oh dang it.

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

i am addicted to rehydration salts

14 June 2009
Howdy, dudes,
Yeah that’s right. Tooootally stickin’ by my guns about that new greeting. You all thought I’d forget. YOU WERE WRONG.

It’s raining like god like the spigot on when he was filling up his pila and then left to go on a bike ride and totally forgot about it…which is something I would never do, by the by. But anyway, it’s raining. Which brings me to a certain interesting Flora and Fauna Fact about Honduras: where’re all them toads at?? ‘kay, that’s a question, not a fact, but still: a week ago, every time it rained, my open doorway turned into a freaking toad Social Mixer…a bunch of toads all standing around awkwardly, girl toads all on one side giggling to each other, boy toads all on the other side, nervously inhaling all the snacks that the Social Committee put out…you know what I mean. Hells of toads, in my house. I would usually lie in my hammock and watch them, because a toad hunting is kind of intense. They focus in on a fallen beetle, left for dead by his comrades (they’re not heartless; they just know how the world works). Then the toad quick-hops over and shlurps him into his mouth. I’ve seen certain toads catch and eat like 7 bugs in 10 minutes. That’s good eatin’, man. But now, it’s raining like the dang dickens and there are NO toads, not even one. What the hell people?

The onset of winter here in the south of Honduras is getting pretty rough…the mountain passes are all snowed in and I heard ‘bout one group of folks tryin’ to make pass…got stranded up near the summit and several of ‘em turned to cannibalism before they could force their way back down the other side. OH WAIT I’M SORRY THAT IS THE DONNOR PARTY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. I always mix that up! Whoopsies. Actually it is just incredibly moist here, with increasing degrees of moist as the days go by. And it’s so damn hot, even my kneecaps sweat. My melon patch continues to explode all the place…I harvesting three cantaloupes today. Melon Day! And my yard just fills up with all kinds of lush, green plants…my landlords came over the other day and set their 12-year-old kid and his machete on ‘em, but I screamed and threw myself on top. NOT MY WEEDS, I screamed. ANYTHING BUT MY WEEDS. They tried to convince me I should machete them all to pieces because snakes will hide in them, but that is ridiculous because we all know where the snakes like to hide (my latrine; see previous blog entry for details). And after six months of living in a damn desert, excuuuuuuse me for delighting in the jungley-goodness that has finally descended upon my abode. The plants are even creeping into my bathroom!! All climbin’ up the walls with their little viney fingers…I’m thrilled. My landlords then decided I should not have to get my feet muddy whilst walking out back to the pila/wash/latrine area, so they paid to a guy to make several shoddy cement walk ways. I liked my yard when it was concrete free, but I guess it ain’t really my house anyways, it doesn’t matter.

Other news…let’s see, Igor is now the laughing stock of all the dogs in Alubarén. Whenever he walks by they all snicker “Jajajaja you weenie, your Owner cut your eggs off!” (The Spanish slang for testicles is eggs, not nuts/balls as we say in English). Then they clutch their own spawn-heavy egg-sacks and make crude gestures at him as he slinks away. Yes, it’s true. I committed the Honduran un-thinkable and had Igor neutered. NO ONE in this country fixes their pets; in fact, I found myself defending my decision about 15 times a day, in the face of great moral dissent. People find it sick and cruel that I am “playing god” by taking away my dog’s manliness—what joy will Igor have in life now that he can’t chase bitches and walk around with a big ‘ol saggy sack? I got really good at my response: “How many strays are there in Alubarén, in Honduras? If we don’t spay and neuter the dogs, they leave all the female dogs pregnant, who have a million baby dogs who are abandoned in the street, and no one loves them, and they are sooo very skinny (at this point I hold up my pinky finger, the Honduran gesture to indicate skinniness), and they have diseases, that they can give to PEOPLE, and then THEY have babies, and it just goes on and on….” Sometimes the person I would be talking to would think about it, and then agree with me. You’re right. We should control the stray dog population that is totally out of control. Sometimes the person would say, Yes, but….poor Igor! (At which point, I am in agreement…poor Igor. I’m sorry I took away your genitals.) And then ONE TIME a dude replied, “Okay, I see your point, but they should just fix the female dogs instead. It’s not fair to take a male’s genitals away!” I was like “dude that is the most sexist thing ever but I gotta bus to catch so see ya later” (it’s true, I did). Anyway, Igor had to spend a terrifying night alone in a crate in the vet’s office, but his stitches are healing up nice and he doesn’t seem to miss a certain familiar weight he used to have dangling between his legs. And now PETA can’t shame us when we come back to the states.

