Spring Break!

Sorry for the lack of recent updates, but life down here had been pretty hectic lately, but luckily has since calmed down a bit. At the end of February we headed to a small town outside of Tela for our second retreat of the year, which was a great couple days of relaxation. Right after that, I had my first visitor in Honduras! My friend Zac from high school and college came down for his vacation for 9 days. Actually, only the first few days were vacation-like as we hung out in Tela with Lauren and Mike. We were actually stranded there for a bit because our car broke down again, but thankfully close enough to the town where we were headed that we found another truck to literally drag us into town. We spent some time on the beach and visited a mangrove forest/ecological reserve in the town of Miami. Miami was an awesome place, because it’s a Garifuna village surrounded on one side by the beautiful ocean and on the other a huge lake and forest area filled with wildlife such as birds, monkeys and crocodiles. The Garifuna people are native to the north coast and have a completely unique language and culture from that of the Honduran people. This village was made up of small palm-leaf homes without electricity, and everyone there made their living fishing. I had a great time touring this area because it has a totally different feel and look from the Honduras that we’re used to in the more Southern parts of the country.
After a few days in Tela, we headed back to Talanga to get things ready for the arrival of a spring break group from Elms College in Massachusetts. We had a crazy 10 days with these 11 students and their fearless leader Sister Carol. They helped a lot with the park project we are working on in the area around La Ceiba tree in the center of Talanga. Sunday we held a festival as a fundraiser for the park and started painting a mural in the park area with our talented friend Luis. The neighbors were selling some delicious typical Honduran foods and there was a traditional dance group that preformed. The students even willingly played a group of girls from Talanga in a soccer match. People flocked to the field to watch women play soccer with the added bonus of half of them being gringas. The crowd definitely wasn’t disappointed when the gringa team was owned with a score of 13 (or something) to 1, not counting the bumps and bruises they endured. They were really good sports about everything though, and even Sister Carol joined in the fun. She volunteered to be goalie to avoid having to run all over the field, which I would normally consider a good strategy… except maybe in this case when you are playing Hondurans who are amazing at soccer and kick the ball really hard. She survived thankfully, but it wasn’t because the challengers cut her any slack for being the oldest and holiest person on the field. Tuesday we brought two of the girls who are nursing majors to Guaimaca with us to get a taste of Honduran healthcare. Wednesday morning was spent with half the group painting some more and the other half working in a community of Talanga by the name of Nuevo San Diego. We just recently started forming a relationship with this community through our friend Chico, but it’s a very poor part of Talanga that could use a lot of help. A group of neighbors recently started organizing this community more in an effort to give the children there activities to get involved in besides gangs and drugs which were prevalent in this area. They organized soccer teams that play every Sunday and have built a community center, which is where the students helped pay for and lay down a cement floor that morning. I think it was a great experience for everyone though, working in this community, which is new to us volunteers even, and seeing the struggles of some of the poorest in Talanga. We met a number of children running around without shoes and talked to people in the community that told us about their struggles finding water in this area. The people living here only receive water for two hours, once a month maybe, and a number don’t even have pilas or the big cement tubs in their backyards used to collect the water when it does come. Many are forced to collect water from a tiny stream running through the neighborhood, but not this time of year because it’s dry season.
After a long morning of work, we headed to Correlitos where we were spending the night to give the students (and ourselves) an idea of what life is like in the remote villages of Honduras. I was lucky to get to stay in the house of a family we know quite well because we visit them every Thursday. For some reason, they’ve always wanted us to spend the night with them, but I finally did and had a great time. We were warned that people are often “over-hospitable” to us on these overnights… if that’s even a term, and our boss tried encouraging the families not to do anything special or out of the ordinary for us when we stayed because we were just coming for the experience, but the family I stayed with clearly ignored that advice. One huge lesson I’ve learned here is a lesson in hospitality, because Hondurans in general are incredibly generous to anyone who comes into their house, giving them the best seat in the house, a cup of coffee, and offering them food even if there is little to go around, but this hospitality was definitely taken to the extreme for us. We were fed three meals there, and each contained meat- a precious commodity usually reserved only for holidays, but it was only us who ate the meat, no one else in the family. Even though their simple house only had one bedroom and a few beds, the parents insisted that we sleep in that room and in their beds instead of on the mattresses we had brought for ourselves. It was interesting to see how life works after the sunsets and the only light you have is firelight. Some of the older guys in the family played Trouble, a game we always bring out when we visit because they love playing it, and used a burning stick to see what was going on. We ended up making bead bracelets with the kids and some of the adults using small fires to give us a little light. And yes, this was as difficult as it sounds, so I probably won’t be beading after sunset there again. Our time spent there was great though, and I loved hanging out with their family and all the kids for a longer period of time that we normally do.
The next big event was Friday when we organized a trash collection day in the Ceiba park area. We worked with the students from an elementary school nearby and the Boy Scouts to clean up the neighborhood and install 10 trash cans to help cut down future littering. The Elms students organized arts and crafts and face painting for the students during recess and raised some money for the park funds.
On Saturday, after a long week, we did some sightseeing with the students in Tegucigalpa. We visited the Picacho statue, which is a giant statue of Christ high up on a hill overlooking Tegus. It was an incredible view and my first time there too. Afterwards, we visited a zoo which happens to be in the same park area as the statue. The word “zoo” in Honduras should have raised red flags for me, but I figured it would be harmless fun. I didn’t think about the fact that there are few “rules and regulations” in this country, and that could hold true for zoos as well. I can safely say this zoo experience was the most unique one in my life thus far. Things were standard in the snake room, thank goodness, with everyone in protective cages, but when we stepped outside we saw a monkey just chilling in the yard. We soon realized that this was just one of a number of monkeys that apparently roam free at the zoo, doing as they please- which must be a nice life for them, but is a little nerve-racking for me. Most of the animals that were confined to cages, jaguar included, were close enough to touch if you really wanted to, making this a great petting zoo as well. The animal selection was smaller than zoos we’re used to, probably for the best, with the scariest inhabitant being that jaguar. We also saw raccoons, coyotes, weird pig-like things, peacocks, crocodiles, caged monkeys (apparently only the unintelligent ones who haven’t figured out how to free themselves) and last but not least, bunny rabbits- which yes, were in cages and harder to physically reach than any of the other animals mentioned above. They were fun to see though after 7 months, considering rabbits are not animals you find here in the wild.
But, that concludes my “wild day at the zoo” stories, but it was an experience I’ll never forget. I hope in their short week here we were able to give the students from Elms a good taste of life in Honduras. I really enjoyed having them around, because they brought a renewed sense of excitement and energy to our work here. It was kind of like we got to see Honduras through new eyes again. After being here for 7 months we begin to take life in Honduras for granted and don’t take notice of the same things we did at the beginning, but having the students here and listening to them talk about the things that impacted or stood out to them each day helped remind me to open my eyes more to take note of the good and not-so-good things that go on around me everyday- so for that, I’m really thankful.