the gang. alison is pissed because the angry ants bit her feet.
Igor practicing for his career as a Pedigree dog food model.
my best bud nely, in her garden.
my other best bud.
noel frolicking in the fields behind our houses.
noel, alison and cristina surprised me with this bottle-cap flower arrangement at my pila.
and cristina planted me this coluis. alison refused to change out of her pajamas all day.
igor in the yard, post machete work.
alison with the turtle we found in my yard.
this caterpillar enjoys my shoe. also, good god, my ankle sure looks ugly up close.
overcoming her fright.
such a beautiful little dude. or lady. who knows.
tarantulaaaaaaa!!!!!
just strolling about my yard.
this used to be a small mountain of sand...igor flattened it. fatty.
my melon patch, completely overgrown. plus papaya trees!
my secret sittin´area, before we took a machete to it.
obed hard at work.
my baseball team with US baseball player and scout Raphael Avila, who came to do a workshop. He was actually from the Dominican Republic, I think. I forget. The kids loved it.
my yard and pila, pre machete attack.
little toad i found in my room.28 June 2009
Howdy dudes,
I can now count two separate times when my jaw has literally fallen open in wonder and disbelief this weekend. The first was yesterday, Saturday, June 27, when my neighbor casually mentioned that she didn’t know that that “dead singer Michael Jackson was black.” I was like hang on, what do you mean, dead singer? And she’s all like “yeah a doctor injected him in the heart and killed him.” Now, this is the same neighbor that sent me into hysterics when she somehow botched the news that the Obamas got a new dog and informed me she saw on the news that “Barack Obama had a new woman,” so I wasn’t sure if I could believe her. Then I remembered I had heard the Ranchera radio station play Thriller three times that morning, and realized she might have her facts straight. I immediately called my buddy who confirmed MJ’s death, though informed me that was “so three days ago.” (To which I reply, shut up, I live in a television-less cave and my only supply of current events comes from my neighbors whose television has never been changed from the telenovela channel.) So all I can say about that is, Michael Jackson, it sucks you’re dead and I hope your babies are okay.
So I awoke this morning, still reeling from the loss of El Rey de Pop, to a text-message from my Peace Corps boss informing me, in the succinct way that only a Spanish text-message can, that there had been a military coup and we no longer had a president. Actually, it said “golpe del estado,” and I struggled through the early-morning boogers my brains coats itself in to remember what the particular phrase meant. Then my four months in Chile paid off and I remember from all those boring lectures that that means the military busts in waving machine guns wildly in each hand, blows up the presidential palace, kills the president, and totally takes over the country, ruling with a bloody fist for like 18 years. “Crap,” I though.
Turns out, Honduras must have read the “Military Coups for Dummies” manual (or at least wikipedia’d that shit) because this thing was classy. I mean, totally seamless. Our now ex-president Mel Zelaya (Liberal party) has been hollering all over the news for the past couple weeks (or maybe more, I only just noticed it myself) that he wants to change Honduras into a “participatory democracy.” At first, no one seemed to know what he was talking about, and people seemed to vaguely agree with him…no one knew exactly what he meant, but he kept saying that with his new plan, the needs of the people who find a voice and the poor would finally get the representation they wanted. Finally, though, it became clear that he actually wanted to do was RE-WRITE THE CONSTITUTION to model that of Venezuela. “Our constitution is too rigid!” he said in a speech last night, the eve of his kidnapping. “C’mon, guys! Let’s change it!” His new “democracy” would involve him having full authority over the Congress and Supreme Court and would allow him to be president FOREVER. Fortunately, even the most humble campesinos recognized this for the Hugo Chavez drivel that is was and I can’t say I spoke to a single Honduran who supported Zelaya’s proposed plan, which he called “La Cuarta Urna” (or something, I’m not even sure). Today, Sunday, June 28, was supposed to be the “voting” day—he’d dispatched people with ballot boxes in all the communities so the people could vote on his plan, offering a hefty “bonus” (bribe) for the folks that voted. He asked the military to force people to participate, and to support him on this, but they admirably refused. The Congress and the Supreme Court also refused, declaring that such a Constitutional re-write and power-grab was against the law. And so, the three entities of law creation, law enforcement, and law trying banded together and kidnapped his blind-to-popular-will-of-the-people butt. This is how I imagine it went down:
SCENE: IN A TOP-SECRET TREE HOUSE SOMEWHERE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF TEGUCIGALPA
MILITARY: Hey, guys.
