there is no crying in baseball

My little preschoolers trying to dance during the Day Against Child Abuse. Please note the obvious struggle against the wind.

Carlita getting her 11am sugar fix, while being snuggled by her sugar-enabler, Mami Sandra. Note the squinchy anger-eyes.

Little Javier, whom you might remember from my first host family, can now toddle a few steps at a time. Here he eagerly approaches the Baby Chute.

Baby Javier loves him some Baby Chute.

20 November 2008
Hey, chochachos! So, for the first time in my short Honduran history, I actually felt COLD this week. In Alubarén. Another cold front blew through, which they call a “norte,” again resulting in anyone under the age of 10 and over the age of 60 only daring to brave the elements if well-protected by any number of knit hats, sweaters, and long pants. During the day it was just warm and blustery, and at night it would cool down to where I would have to wear jeans and a sweatshirt, possibly the first time I’ve had to wear such an ensemble since my brief period in the piney mountains of Valle de Angeles. Too bad I forgot I was going to a tropical country when I packed—I literally have like four sweatshirts here, as well as several long-sleeved shirts…maybe I will sew them into drapes. Or cut them into strips and make a hammock. Speaking of hammocks, my neighbor’s sister, Chepa, bought a beautiful, huge handmade hammock because she “felt sorry” for the person selling it, and is now going to sell it to me (though I don’t feel sorry for anybody). It’s even got fringe!! I think you guys know how I feel about fringe. Or maybe you don’t. But I am FOR IT. In other news, this same lady (Chepa) is going to lend me a little wooden bed for my two years here, AND gave me several little cuttings so I can have plant-friends. And for those of you who lived with me in the Tit, I promise I won’t do what I did last year and let my little cuttings sit on the kitchen table and grow algae for like seven months before throwing them away on move-out day. I’m going to teach the plants English, and they shall be my friends.

So there is sort of a “Honduran Murphy’s Law” that I’ve come to accept, meaning that nothing here ever goes as planned and my own personal skills in dealing with disappointment and frustration have really had a chance to develop. So, still preparing for International Day Against Child Abuse on Wednesday, I showed up on Monday and asked how the drama practice had gone with the high school kids on Friday—I’d been unable to attend. Franco, the guy left in charge of this, who is also sort of my boss, just shrugged and smiled and said, “Yes, well, they didn’t show up.” I figured this might happen (see! I’m leaning!) so I had pestered the six students for their phone numbers ahead of time and left the list of names and numbers for Franco. I asked why he hadn’t called them when they failed to show, and he said “Yeah, no…we’re just not gonna do the drama.” So I stabbed him in the face. No actually, I called all the kids and asked why they hadn’t shown up, and each one said they had forgotten. So I told them we were gonna practice tomorrow, Tuessday, at 2:00pm, and could they come? They all promised they would, and in return I promised fresco (soda) and churros (chips). Tuesday at 2:00pm rolls around—no high schoolers. So I call them, and each one has an excuse…one was going to kill a pig, two had headaches, one didn’t answer, and the remaining two were busy but said they’d be right over. Only one came. So by now it’s like 3:00pm, and I’ve got myself one high schooler, and two neighborhood kids I’d hastily snagged in the interim, named Bella and Karen. We quickly wrote a skit, which involved an abusive mother, two little girls, and a caring teacher. After practicing a couple times, I dispatched the kids, agreeing to meet at the park the next morning at 9:00am for the beginning of the program.

Meanwhile, the preschool teacher Karen and I were hastily preparing the little guys to dance (aka waggle their arms to and fro above their heads) to a song about smiling and love, and I was mentally practicing a speech in Spanish I was gonna give at the beginning of the program. We headed over at about 9:30 (“Honduran time”—nothing here starts on time, because the collective agreement is that things will begin an hour or so later than what is officially stated), but (Murphy’s Law) the wind was blowing so strong that we could barely get our stuff set up. The giant board with all the illustrations done by the school kids kept falling over, and we had to tie the giant mural to a tree. We set up our sad little card table with chairs for the “invitees,” which included the school principal, a police officer, and several priests. We set up our PA system, which didn’t work, so we resorted to a megaphone. The preschoolers shrieked and ran around on the play ground, and the chickens and dogs wandered around, and that was about it. No one was there. All this time I had asked how they were getting the word out, and they assured me invitations had been sent out. By about 10:15, our invitees were finally there, and about 15 mothers and their children were sitting on benches in the back of the park. I ran over and begged (literally) for them to come sit in front. They grudgingly did so, and with all the extra school kids scampering around, released from school, it looked like about 40 people were there. If that. I only counted four men, three of whom were the lame smelly dudes who always hang out in the park, and probably would have left if the scene hadn’t looked suspiciously like one that might involve free snacks later (it didn’t). Either way, we had to get moving, so Franco grabbed the megaphone and thanked the “crowd” for coming out for our first annual campaign against child abuse. Then he introduced our invitees, and then said something like, “And now our very special Peace Corps volunteer, Hayley the gringita, will say a few words.” I talked for about five minutes, basically arguing that children have the same rights as adults to live without violence and fear, and that as grown-ups it’s our responsibility to protect them. I talked about how most youth in Honduras have experienced violence in the home, usually from the parents, and how detrimental this is to them psychologically. Then I finally got to say my favorite line, which is “If we plant violence, we will harvest violence.” All in all it was a good speech, and when I was done Franco took the megaphone and said, “Such strong words from our gringita.” Thanks, Franco. Then one of the priests stood up to pray, at which point I snuck behind the tree to call my high school thespian, who was missing. After calling three times, she finally answered. I asked where she was, and was fed the typical Honduran “here comes an excuse” line, “Fijise que....” She said her head hurt too much to come. I argued with her, said it was her responsibility, and that without her we couldn’t do the drama, and she said maybe she could come. I pushed her—yes or no? And she finally said no, she wouldn’t be coming. I was pretty pissed, and went over to tell Bella and Karen we couldn’t do the skit. Alison, another school girl sitting nearby, overheard and marched over to me. “I can be an angry mom!” So the show went on, and it was damn cute. No thanks to stupid high school flakey kids. Then the preschoolers danced around, and it was adorable, and then the police offered talked about god knows what for almost 45 minutes (we lost about half our crowd at this point). All the while, the furious wind is still howling, blowing dust and garbage in everyone’s faces and making it impossible to hear. So my first attempt at a public event was mildly disastrous, but at least it wasn’t humiliating (I wore pants, so there was no skirt-blowing-up-everyone-seeing-gringa-undies situation). And I learned a lot (such as: youth cannot be trusted, invitations don’t work, give police officers strict time limits, wind is lame).

