12 February 2009
Hey, chochachos! Happy February 12th…it wasn’t until tonight that I realized Valentine’s Day is coming up, which is sort of weird…people here do celebrate it, but they call it the Day of Love and Friendship, which I think is much more hilarious. Differently from the states, and at the same time EXTREMELY Honduran, my neighbors have informed me that Catrachos (Hondurans) celebrate by sending what I translate as: “hella text-messages.” So apparently I needn’t worry myself with 32 boxes of candy hearts and/or tiny cards with Spongebob on them…I just gotta make sure I have saldo (cell-phone minutes, sold in tasty little cards or sketchy re-cargas). CHECK.
So dudes, I just ate the first ripe mango of my life in Honduras, and it was….AWESOME. At first I totally pulled a novie move and chomped right into the skin, but after two extremely unsatisfying bites, I realized my mistake and tore the rest of the skin off before I ate it (yes, this was an extremely sticky process, most of which ended up on my shirt). Don Nativo was selling them today in his little pulperia/produce stand, and I just stared at them. “What fruit is that?!” I asked…because all I’ve seen so far is little hard, green mangos that you peel and dip in chile and salt and eat; it’s a crunchy, sour, salty experience—Hondurans seem to have a thing for taking fruit and eating it before it ripe, with as many masking condiments as possible. Anyway, when he informed me they were ripe mangos, I had 7 heart attacks and promptly bought five, at the price of one lempira each, which is like a nickel. Then I also purchased a selection of all of the other produce he had at the moment, which included two green sweet peppers, an avocado, and three tomatoes. Hells of tasty dinner, that is.
So this week was relatively busy Peace Corps style…meaning that I had something to do every day that wasn’t just playing baseball with the kids. I’ve been “steadily” (AKA lazily) working on this workshop on classroom management for the pre-school teachers for like three months…I didn’t have any documents or manuals or anything so I kind of just pulled most of it out of my b..rain. Anyway, it finally happened this Wednesday (aka yesterday), and considering that it was my very first solo workshop-facilitating (and creating, right down to snack time and ice-breakers), it went pretty awesomely. Almost everyone showed up, no one was too late (although two women did skip out to go take advantage of the health clinic in town, which was cool), and lots of people participated (like thirty!). I honestly think they learned a lot…although I totally forgot to measure if they learned a lot, which is by administering a pre- and post-workshop quiz, which is allegedly Peace Corps protocol…crap. We talked about lots of things, like atmosphere in the classroom, appropriate punishment, creativity in the classroom, using the curriculum they’ve got, being constant and firm, and, above all, using positive reinforcement with a basic token economy instead of just getting all screamy and negative. I made them do a lot of group work and dramatizations, though sometimes I think I stretched their willingness to be silly and involved a bit much…essentially a game in which they had to mill about the room making animal noises. While that type of ice-breaker wouldn’t faze a group of young American teachers, it was too much for them to bear. No matter. It was a fun and novel experience to work with an NGO to get funding for a workshop I was to do independently, and the fact that I actually did it and it actually went well is rather exhilarating. And exhausting.
Not much else is new. Igor continues to grow, and recently made his virgin voyage to Tegucigalpa, clutched in my lap on the bumpy four-hour bus ride. He hated the city…I’ve never seen such a scared little guy. He also hated the cold. When we got to the vet, he got all vaccinated, as well as tested for and then treated for parasites, a process which involved the vet sticking a long plastic poo-collector thing up his little butt…poor, poor Igor. He was VERY upset at this procedure and proceeded to be very sullen and angry at me for the rest of the afternoon. I then toted him to the nearby Peace Corps office, so I could show him to my friends and bosses, and also get some work done. This almost went smoothly, until the main-head-boss-of-Honduras-Peace-Corps-lady Trudy walked in on Igor and Sandra (my project leader). So poor Igor was kicked to the curb…which I guess makes sense, considering he had just moments before christened Sandra’s office floor with a little puddle of liquefied nervousness. We crashed for the night at my rad-Honduran-hippie-friends-who-live-in-a-glorified-tree-house, which was also upsetting for poor little Igor (he has never been away from home before!) But after a couple hours he settled down and was his old self, hella stealing shoes and chasing cats up the wall. When it was time for bed, I brought out his special flannel shirt and we snuggled together in my sleeping bag on the floor. Tegucigalpa is mighty cold this time of year (mighty cold by Honduran standards, not Chicago standards…I’m talking switch from shorts-and-a-tee-shirt to jeans-and-socks-sweatshirt-recommended).
