toad turds and pollywogs

crazy sunset cloud formations...doesnt that look like Snoopy, peering off a cliff during a full moon? I KNOW RIGHT?!

Yes Igor you DO look awesome bathed in late afternoon sunlight.

the hill david and i (and igor) scrambled up.

ambulatory bovine alert!!

the only photo of us together, ever.

lubey lubes on a humid afternoon.

Gary, my pet garrobo that lives in the random rock heap I have outside my home. He sits and suns himself all day long.

Las Panteras, after our championship.

dog pile of joy...despite losing. thats right children, pound out your misery.

Fernando on first!

Nely and her birthday donuts.

Little Geyli and her grandpappy.

My backyard on an early misty morning

my extremely pregnant landlady Mirian, who actually just had her baby the day before yesterday...a little baby boy named Eli! yay!

Rony and Mirian. Landlords of the future.

Little Elvin, practicing good oral hygiene.

My friend Aida's younger sister, Xiomara, with her new husband Marlon and their puppy, Tuta, in their new home.

Doesn't little Carlos sit like a king? He looks ever so benevolent, yet wise...

the little types of El Jicaro, scrubbin away.

Semana santa sunset.

permanent waves.

cotton candy evening

23 April 2010

Hey, chochachos! Guess what? IT’S FAKE WINTER!!!!! A little old man told me on the bus like two months ago that we would experience an “invierno falso” in April, and he’s totally right (real winter begins in the middle of May). If it ain’t fake winter right now, then I’ll eat my mittens and hat (though not really, ‘cause I need those puppies!). Actually, that’s a lie. When Hondurans refer to “winter” they mean the rainy season, which if anything is actually HOTTER than summer because of the moisture-induced humidity. However, the rain storms cool everything off and so it’s totally worth it, 100 times, 1,000 times. So anyway, a month ago I was bitchin’ about how hot and dry it is, how there’s no water, how all the plants are dead…please consider such insignificant groanings null and void. Beginning about two weeks ago, we’ve had late-afternoon thunderstorms maybe every three or four days, with deliciously squishy results, foliage-wise. My basil is completely on steroids, and all the trees have suddenly exploded with leaves and new twigglies. The grass and weeds are growing like they’re 13-year-old boys, only without the painful self-awareness and wet dreams. My pila is filled with water regularly every other day, and the swimmin’ holes have swelled marvelously (here I could make another puberty-esque metaphor, but I’ll refrain as there might be children reading this). However, the rainy season isn’t just all rainbows and tambourines—there are evils afoot, too, which I shall list below in no significant order:

1. The beetles. The rains make all these huge, crunchy beetles emerge from somewhere, and they congregate in the evenings around the light. This means that while lying in my hammock, eating or reading or whatever, I am constantly plucking this plastic-enforced monsters off my shirt, my hair, my food, my skin, etc., though it’s a rather fruitless battle because no sooner do I yank one off and hurl his little scarab ass across the room does another dive-bomb me—they seem to love it. Also, the hammock lounge position (feet together, knees bent like a frog) means that there are gaping caves between my shorts and thighs, which is the perfect target for such kamikaze pilots…which is why I spend maybe a fourth of my evening fishing donut-hole sized insects out of my crotch.

2. The amphibians. Now, don’t get me wrong. Unlike every single Honduran ever, I am not deathly afraid of toads and their slightly less grotesque cousins, the frog. I actually like them. The rains, however, have encouraged them to emerge from their secret lairs carved into the sides of remote mountain ranges and they are taking over the damn place. At night, the toads hop into my house and lazily hunt the beetles that have turtled-over and wobble on their backs, tiny sticker legs waving around hopefully. That’s all fine and good. The frogs, aided by sticky feet, spider-man-frog it around the walls and ceiling, hanging out by the light and slurping down any and all flying insects. Fine by me. They also fill the night air with an incredible cacophony of different chirps, squawks, and croaks—it sounds like an intergalactic laser gun fight. Also great—if you think there is better falling asleep music, then you’re a liar, ‘cause there isn’t. Wonderful. What I DON’T approve of, however, is the frogs’ collective decision to turn my bathing barrel and pila into an all-night bath-house…and here I am referring to the infamous bathhouses of ill repute. You can also imagine my pila as a shadowy truck stop along a lone highway in the 1980s. Either way, there is a lot of mixing of bodily fluids and I often go out for a late-night pee, only to find various slimy green couples playing two-frog twister. One Friday, I left to go to Tegus for the day to do errands at the Peace Corps office. My neighbor Tina called me, very distressed, at about 10:00am, to inform me that I had “thousands of frog eggs floating in my pila.” She said she scooped out what she could but that there was still a lot in there. I returned home Saturday to find a thick blanket of tiny black tadpoles carpeting the bottom of my concrete pila, wriggling around like spermies. The shower barrel was spawn-free, but had two toad turds floating in it, which look just like mini dog turds. DAMN YOU, ANPHIBIANS. I called the kids over and we carefully filled 10 baggies with tadpoles, which we carried to the creek and released in a very Free Willy-esque moment. The rest I drained out and scrubbed down with soap…same with Turd Island. I’m touched these young lovers are sneaking out of their burrows to come tangle at my house, but if it happens again I’m gonna have to take serious measures. Like filling my pila with ginger-ale…boiling hot, Texas-style ginger ale!!!

I guess that’s it, complaint-wise. I love the thunderstorms…the anticipation as the gray-purple mass forms on the horizon and heads toward us, usually from the north-east. I love the flash of light followed by sharp crackles and booms, all the crazy pageantry of nature that we Californians can’t understand (no summer rain!). I love the sheets of water pouring off my zinc roof, and the roar it creates, so loud I can’t even carry a conversation with myself (“Another peanut M&M, Hayley?” “WHAT. EMINEM SUCKS. WHAT?" And I love the sudden greenification of my house and the hills around it. So even if this is a fake winter…I’m diggin’ it. Just don’t plant your corn yet.

