Photos

As per request, I have posted a number of pictures below. They are in reverse chronological order, although that doesn't really matter.

Christmas is coming! So in our house we have a molded plastic picture of Saint Nicholas and his cows.

My house! The new house is to the left, and you can just see the abuela sitting on the porch. The old house is to the right of the new, and two more houses are hidden behind the two mango trees at the right of the picture. The mango trees are starting to flower, and I'm told they are very fruitful trees!

The road outside my house. The burning garbage pile is a frequent sight, as garbage disposal services are not present in La Campa.

A tour of an integrated farm, showing the visitors from a neighbouring village admiring the fish pond.

120 chickens create a lot of noise and a huge smell! This was part of a chicken distribution day: each family got 20 hens and 1 rooster.

CASM colleagues, high school interns and a few children celebrating the successful graduation of the interns and my birthday. Luckily, they didn't push my face in the cake as per tradition!

Welcome to La Campa!

Aerial view of La Campa. My house can just barely be seen at the left of the picture. It is the most upper-left house, nearly blocked by the tree. The CASM office is just off the right hand side of the photo.

One view of my room.

Another view of my room.

A view of the gorge from my room one October afternoon.

"Teach me Lord, teach me Lord, to wait"

The other day while waiting, a song started going through my head:

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength

They shall mount up with wings as eagles

They shall run and not be weary

They shall walk and not faint

Teach me Lord; teach me Lord, to wait”

Although the song uses one definition of waiting, the last line rung true for me using the more common definition of waiting. “Teach me Lord, to wait.” I spend a good deal of time waiting (example: meeting was supposed to start at 8:00; we arrived at 9:15; the other attendees didn’t arrive until after 10:30, and the meeting began at 11:00), and sometimes get impatient and bored. I have made a list of things I have enjoyed doing while waiting:

1. Making lists. I have already posted a couple of lists (things in Honduras that make me look twice; things I am learning), and I am in the process of making more (7 underway!). I daresay I will post more lists before I return to Canada.

2. Watching old women scold men. This is particularly fun if the scoldee has a sense of humour and cowers under his scolding.

3. Finding out how much of something fits in the back of a truck. In this case, “something” can be cows, bags of cement (which tell you not to do drugs), people, sacks of recyclables three times taller than the truck itself, furniture, sand, manure, trees…

4. Watching my thermometer. I thoroughly enjoy this. Watching the temperature change as we go up a mountain, or as we move from sun to shade, or night to day. I am keeping track of the maximum and minimum temperature each day. The lowest was 11.9C, and the highest was 23.7C.

5. Watching animal/human interactions. Chickens casually stroll into the kitchen when the door is open, only to be shoed out again with the bottom half of the door closed behind them. So the chicken flies back in! Dogs happily lie in the sun in the road, and refuse to move until a vehicle is practically upon them. Goats don’t like going for walks; they prefer to go where they please. Lassoing a cow is a challenge for a learner, and a pasture full of 12 cows with their new owners who are learning how to lasso them is a picture of chaos.

6. Identifying which animals have passed based on what they have left behind. Since the rainy season has ended, the streets are getting full of animal droppings. I am able to identify 6 animals based on their excrement (dog, cat, cow, horse, goat, chicken).

7. Making family trees. Families here are generally large and well inter-connected. To help me keep track of people, I have two main family trees underway (my host family, and the family with whom I eat). And yes, the two families are related by marriage!

8. Finding the second tallest person in the room. It’s never hard to identify the tallest person – in La Campa, it´s always me. The second tallest person is harder to spot, especially if the men are wearing their hats, which adds an inch or two to their height.

9. Catching glimpses of telenovelas. Telenovelas are soap operas, and are always intensely dramatic, romantic, and ridiculous. My favourite so far is named “Sea of Love.” I have never watched an entire episode, and I don’t think I want to.