This past week was “Student Week,” a stupid “holiday” in which the kids don’t have to go to school, which is stupid because they barely have school anyway. It should be called “Teacher Week,” because they’re the only ones who want it. Anyway, since all my work is with the kiddies, I also had the week off, which I spent very productively. PSSSYYYCCCHH!! I didn’t really do anything, except hang out with the neighbors and drink lots of coffee. Also, I gave a 30-minute lecture to the folks waiting in the health clinic about the dangers of saturated fats and salt, because everyone and their mom here has high blood pressure. That was Friday morning…around noon, My Pretend-Site-Mate David (the fella who lives about an hour walking-distance from here) came over, and we packed a picnic (aka bought two plates of awful fried chicken and potatoes, plus a two-liter bottle of soda) and headed out to my favorite swimmin’ hole up in the mountains. He stayed the night ‘cause of the big late-afternoon rain storm, so I once again willingly submitted myself to all kinds of neighborhood gossip for the sake of companionship. Unfortunately, I got the ‘ol “2.5 Hour Dysentery,” and totally almost died for the majority of the night. I’d had the sass-gut all week, and it was just as burbly that day as any other, but right about 6:00pm, I basically just started POMB (Peeing Out My Butt, it’s a medical term for when you got craaa-aaazy diarrhea), with just the worst stomach cramps of all time ever. I actually though I was dying. I would come staggering back in and collapse in the hammock, only to spring up three minutes later, sprinting out the door and up the yard as David cries “What, AGAIN?” after me. Finally (after I totally pooped my pants with BLOOD on the way) I just stayed put in there, and sent several instructional text messages about what kind of soup and juice to buy me to David, who was amusing himself in the house by reading some Christopher Moore novel. At about 9:30pm, I was totally empty and feeling better so I had some Victory Soup and Victory Juice and we watched a movie on his computer. Now I’m totally healthy and fine, but with the 2.5 Hour Dysentery a recent memory, and the fact that the water coming out of my pila has become dirt-brown due to who the hell knows what, I’ve decided to start the Hayley Kercher Water Treatment Process, in which I tie an old pair of undies around the faucet to act as a filter (check) and add chlorine to my drinking water (double check). SO I’m feelin’ great! And my water has that great “Fruit of the Looms Found Floating in a Swimming Pool” taste we all know and love.

HEY it’s summer in America! Happy Summer dudes!!
Love,
Hayley

i love that honduran chip bags come with stickers or pogs inside

Scumbag 2, before we kil't him.

Obed looks so....excited!

a very deadly baby black coral snake, waiting to bite my ass in my latrine.

igor enjoys laying in the sand pile and scraping said sand into his crotch.

"it's true."

hell YES i scored the only dang goal during donkey polo

oh, serafin. my noble steed.

you can't really tell, but that kid is wearing GLOVES! cheater! thinking-ahead-cheater!

someday, after his immigration to the states, im gonna make igor his very own giant sand-box in the shade.

Dos de mayo 2009
Hey, chochachos! Man I should come up with a new greeting, huh…that’s gettin’ pretty old, you know? Alright…from now on I shall be greeting this blog with a “Howdy, dudes,” or at least until that one gets boring, too. Case CLOSED. *gavel noise*

Howdy, dudes,
I want you all to know that me writing this blog right now is an intense bodily sacrifice, because my butt was destroyed (literally, it might fall off!) in a recent Donkey Polo competition in which we kicked some ass and lost profoundly to a Honduran team of dudes on donkeys, playin’ polo. Those have got to be the BONIEST critters in the whole entire dang animal kingdom. I’m going to suggest tiny saddles for next year. So anyway, that’s why sittin’ in this here wooden chair is so ouchy. But that’s why god invented hammocks…they cushion one’s pompis in a way grounded seats never will. Blessed are the hammocks. I suppose this machine IS a laptop, I could conceivably take it me on a journey to the hammock in the other (the only other) room. But it’s kind of heavy and extremely burny (this is the Chubby Chunk 2001 of dell, 6 years ago)..the old guy is finally dying a slow and painful death, and in doing so has made himself very fragile. My butt doesn’t hurt so bad that I can’t stay here and write a bit more.

