other people. Even vocabulary and basic slang can change just moving from one side of the city to the other.
Concrete help is always good and can often be completed in a concise period of time. Projects that don’t require upkeep are especially a good idea. If you want to plant a garden, fine, but will there be anyone who is going to be able to keep it going? Did you choose plants that will grow here throughout the year and into the next? You can send a huge number of vitamins, but even if the label is in Spanish, will the people be able to read them and understand what they are for, how often to take them, etc.? Sustainability is a problem here. People do not always know how to fix something that has broken or has developed a problem. Look for the simplest solution you can provide. Nine times out of time that is what you need to do. If you do not have a specialty, consider funding the trip for a specialist that is needed here. Sanitation, health, education…these are all the bases from which the poor can improve their lives. A surgeon, a civil engineer, a special education evaluator…these people can make huge differences in many lives in a concise period of time if given the right kind of support.

WHAT SHOULD I BRING OR SEND? Barring natural disasters, we really probably don’t need your old clothes. We sometimes feel we are swimming in used American clothing. We always need shoes, but only shoes that are going to last. We always need new underwear. We always need quality sheets, towels, and light blankets.
Durability is a big issue. What you send needs to survive the rainy season, being worn in the jungle or under the hot highland sun, being worn every day. Kids use everything, especially shoes, harder than adults will. There are no washing machines and rarely soap, so clothes are washed by being beaten against the rocks in the river. It always makes me smile to see a small, shoeless girl in a worn-out velvet dress on a hot day…such an oxymoron…but it makes me wonder what the donator was thinking…where would a poor Honduran child wear a winter party frock? How hot that poor babe must be!
Don’t fall into the trap of “They’re poor. They’ll like whatever we give them.” If toys are cheap or not age appropriate, if clothing is of poor quality, it will not be kept for long. People may smile and say “Gracias” but if it were you, wouldn’t you be thinking “Do they think I’m stupid? That I have no pride?” If you wouldn’t wear it on the street, why would you subject someone else to wearing it? (Look into recycling it there in the States, Europe, or Australia…the companies do exist.)
Consider where the item will go when it wears out. Consider the packaging. This is especially a problem with plastic toys, or as one friend here calls it “Junk for Jesus.” When it breaks in the States, we send it to the trash bin on the curb where the city picks it up regularly and takes it to the dump where it is sequestered and made at least somewhat sanitary. Here there is no one to pick up the garbage in many places outside the cities or people may be too poor to pay for the service. Here people live on the trash dumps because they can’t find anywhere else to live. Here people burn their trash in their stoves to cook their food. For the same amount you spent on the toys, you could likely have found school or art supplies, nutritional snacks like dried fruit in paper boxes, or educational games that can be shared and used for years. Why send things in easily broken plastic bags when you could splurge just a bit more on cheap plastic boxes with lids that can be used for years? Can something be wrapped in another useful item? One church group gave out stockings to the kids at Christmas, just a regular sock filled with candy, pencils, erasers, pencil sharpeners, rulers, etc. It was great except that they didn’t think to stuff the other sock in too. What is a child going to do with one sock? People send cardboard puzzles in cardboard boxes…what do you think happens to those in the humidity? Also, most kids are not patient or cognitively advanced enough to do even a 100 piece puzzle. Think simple and multi-use as often as you can.
If you are coming to visit a project, avoid bringing candy or sodas. The kids can usually afford a little candy each week. It’s cheap even here where it is almost always an import. Bring chocolate milk or juice or drink mixes rather than soda (consider the lack of refrigeration and air conditioning.) Bring fruit or vegetables, especially fruits that the kids have never seen or been able to try. My second and third graders are crazy for broccoli now, which I brought to school in order to show them that it really is possible to eat flowers (we were studying parts of the plant.) And unlike the candy wrappers, the peels and trash from fruit and vegetables will be nutritious for the environment, not toxic. If you are bringing a drink of some kind, bring some quality plastic cups (these never seem to last at the Jungle School but slowly filter away to be used as shovels or other toys on the playground.) If you are visiting a family in poverty, bring dry goods or a frozen chicken (which can keep for at least 24 hours without refrigeration…most people don’t have electricity.) These gifts seem ridiculously cheap to us but they are well out of the family’s price range. Simple toys, like balls or Frisbees, are great if you have a chance to play with older children. I took one family two chickens and a sock filled with rice to make a ball. We had hours of fun.
Carry a cheap notebook, nothing you’ll be sad to lose. You can record what you learn, your self-reflections (if you trip is any kind of success, you’ll have lots of them), and you can tear out pages to give away. I don’t know how many pages of the basics of English vocabulary and grammar I have given out in my short time here. (Although this is something I only do if requested; I never force English on anyone.) And I am going home with more notes and drawings from children than I will ever know what to do with.

ONE LAST ITEM ON THE PACKING LIST: The last and most important thing to bring is your humility. Check your arrogance in your North American airport (for those travelling from other continents, you are still likely to go through Miami, so feel free to leave yours there.) You may think you won’t have it, but it will creep up on you without your realizing (it happens to me frequently.) Whatever you do for these children, it was only a drop into their very deep well of need.
I’m not saying this to discourage you but rather to encourage you to do your work with a sense of reality. I met one young man who had been here a week and was overly proud of the bookcases he had helped build at an orphanage. Don’t get me wrong, the kids needed them and I appreciate that someone came out to put together 25 bookcases. At the end of a morning of teaching in the Jungle, I’m wiped and not about to be putting together bookcases in the afternoon heat. And we won’t be able to find Hondurans willing to do it for free. But don’t get too crazy with the pride. After all, they were just bookcases. They were not an end to poverty or child abuse or malnutrition. I would have preferred to hear, “Well, we made bookcases, and when we come back we will do something even better.”
I don’t think that I have done so much I should be arrogant, either. Please don’t think that. I go to bed each night thinking of all the things I could have done better. I keep thinking of projects that I should have done while I was here. I keep thinking of ways I could have phrased things better to improve the children’s understanding of a topic or their sense of self-esteem. I’ve been spitting into the wind, too. I’ve just been here long enough to start learning how to aim a little better, maybe, I hope. I will learn more each time I come back. It is all about perspective. I don’t fault the folks demanding more of me or lying about having received their gift and wanting me to give them more. To them I am enormously wealthy (even as I have watched my net-worth dwindle to less than half its size amidst our economic woes.) I politely explain that no, I am sure I already gave them a soup packet so no, they cannot have another one as this means someone else would have to go without. I also explain that in my culture (and amongst many middle class Hondurans as well) it is customary to preface and/or close any request with the word “please,” and that they should keep this in mind for their future requests as it will help them get what they need, but no, my answer isn’t changing. [Okay, that is a bit of wishful thinking really…by the end of a day I am so tired that I am just as likely to give them another soup packet if no one is looking.]

I remind myself every day that justice is not a natural phenomenon. The life of the gazelle or blue jay or wild mongolian horse is not fair. It could be eaten by something stronger, bigger, and faster. It could succumb to a nasty disease. It could be washed away in a flash flood while drinking from a river. It lives very much in the present. Poor children are much the same and I have learned a great deal from them about how to keep my wider perspective. But in the same way we see animals in the shapes of clouds or constellations of stars, we have developed this concept of Justice, a deeper concept that we feel should be there even when it isn’t.
It is we, all humanity, together, who must carry it out, we who must create Justice with our own hands and sweat and cradle it like a precious child, keeping watch as it learns to walk that it not falter and injure itself permanently. It will grow very slowly. We may never see it take more than a few baby steps within the generations walking the earth right now. But why should that mean it is impossible?

#15 I Just Can't Say Goodbye...

