Time for my sad face...

When I'm asked how good my Spanish is I usually respond with something non-specific like, "Well, I'm learning more every day," or "I can understand more than I'm able to speak." I am in the fuzzy zone which is somewhere between beginning-intermediate and whatever comes after that, also known as "Level Dangerous."

Level Dangerous involves a lot of reassuring head bobbing that communicates that yes, I understand what you are saying to me even if you're not getting much else in the way of feedback. And, most of the time, I DO understand what you are saying to me. Until I reach Overload. Overload is the state someone in Level Dangerous reaches when they have maxed-out their listening comprehension. This can happen unexpectedly. I have found that I'm more likely to reach overload when I'm in a small group and I'm not the only one expected to listen in Spanish. Constant eye-contact, a friendly smile, and slow reassuring head bobbing is very important when in Overload.

This usually works just fine. Usually. The system breaks down when the speaker strays from friendly, informational, or happy topics and onto other more serious and sometimes even sad territory. This can happen without warning. The other day a woman was telling Andrew and I about how her brother had been married for a long time and was not able to have children. His wife, pregnant with another man's child, eventually left him and went to the states. Up until this point we had been talking about the photos of her cute grandchildren that were posted all around the house, and I was still wearing my happy face. Belatedly, way too far into the sad brother story than was socially appropriate, I realized it was time for my sad face and a slow side to side head bob. I can't wait to be in Level Almost There.

MCC Honduras team pictures

This Friday was the despedida for Jeff, the volunteer whose work we are taking over. We went to Fred's Kitchen and delighted in various international cuisine offerings, including European vegetarian crepes, Thai-ish peanut butter chicken, and American cheeseburgers. Here are some team pictures to give you a sense of our work environment.

The MCC Team (Center to left around table): Jeff Eschleman, Maria Eley-McClain, Adam Lawrence, Sarah Winter, Caleb Yoder, Darrin Yoder(with Caleb), Julie Aeschliman (with Lucía), Andrés, Amanda, Josh Eley-McClain.

In the paila of the Nissan.

Josh, Jeff, Maria.

Sarah and Simon

Jeff leaves on Friday, so I guess we have to hope we have gleaned as much of his encyclopedic knowledge about Honduras as possible. Everywhere we've gone in the country people tell us how much Jeff has meant to their lives. He will be missed.

The globalization of war

Today, while waiting at Charlie's Chicken for a chicken sandwich and side order of tajadas, a friendly middle-aged gentleman approached my co-volunteer, Josh, and me and greeted us in labored English: ¨Hello. How are you?¨ It isn't uncommon for a Honduran to approach gringos for a rare chance to practice what English they know.

Anyway, this led into a conversation about how he learned English. Apparently he worked in security at the US Embassy in Baghdad a year ago and was one of the many guards responsible for securing the premises in the Green Zone. His salary was high -- about nine year's worth of work in one -- but it was dangerous and thankless. Josh said he has heard that the job did not include insurance.

This man was not the only Honduran sent to Iraq for security work. According to this article there is a contingent of at least 600 Hondurans who were essentially outsourced as private security for American interests in Baghdad. They were to be paid between $900 and $1,500 a month for a six-month tour in Iraq. In this report, the salary promised that was promised to a Chilean mercenary was not what he received, but the worker did not see the contract until he was on the plane for Baghdad.

Incidentally, this chilling line from the first report was also eerily similar to a comment the man at Charlie's Chicken had made: ¨The instructors 'explained to us that where we were going everyone would be our enemy, and we'd have to look at them that way, because they would want to kill us, and the gringos too,' an unidentified trainee told the AFP wire service. 'So we'd have to be heartless when it was up to us to kill someone, even it was a child.'

As is generally the case with globalization, the Honduran security workers were not compensated as well as their US counterparts. According to yet another article, which talks mostly about Colombians used as private security personnel, the Latin American mercenaries were paid half of what their American counterparts received. In the report quoted above, the American secuirty personnel received more than 10 times what the Chileans did.

What does this say about how we value a person from a developing country compared to a person from a developed country? They are both doing the same work in the same dangerous situation, but the Honduran mercenary is essentially viewed as less valuable. Yes, $1,500 a month is significantly more than the Honduran worker would make here in Honduras, but to me the salary in this line of work is essentially the value of someone's life.

The reality is globalization allows us to outsource all of our dirty work to cheap labor -- t-shirts, car parts, and killing.