indecent exposure

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