Las Panteras continue to practice every day, with no observable progress but plumb plucky spirits. We start every practice by huddling up, and putting our hands/paws together. Then I should, “QUIEN SOMOS?!” (Who are we?!) and the boys and girls scream, “LAS PANTERAS!” Then I shout, “QUE SOMOS?” (What are we?!) and they all scream, “LOS MEJORES!” (The best!) Then we take off and run a lap around the dirt field, and then meet in the middle and do our stretches in a big circle. Depending on the number of kids and day of the week, we either play a scrimmage (definitely their favorite) or do various batting/fielding/catching/throwing/base running drills. Then we huddle up at the end of the two hour practice, and I do something called “La Mera Pantera,” which is essentially MVP. I single out a kid who made a great play, or had a great attitude, or improved something, or perhaps, for the first time ever, chose not to throw a screaming “N’HOMBRE, N’HOMBRE” hurling-glove-to-the-dirt-and-stomping-around-temper-tantrum after being tagged out (that was today’s, given to a remarkably calm, 12-year-old kid named Ever). I actually had a meeting before practice with the parents today, which I’d never done before…it was fun getting everyone together; we ate cookies and drank pepsi and I told them to support our team, to come watch their kids play, and they we have a “big” championship coming up. One of the moms stood up halfway through and announced in a relatively scary voice that we had to do everything possible to win the regional championship; that we won it last year and it would be shameful to not do it again (she was looking at me intently while she stated this and it made me rather sweaty, like maybe she would not think twice about feeding me venomous tortillas if I made her kids lose). The two dads in the room came up to me afterward and enthusiastically informed me they would do ANYTHING to make sure we win. It’s hilarious and great to see this extremely competitive side to my kids’ folks, though, so I love it…even through it does make me a little nervous for myself if we happen to lose. Which we might…if only baseball was scored based on how many balls you could drop, with extra points if dropped in an extremely clutch moment in the game.
May you dream with the tiny angels! (A direct translation of my favorite Spanish good-night phrase)
Hayley
18 February 2009
What’s UP, chochachos! I have recently discovered that Reitoca, the next pueblo over, now has working INTERNET. That’s right. I no longer have to travel four hours on multiple buses and taxies to check e-mail/read Achewood/upload bloggy-blogs to you people. So that’s freaking sweet.
Valentine’s Day, last Saturday, was fun…I woke up and made papaya smoothies with my neighborhood posse of children (plus Nely and Tina), which we drank in my yard. Then I handed out little foam hearts (thanks, Sherry Carpenter!!) with little candies to all the kids, which was cute. They were all shrieking “CAN I PUT THIS ON MY FACE?!” and I’d be like, “SURE MAN PUT THAT DANG THING ANYWHERE YOU WANT” and the kids would be all “HOOORRAAAAY!!! ANYWHERE!!!” and proceed to stick them all over themselves and then shriek some more. Ah, the Day of Love and Friendship. I sent and received many text messages, so I’m pretty sure I did a good job. Then my friend David, the volunteer who lives in Reitoca, came over so we could eat baleadas and drink cokes and speak English in my little house while I locked the gate to keep the babies out. Of course, the fact he came over on Valentine’s Day didn’t do a thing to help quell the rumor that we’re actually secret novios…he was gonna crash for the night on my spare mattress, so he wouldn’t have to leave at like 4:00pm to walk home, but I think—no, I know—that would have just been too much for my gossipy townsfolk. They don’t know what a blog is, but I bet they would have created some kind of campo version just to spread the word that the gringa and her secret boyfriend are sharing a secret overnight Valentine’s Day situation. It’s actually really annoying, that this culture is so unwilling to accept platonic man-lady friendship…in the states, havin’ a guy friend spend the night wouldn’t be weird or eyebrow-raising. And the neighbors probably wouldn’t even know/care. But here, you can’t even walk around next to the dude without people elbowing each other and whispering about it as you walk by. Part of me just wants to say screw it, it won’t kill me if they gossip about me, but the other part actually lets the culture here get to me enough where I would feel really embarrassed knowing they were talking about me and David (or whomever) like that. Dang man.
