Oh Yes I Know

Third Culture Community

2010-07-21T10:35:00.001-07:00

This week I've been at Mennonite Mission Network's Overseas Seminar, leading the third culture kid (TCK) youth. Being a TCK means that you grew up in a place where one culture was your passport country's, another was your host country's, an interesting blend of the two (or more) is your own. I haven't been at one of these since 2002, when I was a little African boy about to enter public high school and have my own less dramatic four-year version of a Mean Girls experience. Seriously.

Being part of the TCK group that week eight years ago was a wonderful thing. I hadn't been in a group before and haven't since that bonded so quickly and felt so comfortable. I was coming from 14 years of life, at least as many different cultural groups (sometimes 3 or more per place) where among the last 10 houses, 8 international moves, 5 school changes, 4 best friends, and 3 languages, the only consistent part of my growing up years had been my family members. The thing is, whenever a group of TCKs gets together, the fact that they grew up with similarly high amounts of transition brings them together pretty tightly.

In preparation for leading this group I've been learning about the advantages and disadvantages of being a TCK. So much of what I've read has helped me to understand the good and the bad of how I've dealt with being a TCK as well as the increasingly clear differences between me and my parents. Once again being in a group of TCKs helps me to see similarities in the values that we hold strongly, our reactions to events, our confidence and easy-going nature, our hesitance and our ignorance.

TCKs deal with rapid transitions by being cultural chameleons. We quickly learn the visible cues, styles, and current pop culture in whatever place we transplant to. We learn how to fit in to the point that we seem to be from the place that we currently reside. When I'm asked where I'm from, I quickly gauge the questioner's interest in me and my life. If I know or hope that I'm going to have a longer term relationship with this person, I'll probably tell them about growing up along the West African coast. They'll ask what countries, and I'll tell them Ghana, Benin, and Ivory Coast. They ask how long, I tell them 10 years. Thats generally as far as it goes. With acquaintances, I simply tell them that I've been around Elkhart since high school.

For many TCKs, we live in multiple worlds. We often go back and forth across lines that most people rarely if ever cross. The most obvious lines are the cultural ones. That is the line between North America and Europe, Africa, and East Asia. Beyond crossing those lines when new air rushes into your face at the plane door, there are the lines between the city and the village, the manicured lawns and the swept-dirt courtyards, the hot shower and the bucket bath. We cross another cultural line every time we leave the American Recreation Center and get on a motorcycle taxi to take us back home. We cross class lines every day between our houses, the international schools we attend with the richest kids in the country, and our churches in the shantytowns. We have potential to grow up to become habitual line-crossers.

The class line is one that we get particularly good practice crossing. Thats because when we come back to our passport countries, we find ourselves continuing to cross that line. Our friends' families from before we left and our new friends have spent more time in the rat race than our families have, making the transition from a missionary salary to dual US salary feel like a step down the economic ladder. Often due to our humble living situation we opt to go to our friends' houses rather than bring our friends to our own houses.

The shame that comes with showing rich friends your life without air conditioning, pools, and servants becomes something familiar. We've learned how it feels. We've learned that to fend off the shame, we must concentrate on what we love and what is beautiful about ourselves, our cultures (as confused as they may be), our families, and our situations.

Logical Policy; Emotional Pull

2010-05-14T16:46:00.000-07:00

The bike shop has continued to be busy. My absence was noticed in both bike shops when I went to Virginia two weeks ago. It feels good to be missed because then I know that the work I do is appreciated. I gave out a lot of bikes in this last week and a half.

A friend of the house donated some very nice bikes to the Elkhart shop. I was inclined to sell the one, as its value when was around $300. A lot of people had been asking if they could work it off and I had been telling them that I was going to attempt to sell it. The bike shop could use more cash flow. After a week, one man (Mark) who had a striking resemblance to a character from the Lord of the Rings movies had helped out around the shop for a few hours without working towards anything. At the end of the day, Mark said he wanted to work it off. I knew that what the shop needed was for me to sell it, but I also knew that this man had probably never had a really nice bike. Who was I to deny Mark something nice that I knew, were I in his shoes, that I would appreciate?

I let Mark work the bike off, with the promise that he would trade to me his old bike. He came the next week and spent the whole afternoon working for it (unfortunately not being very productive). I gave him the bike, he gave me his old one, and he went on his way. The next day, someone else came into the shop and worked for a few hours for Mark's old bike. Happy transactions all around.

Yesterday, Mark walked up to the shop. Uneasiness turned my stomach turned. When I asked him where his bike was, he shrugged his shoulders. He said that it had been stolen while it was locked up. I gave him an incredulous look, to which he told me of the camera, the security guard, the unidentifiable hooded figure who had been taped stealing the camera. I didn't believe it, my theory was that he had sold it at a pawn shop. That's because Mark wasn't looking sad at all, not even a bit disappointed. He was more interested in looking at the other bikes to see what the next one was that he could fix up and take. But this one wasn't for him, this one was for his girlfriend. Why did she need another bike, hadn't I already given her one? Of course, her bike has been stolen as well. Doubtless.

I let him know that I wasn't going to let him work off another bike, for neither himself nor his girlfriend. At least not for a month. I explained that this was policy to prevent people from taking bikes and selling them at pawn shops. At this he got a bit flustered, said that he understood, and walked off. Several hours later, he came back, this time on a bike. He asked me if I recognized it. It was his old bike. He said that the guy who worked it off was actually his friend, who was going to let Mark work it off from him. Mark said the other guy didn't want it because it had been too long since he had ridden a bike and he was really sore.

Another story, a little boy (6 years old maybe?) has been trying to buy a bike from me. I said I would sell a decent BMX bike to him for $10, a stellar bargain. He brought me his money, $3. I explained that it wasn't enough, he had to bring me $10. So he came back soon, this time with $6.14. Apparently he hadn't learned how to count money as of yet. It was too nice of a bike, I couldn't let it go for less than $10, so I told him that he should come back the next day with $10. When he showed up the next day with the same $6.14, I told him that he could do some work then I would give it to him for the money that he had.

Have you ever given a 6 year old child work to do? What a weird feeling. I gave him some steel wool and a rim to scrape. And wow did he work. Most adults don't work that quickly or that well. He did an awesome job scraping for about 20 minutes until his older brother showed up and yelled at him for leaving the house when his other siblings weren't home. He left and I didn't get the chance to give him his bike. I guess it'll have to wait.

This one is difficult because I feel torn because of so many different things. I know that his family is poor and I want to give him the bike. I don't want to give it to him for free because then he won't treat it well (true for almost anyone) and he won't be as proud his accomplishment. He also might tell his friends that he got it for free and they would then demand the same thing from me. What really threatened to break my heart about this situation was that this boy was so committed to getting this bike that he was willing to one, give his live savings (three dollar bills, eight quarters, and a few dimes, nickels, and pennies), two, work for it, and three, be committed enough to remember and to actually come back several times over the course of two weeks. Stress the heart some more with the knowledge that since he's 6 years old and around 3.5 feet tall, hes probably going to get this fairly nice bike stolen from him by an older kid faster than you can say 'I think I'm going to cry.'

The combination of these stories provides a lens to view the difficulties of operating a community bike shop and dealing with real people who have real needs. The cash-only policy for nice bikes exists for a reason, as does the requirement that people do work or give money for bikes and parts. But often the emotional reasons behind bending policy can play the strings of your heart like a harp. I'm sure Mark needed whatever money he got from the two bikes that I assume he sold but I wish he and his girlfriend were enjoying the bikes as they carried them so smoothly around town and to work. Maybe all is well because both bikes will be eventually recycled back into the community, a few other bikes are in better condition because of the work he did, maybe he learned something, and hahahaha, hes still on the same trusty steel steed that originally brought him to my shop.

Tender Loving Care

2010-04-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

The bike shop in the garage behind the Jubilee house has been so busy. The shop is full of beaten up, worn out bikes that people have brought in to fix or just to give to me. Its really been wonderful to have a busy workplace and to feel like I'm doing something productive with my time. It had to warm up to about 40 before people woke up from their winter slumber, but now that it's really warmed up nicely, people have started coming in droves.

Every day its the same story with the bikes. They have rusty chains, rusty cables, rusty, wobbly, and dented rims, dry bearings, and maybe a few bizarre creaks here and there. But they can be made to function, more or less. Some have more serious problems, like when the bearings have fallen out completely or axles have broken in half. With a lot of perseverance, a little creativity, and some sore, skinless knuckles, most of these things can be fixed.

The most common type of problem is just a maintenance related one. That happens when people haven't known or cared enough to take care of their bikes. Mostly, people coming into the shop clean bikes with these kinds of problems. It can be a really rewarding thing, especially when it seems so hopeless before any work is done, but then the smallest signs of progress encourage us to keep up the good work. A dull, rusty rim can be made shiny if someone tries hard enough.

The other day I showed Chris how to adjust a seat so that it was tight and at the right angle. I showed Lee how to clean up cables and replace them if need be. After a couple of hours of all of us working on their bikes, some other people showed up. Predictably, their bikes had the same problems as most of the other bikes. This time, I was really busy, so I couldn't take the time to teach them how to get things to work again. So I put Chris and Lee up to the task.

Sometimes I can stop for a second and look around. I look at everyone's beaten down, worn out bike and see that really, all that it needs is some tender loving care. Then I see the sweat beading on weathered, scrunched up faces, the torn shoes, the beaten up hands, the grease-blackened jeans grunting to turn rusted out nuts and bolts. These people have been under a lot of stress, having lost jobs, homes, or maybe even families. Smiles break loose across our faces, a laugh jumbles out from behind the truing stand. Self-respect, confidence, and shock radiate from people as they find themselves put into a teaching position, made a leader. Sometimes, all we need is some tender loving care.

Hallelujah

2010-01-31T18:12:00.000-08:00

The last week has been wonderful at the Jubilee house. I enjoyed the weekly meeting (!?!?!?), we had an impromptu birthday dance party for a friend, we went to a bar together, and we ALL ate dinner together tonight. It has been amazing to choose to hang out together without having business to talk about. Sam and Maisha have been singing, playing piano and guitar, and sounding awesome too! Hallelujah, praise the Lord!

As is the precedent, the miracles aren't only in the house. It's been sunny out the last two whole days, chasing away our cases of Seasonal Affective Disorder. I also had a meeting with the director at Faith Mission, a nearby shelter, about the future of the bike shop. After I explained everything about how the bike shop works and how about 10 people from Faith Mission have come by since it's been cold, the director got excited about it. Its looking like the shop will find a new residence in a warehouse next to the thrift store that Faith Mission runs! That means many people will know about the shop and hopefully many clients at Faith Mission will be interested in working off their own bikes. Hallelujah, once again.

Recently Juan, a middle-aged Mexican man, has been visiting at Chain Reaction. Juan has only lived in Goshen for two years. Right now his wife has a job but he has been unemployed for a while now. He came in and worked off two nice bikes in about 12 hours. In Aguas Calientes (named for its hot springs), Mexico, he worked taking care of someone else's land and livestock. I did very little production-scale agricultural work in Honduras, but it was enough to learn that it is physically punishing. Once I had showed him a few things about fixing bikes, he started to dream about starting a bike shop in Mexico. With a few tools he could support himself into old age, not having to worry about getting up before dawn to pick hundreds of pounds of coffee off of the bushes until well into the night time. Meeting someone who aspires to learn your own not-so-prestigious trade is a good way to get slapped by your privilege. But its these occasional slaps that keep our opulence in perspective, that keep us humble.

Grumpy is another recent friend from the bike shop. He is one who just got out of the prison industrial complex. His factory job paid high in comparison to the rest of the incarcerated workforce. Working 56 hours, he was bringing a whole $31 back to his cell each week. Yeah, you do the math. He said many that he knew were saddled with jobs that paid only a tenth of what his did. I wondered if that had allowed him to save anything over his multi-year stint, but apparently the horrifying quality of the provided prison food was enough to drive anyone to the commissary for some preservative-injected plastic-wrapped industrial nourishment. Reading has taught me of the private (for profit) nature of many prisons and the slavery of millions of inmates in the USA. It must be awfully lucrative, with the state paying to house the prisoners who end up working for the companies for nothing. It made me happy to be able to give my friend Grumpy a $30 bike after a few hours.

One idea that the director at Faith Mission got excited about was the potential for a recycling program. Chain Reaction runs a recycling program that pays the bike-riding recycling collectors $15 and hour, something closer to a living wage. That can only provide employment for a couple of people for a couple of hours each week. But its enough to give people a fighting chance at some dignity. Hallelujah!

Hard Knock Life

2009-12-30T08:55:00.000-08:00

Business has been picking up at the bike shop. Well, not business as you normally think of it, but people have been coming in to fix their bikes and a few have asked if I have bikes to sell. Its notable that the people coming by aren't just wide-eyed neighborhood kids trying to get their hands on whatever they can. These people have been adults who use or will use their bike as their primary mode of transportation.

Meet Brian, a tall, thin anglo man. He is soft-spoken and very humble. He rides a black Huffy mountain bike, the kind that you buy at Walmart for $90. Today, Brian has his long, wavy blond hair bunched upwards into a beanie. He is a Bible student at Bethel College in South Bend. Luckly, he only has one class per week on Monday nights, to which he rides his bike. He is so serious of a student, so passionate about what he does, he carries all of his books 15 miles or more each way in a hiking backpack. Recently his seat post had to be replaced because his body weight combined with the books had bent his first one down to his rear wheel (I find that hard to believe, but he wasn't joking). He came by on Tuesday as well to work on his bike a little and check to see if I could help him install a 49cc motor inside his bike's triangle. Today he is here to install it.

We open the boxes to check out the parts. Several are very heavy, others are complicated to the point of being intimidating. I spot the manual at the bottom of the box. Drawings cover a few pages of the manual, speckled with hundreds of scratchily handwritten, hardly visible numbers. On one page, there are a few paragraphs written in far-from-perfect English describing installation sequence along with a picture of the finished product. Looking at the sketches, into the box, and at the tired little Huffy, I have a feeling of uncertainty. Brian suggests that we pray about it and I chuckle. I always pray once I've messed a project up, rarely before I even start. I turn to look at him and see that he is serious. I drop my hands and close my eyes, admitting that he has a point, then Brian prays that God will give us what we both feel is lacking, the ability to complete the project.

We didn't finish the installation, but we came really close. It'll make for an inspiring motored bike. The experience of just meeting this man was already plenty of inspiration for me. He used to live with some people close to where I live now, but he moved out when some chemical dependencies showed up in his housemates. Now he lives in a storage unit where he says he plans to build himself a loft set-up, like a dorm. He says living in a storage unit is fine, except sometimes you just want some light, like in the mornings when you want to get dressed. His light is currently a few LEDs on a utility battery. It blows my mind that he can live in a storage unit and bike 30 miles once a week to take a class.

I stayed at the Catholic Worker house in South Bend. Their commitment to simple living goes beyond ours over at the Jubilee house. Thirty of them eat nearly all donated food together every night, they work real jobs and contribute all of their earnings to the house, and on the weekends they voluntarily run a busy soup kitchen. When I commented on how busy their lives must be, I was corrected, full, not busy. One of them was gone and I stayed in his room. The only decorations in his spacious room were a crucified Jesus on the wall and several big piles of books. Yet it almost felt like home. How are these people renewed, where do they find life, how are they filled?