I played with Saul on Monday, and found out their going to bring Norlin back!! I guess I’ll have to wait and see if that’s actually true, but it’s the word on the street and I’m so excited. I also got a package from my parents and some letters. Yay! Tuesday, however, was a sad day for me…one of my best friends here, a really bright, outgoing, involved, and hilarious 16-year-old girl named Maria (fake name…just in case), got into some trouble, and her mom sent her to live with a cousin in San Pedro Sula. She and her boyfriend of four years decided to run away together, and snuck off to his house, which is across the river, in the middle of the night. She was gone several days and her mom didn’t know where she was for half the time. Maria and her boyfriend (who is 18) decided they wanted to be married, and slept together, which was her first time. When she returned home to a frantic mom, the whole thing had spun out of control into the scandal of the year. Her mom took her cell phone away, and is threatening to have the guy arrested—he’s got a really bad rep around town and is known for smoking and drinking. Worse still, Maria was acting under the information that you can’t get pregnant the first time, so she was totally unprotected—and is now sitting alone in some cousin’s house, on the other side of the country, with no phone, no friends, worrying about a potential pregnancy and feeling like shit. She called me the night before she left, and told me to meet her at her aunt’s house. I went over and her mom led me into the backyard. She grabbed me by the shoulders, sobbing, and begged me to “talk some sense” into her kid. She looked straight into Maria’s eyes, still crying, and said that she was a foolish girl who made the worst mistake of her life, and that she would never forgive herself for this, and that she should have followed God and had now just wasted so many years of schooling and money and was good for nothing. She said she had shamed the entire family and didn’t know what else to tell her, and left. So we sat down on the stoop, wrapped in sweatshirts, and I just listened to her silence for a long time. She asked me if it was true you could get pregnant the first time. I said yes. We talked for almost three hours, until nearly midnight…this whole thing is especially tragic because Maria is known around town as one of the most promising kids we’ve got—she’s so smart, comes from a great family, is really involved in the community and is just this loving spark of light. I think that is what makes part of this so hard…EVERYONE knows what happened, and the gossip in this place makes it unbearable. People talk about her like this angel, fallen from grace. She feels like she’s ruined her life. Furthermore, she loves this guy, and her family shuns him and is forcing her to dump him and move to the north coast. She kept saying she wishes she could wake up tomorrow and have this all be a bad dream. I’m worried because I feel like she’s going to get very depressed, all alone with her shame and self-deprecating worry. I tried not to give her too much advice, but I told her to think about what it would be like to marry this guy now, to close all the doors she’s got open in front of her, and I think she realized that it’s not too late to call the thing off and move on. She plans to come back to Alubarén in a couple months, and I got the phone number of her cousin so I can call her when she’s up there. I feel so terrible, though…it’s been a long time since I’ve sat with a friend on the worst day of her entire life. Like Maria, I wish it was all just a dream.

It’s almost Thanksgiving. I miss you, Mimi! When I come back we will eat cheese-stuffed olives with those little wooden sticks and drink Gnarly Head and eat turkey and it will be awesome.
Love,
Hayley

26 November 2008
Hey, chochachos! Dang but if it isn’t Thanksgiving eve once again. Tomorrow I plan on celebrating by finding a quiet place to shed my tears without alarming the locals, followed by a meager dinner of fried Spam (a huge thing here, unfortunately) and alarmingly sweet coffee. Then, dressed as a pilgrim, I shall go to the nearest water front (dirty river) and reenact the landing at Plymouth Rock. Then more Spam, which of course shall include more tears.

