Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Testicles and the Return of Mel
So things have gotten a little crazy here in the past couple of days… Before we talk about that, we’re going to talk about the things we have done in the past couple of weeks. Kevin finally finished his English class at the University. The majority of the kids even passed, although Shannon did have to take a test from a boy who was cheating and give him a zero. Kevin will not be teaching next semester but will be helping the new teacher out.
Our friend Calixto took us and our site-mate Elisabeth and her boyfriend to an awesome waterfall and the hike there was quite an adventure. To get there, we had to scale up three or four smaller waterfalls using rope (Calixto, of course, climbed without rope in order to tie the rope for us). At one point, Calixto put Elisabeth’s feet on top of his to help her scale down…he is quite amazing! It was a great experience and we were definitely sore the next day. The waterfall was beautiful as was the hike. We hiked rather high into the mountains where the water was fresh and pure (supposedly) and we drank straight from the creek. We haven’t gotten sick yet so the water must have been clean!
Kevin created a Peace Corps Honduras fantasy football league and at the last minute one of the guys had to drop out. Shannon and Elisabeth took his spot and have won both of their games so far. All of the guys are mad because Shannon and Elisabeth drafted players based on looks. The hot guys just seem to play better! This keeps us occupied during the weekends as we often have small parties to watch football and eat junk-food. Shannon has been cooking and baking a lot lately and made cinnamon rolls last weekend to eat while we watched the games. Kevin has also ventured into making homemade soda. He started by making a honey ginger ale from a recipe he found on the internet. It seemed a little watery with a very strong ginger aftertaste but it actually tastes good mixed with some lemonade (well, Shannon doesn’t really like it but others do). Next up, homemade cream soda. He plans on experimenting with many different flavors and recipes until he gets them just right.
A week and a half ago, we finally took our two male cats in to get neutered. Most male animals here in Honduras (and Latin America in general) do not get neutered. Many people believe that the animals get sad and/or lose their “manhood” when they get castrated but there are vets around that do the procedure. Plus, most animals here are not seen as pets like in the United States. They usually serve a purpose such as to catch mice or other unwanted animals and the majority of people do not buy packaged animal food for their animals. If they feed their animals, the feed them table scraps or they are left to scrounge through the garbage on the street. Here in the city, you can find packaged animal food, ours eat it, but it is still not super common. The vet did not put the cats to sleep, instead she gave them something to make them groggy and then used a local anesthesia. Shannon got to help by holding the cats in the air while the vet gave them the shots to drug them. After she was done with the surgery, she showed us their testicles and Baza’s were much larger even though he is the smaller cat (3 pounds versus Caramelo’s 4).
Things were just starting to get more normal around here. School had been sporadic for awhile as there was always some holiday, Dia del niño, dia del maestro, Independence Day…always some reason to miss class. Catacamas did not celebrate Independence Day which was kind of nice (very quiet without drums or fireworks) but very weird and sad at the same time since it is usually a big day filled with parades and activities, but they still cancelled classes for most of the week. This week classes were in session again and Shannon was happy to be working on Monday when Mel Zelaya, the ousted president, decided to come back and everything stopped. He is stationed inside the Brazilian embassy and troops are surrounding it and a van is supposedly parked out front playing the Honduran national anthem 24 hours a day. We are in the midst of a 50 hour curfew (nobody is supposed to leave their houses) which, according to the news, most people in Tegucigalpa seem to be obeying. Here, a lot of businesses and most schools are closed but people are still out and about. Needless to say, we are kind of bored. We were supposed to go to Tegucigalpa yesterday to talk to the married couples in training, but that got cancelled of course. This is the second time it has gotten cancelled due to political-related issues and it sucks. Hopefully things will get resolved soon but at least all is calm here in Catacamas.