I puzzle over that question. I think that either of those lives would exhaust me. I am filled by many things, singing, eating with people, working with people, praying, exercise, working with food in all of its stages, going to church, being with people, reading books, and other things. I guess I could still be filled by all of those things if I was in either situation, but I'm not sure about that. I am reminded of the Liberian A Capella, a singing men's group that has gone through civil war, the loss of friends and family, and surely are familiar with looking despair in the face then staring it down. These men sing songs of freedom, joy, and peace despite witnessing atrocities and intense heartbreak. Could I still sing if my family had been killed, my friends raped? The resonance in their voices stands as a testament to the power of faith. Also, it stands as a reason to be thankful for all of the people in our lives, for the good times and for the hard times. One struggle helps to give us a cheerful perspective during another, when we know the beauty and triumph that comes out of the pain.

Una Forma de Amar Diferente

2009-10-28T18:29:00.000-07:00

Hello dear bloggership! These days, I'm doing quite well. The interpersonal stress in my household over gender/personality issues has calmed down a little, and while they mostly remain unresolved, things are at least friendly. I'm feeling more comfortable in this house and with work, things like community meal (when 20 people show up to eat dinner with the 10 of us) no longer stress me out.

Tonight I just finished a small batch of applesauce. Our biggest pot was full of apple slices, but they boiled down to 5 quarts. They're next to the computer and one of them happily popped a few seconds ago, signaling the successful sealing of the jar. Without decomposing bacterial invasion, that seal is capable of preserving the applesauce inside for many years to come. About a month ago, I picked up some jars from an old Fellowship of Hope (intentional community) house, some of which had food still in them. The lids said 95 and 97. Everything still looked good, so I broke that precious seal on a jar full of pears, then ate them all. They were delicious. But not nearly as delicious as my 5 quarts of applesauce will be when I open them up with some loved ones in the dead of winter.

There's something that I've wanted to write for a long time but I haven't gotten it out, its about bikes, specifically why I love them so much. Not only do they build amazing muscles in your legs that allow you to go all day and not get tired, help your body stay strong to ward off diseases, prevent future medical complications, and save you money on car insurance, maintenance, and gas, they also build community. Riding a bike, you go slowly, at 20 miles per hour or less. At this speed, and lacking the metal box enclosing most street travelers, you can make eye contact with and say hello to people sitting in their driveways, enjoying the afternoon.

I thought all of this was well and good, perfect even, until now that I've been doing it for a long time and I still haven't gotten to know my neighbors. I've made eye contact with, smiled at and said hello to many people who pass by my bike shop as I work and also many people on a few streets around Elkhart as I ride my bike around. But just that isn't enough for me to have a sense of community.

Earlier this week I stopped at Ox Bow Park on my way to Goshen to take pictures of the beautiful leaves and trees. Breaking my ride up like that really helped me to relax and feel great, also to appreciate nature. Riding my bike is great for me, but I still need to stop and take time to relax.

In Honduras I really felt comfortable in my town when I could walk around and greet people by name. Towards the end I started to hear 'A wiki-wiki WAMBA!!!' when local high schoolers would see me. They were just repeating the camp chant that I had taught them, but it helped me to know that I was a part of their lives and their community. It is a beautiful feeling, something I will cherish forever.

Staying Out of Trouble

2009-09-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

Adjustment to life in the MVS house has been a little hectic. Weeks fly by like seconds. Thursday night happens before you take your first deep breath after the weekend. That is, if you get to take a breath on the weekend. Exciting projects have coupled with my desire for community involvement and the work realize personal dreams. The first month of this life happen without time to sit in the hammock and read, as I spent so much time doing in Honduras.

This last month has also been full of anti-racism and anti-sexism talk in the house and outside of it. Its all been well and good, except that the tight-packedness of it has left very little time for reflection and collection of thoughts. Anyway these thoughts have seeped into every interaction that I have. I feel like I suddenly have a window into (what I've been told) is the dark side of systemically oppressed people's thoughts. Its a little bit unnerving.

Working at the bike shop behind the house gives me a lot of opportunities to interact with local people. If I see a Caucasian kid taking charge and his significantly older sister or an African-American kid letting him take charge, I wonder how much of that is happening because of socialization. Much, apparently, despite the Caucasion kid's high mechanical aptitude. I must admit that the things I see do make sense under these new lenses.

Before the (Damascus Road) anti-racism training, I had spoken with an African-American male teenager outside of the bike shop. I asked what was up, to which he responded that he was just trying to stay out of trouble. Being taken back to the hundreds of times I had heard my dad say that in a joking way, I laughed and told him that that was what I was trying to do too. What struck me immediately was that for him, keeping out of trouble was a very real struggle. Every day I'm sure he struggles to keep out of trouble with gangs, drugs, and police. He, walking alone or with his friends, is immediately suspect. I don't know the statistics, but I do know that he, simply by being African-American, is much more likely to do time in prison or in the back of a cop car. And even though I disregard traffic law and have done stupider and more illegal things in the past, I was and am not as likely to get arrested for it.

But I see hope. A growing wave of racial and sexual discrimination awareness is bringing these things into more and more benefiting people's conscience thoughts. A smile and salutation still have the power to blast warmth and acceptance through people's reluctantly built walls of bitterness, anger and fear. And Maisha (housemate) and I were welcomed to the neighborhood last night by an Angel, a woman who lives down the street.

The Work Pew

2009-09-04T06:31:00.000-07:00

I'm getting settled in here in Elkhart. I moved into the MVS Jubilee House almost two weeks ago and I've been working a lot doing projects with my dad, projects at Jubilee and getting the bike shop set up. Its been exhausting and I'm already drawing clearer lines between work and personal space so that I can preserve calm, peace, and energy throughout my time here. The MVS unit here is coming together a little more every day and I'm really enjoying the friendships that I'm making here. We fill our time with good laughs. :)

Last week as I was rearranging the attic over the bike shop, I found a small section of one-legged pew from Prairie Street MC that had been cut off several years ago to make space for wheelchairs. I carried it down into the bike shop, thinking it would be a great chair to put into Jubilee. When Simon Gingrich (Prairie Street MC's pushing-90 workhorse) gave a suspecting sideways look at it and said it was one of his challenges to cut a few years ago because the wood curves while it's thickness changes.

Later that week I found a suitable piece of wood, sawed it up and nailed it onto the legless side of the pew. Then I sawed it again so that the pew would sit straight. Smiling to myself, I took a good look at my work. This little disabled pew now had enough legs, it supported my weight. The torn cushion and cover were as comfortable as they had ever been, happy to be able to serve a purpose again.

Sitting on the pew, I was overcome by an urge to sing a hymn, to rejoice for all that God provides. My upbeat heart sung all day, now with a place to sit and examine old dysfunctional bikes, take them apart, wipe of decades of grime, patch their tubes, true the wheels, tighten the brakes, scrape off rust, and grease up their mechanical pieces. Yesterday five other people came to work at the bike shop doing all of the above. One old neighbor man, Uncle Ed, sat on the pew and made wheels, fenders, and handlebars shine brighter than any of us would have believed possible.

With this work, some lines have been blurred rather than better defined. One has been the line between work and worship. For me, it has become an act of worship to rehabilitate an old pew and a few old bikes as well as teach some bike repair. New familiarity with each other, the feeling of being useful, the dissipation of fear of the unknown, the swelling joy from riding a pretty bike, the empowered glint in the eye of a new bike mechanic who understands her machine, all of it gave me a glimpse of the Kingdom. Its a beautiful sight to watch from a seat in the crutched work pew.

And if the salt has gained new flavor?

2009-07-21T16:30:00.000-07:00

I have now arrived in Akron, Pennsylvania and am with the SALTers from around the world. Its been a wonderful couple of days. I'll move on to visit my brother and EMU people in Harrisonburg, then to a family reunion at Laurelville Mennonite Camp then to Liz' friend's wedding in Newton, Kansas. then I'll take a train to Purdue and hopefully connect with friends from Camp Tecumseh (where I worked last year) and friends from Purdue, then my parents will come pick me up. and take me back to Elkhart. All of that is extremely exciting, but I'm sad about the fact that I'm already exhausted. Not doing consistent exercise for about a year will take a toll on you.

Its quite apparent that the same affliction has fallen on most of the rest of the SALTers as well. Evidence was shown in the disappearance of tone and muscle size during our ultimate frisbee game the other day. My calves are still killing me. I've started out into vegetarianism as well and I'm struggling to find sources of lots of protein.

But personal fitness was the least of our worries. Today we had small-group meetings where we talked about our greatest struggles this last year. It was quite powerful as many SALTers shared deeply about being trapped in social or physical boundaries. We all were trapped at some point because of language difficulties, some people unexpectedly had to learn an indigenous language. People shared about tough host family, work, and community situations that they dealt with the whole year. In a few cases, they were able to come out at the end with an acceptable resolution, but a lot of them just had to learn how to cope. Some people who were bubbly last year are now startlingly quiet, others where had appeared muted and emotionless last year expressed powerful emotion and passion.

Its been tough. We are tired. We were hit with things we never expected and confused for months over things that shouldn't have been ours to worry about in the first place. We have cried nights away, spent hours clearing out abused intestines, and run away to hundreds of worlds in the books we read. I think we have all come out of the experience stronger. We have more understanding of ourselves and definitely more understanding of foreigners and their cultures. We have developed passion for personal and community development, passion for right relationships, passion for life, love, and peace. Please, be gentle with us.

Las Palabritas

2009-07-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

The last couple of weeks here have been kind of crazy. Honduras has been undergoing some serious political issues. In case Michael Jackson has taken priority over Honduras in your news, I’ll recap.

Former president Mel Zelaya had been pushing a public inquiry to open the constitution to change in a way many suspected would be similar to Venezuelan Hugo Chavez’ recent changes (highly left-wing, but also with a clause to allow him to run for president again). On the day that the inquiry was to happen, Honduran military took Zelaya to Costa Rica and Roberto Micheletti (presidential candidate in recent caucus) was put into power by Congress. Zelaya and Chavez threw threats of war around for a couple of days then settled to push Zelaya’s reinstatement through the Organization of American States (OEA). Zelaya also went to the UN, where he found support. From what it looked like on the TV, protests for and against the new government were raging in the biggest cities around the country. Lastimosamente, one or two protesters were killed by police when Zelaya tried to fly in to Tegucigalpa last week. Since then, aid money to Honduras has been delayed and there have been vague threats of trade/oil embargos which do a fairly good job of striking fear into rural people. Zelaya has said that he is going to appear in Honduras sometime soon.

Though life goes on as usual, it has been a pretty frightening experience out here in La Campa. I think that’s mostly because being so far away from all the action and straining all day to hear reports of anything on the radio really gets your imagination going. I went to San Pedro Sula over one weekend that looked a little dicey, but the 10pm to 6am curfew made sleeping downtown feel like La Campa, minus the roosters.

Zelaya was taken out on a Sunday. Similar to Amanda and Andrew’s experience, church that day was very good to me. A guest speaker preached an uplifting message of hope and faith because as Christians, our citizenship is of heaven, not of any country, and we know that God is with us. During the church service, I couldn’t stop looking at the plump, smiling, wide-eyed babies all around me. It weighs on my heart that this event is and will continue to provoke a massive uncertainty for the future of those babies. What does this mean for their education? For their life opportunities, slim as they may be? Will they be like the children of Baghdad, six years old and unaware of an empowered life, always subject to the whim of a random bomb or rocket attack?

Thankfully, protests have not become seriously violent. As always, we are reminded to pray for the future and these children. The national (and global) divide between the ultra-rich and the rest as well as their grip on politics and the economy continue to grow. All of this leaves room for plenty of incertidumbre, a good, awkward word to describe feelings of unsureness.

As I prepare to leave, I find myself looking into the eyes of my Honduran friends and trying to push away that shadowy, persistent demon of incertidumbre. And then we talk and the bond of life, joy, friendship, love, and hope starts shining and brightening between us.

Photos to pass the time

2009-07-04T15:08:00.000-07:00

Probably the last photos I will post here in Honduras

I'm at the MCC farm near Lago Yojoa with the Stephens family. Its been fun to to hang out and see some farm work and dull a machete on some rocks. The political situation here has been preoccupante this week. I feel like it should be alright, but the situation is a little more worrying for the Hondurans as international aid money is being cut and possible sanctions could be applied. I went to church last Sunday after hearing that the president had been taken to Costa Rica and I saw the usual load of babies and small children there. With the political situation as it is, it makes me wonder about their future. It is heavy on my heart that while I can leave easily and carry on with my life, the children of Honduras's education, their parent's livelihood, and a million other things are in jeopardy. So please, take a moment to pray for Honduras and its people, wisdom for Honduran and other Latin American leaders.

Thanks!

Culture Accepted as Truth

2009-06-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

This last week I finished my work with the camps. I’ve said this before, but I’m so glad that I’ve gotten to help with them because I’ve seen such a wonderful effect of the work. Amanda and Andrew came to visit me on the weekend and we had a good time hanging out and talking. I also took each of them on a short moto ride and they both got pretty scared, but they managed well in the end.

One thing that has been very interesting to see is how some cultural taboos work. In North America, most everyone except for some young women have never danced moving their hips from side to side, in fact most think it’s not possible. If a North American tries it, they will undoubtedly laugh out of embarrasement and convince themselves not to try it again. Men would never dance moving their hips. Here, all you have to do is demonstrate how you want the jovenes (young adults) to move their hips, and they (the non-evangelicals, at least) get to it right away, without a hint of embarassment. Either that or they say they can’t do it and watch in envy.

Cheating also has a contrasting taboo. In North America, cheating is generally prohibited, unless you’re playing one of those card games that is based on it. Whether we’re playing Mafia, walking around blindfolded, or answering surveys, cheating normally comes out as the prefered method to complete the task at hand. If theres another way to do it that seems like it might be easier, people go for it. There seems to be no real concern for ‘the letter of the law,’ sometimes even when it is repeated and reiterated that it must be followed. Cheating appears to be fully acceptable.

That perception of mine makes me wonder if that’s how so many government officials get away with corruption. Two of La Campa’s three hotels are owned by former mayors, along with one or more nice vehicles. The current mayor has a very nice truck and several large milking cows, which together have a value of around 6 years of his actual salary. I’m not saying that any of them pocketed La Campa funds, but its just a little suspicious that the three (by far) most well-well off families in La Campa have held La Campas highest government post.

I am fascinated that depending on where you grow up, you can develop distinct attitudes toward the same thing. In La Campa, we admire a man who can shake his hips. We understand that cheating is acceptable. We crave meat, beans, and tortillas. We see a hungry man unless a woman is close by to cook and serve him food. We go to bed at 9pm and get up at 5am. We ask why the present NGOs aren’t giving us houses and petroleum-based fertilizers. We wonder how, without the NGO’s constant donations, we can ever make our country developed and respectable. We see green grass and we look for the horse or cow that should be eating it. We look for tasty/medicinal monte (shurbs) and mushrooms on the road or path that we walk on. We talk in hushed voices about the corruption we see up the street. We are so busy incriminating politicians that talking about solutions hardly crosses our minds.