2009-03-11T18:29:00.000-07:00

THINGS I WON’T MISS:
· the rainy season…
· the fact that everything here is “relative” (read: a little bit of a lie…at least a little bit…)
· my kitten, Lempira…he’s coming home with me!
· learning just how cruel people can be to their own flesh and blood…
· boiling water on the stove in order to avoid bathing in cold water,
· the starving, skin and bones dogs who cower when you come near because they expect to be beaten,
· constant repetitions of the word “crazy” with a Latin lilt (gotta teach the kids another English word…)
· learning the signs of malnutrition…
· adults who can’t take responsibility for their own mistakes and blame the kids…
· fried lunch meat on my dinner plate…
· learning just how cruel people can be if they can write off someone for being poor…

THINGS I WILL MISS:
· the blaring 70s and 80s music in the supermarket (and to which I can’t resist the urge to boogie right there in the produce section)
· Geny’s jokes…
· Jose’s “Kati!” every time I pass by…
· Marieli’s laugh…
· Luis’ “stoy muerto” routine…
· Bryon, the street vender, who says that he loves my freckles
· Eloisa’s intellect…
· Nayeli’s smile…
· Paco’s whistling (but don’t tell him I said that because he shouldn’t do it in class…)
· baleadas (refried beans and cheese in a tortilla…I can’t explain exactly why they are so yummy…)
· Toshi, the other remaining volunteer, he’s awesome!
· Diana’s tiny hands…
· Kristian’s “bien”…
· Danielito’s hugs…
· Luzmila’s calm…
· Wilmer’s giggle…
· Paola’s determination (she is the world’s smallest, youngest old soul…)
· the cool moist morning air…
· Soyla’s hair…
· Denis’ writing (he has no idea what it means but he does it so carefully…)
· Nelson’s fastidiousness…
· Paola E’s shyness…
· Dilcia’s good heart…
· the waterfall’s along the Cuenca road…
· Hugo’s attentiveness…
· Kevin’s energy…
· Gloria’s fidgeting (it’s like her butt and the chair are of opposite magnetic poles, I swear…)
· the cool rush of river water…
· Denia’s strength…
· Karla’s quiet fortitude…
· Ronald’s helpfulness…
· the bounty of beautiful butterflies…

#14 ¿Que puta hago aqui? (What the f*ck am I doing here?)

2009-03-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

I've randomly interspersed photos of my classroom to entice readers through my eloquent frustrations...enjoy!

Sometimes it feels like my job here has been merely to care and to witness and if I manage to teach one or two children how to spell a few words correctly, so much the better. The lack of resources, the cultural differences, language differences, the dire poverty, and even the rain and mud and heat and dust have all left me with more questions than answers, more of a to-do list than accomplishments done.

Many children want to learn, but how to learn when there aren’t enough books, when the books they have aren’t something they can yet read, when they don’t know how to think to form a question or to want to know its answer? These are things learned in school and by family members who went to school. I’ve decided, as un-concretely as one can decide anything (because decisions change constantly here) that the language goal of a basic education is to learn how to form a question, how to communicate it clearly, and how to search for its answer. But how to learn when all you know is that you are hungry and tired? When you are sick due to poor sanitation, constant rain (some of it even inside your house,) and malnutrition? There isn’t a trick in the world that I can find to get past that learning hurdle.

The textbooks for Social Studies and Science are almost completely useless. They are fairly heavy in text that is far beyond the kids’ abilities to read, let alone grasp the meaning of in any useful way. These are, by the way, government issued text books, and from what I can tell the Jungle School kids perform at or above the average Honduran public school child. Why they would write books that their children can’t be expected to be able to learn from is beyond my comprehension. The children will copy down any problem I write on the board, be it fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, or open answer, but are completely stumped when asked to answer it on their own. An extraterrestrial might think “No puedo” (I can’t) is a national greeting or courtesy given how often my kids say it.

Honduran education is from another century in so many ways (and I’m not talking about the 20th century.) Education is only legally required until the 6th grade, and this is not even available in some areas. The public schools aren’t completely free, as you must buy and sustain uniforms and school supplies, pay for the guards at the school, and pay the fees for any extra classes like computers. Many families have no hope of covering these costs and adequately feeding themselves.

Public school teachers are one of the only organized labor forces in Honduras. So, whenever there is a labor dispute, whether or not it involves education, the teachers strike. I have heard that they lost over 40 days of school last year due to strikes. Elementary teachers are certified by working as assistant teachers for three years, starting as early as 16. This means that a 19 year old can be a certified teacher. I’ve met few this age from any culture who are capable of handling 15 children with discipline, patience, organization, and maturity. I’m 10 years older, fairly capable in all those arenas, and exhausted at the end of every class period, let alone an entire day. The teachers’ textbooks spell out your entire lesson plan for every class period and explain how to do the math, so obviously the government is somewhat aware of what it is lacking in terms of trained professionals.

It is never lost on me that this was a heavily colonized country, from the endemic poverty to the incredible social stratification. Teachers are the middle class here, although that hardly spells wealth or social security, nor does it keep them immune from the endemic problems of poor self-esteem, lack of initiative, and unreliability. It is a huge accomplishment to become a teacher, but they must find ways to build self esteem and community rather than setting themselves apart from their students by saying “Look how clean we are. Look how much we know. You need to be like us because what you are is not enough.”

When there isn’t adequate self-esteem in a society as a whole (and I don’t think I know of a society where this isn’t a problem) people are always looking for who is “worse” so that they can feel better about themselves. This means everyone is being actively looked down upon by someone above them on this imaginary hierarchy of “worthiness.” When you get to the folks for whom there is no one above them on this ladder, it is as if they are being shat upon by the entire country. And it is their children that I am teaching.

One day we waited a half hour in the pouring rain for one of the teachers to pick us up and take us up to school. When we finally called we found out that he had a meeting that he had forgotten to tell us about. We later found out that his birthday had been the day before as well. And I am constantly fascinated by the horrendous traffic in this small city of maybe 100,000 people that keeps the other teacher from arriving any earlier than 40 minutes late. Yet they are some of the most dedicated and hard working teachers I have met here, so keeping it all in perspective, I have tried hard not to lose my temper. I did do so once, on purpose, because they wanted to restrict tutoring to the tables outside because they believed children were playing with the first grade’s toys in the afternoon. I had to point out that is actually occurs when the first graders are waiting for a teacher to arrive each morning, not under my watchful eye in the afternoon, and that while I am here for the next three weeks we are not moving tutoring to a less conducive environment to facilitate a lack of adult discipline.

But as I said before, I am likely leaving here in three weeks with more questions that I came with, mostly as a result of the extremely relative nature of “truth” and the incredibly subjective but important role of appearances. Uniforms are very good example of how important appearances are, what hidden messages are really being sent to the children, and how they are stressed at the detriment of the substance behind them. Having the right uniform, utterly spotless, with the correct school patch on the sleeve, etc. is a very big deal. Children can be sent home if their uniform is incorrect (and often are from public schools--I’ve been told--I’ve learned to assume everything might be a bit of a lie until I see it for myself.) Lectures are given on the responsibilities each student has, and it always seems to come back around to keeping the uniform clean so that you do not appear to be a dirty, stupid Honduran (read: you are a dirty, stupid Honduran deep down so you need to appear that you aren’t.) During one of these speeches at our school, it wasn’t until the volunteers got a chance to speak that we brought up the idea that the most important responsibility is to learn, to work with your teacher to do so by paying attention, asking questions, doing your homework, and being on time.

I have seen little evidence of consistent tests, quizzes, or grading except by the volunteer teachers. My two kids from public schools had excellent grades in first grade last year but fail to meet most if any of the government standards for first grade. Grades and evaluations are just two more incredibly subjective things, I suppose. But most of my kids are passing on their tests and they all enjoy getting a chance to see what they are learning and earn recognition for it.

I have my work cut out for me when it comes to teaching that cheating is wrong. In a world of appearances and subjectivity, it is better to appear smart than to actually admit that you don’t know something and learn what you didn’t know. How much of this culture operates out of shame? I am afraid to know.

