Just a few pictures...

It's been a nice little Saturday... Andrew and I got up, had some coffee, then headed down to the open air market downtown. After some pupusas (for me), and baleadas (for him), we got down to business and bought as many fresh fruits and vegetables as we could carry. I painted a little this afternoon and then we made pizzas with my friend Ivonne. This is the first Saturday in months that we've had to just relax around the house and get to the market, so very nice. Here are just a few recent pictures:

Guillermo really likes to hang out in the pool when it's hot. It doubles as a bathroom.

Making bagels. I was not able to flip this picture. Yes. Lame. But the bagels were NOT lame; in fact they were quite tasty and a new personal favorite, and pretty much the only thing I'm willing to bake.

This we took on a recent day venture to Santa Lucia, my new favorite little town in Honduras. Unfortunately, none of the scenic pictures I took are worth posting, since it was gray and rainy most of the day... but you can see how happy we were to be out of the city for a bit.

My first English students with their diplomas. We were just missing Jessica, who couldn't make it due to one of the demonstrations that blocked her way back home after a visit to her family out East.

Painting flowers on Saturday.

This little friend landed on Andrew's hand while we were waiting for the bus one day. I kind of think he was blowing a kiss at me. Flirting a little bit.

Clowning around

In addition to a smooth and economical ride, Honduran busses often provide unexpected entertainment: preachers giving sermons about the end times, salespeople pitching various skin creams and magical pills that cure everything from earaches to cancer, and, my personal favorite, clowns.

Yesterday on my way home from work with one of my co-workers, Deily, we treated to an act by a very cute, very young clown couple. It was probably the best clown act I had ever seen on a bus, due to their genuineness. This wasn’t just a sad way to make money by telling crude jokes about women and mothers-in-law, as most clown acts are. They really took their art seriously. And the rest of the bus really found it hilarious when they used the gringo—me—as their volunteer.

It went something like this, with the actors being Boy Clown, Girl Clown, Gringo, and Deily:

Boy clown: *Something about what would happen if all the women on earth suddenly died. Morbid, but fodder for a good clown act.*

Girl Clown: But if all the women on the earth died, you men would be in big trouble. Who would cook for you?

BC: Not a problem at all. Look. Hey, gentleman standing there. (Points at gringo.)

Gringo: (Turns to Deily.) Uh-oh.

BC: Gentleman, can you cook?

G: Uh, yes.

BC: See, Girl Clown? He can cook. Problem solved. He’ll cook for me, and I’ll cook for him.

GC: Ah, but who would wash your clothes?

BC: Not a problem at all, Girl Clown! Gentleman, gentleman. Can you wash clothes?

G: (Face red, trying not to notice that everyone is staring and laughing at him.) Yes.

BC: See, Girl Clown? He’ll wash for me, and I’ll wash for him.

GC: Ok, Boy Clown. But I know one thing that you can’t do. Who will have babies?

BC: Gentleman, gentleman. Can you have babies?

Deily: (Jabbing Gringo in the back.) Tell him no, Andrés! Tell him no!

G: (Wags finger at Boy Clown.) No.

BC: Some punch line that couldn’t be heard as entire bus was laughing at the gringo who can cook, wash clothes, but can’t have babies.

Good stuff. So good that I gave them 10 lempiras. It was probably worth at least 12.

The relajo continues...

So it's 3:00 am and I couldn't sleep... life here in post-coup Flor del Campo goes on... last week my friend Arely had her baby (giving me an eye-opening glimpse of the Honduran public health system), and yesterday my friend Tina's mom passed away. Daily life in Flor del Campo continues, despite the fact that kids haven't had regular classes since the beginning of this month. I haven't written on this blog for almost three weeks now. Why the silence? Quite honestly I just don't know what to say... I've run out of words. Honduras is no longer front page news around the world, but anxieties and tensions continue to rise; the economic ripple affects are being felt as tourism has come to a screaching halt and major road closures due to marches and demonstrations are crippling local businesses. Everyone is tired of this mess.

Yesterday was a hard day for many people in our community. The main food market in Comayaguela, where most people from our neighborhood go for weekly grocery shopping, burned to the ground. This is a market where hundreds of people made their living selling fresh meat and cheese, grains and veggies and non-food essentials like clothes and burned CDs and DVDs. I haven't been down to the market after the fire, so it's still hard to imagine the damage; much less the despair that all those people with small businesses are suffering after losing everything they had.