We’re so used to all this, we can’t even imagine things any other way. We’re convinced that the way we see it is the (t / T)ruth. But then breaking that in ourselves and in others is why cultural exchange is always so rich and rewarding.

El Gran Reto

2009-06-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

The camps I`ve been helping with recently have been wonderful. They`re paid for and staffed by multiple institutions, PLAN International, World Vision, and a bunch of Honduran NGOs. Its really amazing and exciting to see young people develop leadership, teamwork, and critical thinking skills over a couple of days. Its really dramatic.

So many institutions working together can be a headache. On Thursday I went into Gracias and walked an hour to the camp site to find out that I had to make it back to La Campa because it had been decided to do the camp right outside of La Campa. Someone had decided to change it the night before and I hadn´t been informed. I was a little furious. But when I got to La Campa, I hung out with the institution people until it was decided that not enough young people showed up in the municipality to go ahead with the camp. In that municipality, turnout is generally low because people walk up to 6 hours just to get to the town center. We, the leaders, went on a hike for fun up a river, climbed up a ravine wall to see a cave where guaro (moonshine) used to be made. I only felt like my life was in danger a few times on the ravine wall, so we´ll praise the Lord for that.

I ended up going to the other camp that was going on in another municipality that I had never been to. I went in a car, a shiny new Ford Explorer, that had been donated to the camp NGO by USAID. SUVs like that don´t exist here except for maybe a couple in the cities. We were listening to techno and mainstream rap from the US. Also we were driving with the windows usp, and since no one could see through the extra-balck tint on the windows, they just looked at the USAID sticker on the side of the car. We were a good personification of a lot of aid money, self-serving, impersonal, and oblivious to the reality surrounding us.

At one point at the camp, we saw smoke rising from a hill fairly close to our camp. When the wind picked up, the coordintor guy said we should check it out to see if it was a controlled burn or not. Four of us then went on a super-exciting, physics-defying, absolutely terrifying motorcycle ride, me on the back, up an extremely treacherous footpath to fight a forest fire. We triumphantly fought one side of the fire, saving maybe an acre or two of forest.

The rest of the camp consisted of giving ridiculous-seeming challenges to the young people and watching them work at it until they figured it out. Its a whole lot of fun. I joked with my parter that el gran reto (the great challenge) is to climb that big pine tree over there, without touching the tree! (or cut it down with...a herring!) :O The great thing is that leadership, teamwork, and critical thinking skills develop during the challenge and everyone comes out with more confidence, knowledge, and wisdom than they had before.

El gran reto made me reflect that that is often how life is for all of us, how things work. We have a huge task set before us that seems impossible, and whether we achieve it or not, we come out with new and improved skills, knowledge, and wisdom. Of course, all this depends on our attitude. And God is the camp leader, watching, laughing about the seeming impossibility of the task, but knowing that it is developing us for our future.

Walkin' legs

2009-05-25T06:48:00.000-07:00

The rainy season is coming into full swing now. It really makes travelling to communities tough. Today on the motorbike, I had to cross a normally shallow river (1 ft deep). I was thinking it had probably grown since it had just finished raining, but once I saw it, it didn’t look like it had very much. I dropped a gear and went into the little river, lifting up my legs so as not to soak them. The moto and I got across fine but my boots went under so I think it was probably about 2.5-3 feet deep. But eso no fue nada (that was nothing)! My coworker Elvin (the one who doesn’t exaggerate) said one time he crossed a river where the water almost came up to the seat on the moto. Scary!

I got to the community and sat around for a while, waiting for the young people to show up. Plenty of younger and older people came in too once we started singing songs and playing games. As is typical, following instructions turned out to be difficult. Reminded of the time, I tried to talk with them about what kind of interpersonal and life skills they had been able to practice while working on the vegetable garden. Unfortunately the presence of the overly participative group leader meant that no one else really had to talk. Soon, the rain started up again and drowned me out. Between the time restraints, the talkative leader, and the rain, I think very little (less than normal) of what I said was understood. Though it was a weaker than mediocre meeting, a bunch of them let me know that they had enjoyed it and thanked me for visiting.

My conclusion is that there is a lot of value in going to a meeting just to make sure that they know you’ve made the effort to come out to see them. I’d probably be encouraged by a simple visit too if I lived out there. Some of them walk to the municipality center (1.5 hours fast, 3 slow) and back for high school every weekday. For these people, spending half a day walking is fairly common. My church in La Campa had a service tonight at an 85 year old man’s house for his birthday. He walks to town at least twice a week for church, about a 4 hour roundtrip over hills covered with loose rocks. In that context, understandably, the presence of people at any meeting means that they care.

And some more books that I just read:

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver – She has an ability to pull you into her story so completely that you never want to put it down and then when its done you miss the characters. It carefully explains the importance of community as few of us know it while providing an intreaguing look into modern Native American society.

A Traves de Cien Montanas (Across a Hundred Mountains) by Reyna Grande – Is a powerful book about immigration to the US from the point of view of a poor Mexican family. Hope carries through the emotional struggle of anger, worry, fear and disgrace. It puts a very human and personal touch on immigration, well worth the read.

Same Kind of Different As Me by Denver Moore and Ron Hall – Powerful and touching, it is a true story about how a millionaire and a homeless man become emotional brothers. Encourages the reader to an enduring relational ministry to the homeless and society’s outcasts. Read it and tell me how many times it chokes you up/makes you cry. My count of 2 shouldn’t be very hard to beat (especially if you’re my dad ;).

Oh Happy Day!

2009-05-13T05:48:00.000-07:00

I've finally gotten to post some pictures! They're beautiful, check them out :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012625&id=1161480074&l=c1d78e3d27

That NGO Addiciton

2009-05-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

The other day I picked up an Utne Reader magazine and started reading it. I found an interesting article called ´The New Colonialists´ talking about NGOs and what they do for the people of third world countries. I`ve read before about aid shipments of clothes, grain, and infrastructure collapsing local economy on those three levels, effectively creating a dependency overnight. The article correctly said that while the effects of NGOs´ work can be horrific, it has saved millions of lives. By saving all those lives, they take authority and the need to be competent away from their host government. This makes the government weak and since it has fewer responsibilities and expectations, more likely to be corrupt. The people lose confidence in their government, making a situation of civil unrest more likely to happen. It was a fascinating article, really, considering that I work for an NGO.

What made it even more fascinating was that I was reading it in La Campa´s municipal building at a meeting of representatives from all the local NGOs with political and community leaders from La Campa and its villages. And who was invited but wasn´t present? Take a guess. La Campa´s mayor. It seemed like the people who were united were the de facto municipality officials, yet no elected government officials were there (but a mayor candidate for the coming elections did showed up). The next day they had a similar meeting in San Manuel, but there the mayor and local government officials showed up.

Whether or not the NGO workers in the area are aware of the political and dependence issues that could come out of their work, what they were doing in La Campa and San Manuel had the possibility of stemming those issues. That would be achieved by uniting local NGO-empowered community leaders with each other and with local government, to effectively do whatever work that needs to be done, without relying on foreign donations to NGOs.

The goal is to empower people, something I feel like we do with CASM. Sometimes though, dependence rears its ugly head. A couple of times when I have visited communities, people ask me what I brought for them. Sometimes it feels offensive, but then I remind myself that its true, I have access to more money and more resources than they do and I am here to serve, so why shouldn´t I help them? The biggest challenge is to work for sustainability, to ward of dependency. Luckily, my work is focused on building leadership in youth and in communities, something that is directed to diminish dependency.

Let the Rain Come

2009-04-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have seen a steady accumulation of clouds in the sky. This country is so parched; the promise of rain is exciting and refreshing. Last week I went to the MCC retreat at Lago Yojoa and it was quite different to see green trees covered with flowers. At the retreat I got to meet the new MCC Honduras family, the Stephens. Their story is encouraging. They took a leap of faith into service, selling their home, abandonning their comfortable life, and coming down with an open mind, hands free.

I stopped for breakfast in La Esperanza on the way to the retreat. An old man with a French cap and voice reminiscent of Sean Connery came in, sat down at the restaurant’s one table with me, and ordered some breakfast. I soon found out that he, Salvador, had spend 15 years studying in the US to get four bachelor’s degrees on top of a Ph. D. in education. He worked for the Honduran government for decades, writing the law concerning organic agriculture while organizing, teaching, and befriending a large group of campesinos, in the process making them millionaires (1M Lempiras = $50k).

Now he is the regional director for Habitat for Humanity. Salvador designed and is building a house for his son to live in that he hopes will be adopted as a new design standard for Habitat in his region. His design separates the latrine/shower from the house and adds two bedrooms, making it a healthier and more practical house. Also, he’s using apropriate technology, building with bamboo instead of steel rebar to support the walls. His design comes out more expensive ($4,500 difference) than the current design, but for the added cost, he calls it a habitacion digna, a respectable living space.

Many development organizations seem more concerned with writing big numbers in a chart than with actually helping people. World Vision recently came by to measure, weigh, and have a doctor glance at some local kids. They were supposed to be the poorest of the poor, but the town setting of the check-ups meant that the kids were already fairly well off. The poorest of the materially poor live in villages that you have to walk over rivers and mountains to get to, few of which I have been to. Not that being weighed, measured, and given a notebook and pencil would have changed their lives anyway.

A homeless man in Lafayette, Indiana expressed to me his anger that most people invest more money in and spend more time on their dogs than the suffering human beings down the street. This is true, we go to great lengths to satisfy a selfish whim; yet, when the most crucial needs of our neighbors stare us in the face, we pretend not to notice.

So make it personal, make it real. Share a meal and a meal-time with someone on the street. Open your house to a family in need. Sacrifice something for the benefit of a neighbor in need. You don’t need to send your money to an institution to be a conduit of life and love. Right now, you can put leaves back on the trees, give the birds a place to sing, and send new green shoots full of life through the dead plants. You can help bring the Holy Reign.

Teólogas

2009-04-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

Out in the country, many people don´t have a lot of social interaction, most people´s days consist of working fields, taking care of livestock, and chopping up firewood. They relate most often to their extended families. Meeting with groups far out in the country with who share distant family connections, the discomfort is thick in the air. Communities with strong, involved leaders get projects done and community development (or the development of community) soon follows after.

These individuals are often also involved in religious leadership. If they are, it’s a sign of commitment to the community since being a pastor here is rarely a way to put bread on the table. They are also providing a time and place for regular social interaction, giving them more opportunity to lead. Taking all of this into account, religious organizations and their leaders understandably have a lot of power.

Por ejemplo, a Peace Corps volunteer in the area was doing an efficient stoves project (they burn less wood to cook your beans and tortillas) and one of the women she was working with was having a problem getting hers installed. Why? Her husband was annoyed by the womens group´s efforts of empowerment so he wouldn´t give his permission to build it. Another Peace Corps volunteer suggested that she involve my host dad, this man´s pastor, because anything the pastor says is to be taken seriously.

All this to say that alongside the unfortunately strong machismo society in Latin America, there are encouraging signs of women´s empowerment. CASM has organized several women´s groups in the area and many community leaders and local development NGO workers have very progressive understandings of gender roles. And last night, my host dad graduated from the Latinamericana University of Theology in a class with 8 men and 28 women. Implications? Profound.

For the Price of a Cup of Coffee

2009-04-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

The wonderful week of Semana Santa just ended, marked by Liz’s visit, vacation, lots of church services, and a politically and socially infused walk through colored sawdust pictures on the road. The walk went by the twelve stations of the cross and the religious leadership spoke of the way that dominant culture abuses women and tradition while politic(ian)s devalue the indigenous and the poor. Though the words were strong enough to be wielded by activists, unfortunately they didn’t talk very much about action. It made for an interesting walk, but nonetheless we decided to go cool down at around the 2 hour mark.

Aaron, a civil engineer volunteering with a bridge-building organization, accompanied us to Gracias for the days of vacation. One night he came down with a nasty case of food poisoning after which he felt bad enough that we took him to the hospital. We were directed around the hospital and into the doctor’s office where a nurse took a blood sample and hooked up an IV. While the IV flowed, a young man with a motorcycle accident mashed face arrived and was parked in the hallway in a wheelchair. Since we were in the doctor’s office, we got to hang out with him while he signed papers, gave directions and chatted with us. The doctor hooked another IV up to Aaron while he told us that he recognized us from the restaurant we had eaten at last night and how traditional culture like we have in La Campa is losing its place in big-city Gracias. He saw Liz’s bag on the floor and advised her not to put it there because the floor was very dirty. Too true, in the hall a nearly naked man with an ace-wraped leg and another painful-looking face was accompanied by drips of blood and several not-so-pleasant smells. Reassuringly Aaron’s needle had clearly come out of a new package and the whole IV setup was very clean.

While they did some tests to determine the cause of Aaron’s sickness, Liz and I walked to the park to hang out and get lunch. I felt a need to leave because we were just taking up space and looking at highly busted-up people in the hospital. We came back a couple hours later to be given several prescriptions with the explanation that only a couple of them could be given to us at the hospital, the rest we would have to buy. The doctor gave us the meds that he could plus a starting dose of the antibiotic to shoot into Aaron’s IV. Aaron got ready, I shook the doctor’s hand, and he sent us on our way. On the way out we paid the bill.

We were given immediate, caring, professional attention, two reenergizing IVs, various tests, a number of pills, a couple prescriptions, and a bed for 5 hours for the going price of a cup of coffee, 5 Lempiras ($0.27). Public health care is an incredible thing.

La Politica

2009-04-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

I posted a few pictures of happy people yesterday, so make sure to check those out too

Politics here are more or less a joke. Everyone knows that the mayor is corrupt, apparent from “the Municipality’s” big new black Ford pickup, the police are corrupt, and the high government officials are corrupt. The presidential commercials often go to the point of showing a minute of nearly-naked women dancing then flashing a name and asking for the vote. Rallies are worse, they display hours of professional dancing mixed with concerts finished off by a little show of the candidate shaking hands and waving at people. Despite all this, the main form of advertisement is through stickers displaying a name, a picture, and a party color. They are pasted everywhere. Enlarged versions are on billboards or painted on walls.

Qué fue? Oh that’s right, you want to find out about what matters to each candidate so that we can decide which single person’s opinion we want to turn into a guiding force. Well my proud citizens of the United States, that knowledge is not really available here. But somehow plenty of people have been convinced that it does. At the camp training for counselors, intelligent NGO workers who had no idea what any government plans were still insisted that each candidate had presented a government plan to someone at sometime. They must have some plan or else they wouldn’t be running! Indeed.

I was surprised at first to find out that the main point of doing these camps all over our department is to encourage youth to be politically active. We analyzed the political commercials and talked a lot about how we could try to get youth to think critically about candidates and officials. But it doesn’t stop there. We’re also trying to turn them into locally active community leaders with a more complete understanding organizing and of gender equality. We’re attempting to equip youth with knowledge of their own people power.

As logical and good as that may seem to us, I think you North Americans could use a good bit of knowledge of your own people power too. The problem is that we are encouraged to make change by being passive, through voting for people to make our choices for us. The fact of the matter is that we can change our communities; it just has to be important enough for us to give it an honest effort, to make sacrifices.