PSYYYYCCCHHHH!!! Man I totally had you guys. Suckers. Actually, I’m going to celebrate with some fellow gringos in the south, in San Marcos de Colon. I imagine no Spam will be involved, so it should be a pretty joyous occasion. Though it will be my first Thanksgiving away from family, and my first one in four years not spent with Mimi, which makes me very nostalgic. I wish Scientists would hurry the hell up with that teleportation technology; it would come in fairly handy in these have-your-pumpkin-pie-and-eat-it-too situations.

This Monday was Opening Day here in Alubarén…after weeks of collecting (far too many) children, assessing my gear (far too few gloves), monitoring the rain (not no more), and basically just getting the balls to get off my lazy butt and start, Las Panteras Rural Youth Baseball Team de Alubarén are now ready for action. And if by action you mean bickering for two hours under the hot sun, then yes. I started several weeks ago, with a formal meeting at the elementary school for all interested kids, between the ages of 9-13. Over 20 kids showed up at the meeting, and followed what could potentially be described as “aggressive” recruiting, I accidentally signed up like 40 freaking kids. Someone should have told me baseball teams only have like 9 kids on the field at a time...but it’s too late now. All I can do now is pray someone shanks someone else with a piece of broken glass so I can kick him off the team. Anyway, with my list in hand, one of my baseball kids Cristian and I walked to every single house last weekend (36, to be exact). I would knock and we’d be invited in, sat down, and more often than not given some coffee (I was a shaky, sweaty mess by the last house). I talked to the folks, explained who I was and why I’m not John, the gringo who started the team (usually followed by a series of questions such as, “Yes, but when is John coming back?”). Then I’d give my “we’re starting this Monday, come to the campo, wear tennis if you have them, please bring water, come at 3:00pm sharp, no, not 3:15, but 3:00” speech, and we’d be on our way to the next house and next cup of coffee. On Monday I stepped out of my house at 2:45 to find about eight kids waiting expectantly, most of whom did in fact have water with them. Miracles, people. We trooped over to the field, with little 7-year-old Anner clinging to my hand and rubbing his face up and down my furry arm, as he likes to do (he’s too young for the team, but his big brother Eliezer is playing and I just couldn’t say no to the kid). The campo is Alubarén’s soccer field, and by soccer field I mean huge, pot-holed dirt patch covered with a nice layer of dried cow poop. Horse poop, too. But it’s nice because I can use chunks of dried manure as bases, which is about as eco-friendly as you can get. These “Rural Youth Baseball” teams are a Peace Corps Honduras initiative, so they give us equipment that is donated from folks in the states. We hauled the bags of gear to one corner of Cow Poop Field and I let the kids go through the bags and explore the gear…11 rubber balls, 20-something leather balls, 14 gloves, three bats, five helmets, and some catchers gear. This would be almost plenty for a normal sized team, but 14 gloves don’t go very far with 36 ball-players, so after warming up (one lap running around the field following by stretching) I had to split them into little groups of three to play catch, sharing the one mitt among them (if this description is jerking any heart strings, feel free to find any old, small, little-kid gloves in your garage and send ‘em to us!). We practice every day, from 3-5pm, and while the sun is boil-y and the ground is poop-y, it’s a lot of fun. The boys fight a lot (usually over gloves), and the four girls are won’t stop sassing each other, but they’re a good group of kids. And little Anner spends most of his time drinking water and playing in the dirt.

In other exciting news, I received my bike today from the Peace Corps office! It’s a sweet green mountain bike! HOW DID THEY KNOW I LOVE GREEN. IT IS A THANKSGIVING MIRACLE. I still haven’t picked a name for him yet, but I’m thinking of wheeling him into my room together to snuggle in bed with me. We’re going to be excellent friends, I think.

Everyone in Fondo Cristiano is scrambling to prepare for Dia Mundial de VIH/SIDA, or World AIDS Day, which is December 1. However, since our internal elections are on the 30th, we’ve moved World AIDS Day to December 2…don’t tell anyone. We’re going to do the same type of thing, with little skits, some speakers, a health talk (given by me, since our nurses and doctor will be out of town), and other stuff, including a march around the town with a little marching band. Should be interested…I’ll let you guys know if more than chickens and dogs show up this time.

Finally, in very sad news, of one my favorite fellow Peace Corps volunteers and close friend was recently Administratively Separated, which is PC Office lingo for kicked out. He went to the Honduras-Mexico fútbol game in San Pedro Sula, which is against the rules (we’re not supposed to leave our sites for the first three months unless necessary). One of the PC staff saw him on TV, and that was that. I feel terrible because he loved his community and his work, and was so gung-ho about being a volunteer…not to mention we’re only one month away from being able to see games without punishment. I don’t have much else to say except it really sucks and I wish this wasn’t happening to him. I’ll miss you, buddy.

Paz,
Hayley

for honduras i will learn to love squash

two of my best buddies here, Lisbeth and Jennifer. We do a lot of monkey-bar action together. Lisbeth is my neighbor, the daugher of Elia, so she and I hang out almost every day.

a very typical birthday scene, from one of the thousands of birthday parties ive been too since ive arrived (im not sure if its because im liked or because they think i will bring bars of gold as birthday presents). Poor strawberry shortcake, as you can see, no longer has any legs.

like all piñata breakings, the kids dive in, elbowing and shoving to get the crappy candy...often with the blindfolded kid still swinging away. to date, ive yet to see tears or blood, which is rather miraculous.

posing dramatically on the ¨hammock bridge" over the river. note that i am modeling my sexy 5th-grade-teacher blouse.

little saul, looking innocent. dont let him fool you.