Yesterday also brought a teacher friend of mine, Yesenia, to the library... she was very distraught after spending the morning at a pro-Zelaya, anti-coup march on the outskirts of the city. My normally super-calm and warm friend was visibly shaken by the violence she'd seen, as a fellow teacher had been shot by the military during the demonstration. She said the police threw tear gas and there was lots of pushing and chaos - later on the radio I heard an interview of another teacher who'd been badly hurt during the march.

Yesterday also marked day 6 of a 24-hour "toque de queda", or curfew, for the people in the departments bordering Nicaragua. They are being forced to stay in their houses because they have the unfortunate position of living between an ousted president and a militarily imposed president. The curfew started before last weekend, meaning people living in these rural areas weren't able to make the customary trip to buy groceries and staples. So yes, the poor are suffering. Stuck in their homes without food and in some cases without water - under threat of arrest if they decide to take to the streets.

So here I am, sitting in my dark living room in the middle of the night, thinking about Tina and her mom, the people from the market, Yesenia and her fellow marchers who witnessed such violence today, and people under curfew near the border. The injustice is mind-numbing. And paralyzing - probably the reason I haven't written in weeks despite the need to write and share with you, friends and family and maybe a smattering of strangers, what's going on here and how we're feeling. Plus I don't like to be a downer. I'll share one happy thought before signing off: as I mentioned, classes have been canceled most days because teachers are striking, but despite that; one super-cool, super-dedicated teacher named Jorge Juan decided to hold his sixth grade class in the library for a few days so his kids wouldn't be so far behind when their graduation exams come up in a few months. There is hope for the world.

Amanda is in Sojourners

Since Amanda probably doesn't want to engage in shameless promotion, I'll do it for her. Here is a piece she wrote for the Sojourners blog.

I, personally, think it's amazing.

Mel joins the jet set

First of all, a translation:

Estamos abajo del toque de queda lo cual empieza a las 6:30.

Colloquial translation: We are under a curfew starting at 6:30.
Literal translation: We are under a touch of stay starting at 6:30.

And we are under a touch of stay after a gripping day that has taken this country to new levels of tension. Ousted presidente Mel Zelaya, who has been using his fair share of fossil fuels by flying around Central and North America this week, was set to make his triumphant entrance this afternoon. Thousands of his supporters surrounded the airport to welcome him back to town. At around 5 p.m. we ran outside to cheering and the sound of an airplane. I looked up and saw the plane that was supposedly bringing him home. It made two laps around the city, acted as if it were going to land, and took off into the distance. The military had blocked the runways with humvees and didn't give Mel permission to land. He took off to Managua, and, later, El Salvador, promising that he will find a way in sometime this week. Though he has not succeeded in coming back to Tegucigalpa, he has been successful in keeping his name and face in the international media.

Today two were killed and two injured when soldiers opened fire on the crowd. It was the first blood to be shed and hopefully the last, but people are getting scared. Today our church was canceled for no reason and despite the fact that everyone lives within five blocks. A pastor I spoke with at a church fundraiser used the words "civil war" in a sentence. The country is becoming increasingly polarized to the point where it isn't as much about Mel as it is about the poor having a voice. Suddenly the formerly marginal socially minded groups, poor farmers, and folks from the country have something rallying them together and a target at which to direct the anger that has been building for the last twenty years of oligarchic rule. Mending this country back together is going to be very difficult, but maybe it is a good thing that the wounds of time are being exposed.

We continue to feel safe and look forward to the time when this standoff comes to a conclusion. It's stressful to live with such uncertainty and to see the poor suffer and lose hope.

Here is an article I co-authored with my boss, Kurt Ver Beek, in Christianity Today that explains a bit more about the situation.

6 days later...

It's 2:30 am and as I lay awake with a stomach-ache I started feeling a bit guilty to any faithful family and friend blog readers who might have been checking our blog this week hoping for some insight into the Honduran situation. My apologies. Something about wading through the deluge of blogs, local print, web and television news, international mainstream news, various rights-organization reports, and then finally many Honduran professionals' analysis of the situation - well, it left me a little speechless. And wary. Wary because so many of those sources came across so strikingly one-sided and in some cases downright false that I became struck by the power of words, and the responsibility we all have to be careful with how we use them. From a wary news-reader I have become a downright skeptic in the space of one week. I graduated!!

