Sorry about the delay in this blog, but computers were scarce to come by this weekend due to the h0liday, so im gonna have to issue a belated christmas greeting to everyone out there. I hope everybody did a down home christmas, complete with brandy slushes and 24 hours of Christmas Story. Also, im fighting off stomach cramps and a cold, so please excuse my spelling today.
Our christmas was unsual, but very cool also. Our friends david and desire (other married couple) and Delfo came up to the lake for some companionship, celebration, and familiarity during christmas. We took them to the brewery for lunch, took turns making dinner, and all colaborated on our Christmas dinner, which came pretty darn close to being the real thing given the circumstances. The big day here is the 24th, which involves an all day preperation for midnight, at which point everyone blows off fireworks and celebrates with a party, traditional food, and even homemade egg nog. Standing in the middle of our street filled with kids whipping m-80s at each other was a weird xmas, but strangely statisfying as well. Yesterday, Dave and Dez returned to La Ceiba, where we will be visiting them for new years, coincidentaly the party capital of Honduras.
Finally, i want to share a little story that really put everything so far in perspective for me. Foremost, i´ve been trying to maintain emotional distance between honduras and myself; as a defense mechanism to stop myself from being truely influenced by some of the heartbreaking stuff we encounter down here. For example, our next door neighbors are probably amongst the poorest people in town. Their house is perhaps 10 feet by 12 feet, has a dirt floor, and the one room which serves as the kitchen, dinning room and bedroom is wallpapered using the newspaper. We hang out there from time to time, and play with their kids. On christmas eve, they insisted that the five of us come over for nacatamales and coffee. The actions of these people who have nothing and yet give food to a group of americans is truly moving. Last night as well, we were waiting for the last bus in san pedro sula (a kinda dangerous place at night) that never showed up, essentially leaving us stranded. However, a woman waiting with us called her brother who gave us a jalón (hitchhike) all the way home, and even stopped to give us coffee and food at his house. During this season particularly, it amazing to know that people will give an help those better off then themselves, and refuse any payment in return. Also, my attempts to remain emotionally netural are impossible, I only hope that our work and help will make payment for the actions we have received.
merry christmas. ( and happy festivus)
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Thursday, December 22, 2005
¨Everybody Happy People¨
...This was the closing statement of a Honduran friend of ours at a party we held last night in our house, a Christmas party for La Casa De Juventud, which is more or less a nonprofit group we work with here in Las Vegas.
Last night we hosted a potluck dinner, complete with kareoke courtesy of our site-mate´s computer, and beer, courtesy of one of our counterparts. It went from a very awkward silent kind of gathering into a beer-fueled kareoke/dance party catastrophe. It was also our friend, Neckali's birthday, which here means having a egg smashed on your head, as per custom. Why this is, I don't have the faintest clue. However, when the person in charge of this task happens to be wasted and lacking a degree of accuracy, you only end up with egg on your wall, which then eats the paint off, and you have to repaint the wall in the morning.
Also, our floor was spat upon frequently throughout the evening, and I found a reserve of tobacco spit behind some speakers. gross. And I won´t even get into the condition of our bathroom after everyone left last night, but needless to say it was atrocious. Eventually, some guy broke (on purpose maybe? who knows) a beer bottle on our floor, and we decided to pull the plug on the party. However, aside from these few blog-worthy comments, it was an excellent time for all, and funny to boot.
We have started to give English classes to the members of La Casa de Juventud, so maybe I can work in a few key phrases in our next class, like ¨May I spit my chew on your floor?¨, or ¨What effects do eggs have on your painted walls?¨
Life in the Peace Corps is all about teachable moments.
love you all much
S
Last night we hosted a potluck dinner, complete with kareoke courtesy of our site-mate´s computer, and beer, courtesy of one of our counterparts. It went from a very awkward silent kind of gathering into a beer-fueled kareoke/dance party catastrophe. It was also our friend, Neckali's birthday, which here means having a egg smashed on your head, as per custom. Why this is, I don't have the faintest clue. However, when the person in charge of this task happens to be wasted and lacking a degree of accuracy, you only end up with egg on your wall, which then eats the paint off, and you have to repaint the wall in the morning.