10. Naming our rooster. I was lying awake one morning, waiting for the rooster to calm down enough that I could sleep, and decided that he deserved a name. This rooster likes to roost in the tree just outside my door, so that whenever he wakes up, I do too. I have named him Maurice Aureliano. I’m not sure where I got the name Maurice from, but Aureliano comes from “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Aureliano is a character in the book that has 17 sons by 17 different women, and each woman names her son Aureliano. I can see distinct similarities between Aureliano and the rooster…!

Learning and Serving

SALT is Serving and Learning Together. In theory, this year in Honduras I am both serving and learning. I know that I have already learned lots; the serving aspect is harder to see at this point. In orientation we were told that they initially wanted to name the program Learning and Serving Together, to put the emphasis on the learning aspect. However, SALT was a better acronym than LAST. This might just be anecdotal, but has some real elements of truth. I often find myself with periods of waiting, so I´ve started making a list of things I am learning. So, at the beginning of my fourth month as an MCCer, here is a list of some of what I have learned thus far:

1. Spanish. This was a major worry of mine before coming to Honduras, and it has certainly been my biggest achievement. I can participate in conversations (with fewer than 4 or 5 people), give a training on soil analysis (somewhat haltingly, but the people could understand me), pray and sing (although understanding sermons is still beyond me), and relate the story of my bus trip to Tegucigalpa.
2. How to sit. I often have to wait for somebody or something. For example, last Wednesday we were supposed to leave at 7am, and didn´t depart until 8:15. This involves a lot of patience, which I am also learning. However, since I like to be doing things, I generally need to find something to do when I find I can´t admire the mountains any more. So, I am learning:
3. How to play Sudoku. My cell phone has one game on it: Sudoku. Before coming to Honduras, I did not like this game. Now I have progressed through the beginner and intermediate levels, and can complete the advanced level in 15 minutes.
4. To greet people. When you arrive somewhere, everybody must be greeted individually, and not collectively. I can shake everybody´s hand (but not in a firm grip like we do in Canada). Women can be kissed on the cheek. When walking down the road, some kind of greeting is given to everybody you pass, but this greeting can be hello, good day/afternoon/evening, or goodbye. I haven´t yet figured out if there is a reason to give one of these greetings instead of the other to each passerby.
5. To drink coffee. I don´t like coffee. But here most people grow it, and everybody always has a pot on the stove. So when you drop by, they automatically offer you a cup of coffee. I don´t like to refuse hospitality, so I am gradually able to drink it without grimacing. It helps that they pour in lots of sugar!
6. New units of measurement. Not only have I adjusted to the lempira (L18 is about $1US), but also to manzanas (1 manzana = 7000 m²), tareas (17 tareas = 1 manzana), garrafas (1 garrafa = 5 litres), and quintales (1 quintal = 100lbs). Manzana is also the word for apple, so at first I wondered why we kept asking, “How many apples do you have?”
7. How to hand wash clothes. I enjoy washing my clothes. Each house has a pila, which is a large concrete water storage container (probably 1 cubic meter). Attached to the pila is a concrete washboard. Every Saturday morning I stoop over our pila (because I´m too tall for it, of course), and scrub out my clothes. Normally the MCC host family agreement has the host family wash the clothes, but here in La Campa something must be wrong if a young woman can´t wash her own clothes! Even the blind abuela washes her own clothes.
8. How to make tortillas. I´ve already discussed the extensive tortilla-making process, but haven´t made any more progress since then.
9. How to deal with ´el norte.´ In the rural areas, summer is defined as when it doesn´t rain, and winter is when it does rain. So although the temperatures are approaching the lowest of the year, we are certainly in summer. El norte is the cold wind that blows from the north (norte) at times during October, November and December. When el norte is present, the doors rattle, cold drafts find their way in through the cracks, and nobody is warm. So I have a towel wedged around my window, a plank across the crack at the bottom of my door, and a large stone to keep the door from rattling. And I have five covers on my bed (each cover is about as thick as denim).
10. What goes down must go up. This applies to walking on mountain roads. I´ve decided that in Honduras the glass half empty/full approach is not as good as my down/up approach. An optimist says that what goes up must go down, and looks forward to the downhill segment of the road while slogging uphill. A pessimist says that what goes down must go up, and dreads the uphill segment that must follow the downhill. Ive been both an optimist and a pessimist.
11. Animal care. I know about the breeding cycle of rabbits, how to vaccinate cows and rabbits, a variety of herbal cures for chickens, and what to feed chickens and rabbits. I am also familiar with the methods for killing chickens and rabbits, although I have not been called upon to participate (yet)!
12. A bit about bravery. A number of people have called me brave, which makes me feel proud but perplexed, as I certainly don´t feel brave. Looking back over the past several months, I think that the bravest thing I´ve done was take the leap of faith to come to Honduras. And when I made that decision, it didn´t feel brave at all – it just seemed like the natural next step for me. I guess it comes down to how you define bravery.
13. How to get by without a daily weather forecast. Normally I like knowing what the weather forecast is for the day and for the week. With limited contact with weather bulletins, and a limited understanding of Honduras weather, each day is a surprise.