The next day, Sunday, was equally delightful…I went hiking with a million babies and my neighbors through a dry creek bed, under a grove of mangos, until we got to a less-dry creek bed, which housed a very tiny and rather dirty swimming hole. I was hot and sweaty, though, and the water didn’t have green scrum floating on it yet, so I thrashed in fully-clothed and basked in the delightful sensation of goose bumps in the south of Honduras. After a bit I got out and sat on the mossy rocks with the moms and a random hella-old farmer lady who stopped by, chewing on green mangos and watching the kids shriek and splash around. (One kid even filled a plastic bag with water and dropped it from a little cliff into the rocks below, which filled my soul with intense pride. God I love throwin’ bags of water off of stuff…) At one point I noticed one of the ladies staring rather blatantly at the chest-region of my tank-top, which was plastered to my torso with river water. “Oh,” she sighed, “I bet Hayley’s nipples are just so white and pretty.” I didn’t really know how to respond to that, so I just said “Yes.” and hoped she would not press further, which, being the shameless Honduran campo woman that she was, she certainly did. “Show us them!” “Yeah, show us!” “We wanna see gringa nipples!” I was trapped. So I whipped ‘em out…I even had to turn around so that the third and final lady would not be left out of the once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity of gringa-nipple viewing. Actually, it wasn’t embarrassing…I totally understood where they were coming from. After all, haven’t we all wondered what the nipples of someone of a different color look like? (No? Stop lying to yourself.) A perfect example of a) how Honduran campo folks have no shame, about anything, but especially regarding the body; and b) how long I’ve been here, that whipping out the nips didn’t even make me blush. Fortunately, though, none of the kids saw…wouldn’t want that getting back to my baseball team.
I can’t wait for the rain to start up again, in April or May or whenever…it’s getting so dry, I barely have water. My pila hasn’t been full in a week, and the barrel I keep my bathing water in in getting dangerously low, too. I’ve even had to wash my dishes at the neighbors a couple of times, who had water when I didn’t….it’s ANNOYING as HELL, dang it. I have so many sweaty shirts to cleanse! And my compost heap is getting cracky! And my plants are wilty! And I’m SMELLY! I talked to the dude in charge of the water, but he told me that’s just how it is this time of year. So I guess I’ll just drink pond water and DIE (which is what I wanted to shout at him, but didn’t).
Unrelated, I also found a dead baby chicken in the pila the other day, which was gross and sad. How did it get in there? Part of me is worried some punk kid threw it in there, as a practical joke….because chickens can’t really get into my yard due to the chain link fence. And chicks can’t fly…I think it was a terrorist attack. Maybe the same terrorist that ripped down my “VIVA OBAMA” sign, back at the my old host family’s house…I’m considering getting a rifle and taping it to a machete AKA bayonet, campo style. Watch the heck out, terrorists. Im’a shank you.
Love,
Hayley
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
OODLES OF PICTURES.
Neighborhood boys getting insane on my floor.
My tiny baby compost heap! That's right, avocado skins. Bake in the sun and become dirt.
Three of my neighbors, Noel, Neil, and Enner, solemnly displaying in my backyard the new hit of the neighborhood, a giant plastic rainbow slinky that Whitney sent me.
One of my favorite little babies, Douglas, sitting atop a random barrel I have in my front yard for no real good reason.
Here he is again...you can't really see it, but he's holding onto aforementioned slinky.
My bathing quarters.
A view of my house AKA Tarantula Oven, from the road.
Alison and Noel playing in my yard, stretching the slinky to their hearts delight.
Tina and me!
My baby, gazing at my face with adoring eyes.
Igor leads a very indulgent life.
Igor contemplating the gravel in my yard.
Alison, getting her slink on in my backyard.
A CAVE! In La Tigra. I saw giant crickets inside.
An old mining shaft (also in La Tigra) that is now used as a water souce for the local community at the base of the mountain...I think.
Words do not describe my contentment.
Quite possibly the coolest picture anyone has ever taken of Justin, ever.
Same for Dora.
CHRISTMAS CARD.
