Nearing the End

Update from our little cozy spot in Moroceli, Honduras: Steve and I are doing really well. The teacher strikes ended (the kids have lost a total of forty days of classes due to the teacher strikes, but finally the government and the teachers have come to an agreement). I will share with you my daily routine.. Every morning, I get up around five thirty or so. I use the latrine, put my contacts in and greet the granny that lives next door and is always making her corn tortillas. I leave and go running by the corn farms for about an hour. I like to see all the men on their donkeys leaving to work on their farms and greet all of them as I run past. Sometimes I get stopped by the herds of cows that run past... I run up a huge gravel hill and enjoy the early sun shining down on Moroceli in the distance. I run all the way to a small stream and sometimes I see parakeets near the stream in the trees. I turn around at the stream and run back. I run past the house of the other volunteer (Timothy) who lives in Moroceli and usually catch him watering his garden. We sometimes have a cup of organic coffee together and I head back to my house. Steve is a sweetie and helps me fill up the big orange bucket so I can bathe and then we usually eat breakfast together...oatmeal, milk and a little sugar with bananas... Sometimes my other neighbor, Sagrario comes over in the morning to greet us with her little adorable daughter. Today she started teaching me how to embroider. At 8 or so, I leave to go to one of the schools in the nearby poorer villages or in Moroceli and I teach classes about the environment. I talk a lot about the difference between Organic and inorganic garbage, how to take care of the water. Why Moroceli`s water is SOOOO contaminated and WHY NOT to drink the water that comes from the faucet... (amebas, worms...) I also get to talk about SEX, positive communication.. condoms, natural birth control... the importance of birth control.. Currently, I am working more with fifth and sixth graders with environmental issues.. but each week it changes and I work with a different curriculum. So I give classes about these topics and then during recess sometimes I go with the kids and we pick strange fruits (Guayabas, Lemons, Passion fruits, Bananas)... I read stories to them and then I go home around 12:30 or 1:00 in the afternoon.. In the afternoon it gets really hot usually. Steve and I make lunch together -- usually bean stew with veggies and he makes spaghetti or whatever.. We check email in the computer center and go around visiting people. I feel famous in my town. I leave my house and EVERYBODY knows me and yells at me like I am somebody important, like a movie star. I am the only white girl in my town. If Steve and I spend the day apart and I am looking for him all I have to do is ask anybody in the street where he is and everybody knows. At five o`clock, I yell to everyone that we are going for a walk and sometimes up to fifteen people come with us. Yesterday, several little girls came with us and they walked the entire hour walk BAREFOOT! I guess since they have never really had shoes, their feet are accustomed to it. We sing songs together in Spanish and read stories afterwards. For dinner, we sometimes eat at a lady’s house named Paula. She makes really good corn tortillas, beans, and tomato, cucumber, cabbage salad. It sometimes takes us an hour to walk the five minute walk home because we have to greet everyone and say good night... So as you see, I have my daily routine here and I feel really important and well respected. As our departure date of October 28 nears, I feel really worried about the change from humble community life to materialistic big town American life. I feel like I might become lost in the large mass of metropolis, consumerist society. I thank all of you that put your greatest efforts forth to come and know my life here in our quiet dusty town of Moroceli. On the other hand, there are some days when I miss you all so much I could cry..I do cry. I miss supermarkets and eight hour work days where I know exactly what I have to do. So I have rambled on a lot about random thoughts and feelings.. I am excited, worried, nervous, anxious to come home.. a little of everything.. SO please, please help me readjust and not feel lost between two different worlds and cultures. We will arrive in Kalamazoo airport on October 28… I do not know the time or the exact flight yet. But I will let you know when I find out… Lots of love and peace, Teresa and Steve

GRINGO RICHES and CONFITES

Hola Friends and Fam! I am posting a couple of articles that I wrote for the Peace Corps Honduras Newspaper. Unfortunately, you will need to use a Spanish dictionary to understand the entire article, but it will be a fun challenge~! Love T and Steve

