Culture Accepted as Truth

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.