I won’t say much about Semana Santa except that it was awesome. I slightly overdid it the first day and spend every waking moment in the ocean, which resulted in a) a ridiculous sunburn, b) painful, blistered lips, and c) an inner AND outer ear infection, in BOTH ears. Totally worth it, though. The waves were 6-feet-high every day and my buddies and I spent our days rolling and riding around on them, eating toasty sandwiches and drinking icy beverages of fruity origins. Sand castles were also made, and I may or may not have pissed off an entire bar full of people by abusing my water-gun privileges and exercising my shoddy aiming skills. Fortunately, I averted the mob by blending into the crowd, something I do naturally in Central America.

Our baseball “championship” (April 17) went about as expected, which is to say we lost. Reitoca hosted it this year, but it sucked because unlike previous years, the Peace Corps has no baseball funds, or they seem to have it tied up in a mysterious “coaches training” that was supposed to happen in February and has yet to be mentioned. Either way, no dough for championships, regional or otherwise, and certainly none for the National Championship. In previous years it’s been held in Tegucigalpa in a real stadium, all expenses paid for the kids—they got hotel rooms, food, medals, even a trip to a children’s museum. Not no more…now we don’t even have funds to pay for a real umpire to come to the regional championships. Which, I suppose, would be pointless, considering there aren’t trophies or a National competition. Either way, with my buddy David’s departure date looming (this Monday! Tear.), we decided to have one anyway, so the kids could have some closure (since Reitoca is the only other community nearby with a baseball team, once he leaves, we’ll have no one to play against until they get another volunteer, which isn’t until September). However, it was essentially like any other scrimmage, except David marked the field with ashes and we made the kids sing the national anthem before they played (horrific disaster…one of my kids Kenssy conducted it, and none of the kids followed her…they finished the song six different times). I only brought 14 kids this time, because I’ve been having lower numbers (no one wants to be a loser, I guess). One of my best pitcher’s moms refused to let him come, because she was “sick of watching him lose.” Not that she’s ever been to a game. So poor Enner had to pitch the whole time. As it was, they played pretty good, and we even scored a run! Reitoca got three, thus beating us with a resounding 3-1 final score, and Las Panteras seemed no worse for the wear, as I suspect they now go into games assuming they will lose. It was fun on the way over, though…I taught them all Spanish versions of those dorky call-and-repeat spirit songs we used to sing in T-ball, as well as the ever popular “GIMME A P! (P!) GIMME AN A! (A!)…” etc. They belted them out all the way to Reitoca and begged to sing them on the way home, too, even though we’d lost. So at least they’re good losers…though when we entered Alubarén proper they all started screaming and cheering and shouting “WE WON! WE WON!” to the people outside, which we most certainly had not. I didn’t stop them, though. A little self-deception never hurt anyone, that’s what I always say.

As I mentioned, David, my “pretend site-mate” and one-man adventure cohort, is on his way out; his two-year alarm clock is finally going off. Since he doesn’t live in my town, my day-to-day life won’t change much, but I’ll miss him coming over on the weekends once a month, to scramble around in the hills behind my house, cool off in the swimmin’ hole, lie in the hammocks and stuff our faces with candy and trail mix sent from the states, all the while greasing the gossip chains of my neighborhood as folks stand around and whisper about how “that other gringo” spends the night and therefore must be my boyfriend. It’s hard to explain that actually, American culture permits that a lady and a dude can be platonic friends and spend our evenings alone together, not boning but playing Hangman on my wall with sidewalk chalk while eating buckets of homemade pesto and drinking two liters of Coke, each. Ah, the differences of culture. Anyway, David and I decided we should have one final fling, and he came over last week to celebrate our Closing of Ceremonies. We made a picnic (rice crispy treats, sandwiches (tuna and cheese on wheat bread; god bless you Tegus supermarket) and a big thermos of ice cold homemade lemonade) and we set off into the jungley hills behind my house, Igor racing around our heels. Determined to make it a genuine Adventure, we scanned the horizon and declared it time to finally climb the abrupt peak that juts out of the mountain but which we’d never scaled. We circled around behind it and, lacking a path, just bushwacked our way to the top. There we ate our lunch (Igor had dog biscuits sent down from gramma and grampa Kercher), peered down at Alubarén, and reflected on life. Getting down was, for some unexplainable reason, extremely treacherous and I led us down several VERY wrong paths (all ended in some abrupt abyss) until we finally stumbled upon the way we’d come up, which turned out to be the only way that didn’t involve “that god-damn gully AGAIN!”. Stupid gully. Then we tramped up and over and down and through the woods, along the cow paths, until we got to the swimmin’ hole, where we splashed around and ate the last of our ‘crispies and drank more lemonade. Finally, we headed up to my favorite sittin’ hill and watched the sun set, slurping down the last tangy drops of god’s gift to beverages. A remarkable Closing of Ceremonies, indeed. Then we headed back to the Tarantula Oven for a pesto, soda, and candy. So long, pal.

Such is life. My time to peace out is fast approaching (I only have 5 months left) and after that I have no idea where I’ll go or what I’ll do. Any ideas?

Bed tiiiiiiime………just me and Fanny the Fan.

Love,

Hayley

man i got the swamp-ass on my throat

Henri, my second-best pitcher.

Enner, my first-best pitcher.

Las Panteras de Alubaren!

On the bus ride over (before their souls were crushed by defeat)

well if that aint a rooster in a windowsill

mouth-themed art.

little guys coloring their mouths.

view from the path on the way to the school...alubaren is waaaay down there in the valley.

the third grade penpals! with their charming yet grossly incompetent teacher.

