Helado

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!

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

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

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

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

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!

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 :)