Gringo Treasure

My mother thrusts a box of chex mix into my arms. “I also bought you a super size jar of peanut butter. Oh, and you can have these spoons, forks, and our old set of plates and dishware. You might need them.”
My first apartment, my third year of college… “Oh, just one more thing, dear, a matching towel, rug, and shower curtain set for your bathroom that I picked up on sale at Target.” I was a “HAVE NOT” and accepted all the hand-me-downs and help that I could get. Then as if with a flick of a magic wand over night, somewhere in the clouds, in my travels between the U.S.A. and Honduras, I became a “HAVE.” Instead of a lowly, struggling, college student with hand-me-downs, I am a GRINGA with GRINGA TREASURE AND RICHES! Everyday, I am reminded, just in case I have forgotten. Big-eyed curious children point and exclaim, “Gringa!”-- not hola or como esta, just Gringa! People of all ages come over not just to visit me, but to visit my GRINGO TREASURE.
My sixth grade neighbor girl noted my Lady Speed Stick deodorant and commented on how beautiful it was (the container and top are purple.) I had just bought a second one at the Colonia supermarket in Tegucigalpa as a replacement as I was about to run out. Tania, my neighbor girl, was now holding one deodorant in each fist. “Regalame!” she shouted.
I gave her a fijese que type excuse and she moved to the kitchen in search of more gringo treasure. I admit that every time I go to Tegucigalpa, I sneak into the Espresso Americano to get a drug up on those oh so yummy iced coffees and each and every time they hand me an extra packet of sugar as if the granitas weren’t sweet enough already. Tania had now discovered the espresso Americano packet of sugar on the kitchen shelf and while petting it gently , she informed me, “This is what the rich people use.” I explained to her that the sugar in the packet was the same sugar that we buy from the pulperia but she was convinced that the packaged sugar had a much richer flavor.
Finally, she found my biggest gringo treasure of all while I was pouring my afternoon cup of coffee. I had just returned from the colegio from giving AIDS charlas and had left my box of materials on the table. Her quick little fingers reached inside the box and pulled out a shiny silver packet (a condom). “This is the type of confites that the rich people eat,” she informed me, “Me encantan los confites! Regalame uno, Teresa, vaya!”
Speechless, and red tomato faced, I sipped my coffee in an elegant gringo fashion to give me a chance to think and then replied in another fijese que manner, “I need those for a charla and wont have any extra to give you.”
The question is, What gringo treasures do you have?










The Fight with the Confite Wrapper

I Step into the hot morning sun and the first thing I see are the ten or maybe even fifteen or twenty disgusting little churro bags color coating my little patch of lawn. There are exactly eight plastic coca cola bottles tossed in with the churro bags and one rumpled up dirty disposable diaper. (Churro means potato chip) All together mixed in with the grass clippings, I suppose it could make a great salad if you look at it with blurred sleepy morning eyes. Every night, the high school students leave their classes and discard their bags, bottles and packaging of their unhealthy food habits onto my front patch of lawn and all along the main street headed up to the park. Even on the winding dirt roads that lead out of town to the aldeas are flooded with garbage. I feel anger and bitter with disgust. I change this negative urge to spit or make revenge into energy to make change.
I arm myself with the all mighty charla paper, markers, and dinamicas and head to the elementary school. I start with an introductory, break the ice type activity where each student stands up and states their name (only their first name since the long bumble jumble of their four names confuses me) and their favorite food. In an attempt to integrate environmental education with literacy and creativity, I have the students write poems individually in the same format. With the title, AMBIENTE, spelled vertically, the students have to think of at least three words starting with each of the corresponding letters to fill in the poem.
A agua, aire, árboles, aguacates
M mariposas, maravillas, mangos, y monos
B bosques bonitos, belleza
I islas, iguanas, insectos, interesantes
E ecología, enorme, excelente
N nubes, nances, naranjas
T tigres, toronjas, tormentas, tomates
E estrellas, elegantes, elefantes

(Ambiente means environment)

I am proud of their creativity as each student comes up with unique words for their poems. I then continue the charla with a drama and ask help to arrange all the chairs in an isle to form a bus. I tell them that I am the ayudante and tell the teacher to sit in the first chair and act as the conductor. I stuff all the kids into the chairs and some standing in the middle to act as standing passengers. When I have all the kids stuffed in the relajo of the pretend bus, I whip out the bag of trash that I collected in my front patch of lawn and pretend to sell churros and soda. “Quien quiere comprar churros, agua, agua, agua…Cómpreme fresco, fresco, fresco.” By the time I am done screaming and mimicking an obnoxious vender, each student is holding a piece of trash. I tell them that many people are uneducated and don’t know the damage of hurting the environment and that they often throw the trash out the window. I tell the kids that on the count of three, everybody should toss the garbage on the floor of the classroom as if they are throwing the trash out the window of the bus. “One…Two…Three…:” and the kids are laughing hysterically as the bags of churros and bottles of soda fly over the scattered desks onto the floor. I comment on how ugly the classroom is and how many of the streets in our town and on the road are littered and full of trash… I ask them what they think they can do instead of littering outside the window or on the ground.. We talk about the importance of burying garbage and how garbage sitting on the surface can collect rain water and be a home for more sancudos and more dengue and more sickness. Finally, we make a list of organic and inorganic garbage and how long each type of garbage takes to decompose. The students are astonished to learn that a plastic bottle can last up to five hundred years!

I feel good about the interaction of the students in my environmental charlas and walk away from the week feeling like a successful volunteer.. Just maybe, just maybe I am creating change. On Friday, I feel the urge to escape my small tranquil town and I hop on the 8:30 morning bus to Tegucigalpa. I even shove a couple extra plastic bags into my backpack in order to reuse them in the supermarket. We turn off the desvio and onto the Pan Americana and the bus picks up speed. I smile at the fresh breeze coming in from the window, the lush green life of the rainy season and then glance forward and notice the director of the elementary school sitting by the window three seats in front of me. Nonchalantly, he unwraps a confite from its shiny wrapper and pops it into his mouth. My heart cringes as he tosses the wrapper out the window and ironically in crushes my mood as it comes back into the bus through my window and hits me in the face.