Gente Digital

2009-04-05T18:57:00.000-07:00

Hey! I haven't been able to post pictures in months, and now that I am able to, I only have a few to post. :/ They are from a camp training session I went to for counselors, we will be hosting close to 1000 youth in over 30 camps/trainings in the region in the next two months. They are a good crew and I'm looking forward to it :)

The point of the camps is to train youth to be future community leaders. There is a focus on developing critical thinking skills, an idea of gender equality, and skills to organize and develop community.

Fotos

I have not yet made progress on talking with church leaders, but its definitely in my mind. Currently I am in San Pedro Sula at the MCC office with Liz, Caleb, and Bikemovent gurus Jon Spicher and Lars Akerson (americas.bikemovement.org). They just made chocolate icing to use on our banans in a bit. It'll be wonderful :) A special shout-out thanks goes to Jenny Hostetler, who sent Jon a bar of wonderful dark chocolate.

The Hammock of Selfish Motivation

2009-04-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

In Akron they asked us to think about what our selfish motivations were for doing a year of SALT service. What I thought of immediately was that I signed up so that I could go to the tropics to eat fruit and see the sun every day, never be cold, and that I could live life at a slower pace. And one reason to live at a slower pace was that I would have time to read plenty of books. So with a little bit of chagrin, I confess to you that I have been reading bastante. And in the meantime, I’ve sentenced my hammock to hard labor. But I thought I might be able to supplant my selfishness by sharing my list with you and making some recommendations, so maybe you can enjoy them :-) I know I’ve left out some books and if I remember them I’ll add them, but at the moment this is what I can remember.

Whats So Amazing About Grace? By Philip Yancey – One of the best books I’ve ever read. Plenty of fascinating explanations of Biblical stories as well as some modern ones. Challenges the church to be the haven of grace that Jesus calls us to be. Powerful and motivational.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver – A truly inspiring book. About her family spending a year growing as much food as they can for their own consumption and buying the rest that they need from neighbors. Challenging yet exciting, it really makes you want to grow tomatoes and have chickens or something.

Kite Runner – Another excellent book, but pretty depressing at times. I related to a disturbing extent with the broken friendship that the book presents and it actually hurt to read it. It provoked some great reflection.

The Secret Life of Bees – Wonderful book about community, racial tensions in the 60s, dealing with personal past, and personal growth in character, spirit, and body. Very well written.

Preventing Violence by James Gilligan – A fascinating look crime and the reason behind it. Does a great job of breaking it down and making sense. Takes a good look at the US’ justice system and alternatives to punitive justice, such as restorative justice.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho – Exciting story about a boy on a quest. It works with a very vague worldview and vague understanding of spirituality that sounds universalistic or animist. Verdict? Harmless.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond – About the history of people and why things turned out the way they did, with Europeans colonizing the world. Chalk full of fascinating research and insights. Its long and it looks heavy, but its definitely worth reading.

Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti – Sassy author who explains different branches of feminism and the logic behind them. Full of enraging stories and statistics, but in the end encouraging and empowering.

Freedom of Simplicity – Paradoxically has possibly the most advanced vocabulary of any book I’ve read. Plenty of good thoughts and suggestions for simplifying life and therefore being more involved in life. Challenging in quite a few ways.

Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa by Walter Wink – Challenges popular nonviolence. Very helpful because it is insight from experience. It reviews violent and nonviolent conflict strategies and roadblocks that present themselves.

The Shack – Despite my initial skepticism, it turned out to be a pretty good answer to plenty of theological and spirituality questions. Unfortunately it is limited to a North American perspective, (almost) completely forgets about service as an integral part of Christianity, and tends to focus on sadness and regret as opposed to life and love. Still a worthwhile book to read.

Liberation theology – About the Latin American empowerment movement in churches and communities. Despite the subject matter I couldn’t get through it. Due to being translated from Spanish where sentences are written paragraphs at a time, it was difficult to keep a thought developing. I stopped reading it because it was so tough to read and I felt like it was repeating a lot of theology that I had already come into contact with through Mennonite connections and other books.

Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder – Another book I was excited about until I couldn’t read more than a couple pages at a time. Could have to do with sentences half the page long and a pretty elevated vocabulary. I couldn’t get very far, I’ll try again though.

Wild at Heart – A macho perspective on the world and a man’s soul. The author presents an opinion, gives a one-line explanation, then accepts his answer as the obvious, ultimate truth. Apart from how sickening most of it was, it had one chapter that I related to a little, but it really wasn’t very helpful. Completely leaves service out of Christianity.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri – I’m currently reading this, it is a bunch of short stories about broken marriages and people with serious issues. They’re good stories and its well written, its just very frustrating because it doesn’t ever resolve anything.

Now its your turn! : )

Unite, Ignite, and Spark a Light...

2009-03-26T17:34:00.000-07:00

The trend of increasing work has proved true once again this week. Monday I traveled to Gracias to ask NGOs World Vision and PLAN for seeds for vegetable gardens. Preparing the required paperwork, I formatted my solicitation, signed and CASM-official stamped it. Unfortunately my proud efforts to make official documents were to no avail, but I left with contacts and a promise to work on it. 12 hours of Tuesday was spent in the office meeting with visiting CASM people. Their passion was great to see, but combined with a Honduran concept of time, it made for hours and hours of monologues that served to reinforce agreement about how the world needs to change. My bosses´ ability to agree while seeming to argue vehemently never ceases to amaze me. Wednesday we went to a new sugarcane processor and the monologues were stopped short by the mouth`s craving for hot, thick, sticky sugarcane. Then we had another longwinded meeting afterwards and we managed to make it out just after bedtime (9). Thursday I went to meet with SAT (high schoolers) and set up some worm composting. There’s something about worm composting that never fails to make everyone feel great inside. The thought of a million little plump, squirmy worms making fertilizer and dropping eggs night and day...well, me fascina.

The really exciting part managed to emerge from the least exciting part, the 12 hours of meeting on Tuesday. We talked about how we could work with church leaders in the communities and municipalities to think of organic as theologically correct. My idea was to try to have a meeting with leaders from both the Evangelical Church and the Catholic Church (gasp).

Here especially, it seems that the religious organizations are more of a divider than anything really. Basic preaching endorses the good Christian life, which boils down to going to church every time there is a meeting, giving offering, and abstaining from drinking, smoking, and dancing. From what I understand, this is the common theme for both Evangelical and Catholic churches, although there are huge chasms of lack of respect that divide them. My host-dad, a man who is a role model in this area, preached about how bad legalism is because look where it got the Catholics, they go out drinking, smoking, and dancing right after mass! Also, he preached about how we should call people brother and sister because we are a family in Christ, unless, of course, they don`t go to our church. A similar spiel comes from other churches, Evangelical and Catholic, in the area. Some communities have as many as 6 churches. The complexity of those divisions blows my mind.

En realidad, my scheme to unite Catholic and Evangelical leaders is something that scares me a little. I practically couldn´t get my idea out when I talked to my host dad Wednesday night. But that’s when you know it’s something that’s worth doing, because you know its right, it´s beautiful, and the feel of it stretching your comfort zone makes your heart skip a beat.

O Si Yo Se

2009-03-16T16:38:00.000-07:00

This last week has been packed as well. There were two North American groups who came, one of 25 EMU people and another 12 from Oklahoma State University. On top of that, I was able to have two meetings with high schoolers to talk about soil, homemade chicken feed, the kingdom of God, and play a bunch of games. Oh yea, the youth wanted to learn a song in English, so I sang my favorite (Freedom is Coming, Oh Yes I Know) plenty of times until they could sing it with me. I also taught them in Spanish so they would know what they were saying. The meetings were wonderful to have and have helped me to see that what I want to do is possible. The irony was fairly severe as I realized that what I’ve managed to start doing, environmental education, is exactly the same thing that was on the assignment description back a year and something ago. I never would have guessed. It just took a while because I had to come up with the idea all over again then figure out how to make the necessary contacts and actually do it. (Sorry Amanda and Andrew)

On Wednesday, I made a contact to start working with youth in another community, then I went to Gracias to receive the EMU group. After some hugs, we went up to the Fuerte San Cristobal to get the colonial view around Gracias. Through much persuading I got 6 people to turn a turret into a concert hall (swords into ploughshares?). The chorus of angels descended, divine harmony danced around us, and we sang Freedom until after the Fuerte was closed.

We spent the next day touring La Campa, eating, and talking. It was wonderful to sit and hear reflections from culturally sensitive, gracious, and positive people. It was also exciting to dream about the Critical Mass that Harrisonburg will be having in late August. On that note, we could do a Goshen one too, that would be awesome! …Whats that, you want to do one in Elkhart too? Three Critical Masses in three weeks? I’m all over that. So if you are in any of those locations during mid to late August, don’t miss them!

Finally, I was hit by the iron skillet of irony this week once more when I looked at the tab on the EMU shirt that I was gifted that said Made in Honduras. I highly value them and am thankful for their visit and the shirt; however, I would feel a lot better about the shirt if it hadn’t been made during a Honduran brother or sister’s 72 to 90 (or up to 120) hour work week in a stifling warehouse in San Pedro Sula. The fault does not go back to this EMU group or even anyone else that anyone has ever known. I wish that we who profess EMU’s school motto to “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God” would “first remove the log in [our] own eye” before walking out of the front door. Unfortunately that's next to impossible because stepping out of the front door is usually what helps us to see the log in the first place.

So as not to end on a sour note, I would like to reiterate that we are not our own enemies. Our enemy is the greed, the inhumanity, the system that leads us knowingly or unknowingly to support injustice, brutality, and arrogance here and between our brothers and sisters. I would like to invite you to sing with me, all the better if you know the harmony:

In English: Or in Espanish (reino means kingdom):

Freedom, freedom oh freedom Reino, reino o reino,

Freedom oh freedom, Reino o reino

Freedom is coming, oh yes I Reino ya viene o sí yo

Oh yes I know, oh yes I O sí yo sé, o sí yo

Yes I know, oh yes oh yes I know, Sí yo sé, o sí yo sí yo sé,

Freedom is coming, oh yes I know. Reino ya viene o sí yo sé.

We´re not in Kansas anymore.

2009-03-06T09:58:00.000-08:00

This week I´ve been blessed with busyness. On Monday I was informed that I would be needed as a translator for a group of Americans. They brought 5,000 pairs of glasses to give away to people in this area. They say that almost everyone here has something called Ptridyum growing across their eyes because of high quantities of sun, dust, and smoke that they come into contact with. We´ve given away several hundred pairs of glasses in this area and I´m proud to say that I´ve diagnosed and given a few more away out the back door. Translator in this case means that I´m also a cultural liason, which has been tiring as well.

The rest of what made this week tiring was that from Tuesday night to Thursday morning, I was travelling with a bunch of campesinos. We were going on a tour almost to Tegucigalpa (long trip!) to see a cane sugar production plant. It was amazing to see their quick, superefficient processing techniques and to discuss them with the campesinos. The men I travelled with have their own sugarcane processing that they do, but it is not nearly as advanced and they don´t come out with brown sugar at the end. Even though 100 lbs of the stuff was only selling for about $26 with half going to expenses, ten men producing ten 100 lb bags of sugar a day is very lucrative.

Travelling with the campesinos, I got to share in their excitement at seeing another part of their country. I was surprised when a few of them told me that they had already travelled as far as Comayagua. Travel is not common here. We had stayed in Gracias the night before at a hotel, a foreign concept as well. Most had stayed up well beyond their normal bedtime (until 10 PM!) to kick off their boots and watch some TV. I shared a room with two campesinos from nearby San Manuel who were fascinated by watching Man vrs. Wild on the Discovery Channel. Actually, they probably related more with that man than with anyone else on TV since they both know their way around the wilderness. The anticipation was thick in the air just after 3:30 AM when we started getting ready to go.

During the travel, they pointed out plants that they recognized and asked each other about the things they didn´t recognize. On the way back, we stopped at Lago Yojoa to eat lunch. When we got off of the bus, I heard one man declare that this must be the ocean. I let them know that it was actually a big lake and they all went out and gazed at it while I answered a few more questions. Then we each got a very special big fish for lunch.

Though we spent many hours travelling that day and we didn´t actually go that far, we passed through many worlds. People rarely travel and because of that, you see plenty of regional variation. The people from one town do things that others don´t. They have thin tortillas instead of thick ones. They have paved roads with lines. They live on flat ground. They have a view of a huge valley. All of these things brought waves of excitement to the bus that are no doubt being relived and splashing new waves in the houses and villages of my travelling campesino friends.

¡La Feria del Fuego!

2009-02-26T14:25:00.000-08:00

This last week my parents have been visiting me. Their visit coincided with the annually occuring biggest event in La Campa, the Feria. People had told me for months that the Feria is crazy, that thousands of people (tens of thousands by recent estimate), people from San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador, descend on the 500 person town of La Campa. Food, candy, and clothing vendors had been throwing tarp over wooden frames and displaying their goods on tables for weeks in anticipation, catching diminishing hours of sleep as the people flooded in. Because of the impossible logistics of providing shelter and sanitation services for 40 times a town`s normal population, Feria pilgrims slept under their own small sheets of plastic, under their trucks, on the street, or they didn`t sleep at all. A large hole had been dug across the river for defecation, but since it was a few minutes walk from the party and one would likely have at least a couple of simultaneously squatting neighbors, many instead opted for unoccupied patches of grass or dirt around town.

Its been like this for a long time. Saint Matthew, the patron saint of the local colonial church, has been performing miracles for a long time too, the lore of which (and the photo-wall in the church!) attract people far and wide by the horse, truck, bus, and big truck-load. I participated in the march of Saint Matthew around town, where all of La Campa`s old women get together and carry half-meter wooden Saint Matthew on a litter all around the town, singing repetative, enchanting songs about him. The procession follows a ways back, regularly complemented by a home-made rocket flying crazily from a mortar then two pockets of gunpowder ricocheting sucessive blasts off the canyon wall. The walk is only 600 meters long, but walking reverently up and down the mountain at the pace of old women weighed down with San Matias keeps us going for about an hour.

Later on, once my parents had arrived, there were guancascos, when catholic and indigenous customs meet. I found myself being passed by one of these processions one day, headed up by an intimidating-looking masked dancer holding a stick with a wooden lizard hanging from it. At night, these masked dancers and their lizards met the toro del fuego (bull of fire) in the area in front of the church. A volley of the same unpredictable home-made rockets and several more elaborate fireworks announced the meeting as they were launched from the hands of a group of young men on the church roof. The toro del fuego was a guy with a long tent-shaped thing on his head who jumped around the meeting place with the masked lizard-dancers while more fireworks were sent off. A few minutes later the fireworks from the church roof had stopped, but the toro del fuego was dropping military-sized firecrackers behind him and daring them to blast him as he performed his frenzied dance around their burning wicks. Soon a sparkler lit up on the side of the toro and, to my parents` and my shock, proceeded to launch several rounds of rockets from the top of the toro into the starry night sky. The combination of extremes made it the most exciting fireworks show I have ever seen.