Also, our floor was spat upon frequently throughout the evening, and I found a reserve of tobacco spit behind some speakers. gross. And I won´t even get into the condition of our bathroom after everyone left last night, but needless to say it was atrocious. Eventually, some guy broke (on purpose maybe? who knows) a beer bottle on our floor, and we decided to pull the plug on the party. However, aside from these few blog-worthy comments, it was an excellent time for all, and funny to boot.
We have started to give English classes to the members of La Casa de Juventud, so maybe I can work in a few key phrases in our next class, like ¨May I spit my chew on your floor?¨, or ¨What effects do eggs have on your painted walls?¨
Life in the Peace Corps is all about teachable moments.
love you all much
S
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Never enough time
So in the case that anyone is wondering, now that we are in our village/town, I can tell you what we will be doing here as ¨volunteers¨: Everything here eventually should become sustainable, meaning the people of our town will be able to do all of this for themselves after we leave in 2 years...this is the ¨technical¨meaning of our service: Sustainable Development....I wont elaborate on how this doesnt always work.
1. In February, there are plans to start building a library, which Simon and I will be doing much of the planning for. This will include making clubs for kids, starting a traveling library for the kids at the top of the mountain who cant come down for school, etc.
2. Fundraising for town projects and for the library
3. Starting a baseball team for youth and we then have tournament in Teguciagalpa in March with all the other teams.
4. I will be working in the colegio (highschool) at the top of the mountain with a drumline/marching band.
5. Teaching English to the heads of our community, so they can teach it after we leave (two of them are teachers)
6. Working with our sitemate, Sydney, on his buisiness project: forming a doughnut co-op. Eventually we would like to have the town selling to larger cities like San Pedro Sula, which is close to us. Right now, we´re still teaching people how to say the word ¨doughnut¨so we´ll see, but they love the idea, and as of now we use the word: donas. Its close.
All this being said, this is what we did yesterday:
1. Woke up at 7am.
2. Washed clothes in the pila for 3 hours
3. Hung the clothes to dry
4. Went to the market to buy food for lunch and dinner(we´ve been eating beans for 10 meals straight)
5. 2pm-boiled our beans and ate lunch
6. read for a few hours
7. had a stare down with the neighbors for awhile.
8. Fell asleep for a few hours
9. Talked to our other neighbor about dogs, for lack of anything to say.
10. Had a 1 hour meeting about donas.
11. Yelled at neighbor kids
12. Ate dinner and read
13. Went to sleep
All in all, the time just goes too fast here. Im not sure that we will ever get work done.
Also, some general observations about our town and house:
1. All the men wear cowboy hats except for Simon.
2. When someone says, ¨be there at 2pm, it really means 2:45.
3. Though our house in new, we still have to use a buckshower because our water comes from the mountain and is freezing and has low water pressure.
4. The sun is really strong
5. Of all places, our house is next to the Chicken lady in town. There are seriously 100 of them at 5 am outside the bedroom window.
More later.
Ok, time for lunch.
love, Crystal
1. In February, there are plans to start building a library, which Simon and I will be doing much of the planning for. This will include making clubs for kids, starting a traveling library for the kids at the top of the mountain who cant come down for school, etc.
2. Fundraising for town projects and for the library
3. Starting a baseball team for youth and we then have tournament in Teguciagalpa in March with all the other teams.
4. I will be working in the colegio (highschool) at the top of the mountain with a drumline/marching band.
5. Teaching English to the heads of our community, so they can teach it after we leave (two of them are teachers)
6. Working with our sitemate, Sydney, on his buisiness project: forming a doughnut co-op. Eventually we would like to have the town selling to larger cities like San Pedro Sula, which is close to us. Right now, we´re still teaching people how to say the word ¨doughnut¨so we´ll see, but they love the idea, and as of now we use the word: donas. Its close.