I am not trying to be a brick wall or to swim upstream against a current. I certainly have no intention of importing North American culture as if these people were uncivilized in any way. And, I have found my own compromises between my goals and reality, rather like a sailboat tacking into the wind, never facing its destination head on. For example, a student who gets nothing correct on a test still gets a 60% so that they have a hope of bettering their grade with enough hard work.

I had to recommend we drop one child from second grade back down to first because he could not read or write and was having an incredibly hard time in math. The school director told the mother that “He can’t do anything. Some kids are stupid and need to repeat grades a lot.” I stopped by their house after school to talk to her and to her son to explain in specifics why I felt he would benefit from repeating first grade now that he was at our school, and I made sure to complement his achievements that I had witnessed (he can draw very well, for example). I rounded it out by encouraging him to work hard as I knew he would likely be one of the smartest and most capable children in the class and that I would check in on how he was doing (which I do.) He started out as a silent kid who just stared at me blankly, but now he always has a smile and a hug for me and loves to come inform me of new things he has learned.

I realize that I have been writing a lengthy diatribe on the many failings of the Honduran schools and Honduras in general, but I am not depressed about what I have learned. In many ways they are the average issues faced by the average human being in the average country, only magnified by the circumstances of history and geography. I am glad and appreciative to have a better understanding of the problems. I am hopeful that I can help Honduras to create and provide solutions in my future work here. I want to come back. I love the kids and their families. The land is beautiful. My hope is an amazing feeling.

If I can teach a little hope, and maybe also how to spell “hacer” correctly, well, that would be a life well lived.

#13 Jungle School Sunny Side Up

2009-02-25T18:32:00.000-08:00

Jungle School has been in session for almost three weeks now and I have learned that I love and hate teaching. It is challenging and fun and active. It is also challenging, exhausting, and frustrating. I love learning and I love helping other people learn, but I am ready to lose my cool at least once a day due to one frustration or another. I could do without the misbehavior and lack of initiative, but they are small prices to pay for making what I think is a real difference in these kids’ lives. I will blog tonight about the positive sides of my work and return later to discuss the less positive aspects.

I am teaching Second and Third Grade, Monday through Thursday, from 7am to 1pm. Julia, a volunteer from Austria, and I trade classes for 40 minutes so that she gets a break from Kindergarten by teaching my classes’ Social Studies and I get a break from my kids and get to play and sing with the Kinder kids. On Fridays I teach music to the 5th and 6th graders; we are learning to play the recorder. Then I stay at the school with the younger kids while the older kids go down to the river with Toshi for karate lessons. I’m not a big fan of Fridays. My Monday to Thursday schedule looks like this…

7-7:20am PREPARATION Transportation is a pain for me and the kids, so this is time when they can finish the homework they forgot to take home, read books from our little library, and we can all finish getting to school.

7:20-8am MATH We’ve been doing the order of numbers and the place names as well as greater than, less than, and equal. The 2nd graders are working with numbers 1-999 and the 3rds are working with 1-99,999. I’m looking forward to getting to addition and subtraction next.

8-8:40am SPANISH I give them 12 spelling words a week that we then practice and use throughout the week before having a test on Thursdays. I am focusing on problem areas like v/b, c/s, h, rr/r and ll/y. It has been fascinating to see how often even adults here spell “hacer” (to do or to make) as “aser” because they are unaware of the silent “h” at the beginning or the fact that “c” and “s” have the same sound sometimes. My other favorite spelling issue is fairly particular to Honduras and is that “b” and “v” are both pronounced as “b”. Many of my kids spell 20 as “beinte” and one kid wrote his alphabet with “…Uu Vb Ww…” These are problems we see with adults too…

[The sign says "Don't vote for trash." They thought they were using the word "botar" which means "to throw out."]

We use the words to practice writing and how to form sentences correctly. We are also currently reading some simple poems and using them to learn how to answer reading comprehension questions.

8:40-9am RECESS AND MILK I have loved watching the kids play a game at recess called “The Lucky Bunny” which consists of standing in a circle and clapping hands with the persons on either side of you and saying a poem about a lucky bunny who comes to visit and kisses the boy or girl he likes best. There is one child in the center who is counting around the circle with the beat of the poem and whoever his or her finger is pointing at when the poem is done is the lucky bunny. This person then moves to the center and chooses who they want to kiss, and then this third kid takes to the center to count with the poem. The gender observer in me noticed right away that while girls kiss girls and boys, boys only kiss girls. Ahhh, homophobia…it starts so young.

9-9:40am SOCIAL STUDIES (aka My time to play with the cute kids who are ages 3-6 in the Kinder class.) It is fascinating how hard it is for a 5 year old who has never been to school to learn to differentiate colors or to recognize numbers or letters.

9:40-10:20am SCIENCE We’ve been working on what constitutes life, the life cycle, how we use things that aren’t alive, and the parts of plants. I’m looking forward to getting to animals soon! The kids enjoyed the chance to look close up at leaves with the magnifying glasses I brought with me.

10:20-11:20am ART, CALLIGRAFY, or HEALTH Depending on the kids’ energy level and attention spans, we usually do one day of art, one day of health, and two days of calligraphy (learning to write in script.) Most of my students’ penmanship is atrocious and painstakingly slow, so it is important to practice and I focus on the words from their spelling lists to help us practice those. Art is very basic. We used white chalk on black construction paper to mimic Lenca pottery (the Lenca are a tribe indigenous to western Honduras.) My plan for Health this week is to teach them to wash their hands for at least the duration of the song “Happy Birthday.”

11:20-Noon LUNCH Ahhh, rice and beans and either pineapple or plantain… the rice is from a program called “Kids Against Hunger” so it is specially formulated with soy protein and vitamins. I can’t say I’m a fan, but I always eat a little to make a good show of it. We also try to make sure the kids brush their teeth and take a children’s vitamin.

Noon-1pm TUTORING While Toshi, another volunteer from the US, and Julia teach English to the older kids, I keep myself available to the younger ones to help them with homework and basic skills. I have one second grader who is new to the school this year. He is very capable in math class but completely unable to read, so I am working with him at a very basic level to get him understanding phonics so that he can catch up more quickly to the other kids in terms of language.

I then go down to the road wait for the bus to pass by (which can be at any time between 1:15 and 2.) I try to stop by a house just down the road where one of our first graders lives. His grandmother has asked me to help him with his homework when I can because she can’t…she’s never been to school.

We have two Honduran teachers at our school. Angel is the director and is in charge of 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, although most classes for them are taught by the volunteers Maria (from Spain) and Toshi. Those three grades (about 25 kids in all) share one classroom. The other classroom is headed by Iris, who really only teaches first grade. Also in that room are 2nd and 3rd grades, with me. In total there are around 25 kids in 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Julia teaches about 5 Kinder students in the roofed space in between the two buildings.

We have approximately one textbook for every two kids, so there is a great deal of sharing. I have mostly given up on using textbooks, as sharing is not an easy thing and the time taken up in fighting over who will have the book on which side of the desk is precious learning time lost. I spend my own money to pay for copies so that the kids can have actual worksheets for math and science and a small book of poems that we use for Spanish class.

My biggest goals in my work over the next few weeks is to help set some foundations for these kids to learn HOW to learn, so that they are not completely dependent upon inconsistent and poorly trained teachers for all of their knowledge. I want to instill in each of them at least a kernel of self-esteem. I want to model consistent adult discipline and appropriate behavior. And I want to provide them with a sense that everything they learn has a practical, and maybe even enjoyable, use.

Part of me can’t wait to come back and teach some more. I love the work. Most days, I really love the kids and will miss them terribly and am trying not to think too heavily on that approaching departure date.