The next day, a Honduran cowoker let me know that during celebrations in her village, the children love making their own toro del fuego. Apparently its great, but I was told that they have to be careful, because it can be dangerous! Who knew?

the Culture of Ya

2009-02-13T13:22:00.000-08:00

Ya is a fascinating word for any North American. It has to do with time. Used in a sentence, it can mean already or that something will soon happen. Or, when used with no as in ´ya no,´ can mean that it is no longer happening or that it will soon cease to happen. Used as a sentence in itself, it can mean that you´re done, you don´t want any more food, you want more food, or you´re ready to go.

I struggle with the usage of ya. Its such a wonderful word, but it can be so frustrating! For example, one day everyone from my office was driving out to a community. The community was probably about an hour and a half away and we had just left at about 8:30. My coworker got a call from the people in the community, asking if we were going to get there soon because people were getting impatient. Her response: No, no, ya llegamos. Which means, no, no, don´t leave, we´re already arriving. I thought that was ridiculous and I said so, saying that we should have planned to leave earlier if we scheduled the meeting for 8:00. Being at least half North American, I get very uncomfortable when I make people wait because I know that time is valuable and waiting is no fun. My coworker assured me that the villagers wouldn´t be annoyed.

Sure enough, we arrived an hour and a half later and within 5 minutes, you wouldn´t have known we had arrived 2 hours late. It blew my mind to pieces. How is that possible? How can you so easily forgive and forget that someone made you wait for 2 hours?

Sometime later, all of us had just finished eating lunch in a neighboring town. We had at least an hour drive to get back to La Campa. As we were paying the bill and the owner was looking for change, the same coworker decided to go use the internet. The owner came back with the change and we sat down to watch some soccer highlights. After a few minutes, the news came on, which we watched for a half hour. We then watched part of a telenovela, or soap (which are on constantly). Tired of the TV, we went outside and sat in the truck, listening to a very weak radio signal from El Salvador. After an hour of waiting outside, I decided I would make good use of my time and go take some pictures of the town´s church. That sucessfully used up about 10 minutes, and I returned to the truck to find that my coworker had not yet returned. Upon commenting to another coworker, all he could do was shake his head in disbelief. Nearing on the 2 hour wait mark, my coworker returned. ¡Ya! said my coworker whom I had been waiting with. And we made our way back to La Campa, acting as if we had only just begun to wait.

When I asked my internet-surfing coworker about why it took so long, she said that the guy at the internet cafe didn´t know what he was doing. Possible. But no one else even bothered to ask why we had waited for so long. They had tired of the wait as well, but why make a big deal out of it? We had begun our journey back to La Campa.

In North America, we would interpret that as a sign of disrespect and we would be angry about the lost time, the inconvenience. Here, we understand that she was not trying to offend us and waste our time, she was just trying to get something done and it happened to take a while. Since we value our relationship with her in the office and it would not do us any good, it would be foolish to get angry about the wait. Its better if we just get back to La Campa, where we all want to be and since that is now an option, lets get to it. Already. Ya. Brilliant.

Christmas all over again!

2009-02-10T15:00:00.000-08:00

Recently I´ve been prepping for something to get started as far as my own work here. I met with my group of youth (anywhere from 12 to 30 and unmarried) the other day and suggested that they plant a vegetable garden to earn money for their group. I thought it would also be a great platform to talk about soil conservation, nutrition, creation, small business operation, planning, and whatever else I can think of. I´m meeting at the high school sometime soon and I´m hoping I can do the same kind of thing with them.

So today I went into Gracias to buy seeds for the garden and I stopped by the post office (where I only get to visit about once a month or so) and I had two Christmas cards! One from my grandma, and one with a million little notes from a lot of people at Prairie Street, my church congregation in Elkhart. Thank you all so much for the kind and encouraging words! In Honduras we call those kind of notes or speeches ´palabritas´ meaning words and with the ´ita´ suffix meaning small/short, cute, nice, or any other endearing word you can think of.

I went to my favorite liquado (fruit milkshake) shop and sipped something delicious as I read through the pile of palabritas. Thank you all so much for sending them, they were wonderful to recieve :)

Lo, the Beloved Campo

2009-01-30T16:13:00.001-08:00

I have now been back in La Campa for a week. I came back this time with resolve to get started on something, whatever that may be. In my place of work thats not so easy because its a very small office where everyone travels from nearly every day to visit far-flung communities and participate in projects. Often I end up tagging along, laughing at the humor that I miraculously and joyously now understand, eating the chicken soup delicacy at lunch, and maybe leading the campesinos (as) in a nice little game or two. Other times I stay in the office so that I can feel like I´ve gotten something productive done. Sometimes that works out for me, and sometimes it doesn´t. As you may be able to tell, I´ve been struggling recently with feeling in the least bit useful here. A couple of days ago I felt like doing even a fraction of what I had originally envisioned was going to be nearly impossible.

So I started praying for signs that my presence was meaningful. Probably something I should have been doing all along, but this is how it works. I soon felt very encouraged when I washed my plate after lunch and a few others that were in the sink. This is not at all something that Honduran men do, in my house, this work is reserved for the ridiculously overworked house-servant who´s job title is ´muchacha´. My host brother deposited his plate, and once I started to wash it, he signalled that he wanted access to the sink so that he could wash his own plate. The growing trend is that I have found myself able to recognize small things in the lives of my family and co-workers that I can see that I have had some possitive effect on. Very encouraging and it feels wonderful.

So, I love being back in La Campa. And I´m looking forward to making whatever kind of impact I possible can here. And I´m going to chop this post short so that you can take some time to read Rachel´s and Liz´s posts because I relate to what they said in a lot of ways and they are excellent posts. In case you don´t have time, because I know how packed we like to make our schedules, here is an exerpt from rachel´s post:

´The outside living-ness of Nueva Suyapa such as children playing soccer in my path, donkeys going on their own and mothers bathing their children no longer makes me giddy like it did before. They now are everyday backdrops of the painting I’d like to call my life in Tegucigalpa.´

That painting is a beautiful one indeed.

Back to My Roots!

2009-01-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

Liz and I have finished one week of language school here in La Ceiba, on the north coast. This city is named after a huge tree that grows here in Honduras and the city is known as Honduras´ girlfriend. Thats apparently because there is a thriving nightlife here that is lacking in all other cities. Theres a well known Honduran song about La Ceiba that has a really catchy chorus, ´Es mi novia Ceiba, dum da da da dum´ and its kinda fun to sing.

Here on the north coast, the (Honduran-African) Garífuna people live in their own towns. Liz and I went to one this past weekend to hang out. I was really excited because I had heard that the towns are very similar to African ones. It was really nice to walk around that town, smiling at people and being greeted in turn by huge white African smiles. The Garífuna like to play music and dance, but the day we went we didn´t see any maybe because it was raining.

We went for a walk on the beach and finally picked a spot to sit down and enjoy the beach and ocean. The beach was deserted and the waves looked perfect for body-surfing, so I went out to catch a few. Liz went on a walk. While neither of us was watching, someone grabbed our bags (and my clothes) and ran, leaving us moneyless and me mostly naked. By the grace of God, my wallet happened to make its way out of a pocket inside my bag, so we had enough money to easily make it back to La Ceiba. I felt like going back right away would just feel too much like defeat, so I got back in the water, got knocked around by a few more waves, then came back in. We then decided to stop at a hotel and get a coffee to enjoy for a while. We sat at the restaurant and watched a storm come in from the ocean before we made our way out. The owner ended up giving us the coffee for free and we went on our way running through the rain to the bus stop, yelling ´Adios!´to massive white smiles as we ran out of their friendly town. We made it back happily and safely without too many losses, and it was a great story to tell our host-mother. Haha, she really enjoyed telling it back to us the next day, laughing uncontrollably about how we showed up at the door without a key and how I was almost desnudo.

We sometimes talk about how our stuff, our technology, really complicates our lives. We talk about how life would be more relaxed and probably better if we didn´t use technology as extensively as we do. But at the same time we are reluctant to give up our technology because it is the most expensive thing we own. I lost my camera to the beach-robber, but that only means that I am forced to pay more attention to the beauty that I see in everyday life and in the faces of the people I would normally try to take pictures of. I see the beauty or the joy or the life and I say to myself, wow, I wish I could capture that in zeros and ones. But since I can´t, I just take a good look at it and soak it in, remembering not just the image, but also the feel of the rotting dock below my feet, the wet and salty sheen on my face, the rolling waves and the mist that trails them as they pass me on the way to the beach. So regrettably, I won´t be able to post pictures for a while. But I´ll do my best to soak in all this beauty around me and tell you about it as best I can. :)

Sending warmth

2009-01-04T22:04:00.000-08:00

This isn't to try to make you jealous, although I'm well aware that it probably will. May you be surrounded by warmth of peace, love, and community. That said, please enjoy some photos of God's creation from the beautiful Caribbean island of Utila :)

Public Fruit

2008-12-30T06:06:00.001-08:00

I just posted some pictures too; http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001279&l=fd945&id=1161480074

One thing that I really love about being back in the tropics is great access to fresh, local fruit. Fruit is often public here. There are guayaba trees ripe with fruit that line the road in places, just waiting for a traveler to take a bite. Behind the guayaba trees are fences or walls which attempt to hide lush ayote (squash) vines, corn stalks, banana, orange, lemon, and mango trees. Basically everyone in rural areas produces their own food either right next to their house or somewhere nearby.

Yesterday I went paseando (a favorite past time involving walking to friends houses to sit, talk, and enjoy some coffee with bread) with Cristina, the jefa of CASM, La Campa. We hitched a ride up the hill to her cousin`s house. After briefly catching up, Cristina asked about their land, so we went to take a tour. We saw the chickens, the orange, mandarin, and lemon trees, and Cristina asked for an ayote. My culture would consider that rude, but here produce is given freely. So we were given a 10kg (22lbs) squash, which we took with us paseando back down the hill. On the way down, we took a side road and repeated this surprisingly quick (less than 15 minutes?) paseando ritual with a green pepper farmer. This time, Cristina bought 7 for a 20 Lempiras ($1). The farmer walked around among thousands finding 6 quickly, then spending a few minutes searching for the 7^th and once he finally had it, he carefully placed two extra smaller ones in the bag. The seven that were being bought had to be of the highest quality, the two extra were separate from the purchase.

Siguiendo, Cristina showed me a beautiful piece of land that they are hoping to buy. She dreams of producing public fruit to give away to people who are paseando, having different animals, and occupying her children with things other than TV. She wants to have trees that will attract birds, so their shockingly bright feathers become familiar.

The culture of gifted produce is not confined to local people. I go paseando myself pretty often now and I am always offered coffee and bread. Generally before I leave I am gifted something else too, like a Christmas nacatamale (tamale with meat), oranges, lemons, or bananas. While I was visiting my co-worker Dago, his neighbor gave me a bag of bananas, to which Dago added lemons. Two days later, I am paseando again and the same neighbor invites me in for some coffee and bread, plus (surprise!) 5 more bananas! Her daughter jokes about going mojada (wet or illegally) to the US so that she can get a higher paid job. I try to explain that things are different in the US and among a host of wonderful Honduran things, we don`t know what paseando is. She seems doubtful.

That seems to be the attitude. Plenty of people want to go to the US, probably because American TV displays the ludicrous, normally unattainable wealth with which capitalism tempts. I find myself often telling Hondurans about how beautiful, fresh, sweet, and wonderful their country is. Then again, I don`t really understand where they are coming from, I know nothing of their struggles.

On the other hand, I do know is that in my culture nothing, not even fruit, is free, and farmers are anonymous. I was thinking about how so few things in the US are public, rarely do people take time to breathe, and there is so much forbidden fruit, unless you have money or can run fast. In contrast, this place looks like the Garden of Eden, where you can breathe deeply and walk slowly in the cool evening breeze loaded down with free fruit, so long as you are in good relationship with the people and land around you.

Reflecíon de Vuelta

2008-12-22T08:57:00.000-08:00

I have been in Copan Ruinas the last couple of days, giving a tagteam tour and cultural experience with Liz to Katie and Laura, Liz`s friends who came to visit. Its been really fun to come back to Copan after I know more Spanish and I`ve seen other parts of the country and I understand the people a little more.

But Copan is a ridiculous town. There is exajerado tourism here that brings in exajerado amounts of money. The number of cars in Copan are a clear sign of their wealth! And so many coffeeshops, bars, restaurants, tourist attractions, its insane! And my host family, who we stayed with this time, seems now to be extremely well-off as compared to 4 months ago, when I thought they were more middle-class. But really, they are comparable to the American `middle class´ because like the rest of the world, there are a very small percentage of people who own a massive amount of the capital. In Copan, its two or three families who own about half of the businesses. I think the American statistics are around 1 percent owning 40%. The flip side of this is that you have a large amount of the population who owns very, very little.

There are several volunteers who live in this town and benefit from the high level of activities and fun that the tourism promotes. On Saturday night, Arte Acción (about which I wrote in August) put on a cultural festival in the park. Really it was just a bunch of really talented kids on stilts walking around and dancing to a bunch of hippie drummers while several hippies took their turn at whipping flaming kerosene soaked pads in circles around their bodies in a mesmerizing lightshow. Quite entertaining. During that time, there was a really good flautist with awesome sound and light equipment who was amplifing his flute to a pre-fab drum rhythm. It was really good, we had listened to him for a while the night before. Later that night, a local, pretty sketchy bar hosted a chest-thumping (five high quality 20 inch speakers with the bass cranked!) dance party in the street, where 50 men watched while 5 or 6 couples danced in the middle. A little strange and uncomfortable, but quite the party! I commented that it would be pretty exciting to live (...volunteer?) in a town that had this level of free entertainment. Liz reminded me that our experience would just really be one of a tourist (inactive, superficial, complacent) painted with a veneer of Honduras. Shes got a point, and while it may be fun to have a weekend once in a while that has this much entertainment, I really appreciate the value and truth and humanity of my experience in La Campa.

Tradición de Té Tremendo

2008-12-11T08:46:00.000-08:00

Hondurans make tea. It used to be that when I thought of tea, I would think of looking at a selection of boxes all with artistic yet hopelessly foggy names (like Lavender Sunrise or Evening Breeze) and picking one, hoping that it would be good. Hondurans pick a spice or a fruit and throw it in boiling water for 5 minutes, add sugar, then serve. It’s the best tea I´ve ever had. My host mom makes tea with cloves, pineapple, cinnamon, rosemary, and probably a ton of other things. I recently bought some spices so I could make my own tea. I broke up a stick of cinnamon the other day fir tea and it ended up so rich with cinnamon, it was almost black. Then I scraped some of a block of La Campa processed dulce de caña (sugar cane) into my tea. ¡Que rrrrico, va!

I´ve been reading a bunch of the Biblioteca del Campo books at the CASM library, books to educate campesinos on food production and appropriate technology. One of the books is on medicinal plants, what plants are good for what pain and what parts of the plant to use in the medicinal tea. While I am clueless about what 95% of the plants I see around La Campa are, I can still appreciate how wonderful it is to be surrounded by a tradition that knows, uses, and makes tea out of its plants.

a few more pictures

2008-12-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

I`m just writing to say that I posted some more (just a few, not 200 :) pictures and hopefully you can get chance to check them out. Some of them are from thanksgiving (I have a picture of Jesus posted too!), the later ones are from when I helped butcher a cow, so viewers, please use discretion!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001244&l=a427d&id=1161480074

Giving Thanks

2008-12-02T14:04:00.001-08:00

I celebrated Thanksgiving with a bunch of Peace Corps volunteers and some English teachers from the US recently. For the celebration I travelled to San Marcos de Ocotepeque, a fairly large town in an expansive, gorgeous valley. The view on the way there and in the town itself is absolutely breathtaking. We had quite a few passionate cooks present and they prepared quite the feast. There were 19 of us there and we packed the food down well. After most people left, the rest of us went on a short hike to a waterfall to swim.