All this being said, this is what we did yesterday:
1. Woke up at 7am.
2. Washed clothes in the pila for 3 hours
3. Hung the clothes to dry
4. Went to the market to buy food for lunch and dinner(we´ve been eating beans for 10 meals straight)
5. 2pm-boiled our beans and ate lunch
6. read for a few hours
7. had a stare down with the neighbors for awhile.
8. Fell asleep for a few hours
9. Talked to our other neighbor about dogs, for lack of anything to say.
10. Had a 1 hour meeting about donas.
11. Yelled at neighbor kids
12. Ate dinner and read
13. Went to sleep
All in all, the time just goes too fast here. Im not sure that we will ever get work done.
Also, some general observations about our town and house:
1. All the men wear cowboy hats except for Simon.
2. When someone says, ¨be there at 2pm, it really means 2:45.
3. Though our house in new, we still have to use a buckshower because our water comes from the mountain and is freezing and has low water pressure.
4. The sun is really strong
5. Of all places, our house is next to the Chicken lady in town. There are seriously 100 of them at 5 am outside the bedroom window.
More later.
Ok, time for lunch.
love, Crystal
Monday, December 12, 2005
Elections
Howdy Ya´ll...
Well, this past month has definitely been a wirlwind of activity here in Honduras for Crystal and I: Moving Twice, Thanksgiving, completing our training, passing our language exams (!!!), and the culmination of our swearing in this past weekend, and taking the bus to our now permenent residence here in Las Vegas for the next two years. However, Honduras itself has been an issue of much activity and suspense during this past month as a result of the elections. Now that all the dust has settled, i´ll fill ya´ll in on the process...
First of all, there are two major parties, the Liberals (flag: two verticle red stripes with one verticle white stripe) and the Nationals (flag: white star on blue background) which more or less correspond with our Democratic and Republican parties respectively. The current president is a memeber of the Nationalista Partido and will finish his four year, non-renewable term in January. There are a host of smaller independant parties as well, but these do not carry much poltical heft in the grand scheme of things...
The National party´s canidate went by the nickname ¨pepe¨and the liberal´s guy was ¨mel¨. Aside from the usual posters and television ads that we are used to for poltical campaigning, these guys also each have their own anthem of sorts, a catchy little song that highlights the basic goals of their platform, using theatrical elements that are much akin to, say, a soap opera from Mexico: extremely dramatic yet lacking on substance. And to up the ante, each party uses a series of trucks with speakers mounted on top to blast these songs everywhere, the truck that drove by our house seemed to always roll by when I was asleep. I am fairly certain that both of these songs will be with me until my dying day. In other words, this campaign resulted to lowest common denominator tactics for votes by using songs, propaganda, and lofty promises.
The polls leading up to the election were extremely close, with each canidate deadlocked, and many pollsters felt that a hidden vote would emerge and decide the election ( sound familar?). I personally felt that pepe was going to win, due to his concise campaign slogan of ¨Trabajo y Seguridad Para Todos¨(Jobs and security for everyone) and his use of iconigraphy by having a giant blue fist for his symbol, intended to indicate how he was going to get tough on the large gang problems here in the larger cities. However, after a week of vote counting and suspense, Mel came out on top with a winning margin of 5%. The fact that many Hondurans feared a harsh response of the gangs if pepe won may have been decisive in this election, I am not sure.
Our host family in Santa Lucia was pro-nationalista, because if pepe won, our older brother would get a government job in the process. In a country where unemployment and underemployment run extremely high, and especially now where more Hondurans earn a living by selling stuff on the street or buses than ever, this promise is more than adequate to garner support. Especially since Honduras opperates on the ¨spoils¨system, meaning there is no civil service for government jobs: if the incumbant loses and you work for the government, you job may be given away as a political incentive. At any rate, the new president faces a mulitude of problems and challanges, as this country attempts to crawl out of debt, respond to natural disaters such as our three hurricanes this year, and combat a sizible gang population with a small and ineffective police force.