VIVA OBAMA! please note the sexy teacher blouse.

Here is little Carlita, my sister, gamely trying on all my baseball equipment at once.

13 November 2008
Hey, chochachos! So recently my dad asked me for the definition of chochacho, and I realized there are many of you out there who, fluent Spanish speakers or not, may not know what chochacho means. It is a word that derives from the ancient King Chochacho, more commonly known as “the Incan Fun God.” He didn’t do a whole bunch of typical god stuff, he just liked to hang around with his buddies and fool around. For a more thorough history, please peruse www.achewood.com.

So this week was both crazy and lame in many respects. Crazy in that I actually had real work to do, lame in that that meant less time for playing on the monkey bars in the park, swimming in the river, climbing trees, and hours of sitting in hammocks or plastic chairs and chewing the breeze (mmmnaum-naum-naum-naum). Next week, on the 19th, is the International Day of the Prevention of Child Abuse, and if it’s one thing child-themed NGO’s do well in Honduras, it’s celebrate international days of stuff. Serious, from the banners to the youth-involved skits to the kindergarteners holding signs that say “we have rights,” they’ve got this stuff down to an ART. So, with my counterpart Fondo Cristiano, I’ve been busy as the dickens all well getting ready. I recruited high school kids to be in the play, grade school kids to draw pictures of child abuse (nothing moves your heart more than child art about serious subjects), and the preschool kids to hold signs. Two other girls who work with Fondo designed the giant banner, and I’ve been helping cut out and glue down letters and stuff. Doing stuff like this made me realize how much easier it is to do artsy projects in the states…we had to hand-draw every letter to make stencils, then cut each one out, we had to tape pieces of paper to the giant board to make the white background…since we don’t have printers or anything, EVERYTHING is done by hand. It’s just the olden times, when kids in pioneer schools in the 1800s were cutting out letters to spell “Dia Internacional de Prevencion y Lucha Contra la Violencia en la Ninez y la Juventud” and glue them next to pictures of crying children.

As such, not a whole else is new. I went to paint with Saul on Monday, like I always do, but they weren’t there—apparently they were off visiting Norlin in Tegus. I was bummed, but I used the extra time to hang out with my buddy Dona Marta and eat oranges, so it was all good. I like the oranges here, but I am just biding my time until MANGO SEASON begins…not until April, I’ve heard, but everywhere you look here there is a mango tree, just waiting to fill my mouth with the delicious. So I am 7 kinds of excited.

Recently, I foolishly bought a ridiculously expensive mattress (for when I live on my own), and I was once again reminded that I am a dumbass with money and should not be trusted. But the mattress is big and pretty, so whatever. Plus it’s made of foam, so if it floods here, I am totally safe (foam floats, yes?). Today I walked to Reitoca, the next municipality over. Even though the sun was hells of boiling, the walk was really nice…under my umbrella, walking along the dusty, pebbly road, sandwiched between green mountains and purple flowers dulled with dust and heat…chickens all hidin’ in the bushes, iguana-like lizards called garrobos warming themselves on rocks, cows flickin’ their ears at me as they munch on said dusty flowers, orange-bellied birdies doin’ this whistley thing that makes me think of the Jungles episode of Planet Earth…it’s all very beautiful. Though I can’t believe how dry and brown it’s getting…it no longer feels very jungley here. Just freakin’ hot. But everyone calls out to me as I walk down the road, and more often than not, when I pass someone, he or she will stop, grasp me hand, and wish me a very happy day. I just love the LOVE in this country. And the generosity to strangers. On the way back, some little kid came running out of his house. “My mom says come here!” he shouted at me. I turned around and let myself in their little gate, to find two elderly folks sitting on the porch. The old woman says, “So, you like squash right??” and even though I’d just eaten like 500 fried chickens I said yes, and they sat me down on the chair next to them. Soon I was handed about a plate with a chunk of squash the size of my face, dark green pulp sprinkled with sugar. A glass of frosty coke was placed at my side, and the little boys giggled at me and sat in the hammock near by. Their grandparents were named Dora and Gregorio, and we chatted for almost three hours…including typical topics such as: Are all gringos blonde like you? Why don’t you have babies yet? Are there poor people in the states? Obama is an Indian, right? Do you guys have mountains in the states? Are there deer? Do you have chickens? What are houses like over there? Are there rivers? The boys played marbles and pogs, and two of them promised to be on my baseball team. Once the sun was lower in the sky, I excused myself and they made me promise to come back. Stuff like this—strangers inviting a random person walking down the road to come eat some squash—would never happen in the states, and it’s one of the reasons I love life here so much. I don’t even really like squash, to tell you the truth.