That night, despite our prodigious leftovers, we went to get pizza and as we were waiting, a short crippled man walked up and signaled hello. This was unusual because normally someone in his state would be asking for money and he was not. It was apparent by his speech that he was severely mentally disabled. I decided to sit and relax with him while my new friends went to hang out across the street. This man shook my hand and laughed hysterically. Then he gestured at my friends and laughed some more. Because of his mental state, I decided not to be offended and enjoy a few good long random laughs with him. Conversation was pretty difficult and it proceeded a lot like 20 questions, with me asking questions and him enthusiastically bobbing or shaking his head and stringing together indecipherable syllables. The beginning, the middle, or the end of any string of communication was infused with a huge smile and a body-quaking laugh. He very clearly said ´fresco!´ which means pop or normally coke, and I decided I would indulge him. When I didn´t get one for myself, he refused to take it. After a lot of pleading, he decided he could hold it. He still didn´t drink it until I was gone, he couldn´t enjoy it if I didn´t also have one. After we had been sitting for a while, I noticed the hat that he was wearing said ´Jesus´ on it. I hung out with Jesus talking and laughing like crazy until the pizza was ready and my friends were ready to leave.

I was struck by seeing this crippled man labeled Jesus right in front of me, coming up not to beg, but to say hi, hang out and laugh. I was reminded of Jesus´ words that whatever we do to the least of these, we do to him. This man was not just materially poor, he was socially destitute. He always waved, made noises, and smiled enthusiastically when people walked or drove past, but most completely ignored him. I´ve been trying recently to recognize God in all of the people around me, no matter who they are or what they are doing. It was very powerful to be reminded that this man is also a child of God and to experience his wonderful humanity.

And in case you´re wondering, the box of bananas was finished with gusto in the preparation of banana bread, which I ate for breakfast J

The Dogs Eat Well

2008-11-19T15:25:00.000-08:00

Honduras is having another cold front pass through it right now. A couple nights ago it supposedly got down to 7 C, 45 F. The days before and after weren´t quite that cold, but they were pretty windy and definitely uncomfortable. It wouldn´t be that bad in the US, but we have heated buildings and good insulation. You get really cold when you have no escape to warmth and you don´t have well-insulated clothes. Cristina at the office (boss-lady) said that she had never been so cold at night. The news said the cold is supposed to last for another 5 days and then hopefully we´ll be back to our really nice weather. ....Sorry if your cold weather isn´t going to end for a few months.

This morning as I was eating breakfast (milk, oat meal, some granola, a chopped banana, and a Honduran portion of sugar) and drinking coffee (with its own generous portion of sugar), I noticed that the dog bowls were full of a familiar mix of rice. A few weeks ago the mountain of clothes that showed up came with 5 pretty big boxes labelled ´Kids Against Hunger.´ The boxes were full of one pound bags of pre-mixed rice and spices complete with cooking instructions and nutrition information (in English). The boxes have been slowly disappearing. Recently when I was coming home from CASM I saw an unusually large pile of something burning outside of my house. I didn´t think too much of it because that is where they usually burn their trash. As un-cool as burning trash is, I´ve half-ways accepted it as a compromise when the only other option (and where plenty of trash ends up) is spread out on the road, in the river, or on some gorgeous field. Ellen, my Peace Corps neighbor, informed me that they were burning the pile of clothes that had come in a few weeks before. The clothes had come in to the mayor´s house and since there was a massive excess (read: too much for the mayor and his family to wear) he decided to give a truck load to the church, which my host-dad happens to be the pastor of. After my family had sorted through a fraction of the clothes, the 30ish church members came over and each took as much as they could carry home. Of the mountain that was left, they burned a significant amount. I was going to try to rescue some, but when I asked they said that they had burned the clothes with stains (I hadn´t previously noticed any stains) and they were saving the good clothes. Saving for what? I don´t know, but I do know there are plenty of very poor villagers within 15 km of La Campa whose clothes are much more stained than whatever was burnt.

Its sad to see that kind of waste. Being Mennonite, I think about the blankets that could have been made with the ´stained´ clothes. I think about the kids who raised money to send those boxes of rice, doubtless with the best of intentions. And I think about how similar some things are here and in the US, with our ridiculous amount of resources that routinely go to waste. Kinda like the untouched 20+ pound trays of pork loin, chicken, spagetti sauce, or anything else that Purdue dumps every day. It just hits me harder here because I see the need so clearly every day.

That being said, my family is very nice and they treat me very well. They buy me food that they think white people eat, like apples, peanut butter, and this factory-made toast that really is just a huge waste of energy. Haha I think they also maintain their fruit abundance for my benefit, and I really appreciate it. The current massive surplus is of bananas, so I´m doing my part in eating at least 4 (or ...6?) every day. Will we get to the bottom of the box?!??!?! Find out next time!

Bastante fotos!

2008-11-14T18:40:00.000-08:00

Pictures from La Campa, San Manuel, San Sebastien, and when I visited Liz and Rachel in Teguc. ---And now, when Liz, Rachel, Gaby, Amanda and Andrew came to visit and pictures from the minor mudslides in San Manuel, a neighboring municipality.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001199&l=023a7&id=1161480074

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001200&l=addeb&id=1161480074

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001201&l=8a2f9&id=1161480074

I'll post more some other time I have a decent internet connection. Probably about a month.
Nevermind, actually. I had more internet time so I loaded them all up, enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001203&l=1596f&id=1161480074

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001202&l=c50cc&id=1161480074

SALT report one!

2008-11-10T15:55:00.000-08:00

I was supposed to write this thing for MCC describing my goals for this year and since it inspired some reflection, I thought it might be cool to post here. Apparently I was supposed to follow a format, but I managed to not see the attachment(happens fairly often), so I just wrote it out.

Coming into this year of service with SALT, I had little direction. I knew that I wanted to do work in the development of local, sustainable agriculture and other appropriate technologies. I had no formal education in either field, in fact all I knew was that the projects that I had heard of sounded exciting and seemed to mesh with my beliefs. Now that I have been in Honduras for nearly three months, I have come to understand that my role here is different than what I had originally hoped. I now see great value in immersing myself in Honduran culture, bringing the best of my culture to this one, and learning as much as I can about sustainable farming and appropriate technology.

I believe that by immersing myself in Honduran culture, it`s struggles and joys, I will be able to develop an alternate thought process and worldview. I want to acquaint myself with the struggles that many Hondurans regularly encounter in an effort to become more compassionate. A few of these are food insecurity, fragility of life, and lack of access to health care, transportation, and the world outside of their immediate community. While I view all of these as struggles, there are joys that come out of them as well. Some of these are the celebrations of life, death, and the harvest, the ability to focus on people and relationships as opposed to time or task, and the joys of community life that come from the development of networks of strong relationships.

I would never describe myself as patriotic, but Honduras has helped me appreciate my culture in different ways. Most children and adults here have never known a time free of obligation that is known in the United States as childhood. I have a desire to bless my community here with the practice of the American notion of childhood, a time to have fun and practice social and practical skills through rejuvenation and community building group games. Individuality is one thing that my culture can stress beyond what is healthy; however, a stronger endorsement of individuality, empowerment, and equality in this culture could go a very long ways. I also hope to develop compassionate leadership skills in both youth and adult groups. My ambitious goal with community groups is to inspire autonomous community based action that will empower individuals to bless their communities both socially and materially.

My last current major goals are to learn about local agriculture and sustainable farming and to encourage development of appropriate technologies. Since I know very little of these things, I can only try my hardest to soak up knowledge and provide humble suggestions. I want to learn about herbs, vegetables, animal care and meat production so that I can understand more of what it takes to sustain a community on healthy diets.

My attitude toward and understanding of these goals (and surely more that I don`t know yet) are prone to change as I attempt and am continuously frustrated by the challenges presented by each one. I will do my best to seek out the joys of the journey and keep the ultimate goal of Kingdom building steadily in mind.

¡El Grito Lenca!

2008-11-06T10:15:00.000-08:00

There is a scream that runs in the blood of many Hondurans, those of Lencan descent. It is a passionate, full-bodied, and jubilant call that reminds people of this area of their shared lineage. I was recently told of the Lencan scream and how it sounds. You really can´t do it without laughing! When I ask people at my office to do it, they pass it off on someone else, saying that the other person can do it better. It sounds like ¡Oh-ee! or ¡Ee-oh! and it often changes pitch between sylables. Some people start low and go high, others start high and go low (this kind souns really strange, but I love it, so its the kind I do). My host dad starts high and goes higher with the Oh-ee version. Its a sound that has so much culture tied to it, you can´t help but love it.

Now that I know what it sounds like, I hear it all the time. I was on my way to Gracias the other day and I saw a woman outside of her house. I gave el grito Lenga a go and much to my amazement and joy, she replied with her own. On my way back from Gracias a couple days ago, the truck I was in had some nice rollbars so I was standing the whole way (much more comfortable and fun, I think). I saw a couple people I knew along the way and I gave them my proud grito Lenca. My parents claim I don´t have any Lencan heritage, but when throw my voice into that scream, my blood begs to differ.

Helado

2008-10-31T11:30:00.000-07:00

Now Honduras is getting into its winter. Up in La Campa, you can feel the difference. Its really cold! Actually I think its probably only getting down into the 50s, if that, but its a big change from the 80s and 90s I had been used to. My co-workers at CASM keep talking about how ´exagagerado´ this cold weather is. They say its helado, which means frozen. Some mornings you can see clouds flying a hundred meters or less above La Campa. I was coming into Gracias this morning in the back of a pickup loaded with green peppers (they smelled wonderful). My campesino travel buddy commented that it was going to be cold in Gracias because there was ice in the air, signaling to a layer of fine mist that we could see over the city.

Earlier this week I went into a village on top of a mountain ridge for the building of a chicken coop. The wind was blowing crazy strong and whipping clouds over and through the house that some of us were hiding behind. In defiance of the icy winds, we build the chicken coop out of really cold mud and adobe. It was nice to be able to throw some mud around with the campesinos and get a little bit of labor in, though my hands were freezing afterwards. When we stopped for lunch, we ate some hot, fresh-ground corn tortillas with lunch. Wonderful :D

I think my body is in denial that Honduras can actually be this cold. I think one of my selfish goals for coming to Honduras was that I would be able to life for a year in hot weather. These last few days I`ve been wearing a couple of shirts, a sweater, and my one thin Goshen College sweatshirt so I can stay warm. Isn´t it ironic, don`t you think?

Innundaciones!

2008-10-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

Honduras is flooding. The south coast has some really serious flooding going on. San Manuel, a municipality an hour away from La Campa has had some small mudslides that have damaged a lot and destroyed a few houses. This week has been pretty crazy because we´ve been running back and forth from San Manuel meeting with campesinos (as) and trying to reassure them. Currently I think the count is around 300 displaced people in San Manuel, which is a really big deal, about the size of a whole community. What needs to happen is people need to be given some land to live on and set up new lives with new cornfields and livestock and all that.

Moving like that is a really huge deal for people here. They are so connected to their communities. They don´t really know people outside of their communities and they rarely travel. Its interesting to think of the huge cultural importance that we put on travelling in the US, but how we miss out on close community life. Then again, there are plenty of American people who have never really travelled either. Anyway, for these people a move signifies massive change in their lives, even if it is only a few kilometers. It means new people, new land (which has likely been in their families for a long time) and a whole lot of uncertainty. The amount of land that I´ve heard people talking about for all of these people seems very small, definitely not enough to do more than have a house. These people rely so much on subsistence farming, I don´t know how that is going to be a realistic option for a new life.

All of this has been brought on by the now 43 tropical waves, they call them, that have brought rain into Honduras. The normal number of tropical waves was about 15 five years ago, but recently its been climbing.

This post is pretty rushed, but I´ll try to post some pictures soon!

¡Que le vayan bien!

That Ranchero Rythm

2008-10-15T15:28:00.000-07:00

In La Campa we listen to an aweful lot of this music. It goes a lot like this.... one chord once, a second chord twice. Repeat. :) Its really fun to listen to sometimes because every song tells a new, culturally insightful story. Out of curiousity, I looked at the tape-cassette cover and the songs were listed. Seven of the 19 songs appeared to be about different caballos (horses) :) I listen to ranchero music for extended periods of time during my commutes to neighboring communities. Generally I only catch a line or two before a boulder or a pothole in the road jars my brain. It can get a little old after an hour and a half of more-or-less continuous potholes and boulders.

I brought my MP3 player into the office today to charge it and thought about how nice it would be to get some varied music mixed in with the ranchero. So once my MP3 player had charged a little, I got a pair of computer speakers and plugged them in at my desk. Its a wonderful thing. I started getting all nostalgic, listening to songs that remind me of different people, places, and events. Some merengue, bachata, and salsa music came on too and I got all excited because I could actually understand the words! I`ve had those songs for a few years and listened to them a whole lot, but it added a whole new dimention being able to understand them.

I want to teach my co-workers some songs. We have little Bible-studies on Monday mornings and we always sing. A few songs have english translations and its really interesting to look at the difference in word choice. Its that way with Bible verses too. It makes me wonder what the originally intended feeling was. Anyway I have some songs that I love that are in Swahili I think. Si-zo ham ba na ye, wo wo wo! and Hakuna wakaita sa Jesu (from SALT orientation). I figure since they`re not in English, everything should be cheque (good). I made working spanish translations so they can understand it. Then they want to learn english too, so maybe we`ll sing them in three languages.

Anyway tonight is another selection game for the World Cup in 2010. Its against Jamaica, in Kingston. I went down to the municipal building last game to watch it and I had a good time, so Í`m looking forward to doing it again.

Words can´t do it Justice

2008-10-08T20:07:00.000-07:00

My back itches. I can hear water running in the kitchen. The lights went out a few minutes ago, and a candle casts oversized shadows of Lencan pottery on the wall. Richly spiced hot chocolate pours delicious steam into my face from a spherical hard squash gourd.

I´m at the Rinconcito Graciano which, as I have just learned, is the only restaurant in Honduras listed on National Geographic´s list of resaurants http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/extras/geotourism/honduras.html. This praise is well deserved, and not just for the quality of the food. The passionate chef and owner, Lizeth Perdomo, explains the value she places on culture, environment, and people. She cooks only with Lenca pottery, serves only local organic food, and builds relationships with local families to provide a place to sell their products.

The food comes out from the dark kitchen and even though either of us can barely see, I can tell that its extravagant arrangement on the plate is only trumped by the river of savoury, salty, and spicy flavor that each tiny bite has to offer. As I eat my food, Lizeth explains her philosophy that the best food is made with love and a real committment of time. The food that I´m eating has gotten an extra dose of time because the power outage slowed her down to one hand, the other being used to hold a candle, she tells me.