First for a personal note - the week has been a strange combination of building tension and anxiety, and absolute boredom. Andrew and I have logged in long hours in the casita just reading news and ruminating on what could happen here in the next days or weeks. The colonia we live in is on the edge of the city near the airport, so while we've had an up close and personal view of military plane and helicopter traffic all week, we're pretty far from the increasing (in size and frequency) demonstrations from both sides in the downtown areas. Andrew is much more connected to the goings-on as he commutes to the other end of town for work and has done some work interviewing and gathering information this week (I'll let him fill you all in on the fruits of that later). I, however, have spent most of the week sitting with my co-worker Ivonne in the empty library. Schools are canceled, nobody is coming in - I had to cancel the two new English classes I started this week. Tuesday's first day of class was a total bust as I was frazzled and my poor students had to squint to see the whiteboard during one of several power outages. The upswing of this is my craftiness is back on - I taught Ivonne to knit so together we produced two scarves and one hat during work. Military coup = crafty productivity.

On a less-personal note: tensions are running high as the new Honduran government installed after the military coup (many people calling it an arrest) refuses to back down and allow Pres. Mel Zelaya return. Micheleti declared that if Zelaya came back to the country he would be arrested and tried. As you all know from the international coverage of the situation - the international community, along with the Organization of American States, is backing Zelaya and threatening economic sanctions for Honduras if he isn't re-instated as President. The country is clearly divided and Hondurans supporting the ousted president are being silenced in scary ways. Local and international news sources that cast Zelaya in a positive light have been blocked, Zelaya supporters coming in from rural areas (most of his support lies in poor rural areas) have been denied access to cities by the military (here is footage on cnn.com of soldiers shooting tires out of 4 or 5 buses as protesters stood by), and yesterday we heard several reports from reliable sources that human rights organizations and leaders were arrested and detained by the military.

I think it's human nature to want to know who the good guys and who the bad guys are in situations such as these, so we can take the necessary steps to support the good guys, condemn the bad guys. In this case it's really not that simple. Zelaya is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good guy. He made a lot of empty promises in order to gain the support of the poor. Micheleti is no better. I think this is a case of wealthy people and career politicians doing their best to retain their power and wealth. The ones who will lose in this political clash, as always, already are and will continue to be the poor. As the second poorest nation in the western hemisphere, this situation is the last thing Honduras needed. I keep thinking about people we've met out in the campo; people who were already struggling to get by day to day. The poor people that make up the majority of Honduras' population are the ones that will suffer from economic sanctions that will come if Micheletti and the congress refuse to negotiate and cooperate with the international community. The poor majority are fed promises and faulty information from all sides; they are the least educated with the least access to good information, and the most likely to suffer from this mess.

Coups

The Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, was taken from the presidential palace by the military this morning and is in exile in Costa Rica. This is the first military coups in Central America since the Cold War.

We were woken up by a phone call from one of our church leaders this morning informing us that the military had arrested Honduran president Manuel Zelaya this morning. He is currently in exile in Costa Rica. Here is an article in the NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/world/americas/29honduras.html?_r=1&hp

The scariest part this morning was the lack of communication. They cut power to the whole country and shut down the media so there was no information about what was going on. Fighter jets flew right over house very low and there were helicopters taking off from our nearby airport. All of this was meant to be an intimidation, I think. The power is back on, however, and our internet seems to be working. People are definitely frightened and don't know what is going to happen, so people are staying home and out of the streets.

We felt blessed to have church this morning, attended only by a few people. But we prayed, sang, and talked about what was going on. Among the themes that emerged:

* God is always with us, even in times of strife.
* The powerful people who run this country (10 families) have tremendous power over the country. They tell us what they want to hear, they decide when we have power and information, and generally hold the country hostage.
* We have a duty to keep ourselves informed and not believe everything we read. Then, as Christians, we need to testify to the truth in all situations.

We are fine and feel hopeful. We don't know if the power will stay on, so if you don't hear from us it is probably because we are incomunicado for the moment. Please pray for the country. Pray for safety for everyone and a peaceful resolution to this ugly situation.

We'll be in touch.