Oh heavens, it’s 10:00pm. Way past my bedtime. Before I go, a quick summary of the crazy dreams I had last night (yes, all of these were last night):
I was riding bikes with my buddies Harrison and Max in my neighborhood in California, and Barack and Michelle Obama walked by. I stammered, “I love you!” and then spent about half an hour strolling with Michelle while she confided in me that she wishes she wasn’t in the spotlight so much and just wants some alone time to relax. I told her I understood.
I was at the movie theatre, and when I went out it was the ocean everywhere. I body-surfed home and it was freaking awesome.
I went to hang out with Caitlin Grogan and John Pappas, two college friends, and when I got to their apartment they were both wearing their bathing suits. “It’s bathing suit time!” they informed me. Which was convenient, cause I just SO HAPPENED TO HAVE MINE ON TOO!!!
Paz,
Hayley

obama in spanish is still obama

8 November 2008
Hey, chochachos! This past week has been like 10,000 Christmases…a jillion birthdays…10 katrillion December 19ths…it’s like my faith in the intelligence of my country has been restored. It’s like I was hoping wildly my parents would get me that intelligent, good-hearted pony for Christmas, knowing that they probably wouldn’t because I’d always asked for a pony before and been disappointed…and then, lo and behold, I wake up on Christmas morning and there is just the sassiest of ponies waitin’ in the living room, all prancing around and pointedly not crapping on the carpet. Thanks, guys. I got up early on Tuesday and headed over to the Fondo Cristiano office, where I promptly made a huge “VIVA OBAMA” sign in red, white, and blue. I went home and tied it to the door of our porch. The folks back home I had recently talked to seemed optimistic our man would win, but I’m just not as inundated with polls and blogs and interviews as you guys and I didn’t really have a good idea of what was gonna happen. Parked in front of CNN en espanol all day, I watched the crowd in Grant Park and wished like the dang old dickens I was still there, celebrating with all my friends, but I could feel the awesomeness just by watching it (Samir, I totally freaking saw you! They zoomed in on you. You were chewing gum. What flavor was it?). Besides, I was havin’ a pretty crazy party on my own…I sat up in one of the comedors (shacks that sell food) and ate three baleadas (hey, it was a special night) and drank some tamarindo juice (I’m not sure if they’re fruit or what, but they look like rubbery peanuts and people here boil them and make them into delicious juice that sort of tastes like apples). However, the folks eating there were more interested in watching soap operas than history unfold, so I went home and sat alone in the living room, watching the magic of democracy in the hands of the wise while sucking down more tamarindo juice from a bag, tallying up each state and beaming until my facebones hurt and my eyeballs sweated. All this week people have been coming up to me and sayin “VIVA OBAMA!” and patting me on the back enthusiastically. Anyway, all I can say is we freaking did it and THANK YOU. Thank you for voting…thank you to everyone who worked on Obama’s campaign…twerpy idealists or not, this collective decision is the best one we’ve made in a long time and I am so proud of our country I could barf. Yay America!

Everything else is awesome right now, too. My program director came and visited on Tuesday, and we had a meeting with my counterparts. She also brought me a butt-load of baseball gear, so I’ve started throwing the ball around (is that a phrase applicable to baseball or football or both?!?) with the little guys who live near me, namely Eliezer, Anner, Erlin, Eric, Elder, and Ander. My old-lady neighbor Gila also joined in a bit, which was hilarious…she marches out there in her matching blouse-and-skirt outfit that all elderly women here seem to own, and asks me for a glove! She’s got a pretty good arm on her, too. The only problem is that now all this kids know I have baseball gear, so they literally never leave my house. When I wake up in the morning, there they are, waiting outside the porch gate. When I cook dinner, they press their faces against the kitchen window and watch. When I leave the house, they pour out of bushes and drop from trees, inquiring if now would be an okay time to play, even though it’s 8:00am and they’re supposed to be in school. It’s kind of hilarious, actually. But I had a meeting at school this past week and got all the kids signed up, and we’re going to start having official practices once they’re let out for the “summer,” which should be in a week or two.

My program director informed me it’s time to stop drinking coffee on people’s porches all day and be “pro-active,” so I guess vacation time is over. I met with the doctor at the health center, and he’s really awesome. They’ve always reserved the first and last Friday of the month for the pregnant women of Alubarén and the surrounding aldeas, but it’s just for a medical check up and sometimes a health talk. So I told him I wanted to make it more like a club, and he said go for it. I made a big poster that says “Embarazada?” (pregnant) and then under it a logo I designed, with three hella pregnant ladies all hugging and looking happy with “Club de Mujeres Embarazadas” written around it. We had our first meeting this Friday, and despite only 5 of them showed up, it went pretty well. We had a dinamica (basically an ice-breaker game), snacks, and talked about our interests, our pregnancies (I stuffed a soccer ball under my shirt to fit in), and anything else. Then I gave a health talk on nutrition during pregnancy, which involved them pinning pictures of carrots and tomatoes and beans to a giant sheet of paper, among other things. It’s sad because four of them were under 20, and one was only 15. Teenage pregnancy is a huge problem here, and next school year (which starts in February) I’m going to do a lot of work with the kids to try to prevent this. Maybe iron underwear, with padlocks and stuff?

