What the @#%& are we getting ourselves into?

Sitting down to breakfast the other day, I turned to Augusto, my fiancé and said

“I’m falling in love with another man.”  He didn’t even miss a beat, taking my hand, smiling and saying,

“Me too:”

I am now 23 weeks pregnant with a little boy we have named Luca.   I feel him move almost constantly, and he has become a part of our daily discourse.  Augusto greets me after work with 2 kisses, one for me and one for my growing belly.  His over-protective nature has kicked into overdrive- I am not just his partner, but his child’s mother, and therefore all possible future bad scenarios are always considered.  It can be frustrating, especially as we are currently house-hunting, and while I am appreciating the large garden space a potential house has, he is eyeing the surrounding wall and assessing break-in possibilities.  He’d happily set up in an underground bunker if he had his way.

At times, we both look at each other with a look that says “What the @#%& are we getting ourselves into?”

Luckily, neither of us has a clue as to what’s in store for us, so we are gleefully enjoying pregnancy with the blissful innocence of first-time to be parents.  Sometimes I hear a certain satisfied/sinister tone coming from my friends and family who have had children when they tell me, “Just you wait…” but I choose not to focus on it.

I have been musing a lot about selfishness.  I am aware that this is the last time in my life that I will be able to take actions without considering the fate of my child, but it hasn’t sunk in what that implies.  If it means taking 30 years of self-absorption and wanton choices and molding them into a caring and responsible mother-figure, I’m not quite sure how that’s supposed to happen.  Is it automatic? Or do I have a long and painful road of learning patience and selflessness ahead of me? (Something tells me it’s the latter…)

There are a lot of what ifs rolling around in my head, and the biggest one is what if I’m not a good mother?  What if I become the mother rewarding her screaming child in the grocery store with candy because she just can’t take it anymore? What if I create a monster by being inconsistent and lacking discipline? What if I can’t shake my selfishness and I resent the child for demanding so much time and attention? I have to stop myself and take a deep breath when I get going down the what if rollercoaster, because I have an overactive imagination and usually don’t stop until Luca is in his 20’s and the head of an international crime ring.

This year in Honduras has completely changed the course of my life.  I had no idea when I first arrived in Tegucigalpa that by the end of the year I’d be looking at the prices of diapers and cribs and discussing the pros and cons of circumcisions. When I consider the crazy changes that have happened in such a short time, it makes me realize that there is no use playing the what if game, because time moves so fast, the only thing to do is breathe and take one day at a time.  Or more likely, hold my breath and take it one poopy diaper at a time. 

Happy Holidays to all my friends and family around the world!

Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans…

So, I missed writing a blog in the month of October.  To be fair, it’s been an incredibly busy month, and I have a legitimate excuse that’s been keeping me distracted.  I’m 16 weeks pregnant. Yup – I’ve told most of my friends and family, but I wanted to avoid a massive Facebook announcement, as I’m feeling overwhelmed enough as it is, what with this wonderful unplanned surprise and all.

Also this month – bought a car, went to visit family in Houston, and got engaged.  So…I legitimately don’t even know where to begin to try to recap the onslaught of emotions, stresses and changes that have happened in the last short period of time!

The bottom line is, I’m feeling happy – although if someone were to have told me a year ago that within a year I’d be pregnant and engaged I would have laughed them out of town.  Everything has happened very quickly, and in the moments of downtime, I try to savor the small joys of what life is bringing me these days.

 I have met the one – I always had read that when you know, you just know, and that’s exactly how I feel about Augusto, so even though in an ideal, planning-ahead scenario, we would have waited to start a family, in the end, I am thrilled to have found myself in this situation with him. He has been incredibly supportive throughout this whole process – I keep telling him to remember that I’m not normally like this (cranky, tired, bloated, nauseous etc), because he has now known me as a pregnant woman longer than the total time we were together before I got pregnant.