So yeah, Donkey Polo was this past weekend in the little cobblestoney pueblo of Yuscuran, in the department of Danli (I think…or maybe it’s El Paraiso…anyway). It was beautiful, at least compared to certain parts of the south. Lots of pine trees, very hilly. Igor and I trekked up to Tegus Friday morning, and a certain somebody got his blood drawn, nuts inspected, ears washed, and endured an awful plastic stick up his poor little fluffy hiney. Once the vet was done, Igor and I hopped on a bus headed toward Yuscuran, plus several other gringos we’d hooked up with at the Secret Clubhouse aka the volunteer lounge at the PC office. Unlike previous encounters with city buses, in which a shake of my sassy gringa hair and a beaming smile of sassy gringa teeth was all the convincing necessary, the dudes on the bus were totally NOT interested in having Igor climb aboard. He’s not even that big! He only weighs 40 lbs, and that’s 40 pounds of LOVE. I had to plead and cajole the bus driver for like 30 seconds, walking alongside the moving bus and shouting into the folding door how “bien educado” (well behaved) and “super aseado” (super clean) little Igor is. They finally let us on, under the conditions that we “move immediately to the very last seat in this damn bus,” which we promptly did. It was weird, usually Igor is a hit on the buses, ‘cause he does cute things like stick his head out the window and guerilla-warfar-crawl on his elbows around under people’s seats, waggling his tail). But this bus was totally anti-dog…stupid city folk. The women were all fresa (prissy) about it, makin’ gross-out noises and dramatically yanking their elbows away from his wet, snuffling nose…the teenage girls in the typical navy-and-white school uniforms behind him would all scream hysterically if Igor turned his head toward them, and one lady kept yanking her kid’s feet away from Igor’s face, even though he was totally just sleeping on the floor. Needless to say I was relieved when we finally arrived and stepped down off the bus. The volunteer who lives here’s house was just 4 blocks down the hill, and the great gringo train chugga-chugged off for the first time in many that weekend. It was just a blasty-blast, a great big ol bunch of folks smushed into that tiny house, hangin’ out at nights on her concrete roof and spending the day hours hikin’ around the protected Park area, sleeping (Igor like to be the little spoon), eatin’, wandering around the pueblo, loitering by the central park, and engaging in general FunTimes. This weekend was also Yuscuran’s annual Mango Festival, so there were loads of people, dancing, and singing and selling tasty food and a jillion pounds of mangos. And, of course, there was the 13th Annual Donkey Polo Championship, which we lost for the 13th time in a row. It wasn’t fair, those Hondurans grabbed all the good donkeys first, and all the gringos (the other team) were left with the stationary, ornery ones. Unfair advantage, I say! But I did manage to steal a certain donkey “Serafin,” who was, according to the word on the street, “bueno.” In this situation, the word on the street was the group of four 4th grade kids who I met on the sidewalk and befriended over the course of 15 minutes. I then paid them a grand total of seven lollipops (bonbones) to hold Igor’s leash and keep up with the pack of donkeys, so he could see me and thus not freak the heck out (poor dude gets nervous when we’re out of the countryside, and doesn’t tolerate being separated from me). Those kids did a terrific job, scrambling after the pack of 40 donkeys walking, trotting and running (what they do is too jarring to be called a canter, if you ask me) around the central park, Igor nearly ripping their arms out of their sockets as he strained to run after me, while a dude shouted to the public about the impending game. We then “paraded” over to the old high school concrete soccer court, where we would be playing the game. We had three subbing periods, and lost like 30-1, but it was still a hilarious blast. Some people fell off! That “1” point we had, by the way, was scored by yours truly, aboard the good-ship Serafin. Ahem. NO BIG DEAL. After Peace Corps I may consider a career as a professional polo rider-person…what are they called? Polo players? That sounds right. Im’a become a Professional Polo Player. A PPP.