Waterfall, duh.4 February 2009
Hey, chochachos! It’s an extremely, extremely blustery night here in Alubarén…I feel as though if I were to go outside with the right duct-tape-to-cotton-sheet ratio, I could totally fly. However, it’s too windy to go outside, so here I sit with my computer-machine and a cup of tea (yes, it’s going to be a pee-in-the-bucket sort of night…which is essentially synonymous with “havin’ a real good time”). Igor is lying at my feet, breathing moist-ily onto the top of my foot and being adorable without exerting much effort. I recently purchased him a little green nylon collar, so he has dropped the formalities with his rag bow-tie and is now strutting about like the stud he is (literally...though not forever. Little does he know, he’s about to become the very first dog to ever be neutered in Alubarén. Possibly via machete). I am still falling in love with my puppy…he now follows me so well he doesn’t need a leash, so we parade about the pueblo together, which usually results in old ladies stopping and commenting, “Oh, how nice, you’re with your little pet…and he’s such a fatty!” (It’s true. He’s a total pig.) He’s also very “bien educado,” and draws gasps of admiration whenever he performs the only trick he’s mastered at the tender age of three months, which is to sit on command (in Spanish, obviously…he’s a bilingual pup but I think he’s more comfortable with his native tongue). Of course, he has his annoying habits…he plays this game he calls “haul all of Hayley’s shoes and flip-flops outside and hide them in the dirt,” and has also been known to tear holes in certain people’s mosquito netting, thus rendering it “pigeon netting”…but when he pops his little head and paws onto the side of my hammock and snuggles into my belly for a nap while I read, all I feel is love. SIGH. (In that sense, he’s come in quite handy when the annoying men around town ask me if I’m looking for a Honduran boyfriend…I just point to Igor and inform them that yes, thank you, I’ve found one.) (Yes, I’m aware that’s creepy and kind of gross. I just play the weird-gringa card and run away.)
Enough about Igor…so, the other day, I totally celebrated Christmas AMERICAN STYLE, WITH PRESENTS….even though it was February. Apparently, the mail system here (dude with a backpack) had a bit of kink, and let all the materialized love from the states build up, only to shoot it all to me in a torrent of goodies. The mail-lady called me and was like “Uhh dude come to the post office, and being a kid with you to carry your shit.” I RAN there, and joyfully carried home not one but MANY boxes, filled with awesome Christmas goodies, as well as like 10 letters. Humming Jingle Bells Batman Smells, I leapt into my hammock and, trying to savor every moment, carefully sliced open the cardboard boxes. It was awesome. I cried. Thanks, dudes.
When I left for Honduras, I lashed to my backpack several large and cumbersome camping things, including but not limited to my tent, hiking boots, my sleeping bag, camping pad, camp stove, mess kit, and way too many knives. “Hayley, you’re a durn fool,” said my mom. “That is some heavy-ass stuff. Also you will not use it.” To that I replied, “The HELL I won’t use it; Honduras is all jungle and I totally wanna go camping around in the jungle.” As it turns out, only part of Honduras is jungle, and for the first 7 months I had little time nor opportunity to embark on any nature adventures requiring over-night lodging. However, I recently decided the non-sweltering forests of Honduras had eluded me and my “Best Friends Clubhouse” (aka little two-person tent) long enough, and so me and some buddies finally loaded up the packs and tramped out into the woods. Specifically, I met up in Tegucigalpa with some Peace Corps friends, and we left early Saturday morning for La Tigra, Honduras’ oldest national park, which is surprisingly close and easy to get to. We loaded onto a city bus, and road it as far as Jutiapa, a community at the border of the protected area—it took about 45 minutes, I think. They unloaded us at the bottom of the mountain, and we stood there, trying to psych ourselves up for the incredibly steep multiple-hour-long hike up the paved road to the park entrance. However, the psyching was unnecessary because the ride-gods were good to us and a nice fellow with a pick-up truck pulled up before we had even shouldered our backpacks. We leapt in and enjoyed a beautiful 20 minute ride up the mountain, waving joyfully to the locals on the way and occasionally yelping with spontaneous happiness to not have had to waste half the day hauling our crap up the freeway. Once we unloaded and thanked our jalon, we took our stuff into the visitor’s center, where two cute kids immediately sold us delicious banana pancake things. We left our stuff there, and departed for what ended up being one of my favorite hikes, the cloud forest trail. It’s INCREDIBLE this place is to close to the city...you step in and you feel like you’re in Ferngully, minus Batty. The vegetation was nothing like crusty old Alubarén, where it hasn’t seen a drop of moisture since October….I’m talking hella-rainforest style. (Well, cloud forest…but since I’ve yet to see a real rain forest, this was close enough.) Huge gnarled trees, fluffy with thick mats of moss, awesome fern-trees, which previously I’d only read about, strange plants with leaves big enough to