In lighter news, I managed to lock Crystal and I out of our house, and our only keys in at the same time last night, and in the rain to boot. The locks here are weird, and i didnt realize that shutting the door is pretty much the same thing as locking it. Our house has bars on the windows and other security measures that makes it nearly impossible to break in, so we were fortunate enough that our next door neighbor found our landlord before he returned to his village on the other side of the mountain, where we would have no method of contacting him until Tuesday. Also, I had to rewire the stove today so that it would work with our outlets, using the instructions the hardware store guy gave me in Spanish. And it worked!
I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season, and I hope to hear from you all soon
Love, Simon
Well, this past month has definitely been a wirlwind of activity here in Honduras for Crystal and I: Moving Twice, Thanksgiving, completing our training, passing our language exams (!!!), and the culmination of our swearing in this past weekend, and taking the bus to our now permenent residence here in Las Vegas for the next two years. However, Honduras itself has been an issue of much activity and suspense during this past month as a result of the elections. Now that all the dust has settled, i´ll fill ya´ll in on the process...
First of all, there are two major parties, the Liberals (flag: two verticle red stripes with one verticle white stripe) and the Nationals (flag: white star on blue background) which more or less correspond with our Democratic and Republican parties respectively. The current president is a memeber of the Nationalista Partido and will finish his four year, non-renewable term in January. There are a host of smaller independant parties as well, but these do not carry much poltical heft in the grand scheme of things...
The National party´s canidate went by the nickname ¨pepe¨and the liberal´s guy was ¨mel¨. Aside from the usual posters and television ads that we are used to for poltical campaigning, these guys also each have their own anthem of sorts, a catchy little song that highlights the basic goals of their platform, using theatrical elements that are much akin to, say, a soap opera from Mexico: extremely dramatic yet lacking on substance. And to up the ante, each party uses a series of trucks with speakers mounted on top to blast these songs everywhere, the truck that drove by our house seemed to always roll by when I was asleep. I am fairly certain that both of these songs will be with me until my dying day. In other words, this campaign resulted to lowest common denominator tactics for votes by using songs, propaganda, and lofty promises.
The polls leading up to the election were extremely close, with each canidate deadlocked, and many pollsters felt that a hidden vote would emerge and decide the election ( sound familar?). I personally felt that pepe was going to win, due to his concise campaign slogan of ¨Trabajo y Seguridad Para Todos¨(Jobs and security for everyone) and his use of iconigraphy by having a giant blue fist for his symbol, intended to indicate how he was going to get tough on the large gang problems here in the larger cities. However, after a week of vote counting and suspense, Mel came out on top with a winning margin of 5%. The fact that many Hondurans feared a harsh response of the gangs if pepe won may have been decisive in this election, I am not sure.
Our host family in Santa Lucia was pro-nationalista, because if pepe won, our older brother would get a government job in the process. In a country where unemployment and underemployment run extremely high, and especially now where more Hondurans earn a living by selling stuff on the street or buses than ever, this promise is more than adequate to garner support. Especially since Honduras opperates on the ¨spoils¨system, meaning there is no civil service for government jobs: if the incumbant loses and you work for the government, you job may be given away as a political incentive. At any rate, the new president faces a mulitude of problems and challanges, as this country attempts to crawl out of debt, respond to natural disaters such as our three hurricanes this year, and combat a sizible gang population with a small and ineffective police force.
In lighter news, I managed to lock Crystal and I out of our house, and our only keys in at the same time last night, and in the rain to boot. The locks here are weird, and i didnt realize that shutting the door is pretty much the same thing as locking it. Our house has bars on the windows and other security measures that makes it nearly impossible to break in, so we were fortunate enough that our next door neighbor found our landlord before he returned to his village on the other side of the mountain, where we would have no method of contacting him until Tuesday. Also, I had to rewire the stove today so that it would work with our outlets, using the instructions the hardware store guy gave me in Spanish. And it worked!