Getting’ home from Yuscuran proved somewhat more challenging at first, as the only bus that would have taken me to Tegus in time to catch the bus to my pueblo refused to let me and my dog aboard…caninists. I almost cried for a second, then I realized “wait a minute, you can just get a sweet jalon dude,” and promptly lifted my chin and sauntered over to the nearest corner. A truck passed. I waved at em and jerked my head but they waggled their fingers at me to say “no we’re not going far,” and so I waited for the next. Drank some juice out of a bag. Igor peed. Another truck drove by, a shiny red double-cabin pick-up with a nice plastic lined bed, totally empty. Jalon jackpot. I waved at em…they pulled right over and rolled down their windows and smiled at me. Some young couple, obviously from Tegus, driving home from visiting the Mango Festival. I asked em where they were headed and they told me Tegucigalpa, at which point I totally turned on my smiley-gringa faucet full-blast and exclaimed, “Oh, WOW! Could you maybe give me a lift there?” They offered me a seat in the cabin but I gestured to my dog and said it’d be better if I rode in the truck bed (which I totally prefer). They said of course, I said you have saved my life, thank god, may little tiny god bless your souls, and then lifted Igor into the truck paila and then launched myself in as well. Just as they started to pull away, another dude from my Peace Corps group can running down the hill, screaming “WAIT! WAIT!” in English. I slapped the side of the car a couple times to signify “hey stop for a sec” and shouted that he better ask them first before he just jumps in. He ran around, gringo-charmed them, and then jumped in the bed with me and Igor. The three of us then sailed to Tegus in style, the sun warming our faces (which were lathered with sunscreen), the wind in our hair, the sky in our eyes and the trees in our noses (too much?). It took about an hour, exactly half the time it took to travel the same distance on bus (we actually passed the bus that had shunned me and I totally stuck my tongue out as rudely as possible). Then Igor and I took a cab to the market where my bus was waiting, and caught the 11:30am bus (last one of the day to my pueblo), arriving to the street where the buses are parked with enough time to peruse the market, buying random things (two spoons, a mug, a good kitchen knife, and two forks) as well as tasty things (cheese, big mangos, fresh, juicy pineapple slices). By 3:30pm that day we were home...after huggin’ the neighborhood posse I immediately stretched out in my hammock, while Igor dug and scratched about in the mud and wet sand until a nice and damp cool layin’ patch was created. He then flopped down in said patch and scooped wet sand onto his tummy and legs, as he loves to do.

CRAP I just burned my beans! I started cookin’ em late today, like 6:00pm, and whilst I was waiting for them to cook I was fed other beans, by Tina, plus four tortillas and some avocado. So I’m not even hungry any more, and I figured I’d get some writing done while they finished…and dangnabbit they got all death-burny on me. Now my house smells like a butt. Sorry, Igor.

Oh dudes, don’t worry, that earthquake didn’t hurt me none. I recall waking up at like 2am or so when it hit, and thought to myself: “Oh, an earthquake. That’s normal.” and promptly fell back asleep. When I awoke the next morning, I remembered what had happened but decided it must have been a dream. It wasn’t until I heard two ladies chattin’ about it in the street did I realize that it actually did happen. So yeah, no big deal here in the south…but our brothers up in the north of Honduras had it much worse, many people died and even more people lost their homes. I’m not sure on how many exactly.

A Haiku:
Small snake, why you here?
All up in my latrine-face.
We machete’d you.

Yes, that’s right, I was totally sittin’ on my toilet-seat-less toilet bowl in my little wooden latrine, havin’ me a delightful morning pee, minding my own business, when I noticed a strange loopy shape in the space between the concrete wall and the wooden doorjam. I got out and peered in from the other side, then poked a stick. When the loopy thing sloooowly began to slither out toward me, I realized it was a little snakey dude! At first I was delighted, as I rather like snakes, and he was so little and cute. I decided to fetch my neighbor Obed to assess the situation. Obed marched over and coaxed the little critter out of his hiding hole.
“Hayley, that’s a black coral snake,” he said.
“Soooo? You mean an itty-bitty coral-woral? With his widdle tonguey and teeny-weeny stripeys?” I said.
Then Obed informed me that coral snakes will kill you if they bite you, and that the littlest ones are the most dangerous and deadly. He then CAPTURED it in his bare freaking hands, totally Crocodile Hunter style, and posed casually while I took many pictures. Then he told me we had to kill it, because of all the kids always running around…it was too dangerous to let go. I had some moral difficulties with this, because Honduras is big enough for me AND my cutie-wutsie snakey-wakey…but he told me to fetch the machete, so I did as I was told. Definitely didn’t want any dead neighborhood kids haunting my soul forever after. Poor little Scumbag 2 (as I named him) was wasted with a few quick hacks to the neck. I’m sorry it had to end this way, Scumbag 2.