Igor and Kaiser, sopping wet after a trip to the swimmin hole.

leapin in!! dont break your face!

noel and his nature-made waterslide.

is douglas peering at us over those shades because he's cool...or because they're super-perscription and his eyes are aching?? child torture for photo ops is a large part of what peace corps volunteers do in the field.

three generations of amazing women (dona anita, chepa, and maricela). all great friends of mine.

27 March 2010

Hey, chochachos! So my buddy Patrick got this awesome purple-camouflage t-shirt, which, being too small for him, was bequeathed to me. It reads “BUTT SWEAT AND TEARS,” which is 1) hilarious and 2) entirely accurate of my current situation. I’m not actually crying (though I did weep slightly last night watching “Milk” on ‘ol laptoppy) but I got swamp-ass like you wouldn’t even BELIEVE. Seriously. Honduras is all like “oo, you likes the heet, si? I geef you MORE!!” and totally throwing the lever to the “Butt Sweat 24-7” level of solar radiation. Anyway. I just thought you guys might like to hear about that.

I also have swamp ass on my throat. Little weird blisters that pop and sting—right in the creases of my neck fat, formed from the slight inclination of the head as a result from reading in the hammock. March and April are the hottest time of year in the south of Honduras, as everyone gazes ruefully at hazy blue horizon, waiting for the rain clouds that won’t appear until mid-May (save for a freak rain shower that fell a couple weeks ago and rained out baseball practice! Delicious). All the plants have transformed into brittle, leafless skeletons and the dust is everywhere, coating all surfaces in a nice gritty filth. The cicadas drone incessantly and the toads hide in my latrine, looking for the Moist. Poor Igor just lies on the floor and pants frantically, though he is a warm-weather dog through and through and does much better here than I’m sure he’ll do in the states (the dope shivers with cold whenever we go to Tegucigalpa). The water shortage continues, though I really can’t complain because I have my whole pila to myself and most people have to share it with mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, kids, aunts, uncles…everyone in the house. So I let Nely come over and wash clothes and take baths all the time. Sometimes, I just lie down in my underpants and let Igor lick me clean…dog saliva is antibacterial, you know. The only good thing about the dry season here is the mangos are beginning to ripen, so I can switch from crunching on sour green ones (still tasty) to slurping down delicious sticky orange awesomeness. Also, “jocotes” are in season now, also known as “plums,” (ciruelas) though they do not resemble North American plums in any way (they’re like little round balls of sweetish flesh, about the size of a walnut, with a huge pit). Maranones are ripe now, which I have plenty of in my backyard. They taste like 100 gallons of butt sweat, though, so I give them all away. Fun fact—the nut on top of the fruit is where cashews come from! SCIENCE. Anyway, bitch bitch moan moan I’m hot and such, but it ain’t so bad cause 1) I borrowed the fan from the library, which has no electricity anyway, and 2) the swimmin’ holes still have water, so goin’ on adventures is always fun. Last week, Nely and the kids and I (plus Igor) hiked for about an hour and a half to get to these amazing pools that are SO deep…you can jump off rocky boulders above and never touch the bottom. Plus, there is a shallow pool where the kids can splash around. We brought little bean tamales and it was delightful.

Work is goin’ awesome. The little penpal project I started up with the third-graders is adorable—they sent letters back and forth with an incredibly smart first grade bilingual classroom in Minnesota, taught by a former Honduran Peace Corps volunteer, Anne. It’s kind of sad, because the kids in Minnesota are a) 6 and 7 years old and b) learning Spanish for the first time, and their letters are still better written than my third graders. But the kids get a kick out of it, and draw great pictures to accompany their letters (which I send off in a manila envelope). So far we’re only written twice, once introducing ourselves and talking about favorites and hobbies, and this past week, where the kids wrote about Semana Santa (Holy Week), which is exactly like American spring break, except instead of teenagers making bad decisions, it’s chock-full of Jesus, excursions to the nearest water source for swimming, and the consumption of fish-cake soup. The little letters explained as such. It’s funny, though, because the third-graders all write little adult-ish phrases in the letters, like beginning with a “Hello, dear friend, allow me to hope that you are currently blessed with fine health and your family as well” (though totally botched spelling-wise) and “may the tiny baby-God bless you today and always.” Those Spanish-immersion blondies in Minnesota are gonna be like “que????” Their letters are pretty funny too, though damn impressive—they throw the “le” and “se” around like it’s their job and their spelling is excellent. My favorite one was from a kid who wrote (in Spanish) “I’m so happy you are my new friend. I used to not have any friends, but now I have exactly 101 and you are one of them. You are my best friend in the whole world and I love you so much.” I want to meet this 6-year-old with so much love.

Aside from that, I’m hiking up mountains twice a week to visit two aldea schools for my oral hygiene project, totally yellin’ at ‘em about cavities and such. The kids are little angels and always so eager to participate—it’s adorable. This week, we colored pictures of the mouth and learned to identify all the different components. It’s a damn good thing I’m a Scientist. In my village journeys, I’ve been able to form a closer friendship with a woman named Aida and her family, including little baby Geyly, who is now four-months old. Every Wednesday, on my way down the mountain after Colgate, I stop at their bright-green, open-air house and have lunch with her. Or rather, she puts a huge plate of beans and rice and tortillas in front of me and watches me eat it, concerned with my “tiny waist” and lack of boobs (seriously!). In addition to little “Hayley,” she has a four-year-old son named Esteven who has the raddest bowl-cut ever. He likes to show me his blocks that his dad made for him, and is also a fan of watching me stuff my face with food. I’m also friends with Aida’s sister, Xiomara, and her husband, Marlon. They’re newlyweds and have decided to stay childless for the first couple years, which is very rare in Honduran culture. They’re in the middle of building a house (made of mud-and-straw bricks), and are sleeping in the half of it that has a roof while they finish the rest. They’re all really wonderful people and I’m delighted to have some real friends outside of Alubarén proper. It’s like Burrito Tuesday all over again (this thing my friends and I did in high school than involved eating burritos on Tuesday), only instead of burritos it’s beans and rice and tortillas, and instead of Tuesday it’s Wednesday.