I visited a preschool in a village near here called Jicaro on Wednesday. I went with my neighbor Angie, who has been the preschool teacher there for four years…even though she’s only FOURTEEN. She walks there for 45 minutes every day, teaches for two hours, then turns around and comes back in time for afternoon high school (there are two shifts). She looks and acts like she’s 18—I thought she was kidding and refused to believe she was 14 until a friend corroborated it. The kindergarten was pretty sad…one little room that smelled like mouse piss, with four wobbly benches that looked like the preschoolers themselves might have made them, a crummy chalkboard, and a table with a cardboard box that held some crayons, scissors, and a bottle of glue. This preschool is a state-funded one, unlike the others I’ll be working with, which are funded by the NGO Christian Children’s Fund. Today, the kids were each given two sheets of paper, a blue and a black crayon, and scissors. Sitting on the floor and using the benches as desks, they all colored the fish tank on the first page blue, then colored all the fish on the next page black. Then cut the fish out and glued them into the tank. I flipped through the curriculum book that Angie has, and it’s pretty extensive—full lesson plans for each day of the school year, all of which are accompanied by a CD, with songs and stories for the kids! I asked Angie about it, but she said she keeps the battery-powered CD player at home so it doesn’t get stolen, and doesn’t have all the CDs. As usual, basic infrastructure in place but no one using it. She started the day by asking all the kids about different tastes (salty vs. sweet, etc), which I noticed was part of the first unit—they should be in the last one, since it’s almost the end of the year. Then she did the fish thing, which was from the third unit or something…but the fish activity was supposed to be prefaced by a whole day focused on counting to 10 (that’s how many fish there were) and caring for animals. She didn’t mention either of those aspects once. I asked her later about it—about why she wasn’t following the state-supplied curriculum the way it was meant to be used—and she just looked embarrassed and said I know, I know. The good thing is I can include her in the workshops I’ll be giving the preschool teachers, but the bad thing is I won’t be starting those until next January or February.

Peace Corps informed me I may not live next to a river (there go all my Chris Farley jokes I was going to make, damn it), but it’s okay, I ain’t buggin. I took some kids for a walk today and was chatting with a dude Nelo who owns a pulperia, and he randomly informed me the cute house across the street was empty. I went down the road to the owner’s house, and she said I can have it if I want it. It’s got a big backyard with all kinds of trees, and plants…even roses! The house is small but nice, and very secure—bars on the windows and everything. It’s got a latrine out back, as well as a shower (well, a tube coming out of the wall, but it’s still a shower!) and a pila. It’s got neighbors next door, and I saw a snake slithering around in the backyard! I plan on capturing it later and making it my guard-snake, Scumbag. The only downside is, aside from a hammock which she said I can use, the house doesn’t have any furniture, so I’ll have to fork over the dough to buy a bed and stuff. Balls. Maybe I can train Scumbag to also be a thief and go steal me a mattress from somewhere…

So I got a bunch of mail the other day! Proof the mail system actually works up here, which I admittedly doubted before—hats off to Wilma and her babies-as-carrots calendar. I received a box from my folks, filled with sexy 5th-grade-teacher-esque collared, sleeveless blouses and enough deodorant to last my sweaty self about two years. I also got a bunch of letters and another box from Kayleigh, filled with love and rainbows and metaphorical pinecones…thanks dudes. For serious. For any interested parties, my address here is:
Hayley Kercher
Alubarén, F.M.
11310
Honduras
I know I keep mentioning that…but I’m just saving you guys energy from excessive scrolling. SO THOUGHTFUL. SO KIND. SO DESERVING OF LETTERS.

Guess that’s it…though I want to mention that one of, if not the, best things about Honduras is that at any given moment I am almost guaranteed to hear either “El Choffer” by Mexican ranchera artist Vicente Fernandez, “My Heart Will Go Own,” by Canadian non-ranchera artist Celine Dion, or…are you ready, Northwestern Marching Band kids?....TARZAN BOY. Yes, it seems that Baltimora is enjoying a healthy popularity wave on certain radio stations down here. Nothing makes me day than walking down a dirt road in the middle of a random mountain in Honduras, passing a house with a radio blaring and suddenly having vivid mental images of Gabe, Harrison, Josh, Tom, and/or Tim shaking their butts while I beat my bass drum. Words can’t describe.

In other news, I totally fell and skinned my knee like a child the other day while playing “bate,” this local game kids play that’s like a combo of kick-ball and baseball. The good thing was I was able to use the surgical scrum in my PC medical kit, which was just as exciting as it sounds.
Paz,
Hayley
p.s. VIVA OBAMA!

also, the puppy died (again)

28 October 2008
Hey, chochachos! Man what the hell that’s the 6th ant I’ve smashed on my leg in the past 10 minutes. Is my bed filled with ants?! At least they’re not the black bitey ants…but they’re the teeny-weeny beige ones, you can barely see ‘em, which is why I call them Mystery Ants. You can feel them crawling on you, but you can’t see them….they’re like the secret agents of the ant world.