Our friend Calixto took us and our site-mate Elisabeth and her boyfriend to an awesome waterfall and the hike there was quite an adventure. To get there, we had to scale up three or four smaller waterfalls using rope (Calixto, of course, climbed without rope in order to tie the rope for us). At one point, Calixto put Elisabeth’s feet on top of his to help her scale down…he is quite amazing! It was a great experience and we were definitely sore the next day. The waterfall was beautiful as was the hike. We hiked rather high into the mountains where the water was fresh and pure (supposedly) and we drank straight from the creek. We haven’t gotten sick yet so the water must have been clean!
Kevin created a Peace Corps Honduras fantasy football league and at the last minute one of the guys had to drop out. Shannon and Elisabeth took his spot and have won both of their games so far. All of the guys are mad because Shannon and Elisabeth drafted players based on looks. The hot guys just seem to play better! This keeps us occupied during the weekends as we often have small parties to watch football and eat junk-food. Shannon has been cooking and baking a lot lately and made cinnamon rolls last weekend to eat while we watched the games. Kevin has also ventured into making homemade soda. He started by making a honey ginger ale from a recipe he found on the internet. It seemed a little watery with a very strong ginger aftertaste but it actually tastes good mixed with some lemonade (well, Shannon doesn’t really like it but others do). Next up, homemade cream soda. He plans on experimenting with many different flavors and recipes until he gets them just right.
A week and a half ago, we finally took our two male cats in to get neutered. Most male animals here in Honduras (and Latin America in general) do not get neutered. Many people believe that the animals get sad and/or lose their “manhood” when they get castrated but there are vets around that do the procedure. Plus, most animals here are not seen as pets like in the United States. They usually serve a purpose such as to catch mice or other unwanted animals and the majority of people do not buy packaged animal food for their animals. If they feed their animals, the feed them table scraps or they are left to scrounge through the garbage on the street. Here in the city, you can find packaged animal food, ours eat it, but it is still not super common. The vet did not put the cats to sleep, instead she gave them something to make them groggy and then used a local anesthesia. Shannon got to help by holding the cats in the air while the vet gave them the shots to drug them. After she was done with the surgery, she showed us their testicles and Baza’s were much larger even though he is the smaller cat (3 pounds versus Caramelo’s 4).
Things were just starting to get more normal around here. School had been sporadic for awhile as there was always some holiday, Dia del niño, dia del maestro, Independence Day…always some reason to miss class. Catacamas did not celebrate Independence Day which was kind of nice (very quiet without drums or fireworks) but very weird and sad at the same time since it is usually a big day filled with parades and activities, but they still cancelled classes for most of the week. This week classes were in session again and Shannon was happy to be working on Monday when Mel Zelaya, the ousted president, decided to come back and everything stopped. He is stationed inside the Brazilian embassy and troops are surrounding it and a van is supposedly parked out front playing the Honduran national anthem 24 hours a day. We are in the midst of a 50 hour curfew (nobody is supposed to leave their houses) which, according to the news, most people in Tegucigalpa seem to be obeying. Here, a lot of businesses and most schools are closed but people are still out and about. Needless to say, we are kind of bored. We were supposed to go to Tegucigalpa yesterday to talk to the married couples in training, but that got cancelled of course. This is the second time it has gotten cancelled due to political-related issues and it sucks. Hopefully things will get resolved soon but at least all is calm here in Catacamas.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Response to the comment from "Rob" after our previous post
First of, thanks for the comments and we will be looking forward to the postcards from the Great Smoky Mountains. Second, we are going to go ahead and leave the comment from “Rob” on here if you would like to read it and we are going to clarify a few things while we are at it. Also, we are not forcing anyone to read this so if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
The COLORS group is a biannual voluntary event that we can get up to 20 dollars per person reimbursed for travel, food and hotel costs. Twenty dollars may go much farther here than in the United States but that does not nearly cover our costs to go to the meeting. So, everyone who is there is doing it because they want to go. The idea of COLORS is to talk about and teach cultural awareness with a class of Honduran elementary school students. Rob makes a good point. Yes, some terms used in Spanish are considered endearing while the English translation would never be used in the United States. Blacky (negrita) was the example used in the blog post. No one we know would yell, “Hi Blacky” to a black person walking past them on the street in the U.S. Here, it is different. You can say negrita here but that doesn’t mean that all people to whom you say it appreciate it. In fact, a Honduran official just got removed from office for calling Obama “negrito”. I guess the Honduran government didn’t think the term was very endearing. In the class we talked to, we used the example gordito (fat). One kid said in front of us and the class that his family calls him gordito and that he does not like it. It might be an endearing term to his family but it was not to the boy in the class that was being called gordito. Another common thing here is calling all Asian people chino/china (Chinese). The locals have no problem with it but a Japanese person constantly being called chino, by acquaintances and strangers alike, might. Those are the issues we talk about, being aware of other cultures and some things that might be offensive to people of those other cultures. We are not trying to change them or “Americanize” them, just help them be aware of other cultures and their differences and we don’t think anything we have written in the blog has been racist or belittling against Hondurans in any way whatsoever.
