Back to My Roots!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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