El Apartamento

We spent all of yesterday making and hanging curtains. It literally took us all day because Andrewhad to drill into the concrete wall to hang them - something that seemed to get harder and harderover time. Either the concrete was getting more and more solid, or, well.... that must be it. Click here to see the promised photos of the apartment which we love dearly. I must say, I think the challengeof getting out, speaking Spanish, meeting new people, and feeling totally acclimated here would be much easier if I didn't like being home so much.

Christmas Greetings!

Andrew and I are gearing up for our first Honduran Christmas in a few days... it's really hard to believe that Christmas is coming when it's so hot and, well, un-Christmasy around here. December was a busy month for us, as we continue to adjust and find more things to do. Our apartment really is feeling like home (I promise to post pictures soon) and we've been able to have people over for dinner a few times which makes it feel even more like home. I was pretty sick yesterday, just a 24-flu thing, but didn't even mind too much because it gave me the chance to just lay around the house and enjoy some hours of quiet by myself.

This past weekend we went with the whole MCC team up to Cerro Azul Meambar National Park which is right by the biggest lake in Honduras, Lago Yajoa. There are ten of us MCC workers in Honduras (along with 2 small kids) and we have team meetings three times a year where we can get together, relax, share some stories, and get a few games in. The park was beautiful and my first experience being up in the cloud forest. It rained the whole first day we were there and was actually pretty cold (we did a lot of sharing of the few meager warm clothes a few of us had brought). The second day cleared up a bit and a bunch of us went on a 4 hour hike up the mountainside... we went up among huge ferns and tropical plants that I'd never seen, and stopped by a big waterfall on the way back. Pretty idyllic - plus it met a serious hiking craving that I've had for a while. We often go on the "coke sign hike" - the paved, urban hike up to the huge coca-cola sign on the hillside facing San Pedro Sula; but there really isn't any substitute for getting away from the city and on a "real" trek. You can check out our pictures here.

We'll be celebrating Christmas with MCC friends Josh and Maria - the other childless, host-familyless couple here in Honduras. Although we're surely going to miss family and friends from home, I'm excited to celebrate Christmas in new ways... for instance: Andrew and I will be performing in the Christmas choir at the local mennonite church on Christmas Eve. Always a real treat. We've had 3 performances so far and we just keep getting worse. I really can't say why. After that, we're heading to Marcos' house for Christmas Eve tamales. Marcos works part-time at the office here and is a favorite of mine - he has daughters my age and feels kind of like a Honduran dad figure. His youngest daughter told us we're going to wait until EXACTLY midnight to eat our tamales - we'll see if I can make it. It feels good to be included in their family Christmas, and I really do feel blessed to be here right now.

Merry Christmas!

Just give it a good Thanksgiving push!

Thanksgiving came and went with little fanfare here in Honduras, though, inidentally, the only Thanksgiving email I received was from a Honduran amigo here in San Pedro. Anyway, Darrin (one of our country reps), Amanda and I spent Wednesday through Friday in the mountains of Danlí and Trojes visiting an MCC partner who helps subsitence coffee farmers diversify their crop load for when coffee prices drop. Getting up to the projects is a trip, but it's worth it.

First, a four-hour-bus ride from San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa, a one-and-a-half hour 4 X 4 truck ride to Danlí, a 2-hour car ride from Danlí to Trojes, and two more hours on muddy cliff-side roads out to the project site near the Nicarguan border. At one point I was pretty sure we weren't going to make it...


But we did, and were treated to some of the most amazing mountainscapes and charming farms I've seen.






These coffee farms tend to be built on steep sides of mountains, which present huge challenges in planting gardens. The MCC partner teaches farming techniques, such as using sugar cane, which has thick, deep roots, to help anchor the soil.




In the picture below, the farmer was drying his corn inside his living room because of the recent heavy rain.
We were greeted warmly by the families. At the first house we visited we enjoyed fresh sugar cane juice with a squeeze of sour orange. In the pictures below they are sending the sugar cane through the press.



While it was hard to know that my family was gathered around the turkey in Goshen on Thanskgiving Day, and I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the chance to be in Central America, experiencing a very different way of life than I had in the US. And though Thanksgiving is not observed in Central America, a poor farm family invited us into their homes for a delicious feast of free-range chicken, potatoes, rice, and corn tortillas.

It was a very good Thanksgiving.

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.

Soy yo, el gringo

Two days ago I drove for the first time through the crazy streets of San Pedro. Amanda and I had to drop off our monton of clothes at Bubbles, the local laundromat. The drive went well; I even sneaked right across the insanely busy Avenida Junior during the beginning of rush hour. We dropped off the clothes, left my name -- Andres -- and returned to the truck to head home. Of course the truck wouldn't start and we didn´t really know what to do. The nice ladies at the laundromat said we were more than welcome to leave our truck in their narrow parking lot until we came up with a plan, but if we left it there overnight, they said, it would be gone by morning. So we helplessly walked back to the office to find help from our older and wiser MCC friend, Jeff. At about 9 p.m. all of the folks in the office who were here for Connecting Peoples meetings we´ve had this week walked down to Bubbles to push start the truck. It took some doing, and must have been a funny site to see a herd of gringos pushing a beat-up Nissan truck down the road with every dog in the neighborhood going nuts, but finally the truck started and we all hopped in the back.

It´s times like this, when I feel helpless, that I feel the most self conscious of the fact that I´m different. No matter how much I try to blend in by not wearing shorts, trying to speak Honduran Spanish, etc., strangers will always recognize me for what I am -- a gringo. But it´s endearing, and it gives me character, I think. I have never been more aware of that fact before yesterday, when Amanda and I returned to Bubbles to pick up our clothes. Oddly, the woman recognized us and didn´t even have to ask my name. She had the bag of clothes waiting for us at the window. While walking home, I noticed a piece of tape on the bottom of the trash bag that held our folded laundry. I assumed it said ¨Andres,¨ the name I gave to the woman when I left the clothes. But no, the the label was even more simple and descriptive -- ¨gringo.¨