Lizeth keeps the wisdom coming by telling me that for her, she is content in her business. For her, money is a means, not an end. This couldn´t be more apparent as I am the only person in her restaurant, she has been talking to me for at least an hour, and the tab is only coming to $3, cheap even by Honduran standards. Among other things, she has told me stories of the people who bring food and goods to her to sell, the old woman who makes wine but can´t make much because she is tired and has many responsibilies and the woman who makes fresh corn tortillas and walks with them a half hour every day to sell on the streets of Gracias. She has told me of her hatred of chemical fertilizers. And she has told me of her dreams. To show her people, the villagers, how to live and farm sustainably. To attach a hotel with a few rooms onto her restaurant, so that her family can build relationships with the families who come to visit her. To show the world the wonders of the work of her people by expanding the trade of local art and products.

This woman has a genuine passion that is hard to miss. This woman has found life in its purest, rawest, truest sense.

Sing Some Menno Song

2008-09-30T08:10:00.000-07:00

Recently I was in the tasty, bustling, and exciting 25k population city of Gracias and I met up with a Peace Corps Volunteer. Turns out she graduated from Goshen College in ´06. Its a small world. Anyway, she lent me her blue Hymnal, and I´ve been enjoying it greatly.

A couple of times, I´ve gotten up at around 5ish and hiked up the mountain with the hymnal, some camp songs, and a couple of yellow (but very sweet) oranges. I have a lovely sitting spot around the side of the mountain and up a ways, where theres a good view of the area. I sit on a bed of dried pine needles (Honduras´national tree). I peel my orange and eat a section or two of it between songs. The sun starts to rise at around 5:30, running the sky through shades of purple, red, pink, and yellow. Once there was a horse eating on the slope of another mountain and it made some sighing noises. I was shocked that I could hear it as well as I could since it looked like it was about a half mile away. So I took a deep breath and, at the top of my lungs, joined creation in its morning song with ´What Is This Place?´, imagining it weave all over the valley.

Global Warming Action in La Campa

2008-09-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to a little meeting where a guy from Chile gave a presentation about global warming and what can be done about it. It was a great presentation, it even had some technical/chemical explaination. The community leaders present were really excited and really thoughtful about what they could do to combat the situation, namely not chop down their forests. The whole time I was sitting there I felt guilty about how I had just recently on my flights to Honduras burned more fossil fuels than they ever will in their whole lives. And yet I´m the one who knew about global warming and had the background to understand at least some of the presentation.

These people already live locally. Most of them grow their own food, use very little electricity and they don´t travel. It seems like anything that they can do to change their lifestyle will only reduce their already small carbon footprint to zero. They´ll probably be taking net carbon out of the atmosphere if they reforest. Nonetheless, it seems that my role in CASM is going to attempt to deal with this by way of appropriate technologies. Among other things, I want to work on introducing ´biodigesters´that capture natural gas for cooking produced by the decomposition of plant and animal matter. These systems would help to make the ´integral farms´(farms with diversified production aimed at supplying all a family´s food needs) that CASM promotes be less reliant on industry and fossil fuels.

Consequences of global warming include plenty of natural disasters. Hurricanes and torrential rains are some of them that occasionally pass through La Campa. Yesterday we went to San Manuel, a nearby town, and were shown the effect of recent mudslides. The guy who showed us around was showing us houses that had been abandonded when people came home and saw that the wall had shifted 10 cm (4 in). He said over a short time last year, a road had sunk a meter (3 ft) and had blocked off a few communities. He then told about one time about a month ago when he had heard a slide and ran to check it out. He said it took out a house and killed a little boy on the way. On our way back into town, he said, ¨These days, life is complicated.¨ The whole experience hit me pretty hard.

I was frustrated by the fact that the tropical countries (third world) are going to be the ones that try the hardest to deal with global warming. It makes sense that they would because when a mudslide kills people you know, you´re motivated to act. The third world has been exploited for so long for so many of its resources, and now it is being asked to deal with the sins of consumption of the first world. The sick part is that while asking the third world to change, I doubt consumerism will change that much in the US. People will probably keep going on huge road trips in monstrous vehicles, eating food thats been flown in from as far away as Chile, and building huge houses that use energy produced by burning coal. Its my hypocracy too, and now I´m going to be asking these people to deal with it.

Ayyyy chile!

2008-09-23T15:14:00.000-07:00

Recently I´ve been discovering the joys of Honduran chilies. I was at La Campa´s only comedor (restaurant) the other day and I thought I recognized pickled vegetables in a jar, so I took some. My co-workers assured me that they were ´muy rico´ or very sweet, which didn´t sound so crazy since I don´t recognize a lot of the vegetables that I see here. I ate the little round red one and it burnt like anything! Then today I was at our office and I found a bush in the back that had plenty of black things on it and a few red ones. I picked a red one and squeezed it and much to my delight it smelled really hot, which I confirmed shortly thereafter. So I picked the red ones and I´m going to try to make some sort of mad hot sauce for my frijoles...mmmmmm.

I´ve been discovering a little bit of the local economy here. Since its such a small place, not much is marked, you just have to know that this house sells ´pan de mujer´ or woman´s bread on saturdays and that house up the hill repairs shoes and sells sandals. The house on the corner sells bananas and pineapples when the boys break from studying (I´m sure) long enough to go and get them.

Life is wonderful here in La Campa. And despite the opinions of a couple of local gringos and a Peace Corps volunteer or two, Honduraños (as) are very awesome people. Come visit, soon :)

Food and Fasting

2008-09-18T10:11:00.001-07:00

I´ve read a couple of books recently that have made me think about food, that it should be connected a lot closer to religion, our worldview, and our life than we tend to think of it. What are a few things that occupy the most time in our day? Working, probably. Hopefully spending time with loved ones. Buying, preparing, and eating food. Now compare this to the time we spend doing devotions, praying, or joining in fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ.

It made me realize how big of a deal food is compared with what should be taking a big part of our lives. What we turn eating into with our hurried meals and food out of a can is an experience in consumption. Our interactions with our food, planting, watering, and harvesting plants, raising and butchering animals, then cooking and eating our food can and should be a spiritual experience. Food has the potential to connect us very closely to God´s creation, God´s providence and the people around us. A Central African word, Ubuntu comes to mind, meaning ´I am only human to the extent of my interactions with my environment´.

I´ve read some books recently that have advocated fasting as a way to fight consumerism and get us thinking about what we actually need and sharing with each other. I also have thought recently as I´ve felt like all I do is eat some days that I really don´t appreciate the food that I´m given. I mean, I love the way it tastes, but the biggest thought in my head when I get a big plate of food that I´m in no way hungry for is ok, how can I manage to eat this food to convey to the people who gave it to me that I really do like it a lot and appreciate their hospitality? Its good to make sure people know you appreciate what they´re doing for you, but I realized that I don´t think of food as sustenance, as something that is a wonderful gift from God.

I read another book that recommended fasting to think about how much we use that we actually need and what we can do with our excess if we lived with less. It said maybe we could fast for one day a week and give the saved money (or food) to people who could use it and would appreciate it greatly. This book also advocated volutary poverty as a way to connect with people who are hungry, homeless, or otherwise. In a word, solidarity.

I did a kinda-not-really fast at EMU in early ´07. I say kinda-not-really because we ate two meals a day of rice and beans in which portions were unlimited and the food was very nicely spiced=absoloutly delicious. It was still really hard to go to bed late at night feeling a little hungry and looking at the food I had on my dresser. It made me think how difficult that must be to go to sleep hungry and not having assurance that you will have food to eat the next day. Even though the experience was far shy of the real thing, it helped me to think about how it must be to actually be hungry.

Today I´m fasting for the first time ever. Not a kinda-not-really fast, I considered it making one but then it would feel wrong. So all I´m doing is drinking water. I´m going to make it something I do once a week for all of the reasons above plus as a way to practice self-control which, I´m finding, I have very little of. My mind keeps drifting and I keep thinking about how I should probably walk across the street and buy a Chocobanana or maybe a couple of muffins from the bakery at my house until I remember that I´m fasting today and I cannot live by bread alone.

Address! and a long update

2008-09-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, I have an address now. Its sweet too, it reveals how community and people oriented this country is. No numbers or anything, mail can be sent to Gracias (a 25k people town 30 min away) at

Michael Wiebe-Johnson
Voluntario con CASM
La Campa
Gracias, LEMPIRA
Honduras, C.A.

There are couple of Peace Corps people I work with who said that they´ve never really lost anything in the mail, not even packages. It just takes a while.

Anyway I´m in La Campa now! I´ve been here on my own for over a week and I´m getting used to the town, making some friends, and visiting a bunch of communities in the area which are generally about 40 minutes away (going really fast!) on pretty bumpy, hilly roads with the most gorgeous view I´ve ever seen.

My host family is really nice too. I have two brothers and three sisters here, but one sister is in University on the north coast, so I probably won´t see her for a while. Another sister is Elena, a Peace Corps worker who is finishing up her 3rd year here. Its nice to be able to hang out with her sometimes. The other siblings I know are pretty fun, its nice to be able to sit and talk with kids. My host dad is the pastor at the church in La Campa as well as a nurse. We have a medicine shop and a bakery in house. The bakery is part of what the Peace Corps worker at my house has been working on and the baked goods there are wonderful. My spanish is coming along, but its still not so easy sometimes. I just need to work on vocabulary....actually I think I need to work on grammar a lot too hahaha.

Village life is proving to be pretty nice. There are four or five little convenience store things with mostly packaged snacks and candy, but one sells Chocobananos (bananas with a coating of waxy chocolate on a stick) and another is a bakery. La Campa is laid out in a 4x4 square of rocky or dirt roads on the side of a hill looking at a pretty big rock wall. There is a sign painted high on the rock wall that says ´Bienvenidos a La Campa.´ The people here are happy about living in La Campa and they ask a lot how I´m liking it.

Travelling to the little tiny villages (communities) in the area is a lot of fun because people are so proud of the work they´ve done and and so happy to have visitors. At one house we saw the result of a whole lot of CASM work (my organization, Comision Acción Social Menonita). One project is where they put a chimeny onto the indoor cooking fire so that it burns less firewood, burns longer, and the smoke doesn´t cause respiratory illness for their kids. They had a grain silo for storing up for the less productive seasons too. This house also had a chicken pen for producing eggs and they were growing most of their food (even coffee!) for their own family´s consumption. Its great that they have the chance to enjoy the crops that they work so hard to grow. In other places they are building latrines and farming Tilapia fish.

It is so encouraging to see how community organizing and help with simple, practical projects has empowered them to be able to support their own families and take so much pide in the work that they do. I´ve heard of other projects with small scale hydroelectrics and natural gas capture from farm animals that I think would be really good to check out and could be benefitial for other communities in the area.

I´m getting used to being here. The adjustment to the food is a slow one, but I have faith. Thats all for now, internet access is sporadic, but at least it exists in La Campa so I´ll do my best to keep you updated. On the left you can see links for the other Honduras SALTers Rachel and Liz´s blogs. They are both very thoughtful and very awesome people, so you should check them out and leave them comments :) Thank you all for keeping me in your prayers!

Por fin, fotos!

2008-08-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

This site isn´t so photo-upload friendly as far as I can tell so I made an album on facebook that you can check out. It has pictures of Copan, the Ruins, local flora, coffee, friends....and probably some other stuff :) Enjoy, and you´re more than welcome to comment on here!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001074&l=f933b&id=1161480074

And these are pictures from the week of orientation in Akron, Pennsylvania.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001075&l=4f84c&id=1161480074

Another student we met at the language school in Copan, Megan, said that she is going to set up a webshots account that we can all load pictures onto if you ever want to look at a whole ton of pictures. Once that link comes I´ll post it, then repost it whenever I add stuff to it.

Arte Acción

2008-08-29T12:21:00.000-07:00

This morning we were walking around Copan and we walked into a little store that looked like it had cards and maybe little gifts we could get for our families here. The guy working there told us that the place was started to help local Copaneco kids experience Mayan culture and essentially build community with each other through art and sports. They had all kinds of really cool illustrated stories about animals with a passion for social action. I was pretty excited :D so I got two of them, one is about Bobo Basura (a creature made from trash, hence the last name) who was abused as a child and who doesn´t want people to fight because it only makes everyone sad. Another is called the Trash Fighting Frog. I haven´t read that one yet, but I´m looking forward to sharing them with the kids in La Campa.

If you want to check out their site, it is www.arteaccionhonduras.org

La Vista

2008-08-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

I´m in the town of Copan Ruinas in western Honduras. It is named for the nearby Mayan ruins that date to around 2000 yrs ago. The town is on a hill surrounded by densely forested small mountains. I love the bright and joyful community that I see all around. People look at me when I walk down the street, so I smile and say buenos and they always respond with a smile and their own buenos. People often hang out in groups on the side of the street talking and laughing until around 9, when most people go to bed.

I´m amazed every time I walk around the town because of the incredible view of the mountains that the streets offer. Everything here is so colorful! Liz noticed that the amazing patters and colors of flowers and plants that we see everywhere are replicated by the culture. You can look at necklaces and bracelets on a table on the street then look up and see the same color and shape about 100 times the size. Its so beautiful how Hondurans embrace the nature around them.

At the same time, I see a lot of American influence. Apparently a TV store opened up recently and everyone went and bought one. Or three in the case of my host family. They have a lot of TV channels showing a lot of American programming. It made me pretty uneasy to see the Simpsons in Spanish playing during dinner. At least it wasn´t South Park, but its still pretty scary. My family generally sits around and watches TV when they´re at home and all I can do is hope that they aren´t taking too much away from the experience.

En-theos

2008-08-15T17:45:00.000-07:00

This summer I've learned and been able to practice something life-changing. At camp we would always encourage our kids to choose to be positive and enthusiastic. When kids would make that choice, we would have great weeks and a cabin full of brothers. Sometimes you have to be a little crazy to get your kids to smile and have a good time, but its always worth it, especially when you refuse to be embarrassed. :)

Here at orientation we have some really enthusiastic people, like Passionate from Zimbabwe. Smiling ear to ear, he taught all of us a song at devotions one day that had some awesome running, spinning, and searching actions to it. It made me really miss church in Africa, where everyone dances around for at least 15 minutes every week. I think if I went back now I would really really appreciate that kind of church. Right now Passionate is sitting one row in front of me talking and laughing, doubled over most of the time.

Reading Jesus for President, they wrote that the root of enthusiasm is en-theos, which means 'in God'. So when someone in enthusiastic, that is God showing through them. Maybe it is hysterical laughing, like my friend Passionate. It could also look like passion for a cause, compassion for people, or sheer joy in life. Many people lack enthusiasm in any of its forms, a tragedy of a magnitude that I can't bear to imagine.

This summer I've been able to live with a lot of enthusiasm. Not just breathe, eat, drink, work, and sleep, but really live! Its a wonderful thing, and I'm looking forward to a life full of living. :)

Multicultural Mingling

2008-08-11T13:38:00.000-07:00

This week I'm at SALT/IVEP/YAMEN! orientation in Akron, PA. The last week of camp and the week at home were really good. It was great to be able to hang out a little bit with the Jubilee house folks. They had their communal dinner one night and 41 people showed up! Normally turnout was more in the 2-5 range. It was awesome to see that they've connected with a fair group of people during their year. A bunch of us helped Jason advertise for an event at the Roosevelt Community Center. We walked around and talked to a bunch of people and told them about the event and I was really surprised, most people seemed interested and really friendly and said they would come. Camp got me more used to being friendly with strangers and walking around really made me think about doing a year at the VS house because I could get to work with all of that potential in the community.