I wish I had more Swedish Fish.
Love,
Hayley

i reinvented the sandwich yesterday

Gabe and Igor at the swimmin' hole

One of my colgate kids happily avoiding a lifetime of oral health problems

i brushed my teeth five times that day...these are my kindergarteners in town

he needs two hands

little ali

freaking claw-spiders, all over my house...this is held by alex, the Brave Neighbor

view of alubaren from my sittin' hill...

douglas checking kaiser for fleas

do it igor!

bat dog! when the wind hits just right...

wrasslin with my dude

alison, contemplating

igor sittin in the river.

me and douglas, sittin on my front steps

the kids with alison's birthday surprise, a clifford pinata i imported all the way from tegus

alison and her uncle alex (nely's brother)

patrick and igor at da swimmin hole

please note douglas is too rude to end his phone conversation for the picture (featuring nely and noel)

noel, nely's son

hermanos! kaiser loves to give igor kisses on the face. they're very close.

this picture is hilarious.

one of my aldea kids

the man loves mangos.

reading a book (thanks Mrs. Kaufmann!) to my preschoolers

the whole gang, at alison's 5th birthday

on our way to the regional championship!

17 May 2009
Hey, chochachos! Man do you guys ever get those zits in your armpits that hurt like the dickens? I totally got one of those things goin’ on right now. Armpit zits = not cool. I bet if a famous journalist was doing a story on Things That Ain’t Cool he or she would totally fly down to Honduras to interview me, cause of my armpit situation I got right now. The front-page picture could be a shot of me showing the camera the red bump and wincing painfully. If you guys know any famous journalists, send them down here. I got a story for em!

Other than that, though, I’m pretty good. I got just ALL kinds of lonely last night, I don’t know why…I was just lying in my hammock, drinkin’ some crazy-delicious cactus tea (thanks, Mimi!!) and thinking about stuff when I just started feeling all lonesome. It’s not that I miss the States…I don’t. Really. Yes, I miss the ample and toasty sandwiches that are available at all hours of the day due to the natural abundance of supermarkets and toasters. And I miss delicious frosty beers of the fancy variety, all on tap, all served to me in a pint glass. And I miss pretzels. And chocolate. And dried fruit. And Swedish Fish (thanks again, Mimi!!). But those are all a) related to things I put in my mouth and chew up, and b) of trivial importance (after all, I can and will stuff myself when I get back to the land of delicious treats in September 2010). But I don’t miss the cars, and the stress, and the greed, and the self-centeredness, and the obsession with money and Things, and the constant need to be entertained, and all that stuff. I could live here in my little yellow concrete and adobe bungalow forever (can I call it a bungalow? I’m unsure of the actual definition of that term, but I’m rather fond of it, so whatever it’s a dang old bungalow as far as I’m concerned). I love my latrine and pila and bath barrel outside, and I love my mango groves all over the place, and my swimming holes, and hills all around my house, and my chirpy birds and blinky bugs (more on that in a bit) and all the little kids that own this town and are my most constant companions. And I love my dog. But even though my neighbors have become my family and the kids my gang of friends and drinking a cup of coffee in a plastic chair my idea of a bitchin’ Friday night…sometimes I just get hells of lonely for all you guys back home. I made a big poster the other day; glued like 15 pictures I’d brought from home glued to a sheet of poster board, colored it all up with crayons, framed it with sticks and hung it from the ceiling with hemp. So it’s not that I’m homesick, per se…just peoplesick. I think part of it has to do with the fact I don’t have much to do in the evenings here—after about 7 or 8:00pm, when the neighbors have turned in and I’ve eaten my dinner, I just lay in my hammock and pet Igor and think about stuff…you’d be surprised, with all one’s reading materials exhausted and no TV or iPod, you get really good at just thinking and thinking and thinking, flowing from one topic to another in your head without direction. It’s sort of like a silent conversation between myself and myself. I’m not crazy, though…just introspective. There’s a difference.