CONGRESS: Hey man.
SUPREME COURT: ‘Sup.
MILITARY: You both told your moms you were spending the night at each other’s houses, right?
CONGRESS: Yeah dude.
SUPREME COURT: Yeah, AND I stole 100 lempiras from her purse and bought us a bunch of Twizzlers and Mountain Dews.
MILITARY: Aw, sweet! Good move, SC. Anyway, Zelaya is totally being a wiener about his four-years of presidency coming to an end. All like “waaah I don’t wanna leave let’s be communists and I’ll be the dictator FOR EVER.” So I’m thinking, kidnap his ass?
CONGRESS: I’m down. Where will we send him?
SUPREME COURT: I’ve heard Costa Rica is nice for exile.
MILITARY: Word. Meeting adjourned.
NARRORATOR: And so the three boys played Bak-u-gan and gorged themselves on candy and soda until daybreak, at which point, giddy with refined sugar and caffeine, they nabbed the president of Honduras and sent him to Costa Rica.
THE END.
So that’s pretty much what happened. Most of the Honduran people are totally down with it. They’ve installed the current president of the Congress (Micheletti) as the acting President until elections roll around in January. Most people seem to be in support of the coup—no one liked Zelaya’s “Cuarta Urna” plan, and the fact that his schemes were all illegal made him lose any legitimacy in the eyes of the people. However, there are people who, Zelaya supporters or not, don’t agree with the situation because of the way it was carried out. Blah blah “military removal of the President isn’t legal, either” blah blah. I guess coups aren’t very “democratic.” But re-writing the Constitution and assigning yourself never-ending leadership doesn’t exactly fit that title, either. So I guess I’m not really for the coup…but in my opinion, it’s the lesser of two evils in this situation. The only issue is, the international community seems to be rather upset about the whole charade and I’ve heard rumors that Venezuela is prepared to go to war in order to reinstate Zelaya as the proper president. So basically, I have no idea what is going to happen. But I feel frustrated because we’re not allowed to leave our communities at the moment (due to potentially violent protests), and in one week, my college buddy Chops is supposed to arrive so we can go have crazy-go-nuts Jungle Adventures in Guatemala. Come on Honduras, don’t ruin my Jungle Adventures. Please?
Other than that little thing, not much else is new. My weeds situation got mildly out of control, in the sense that the snakes started to have secret Snake Party meetings there, which eventually spilled into my house (picture, if you will, me lying in my hammock one night, reading Newsweek, listening to Cat Stevens, drinking tea, aka TOTALLY PEACEFUL, and some smart-ass snakey dude just slithers all angrily out from some corner and crosses the room). I said angrily because his head was raised, like a water snake or something….it gave me the creeps. I leapt out of my hammock and sort of death-gripped my magazine, clutching my heart (literally, just like in the movies!) with the other hand and unsure of what to do. The snake continued his angsty migration toward the open door and disappeared into the rainy night. I have no idea if it was poisonous or not. Then, later that night, I carefully tiptoed out to my latrine, and was brushing my teeth when something compelled me to turn around. Slithering toward me was ANOTHER freaking snake! I sort of jerked my foot at it and it flipped over and ran away. HAH. Anyway, I decided that was enough and spent the next three days breaking my back with my neighbors Obed and Elias, wielding machetes and cutting every blade of grass and greenery into complete submission. Nothing quite makes you appreciate lawnmowers like cutting an entire yard of knee-high grass with a machete…it was just like the Olden Tymes. We found a baby turtle, a harmless garden snake, and the biggest, hairiest tarantula I’ve ever seen (of all the critters we found, he didn’t make the cut…my neighbor Tina stabbed him with a stick while giggling madly and crying, “He’s ripe to die!” I did not stop her.) It was hard work, and I miss my jungle, but it’s nice to be able to walk around at night and not worry about having to kung-fu a snake to death with a magazine or anything.
I’ve begun my abstinence group, which is a roaring success so far…none of my sixth or seventh grade girlies have become pregnant this week (to my knowledge) and I KNOW no one has HIV, either. Score one for abstinence! We’ll continue to meet for two hours a week (each group) until October. And, due to the genius of my mom, I’ve decided I want to start an herb-growing club with local women (perhaps the very same pregnant women of my pregnant women’s club, though I’m not sure how much time they’ll have to tend a garden once their bun in the over pops out). We’ll see. If anyone has any insight on such a group, or materials they want to suggest, shoot me an e-mail. Or e-mail me a shoot! (Get it? As in, the first little green guy that pushes out of the ground…) I’ve also begun doing chats at the health center once a month about high blood pressure and how to avoid it (stop eating so much saturated fat dipped in salt, guys!).