Baseball season is, thank tiny-baby-God, finally almost nearing an end. We had our last “friendly scrimmage” today, in Reitoca. I’ve spent the past month convincing parents to let their kids play, despite the fact that no one wants their kid to be on a losing team, and did much damage to my “we’re improving everyday!” argument when Reitoca took us to school in the mini-van of Pain today, beating us 4-0 (our most painful loss yet). We took the bus over early this morning, all sweaty-eyed and bushy-tailed, dressed to the nines in our sassy golden get-up. The game started out all right, and we came very close to scoring runs several times (bases loaded, with my best batters at the plate…) but never managed to get a point. Meanwhile, Reitoca was playing just as crappily, with just one point to our zero. Then, in the fourth inning, with two kids on base, their best batter slammed a ball into outer-space and won them three additional points with his fancy homerun. After we lost, my kids didn’t seem too disappointed—we’re used to being losers now—and instead ran around giggling and hamming it up for the camera, while I took individual shots of them posing in front out our team flag, one knee up and one knee down, with their hand on a bat, just like the cheesy pictures we take in American little league. The parents were pissed, though, and much berating was going on until I finally lost it and yelled at them (the parents) that if they couldn’t support the kids positively then they shouldn’t come to the games (a message that needed to be said, but I shouldn’t have lost my temper, because know they’ll all talk smack about me behind my back). Anyway. We bused it home, I laid in the hammock and stuffed my face with avocado, tomatoes and basil salad (all local grown, chumps) and drank chai iced tea (thanks mom and dad!) with my new best friend, Fanny the Fan (I’m all like, Hey, Fanny, do you like tarantulas? And she’s all “Noo-oo-oo” while shaking her head slowly to-and-fro). Anyway, just three more weeks until the “championship” on April 17 (though it will be essentially the same thing as a scrimmage since Peace Corps has no money in the baseball program for trophies, trips to Tegus, or anything of that sort) and baseball will have ended until next year, at which point the next sucker volunteer can have ‘em. I should have formed a “hangin’ out in the swimmin’ hole” team.

Hella bedtimes, folks…I gotta rest up for my Semana Santa adventures, which are beginning soon and involve salt water and hammocks. MYSTERIOUS!!

Love,

Hayley

birth birth birth birth

muddy fingahs!!!!!
birthday partyyyyyy
mud cake and a mud heart!!
FELIZ CUMPLEANOS JILI SORPRESA
me and igor on the kitchen floor
douglas, the great chicken wrangler.
thankfully the toy is covering his business this time


11 March 2010
Hey, chochachos! If my writing seems more sage and geriatric today, that is because ya’ll are accustomed to reading the words of a 23-year-old, and this chochacha is now 24. So, please attribute any sudden leaps in wisdom and/or insight to my advancing age and the gifts—and burdens, yes, there are burdens as well—that come with it.

As the Hondurans say, I was “a little baby once again” this past Tuesday, March 9th. My second birthday in Honduras, this time fortunately bereft of extremely tiny panties, which were given to me in great numbers last year by various individuals. I woke up early because I had to get out to a village (Alto de las Mesas) to start a Colgate project with the school there, in which the kiddies brush their teeth with hopeless abandon every day after snack-time and receive weekly lectures regarding oral hygiene and the toothly sciences. This week, the lecture was just on how to brush your teeth correctly, though, which was nice and easy. Unfortunately, it meant brushing my teeth six times in 30 minutes, as I chose to do a demonstration with each grade, even though it’s a one-room school with one teacher for the whole lot (60 kids total). Let’s face it; I just love brushing my teeth. It’s so awesome. Anyway, I stayed the whole day, and clamored down the mountain (to get to the school from the dirt road, you have to walk up a mega-steep dusty narrow path that edges along the rim of a steep mountain, banked by corn and sugar cane plants) with the teacher, Maricela (who is also in my English class). As we approached the main road, we heard a truck coming (free jalon!) so I started to race down the hill like a dang goat, which was stupid because goat I am not. About 8 feet from the road, in plain site of the driver of the truck and several people standing around outside a house, I totally ate it and slid down face-first, my skirt all sliding around to suggestive leg-levels and my glasses all goin’ askew. I wasn’t hurt, except for a skinned leg and arm, but jesus in a juice box was I embarrassed. Everyone rushed over and was hella concerned, tryin’ to clean me up…meanwhile I’m covered in red dirt and laughing like crazy. Awesome. The driver of the truck did give us a jalon back to Alubarén, though, so that was rad. Then I went home for a quick shower and lunch before my 4pm English class. As I approached my house, the neighbor kids came streaming out yelling my name like they always do, trying to drag me into their house to see the surprise they had for me. Unfortunately, I had to pry their feeble little baby hands off my skirt and make them wait until that evening, because I was all kinds of rushin’.