I can’t complain though. A week ago, two fellow volunteers Gabe and Patrick came and visited me in my site, which was excellent fun. David, the volunteer who lives in the next pueblo over (like an hour walking), came over too and the four of us had a great old time, eating tasty foods and speaking in English and having adventures. With my neighbors Nely and the kids, we hiked out to these awesome little swimming holes carved out of the rocks by the water, surrounded by little caves and big trees. It was very beautiful, and the rust-colored water (due to the rotting leaves at the bottom of the pools) was delightfully cold. The next day just me and the gringos hiked back out and swam some more, ate a lot of guacamole and tortillas, and then had a crazy two-hour hike back home “as the crow flies,” as in tramping up and down vertical hills, weaving (very carefully) through farmer’s crops and stoppin’ at what I like to call Mango Town, where a thick carpet of freshly-fallen mangos cover the dirt under the canopy of green. (You gotta be sure and only eat the ones without worms, though…unless you’re into worms. Igor, for example, is not picky). Then we scrambled up to my favorite look-out spot, an isolated little perch on top of a rocky hill that gives you a view of the whole town. Later we made spaghetti, and each drank 4-5 “purple drinks,” which are these awesome popsicles in plastic tube-shaped bags (think short, fat, Otter Pops) that my neighbor, Nelo, sells as beverages. Drinking liquid popsicles = making a lot of my childhood dreams a reality.

It’s the rainy season now! About two weeks ago, David came over to work on a project we were doing together. It was a hot Saturday afternoon, just like any other….when SUDDENLY, the sky turned chunky gray and the thunder boomed and it just RAINED like the dang old dickens, all that day, all night, and most of the morning the next day (David spent the night on my floor on my extra mattress, which provided a lot of fodder for my gossip-hungry neighbors). Ever since, it’s rained every other day or so. My backyard, which used to be pure dirt except for the small patches where I dumped pails of water, has transformed itself entirely. It looks like someone ate a bunch of green Skittles and then just barfed all over the place. EVERYTHING is growing! Everything is green! Everything is flowering! It’s crazy. I have a lawn where I used to have dust. Random seeds I’d thrown around casually have sprouted, resulting in a small watermelon patch by my front door (from the time I was too lazy to throw the seeds and rinds away properly) and a bean patch by my water spigot (from when I sit and sort through the good and bad beans for dinner). And my cantaloupe patch has taken over about half my yard now. I can’t get over how green and leafy and wonderful everything has become. At night, sometimes I just go and sit out in the darkness, and enjoy the blinky-ness of the night. Fireflies are crazy this time of year; the air is so thick with them it looks like a psychedelic light show. The lightening flashing over the mountains adds a distant layer to the blinky-blink. The waaaaap-waaaaap of the toads and the laser-gun frogs are like an auditory blinky-blink…and, since the lights usually go out if it’s raining, the flickering candles from people’s homes makes it all the blinkier. Basically I’m just delighted that we’re finally ending the dry season and beginning the wet season…we’ll have rain now until November. I get water in my pila almost every day now, and the torrential downpours make running and screaming in the water a neighborhood activity. Dang but man I love this rain!

My butt is sweaty…I’m gonna go take a bath. Hooray!
Love
Hayley

pig flu is just a conspiracy

26 April 2009
Hey, chochachos! Dudes I just killed a tiny baby scorpion in my dang house! I was sweeping (yes I am domesticated in that sort of way) in the kitchen and I saw this little critter go scuttling across the floor. I bent down to see what the tiny thing was and discovered it was an itty-bitty arachnid of the stingy variety. I quickly shanked it to death with my broom and swept it outside, and then ran over to announce to Nely what I’d done. Of course she and Tina were duly impressed and then Tina became quite concerned, telling me the mom scorpion was surely nearby, giving birth (?) to many more tiny scorpions. Either way, I have to find her, but I’m not really interested in hosting a scorpion day-care center so she should probably find another place to birth her young (though obviously Tina is mistaken about the live-birth thing…everyone and their momma knows scorpions are marsupials).