#12 Las Cascadas Bejuca, Pico Bonito, Honduras

2009-02-15T18:43:00.000-08:00

I am currently lying on the couch with my slightly battered left knee elevated on pillows, but it is entirely worth it. The other three volunteers and I spent the last two days hiking and camping in Pico Bonito National Park along the Cangrejal River outside of La Ceiba. A Honduran friend,Queso (yes it is a nickname and, yes, it is the Spanish word for cheese) offered to take us up to the top of the waterfall and camp there for the night after our failed attempt to reach the falls on an afternoon hike last Monday.

Lessons learned on that Monday hike:
Lesson #1. Do not count on a dog as your guide. Tonki, the pudgy Rottweiler who belongs to the owner of a lodge along the river, decided to tag along with us and would run ahead on the trail and then wait for us to catch up. No one informed us that we were actually looking for an offshoot of the loop trail, so we missed the turn, and although we found some lovely smaller falls, none of them were the 180ft falls we were expecting to find. Whenever we see Tonki now we call him “Mal Guia” (bad guide.)

Lesson #2. Water droplets on a carpet of moss look like liquid emeralds.
Lesson #3. You don’t have to reach your destination to have an incredible journey.
Lesson #4. Leafcutter ants will go one hell of a long way down the mountain to find good leaves to carry back to their colony. And they form their own little highways as they traverse back and forth by the thousands. Also, smaller ants will hitch rides on the leaves being carried by the larger ants. I could watch them for hours.
Lesson #5. Sitting in front of a water fall and listening to it is like sitting before a wise teacher who speaks in poetry, so that you must take in everything you hear and await the day that you will understand it. And all the time you are listening to your own inner voice.

We camped at the top of the falls, about 200ft above the valley floor. From our fire we could see far up into the Cuenca (Spanish for “watershed” and used to describe the valleys formed by the river and its tributaries.) As the sun set and lights in houses below were turned on, we could sit at our fire and look south into the mountains. We could see that electricity has not yet been installed far into the Cuenca, and as night fell it became an inky black void. From our tents we could see north all the way to the city and where the river meets the sea. Sitting near the edge of the falls, I was far enough out from under the canopy of trees to see the eastern sky filled with more stars than I could count. As the clouds began to form yesterday afternoon (this is after all a cloud forest) they were actually below us, we were so high up! This morning we hiked down to the base of the falls and then to the river valley floor, stopping along the way to enjoy a dip in a beautiful swimming hole.

Lessons learned on this weekend’s hike:
1. The floor of a cloud forest is a loose, peaty dirt mixed with dead leaves that is more than willing to give way at any moment beneath your feet. The only things holding it in place are the tree roots. It really brings home the fact that this soil is not meant for agriculture or ranching and that deforestation is the worst thing you can do.
2. Trees, their roots, and thick vines are my nearest and dearest forest friends. My fall this morning would have been much worse were it not for the strong vine I was able to hook my arm across and thus stop myself from going down the steep slope below the trail. My bruised armpit is a small price to pay for not having to figure out how to get down a steep mountain with broken bones. (Big Honduras lesson: Life hurts sometimes, so get over it. Keep your eye on the positive.) I have endless respect for my students and their hikes to get to school because I know some of their paths aren’t much better.

3. Soaking in cold river water is as good as ice when your knees are hurting.
4. The Cuenca is a beautiful place, full of vibrant life of all kinds, and I really feel like I am a member of the community sometimes. Coming home in the back of a pickup, we were greeted by many of our students playing along the road or in the yards of their homes.

5. Sleeping in a tent with the other 4 volunteers just doesn’t compare to having Lempira, my pygmy jaguar friend, wake me up in the morning by biting my nose.
6. I am definitely closer to 30 than 20 and my body knows it. I should listen better.
7. Caterpillars come in all shapes and sizes.

8. If you crush termites and rub them on your skin, you won’t get bug bites. (I already knew that they taste like carrots.)

9. Mountain spring water tastes delicious!

#11 Solares Nuevos

2009-02-08T18:53:00.000-08:00

I spent my Friday afternoon and Saturday morning helping to organize and deliver food to the campesino village that Helping Honduras Kids has become involved with. Campesino is the Spanish word for peasant, and village is a polite description of the terrible conditions these 250 people are lucky enough to live in. They have chosen for their group name Solares Nuevos, Solares being the Spanish word for plots of land, often referring to tenement homes and Nuevo being new. That’s right…the “new tenements.” They first lost their homes and belongings in Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Then, two years ago, they were forced off the land that they had been living on for 6 years and where they had managed to build adobe homes. A humanitarian group was able to purchase this hectare of land for them just outside the town of La Bomba where they have managed to build wooden shacks and establish something of a home around the one-room concrete building and the well that have been built for them. There was a donor helping provide food until a few months ago, when they had to or chose to stop buying food. Agriculture is next to impossible on this land and completely impossible in the enduringly severe rainy season we are still at times experiencing.

Here are some figures to help you imagine. A hectare is 10,000 square meters, equivalent to a little less than two and a half acres. The average US home is 2,330 square feet. This means that there would be about 47 average US homes back to back and side to side without yards and in each house there would be about 5 and a quarter people. That is one person to every 435 square feet. Sounds livable until you start including shared space like paths, roads, the well, community center, and most importantly the subsistence agriculture these folks so desperately need. The land is low and gathers mud and water easily but is slow to release it and become dry. Even if it was suitable for successfully growing crops, it is not adequate for the variety of foods necessary to ensure nutrition. That would include corn, beans, plantains, and chickens at the very least.

I spent much of my time there talking with the children. They have many of the same problems as the kids at the Jungle School, living in fatherless homes, staph infected bug bites on their legs, light streaks in their hair from malnutrition, trouble learning and staying at grade level in school. However, their problems were all markedly more severe than the ones I encounter at my school. The wounds on their legs were actively bleeding and deeply eaten into the skin, making divots into their shins. I met multiple children who were in grades far behind the average for their age, for example eleven year olds in second grade. I also saw evidence of severe birth defects, including one girl with Down syndrome, a baby with a slightly but obviously oddly shaped head and a boy with the wide set eyes that I have often heard associated with fetal alcohol syndrome. My thoughts today have often strayed back to the girl with Downs, wondering what her future will be, especially should she outlive her parents and siblings and especially in a culture where she is vulnerable to predatory men just for being a girl, let alone developmentally challenged.

The kids taught me the Spanish words for bike seat (monturo) and swing (culumbrio). I taught them the concept of “thousand” in English, so that they can now count up to 999,999 in English. I also taught them my Monkey Poo song, which was a big hit with the kids and the woman driving the delivery van for us.

And now I sit with the information I have gathered and attempt to digest it…looking at it from the personal story angle, the statistical angle, and finally the philosophical angle…trying to see the truths through the mixed muck of poverty and social prejudices and enduring disadvantages in these peoples’ daily lives. Whose fault is it that they are poor? The society at large does not offer them much in the way of opportunities and lives in such ways that demand that someone be poor so that they can be rich. But nor do these people help themselves, instead perpetuating much of their poverty by giving up in the face of such enormous odds and being self-destructive with alcohol and other behaviors. For example, we seriously considered not leaving the unclaimed bags of food for the absent families because it was so likely that someone else would steal them before those families returned. We eventually left the bags under the security of the woman they have chosen as their community representative, but it was with minimal hope that the intended families will actually see all of the nutritious goods intended for them.

Each bag contained a pound of pasta, a pint of tomato sauce, a pound of coffee, a box of milk powder, a pound of shortening, two pounds of beans, two pounds of rice, and two pounds of coffee, and two pounds of sugar…in short, enough to stave off starvation for a week. The kind couple from New Mexico who was donating the food bought enough for us to deliver this for at least two weeks, possibly three. It cost them less than $500. $2 per person in the village.

It seems so easy to help. At the same time it is so difficult to solve. So I am embracing the famous Rilke quote:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved...and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them...Live the questions.”

That is what I am doing here, I think, living my way through the question and hopefully in some small way living the answer whether or not I am aware of it.

