today i saw a dead armadillo on the road!

Two sixth grade girls in my "I Derseerve" abstinence workshop, making the "Chain of Abstinence"....very inspiring.
My neighbor Rubio, with his banjo (this one goes out to you, dad!)

18 July 2009
Hey, chochachos!

Sorry, I can’t hack ‘howdy dudes’ anymore. It just makes me think of “Hey, dude!”, which those of you fortunate enough to have had Nickelodeon as a child (and, obviously, fortunate enough to have been a child in the nineties) will recall as the teenagers-on-a-dude-ranch sitcom. All ladies wearin’ sleeveless denim tops, knotted in that sassy limbo that is the below-the-navel-above-the-jeans region…all guys with floppy man-bangs…everybody eatin’ outside, on picnic tables…hilarity all ensuing when the experienced ranch-hands let the excessively-fringed greenhorns take the toughest stallions EVER on a trail ride…man. I hope that show was as awesome as I remember it. Next time I am on a non-dial-up computer I am totally going to YouTube the DICKENS out of “Hey, Dude!” and see what’s up with the old gang.

Meanwhile, back at the non-1990s/non-horse ranch ranch, things are...semi-crisis like. Think of your typical political crisis as a delicious sirloin hamburger. Then replace that delicious sirloin with crappy pre-formed hamburger patties, and cook them (aka throw the still-frozen meat-disc into the frying pan) medium rare. This non-deadly, but certainly non-tasty burger, is essentially the state of the union down here in H-Town (if I may). The past couple weeks have been a delightful exercise in what happens when a country decides to oust its own leader. Following the coup, Honduras was surprised to discover that no one outside of Honduras (except Thailand, I think…random) supported their decision to get rid of Zelaya. Nearly every Honduran I spoke to (aka all my neighbors and such, all poor campesinos) echoed similar sentiments—“we HAD to get rid of Zelaya like that, there was no more time and he was about to do a big sassy power-grab and ruin our democracy.” Most people are indignant that any other country (especially Venezuela) should stick its nose in their business regarding their political issues, and continue to organize politically in a way I’d never have expected. The news here showed massive demonstrations for Peace and Democracy marching around in all the major cities, with children, youth, old folks and everyone in between chanting “STAY OUT, ZELAYA!” and “IT WASN’T A COUP!” (Since the military is not in power, and they all acted together, they’re trying to argue it wasn’t a coup and was a legal maneuver.) The government issued a country-wide curfew and was constantly interrupting the normal television programs to update the public on what was going on. Fortunately, though, because the vast majority of Hondurans seem to be against Zelaya, there has been little conflict or blood-shed at any of the demonstrations. The Peace Corps has restricted our movement around—some days we were instructed not to leave even our homes, and other days we were allowed to leave our sites to go to nearby towns. Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, however, continue to remain off-limits. The boiling point was reached last week, when they closed the airport on Tuesday, July 7—Zelaya attempted to re-enter the country and people stormed the runway and blocked his plane. One person was killed in the struggle. Zelaya has yet to enter the country, and recently had the first face-to-face meeting with Micheletti (the president of Congress, who was placed as the new president of the country after they kicked Zelaya out), mediated by Costa Rica’s president. Nothing has been resolved yet, but things seem to be calmer and I expect life will return to normal relatively soon. The vibe I get from the folks I talk to is that they want Micheletti to stay until November, when we have the general elections to choose a new president. However, that’s flexible—even Micheletti said he will step down if people want him too—people seem to be saying “ANYONE but Zelaya!” At first, everyone I spoke to was very vehement that Zelaya not even be allowed to return to Honduras, because “he’s a corrupt thief” and it will just bring more disruption. Now, however, people seem willing to allow him to return to Honduras—just not as President. I expect a conclusion will be reached in the next couple of weeks. Being in a country involved in such a political crisis has been kinda exciting, I’ll be honest—mainly because this type of thing could never happen in the states (can you imagine if the military, congress, and supreme court had kidnapped Bush on the eve of some huge decision he was about to make and sent him to Canada, then, with massive citizen support, managed to argue it was a legit move?). I’m also lucky because the “coup” hasn’t really affected me in any important way...my little dusty pueblo in the middle of nowhere goes about its sleepy, sweaty business no matter what happens in the big cities, and the only danger I face here has either 0 or 8 feet, and are not known to participate in mass demonstrations (though if I ever catch wind of a tarantula or snake peace march I will become a Peace Corps deserted and go straight to the beaches of El Salvador). However, Zelaya DID ruin my Guatemalan adventures with my excellent college buddy Chops…the day Chops’ plane was supposed to land, Honduras closed its airports and American Airlines cancelled all flights, due to the riots at the airport. But it was for the best, because I was totally POMB (Peein’ Out My Butt) anyway and traveling would have been extremely gross. So Chops is gonna come in August and I ain’t gonna have any diarrhea and we’re gonna have a great ol time. Hells of hooray!

