I like birds

As Amanda mentioned in a previous post I have recently become enamored with -- or obsessed with -- birding. I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but I would not be as fanatical about it if it weren't for Virgil Troyer, MCC Disaster Response Coordinator, and Birder Extraordinaire. Actually, I also owe much thanks to my father-in-law, Ralph Lind, for buying Amanda and I a pair of incredible binoculars; and to my mother-in-law, Brenda Janzen, for gifting me an exhaustive Central American birding book. Thanks! I think what I like about birding is that it's a low-impact, low-equipment hobby that involves lots of reading, research, and careful observation.

I've compiled a really nice list of birds in the last 6 months, which I will not reprint here, but hope that in the next year I can add many more, including the elusive and beautiful Resplendant Quetzal.

Here are a couple of pictures from our team retreat near Lake Yojoa, taken at Finca Las Glorias.

A Ferruginous Pygmy Owl. Virgil and I spent at least half an hour tracking this guy through the woods, listening to his call and trying to answer back. Apparently my imitation was convincing. He flew right up to us, sat on his perch and had a nice long conversation.

The Belted Kingfisher. I took this picture through Virgil's awesome spotting scope. (If you want to get me another optical present, Ralph...)

First Rain!

It started slowly with a few drops and then gradually grew into a great, pounding rain. Andrew made some hot pinol (a corn based hot-chocolate-esque drink) and we sat out on our plastic chairs on the porch and watched the rain come down, washing the dusty trees and plants clean and sweeping the accumulated garbage down the gutters. I love rain! I just love it...especially after the hot dry season months, when you think it might never rain again here and everything is dry and brown, thirsty for water from the sky. We've been told that before the climate started changing here and the weather patterns were more predictable, the first rains of the year always came during the first week of May in Tegucigalpa. Our friend David went as far as to say they always came on May 3, every year, like clockwork (although I find this hard to believe... I mean, what about leap year?) It is very comforting to think that, this year at least, we are getting off to a normal start. I can imagine farmers all over will sleep a little easier tonight, and the city water board can rest assured that the water supply did not run out before the first big rain of the year, as predicted by the pessimists. It's starting again! The tinkling on the tin roof! Gotta love it.

The view looking up the stairs from our porch. We're happy that whoever designed this staircase included a little river to channel away the rushing rainwater.

Enjoying a hot cup of pinol.

This was a couple of days ago, but I thought I'd put it here anyway. Amanda cleaning out our pila, otherwise known as our mosquito farm.

Semana Santa

I want to give a little belated report on our lovely Semana Santa, or Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter.

Our dear friends Paul and Charity decided to spend the first part of a belated honeymoon visiting us (along with mutual friends Ben and Joy who live in another part of Tegucigalpa). We bussed up and met them in San Pedro and spent a day and a half showing them around our old, very hot, stomping grounds. We then bussed back down to Tegucigalpa to show them our new casita and impress them with the number and variety of ant colonies flourishing here. Next on the agenda was a day-long hike through La Tigra national park and overnight stay on the other side, near the little town of San Juancito. After exploring another little town nearby the next day we got back to San Pedro and all six of us crammed into our house for the night so we'd be ready to bus to Comayagua the next day - the first Colonial capital of Honduras, a town noted for its Semana Santa celebrations.

We arrived expecting large crowds of people... only to find the town nearly deserted. It wasn't until evening that people started coming out of the woodwork, and shortly after sunset there was a re-enactment of the Last Supper in front of the Cathedral overlooking the central park and town square. That was followed by a procession, one of several during the next few days. The real excitement started around midnight when local families and business and various groups started the 9-hour process of creating alfombras, or carpets, from dyed sawdust, sand, and other natural materials. This creative marathon was the result of months of planning; we got up early to see them putting on their finishing touches. The art was incredible - I don't think I've been so excited in months and I think it was just all that creative energy in the air. I took a lot of pictures but the ones here are my favorites - a lot of the photos are of the artists themselves because that's what I found the most exciting - seeing how families and groups worked together to produce the carpets. Shortly after the carpets were completed, they were destroyed in a blaze of glory. The "blaze" coming in the form of Jesus (and several young apprentice Jesus's) carrying crosses, followed by altar boys swinging incense, several priests, and a big float with Moses and the 10 commandments, Elijah on a flaming chariot, and Jesus carrying the cross, all being hefted by about 20 young guys wearing robes and hoods that made them look creapily similar to KKK members. I'm still not quite sure about the symbolism there - we asked several people since our return and nobody seems to really know what's up with the capes. That aside, it was an impressive scene and we followed it through several stations of the cross. I was moved by this massive religious display, so unlike anything I've seen in the states.