swaddle a manatee, drooping vines, all dripping with water…we saw waterfalls, and heard what I’m sure were the most exotic birds in the whole wide world (except for one particularly elusive species, which upon closer examination turned out not to be a bizarre mating call but actually a shoddy drainage pipe). Later that day, we returned to the visitor’s center and hauled our stuff about 40 minutes into the forest to the only campground in the whole park, which was rather disappointing in many respects (housed what must have been a Large Spider Family Reunion, contained only small, wet sticks for firewood, and was perhaps the only campground in the world that is, paradoxically, never flat). Despite its inconveniences, however, we pitched our two tents, had a fire both nights, and stoically avoided any spider bites, so I suppose I can’t complain. The next day we pretty much hiked the rest of the park (it’s not very large, in comparison to some you might find in the states), and my mind was totally blown. We alternated between lush, jungle-y cloud forest with towering waterfalls, cool pine groves, and stretches of golden broad-leaf deciduous woods with a thick carpeting of crunchy fall leaves on the forest floor that seemed like something out of a Midwestern calendar. We saw many caves (and spelunked most of them, thanks to my trusty headlamp) and several abandoned mines (relics from La Tigra’s relatively recent history as a mining site). The whole adventure was delightfully disorientating, and I can’t think of anything more excellent then lounging in the leaves around a little fire with several buddies, eating candy and burning stuff. The next camping outing is scheduled for April…hells of hooray, yo.
You’d think from the focus of my blogs, all I do as a Peace Corps volunteer is play with puppies and pointedly spend time in the woods that are not in my site, but that’s not the case. I totally do stuff. Summer break is finally ending here in Honduras, and the kids are grudgingly (though not nearly as grudgingly as the teachers) gearing up to get back into the scholastic groove. They start Monday, allegedly (I’ll believe it when I see it…). That’s good news for me, as the summer break season is always a bit slow for the youth-oriented volunteer. I’m going to be starting an oral-hygiene project, sponsored by Colgate, in the surrounding villages, and that should be fun…they donated a bunch of little toothbrushes and toothpastes and I’m going to train the school teachers to do little health classes on a weekly basis, while the kids practice brushing their teeth after the school snack. Should be cool…I’m also going to be teaching the teachers in my town how to teach English to their kids, using American methodology, which is nice and imperialistic but admittedly a huge improvement to the rote-memorization tactics used here. So, no one can say I don’t do stuff. That’s some stuff I’m gonna do!
As for stuff I’m currently doing, that is basically summed up in one word: BEISBOL! Las Panteras continues to be a lovable pain for me, which I’m sure any youth coach can attest to…it’s fun, and the kids are great, but good GOD they are little monsters at the same time. However, it’s a great exercise in patience for me, since half the things I want to scream at them I can’t, because I can’t do it in Spanish (I definitely yelled, “COME ON, GUYS!” today. In English). Seriously, though, they are great kids despite their constant desire to fight and shout cusses. I usually have about 20 kids at practice, which is perfect. The dynamics are very interesting…I have the older boys who played last year with John, who are great because they help the younger, newer kids, but terrible because they are constantly trying to exert their emerging manhood by seeing if they can break the rules (they can’t). The younger kids are much better behaved, but also much worse at the sport of baseball, which frustrates the older kids to no end. One of the rules of a PC baseball team is you must have as least two girls…I began the season with like seven, but now I’m down to the required two. One is little Nuria, a 10-year-old who can actually throw and catch pretty well and has a very plucky spirit. The other is Lisbeth, a nine-year-old kid with a heart of gold but who is admittedly still too immature to be trolling around with 20 older boys under the hot sun every day…a rare day indeed when she doesn’t come running, sniffling because someone hurt her feelings (the kid can’t throw or catch to save her life, which sometimes results in criticism from her more coordinated teammates). However, I’ve got to hand it to her, because she comes to every single practice with a smile on her face and always offers to help out. The kids are all bursting with enthusiasm these days, because the Peace Corps recently announced that no other than ALUBARÉN would be hosting the regional tournament this year, on the 28th of March. That is big news for us, and the kids feel very proud that the other teams are going to have to truck up our steamy mountain to play in the tournament. We will play against two other teams, Pespire and Reitoca, and the team that wins will go to the National Championship in Tegucigalpa. I really hope we make it…the kids want it so bad, and since they went last year, if we don’t make it this year I will feel like I’ve failed as a skilled baseball coach (which I admittedly am not).