My paragraphs seem to be getting shorter. I think that means it’s time for bed.
(Though all the gunshots I’ve been hearing in favorite of Zelaya’s removal are not very sleep-inducing…and this crazy “Mexican chili bean” tea I found abandoned in the Peace Corps lounge is making me sweat.)
Love, all over the dang place,
Hayley
Howdy dudes,
I can now count two separate times when my jaw has literally fallen open in wonder and disbelief this weekend. The first was yesterday, Saturday, June 27, when my neighbor casually mentioned that she didn’t know that that “dead singer Michael Jackson was black.” I was like hang on, what do you mean, dead singer? And she’s all like “yeah a doctor injected him in the heart and killed him.” Now, this is the same neighbor that sent me into hysterics when she somehow botched the news that the Obamas got a new dog and informed me she saw on the news that “Barack Obama had a new woman,” so I wasn’t sure if I could believe her. Then I remembered I had heard the Ranchera radio station play Thriller three times that morning, and realized she might have her facts straight. I immediately called my buddy who confirmed MJ’s death, though informed me that was “so three days ago.” (To which I reply, shut up, I live in a television-less cave and my only supply of current events comes from my neighbors whose television has never been changed from the telenovela channel.) So all I can say about that is, Michael Jackson, it sucks you’re dead and I hope your babies are okay.
So I awoke this morning, still reeling from the loss of El Rey de Pop, to a text-message from my Peace Corps boss informing me, in the succinct way that only a Spanish text-message can, that there had been a military coup and we no longer had a president. Actually, it said “golpe del estado,” and I struggled through the early-morning boogers my brains coats itself in to remember what the particular phrase meant. Then my four months in Chile paid off and I remember from all those boring lectures that that means the military busts in waving machine guns wildly in each hand, blows up the presidential palace, kills the president, and totally takes over the country, ruling with a bloody fist for like 18 years. “Crap,” I though.
Turns out, Honduras must have read the “Military Coups for Dummies” manual (or at least wikipedia’d that shit) because this thing was classy. I mean, totally seamless. Our now ex-president Mel Zelaya (Liberal party) has been hollering all over the news for the past couple weeks (or maybe more, I only just noticed it myself) that he wants to change Honduras into a “participatory democracy.” At first, no one seemed to know what he was talking about, and people seemed to vaguely agree with him…no one knew exactly what he meant, but he kept saying that with his new plan, the needs of the people who find a voice and the poor would finally get the representation they wanted. Finally, though, it became clear that he actually wanted to do was RE-WRITE THE CONSTITUTION to model that of Venezuela. “Our constitution is too rigid!” he said in a speech last night, the eve of his kidnapping. “C’mon, guys! Let’s change it!” His new “democracy” would involve him having full authority over the Congress and Supreme Court and would allow him to be president FOREVER. Fortunately, even the most humble campesinos recognized this for the Hugo Chavez drivel that is was and I can’t say I spoke to a single Honduran who supported Zelaya’s proposed plan, which he called “La Cuarta Urna” (or something, I’m not even sure). Today, Sunday, June 28, was supposed to be the “voting” day—he’d dispatched people with ballot boxes in all the communities so the people could vote on his plan, offering a hefty “bonus” (bribe) for the folks that voted. He asked the military to force people to participate, and to support him on this, but they admirably refused. The Congress and the Supreme Court also refused, declaring that such a Constitutional re-write and power-grab was against the law. And so, the three entities of law creation, law enforcement, and law trying banded together and kidnapped his blind-to-popular-will-of-the-people butt. This is how I imagine it went down:
SCENE: IN A TOP-SECRET TREE HOUSE SOMEWHERE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF TEGUCIGALPA
MILITARY: Hey, guys.
CONGRESS: Hey man.
SUPREME COURT: ‘Sup.
MILITARY: You both told your moms you were spending the night at each other’s houses, right?
CONGRESS: Yeah dude.
SUPREME COURT: Yeah, AND I stole 100 lempiras from her purse and bought us a bunch of Twizzlers and Mountain Dews.
MILITARY: Aw, sweet! Good move, SC. Anyway, Zelaya is totally being a wiener about his four-years of presidency coming to an end. All like “waaah I don’t wanna leave let’s be communists and I’ll be the dictator FOR EVER.” So I’m thinking, kidnap his ass?