Today was real chill. I got up and went to the preschool, but it was mysteriously closed (Mystery Ants, perchance?!?!) so I just wandered up the road and waited for a baby to run out and be my friend, which happened almost immediately. Little six-year-old Jessica yelled “HEELY!” and grabbed me the by the hand, dragging me to her house. Her mom invited me to sit in the hammock and, since it’s orange season right now, began peeling me an orange. I swung and chatted with them for about an hour, while Jessica sat on the ground and ran her hand up and down my legs repeatedly (my blonde furriness is a captivating situation for all). Eventually I left and wandered up the road toward the “post office,” stopping to play a little fútbol with the cipotes (that’s what they call kids here). Turned out the post office was ALSO mysteriously closed (what the hell, ants?), so I went into a nearby pulperia to make friends with the owners. I bought a cucumber, and the woman, whose name I unfortunately forget, sat down and chatted with me for a while (I also received another peeled orange, which I ate). Then I heard “Heeeeely…heeeeeely…” and turned around to see two of my little friends peeking around the doorway—little Katy and Noelia, two preschoolers who know how to party. Katy sits down next to me and goes, “So, you want to come to my house right now, right?” I couldn’t help but laugh out loud…and then she goes like, “You can even cuddle my baby brooooother!”, completely trying to entice me as much as possible. So I said goodbye to my new pulperia friend and followed the two cousins to their house, where their mom Rosi was lying in the hammock, breast-feeding little Edward. I like their house because it’s got a dirt floor and is always filled with baby chickens…it’s kind of like being on a farm, but in the comfort of your living room! We played soccer (with three wadded-up Huggies packages tied together with string), and then played the timeless classic “Lobo,” which is where I stomp around and growl like a wolf and the kids shriek and run away…eventually I catch them and pretend to eat their guts. Then Katy said, “So, you want to eat some lunch, right?” and I turned around to find her mom fixing me a plate of cuajada, which is delicious cow-cheese that sort of tastes like goat-cheese, beans, and tortillas. After lunch, we went next door and played with the kids over there and I chatted with their grandma, who cares for them. I met a 14-year-old named Mirian who can’t read or write, nor identify any numbers. She told me she graduated from third grade but then stopped going. I asked why, and her grandma butted in and said it was because she “couldn’t form the words very well with her tongue.” Mirian speaks just fine, so I found this really confusing. I pressed her about it and never really got a straight answer. We did some basic “if I have two apples and then add one more, how many apples do I have in total?”, which she could do…but if I wrote “2 + 1 = “ on her sheet, all I got was a blank stare, which I realized was because she doesn’t know any of her numbers! So I made some number flash cards, 1-10, and we worked on learning 1-3.

After I left, some more neighbors waved me in, so I dropped in to say hello. It was hilarious because in the two hours that I was there, the little old lady would walk into the room, present me with a plate of food, then walk back out…only to return in 20 minutes with MORE food. I didn’t want to be rude, so I ate it all, but I was so freaking stuffed I thought I was gonna explode. I ate a huge chunk of dark green squash, an ear of corn, a chicken tamale, and a cup of coffee with cookies. She also gave me three bananas and a peeled orange to take with me.

So yes, this week is off to a good start. I went to visit Norlin and Saul yesterday, but Norlin had gone to Tegucigalpa with his grandma to visit his father, who lives there with his twin sister (until yesterday, I didn’t realize that Norlin had a twin, nor that the man who Lourdes lives with isn’t his real dad). The twin does not have Down’s. Apparently this “Hayley wants to send Norlin to school” thing is more complicated than I thought…Lourdes seems to be giving me evasive answers. When at first she told me he’d never been to school, when I excited reported that the preschool teacher would take him she informed me that he’d already done preschool. What about kindergarten, I asked? She told me he’s done that too—at which point her husband, Hernan, interrupted and said he hadn’t. They argued about it for a while, and it became clear neither was sure about what school Norlin has had and when, which I find incredibly confusing—how could they not know? I feel like someone is lying to me. Lourdes doesn’t seem like she wants to send Norlin to school. Maybe this is one of those gringa-butting-in-where-she-doesn’t-belong things…maybe I’m missing something here, culturally or otherwise, regarding Norlin’s education and his mother’s attitude. I don’t know. Anyway, he wasn’t there, so Saul and I painted just the two of us, which was nice. We worked on his colors, and while he doesn’t know any of them, he can do the matching game much faster and with much more ease than his brother. He learned green, brown, and blue, though, which was great. He’ll start preschool in February though, so I’m not so worried about him.

Not much else is new, except I’ve been going swimming in the river every afternoon at about 4:00pm with my posse of little boys, and then playing in the park with my posse of little girls until dinnertime. Life is good.

Only a week to go until the best day of my life!!! The excitement is starting to build here; I get asked daily who I’m voting for, and people here are aware something big is coming. I can’t decide if I’m going to try to stay in Alubarén and try to find a TV with CNN on it, or if I’ll head over to Reitoca where I know David gets the channel. Either way, I’m so excited I can’t sleep and sometimes I just feel like crying. If we win, the pride in my heart is gonna explode all over the place and drown everyone in happiness. QUE GANE OBAMA!!!!