Still to come: an update on my work on the library and la vida here in Flor del Campo. We are planning a big homemade pizza fest this Sunday afternoon to celebrate Andrew's birthday on Monday. I have discovered my favorite pizza topping combo: carmelized onions and roasted red peppers. Oh yes. We are hoping to shock and awe all of our neighbors, and see how many people we can fit into our little house.

(In case you missed the link to our pictures above, you can see more of our pictures here.)

Creating a more just society

I've had a nice long break from blogging, and am ready to return in full force! Maybe I wasn't inspired because there wasn't much going on. We're still in the honeymoon phase of our move to Teguc, so I'll try to take advantage of the shiny new veneer on our MCC experience and talk about my new job at the Asociacion para una Sociedad Mas Justa.

Here's the link to the Spanish site.

ASJ is an organization fighting within the Honduran justice system to create a fairer playing field for some of Honduras's most marginalized citizens. The work at ASJ focuses on labor rights, land rights, monitoring the use of public funds, alternative news gathering (www.revistazo.com), and providing low-income people with psychological and legal aid.

For now, I'll talk briefly about land rights and labor rights.

This last week was actually a very big one for ASJ. Two years ago one of their labor rights attorneys, Dionicio Diaz Garcia, was murdered by two hired assasins who worked for a private security company. Dionisio worked to defend the rights of security guards who had suffered labor abuses. A couple of weeks ago the two men were convicted, and last week they were sentenced to 21 years in prison (the maximum is 30). This represented a major victory for ASJ. They aided the prosecution in investigating and compiling a case against the murderers, and advocated internationally for justice to be done. In Honduras, many officials are afraid to convict people, as they are afraid that they themselves might be killed in retaliation. The intellectual author of the crime has yet to be prosecuted. On one hand, this victory sends a message that impunity won't be tolerated. On the other hand, I think ASJ hoped that two men who killed a human rights lawyer who worked for the poor would get the maximum sentence.

ASJ's labor rights work focuses mostly on security guards and cleaning company employees. Both of these types of companies tend to have the worst labor abuse records (failing to pay minimum wage, not giving time off or vacation days, firing people without fair cause) because they often hire people who have very little education. They take advantage of Hondruas's high unemployment rate (I heard that it was 25%) and threaten to fire employees when they demand the rights offered to them under Honduran law. But the owners of these companies tend to be well connected and very rich, earning themselves a certain amount of protection from the authorities and the government. ASJ is going up against some powerful people.

On the land rights front, ASJ is working alongside various community leaders who are trying to get fair titles for their land. The land titling process is messy. Often times various supposed land owners claim ownership of the same parcel, and there are few good surveys and records in many of these old communities. Many neighborhoods started as squatter villages and gradually became more formalized. ASJ helped write a new Honduran law that allows the government to take ownership of a community where land ownership is in dispute, and allow the people living there to pay into an escrow account. Once the courts decide who the owner is, the owner gets the money in the account, and the community members get the titles to their land. In Cofradia, a community near San Pedro Sula, three community leaders have been murdered by assasins hired, most likely, by supposed land owners who don't want what the land to expropriated. ASJ is helping to investigate the killings (despite the fact that the police are ignoring the crimes), and continues to help other community leaders who are receiving threats. They also continue to aid leaders in expropriating the land, though the government has been slow, despite pressure from the World Bank and international NGOs. The fight is long.

Otherwise, ASJ is involved in a host of other activities. The Gideon Centers, located in some of Tegucigalpa's poorest neighborhoods (including Flor del Campo), offers psychological and legal aid for a fee of $.50. This is the only service of this nature I have ever heard of in this country. Legal cases include labor abuses, child support, proof of paternity, spousal abuse, etc. They deal with many of these in a holistic way, tending to not only the legal case but also the person's mental well-being.

The mission of this Christian organization revolves around the idea that people of faith are called to advocate for the rights of the poor and marginalized. In many cases the strong laws in Honduras are not enforced, and uneducated people from poor communities have few advocates, or may not even know what their rights are. We are called to work within the system to change laws, or to enforce existing laws, to ensure that the "least of these" is taken care of. There is danger involved, but Jesus said that Christians would be hated by the world.

It looks as if I will be involved in advocacy in the Cofradia land rights case, and a whole host of communications and public relations activities. I've only been there two weeks. Here is a video that we just posted of a Honduran cleaning woman telling her story. All I did was put in the subtitles in Windows Movie Maker, but at least it is an example of some of the advocacy work we do.

