And to think I once looked at other volunteers' blogs and judged them (just a little) when their posts came a little less frequently and a little less thoroughly as their year progressed ...
April's been a nice month, hot as can be. It's also mango season. Finally! When we first arrived in August, Brooke, Rosi and I made the mistake of asking for mangos at one of the corner stores in the neighborhood. Much to our embarrassment, the owner gave us an incredulous look and informed us that mangos wouldn't be ripe for another 8 months. Where on earth would we have gotten the idea that fruit would be available for purchase out of season? Hard for us, raised on produce from the A & P, Acme, ShopRite, Giant Eagle, etc, etc, etc, to comprehend.
Things at the Comedor are progressing. We have a new Honduran staff member, Deysi, who has taken on the role of social worker / administrator. Deysi's presence is reassuring in the face of our impending departure, something all of us volunteers are feeling anxious (read: freaking out) about. We're hoping for that elusive thing called self-sustainability for Comedor when PVI leaves Talanga. We've had some really successful tooth-brushing exercises for the kids at Comedor, successful probably for everyone except the moms who know have to wash toothpaste stains out of the entire front of their kids' shirts. Effective spitting is still on an upcoming lesson plan. We also had enough donations to do another presentation and give toothbrushes to the nearly 100 kids in grades 1 - 6 who attend classes in the two classroom schoolhouse of Majada Verde and are still planning one for the village of Rincón Grande. I sort of feel like the Santa Claus of toothbrushes at this point, which is actually a title I'm pretty proud of. Crest should probably hire us all as sales reps for the region.
Three weeks ago I got to go back to El Salvador to visit some friends from my semester there as an undergrad. If anyone is a college student or knows someone interested in the realities of the developing world, check out Casa de la Solidaridad (I really cannot say enough good things about this program) and also Casa Banyahan, a new collaboration between the University of San Francisco and Ateneo de Manila in the Philipines
It was really fun to see families from the Salvadoran community where I worked who are doing well two years later. Also cool to see the progression of democracy in the country, visible even from my outsider, amateur perspective. The current president, Mauricio Funes, was elected in 2008 and was the first to defeat the rightist party whose founder was responsible for the government secret police that terrorized the country throughout the armed conflict.
I also got to visit with my friend Olivia, a Fordham grad and study abroad friend who now has a Fulbright - you can check out her blog here. Olivia's work is fascinating: families looking for children who were disappeared during the armed conflict. I'm told 'civil war' isn't the best description for the years of violence because those words imply that it was a fight between equals, when really one side was a military government backed by the US (to the tune of $6 billion) and the other side was peasant guerillas fighting for a fate other than starvation. Not to be dramatic or anything.
Speaking of drama, I just finished a book about the American coup in Guatemala with facts that are so outrageous (but true) it reads like a James Patterson thriller. The CIA overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president at the request of a US corporation (United Fruit) - because the Guatemalan president enacted legislation to purchase land from United Fruit and give it to Guatemalan peasants and because said president wanted to build an electric company and highway for Guatemala since United Fruit owned all of the electricity in the country and the only railroad. Because minor reforms to benefit the poor masses were contrary to the economic interests of United Fruit, the company and the CIA waged a completely fabricated publicity campaign to convince the American public that there was a Soviet threat in Guatemala. The subsequent coup interrupted the development of democracy in Guatemala at such a pivotal moment that the country was thrown into a civil war that lasted until 1996, leaving 200,000 people dead, 93% of whom were killed at the hands of the military government we installed.
Anyway, since this isn't a blog about all the terrible things the US did to Latin America throughout the 20th century, I will move on. I sort of feel the need to apologize when I digress from the lighthearted anecdotes and start on about US foreign policy (past and present) but it's just hard for me to be wrapped up in the reality of Central America on a daily basis and see how the grinding poverty and violence and absolute fatalism infects our friends and not feel disheartened (read: outraged) at how their current reality is so tied up in our historical abuses.
Now actually moving on to other news ...
Walter, Renee, Patrick and Andrew will be touching down in Toncontin International Airport in Tegucigalpa on May 7th. I know I will have lots of good things to report on after this weeklong opportunity for family bonding. Hopefully I can earn my stripes as a tour guide of Honduras. It might even top the summer of 2003 (or was it 2004?) driving the rolling [....] ahem, blue minivan cross country to Santa Fe. I say that with all due respect to the blue minivan.
Last but not least, a little re-cap of Holy Week in Talanga. Super nice, very animated and thoughtful religious traditions make up the week with everything from conventional prayer services to bonfires for youth groups. For the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, the community walks alongside giant sawdust illustrations of the Stations and also live reenactments by children (just slightly odd to see a child in a wig playing Jesus and nailed to a cross) for the morning. On Easter Sunday, the Races of San Juan begin the day. Community members take the statues of Mary, some assorted saints and angels out of the Church and re-enact when Jesus' tomb was discovered empty by running around the park in front of the Church and carrying the statues, who are supposed to be spreading the word that Jesus ha resucitado (Jesus has risen). There is definitely a form to the ceremony but it's done in a lighthearted way that seems to channel the excitement of what that Easter morning really would have been like. The "races" begin at 5 am, and the fact that I was there to witness them really is saying something because, as both Patrick and Andrew will attest, that's earlier than they've ever been able to cajole me out of bed on Easter morning to go eat candy.
