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.