On a lighter note, here is the view of our community out of the porch window.


And Amanda doing the laundry.

In the heart of the flower of the field

Here we are in Tegucigalpa! We moved in a week ago last Thursday, to a colonia called "Flor de Campo." But wait, rewind, first a short update:

February was FULL, hence the lack of blogging. We were very busy hosting the annual food, faith and justice learning tour for youth through the Canadian Food Grains Bank for two weeks. We didn't take many pictures ourselves but as soon as we get some pictures from the participants we'll post them for your viewing pleasure. Right after they left, Andrew's parents and youngest brother Zach came to visit for one full week and we had a lot of fun showing them around Copan, the Tela beach, and cramming into our apartment when we were in San Pedro. Zach had the pleasure of sleeping in the laundry room. The Clouse trio left on a Sunday, and we had until Thursday to pack everything up and clean our apartment for the last time. That week was very bittersweet: some good friends from La Iglesia Central Menonita, where we've attended for the last year and a half, hosted a dinner for us on Monday and sent us away in style with some singing and a blessing that reminded me that we will still have friends there despite being four hours away in a new and yet unknown city. I was surprised at how sad I was to leave our apartment that had become home; we got kind of choked up saying goodbye to David and the other construction workers that work on the apartment next to ours and Dobie, the watchdog that Andrew has been keeping tick-free since November of last year.

So last Thursday we packed it all up in a big truck that Darrin, our boss, arranged to transport us to our new home and took off for the capital city and a new adventure... 6 hours and one fried fish lunch later we unpacked everything, carrying it from the narrow street above our house down the cement stairway that leads to our front door. We quickly realized we needed to downsize, as not all the furniture from our apartment fit into this tiny little house that we now call home.

Andrew by our front door. This was taken from the steps above. The stairway leads down to the street below us.

Our porch and clothes-washing center. The view to the right looks out over the neighboring colonia. The basil plant to the left fell shortly after taking this picture. Apparently I wasn't as smart as I thought.

Our bedroom and home office.

Living/dining room

We named this gecko Choco after his apparent fondness for chocolate chips.

This move represents a very big change... we went from a nice big apartment in the center of San Pedro to a very small house in a colonia on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa. A "colonia" is generally quite different than barrios in the middle of a city - they are almost like small towns within themselves and generally more crowded and lower-income than centralized areas. I am already missing luxuries like running water every day (water comes every other day for about 12 hours) and daily garbage pick-up (we still haven't been able to figure out when the garbage truck will come - our nice new neighbor Sandra promised she'd call us when it does). I'm honing my washing-clothes-by-hand and waging-war-on-ants skills. BUT, we are also already enjoying what a neighborhood like this provides. Here are some new novelties in list form:
1. NEIGHBORS. They are everywhere and everyday we meet more people who are curious about our presence. It's great. I love it.
2. A nearby church community. We will go to the small Amor, Fe, y Vida church - the night of our arrival two women from the church came with their daughters to greet us; both brought dinner. We ate plato tipico AND spaghetti and chatted. A few minutes later 6 other people from the church showed up to greet us, so there were 13 of us in our little living room - more people than we ever had in our apartment in San Pedro.
3. Freshly made tortillas just down the stairs, four for 1 lempira. Last night we had some confusion when we ordered 12, and instead of twelve tortillas we got 48 (for 12 lempiras). While they were preparing them I kept thinking "man, SOMEBODY ordered a lot of tortillas..."
4. Pulperias, or small in-home stores, are everywhere, so we don't have to go to the supermarket to get most things.

We miss our San Pedro friends a lot, but are adjusting to a new way of life. We are enjoying the weekend after our first week of work at our respective jobs... and there I will leave you all hanging. Details about said new jobs to follow.

Walking in circles

Hello faithfull readers. My Dad recently reprimanded me for not blogging in a while - we have actually been kind of busy lately. We went to Nicaragua for the regional MCC retreat; a spiritual retreat giving us a lot of time for reflection and prayer and discussion with people from all over having similar experiences with MCC, which I enjoyed immensely and would be happy to tell anyone who is interested more about. Recently we hosted a church group from Bluffton Ohio who has a sister relationship with a Mennonite church here near San Pedro, and we are gearing up for our big annual ¨Food, Faith & Justice" youth study tour from the Canadian Food Grains Bank. But rather than going into details about any of the above, I'm just going to copy and paste something I wrote after a wet walk I took a week or so ago with Andrew (sorry for the lack of pictures... it was raining, after all):

We just had a long and rainy weekend without much activity. Saturday, after a few hours of coffee drinking, dinking around, and looking out the windows, I was struck by the urge to walk around the circunvalación – the circular road that goes all the way around the center of San Pedro Sula. There’s something about a circular road that just invites you to try walking around it. Despite the rain Andrew was game for it – and after some more piddling we set off, in our running shoes and track pants, me with my rain coat, and enough money to get some snacks and a taxi if things got ugly.