Love,
Hayley

31 October 2008
Hey, chochachos! Happy dang old Halloween. This time last year, I was running around the Tit dressed up as a Tree Fort, droppin’ bags of water off the balcony and enjoying a cold one. This year, I’m in bed by 10:30pm and celebrating by eating raisins that taste suspiciously like soap. No bags of water have been thrown, though I did buy a bag of water today while I received the Virgin de Suyapa, which is Honduras’ patron saint. Either way, I hope you guys are having an excellent time without me.

So for the past week everyone’s been like, “Heely, are you going to come with us to receive the Virgin on Friday?” I never really got a straight answer about what that would entail, except a lot of walking and Catholicism (whenever I get asked which church I go to, I just say I like ALL the churches and couldn’t possibly chose a favorite). But my neighbors invited me, so I went. I knew the Virgin de Suyapa was a statue-thing that stays in a special church in Tegus, but apparently it gets trotted out to visit the pueblos on occasion. So about 100 of us hiked out for about 30 minutes on the main road, and waited for a truck to appear with the virgin. They unloaded not a giant replica of the virgin Mary, which is admittedly what I was expecting, but a golden cage the size of a TV with a little figure inside it. Two women in pink skirts and halter tops solemnly carried the cage between them, and led us all back to town. About 12 high school band students played “The Saints Come Marching In” repeatedly, a song I’ve never enjoyed quite so literally before. We marched, saint in hand, all the way to the Catholic church, which is right next to our central park, and I sat down with my neighbor Elia for mass for a grand total of four minutes before we left. All in all, a delightful experience. All day now they’re been shooting off guns next to the church , and a little old man has been perched in the belfry for about 12 hours, ringing the bells. I hope someone brought him a sandwich.

This week has been good, except for some unexpected sadness. If you recall, when I went to visit Norlin and Saul on Monday, his mother Lourdes told me Norlin was gone “visiting his father.” What she didn’t tell me was that the dad actually has legal custody of Norlin and his twin (who knew Hondurans had custody battles?), and had only “lent” Norlin to her for 60 days. Now he’s taken Norlin back, and when I asked when Norlin was coming home, she said she has no idea, that she has to talk to the social services and see about getting custody. So Norlin is gone. I almost cried when she told me, and it kills me because the kid is gonna have to spend all his time cooped up in the house with his sick grandmother and no one to play with—the dad goes to work and his sister goes to school all day. And I can’t work with him anymore, either. Now I think I understand why Lourdes was being so evasive about his starting school next year…he won’t even be here next school year. I suppose he will certainly come back to visit, but I feel very sad that I won’t get to see him whenever I want. And little Saul is suffering for the lack of his play-mate, too…I went to visit him on Wednesday, and he was just glued to my side, desperate for attention. When I tried to leave to go to the Fondo Cristiano office, he freaked out and was sobbing so hard I just decided to stay for as long as he wanted. He actually tried to padlock me in the house, but fortunately the thing was rusted shut.

I did a little recycling art project with the preschoolers this week. They’re currently “studying” modes of transportation, so I told the teacher I’d bring in materials for a fun art project. I went out wandering around and decided to use garbage (recycling!!), so I started collecting 2-liter bottles of coke, which wasn’t hard. One lady saw me and called me into her home because she had like 500,000 of them piled up in the back. Turns out she’s Nedi’s sister! (Nedi is my awesome neighbor, the grandma of Scarlett.) We chatted for about an hour and she gave me a delicious homemade chocolate popsicle. She also informed me the house next to hers is empty, because her sister and the kids went to live in Tegus. She showed me the house and very enthusiastically tried to rent it to me, but it’s still filled with all their stuff, from multiple beds to dishes to clothes to framed kindergarten diplomas on the walls. Why they left all their belongings is beyond me, but they certainly don’t seem ready to rent it the place out for two years. Anyway. Bottles in hand, I collected a bunch of the little plastic tops from the road, and headed home with a handful of local kids in tow. Using a hammer and nail, we punched holes in all the tops. Using a machete, I cut all the bottles in half length wise, and we folded a little piece of plastic up. Ta-daaaa, coke bottle cars, complete with windshield! I brought all the stuff in today, and the kids tied the wheels to the cars (we’d punched holes in the sides of the bottles for this, too) and then painted them. Hells of successful. Well, only two kids showed up for preschool today, but still. It was adorable.

That’s about it…a “cold front” has blown though for the past couple days, bringing temperatures down to an icy 75-80 degrees. All the kids are running around with knit hats and sweaters on, which is hilarious because I’m still sweating in my tee-shirt. My little host-cousins wanted to go out and play in the park and their mom wouldn’t let them, lest they get sick from the frigid temperatures. The rainy season seems to have abruptly stopped, too…the other day it didn’t rain, and I commented on this, and they were like “well, yes, now it’s summer.” Honduras, you are a wacky dame…but I did wear long pants tonight and that was pretty spectacular.

I was hanging out at the little stand where Doña Dorita sells food tonight, watching ESPN2, and saw that they’re going to play the Northwestern vs. Minnesota (hisss) game tomorrow at 11am!! She said she’d play it just for me, so I’m totally showing up tomorrow morning with all my purple on. GO CATS BEAT THE GOPHERS!

Just five more days till the most awesome day ever. I’m just sayin’.
Paz,
Hayley