Well, last Saturday was the big regional baseball tournament, hosted with honor by non other than Alubarén. Originally, both Reitoca and Pespire (another town in the south) were supposed to come and play, but Pespire backed out at the last minute—their volunteer said he couldn’t wrassle up enough kids to play. Very disappointing for us, since the rules state that in order to win the tournament you MUST have two wins under your belt—aka we would have to play Reitoca twice, potentially three times in the event of a tie. Saturday morning came, and the 15 kids I’d selected to play, plus all the others that are part of the team but not old enough/too sucky/too bratty to be picked for the tournament team, showed up at my doorstep as planned at 8:00am. In their little yellow jerseys with marching black baseball pants and yellow caps, they looked very professional. We hoisted the Panteras flag that John (volunteer before me; he started the team from scratch!) made by hand and marched proudly through town up to the baseball field. The kids, wanted to make a good impression on Reitoca, who were beginning to arrive, quickly arranged themselves in two neat lines in the center of the field and began to play catch. Eventually, my program direction Ronaldo and his wife showed up, with a member of the National Baseball Federation of Honduras (yes they exist!) who would act as the main umpire. They dragged a cooler of water they’d brought for the kids over, we marked up the field with ashes the kid’s had brought in bags from their moms’ woodstoves, and got all the kids together to sing the national anthem and give a couple short speeches about how cool this whole deal was. Then, sweating profusely under the baking 9:00am sun, we headed to our respective sides of the diamond. Reitoca was up to bat first, so we headed out to our fielding positions…PLAY BALL! (I actually shout this all the time when we play, the kids love it and I feel like I’m in the movie A League of Their Own). I was a nervous wreck the whole time, leaping around and spazzing out to the point where the kids asked me to sit down. As it turned out, I had no reason to be nervous, because my kids were so determined to get back the loss we’d suffered to Reitoca last week in the scrimmage that they played their hearts out. Reitoca struck out without a single run! Our turn at bat…after two outs, Las Panteras had batted and walked until the bases were loaded, with 9-year-old Nuria, one of my two girls, crouching on third. Lisbeth, my other girl, a stocky little 8-year-old who reminds me of myself as an 8-year-old softball player (terrified of the ball, prefers to sit deep in the outfield where one can chew on one’s leathery glove in peace or play with the dirt) was up to bat. All the boys groaned…Lisbeth can only hit slowly lobbed balls, and has never, in my knowledge, made contact with a real pitch…there was no way she was going to bring Nuria home. Pitch one…she swings a strike. Pitch two…another strike. Pitch three…BAM! Well, maybe not “bam,” she only hit it slightly past the pitcher, but she hit the damn ball! She stood there dumbfounded for a minute until all out frantic screams “CORRE!! CORRE!!!” sunk in and she threw the bat down and dashed off to first. Fortunately, Reitoca’s fielding skills are not 100% yet and through many fumbles of her gentle grounder, Lisbeth made it to first safely and Nuria shot across home plate, our first run of the game. It was awesome…all the boys raced over and lifted Nuria up and carried her around chanting “Nuria! Nuria!” while she beamed ear to ear. Then they ran over and did the same to Lisbeth, until I had to pull them off because the next batter was waiting and they were all over the field. It was so awesome for them, as the only girls on the team and arguably two of my worst players…who says girls can’t play baseball? Hm?! Anyway, the game continued with Reitoca striking out or getting tagged out, and we scored two more runs before the 5-inning cap was up, finishing with a glorious 3-0 win. We screamed and leapt around while Reitoca shuffled around disappointedly. Then I lead the troops of 40 kids down the road to Dona Marta’s house, who sells tasty meals and had agreed to cook the teams’ lunches, paid for by the mayor’s office, thanks to a well-worded request for funding sent by yours truly. The kids sat under the trees by the riverbed and ate their chicken and rice and guzzled bags of water while I sat inside with David and the umpires. After about an hour rest, we headed back to the field for the second game. This time, Reitoca was in it to win, and my kids entered somewhat cockily, despite my many warnings that anything could happen. Reitoca played much better and beat our butts 4-0. By this time, it was 2:30, and the sun was deadly overhead (no shade at our field). The cluster of families that had come to watch were wilting under black umbrellas and the bags of water we’d bought were long gone. However, it was 1-1, and a tie-breaking game was needed. I huddled up my kids and we screamed LAS PANTERS! LOS MEJORES! and I knew we were going to win…their energy was incredible. Reitoca started off at bat, and the inning ended without a run scored. Then we came up to bat, and scored an incredible four runs in the same inning, which for us was insane. I’ve never screamed so hard….the game was in the bag. Unfortunately, there is a rule that no pitcher can pitch more than 5 innings or one complete game, and at the conclusion of this first inning, my two good pitchers Neil and Kevin were now through. I had to put in Junior, who has trained as pitcher since November but remains pretty terrible, probably because I don’t know how to help him…he throws hard but always slightly to the left, AKA the king of balls. To the horror of everyone watching, and to his own increasing frustration, he proceeded to walk everyone and their mom across home plate…by the third inning Reitoca had caught up, 5-5. By the time the fifth and final inning ended, they had somehow crept past us and won 7-5. At first, my kids were incredulous. “That’s it? We lost? It’s over?” They had won last year (with one game against another town) and gone to Tegucigalpa for the championship, and had assumed they would naturally go again. Reitoca was ecstatic, screaming and shouting and jumping all over the place. My kids burst into tears…I’ve never seen so many 13-year-old boys in tears. It was terrible. They were inconsolable. I felt the worst for Junior, who took off running for his house and never came to my place for the after party with cake and soda, supplied by my project director Sandra. We had a good long talk at my house, and while they were still sniffling, I tried to explain that the world of sports is about losing just as much as it’s about winning, and that they played their very best and that’s all they can do. They ate their cake and drank their coke, but it still wasn’t a very fun party. We took this past week off to recuperate, and starting tomorrow, we’re going to practice once or twice a week, just for fun, until the rainy season begins, when we’ll throw in our hats until November, which it gets dry again.