April's been a nice month, hot as can be. It's also mango season. Finally! When we first arrived in August, Brooke, Rosi and I made the mistake of asking for mangos at one of the corner stores in the neighborhood. Much to our embarrassment, the owner gave us an incredulous look and informed us that mangos wouldn't be ripe for another 8 months. Where on earth would we have gotten the idea that fruit would be available for purchase out of season? Hard for us, raised on produce from the A & P, Acme, ShopRite, Giant Eagle, etc, etc, etc, to comprehend.
Things at the Comedor are progressing. We have a new Honduran staff member, Deysi, who has taken on the role of social worker / administrator. Deysi's presence is reassuring in the face of our impending departure, something all of us volunteers are feeling anxious (read: freaking out) about. We're hoping for that elusive thing called self-sustainability for Comedor when PVI leaves Talanga. We've had some really successful tooth-brushing exercises for the kids at Comedor, successful probably for everyone except the moms who know have to wash toothpaste stains out of the entire front of their kids' shirts. Effective spitting is still on an upcoming lesson plan. We also had enough donations to do another presentation and give toothbrushes to the nearly 100 kids in grades 1 - 6 who attend classes in the two classroom schoolhouse of Majada Verde and are still planning one for the village of Rincón Grande. I sort of feel like the Santa Claus of toothbrushes at this point, which is actually a title I'm pretty proud of. Crest should probably hire us all as sales reps for the region.
Three weeks ago I got to go back to El Salvador to visit some friends from my semester there as an undergrad. If anyone is a college student or knows someone interested in the realities of the developing world, check out Casa de la Solidaridad (I really cannot say enough good things about this program) and also Casa Banyahan, a new collaboration between the University of San Francisco and Ateneo de Manila in the Philipines
It was really fun to see families from the Salvadoran community where I worked who are doing well two years later. Also cool to see the progression of democracy in the country, visible even from my outsider, amateur perspective. The current president, Mauricio Funes, was elected in 2008 and was the first to defeat the rightist party whose founder was responsible for the government secret police that terrorized the country throughout the armed conflict.
I also got to visit with my friend Olivia, a Fordham grad and study abroad friend who now has a Fulbright - you can check out her blog here. Olivia's work is fascinating: families looking for children who were disappeared during the armed conflict. I'm told 'civil war' isn't the best description for the years of violence because those words imply that it was a fight between equals, when really one side was a military government backed by the US (to the tune of $6 billion) and the other side was peasant guerillas fighting for a fate other than starvation. Not to be dramatic or anything.
Speaking of drama, I just finished a book about the American coup in Guatemala with facts that are so outrageous (but true) it reads like a James Patterson thriller. The CIA overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president at the request of a US corporation (United Fruit) - because the Guatemalan president enacted legislation to purchase land from United Fruit and give it to Guatemalan peasants and because said president wanted to build an electric company and highway for Guatemala since United Fruit owned all of the electricity in the country and the only railroad. Because minor reforms to benefit the poor masses were contrary to the economic interests of United Fruit, the company and the CIA waged a completely fabricated publicity campaign to convince the American public that there was a Soviet threat in Guatemala. The subsequent coup interrupted the development of democracy in Guatemala at such a pivotal moment that the country was thrown into a civil war that lasted until 1996, leaving 200,000 people dead, 93% of whom were killed at the hands of the military government we installed.
Anyway, since this isn't a blog about all the terrible things the US did to Latin America throughout the 20th century, I will move on. I sort of feel the need to apologize when I digress from the lighthearted anecdotes and start on about US foreign policy (past and present) but it's just hard for me to be wrapped up in the reality of Central America on a daily basis and see how the grinding poverty and violence and absolute fatalism infects our friends and not feel disheartened (read: outraged) at how their current reality is so tied up in our historical abuses.
Now actually moving on to other news ...
Walter, Renee, Patrick and Andrew will be touching down in Toncontin International Airport in Tegucigalpa on May 7th. I know I will have lots of good things to report on after this weeklong opportunity for family bonding. Hopefully I can earn my stripes as a tour guide of Honduras. It might even top the summer of 2003 (or was it 2004?) driving the rolling [....] ahem, blue minivan cross country to Santa Fe. I say that with all due respect to the blue minivan.
Last but not least, a little re-cap of Holy Week in Talanga. Super nice, very animated and thoughtful religious traditions make up the week with everything from conventional prayer services to bonfires for youth groups. For the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, the community walks alongside giant sawdust illustrations of the Stations and also live reenactments by children (just slightly odd to see a child in a wig playing Jesus and nailed to a cross) for the morning. On Easter Sunday, the Races of San Juan begin the day. Community members take the statues of Mary, some assorted saints and angels out of the Church and re-enact when Jesus' tomb was discovered empty by running around the park in front of the Church and carrying the statues, who are supposed to be spreading the word that Jesus ha resucitado (Jesus has risen). There is definitely a form to the ceremony but it's done in a lighthearted way that seems to channel the excitement of what that Easter morning really would have been like. The "races" begin at 5 am, and the fact that I was there to witness them really is saying something because, as both Patrick and Andrew will attest, that's earlier than they've ever been able to cajole me out of bed on Easter morning to go eat candy.