Other than that, I spent a lot of time doing what I’ve been doing since the day I arrived, which is socializing with the townfolk. My new neighbors, especially…Tina and Rubuen, their two children Alex (19) and Nely (26), and Nely’s three adorable children, Alison (4), Noel (6), and Douglas (about 17 months). When I’m not over there, sitting in hammocks in the shade and sipping on sweet coffee, everyone’s over here, sitting in hammocks in the shade, sipping sweet coffee and watching the kids search for “cherries” in the dirt. I truly love them. And I know they love me…the other day, when I was randomly barfing up my guts without avail for 24 hours, Tina brought me several cups of cinnamon tea and was so concerned she almost carried me to the health clinic (I recovered, however). The first thing I do in the morning when I let the dog out is shout GOOD MORNING! to them, to which the kids always bellow back GOOD MORNING! before racing over to harvest any cherries the wind knocked down during the night. They bring me tortillas, I bring them beans. They bring me bananas, I bring them melons. I share my Christmas goodies, and Tina presents me with an embroidered tortilla-cloth she made just for me. It’s like having real family, right across the street…I wish I could help them more. They’re so poor. Ruben, the father/grandfather, has a bad case of Parkinson’s and shakes so bad he can’t even dress himself, but they can’t afford medicine. Tonight, while Tina and I were sitting outside watching the day turn to dusk and the kids charge up and down the road engaged in Coke-bottle-cap warfare, she broke down into tears and asked me if there was any cure for Parkinson’s. I had to tell her no…she told me some man on the bus told her he had the cure and sold her some little bottles of liquid. I held her hand and she cried for the husband she used to have, who is slowly turning in another child for her to care for…every night, she told me, she prays that they will discover the cure for Parkinson’s for her husband will go back to normal. And yet despite the intense emotional and physical challenges this family faces, I’ve never met a happier, more loving and joyful group of people. They appreciate everything. That’s what I love about them…they’re so genuine.
Bedtime…I love you guys.
Love and paz,
Hayley
Hey, chochachos! It’s an extremely, extremely blustery night here in Alubarén…I feel as though if I were to go outside with the right duct-tape-to-cotton-sheet ratio, I could totally fly. However, it’s too windy to go outside, so here I sit with my computer-machine and a cup of tea (yes, it’s going to be a pee-in-the-bucket sort of night…which is essentially synonymous with “havin’ a real good time”). Igor is lying at my feet, breathing moist-ily onto the top of my foot and being adorable without exerting much effort. I recently purchased him a little green nylon collar, so he has dropped the formalities with his rag bow-tie and is now strutting about like the stud he is (literally...though not forever. Little does he know, he’s about to become the very first dog to ever be neutered in Alubarén. Possibly via machete). I am still falling in love with my puppy…he now follows me so well he doesn’t need a leash, so we parade about the pueblo together, which usually results in old ladies stopping and commenting, “Oh, how nice, you’re with your little pet…and he’s such a fatty!” (It’s true. He’s a total pig.) He’s also very “bien educado,” and draws gasps of admiration whenever he performs the only trick he’s mastered at the tender age of three months, which is to sit on command (in Spanish, obviously…he’s a bilingual pup but I think he’s more comfortable with his native tongue). Of course, he has his annoying habits…he plays this game he calls “haul all of Hayley’s shoes and flip-flops outside and hide them in the dirt,” and has also been known to tear holes in certain people’s mosquito netting, thus rendering it “pigeon netting”…but when he pops his little head and paws onto the side of my hammock and snuggles into my belly for a nap while I read, all I feel is love. SIGH. (In that sense, he’s come in quite handy when the annoying men around town ask me if I’m looking for a Honduran boyfriend…I just point to Igor and inform them that yes, thank you, I’ve found one.) (Yes, I’m aware that’s creepy and kind of gross. I just play the weird-gringa card and run away.)
Enough about Igor…so, the other day, I totally celebrated Christmas AMERICAN STYLE, WITH PRESENTS….even though it was February. Apparently, the mail system here (dude with a backpack) had a bit of kink, and let all the materialized love from the states build up, only to shoot it all to me in a torrent of goodies. The mail-lady called me and was like “Uhh dude come to the post office, and being a kid with you to carry your shit.” I RAN there, and joyfully carried home not one but MANY boxes, filled with awesome Christmas goodies, as well as like 10 letters. Humming Jingle Bells Batman Smells, I leapt into my hammock and, trying to savor every moment, carefully sliced open the cardboard boxes. It was awesome. I cried. Thanks, dudes.