To be honest, though, despite how much I hate losing (especially to freaking Reitoca, those cocky bastards…if David weren’t my dear pretend-site-mate I would never walk over there again…), it’s kind of a blessing in disguise that we lost, because my cessation of incessant baseball practicing has been seamlessly replaced by “tons of work,” at least in the Peace Corps sense. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a two-hour English and teaching methodology class with about 40 teachers (20 each day) from my town and the surrounding villages, which is going excellently, thank you very much. They are all very eager to learn English and have great high spirits. I like it a lot more than I thought it would. Every Thursday I walk about half an hour up the mountain to reach a nearby aldea (village) called San Antonio, where I do Colgate-sponsored oral health with the 3-room school house of 1-6th grade (each teacher teaches two grades in one class). Starting this coming week, I’ll be doing the same project with the kindergarteners in my town, as well as another two-room schoolhouse in an aldea that’s about an hour away, called Santa Rita. It’s a great program; Colgate donated the toothpaste and toothbrushes and little posters for the kids to chart their progress, and they keep them at school in little labeled cups. Once a week I go in and do a little health chat and a project (usually an art-themed one, since they get no creative art at school). They we go outside and brush together, which is hilarious because the little kids dribbled all over themselves and the big kids are so embarrassed to be brushing their teeth in front of the opposite sex that they go through great lengths to hide themselves while brushing (squatting behind chairs, hiding in the outhouse, climbing trees, etc.). Igor comes with me, and keeps the kids in line by trotting around and jumping on them (trying to break this habit).

I just left my computer and went on an adventure!! It’s about 6:20 right now and getting dark, but we left about 45 minutes ago, at like 5:30 or so. It’s the best time of day here in my opinion, cause it’s toasty warm but not burny like the fire-death of sun. Me and my baby posse, plus my best buddy Nely, tramped though the hills to the dry river bed to collect mangos and let the dogs romp. Igor is turning into quite the water dog, to the point where I can’t leave any containers of water bigger than a cereal bowl on the floor inside or out, because he will sniff it out and frantically try to squeeze himself into it, this making a huge mess (last night I came outside to find him sitting happily in a big paila of water I had left under the faucet to fill up for watering plants (paila = plastic container)). I take him out every day to romp through the mango groves and he’ll race toward the little pools in the deeper spots of the dry river, charge in gulping water and spinning around until he’s soaked. If it’s deep enough he’ll swim around and then charge out at full speed, disappear, and then come back at a full gallop two seconds later, thrash into the water, and repeat the process. Once he’s thoroughly soaked, he’ll sprint off down the path—though I discovered if I hide behind a tree or don’t immediately follow him, once he realizes I’m not racing behind him he’ll come trotting back to look for me. I can’t wait to take him to the ocean some day….probably in the states, though, cause he really is getting too big for bus travel, except for the ones the guys in my pueblo drive, and that’s only because I’m the gringa and I can basically get away with murder.

That’s it for now…I’m excited because my parents sent me a great big box for my birthday filled with dried fruit, nuts, chocolate, and Newsweek magazines chock-filled with Obamamania…my favorite combination. Im’a gonna go lay in my hammock and indulge in said delights. I love you guys…Happy Spring to all you kids in Chicago that are finally thawing out.
Love,
Hayley