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.