When I left for Honduras, I lashed to my backpack several large and cumbersome camping things, including but not limited to my tent, hiking boots, my sleeping bag, camping pad, camp stove, mess kit, and way too many knives. “Hayley, you’re a durn fool,” said my mom. “That is some heavy-ass stuff. Also you will not use it.” To that I replied, “The HELL I won’t use it; Honduras is all jungle and I totally wanna go camping around in the jungle.” As it turns out, only part of Honduras is jungle, and for the first 7 months I had little time nor opportunity to embark on any nature adventures requiring over-night lodging. However, I recently decided the non-sweltering forests of Honduras had eluded me and my “Best Friends Clubhouse” (aka little two-person tent) long enough, and so me and some buddies finally loaded up the packs and tramped out into the woods. Specifically, I met up in Tegucigalpa with some Peace Corps friends, and we left early Saturday morning for La Tigra, Honduras’ oldest national park, which is surprisingly close and easy to get to. We loaded onto a city bus, and road it as far as Jutiapa, a community at the border of the protected area—it took about 45 minutes, I think. They unloaded us at the bottom of the mountain, and we stood there, trying to psych ourselves up for the incredibly steep multiple-hour-long hike up the paved road to the park entrance. However, the psyching was unnecessary because the ride-gods were good to us and a nice fellow with a pick-up truck pulled up before we had even shouldered our backpacks. We leapt in and enjoyed a beautiful 20 minute ride up the mountain, waving joyfully to the locals on the way and occasionally yelping with spontaneous happiness to not have had to waste half the day hauling our crap up the freeway. Once we unloaded and thanked our jalon, we took our stuff into the visitor’s center, where two cute kids immediately sold us delicious banana pancake things. We left our stuff there, and departed for what ended up being one of my favorite hikes, the cloud forest trail. It’s INCREDIBLE this place is to close to the city...you step in and you feel like you’re in Ferngully, minus Batty. The vegetation was nothing like crusty old Alubarén, where it hasn’t seen a drop of moisture since October….I’m talking hella-rainforest style. (Well, cloud forest…but since I’ve yet to see a real rain forest, this was close enough.) Huge gnarled trees, fluffy with thick mats of moss, awesome fern-trees, which previously I’d only read about, strange plants with leaves big enough to swaddle a manatee, drooping vines, all dripping with water…we saw waterfalls, and heard what I’m sure were the most exotic birds in the whole wide world (except for one particularly elusive species, which upon closer examination turned out not to be a bizarre mating call but actually a shoddy drainage pipe). Later that day, we returned to the visitor’s center and hauled our stuff about 40 minutes into the forest to the only campground in the whole park, which was rather disappointing in many respects (housed what must have been a Large Spider Family Reunion, contained only small, wet sticks for firewood, and was perhaps the only campground in the world that is, paradoxically, never flat). Despite its inconveniences, however, we pitched our two tents, had a fire both nights, and stoically avoided any spider bites, so I suppose I can’t complain. The next day we pretty much hiked the rest of the park (it’s not very large, in comparison to some you might find in the states), and my mind was totally blown. We alternated between lush, jungle-y cloud forest with towering waterfalls, cool pine groves, and stretches of golden broad-leaf deciduous woods with a thick carpeting of crunchy fall leaves on the forest floor that seemed like something out of a Midwestern calendar. We saw many caves (and spelunked most of them, thanks to my trusty headlamp) and several abandoned mines (relics from La Tigra’s relatively recent history as a mining site). The whole adventure was delightfully disorientating, and I can’t think of anything more excellent then lounging in the leaves around a little fire with several buddies, eating candy and burning stuff. The next camping outing is scheduled for April…hells of hooray, yo.
You’d think from the focus of my blogs, all I do as a Peace Corps volunteer is play with puppies and pointedly spend time in the woods that are not in my site, but that’s not the case. I totally do stuff. Summer break is finally ending here in Honduras, and the kids are grudgingly (though not nearly as grudgingly as the teachers) gearing up to get back into the scholastic groove. They start Monday, allegedly (I’ll believe it when I see it…). That’s good news for me, as the summer break season is always a bit slow for the youth-oriented volunteer. I’m going to be starting an oral-hygiene project, sponsored by Colgate, in the surrounding villages, and that should be fun…they donated a bunch of little toothbrushes and toothpastes and I’m going to train the school teachers to do little health classes on a weekly basis, while the kids practice brushing their teeth after the school snack. Should be cool…I’m also going to be teaching the teachers in my town how to teach English to their kids, using American methodology, which is nice and imperialistic but admittedly a huge improvement to the rote-memorization tactics used here. So, no one can say I don’t do stuff. That’s some stuff I’m gonna do!