I am positive I will continue to learn more as the year progresses, and will have a whole new level of education when I return to Canada in July (next winter!).

Our truck couldn't cross this river, as there were too many rocks! So we unloaded all the material, and it got carried across to the other side on a pedestrian bridge.

My accomplishment one Saturday morning!

My first training session! I led a workshop on soil analyis for 31 adults, plus children.

Life in the Campo

Greetings from a chilly La Campa! "El norte" is here in full force, with strong winds and low temperatures. This morning my room was 14.2C, and it was a big challenge to get out of my warm bed. I can really recognize the privilege of central heat in Canada, which so many people cannot even fathom.

Let me try to give you an idea of life in the campo (rural life). Don´t be confused by campo and La Campa - there is no relation between the words (like invierno meaning winter, and infierno meaning hell). According to Wikipedia, the name La Campa came from miners working in the area in the late 1800s. When it was about to rain, they would say "Vamos a acampar!" and go and rest somewhere out of the rain.

The chickens wake up first, and are always excited about that fact, making as much noise as possible. Gradually, the human population gets up between 4am and 7am. I get to sleep in all the way to 7, but my 15 year old neighbour gets up at 5 to prepare breakfast and lunch for herself and her father before going to school. I get up at 7, and have an extremely fast shower. I compare my shower to diving into Lake Huron on a cold May long weekend - invigorating but terrifying!

Breakfast is normally tortillas, beans and eggs, with fried plantain on occasion. I then head off to work, which has a marvelous schedule: 8-12, and 2-5. Lunch is tortillas, beans and vegetables; supper is tortillas, beans and eggs. Women here spend much of their time preparing for making tortillas. First the dried corn must be removed from the cob, then it boils for several hours on the wood stove. Once it is soft, it must be ground twice to get it to the right texture. Then water is added to make a dough, and the tortillas are hand-made. I´ve tried the last step twice, and it is hard to get it the right! Every tortilla that I eat is perfectly round, the same size, and the same thickness. Mine are somewhat oblong and uneven. But I will get there!

In the evenings I sit in the kitchen with my host grandmothers and cross-stitch until 8pm, when I get ready for bed. Early hours are the norm here! My weekends are filled with church (I am attending both the evangelical and Catholic churches, although I feel more comfortable with the Catholic service), washing clothes (a long process by hand, but one which fills me with pride when I see the clothes-line full of clothes), studying Spanish, reading, hiking, cross-stitching and visiting. There is a wonderful verb: pasear. Anybody can go paseando, which means go up to a neighbour´s house and visit for a half hour or so over coffee, a fresh orange and conversation. No invitation necessary. It contributes to a real sense of community.

At work, I am still figuring out exactly what I´m doing, although one of my projects have begun. I gave a training last week on soil analysis, and will be sending five soil samples to a laboratory this afternoon. Last week I helped deliver 120 chickens as part of another CASM project. 120 chickens create a huge smell, but people were so happy to receive these birds. Food security is one of the main aims of CASM, and chickens are an important aspect of food security.

I learned last week that I am known as "La Gringita" by people in La Campa. So, best wishes to you all from La Gringita!