#10 Approaching Bilingual

2009-01-26T19:25:00.000-08:00

I know I have achieved an amazing level of comfort with my Spanish now that I have started making up funny songs just like I do in English. Enjoy (especially when imagining me on a bike going up a mountain and singing these at the top of my lungs to keep my spirits up!) The kids particularly enjoy the Monkey song.

MONO /MONKEY
(sung to the tune of Farmer in the Dell)

Soy el mono en el zoo
El mono en el zoo
No me molestas
Te golpeo con mi pupu

I’m a monkey in the zoo
A monkey in the zoo
Don’t you dare to mess with me
I’ll hit you with my poo

CULO ROTO/BROKEN BUTT
(sung to the tune of This Land is Your Land)

O si mi culo
Es muy roto
Porque mi bici
Es muy duro
Porque la calle
Es muy mala
No me gusta montar en bici

O yes my bottom
Is very broken
Because my bike seat
Is very darn hard
Because the road here
Is really horrible
I really hate riding my bike today

#9 Another Day Another Dolor

2009-01-11T18:09:00.000-08:00

I know. I haven’t written in ages. I appear to be absorbing whatever it is in the air here that saps one's work ethic, energy level, and general ability to give a shit. That’s not completely true. I am working hard and I care deeply. Energy, well, that’s definitely lacking. I have fully embraced the siesta culture. Sometimes I embrace it twice a day! This makes it hard to plan my lessons and write my blog.

Although a million things have happened, it also feels like little to nothing has occurred since I last wrote. It is all becoming routine daily life and I forget what might be of interest to those at home. However, here is a recap of my last couple of weeks.

I went to Copan Ruinas, the largest Mayan archeological site in Honduras. The ruins and my reflections deserve an entire blog entry unto themselves, so I will leave that for a later date.

New Year’s was lovely. I chilled with friends here in El Sauce, my barrio, drinking and listening to music, and then making lots of noise when the clock struck midnight. (Well, when it got close to midnight. As usual, exact punctuality is not regarded as necessary here…and for once something actually started early!) I reflected, as is my wont, that my video of the neighbor’s fireworks could be mistaken for Aljazeera coverage of Gaza.

Otherwise my vacation time was quiet. I saw some movies…Madagascar 2 is funny even in Spanish…Red de Mentiras (the Russell Crowe, Leonardo di Caprio CIA flick) was excellent and has made for some interesting arguments around the dinner table. Julia, a new Jungle School volunteer, arrived from Austria. Lempira learned to climb the Christmas tree.

Lempira is also learning to pounce and play rough. His favorite playtime is at about two in the morning. His favorite toy is my face. As a result, he is also learning the word “no” quite well and getting used to sleeping in the bathroom.

We’ve been back at school for almost a week. For the most part, I have adjusted back to the bike riding. It has been blessedly free of rain for over a week, so for the first time the road is truly dry. And thus I’ve discovered the downside to the dry season. The road is now a hard-packed, jarringly rocky ride that creates a dust-flavored mucus-shake in my sinuses and incredibly sore backside by the end of each ride.

Watching Julia adjust to the school this week has put my own experiences in perspective. I feel rather jaded now, although I am also more determined than ever to give these kids everything I can. Who would have thought, before Christmas at least, that I would ever threaten a group of hungry misbehaving first graders with no milk if they didn’t shape up? And to watch them test poor Julia’s patience, seeing how far they can go with any particular thing, gives me a gauge of how much the kids have changed their attitudes toward me since I arrived. I have earned their respect at last, I think. I gave a slide show presentation about why it is bad to leave the trash on the ground, and they were all well behaved and attentive throughout the program. It was an incredibly pleasant surprise. I have gotten a hold of three metal barrels to use as trash cans, which I will paint with some of the artwork the kids have done. Here are some of the kids’ winning artworks (there are so many good ones that I want to combine them rather than pick just three!)

Apparently we are being treated to a missionary group teaching Bible stories next week. As my devout agnostic self, I am looking forward to the opportunity to work on painting my trash cans because I am not about to teach Bible stories (unless I am also allowed to teach the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the Popul Vul, of course.)

In general I have lost my feeling of being a visitor here. I can’t really imagine that March 24th will arrive and I will go back to DC. It just seems unreal. I can’t say that there aren’t things I will look forward to once I get on the plane, especially given that I am currently soaking my swollen, bug-bitten ankle in an attempt to bring the swelling down and perhaps by some baking-soda-miracle relieve the itching. More and more I am less and less thinking about all that I don’t have here and as a result I am not so frustrated. It hasn’t changed my drive to solve the problems here, but rather honed it, like a surgeon learning how to use a scalpel more precisely. I don’t stop to mourn what is lacking because that just delays the solution and enough has been delayed in these kids’ lives.

On Friday I treated several sisters for what I believe is the contagious skin infection impetigo. The children have bug bites all over their legs which they scratch open, inviting in the staph or strep germs which then spread their sores over the kids’ legs. So on Monday I must start working to show them how to wash off the scabs and put antibiotic ointment on the wounds. I would like to tell them to wash their sheets and not brush up against each other, but given that they likely share a bed and don’t have a spare set of sheets, that would just be cruel. Like I said, you have to use the scalpel to cut away at the problem where you can and hope that what portion of the tumor you do excise will help the rest of it to diminish over time.

#8 Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night!

2008-12-26T17:19:00.000-08:00

Ah, my first Christmas in the Developing World

It’s been different than I ever expected, far more calm and sane than I thought it would be. It did not even feel like Christmas at first. There are some lights up here and there...we even have a Christmas tree in our house here in El Sauce, but something was missing…maybe it is the 80 degree afternoons, or the lack of consumerism…

Our Christmas Tree…and my roomies

The Sunday before Christmas we had a big party at the Jungle School, put on by a local Catholic group. It was really great…presents, sandwiches and sodas and cookies, and 2 pinatas! They taught the kids songs and dances to go with them, which the kids sang for the rest of the week.

Kids and Adults Dancing

Kids at the Pinatas

Dave Ashby, HHK founder, at the Pinata

Kids with Presents

I appreciated the work done by this group, especially in comparison to another—Evangelical Christian—group that came the week before. They had stopped in just briefly, given cheap plastic gifts that were often not age appropriate, and there had been no food but lots of prayer, laying on of hands, and Jesus-talk. That group barely interacted with the kids and then they were gone.

What does surprise me about both groups is that the presents they gave were very impractical. Toys are fun, don’t get me wrong, but these kids need so much more. They each got a sock full of candy from one group…one sock…why not make it a pair of socks? Given that the kids are registered with the school, we really need to be collecting the information about each child that would allow and encourage the groups to purchase clothes, shoes, and age appropriate educational toys. We all know Christmas is coming once the calendar says “Octubre”…maybe the older kids could each take on the responsibility of putting together the information for their families. Just a thought…

But back to my own Christmas. Things did start to feel like Christmas when I went to a party at David’s Great Aunt’s house. We ate dinner and listened to a local musician who was coming around the houses and playing a few songs at each one for a few lempiras or a plate of food or a beer. Apparently he is quite famous around La Ceiba and is known as “El Canario.” They were traditional Ceibena songs…beautiful…I could have listened all night but we returned to the Aguero’s house, where we at Midnight we ate a small meal and wished each other “Feliz Navidad.” The next day was calm, full of relaxation, and Honduran tamales (sweeter and cooked in banana leaves rather than corn husks.) Tamales and fireworks, that’s what Christmas is about here it seems…I’ll be glad when our neighbors here in El Sauce run out of fireworks and stop firing them off in the front yard. Tamales, fireworks, and—now that I’m here—baked goods…I’ve made brownies and cookies over the last couple of days. I used too much water in the cookie recipe, and the eggs are small so I had to use two, so I guess I actually made brownies and a cookie cake.