The Religions Equality Meeting (REF) is a meeting solely for volunteers to get together and talk about their different beliefs in an open, friendly, and neutral environment completely amongst themselves. It is a fact that nearly 100% of the Honduran population consider themselves either Catholic or Evangelical and are in general much more religious than the average person from the United States. We ARE NOT religious missionaries and we ARE NOT here to promote our religious beliefs. But for many volunteers who have beliefs different from Catholics or Evangelicals (i.e. Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or atheist to name a few) it can be hard not to feel pressured to attend one of those churches by community members you live with. It can also be hard and awkward to freely express your own religious views when asked about them, something you have to experience to completely understand. So REF is here for volunteers to talk to other volunteers and more than anything it was an experience for all volunteers involved to learn about other religions and beliefs themselves.
Everything we put in this blog is fact of things we have seen, heard, or experienced here in Honduras. Of course everyone’s experience is different so what you read in our blog is what we have experienced. We do not put our religious or political views in this blog. We are not sure how saying the upcoming election is going to be interesting implies that we are anti-democratic; far from it. We have talked about the situation enough in the past and didn’t need to repeat ourselves again by adding more than the word interesting.
“Your ideology is diseased, and you don't have the intellectual curiosity or the will to heal the tremendous damage that your economic system and culture have created.” Rob, feel free to leave some advice or better yet send us some literature that you think we should read, our address is on the blogsite. Yes, the Peace Corps is funded by the US government but it is all free aid, mostly in the form of teaching and training that the local communities are seeking and have asked for a volunteer to live in their community. We are not forcing them to adopt North American ways and are not providing them loans that they will never be able to pay off. If you want to point fingers, look somewhere else to place blame. Also, you mention my economic system and culture. Why don’t you tell us what economic system and culture you live in instead of trashing other peoples who you don’t even know.
“And, please, as one of the most racist groups of humans on earth today, understand your own deeply internalized racism before you look down on darker-skinned Hondurans as coming up wanting in that area. Your comments are vile and lack insight” This just doesn’t make sense. Why would we volunteer two years of our life to go somewhere where we look down on the people? You seem to be generalizing and stereotyping here which is exactly what we talk about in the COLORS meeting. Maybe what we have written is not the most eloquent but you have taken what we have written and totally misconstrued what was said. And our comments are “vile and lack insight”? Keep in mind, this blog has no agenda, despite what you may think. This is a blog for our friends and family to keep up to date on what is going on in our lives. So, sorry if it lacks insight for you, Rob. It was left on public view for anyone who might care to read it. Of course questions/comments are always welcome.