Because the government shut down the schools for a couple weeks during all this government hoo-hah, I haven’t had as much to do—just my English and methodology classes for teachers, pregnant women’s club, hypertension classes, and abstinence workshop. But one exciting development is that I finally wrangled together the folks who used to be involved with our little library (which was founded 10 years ago by a Peace Corps volunteer named Johana and has been bolted shut for like two or three years) and meet with the mayor. The mayor agreed to pay a small stipend to our librarian (1,000 lempiras a month, about $50) to open the library four hours a day. SUCCESS!! It’s just a tiny room attached to the school, with four huge shelves stuffed with incredibly dusty books. Most of the books are useless crap—seriously—but there is a nice selection of children’s story books as well as some chapter books and novels for adolescents and adults. Pleasure reading is not an activity pursued by any Honduran that I know, but I’m working with the preschool and elementary school teachers to form reading clubs, so hopefully we can change that, at least a little bit. The kids here love to be read to, so my plan is that if we can get the teachers to use the library and read to their kids a couple times a week, maybe the kids will start coming on their own. Once school lets out in November I’m going to start a “summer vacation literacy project,” but that’s a ways off. The library still needs a lot of work and supplies. The librarian we have at the moment is horribly incompetent—I had to explain to her the concept of alphabetical order—and the whole idea of organizing the books into sections based on topic (non-fiction, fiction, science, history, etc.) is very challenging for her, too. Her attitude is seven kinds of awful, too—she’s very childish and gossipy and makes no effort to hide the fact she’s in this for the money and not much else. However, she was the only one we could find who was interested and had the time and “experience,” so for the time being, she’s the boss. I want to fix up the library a little, maybe buy a rug and some pillows or squishy chairs for the kid’s reading corner, and buy some posters or decorations to liven the place up. We can also use more Spanish books, so if anyone has any (especially children’s books), send ‘em my way. I just received a shipment of 30 pounds of books from the Darien Book Aid organization, which is located in Darien, Connecticut (what up, Brickmans!). They were amazing and sent me the box free of charge. Unfortunately, their Spanish section is limited, so the majority of what I received was in English. But beggars can’t be choosers, so I am very thankful for their support and generosity. Yay for NGOs!

Man, I can’t believe it’s July…I celebrated the fourth last weekend with my neighbors in the most American way possible—slightly burned hotdogs. I bought like 20 of them (20 for a dollar, can’t beat that price) and fashioned a grill over Nely’s woodstove. We diced up lettuce and tomatoes and served the dogs on toasted buns with ketchup. Everyone drank a butt-load of soda and had at least two hotdogs, so it was excellent. Then I handed out firecrackers to the kids (good influence, I know) and we had a great ol time. They asked me to sing the national anthem, which was brutal. No effort was made to hide their collective look of horror as I screeched my way through it…couldn’t we have written an anthem that is a little easier, tone-wise? Like Old McDonald? Then David came over, and we ate a ton of chips and drank more soda. On July 9^th, I hit my one-year mark of being in-country, and will celebrate my halfway-through-service mark in September. It feels like I’ve been living in Alubarén forever.

I’m sweating. Time to go.

Love,
Haylz