Off I dashed to English class, where I told my class of teachers that I had prepared a special surprise for them, in honor of my birthday. Murmurs of joy spread throughout the class, which were abruptly extinguished when, cackling madly, I whipped out the manila envelope filled with pre-tests they all had to take (which I should have given to them on Day 1, whoopsies). The test was hellsa chunkity, like 5 pages, so I just sat and dangled my legs from the desk while they grumbled their way through it. As they finished about 50 minutes later, they wandered outside and waited on the little soccer-playin’-concrete-slab (or so I though). When the last teacher handed me her test, I stepped outside to call the others in, only to find them GONE. I was like AW HELL NO YOU CHEATIN’ DESERTERS and such, full of Anger, until I saw one of them heading back into the school with a huge bottle of soda in her arms. Yay! Birthday Soda! I ducked back in so she wouldn’t see that I saw her coming, and busied myself writing on the board while they whispered and giggled outside. Suddenly, all 15 of them burst back into the room, grinning like little kids, bearing a little sugary-bread thing they’d bought at the pulperia and covered with 24 matches. They began to sing “Happy Birthday” (in English!) and took pictures of me with their camera phones while I blew out the “candles.” Then they doused me with bags of water (it’s typical to attack the birthday girl or boy with eggs and other crap, so I guess I got off lucky), handed out bags of chips and lolly-pops and cups of soda, and we participated in the great age-old tradition of forfeiting school time for consuming delicious treats. By the time we finished it was 5:30, so I just let everyone go home half an hour early. I walked up the road to my house, where Alison, Noel, Douglas, Cristina, and Yesica were waiting for me. They made me close my eyes and lead me through the house into the backyard, before finally arriving at the base of a big orange tree. “SORPRESA!!” they all screamed, and I opened my eyes to find a succulent mud birthday cake waiting for me at the base of the tree, complete with 24 little sticks, masquerading as candles. They’d also made a giant mud heart with my name inside, and with cinders from the fire had carefully written “FELIZ CUMPLEANOS JILI SORPRESA!!” on the concrete. Then they made me sit down and each presented me with a little hand-made envelope, covering in drawings, with sweet little birthday letters inside. My eyeballs, they did sweat a little, I must say…those kids have a vice grip on my soul. Then we trooped inside and made chocolate-banana smoothies, like we did last year, and sliced open a big juicy watermelon. My landlords gave me a huge sleeveless muscle-tee that I can never wear in public, with a picture of a Honduran beach on the front. Maybe I’ll wear it to baseball practice one day and freak out off the adolescent boys. Tina gave me an apple and a chocolate bar, and Lisbeth gave me a pencil, an eraser, a pencil sharpener, and a pen (her pencil case seems to have gone on a diet recently, I wonder why that might be?). But the best was that mud cake, which is now dry and sitting on a paper plate on my shelf in my room. Though I will admit I snuck a tiny bite before I put it up for display…god, those kids know how to mix dirt and water. Like imported Swiss fudge on ‘roids.

That’s about it for the Birthday Special…baseball is goin’ great, my little misfits are having a wonderful time, and getting excited for our up-coming scrimmage in Reitoca on the 27th of this month. Colgate, Joven a Joven and TEAM are all cominn’ along beautifully, and I’m gettin’ ready to start a Nature Club in the school. Finally, I get to start the pinecone-art sweatshop I’ve always dreamed of (though pinecones don’t exist in Alubarén, I have a huge bag of them I collected when I lived in Santa Rita).

My bed just texted me “haylz come on man it’s so l8t, come put on yr shortz and loser mouth-guard and get yr slumberz on”…so I guess I’d better go.
Looooove
Hayley

P.S. Birthday Update: I got a sweet ride to Tegus on Friday afternoon and met up with some friends, who treated me to surprise party with cold beers and an incredible smorgesborge of fancy cakes (chocolate caramel, cheesecake with raspberries, and carrot cake ) and ice cream. And they sang so beautifully!! You guys is the best.

dear john, im sorry i made baseball lame.

beach day! the whole gang...except for little andri, who was passed out in the shade.
esau found some cangrejas...which he brought back to alubaren in a pepsi bottle and then fried in lard and bullion cubes.
douglas playin with the boats.
splashin' around with grandma
SO SALTYYYYY
cute swimsuit little lady
grandma tina and her nietos
ah, cedeno...
esau, nuria, lisbeth, alison and noel...in the swishy swashy warm waters
douglas in his little sand lounge chair
they'll be pickin sand out of their butts for weeks
diggin and jumpin
playin soccer!! before some chumps swiped it
douglas playin in the sand
"I'm on a boat, ******-******!" says Andri. "Got my flippy-floppies!" agrees Douglas.
the kids and igor with some side-walk chalk art they did on my house...yeah i been doin some external decorating lately.

the serious shot.

21 February 2010
Hey, chochachos! It’s about 8:00pm on Sunday night, and I am waiting quite patiently for my Hayley Rice to finish….which is, in case the reader is wondering, is rice. With tomatoes and green peppers and onions. Hells yes Also, I have some spicy sausage I am gonna throw in there, and then throw in my MOUTH. Naum naum naum, naum.