Tomorrow I am off to Copan for a few days to learn more about the Mayans and see a bit of Western Honduras…

#7 I’ve gone and done it now…

2008-12-18T17:56:00.000-08:00

I got myself hitched. He’s a real cutie. His name is Lempira. He’s about six weeks old, I’m guessing. He’s got a few fleas and a swollen belly likely full of round worms and, don’t worry, Dad, he’s a kitten…No…a real kitten. He’ll go to Brenda, one of the students at the school, when I leave in March. I am just trying to see him back to health and vigor, which includes keeping him away from homicidal toddlers.

It isn’t uncommon in India, Bangladesh, and many impoverished places, for younger children to attend school with their older siblings. The only difference here is that many of the older siblings show little to no interest in their toddler hermanitos. We don’t have volunteers or space for these guys but we aren’t about to turn them away from a reliable source of nutrition.

But I think we need to draw the line when the toddlers bring along their small, starving, dirty, flea-ridden kittens to play with. This was the second cat I had to watch be tormented by a homicidal toddler in the last two days. Homicidal seems a strong word for a three year old, doesn’t it? But this three year old was hurling the kitten to the ground with all the force he could muster, then picking it back up while it was still stunned and doing it again.

And, yes, this was while I was trying to teach geometry.

I know that I have limitations. I am one woman and cannot single handedly wipe out endemic poverty and its woes. But I could do something in this situation.

So I took the kitten away from the three year old. To him it was a cute ball of fur with no more rights or feelings than most people attribute to, say, a three year old. There isn’t any reasoning or explaining that can change a very limited mind. So, I stopped teaching geometry and took the role of the responsible adult…and ten minutes after I took it away, he seemed to have forgotten it completely and had started playing with a plastic bag over his head (which I also took away despite the urge to let nature run its course.)

The kitten stayed, quite happily, in a box on the table in the corner of the room. Anyone who approached it was threatened with no milk or lunch if they so much as touched the box. The kitten curled up and went to sleep. He awoke when I brought in a little of the milk mixture we give the kids, which I diluted with water and he gobbled down hungrily, then crawled onto my hand and fell asleep again.

It was the kitten version of a kidnap victim’s response. Food! Sleep!

So, I made up my mind that he wasn’t going back to the toddler. This child comes from the poorest family. They don’t have enough food for themselves. This little guy wouldn’t last but another two incredibly miserable weeks at the very most. After lunch I convinced the oldest child in the family (she’s six) that it was sick (and showed her the distended belly to prove it) and that there was no way they could care for it, so she gifted the kitten to Brenda, another girl of about ten or eleven. This I found acceptable, as Brenda seems in good health and, even better, sane mind. As I was leaving, Brenda ran up to me with the kitten and asked me to have it.

It is amazing how when you have nothing, it causes you to see value in nothing…or everything. The toddler’s sister couldn’t care less about the cat. It would likely die anyway. There would always be another amongst the limitless hungry, unsprayed and unneutered population. Brenda valued what the cat needed, that I could provide it, and what caring for the cat might mean to me. She and I had bonded over her great work in Geometry, and she wanted to show me how much I mean to her. I asked Brenda if she could take it when I have to go back to the US, by which time it will be bigger and healthier and won’t need so much constant care, and she said yes.

Crap. No more excuses. And how could I say no to those green eyes?

So, feeling a little bit like the Wicked Witch with Toto in the bike’s basket, Lempira and I came home to Ceiba. Together we learned online that he is indeed likely a he (it’s hard to tell at this age,) that he is likely about 6 weeks old (his baby teeth are almost all in but he is too small to be a full two months,) that most likely his belly is swollen due to roundworms (for which I am trying to find a treatment here,) and how we would go about litter box training, etc. At the store we found Kitten Chow, some yummy treats, Ivory Dish Soap, Combs, and a large plastic tray with sunflowers that will be serving as the litter box. Cats here are always outdoor cats. David says they just pee everywhere and hates them, but I am determined to succeed with the plastic tray and the fine silt that I collected at the side of the road.

Lempira has now eaten his fill (which took two platefuls of Kitten Chow.) He has had a bath (which he did not enjoy but which seems to have killed most of his fleas) and lots of cuddle time to warm back up from said bath. He has explored the room with gusto and discovered a feisty enemy in the form of my backpack. I can see that his fur and gait have already begun to improve a bit just from a bath and the sense of safety. I am laying on my bed, and he has curled up in the crook of my neck (he wants constant contact) and gone to sleep purring.

At least I will have succeeded in positively touching one life here…

#6 E. coli? Sure I’ll try anything!

2008-12-16T15:31:00.000-08:00

DISCLAIMER: This blog entry includes decorative discussion of my bowels, so readers beware. If you don’t want to know what it is like to have a horrid digestive infection, then don’t read this entry…

It’s been a while since I’ve written, right? Well, it’s been a couple of days since I left the house or ate solid food, too!

I awoke on Sunday morning with the most watery diarrhea of my life. I had been out partying the night before and I thought, “Okay, fine, I’ve done this to myself. This must be my version of a Honduran hangover.” Alas, no. Things headed downhill a couple of hours later when I added to the hourly diarrhea regimen the companion activity of vomiting. That’s right…both ends…sometimes at the same time!

I have nothing but the upmost empathy for babies with diaper rash. I thought I had somehow given myself a chemical burn, I swear. Thankfully, skin heals quickly.

My favorite moments were:
1. After cleaning myself up, going to my bed where I had thrown my water bottle on the way to the bathroom…well, I hadn’t gotten the bottle fully closed so there was a nice huge puddle of wet in the middle of my bed! I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening curled up in a ball, perched on the edge of the mattress until the worst of the wet had dried.
2. The expat Dr. Black came over after I had emailed him to please help me as my Imodium wasn’t doing a damn thing. He took my pulse and told me, “Well, you’re not in extremis.” I nearly cried…I was thinking, this is pretty extreme! He gave me anti-nausea medication in both pill and suppository form and told me to take both so that at least one might stay in. He then came back later after I had fallen asleep with the injectable form of the medication just in case neither the suppository nor pill stayed in or did the trick.

I had decided that at that point, if the only way to stop the pain was through injected medications, I was going to the hospital. (Don’t worry, that would be the nice, clean, private hospital not the scary, dirty, public one. )

I think I scared both David and my mother a little. I was fairly out of it when they called to check on me. Monday fared a bit better. Dry toast in the morning and afternoon and chicken soup with rice in the evening. I didn’t even try to go to school. Dr. Black and Cynthia had me drinking a powdered drink called Gastrolyte to keep my electrolytes correct. I started antibiotics yesterday once I was fairly certain of keeping them down.

So I now continue to repair myself. Lots of naps. Chicken broth with white rice. Lots of water. More naps. More water. It’s not quite all systems normal yet. Things are gurgling in ways they never have before and my abdominal muscles are sore as the dickens.

I managed to get to school today although I was incredibly ragged by the time we arrived. The road has been severely damaged by the latest rains. One section was completely blocked by a landslide but has been somewhat cleared by a bulldozer. It is now a large mud puddle, ankle deep and iron-rich red mud. But I was okay. After all, I’d seen grosser. Recently. In my own bathroom.

One of the older kids was riding his bike back from the store and kept me company as I tended to lag behind Cynthia and Brooke. I must not have looked too good but I held my own.

My sweat tastes like Gastrolyte. I hate the taste of Gastrolyte.

#5 It’s raining! It’s pouring! I’m bored and snoring!

2008-12-12T05:52:00.001-08:00

So yesterday morning I awoke around 2am to the sound of pounding rain. It had not let up when we left the house at 7:30am to bike to school. It had not let up when we stopped to shelter under a corrugated tin awning. It did not let up for the hour we waited there, reviewing the US state capitols, the capitols of Central and South American countries, and the names of the Australian territories and their capitols. At 9am we gave up given the high possibility of mudslides and road outages further ahead where the road becomes dirt or gravel and runs right above the river along the valley slope.) So we headed back home, slogging through water up to our thighs (and this on the paved part of the road!) Oh, my brave willies, they tried so hard but were no match for the water, and once I got home I learned just how hard it is to removed your foot from knee high waterproof boots that are completely filled with water!