As for stuff I’m currently doing, that is basically summed up in one word: BEISBOL! Las Panteras continues to be a lovable pain for me, which I’m sure any youth coach can attest to…it’s fun, and the kids are great, but good GOD they are little monsters at the same time. However, it’s a great exercise in patience for me, since half the things I want to scream at them I can’t, because I can’t do it in Spanish (I definitely yelled, “COME ON, GUYS!” today. In English). Seriously, though, they are great kids despite their constant desire to fight and shout cusses. I usually have about 20 kids at practice, which is perfect. The dynamics are very interesting…I have the older boys who played last year with John, who are great because they help the younger, newer kids, but terrible because they are constantly trying to exert their emerging manhood by seeing if they can break the rules (they can’t). The younger kids are much better behaved, but also much worse at the sport of baseball, which frustrates the older kids to no end. One of the rules of a PC baseball team is you must have as least two girls…I began the season with like seven, but now I’m down to the required two. One is little Nuria, a 10-year-old who can actually throw and catch pretty well and has a very plucky spirit. The other is Lisbeth, a nine-year-old kid with a heart of gold but who is admittedly still too immature to be trolling around with 20 older boys under the hot sun every day…a rare day indeed when she doesn’t come running, sniffling because someone hurt her feelings (the kid can’t throw or catch to save her life, which sometimes results in criticism from her more coordinated teammates). However, I’ve got to hand it to her, because she comes to every single practice with a smile on her face and always offers to help out. The kids are all bursting with enthusiasm these days, because the Peace Corps recently announced that no other than ALUBARÉN would be hosting the regional tournament this year, on the 28th of March. That is big news for us, and the kids feel very proud that the other teams are going to have to truck up our steamy mountain to play in the tournament. We will play against two other teams, Pespire and Reitoca, and the team that wins will go to the National Championship in Tegucigalpa. I really hope we make it…the kids want it so bad, and since they went last year, if we don’t make it this year I will feel like I’ve failed as a skilled baseball coach (which I admittedly am not).
Other than that, I spent a lot of time doing what I’ve been doing since the day I arrived, which is socializing with the townfolk. My new neighbors, especially…Tina and Rubuen, their two children Alex (19) and Nely (26), and Nely’s three adorable children, Alison (4), Noel (6), and Douglas (about 17 months). When I’m not over there, sitting in hammocks in the shade and sipping on sweet coffee, everyone’s over here, sitting in hammocks in the shade, sipping sweet coffee and watching the kids search for “cherries” in the dirt. I truly love them. And I know they love me…the other day, when I was randomly barfing up my guts without avail for 24 hours, Tina brought me several cups of cinnamon tea and was so concerned she almost carried me to the health clinic (I recovered, however). The first thing I do in the morning when I let the dog out is shout GOOD MORNING! to them, to which the kids always bellow back GOOD MORNING! before racing over to harvest any cherries the wind knocked down during the night. They bring me tortillas, I bring them beans. They bring me bananas, I bring them melons. I share my Christmas goodies, and Tina presents me with an embroidered tortilla-cloth she made just for me. It’s like having real family, right across the street…I wish I could help them more. They’re so poor. Ruben, the father/grandfather, has a bad case of Parkinson’s and shakes so bad he can’t even dress himself, but they can’t afford medicine. Tonight, while Tina and I were sitting outside watching the day turn to dusk and the kids charge up and down the road engaged in Coke-bottle-cap warfare, she broke down into tears and asked me if there was any cure for Parkinson’s. I had to tell her no…she told me some man on the bus told her he had the cure and sold her some little bottles of liquid. I held her hand and she cried for the husband she used to have, who is slowly turning in another child for her to care for…every night, she told me, she prays that they will discover the cure for Parkinson’s for her husband will go back to normal. And yet despite the intense emotional and physical challenges this family faces, I’ve never met a happier, more loving and joyful group of people. They appreciate everything. That’s what I love about them…they’re so genuine.
Bedtime…I love you guys.
Love and paz,
Hayley
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