So I’m a big fan of the concept of “Beach Day!”, in which one packs the car with sandwiches, soda, and Frisbees, and takes to the beach with one’s buddies for swimming and adventures. Honduras is nestled in the tender bosom of not one but two oceans, so in my hunk of time here I’ve had many opportunities to embark on such Beach Days. My neighbors, “Nely and the kids” (a nickname I have for them, which my buddy Patrick says should always be followed by “The Country Jam-Band”) always stay and take care of Igor while I cavort around the country, my pockets heavy with US tax-payers’ money, and I always feel guilty that I can travel about so easily and they can’t, ‘cause they’re hella poor. So we decided as an early “Semana Santa” adventure, we would embark on a Beach Day adventure of our own. I went to the market on Thursday and bought all the fixins’ for tamales (corn flour mix, potatoes, chicken, onions, sweet pepper, vegetable-based lard, spices and salts) and Friday afternoon we made about 60 chunkity ‘ol tamales, wrapped up steamy in huge green banana leaves. Then we packed baskets with blankets, towels, extra clothes, water, sunscreen, the works. Saturday morning, at 5:00am, my landlord Rony, who is married to Nely’s half-sister Mirian, pulled up outside the house with his two kids, Esau and Nuria (and his pockets full of gas money, provided by Uncle Sam). Nely, little Douglas, and her dad Ruben (the old man with Parkinson’s, if you recall) sat up front while the rest of us (Tina, Elias, Esau, Nuria, Lisbeth, Andri, Alison, Noel, and me) settled onto the foam pad we’d placed in the truck bed. The kids chattered excitedly about what the beach would be like (none of them had ever been to the ocean), while little motion-sick Alison barfed continuously into various plastic bags, which were then ceremoniously dumped over the edge of the car into the dirt as we flew along. We watched the stars disappear and the sun come up over the mountains as we drove along, and after an hour and a half we reached the paved road. By 8:00am, we arrived at the southern beach town of Cedeno, parked the car near a little shack at one end of the beach, and unloaded ourselves into the sand. This particular shack provided chairs, shade, and hammocks to the folks who purchased their wares, so we bought a bunch of sodas to complement our bucket packed to the brim with tamales. The kids stripped down to their underwear in about three seconds and sprinted toward the surf. “AHHH IT’S SALTY!! IT’S SALTY!! OH NO!!!” screamed Alison, totally upset by the fact she couldn’t drink it. “MY EYES! THEY BURN!” They quickly got used to the salt water, though, and from that moment on until we left at 3:00pm, the kids didn’t leave the ocean once (except to ingest tamales as quickly as Science would allow). I had brought my Frisbee and Noel his new soccer ball my dad sent him, but both toys went basically unused as the kids were way too enthralled by the crashing waves. We played a Catcher in the Rye type game in which I would stand waist-deep in the water and snag the kids as the receding surf dragged them out…then, as the waves rolled in, I would launch them like little brown surf-boards and they would “surf” in. The only people who didn’t enjoy the water were Ruben, who shuffled around dressed for the office in leather shoes, pinstriped slacks, and a long-sleeved cotton shirt, and Douglas and Andri, the two-year-olds, who were so terrified by the immense body of water that they refused to even go near it. However, there were little fishing boats pulled up on the sand, and they had a great time climbing around and playing in the sand (Douglas tried to eat it, and then sat there gagging until someone ran over and rinsed his mouth out). At 3pm, we piled back into the truck and set off for home. This time, the ride was much more unpleasant, because the sun-burned, tired kids were very cranky and we were all melting under the blistering sun. At least Alison wasn’t puking nonstop again; she passed out in my lap after 10 minutes in and slept almost the whole way home. When we arrived at 6:00pm, everyone took baths and then we made a quick dinner of eggs, chorizo, cream, and tortillas before calling it an early night. The kids passed out on the floor, on top of the same dirty pad we’d had in the truck, mumbling about waves (I bet they all pissed the bed). Hells yes Beach Day!

I’ve suddenly found myself rather busy, which is nice. I began TEAM (Teaching English and Methodology) classes this week, with 16 teachers, and that went quite smoothly. I went by the high school one morning, to recruit baseball players, and mentioned to the principal that I’d like to start a project called “Youth to Youth: Work Skills and Orientation”; a 10-session, 40-hour work-shop that helps the kids identify their aptitudes and labor interests and, once they’ve identified possible careers or jobs they might enjoy, orients them on how to pursue them. It’s very intense and work-heavy, both for the facilitator and the participants, and I’ve been stressing about it because my counter-part that was trained in how to facilitate the program with me has since jumped ship and enrolled in the Police Academy—I’m flyin’ solo. So anyway, I sit down with the principal, and she whips out her little calendar, and figures out when the 11th and 12th graders could sacrifice an entire morning. We decide that Fridays would be best, and she announces that we must begin the NEXT DAY. I stay up until freakin’ 2:00am creating all the visual aids I would need and preparing, and wake up at 5:45am to I can get to the school by 7:00am. Despite my sleep deprivation and nervousness, the workshop went really well for the first day and the kids seemed into it (the methodology is excellent and uses a lot of games and activities). I enjoy it, sort of…though pre-schoolers and little guys like that are much more my thing and dealing with 37 high schoolers was definitely a challenge for me…they definitely think I’m super lame (probably because I kept telling jokes and doing things that can only be fairly described as such). We had the next session the next day, Friday, and from now one will have one session per week until we finish. Oh heavens.

On the baseball front, Las Panteras have suffered a revolution and an abrupt re-enrollment. After we lost our first game, all the big kids that have played baseball for two years decided baseball is no longer cool, and ceremoniously quit (including my pitchers, catchers, and best basemen). I tried everything—talking to their parents, talking to them, going to the school—but it’s a closed case. Baseball is officially Hella Lame. I went to the school and recruited heavily, and all this week I’ve had numbers higher than I’ve seen all year—20 kids came on Wednesday, and 24 on Friday. But the dynamics are totally different. Before, the kids were the same ones who played with John (the volunteer before me)—generally well-behaved, successful kids whose parents are involved in the community and the churches. And, since they began with John, most of the kids were now pretty big and pretty good players. However, since they all quit, the ranks have been re-filled with all the little ragamuffins—the kids who roam the pueblo all day because their parents don’t care, little urchins who do poorly in school and stay up until 10:00pm every night playing soccer in the street because they don’t have enforced bedtimes. A lot of them have drunks for dads, and these kids have mouths on ‘em that would make a very surly pirate blush and say, “Well, I never!”. Essentially, these little guys, the smelly kids at school, have become the core of Las Panteras. Baseball is no longer for the cool kids, it’s for the underdogs. This interesting social phenomenon came about very abruptly—I didn’t specifically invite this crowd of kids, I just issued a general invitation at the school and showed up a the baseball field the next day, expecting nobody to show and instead being greeted by 20 very punctual children, all eager to play. It’s frustrating, because the regional championship is in April and I’m now starting from scratch with kids who have no idea how to play baseball, but it’s awesome having a group of kids who are just there to play and not obsessing over whether or not we win our little scrimmages against Reitoca. And the best part of all is that these kids, who are always getting yelled at in school and bear the reputation of the “bad kids” have now accomplished two practices in which they were as good as GOLD. No cussing, no fighting, no rudeness (except for one kid who straight-up peed on another kid…needless to say, Pee Boy has been removed from the team). Maybe this will act as a catalyst in a life-changing metamorphosis in these children, and then Disney will make a movie about it. The rag-tag group of misfits who manage to win the big game…just like in Wet Hot American Summer. Only instead of calling it off and running off into the woods, we actually will play and it will be Awesome.