It actually didn’t take as long as we’d initially thought – about two and a half hours in all. It was perhaps the ugliest walk I’ve ever taken just for the sake of walking – most of the way there is no sidewalk, and of course it’s along the busy road the whole time. There was a lot of dodging of big holes in the sidewalk, broken glass, garbage, ect. We walked directly north from our apartment until we reached the circunvalación, then walked counter-clockwise all the way around. It struck me how we started off in a fairly middle, or lower-middle class neighborhood (the North side), and as we reached the Western top of the circle, we passed nicer and nicer stores, coffee shops, chains, bars (although still no sidewalks – this is not a pedestrian friendly route). We stopped briefly for pupusas at our favorite little pupusa restaurant just a quarter of the way in, partly to get out of the rain and partly because we hadn’t brought anything to eat or drink with us and were already ready for a break. Pupusas are by far my favorite Honduran snack/lunch food – especially the ones with beans and melted cheese inside the corn tortilla, with pickled onions and cabbage on top and a side of hot salsa. Delicious! I stay away from the ones stuffed with chicharron, or pig skin. I am not that hard core.

Then as we passed into what we thought of as the 3^rd quadrant, it got dingier, and old Chinese restaurants and mechanic shops started to replace the glitzy chain stores, and even the mud looked dirtier. I think it was raining harder, too. Right in the middle of the 3^rd quadrant, or the South part of the circle, was the butt end of the big open air food market. The end where they put all the rotting cabbages, and neglected horses stand in the rain to munch on whatever debris is available. Here we had to run to avoid getting hit by a garbage truck, and had trouble maneuvering between the big mud puddles and piles of rotting vegetables. I tried to hold my breath for the length of the market but failed, breathing in a big gasp of sickeningly sweet air. We continued curving around slowly, past more food markets, tire shops, mechanics, more tire shops, more mechanics... slowly back to the middle class neck of the woods and home.

At the end of it all I felt kind triumphant, even though it hadn’t really been that long of a walk. It was fun to do something spontaneous. We stripped off the wet and muddy pants and sneakers, took low pressure hot showers, made some tea, and settled down to do some more web surfing/rain watching. Just another Saturday in San Pedro.

Once again I am reminded that San Pedro is a city of stark contrasts, the wealth and poverty distinct from one another, but thrown together at times to create jarring contrasts. Big shiny SUVs whipping past horsecarts, shoeless youth sleeping in front of the Espresso Americano coffee bar on cardboard mats.

2009 here we come

Posted here are some pictures from the holidays...
Andrew and I spent all day Christmas Eve making cookies and listening to Christmas music and trying to get in the Christmas groove... somehow it was harder to feel like it was really Christmas this year. That evening we sang along with the church choir in the truly spectacular Christmas drama/music extravaganza - which ended with us singing "Al Mundo Paz" (joy to the world) with the nativity actors in freeze frame throughout the entire 5 minute medly. I wish I could somehow convey this climactic moment with equally expressive prose - but words are failing me and you'll all just need to use your imaginations.

Christmas Eve was passed at the home of our good friend Alejandra and her family - we ate great food and shot off a few firecrackers - my nerves were pretty frazzled by the time midnight rolled around because fireworks go off ALL DAY LONG around here. I had to put my hitting-the-floor-at-the-sound-of-gunshots instincts on hold.

We spent Christmas day and a few days afterwards with our friends Josh and Maria at the farm in El Cipres - trying not to be too sad about their upcoming departure from Honduras. After a few days of house hunting in Tegucigalpa we came back to celebrate Maria's birthday/New Year's Eve with the two of them and about a zillion neighborhood children who were all eager to partake in some promised piñata fun. A bunch of kids showed up about 3 hours early, ready to camp out in front of the house for fear of missing any action.

It was a good end to 2008. I already feel a certain heaviness about this new year in light of the recent bombings in the middle east and a general "doomy" feeling that I can't shake. I wonder what this new year will bring... it's sometimes hard to sort out all the hope, anxiety, dreams, prayers, frustrations and thanksgivings that fill my head and heart when I think of a whole new year to come. Happy new year to you all! And if anyone out there figures out the secret, let me know.