The COLORS group is a biannual voluntary event that we can get up to 20 dollars per person reimbursed for travel, food and hotel costs. Twenty dollars may go much farther here than in the United States but that does not nearly cover our costs to go to the meeting. So, everyone who is there is doing it because they want to go. The idea of COLORS is to talk about and teach cultural awareness with a class of Honduran elementary school students. Rob makes a good point. Yes, some terms used in Spanish are considered endearing while the English translation would never be used in the United States. Blacky (negrita) was the example used in the blog post. No one we know would yell, “Hi Blacky” to a black person walking past them on the street in the U.S. Here, it is different. You can say negrita here but that doesn’t mean that all people to whom you say it appreciate it. In fact, a Honduran official just got removed from office for calling Obama “negrito”. I guess the Honduran government didn’t think the term was very endearing. In the class we talked to, we used the example gordito (fat). One kid said in front of us and the class that his family calls him gordito and that he does not like it. It might be an endearing term to his family but it was not to the boy in the class that was being called gordito. Another common thing here is calling all Asian people chino/china (Chinese). The locals have no problem with it but a Japanese person constantly being called chino, by acquaintances and strangers alike, might. Those are the issues we talk about, being aware of other cultures and some things that might be offensive to people of those other cultures. We are not trying to change them or “Americanize” them, just help them be aware of other cultures and their differences and we don’t think anything we have written in the blog has been racist or belittling against Hondurans in any way whatsoever.
The Religions Equality Meeting (REF) is a meeting solely for volunteers to get together and talk about their different beliefs in an open, friendly, and neutral environment completely amongst themselves. It is a fact that nearly 100% of the Honduran population consider themselves either Catholic or Evangelical and are in general much more religious than the average person from the United States. We ARE NOT religious missionaries and we ARE NOT here to promote our religious beliefs. But for many volunteers who have beliefs different from Catholics or Evangelicals (i.e. Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or atheist to name a few) it can be hard not to feel pressured to attend one of those churches by community members you live with. It can also be hard and awkward to freely express your own religious views when asked about them, something you have to experience to completely understand. So REF is here for volunteers to talk to other volunteers and more than anything it was an experience for all volunteers involved to learn about other religions and beliefs themselves.
Everything we put in this blog is fact of things we have seen, heard, or experienced here in Honduras. Of course everyone’s experience is different so what you read in our blog is what we have experienced. We do not put our religious or political views in this blog. We are not sure how saying the upcoming election is going to be interesting implies that we are anti-democratic; far from it. We have talked about the situation enough in the past and didn’t need to repeat ourselves again by adding more than the word interesting.
“Your ideology is diseased, and you don't have the intellectual curiosity or the will to heal the tremendous damage that your economic system and culture have created.” Rob, feel free to leave some advice or better yet send us some literature that you think we should read, our address is on the blogsite. Yes, the Peace Corps is funded by the US government but it is all free aid, mostly in the form of teaching and training that the local communities are seeking and have asked for a volunteer to live in their community. We are not forcing them to adopt North American ways and are not providing them loans that they will never be able to pay off. If you want to point fingers, look somewhere else to place blame. Also, you mention my economic system and culture. Why don’t you tell us what economic system and culture you live in instead of trashing other peoples who you don’t even know.
“And, please, as one of the most racist groups of humans on earth today, understand your own deeply internalized racism before you look down on darker-skinned Hondurans as coming up wanting in that area. Your comments are vile and lack insight” This just doesn’t make sense. Why would we volunteer two years of our life to go somewhere where we look down on the people? You seem to be generalizing and stereotyping here which is exactly what we talk about in the COLORS meeting. Maybe what we have written is not the most eloquent but you have taken what we have written and totally misconstrued what was said. And our comments are “vile and lack insight”? Keep in mind, this blog has no agenda, despite what you may think. This is a blog for our friends and family to keep up to date on what is going on in our lives. So, sorry if it lacks insight for you, Rob. It was left on public view for anyone who might care to read it. Of course questions/comments are always welcome.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Adventures in the West
So it’s been awhile since we’ve written and a lot has happened in the past month. There are four support groups in Peace Corps Honduras and we have been to the meetings for three of them in the past month! First we went to COLORS which is to promote racial equality and understanding. For this meeting we did a talk at a local school which went really well as the people here don’t really know much about racial equality and often call people “negrito” (blacky) and other racial slurs that most people do not appreciate. We then spent the night at our friend Ellie’s site which is where we did the talk. She lives right on the outskirts of a large protected area and her site is beautiful! We swam in her lagoon and enjoyed the coolness. Then Shannon went to a VOS (Volunteers Offering Support) meeting near Tegucigalpa in the protected area of La Tigra while Kevin went on home. People were chosen for these positions and trained to take calls from volunteers in need of support. She was also voted the communications officer for this group and is now in charge of a monthly newsletter as well as various other duties. It was a great training in the cool mountains and she felt refreshed and ready to tackle another year in Honduras. The next weekend we visited some volunteers in Olancho so Shannon could do her Emergency Zone visits and went to a cave north of where we live.