Love,
Hayley

P.S. I just found a tarantula the size of my face chillin on my bedroom wall. But my neighbor squished it with a broom so it's cool.

sucks to be losers

Igor and our basil forest. yes, i eat pesto weekly, so what?

Las Panteras, posing in my yard during our after-party (celebrating that we...lost? i dont know.)

Some of the kiddies in the Readers Club, with notebooks and McDonald's toys. Ah, literacy!

Making egg-carton dragons.

Aurelio is too busy to smile.

Little Elvin, my neighbor, gettin' to work.

Nice polar bear Cristian!

Dancing polar bears, la la la...

Escarleth and friends gettin' busy durin arts and farts and crafts.

6 February 2010
Hey, chochachos! Well hooty-hoo, lookit that, a whole month has passed since my last blog. You guys have probably been super bored. I hope you all took advantage of your new-found free time and tackled those projects you’ve had hovering for the past few years (200 piece jigsaw puzzles, cleaning your toenails, writing your thesis, etc.). Anyway, you can put down that letter to grandma, because I got a hot new steamy blog all ready for ya’s. Topped with Funyons!

Today was a sweaty bummer. After training Las Panteras in the stupid sport of baseball for the past three months (practicing EVERY DAY for two hours in the punishing Honduran sun), we finally had our first game today—a scrimmage against neighbors Reitoca, who are trained by my fellow Peace Corps buddy David. Now, last year, we managed to lose every single game we played against Reitoca except for one, and this year it’s been rough going trying to get the kids to show up for practice—they’re all like “Why play if we’re just gonna lose?” and “We’d rather play soccer!” Of course, there are still loads of kids who want to play, mainly groups of 8-year-old girls who idolize me. I can’t seem to get the 12-year-old boys to follow suit. Anyway, despite the resounding negativity, I felt confident that we could win the game with a little luck, and so we set out parading behind our banner toward the field at about 8:00am this morning. We got there, marked the field with ashes the kids brought from their mom’s wood-ovens, warmed up, and began the game. In the first inning, Reitoca didn’t get a single player on base, and we scored a run with a “jonron!” It was awesome. 1-0, bitches. Then the next inning, no changes. Then, in the third inning, Reitoca got lucky and scored three runs, mainly due to a crazy fluke batter who sent the ball into the bowels of left field, leaving our outfielders searching in the weeds. Finally, we reached the final inning (we only play five here). We batted second, and we found ourselves with two outs, bases loaded. It was Kelvin’s turn to bat, a new-comer who has a lot of spunk but whose technique is basically “swing wildly at anything, no matter what.” I kept yelling “Wait for the good ones! Don’t swing!,” hoping he’d get walked to first base and thus earn us a run. Pitch one. STRIKE. Pitch two. STRIKE. Pitch three….WHAM! Kelvin smacks it, straight to…first base. Our guy on third runs as hard as he can toward home, but the first baseman stomps the bag, thus ending the game, before our guy can cross the plate. We were soooo close to tying it up, but it just wasn’t in the cards…my kids were furious. Half the bigger kids threw their gloves down and stomped off, others dissolved into tears, were teased by the others, and then tried to fight them. It was a disaster. After screaming “Come BACK here, you guys! C’mon!” the kids finally grouped up so I could give them a little pep talk. We almost did it, you guys played great, don’t feel bad, we’ll get ‘em next time…but you could tell they didn’t want to hear it. I invited them all to come to my house at 2:00pm for the after-party (which I’d planned as a hopeful celebratory event, alas) and we went our separate ways, while Reitoca drove slowly down the road in their giant truck whooping and taunting. It was pretty sad.

At two, all the kids showed up (each player toting about 5 siblings), and I cranked up the Rolling Stones and handed out puzzles, paper and markers, and the kids amused themselves playing tag and coloring while I dished out watermelon, popcorn, and home-made orange smoothies to 33 children. Then we circled up under my big cherry tree and talked about the game. Since they were all much more chilled out, this time it went a lot better, and we talked about how close the game had been and how if it wasn’t for that crazy left-field slammer we would have won. We talked about sportsmanship and how we weren’t always going to lose; how the next game could be different and how important it is to keep trying and not give up. Blah, blah, you guys are losers, you’re never going to account to anything…I like to tell it to ‘em straight. Then I brought out a big piñata filled with candy and little toys, and the kids smashed it to pieces. Only two kids got cracked in the head! New record! Then I sent them home and spent the next hour picking up watermelon rinds and plastic cups. Boo…urns.

Oh, well. I’m thinking of making t-shirts for everyone that says “There’s No Crying in Baseball…Even when you lose every single game, ever, because your coach secretly hates baseball and is no good at teaching it.” Wouldn’t that be cute?