Anyway at orientation here we have 50 American/Canadian SALTers and about the same number of IVEP/YAMEN people who come from all over the world. The cultural mix is fascinating. On the first day I felt badly when I would see an African brother or sister because I knew that they wanted to sit and have long talks to get to know people, but I was really tired and I didn't have enough energy to talk with more than a couple of them. That night, I saw one woman from Jordan getting some cake. I commented something worthless like "Oh, you have cake!" and she right away asked if I wanted any. I said no, I didn't, to which she asked again. I said no again then she said, here, I'll get you a piece of cake. I was so confused, I thought she hadn't understood me but her english was good and I was sure I had spoken clearly. Then it dawned on me that the norm in Arab culture is to decline offers of hospitality until the host does it anyway. I knew this because MCC had sent me a little book about cultures before I came. Realizing that resistance was indeed futile, I accepted when she offered me juice, forgetting that accepting an offer immediately is perceived as being forward. Oops. We ended up having a nice chat while we slowly ate our cake and drank our juice.

These last two days have been full of this kind of confusion, all around, I'm sure. The awkwardness is quickly wearing off and everyone seems to be quite comfortable with each other.

Transition Weeks

2008-07-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

These next few weeks will be full of transition for me. Next week is my last at Camp Tecumseh, then I'm home for a week to get ready to go to Honduras. After that, I have a week of orientation with SALT and some other MCC volunteer programs in Akron, Pennsylvania, then I go to Honduras. And then who knows what! I've been thinking about it more recently since its pretty much on top of me now.

Camp has been a wonderful experience. Its really fatiguing sometimes, but then there are other times that it is completely awesome. This week was pretty much incredible. The guys were all well-mannered and got along great. They got to know each other right away and on Sunday evening they were already calling themselves brothers. Gumby likes to call the really awesome campers 'stand-up guys,' on our good weeks we've had maybe 3 of them, this week we had 10. Often the way they talked and the fun we had reminded me of college. Put those guys in a hall and you would have my freshman year of college, plus or minus a few. So now I only have one week of camp left and however it goes, this summer has been awesome with the campers and the counselors too. Depending on how much time I have back in the US next summer, I might come back and work a week of camp.

I'm really looking forward to the week at home too. Its always great when I get to hang out with my parents for any amount of time. It'll be great to see Elkhart people again. Well, I guess church people, I doubt I'll see too many other people I know. I want to have some more time to hang out at the Jubilee house too because I think spending some more time with them would really be good. There are some wonderful conversations there. As well as my hammock, I need to go lay in that a little too I think. Drink some yerba mate maybe. Sounds incredible. I'm so used to being insanely busy and doing ten different activities everyday where I have ten kids to watch, so it'll be nice to have some time to relax.

Then comes orientation. I'm thinking orientation is going to be like another week of staff training for camp (incredible) but probably a lot more fun. So pretty much, I can't wait. I've emailed another SALTer whos going to be in Honduras but thats only been a couple times. She seems really cool though and I'm sure the rest of the SALTers and the volunteers from other programs are nothing short of the coolest group of people I've ever met. Counselors currently hold that title, but we'll see.

Honduras next. There's a couple that I'm going to be in contact with in Honduras who's blog I found. It was a good blog, and Morgan told me they're cool, so I have some pretty high expectations. ;) They said they have a 7 person community of American/Canadian volunteers whom they get together with and I'm sure I'm going to be really glad for that. I think in the village I'm going to be the only American, so it'll be immersion and that volunteer community will be nice to hook up with every once in a while. I still really don't know at all what to expect. I feel like I'm dropping into Honduras blind and uneducated but I'm supposed to be educating the people there. Sounds audacious.

I see a lot of 'lost and found' clothes at camp and I've taken to looking at the tags on them. Even though I haven't been to Honduras yet I know there are a lot of the sweatshop variety of factory there. Whenever I see 'Hecho en Honduras' written on shirts, I feel a moment of connection with those people in Honduras whom I will soon know and work with. I'm sure I'll get to see plenty of that dark underbelly of global capitalism, aka the beast. Can't wait.

We Need New Heroes

2008-07-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

Its another night off here at camp. I'm pretty tired, especially this week. Some of that could have to do with my part of camp doing the 'man up challenge' all week. Its a ridiculous event but its a lot of fun. About half of the male staff plus a few campers are walking around camp shirtless (but not inside or at chapels), wearing hats or headbands, eating all of their meals with knives or fork handles, and laughing hysterically at how we all look. Well, maybe that last part is just me and a few really cool counselors. Originally I thought the challenge had a component where you had to wear short shorts but apparently that isn't the case. Essien (my half Nigerian partner who also goes by Gumby) has been doing pretty well with that part of the challenge by wearing a nice pair of blue running shorts.

My cabin isn't so wonderful this week. Some of their parents thought it would be genius to send their kids who are friends to camp together, so they got here and since we've been trying to get them make friends with the rest of the cabin so we can all get to know each other. I think its getting a lot better but Essien isn't as optimistic. I don't think Mike is either, but he isn't as vocal about it.

Anyway tonight I went to the staff Bible study. We went over Esther's story, a fascinating one. The leader of the study talked about how all the women were pretty much just there as objects for the emperor. The part I found to be most interesting was that a Jew named Mordecai wasn't kneeling down and honoring one of the emperor's officials. The official then decided to kill all of the Jews because Mordecai wasn't respecting his authority and as a people group, the Jews acted differently, they set themselves apart. I find it encouraging that they lived 'in this world, but not of this world' in a very apparent way. I was also struck by the parallel of kneeling down and honoring an official with standing up, doing the 'camp hand salute', and saying the pledge of allegiance to the American flag. Both are symbols of government and worldly power and in both cases, we are expected to stand and honor them. I stand for the flag stuff, but I stand to pray. Unfortunately, Mordecai ends up being promoted to second in the empire and he makes a special day for the Jews to go out and kill all of their enemies, which they do. My explanation is that he didn't have integrity and the massive power of the empire corrupted him. At any rate, he wasn't loving his enemies and praying for those who persecuted him.

I can only pray that I would have the faith and courage that Mordecai must have had to stand up for what he believed in the face of death. The title of this entry comes from Jesus for President, where it encourages us to look for the heroes who are around us every day and are normal people. I'm looking. If you know of any, please let me know. ;)

Counseling the Boys of Comanche

2008-06-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

This summer I am working as a counselor at the YMCA Camp Tecumseh in central Indiana. It is a really good time. During the staff training week I got to know a whole ton (at least!) of really cool people. The other counselors are all really open and excited about life and ready to meet people. A bunch of them try to read with at least some of their spare time, which is impressive concerning how short it is. I've never met a group that has had such a high concentration of really interesting, open, artistic, friendly, and happy people. So pretty much, the week and a half that I was here before camp started was nothing short of awesome.

My cabin was a little bit rough the first two weeks, mostly because two of my campers took so much of our time that we couldn't spend much time with the rest of the kids trying to get them to know each other. I was originally paired with Mike Lang, a junior at IU who is from Kokomo, Indiana. At the end of the first week we got a third counselor in our cabin named Essian Ukanna, a Dartmouth graduate who is half Georgian and half Nigerian. The three of us together work very well and we have a ton of fun. This week all of my campers have been great kids who have listened to and respected us. It has made a world of difference and I can tell by how even the depressed, unsociable campers are having a great time and are feeling comfortable enough to jump in to activities.

I think this summer is really going to be a great one. For one, I have the privilege of getting to know all kinds of really awesome people. I get to learn how to deal with plenty of different kinds of kids from all kinds of backgrounds. I've learned how to make pens on a lathe!!! I also get a lot of experience leading and observing devotions and discussions for adolescents. I have plenty of time to think about Biblical stories and what they mean. And I'll be spending some time writing new devotions and chapels with another counselor.

I'm excited about that part because I feel like it could have an impact on people's faith. So many of the devotions and the chapels are modern adaptations of stories where Jesus comes and is rejected by people or all that they experience of Jesus is that he takes the physical and mental anguish that they have experienced on himself and experiences it all himself. An example is a story about a couple who gets a phone call from God saying that God is going to come to dinner, then the couple makes preparations and turns away a beggar, a man in need of help, and a sick little girl in their anxiousness. Or another where Jesus walks around and takes a weeping woman's sorrow onto himself as well as trading a Vietnam veteran's stump of an arm for his own strong one. I think these messages are mostly good but are also depressing because we constantly watch Jesus being rejected and suffering. Jesus did suffer in his life and on the cross, but he also preached a gospel of love, acceptance, and community that leads to a very fulfilling life. Everyone at camp experiences all of these things and they say that they feel closer to God here, yet for some reason camp lifestyle is not connected with Jesus. I hope to build that connection. Not to say that I think camp is the Kingdom of God, but I think we would do well to live some of the camp culture.

What a Wonderful Aurora

2008-05-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

I was just in Elkhart for three and a half weeks, and it was incredible. I biked around 350 miles, I did a bunch of yard work, and I made a lot of new friends. Most of the biking was to and from Goshen to visit some new and old friends. I stayed at Morgan's house at Goshen College. Stayed is a pretty weak word, I think lived is much more appropriate.

What a life it was! For one, it was really reviving to be in a Mennonite college context again. It was nice to be accepted and loved the way I came. After all the biking, I'm sure I didn't smell good whenever I was there and I generally didn't have clean clothes for the time I spent sitting around all of the next day talking, reading, eating and sleeping. The most amazing part about Aurora House was that my lovely house mates expressed their affection for each other very easily and openly. I think the physical closeness and acceptance that they showed each other is one of the most powerful tools around for building community. I think physical contact is directly related to trust and, obviously, love. It was great to see their honesty in sharing joys and sorrows and how they relied on their house community when they had things to deal with. Apparently they had house meals almost every day during the school year. The one that I got to be a part of was a perfect time for them to build relationships and identity as a group. That kind of life, the kind where you're living every day, is an blessing that is worth so much.

When there was a Critical Mass bike ride in Elkhart, seven of the Aurora community showed up. We went to my house and had a bonfire with Jubilee House (the Mennonite Voluntary Service House in Elkhart) members. I experienced another great community builder there as we sat around the fire and sang all of the good singing songs we could remember. Like my opening post on this blog, I want to fill beautiful and ugly places with powerful and weak voices joining in song. Acceptance, belonging, physical contact, group meals, singing.... all of that is a dream, one that feels like heaven to me.

Silly Cars

2008-05-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

I ran some errands today on my bike. The agility and precision that I have on my bike makes car-watching hilarious by comparison. Cars have to run through all kinds of complex maneuvers to get out of tight spots, sometimes people even do all the maneuvers for spots that aren't that tight. Thats because the driver generally doesn't have a good understanding of how long or wide their vehicle is, so they end up cranking on their steering wheel for a couple minutes doing 20 point turns, 15 cm (6 in) forward or backward at a time. Whenever I see cars driving slowly they always remind me of stupid animals. I had to laugh when I saw a Neon or something like it that looked completely bovine as I was going through a neighborhood. It only makes the analogy better when you see the faces of drivers sitting at stop lights or rolling slowly through neighborhoods because they always look really bored and a fair bit bovine themselves. Occasionally I get the people who see me on my bike and then sit frightened at the stop signs from when they spot me until I pass since I'm not driving a car and therefore must be insane. That behavior reminds me of cows too.

That being said, I have nothing against drivers. I do my fair share of the bovine driving and parking thing as well. I think its tragic that we've all become accustomed to traveling 30 km (19 miles) to find friendly people to eat dinner with. Not that long ago, travel was a time that you spent your days outside and had plenty of time to look at and appreciate nature. At nights, you would stop and spend the evening sitting or meeting people. Now our cars cut us off from all of that. We travel in climate controlled boxes playing canned noise to counteract the noise from our vehicles. We stare at the stripes in the road as they fly by. If we're not on highways, we might even catch glimpses of the communities that we thunder past. Cars are another example of the paradox of technology, they are meant to connect us with each other and increase our quality of life, but they actually disconnect us from and often destroy our communities and the nature around them.

Welcome to Tent Town

2008-04-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

This week has been hands down the best week of my college career so far. Last sunday night about 30 people went and set up tents on the Memorial Mall in the middle of campus. The people came from different campus groups for labor equality, atheism, anarchy, marijuana legalization, probably some others, and a lot good number of people just showed up. That night we hung out and drew everywhere on the walkways with sidewalk chalk. Everyone had their own message encouraging people to question things in their lives and to rely on each other. I was up that night until 6:30 when I went back to my apartment so I could sleep for a few hours.

The next morning activity planners from Purdue came and told the police that we had to go. Many of us had different methods of dealing with the police but a few people from the anarchist group set up meetings with the dean of students and the other people who needed to approve it. Unfortunately we didn't get our approval signed for Monday night but we continued Tent Town elsewhere. On Tuesday we got it approved and so we set up tents and kept them up for the rest of the week, even though the administration pushed us around a few times and tried to complicate things for us. A troubadour and his friend spent the week with us and shared his incredible stories and music every day, so much that his voice was always hoarse and raspy. If you want to hear a little bit of Tent Town, check out his myspace page and you can listen to his music with the box on the upper right, although I hear that his voice isn't raspy in those songs.

The most amazing thing to me about Tent Town was the sense of community that we all felt. Few of us knew each other when we got there but after living together for a little while we felt like family. The beauty of the whole thing explodes for me when I realize that for many of the people who were at Tent Town, it is their community. These people had no other community and likely not that many friends since Purdue is a very isolating place. We were all able to build a web of friendship that we know can support us. Our bonds of friendship moved Tent Town as a community three times over this week to camp out, listen to Ryan and Snorlax (our troubadours), and have a camp fire.

Along with the community feel, we all contributed what we could to feed, clothe, and watch out for each other this week. I left notebooks that were important to me, my bike, my camera, my hammock, and other possessions out at Tent Town all week and people took care of them for me. The hours we all spent chalking, singing and talking brought us very close to each other and helped to make last week many of our best weeks of college ever. Hands down.

I'll leave you with the pictures I took this week (this link works, sorry about that) check them out :D

Freedom, oh Freedom

2008-04-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

There's this song I like to sing where I got the blog title from. I think it might be one I learned in Ghana way back in the day. Anyway this morning I was in an empty parking garage and I heard an echo and I thought to myself how perfect of a place this would be to sing. So I belted it out and sang my Freedom song and any hymns I could remember until my voice cracked.

I was thinking about how incredible it would be to fill a gray cement place like that, an empty parking garage or the walkways of Purdue, with loud unashamed singing. Its all part of the 'in this world but not of this world idea' to make our depressing surroundings uplifting. Shane said Mother Teresa called it finding the Calcuttas around us. Even at this university where people are for the most part provided for, the Calcutta is in their loneliness and depression. The bond that group singing makes, the community, love, and solidarity that can be felt is beyond this world.