I filled my day with a nice long nap, a lot of snacking on anything I could muster from the fridge, translating three children’s books into Spanish, and researching ideas for teaching practical math skills in an enjoyable way.

Reports this morning are that there is at least one small landslide between us and the school and likely the road further past the school into the mountain is even worse, so Cynthia has declared it a day off again for us. The rain has yet to let up for more than an hour at most, but we hope it will let up soon and that things can dry up a bit over the weekend.

Brooke and Me…

Brooke and Cynthia…

This is what we waded through…

#4 Cultural Encounters of the National Geographic Kind

2008-12-10T17:39:00.000-08:00

In addition to the numerous human Hondurans I have met, I have now also had close encounters with:
…the hen and rooster that live at the Jungle School (and whom I have named Lunch and Dinner in Spanish…)
…the enraged version of said rooster who had accidentally been locked into one of the classrooms over night,
…the puppy named Punky who likes to sleep in the kitchen trash at the school,
…the weevils in the school’s maize flour that must be sifted out,
…a large scorpion (okay, it wasn’t that close, but 10 feet was close enough for me…)
…numerous El Sauce guard dogs that love to jump at you through the house fences,
…lots of roadside livestock including skinny cows, skinny horses, and incredibly fattened pigs (there’s lots of roadside trash…)
…a grey 8 foot long but dead venomous snake by the side of the road,
…the six foot boa constrictor that was trying to eat the 8 foot long venomous snake when it was run over by a truck (so, yes, it was dead on the side of the road too…)
…and thousands of vicious sand flies and mosquitoes (and, trust me, the mosquitoes are to be preferred.)

And, here is one last close encounter that I can’t help but share…

#3 Weekend Getaway

2008-12-08T16:40:00.000-08:00

I got out of Ceiba for the weekend to avoid trying to rest amid the car alarms and barking dogs of El Sauce. Instead I spent two lovely nights in El Porvenir with other HHK volunteers Cynthia, Brooke, Nathan, Brendan, and Caroline in a beach house that is used by the HHK program Grandma’s Kids. The project is on hiatus for the holidays, so we had to go look in on the house, right? (and drink beer, walk on the beach, watch movies, and be general layabouts, of course…)

Porvenir is a small town along the beach about a half hour west of Ceiba. The weather was crappy until Sunday…the day we left…but good weather isn’t necessary for sleeping in and napping. At one point a couple of us got separated from the others, but we got directions from a friendly chap named Mario. He owns two restaurants there in Porvenir, where he cut us deals on the food and loaned us a DVD player so that we could watch movies back at the house. It pays to be friendly to people here…good people will be generous and welcoming, I’ve learned. No community here is so large that you won’t run into a person again at some point.

How’s the beach, you ask? Oh, fairly par for any mainland Honduran beach that I have seen. That means it is eroding quickly, shows little sign of healthy life offshore like washed up seaweed or shells, and is covered with dumped trash. I couldn’t tell if the trash came from the sea or the land, but it wasn’t from very far away, that’s certain.

Cynthia wanted to look for shells to show the kids, but we weren’t able to find many, as I said. So we started picking up bits of trash that we thought might be useful…plastic bottle caps for checkers, a dilapidated artificial Christmas tree that I scavenged for décor for the school, etc. etc. etc.

We also found an immature bread fruit that had washed up onshore. Brooke and Nathan were excited to practice their machete hacking skills (looking tough with a machete is part of looking Honduran.) Turns out bread fruit (at least this one) smells just like pumpkin. Who knew?

I’m reading a new book, In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. I highly recommend it. It is a nice addition to the other book I am currently reading, Creating a World Without Poverty by Muhammed Yunnus.

Cynthia, Brooke, and I finished out the weekend of lollygaggation by having a sumptuous lunch buffet at a local German hotel. We were let in on the secret of its existence (and its status as a favorite of the local expats) by Dr. David Black, whom Cynthia helps out at times when he is in need of a female volunteer for ob/gyn exams in the poor communities he serves. He brought along Charlie, who he described as working in blackwater, which bothered me extremely until I realized he meant sanitation, not the questionably ethical international security company. Amongst a lively and long discussion of the political and economic realities of Central America, I fell in love with the view of the palm tree above me...

#2 Setting the Scene...Los Estudiantes

2008-12-07T18:55:00.000-08:00

I begin again and again in my mind to describe my first impressions of the children I’m teaching here but there is so much to say and so many more questions come tumbling in with every thought that I keep erasing and starting over. These children are wonderful, exhilarating, and awe inspiring as are all children when you truly connect with them. But at the same time, their situation feeds my wrath at humanity’s apathy and strums a low chord of terror for their future. It nips at the heels of my enthusiasm.

These kids are incredibly poor. Many of them have only one or two changes of clothes, I’ve noticed. My first day was a Monday and I was terrified by the students lack of attention or discipline and overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of them (over forty) that were awaiting our arrival at 8am…then one of the other volunteers reminded me that many of these kids had little to no food since leaving school after lunch on Friday. Many of the girls have light streaks in their dark hair, which I’ve learned is a sign of malnutrition. At the morning break we provide them with milk, which is powdered milk mixed with hot water and maize flower and a little sugar for taste. For lunch they get rice and beans and a bit of fruit, usually pineapple or banana. The rice is regular rice to which we add packets of soy-and-vitamin-fortified, chicken-flavored rice from a program called “Kids Against Hunger.” Sometimes there is meat or tortillas but not often. Often my kids have come into class having pulled up chunks of a leafy plant they call “canya,” the stems of which they strip of leaves and then proceed to eat. It has an acidic, lemony taste but is likely they closest these kids often get to a leafy green vegetable, which isn’t even all that common a food type among more well to do Hondurans.

There are many large families of kids attending the Jungle School. Some are the usual stories of basic poverty and then some are even worse…children who have lost their parents to AIDS and now live with extended families that couldn’t support their own children in the first place.

There is no set curriculum at the moment. We are in what is called “Vacation Care” as the school year ended with November and starts up again in February. We have been asked to work on their Math and English skills and to teach them Christmas songs to sing to the children at the Helping Honduras Kids Hogar (Orphanage) a few towns over. All three tasks are proving incredibly difficult. I’m teaching Math in the morning in two groups, one grades 4-5, the other grades 2-3. The 6th graders have graduated and the kinders haven’t started yet. That said, our students currently range in age from 3 to 22. The toddlers run about with minimal supervision and little interaction. When they fall down and cry, their older brother or sister leaves class to care for them. If there is an extra volunteer to keep an eye on them or if the toddlers want to settle down with the first graders while they color and talk about language skills all the better, but you can’t count on either, of course. Dilcia, the 22 year old, is actually one of the toddlers’ mother, who is coming when she can during vacation care to improve her English skills. In the afternoon I take a group of kids and work on music, science, or social studies. Teaching music is surprising difficult. For many of the kids, listening to music is an incredible luxury, so rhythm and harmony are fairly foreign concepts.

These kids lack so much, rhythm is really the least of my worries. In math last week we worked on money…practicing how to add it up and subtract it and then with the older kids I’ve also added figuring out how long you would have to work at a certain wage to earn that much money. They can do sums and long division like pros for the most part, but the moment you go to apply it to a practical task, it is completely beyond their imagination.

