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