The dry season is in full-swing. Or should I say, Honduras, most especially the south, is getting totally boned by a terrible draught. And it’s not consensual boning, if you receive my meaning. And I think that you do. Every sponge-full of water taken from the pila is measured and used carefully, and every drop of dirty water is conserved to dump in the toilet or sprinkle on my Basil Forest I’ve planted in the yard. The guy in charge of opening and closing the water valves in the community has become a hated man, as every day that goes by without water, everyone mutters, “That guy NEVER gives me water.” People accuse others of sneaking up and closing the valves a little after he leaves, so less water leaves, leaving more for themselves when it’s their turn. When the water does come, it comes in spurts and dribbles, and people stand agonized by their pilas, hoping it will be enough to add a couple inches of water. There are days when I have not a single drop, and I can’t bathe, can’t brush my teeth, can’t wash my clothes, can’t flush out the latrine, can’t even drink (on those days, I head sheepishly down to my neighbors, who often have water when I don’t, and vice-versa—we’re on different water lines). The other day my landlord woke me up at 6:00am hollering my name at the gate, and I walked outside rubbing my eyes to the sight of Rony standing on the steps in a towel—“Hayley, we haven’t got any water—can I take a bath here?” It’s an exercise in community support, because as much as I hate to give away even a drop of my precious water, I know there will be a time when I’ll have to go clean up at their house, too. The hills have turned brown, the river is totally dry, and all the soft luscious green plants have dried out and turned into vicious thorns and spines. The air is hot and dry all day long, and only at dusk do we get any kind of relief from the heat. Many of the corn and bean crops suffered from our dry winter and people are going hungry. The good news is that the mango trees are flowering and some of the other dry-season fruit trees are producing, so money can soon be made selling that produce in the market in Tegucigalpa.

Next Monday, school begins, thus ending the 4-month summer vacation for the kids, and for me as well. I’ve spent my summer break doing daily baseball and twice-weekly “Readers Club” in the library, and that’s about it. Bout time for some real work…I was beginning to get incredibly lazy. We’re going to reduce baseball to Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the Readers Club has finished. It was great while it lasted, though…the kids loved it. The little guys came on Monday mornings, and the big kids on Wednesdays. First, the kids spent about half an hour reading silently to themselves, choosing from the books I’d laid out on the tables. Then, they circle up, and each kid shares the book he read and what it was about. Then, I read a story out loud, and then the kids retire to the tables for a related art project. For example, after we read “The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush,” all the kids were given a sheet of white paper and watercolors and painted sunsets. Or another time, we read “Lars the Polar Bear,” and the kids glued cotton balls to cut-outs of polar bears and glued them to Artic scenes they painted themselves. To celebrate the last meeting, this week we read “The Paper-Bag Princess” and “Leo and Memo,” both of which feature dragons and/or crocodiles. Then I handed out egg-cartons and they painted them green (though most of them opted to paint them multi-colored for some reason) and we turned them into scary, toothy reptilian monsters. Then I handed out as prizes some notebooks Mom’s friend Leetha had sent me, and some crappy little McDonald’s toys I’d had donated. And that was that! The kids were all begging me to keep the club going, but we can’t do it in the mornings because they have class, and I won’t have time to do it in the afternoons. But our new superintendent is on the Library Committee, so I’m hoping to get him to force the teachers to take their classes to the library once a week for silent reading or story hour, something they flat-out refused to do last year.

I’ll be starting “Team 2” in a week or so, which will be the same English classes I was giving to the teachers as the year before, only now it’s a level up. I’ll also be starting my “Yo Merezco” abstinence-education and female-empowerment workshop with the fifth and sixth-grade girls. I’ll continue doing oral-hygiene education in the village schools with free toothbrushes and toothpaste for all the kids, courtesy of Colgate, and I’ll also continue with my Pregnant Women’s Club and Hypertension Workshops in the Health Center. In March, I’ll begin a three-month workshop called “Youth to Youth,” which orientates and trains junior and seniors in high school in how to prepare themselves for the work-force after high school—gets them thinking about their characteristics and aptitudes, about what sort of work they would enjoy, or whether they would be better suited as entrepreneurs, and how to successfully apply for a job. Plus we throw in healthy doses of decision-making, self-esteem improvement, and life-skills such as good communication and positive coexistence with other people. Should be fun, but the manual is very complicated and I’m nervous because the counter-part I was supposed to do it with has left to join the police academy, so I have to train someone new. Finally, I’m going to start a Nature Club in the elementary school and give classes on environment education, and the kids are going to get baby trees through an NGO called “Trees for the Future.” They’ll tend these fruit tree saplings themselves, and then they get to take them home and plant them in their homes. Oh, and we’re going to do pen-pals with another third-grade class in the states!

At the end on the month, I’ll have my annual “Re-Connect” conference in which all the Youth Development volunteers get together to share knowledge and stuff. I’m psyched though, ‘cause I’m going to leave a couple days early and go camping in La Tigra national forest with some fellow volunteers. Then, a week later, I’m going to go climb the highest peak in Honduras, Montana de Celaque! I’m gonna capture a gnome and roast him over a spit. No reason. Just feel like it.

Finally, in political news, Pepe Lobo took up the charge as Honduras’ new president a couple weeks ago, amid much fanfare in the national soccer stadium (the best part was Pepe doing laps around the stadium in a glorified go-cart and waving happily at the people while sexy ladies danced around him and dudes dressed in white did some good ‘ol fashioned Ribbon Dancing. It was excellent). Our ex-prez Zelaya (you may remember him from such coups in which he was removed by force and then exiled to the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa) is now, I imagine, drinking a remarkably-garnished beverage on the beaches of the Dominican Republic, which is to be his new home. Be careful, Zelaya, don’t get sunburned! I imagine he must be mighty pasty after so many months without stepping outside.

Time to get goin’, chochachos…I have to go to a vigil for a women in my community who died about a week ago, of a heart attack (I was actually in the health center with my pregnant women when she was carried in by three men, followed by a string of wailing daughters…they placed her on the table, the doctor checked her vitals, declared her dead, and then the center suddenly filled with mourning family members). This makes the fourth death in my community in the past month, all of them heart attacks…too much grease and salt in the diet! I don’t think their habits are close to changing, despite the educational attempts by the health center and the constant reminder that a fatty diet leads to high-blood pressure and heart attacks. Sometimes it feels very, very futile.

Love,
Hayley