But they are catching on quickly. Not a soul among them is not in some way a clever problem solver. And they love learning. I have never been so heartened as to see a child sitting, studying my math problem on the board, and choosing to go late to a vital lunch because they want to understand it better or ask a further question. It is not lost on them that these are important skills. When you get past the part where they sometimes miss a basic step they should have learned years ago, something as simple as lining up their numbers in a sum, they are willing to take on more than most children I’ve met. They all want to hold up their sheets of loose leaf paper for me to check and they laugh when I step back and say “Yo soy sola una mujer…uno por uno…” (I am only one woman…one at a time…) When I am sweaty and gritty from biking uphill to the school and they run to me for hugs I can’t help but hug them back despite my grubbiness. And, when I have to fake my enthusiasm for math after trudging up from the road to the classroom, their responding enthusiasm makes for a fabulous feedback loop of positive energy.

Still classes here are not what I could have imagined prior to my arrival here. Trying to teach twenty children who are hungry and who have never in their life been given the kind of supportive, consistent structure to which we were accustomed is much like teaching a room of children with severe ADHD. Tempers flare in a moment, things are thrown, attention is distracted and sometimes they even just walk away from the lesson entirely. If I set something on the table, it is jumped at with the feeding frenzy of sharks. Sharing nicely and waiting one’s turn are not common skills. Anything they hold goes into their mouths in a moment’s notice, an oral fixation that I attribute to both the hunger and the lack of parental guidance to discourage it. I am slowly pushing the basic classroom skills like sitting quietly, raising your hand, and keeping attention on the teacher, but it is an uphill battle. I am earning their respect, however, which means a lot, both personally and for their willingness to agree to my rules. They want to show me respect, I can tell, but as few adults have shown them what that means by respecting them, they don’t know what to do.

We have to lock up everything at night and nothing can be left on or near the window sills where hands could reach in through holes in the window screens. But, I really believe that stealing anything that isn’t locked down, even things they have no use or value for like pencil sharpeners, is just a part of the hoarding behavior typical of someone trying to fill enormous wells of emotional and physical need.

Imagination is the hinge to my current thoughts on my students’ intellects. When Vacation Care started two weeks ago, apparently, the children would only use pencils to draw, crayons and markers were just left to lie there. With a little coaxing, they have taken off with the crayons and markers, and with a little coaxing and practice they start to see that they can solve these practical problems I put before them, but it is an extraordinary task for all of them. I think it goes back to their basic starting places, where there is so little interaction with them while they are forming their early minds and language skills. Their families have so little time to tell them stories or work with them on their colors, numbers, shapes, and letters or even basic motor skills. It occurs to me that imagination is a skill that we teach to tiny children. When you have toys to manipulate and parents to interact with, you form the ability to imagine that those blocks are a castle you are building. These kids have the difficult task of forming the ability to imagine well after the best age for the brain to do so. It isn’t about dreaming big; it’s about solving basic problems in life.

I believe they can do it. I feel incredibly blessed that I can help them with it. I feel sad that we didn’t get there sooner for them and worried that we aren’t doing enough for the little ones who still have the greatest chance.

#1 Setting the Scene...La Ceiba, Honduras

2008-12-04T17:40:00.000-08:00

How the heck are ya, you ask? Well, to be honest, I’m doing quite well, which is great for 5 days in the developing world, 3 days into teaching in a rural school in that developing world, etc, etc.

I got here safely. David (the wonderful dentistry student I met here this past summer and with whom I kept in touch) met me at the airport in San Pedro Sula and we took the bus to La Ceiba together. I was able to get into the house where I am living without too many complications (by Honduran standards) and spent a lovely evening and then a lovely afternoon with David and his family before he got back on a bus for San Pedro Sula and his studies there. I then proceeded to cry for hours on Sunday night, don’t ask me why, probably sheer terror of “what the f*** have I gotten myself into?” and after spending time with a lovely family that reminded me of having just spent lots of time with my own lovely family for Thanksgiving, I was missing my now very far away lovely family like crazy. Thank god for Skype and my mother, that’s all I’m saying. “Thank god for Skype and my mother” will likely be a tagline for many evenings of my time here in Honduras. There’s nothing like facing the deep, dark inadequacies of the world to make you want to crawl back into the womb.

My house here is good…palatial luxury when I see where my students live. I live in the city of La Ceiba, near the outskirts in a neighborhood called El Sauce. Many people live here and it can be noisy…lots of dogs barking and car alarms going off in the night. But it is convenient to both the city and the road out to the school and it is quite safe (again, by Honduran standards.) I rarely travel alone except during the afternoon. We volunteers ride bikes to get to school each morning, meeting here at our house where we lock them up inside for safe keeping. We have to leave quite early as it takes an hour. We’ve discussed finding a place to live closer to the school, but it wouldn’t be as nice or as safe, and as it is rainy season we stand a chance of the road washing out between the school and the nearest village to it where we would likely live (as it is further up the mountain.) That would put a damper on our ability to do our jobs, so, for now, we are here. I live in a house with Cynthia, an Australian woman who is here for a year to be the volunteer coordinator for Helping Honduras Kids. Carly, a British woman, lives upstairs in another bedroom, and teaches at one of the many bilingual schools here in Ceiba. There was a Dutch woman named Ninca living here but she has moved out in search of cheaper abode, so I have moved rooms because my original room has a tendency to leak when it rains and the shower doesn’t work. Now I am in a smaller, more comfy room with a shower that won’t seem to turn off, which is a bummer as I just finally managed to get my bowels calmed down a bit and now I will have to pee all the time from listening to the constant drizzle, but there are worse things in life than spending an significant amount of time on the toilet, right?

Enough about my bowels…I’m sure I’ll have plenty of decorative things to say about them before my four months here is up.

The weather is…well…tropical rainy-season Honduran weather, I guess. Everything is moist. Not soggy, but noticeably moist. The air feels just a bit thick. It rains, sometimes all day and night, sometimes just a constant never ending drizzle that then lets forth a short deluge…I’ve learned that short, can include up to and even over an hour here. My first two days were amazing…hot and dry…not a cloud in sight. It still gets hot most afternoons but the evenings really cool down. While it isn’t cold, there is something of a chill in the air in the evenings. Not like in the States, more like a muggy summer evening when you want to wear a light sweater but then it feels silly to have it on. I often sleep with my sweater on so that I can comfortably keep a fan on…keeping the air moving keeps me from sticking to the just ever so slightly moist sheets. Teaching in this weather is hilarious. When the rain pounds on the tin roof, the kids have to crowd up the board to be able to hear me and then I can’t hear them or understand their shouted Spanish at all. Craft projects are rather a joke…construction paper in this weather tears easier than wet toilet paper! The upside to the rain is that it batters the hell out of the mosquitoes, so those haven’t been too bad so far (by Houston standards, at least.)

Now to describe the school. It is an hour’s bike ride or an hour and a half walk from my house in El Sauce. We go out of the city on one of the highways just far enough to cross the Rio Cangrejal and then turn up the road, which quickly stops being a paved road and becomes a gravel /dirt/mud road as it ascends into the mountains. (Thank god the up is in the morning after a night of sleep. We get off and walk up most of the hills. By the time we get to school, our shoes and legs are caked in mud but that’s just life at the Jungle School I’ve learned.) There are two classrooms, one upper and one lower. There are also bathrooms, a kitchen (we give the kids milk, lunch, and a vitamin each day), and a small playground. The land is incredibly steep, so there is no wide open area for the kids to play soccer, which they instead play in the road. For a reason I cannot see given the expense of dry erase markers, chalkboards are nowhere to be seen in Honduras. (On the upside, you can leave the cap off dry erase markers here and the air is so moist they won’t dry out, not even over the weekend, we’ve learned!) Each classroom has dry erase boards, which we rely on heavily, as materials for the kids are incredibly expensive.

It is all rural and minimal and difficult, but each day, even in the rain, it is breathtakingly beautiful. A small stream runs right by the school right now, and the road winds along the river which is roaring full at the moment and the banks are covered with different leafy flowering plants. The sight just stops all thinking at some points. As I ride my bike up the mountain in the morning, mist is hovering over parts of the forest and I can see huge cascading waterwalls coming down the mountain in the distance…