Culture Differences

As we are sure you can imagine there are a lot of cultural differences between Honduras and the U.S. Some of them are really awesome, and some of them drive us crazy! We thought we would talk about some of them today so you can get a feel for Honduras and life here. One of the cultural differences that we really like is the closeness of neighborhoods. Since most people live in the same city, and many even the same neighborhood their whole lives, the neighborhoods are very close knit. Everyone knows everyone else and they look after each other. When someone needs help, there are lots of people there offering support, and things are safer because everyone is keeping an eye out. This is really nice for us, especially since we live in one of the oldest neighborhoods and everyone is very close. In the U.S. we did not know our neighbors and it is nice to be part of a tightly-knit community. One of the differences that is hard to get used to is the slow pace. Most people do things very slowly, especially walk, and they are also late to EVERYTHING. It is really frustrating when you are at a training, class at a school, or any type of meeting, and people show up an hour late. Another big difference is the way people use cell phones. Most people here have cell phones and they never turn them off. They ring in meetings, classes, even church AND they always get answered in the meeting, class, or church. At first this really bothered us, but then we started asking around and were told that one of the main reasons people answer their cell phones everywhere and do not put them on silent is due to the fact that it does not cost you anything to receive a call but if you miss it and have to call someone back, you have to pay. This made a lot more sense to us and although it is still annoying to hear cell phones ringing and people talking on them in meetings and such, at least we understand part of the rationale behind it. There are also a lot of catcalls (piropos as they are called here). This is impossible to get used to and drives Shannon crazy all of the time. Last week an 8-year-old yelled at her! Kevin gets some too which is also funny. An interesting note is that if we are together, we both still get them. Some men call Kevin their brother-in-law implying that they are going to marry Shannon. We just keep hoping that as people get more used to us the piropos will die down. That’s just a few of the cultural differences that we have noticed, there are, of course, a lot more…perhaps we will write about them in a future blog.

Another slow week

Another slow week last week. For being the rainy season, it hasn't rained since November 1 here, thats over 2 weeks and the dust is starting to pile up around the town. We hopefully found a place to live starting December 1. There is a house across the street from our host family that is going to be vacant and we already know the owner. The only thing to do now is hope that the people actually move out in time for us to move in. It will be so easy to move our stuff there and we already know all of the neighbors. The people that live there are actually the daughter and her family of the lady that owns it and on Sunday we went with our host family out to their new house and swam in the pool and bar-b-qued, which was nice. There are three new, nice houses there, all family, that share the pool and it is a very nice place.

Our first (and hopefully last) robbery

Yesterday we were talking about how our week had been pretty boring and then, last night, we were robbed…not so boring. We had gone to dinner with one of the other volunteers in our site and were walking home at about 8:15. A group of three high school age boys walked past us and then eventually turned around and started following us. We were joking around that they were probably going to rob us and steal our crappy phones. For some reason Shannon took her phone out of her purse and put it in the waistband of her skirt (just in case) and we continued to walk. We turned a corner and they followed us. At this point we were pretty sure they were planning to rob us and we hurried because we could see a pulperia with a lot of people ahead. The boys saw it too and one ran up and grabbed Shannon’s purse. She of course tried to fight him for it and then he said something to one of his friends who reached into his waistband like he had a weapon. At this point we realized that it was not worth it and Shannon let go of her purse. They then told the other volunteer to give them her purse and they also took the bags with our leftover Chinese food and ran off. We went home and called the Peace Corps and they contacted the police who went out to look for the boys (not very likely that they would find them but we did see them driving around). Luckily Shannon only had five Lempiras (about 30 cents) and her water bottle in her purse (she is really sad about her water bottle and her NRA sticker). The other volunteer was not so lucky and her phone, ID, and debit card were all in her purse along with a couple of dollars. Luckily nobody got hurt and we all laughed about getting robbed by 15-year-olds who stole our Chinese food. Now we will be more careful and only take what we need and not walk down dark streets…it was bound to happen sometime, hopefully this will be the first and last time!

Hurricane Paloma

Not much exciting has happened this week. We both had our Peace Corps project managers come out for a site visit. They both went well and we got a free dinner out of it so that is always good. People here, Hondurans as well as others, are happy that Obama will be the next president. Kevin was supposed to go with the university kids out to the east on the edge of the Biosphere but because Hurricane Paloma was hanging around there yesterday and the day before, they decided not to go but now Paloma is heading toward Cuba so it probably would have been ok. They will go next Friday though. By the way Paloma means dove or pigeon. Most of you back in the States had a time change, we did not so now we are the same as the Central Time Zone, two hours ahead of California. We really didnt have any rain all week, which was nice, but some places are already getting pretty dusty in Catacamas.

Dia de los Muertos

Yesterday was Día de los Muertos. It is the first Sunday of November, and a day where everyone goes to the cemetery to clean and decorate the graves. We went to all three of the cemeteries in Catacamas with our family and it was very interesting. There were so many people at each cemetery and there were people outside the cemeteries selling flowers and food. Some people bring food with them and eat in the cemetery but our host mom said that she does not like to eat in the cemetery so we ate later. Most of the graves were covered in flowers or wreaths and the air smelled of flowers. It was really fascinating watching everyone honor their families and friends. We went to the graves of our host grandma who just died, our host mother’s husband (who we found out today died three years ago because his blood sugar got too low and he fainted and cracked open his head), and our host mother’s sister and her husband. The cemeteries were very different; the oldest having mostly above ground tombs was much smaller and unorganized. The newest, and biggest, was composed mostly of below ground graves which were somewhat organized and there were a lot less weeds. We thoroughly enjoyed this cultural event that was totally different than anything we do in the U.S.