CONGRESS: I’m down. Where will we send him?
SUPREME COURT: I’ve heard Costa Rica is nice for exile.
MILITARY: Word. Meeting adjourned.
NARRORATOR: And so the three boys played Bak-u-gan and gorged themselves on candy and soda until daybreak, at which point, giddy with refined sugar and caffeine, they nabbed the president of Honduras and sent him to Costa Rica.
THE END.
So that’s pretty much what happened. Most of the Honduran people are totally down with it. They’ve installed the current president of the Congress (Micheletti) as the acting President until elections roll around in January. Most people seem to be in support of the coup—no one liked Zelaya’s “Cuarta Urna” plan, and the fact that his schemes were all illegal made him lose any legitimacy in the eyes of the people. However, there are people who, Zelaya supporters or not, don’t agree with the situation because of the way it was carried out. Blah blah “military removal of the President isn’t legal, either” blah blah. I guess coups aren’t very “democratic.” But re-writing the Constitution and assigning yourself never-ending leadership doesn’t exactly fit that title, either. So I guess I’m not really for the coup…but in my opinion, it’s the lesser of two evils in this situation. The only issue is, the international community seems to be rather upset about the whole charade and I’ve heard rumors that Venezuela is prepared to go to war in order to reinstate Zelaya as the proper president. So basically, I have no idea what is going to happen. But I feel frustrated because we’re not allowed to leave our communities at the moment (due to potentially violent protests), and in one week, my college buddy Chops is supposed to arrive so we can go have crazy-go-nuts Jungle Adventures in Guatemala. Come on Honduras, don’t ruin my Jungle Adventures. Please?
Other than that little thing, not much else is new. My weeds situation got mildly out of control, in the sense that the snakes started to have secret Snake Party meetings there, which eventually spilled into my house (picture, if you will, me lying in my hammock one night, reading Newsweek, listening to Cat Stevens, drinking tea, aka TOTALLY PEACEFUL, and some smart-ass snakey dude just slithers all angrily out from some corner and crosses the room). I said angrily because his head was raised, like a water snake or something….it gave me the creeps. I leapt out of my hammock and sort of death-gripped my magazine, clutching my heart (literally, just like in the movies!) with the other hand and unsure of what to do. The snake continued his angsty migration toward the open door and disappeared into the rainy night. I have no idea if it was poisonous or not. Then, later that night, I carefully tiptoed out to my latrine, and was brushing my teeth when something compelled me to turn around. Slithering toward me was ANOTHER freaking snake! I sort of jerked my foot at it and it flipped over and ran away. HAH. Anyway, I decided that was enough and spent the next three days breaking my back with my neighbors Obed and Elias, wielding machetes and cutting every blade of grass and greenery into complete submission. Nothing quite makes you appreciate lawnmowers like cutting an entire yard of knee-high grass with a machete…it was just like the Olden Tymes. We found a baby turtle, a harmless garden snake, and the biggest, hairiest tarantula I’ve ever seen (of all the critters we found, he didn’t make the cut…my neighbor Tina stabbed him with a stick while giggling madly and crying, “He’s ripe to die!” I did not stop her.) It was hard work, and I miss my jungle, but it’s nice to be able to walk around at night and not worry about having to kung-fu a snake to death with a magazine or anything.
I’ve begun my abstinence group, which is a roaring success so far…none of my sixth or seventh grade girlies have become pregnant this week (to my knowledge) and I KNOW no one has HIV, either. Score one for abstinence! We’ll continue to meet for two hours a week (each group) until October. And, due to the genius of my mom, I’ve decided I want to start an herb-growing club with local women (perhaps the very same pregnant women of my pregnant women’s club, though I’m not sure how much time they’ll have to tend a garden once their bun in the over pops out). We’ll see. If anyone has any insight on such a group, or materials they want to suggest, shoot me an e-mail. Or e-mail me a shoot! (Get it? As in, the first little green guy that pushes out of the ground…) I’ve also begun doing chats at the health center once a month about high blood pressure and how to avoid it (stop eating so much saturated fat dipped in salt, guys!).
My paragraphs seem to be getting shorter. I think that means it’s time for bed.
(Though all the gunshots I’ve been hearing in favorite of Zelaya’s removal are not very sleep-inducing…and this crazy “Mexican chili bean” tea I found abandoned in the Peace Corps lounge is making me sweat.)
Love, all over the dang place,
Hayley