I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season, and I hope to hear from you all soon
Love, Simon
Friday, December 2, 2005
Site Announcements...Drum Roll Please....
And the drum is rolling.....
LAS VEGAS!
Let the Vegas jokes begin. After the 5 or so hour bus ride to our site this weekend to check it out, here is what I have to say...We hit the jackpot.
The town: is absolutely gorgeous. We live in this little valley up in the mountains inbetween the second highest peak in the country (Parque Nacional Santa Barbara) and between the only lake in Honduras. Coffee is grown here, and so are pineapples, sugar, and avacadoes. Wherever you look up, there are mountains and clouds. Our streets are mostly paved. It is very tropicalish and lush and green. I really havent seen anything like it.
Our house: Absolutely gorgeous. It is still being worked on (that means built, its brand new) but its going to ready just in time for when we move in next weekend. It is made of brick and adobe. We have a big porch with beatiful ceramic tiles, the coolest setup inside with a kitchen, indoor bathroom, dining room, livingroom, and 2 bedrooms, we have a yard, with a fence, and a gate, all the way around it, so we can have a garden or maybe some chickens. Our neighbors are the coolest, and very friendly and helpful.
The people here are really nice. There are alot of really cool young people here to be our friends, they have no problems with teaching us better spanish. We also have a PCV sitemate, who is a cool guy. Tomorrow we are taking him to the brewery we live by.
Its kind of hard to get to our town, its in the middle of nowhere, but its so pretty, I dont care.
Oh, Thanksgiving with the Dep. Ambasador was great. He was really chill and gave us everything we could ask for. We even got to play pool and watch tv in his mansion.
We swear in as real Peace Corps Volunteers this thursday. We will be singing the Honduran national anthem to the current presidente and it should be boring, but afterwards we are having a massive celebration, courtesy of peace corps, at the nicest hotel in Teguciagalpa. The day after that, we stop being treated like little babies, and move on to our site, to be alone, and to start our service. I think we´re ready, though. We´ll see!
peace and love, Crystal and Simon
LAS VEGAS!
Let the Vegas jokes begin. After the 5 or so hour bus ride to our site this weekend to check it out, here is what I have to say...We hit the jackpot.
The town: is absolutely gorgeous. We live in this little valley up in the mountains inbetween the second highest peak in the country (Parque Nacional Santa Barbara) and between the only lake in Honduras. Coffee is grown here, and so are pineapples, sugar, and avacadoes. Wherever you look up, there are mountains and clouds. Our streets are mostly paved. It is very tropicalish and lush and green. I really havent seen anything like it.
Our house: Absolutely gorgeous. It is still being worked on (that means built, its brand new) but its going to ready just in time for when we move in next weekend. It is made of brick and adobe. We have a big porch with beatiful ceramic tiles, the coolest setup inside with a kitchen, indoor bathroom, dining room, livingroom, and 2 bedrooms, we have a yard, with a fence, and a gate, all the way around it, so we can have a garden or maybe some chickens. Our neighbors are the coolest, and very friendly and helpful.
The people here are really nice. There are alot of really cool young people here to be our friends, they have no problems with teaching us better spanish. We also have a PCV sitemate, who is a cool guy. Tomorrow we are taking him to the brewery we live by.
Its kind of hard to get to our town, its in the middle of nowhere, but its so pretty, I dont care.
Oh, Thanksgiving with the Dep. Ambasador was great. He was really chill and gave us everything we could ask for. We even got to play pool and watch tv in his mansion.
We swear in as real Peace Corps Volunteers this thursday. We will be singing the Honduran national anthem to the current presidente and it should be boring, but afterwards we are having a massive celebration, courtesy of peace corps, at the nicest hotel in Teguciagalpa. The day after that, we stop being treated like little babies, and move on to our site, to be alone, and to start our service. I think we´re ready, though. We´ll see!
peace and love, Crystal and Simon
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