Two weeks ago we went to the town of Gracias in the department of Lempira way out on the west side of Honduras for the REF (Religious Equality Forum) meeting. It was very interesting to learn about everyone’s different religious beliefs as well as the pressures from Hondurans to attend their churches and adopt their religions. Most Hondurans are either Catholic or Evangelical and are not very understanding or accepting of other religions which can be frustrating for many volunteers. Next, we climbed Celaque, the tallest mountain in Honduras at 2,849 meters. It was not a very long hike but VERY steep and strenuous. At parts we had to hold on to roots to pull ourselves up. It was a fabulous hike and very interesting to see all of the different plants and changing ecosystems as we climbed in elevation. On the way up we took a different trail and climbed another mountain (we did not realize this ahead of time) that was about 2,300 meters! It was an awesome hike but we were a little sad when we realized that we were going down instead of up and that there loomed another mountain in front of us! But we did see our first Honduran deer, Honduras’ national symbol of their fauna, since we have been here. People always tell us there are deer in Honduras but for the most part they have been hunted to near extinction now we finally believe that they exist! We camped a little below the top at a basic campsite that had a little covered space for a tent and a primitive latrine. There was a tarantula but Shannon is getting much better and only freaked out a little. It was really cold at night and we nearly froze to death! It was much too wet to start a fire so we went to bed at 6:30! The next day we hiked the hour and a half to the top. The view was not great as there were lots of trees and clouds but it was worthwhile.
After conquering Celaque, we went to the quaint town of Santa Rosa de Copan. It is probably the nicest town we have been to in Honduras. The central park looked like it could be in the U.S. and we ate at a great Mexican restaurant and had delicious margaritas! It was nice to feel like we were back in civilization for a little while. Then we went a couple of hours farther to our friend Justin’s site. He used to live close to us in Olancho but was moved for security reasons. His site is tiny with less than 200 people and you have to hike up a mountain from the road to get there. It was very relaxing. We went from there about 30 minutes away to another site where the volunteer has done a bee project. Kevin is interested in starting one here so we looked at the hives and talked to the owner about the steps needed to start such a project. It was very interesting and the honey was delicious! It was nice and cool in the mountains and nice to be in smaller sites for a change.
We then went back to Gracias for the MARV (Married Volunteers) meeting. We are in charge of this group so we had set everything up. It was good to meet the new married couples and talk about things that affect us that other volunteers do not deal with. We went to the quaint little town of La Campa about an hour away where they make a lot of Lencan (an Indian tribe) pottery common to the region. We also took advantage of the hot springs in Gracias and enjoyed a night there. It was a nice vacation/break from the unbearable heat and humidity of Catacamas. It left us feeling refreshed and ready to get back to work.
Things are relatively back to normal here in Catacamas. The university where Kevin works started back up about two weeks ago and the schools now have classes three days a week which is better than none. Thursdays and Fridays are still reserved for strikes and marches. A couple of days before we left on our trek a march passed by our house at about 8:00 PM. It was peaceful, pro-Mel with lots of motorcycles, cars honking, and people carrying candles. It lasted about 20 minutes and we were invited numerous times to join in (we of course said no). The schools in all of Honduras usually have large parades to celebrate Independence Day but this year none of the public schools in Catacamas are going to participate because they do not believe that they have independence right now. This is a big deal because Independence Day is huge here and the students spend months before preparing and practicing.
Campaigning for the upcoming elections began last Sunday and there are now trucks driving around playing Shannon’s least favorite song “El Chofer” with the words changed to the appropriate party (“viva el partido liberal/nacional/etc”). It’s quite annoying and we have two and a half months to enjoy it. The elections should be interesting as people are still upset about the coup. It will be an experience!
Two weeks ago we went to the town of Gracias in the department of Lempira way out on the west side of Honduras for the REF (Religious Equality Forum) meeting. It was very interesting to learn about everyone’s different religious beliefs as well as the pressures from Hondurans to attend their churches and adopt their religions. Most Hondurans are either Catholic or Evangelical and are not very understanding or accepting of other religions which can be frustrating for many volunteers. Next, we climbed Celaque, the tallest mountain in Honduras at 2,849 meters. It was not a very long hike but VERY steep and strenuous. At parts we had to hold on to roots to pull ourselves up. It was a fabulous hike and very interesting to see all of the different plants and changing ecosystems as we climbed in elevation. On the way up we took a different trail and climbed another mountain (we did not realize this ahead of time) that was about 2,300 meters! It was an awesome hike but we were a little sad when we realized that we were going down instead of up and that there loomed another mountain in front of us! But we did see our first Honduran deer, Honduras’ national symbol of their fauna, since we have been here. People always tell us there are deer in Honduras but for the most part they have been hunted to near extinction now we finally believe that they exist! We camped a little below the top at a basic campsite that had a little covered space for a tent and a primitive latrine. There was a tarantula but Shannon is getting much better and only freaked out a little. It was really cold at night and we nearly froze to death! It was much too wet to start a fire so we went to bed at 6:30! The next day we hiked the hour and a half to the top. The view was not great as there were lots of trees and clouds but it was worthwhile.
After conquering Celaque, we went to the quaint town of Santa Rosa de Copan. It is probably the nicest town we have been to in Honduras. The central park looked like it could be in the U.S. and we ate at a great Mexican restaurant and had delicious margaritas! It was nice to feel like we were back in civilization for a little while. Then we went a couple of hours farther to our friend Justin’s site. He used to live close to us in Olancho but was moved for security reasons. His site is tiny with less than 200 people and you have to hike up a mountain from the road to get there. It was very relaxing. We went from there about 30 minutes away to another site where the volunteer has done a bee project. Kevin is interested in starting one here so we looked at the hives and talked to the owner about the steps needed to start such a project. It was very interesting and the honey was delicious! It was nice and cool in the mountains and nice to be in smaller sites for a change.
We then went back to Gracias for the MARV (Married Volunteers) meeting. We are in charge of this group so we had set everything up. It was good to meet the new married couples and talk about things that affect us that other volunteers do not deal with. We went to the quaint little town of La Campa about an hour away where they make a lot of Lencan (an Indian tribe) pottery common to the region. We also took advantage of the hot springs in Gracias and enjoyed a night there. It was a nice vacation/break from the unbearable heat and humidity of Catacamas. It left us feeling refreshed and ready to get back to work.
Things are relatively back to normal here in Catacamas. The university where Kevin works started back up about two weeks ago and the schools now have classes three days a week which is better than none. Thursdays and Fridays are still reserved for strikes and marches. A couple of days before we left on our trek a march passed by our house at about 8:00 PM. It was peaceful, pro-Mel with lots of motorcycles, cars honking, and people carrying candles. It lasted about 20 minutes and we were invited numerous times to join in (we of course said no). The schools in all of Honduras usually have large parades to celebrate Independence Day but this year none of the public schools in Catacamas are going to participate because they do not believe that they have independence right now. This is a big deal because Independence Day is huge here and the students spend months before preparing and practicing.
Campaigning for the upcoming elections began last Sunday and there are now trucks driving around playing Shannon’s least favorite song “El Chofer” with the words changed to the appropriate party (“viva el partido liberal/nacional/etc”). It’s quite annoying and we have two and a half months to enjoy it. The elections should be interesting as people are still upset about the coup. It will be an experience!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