I had to quickly realize how skewed my view of pregnancy was before this – I had a vision of me blissfully going through my entire pregnancy with the only changes being a growing stomach.  This is not at all the case.  I had really never considered the massive changes the female body undergoes in order to create an entire new human being.  My first symptoms of pregnancy were the boobs – definitely the boobs – they were incredibly painful for the first 3 months (and still kind of are).  I changed from being a well-endowed woman who can shop anywhere to being laughed out of Honduran shops because the size of bra I wanted doesn’t exist in this country. (Thank God everything is bigger in Texas! I was able to get my shopping done while I was in Houston)  I also learned about the joys of the pregnant woman’s digestive system –it slows down, I mean sloooowww, almost to a complete halt, which creates lots of time for fermentation and gas.  Oh yay.

The weirdest part of pregnancy so far for me has been the food aversions and cravings – suddenly foods and drinks that I love (fish, eggs, fruit juice, chamomile tea) completely disgust me, and other food that never featured heavily in my diet: kidney beans (I literally ate beans every day for a month) and bagels (it took me a month to find the one store in Tegucigalpa that carries bagels) are now the only thing I want, again and again and again.

I have been lucky, I haven’t thrown up once.  Well technically I did just once, while I was cleaning the fridge, but to be fair there were some really nasty mysterious no-longer-recognizable containers of food to be thrown out.

I can still uncomfortably squeeze myself into my regular clothes, but it’s getting pretty evident that I’m actually pregnant – not just fat as a few of my coworkers and workshop participants have suggested.  (Bluntness about one’s physical appearance here is very accepted – telling someone they look like they’ve gained weight isn’t considered offensive, even though I definitely feel offended).

So, there you have it folks – I am going to be staying in Honduras for the foreseeable future, until Augusto and I (and baby) figure out where life is going to take us next.  This blog was originally going to be about my year in Honduras – well, now, it’s looking like it’s going to be about my life in Honduras for the next few years!

Resilience

This week, I participated in a national youth forum in the south of Honduras, focusing on human rights and how to be citizen overseers – they learned how to created observatories, databases and learn how to be advocates for their youth networks.

During dinner one evening, I spoke to one of the youth, Arnaldo, a young leader who has participated in various forums and events as a representative of his community´s youth network.  At some point, he uses a tissue to wipe his eye, which I notice is tearing constantly and is scarred. 

“Is your eye ok?” I ask.

“No,” he laughs, “It’s not my eye, it’s a fake.”

He goes on to tell me that a little over a year ago he was walking down the street when he noticed that a man was following him.  After a few blocks, he started running and the man started running after him.  At the last minute before the man caught up to him, he threw his backpack (which contained his laptop and his money) over the fence of a house.  Seeing this, the man realized he wouldn’t be able to rob him of anything, and so he shot Arnaldo in the face. Arnaldo tells me he turned his head just as the shot went off, so the bullet grazed his eye and nothing else.  After many surgeries (In Guatemala and in Mexico), the result was that he needed to have his eye removed and now wears a very believable prosthesis.  The only thing that stands out is that he is missing part of his eyelid, but it is slight and only noticeable close up. 

I ask him if he is scared all the time now.  He tells me no, that in fact his friends and family are surprised at how quickly he recovered and that he doesn’t have any lingering trauma from the event. I am blown away by his matter-of-factness, and the joie de vivre that I have observed in him as he leads group activities and jokes with the other youth. 

We continue to talk.  He tells me he is the oldest of 8 children, and that he tries to set an example for his siblings.  He tells me that despite his best efforts in trying to relay the education he has received to his family, his 14 year old sister still ended up getting pregnant.  Arnaldo then tells me that half of his siblings between the ages of 15-20 have gone illegally to the states to try to make a better life.

“I can´t blame them,” he says, “After all, the situation here is very bleak.  We are lucky to find jobs, and, I mean, look at what happened to me – I was shot for basically no reason. “  He tells me it’s hard, having the family scattered and facing hardships – he himself has had to leave the family home to live with an aunt in order to continue studying. “At one point,” he said, “I was walking 2 hours every day just to get to school.”

What strikes me more than anything is how this young man, at first glance, appears carefree and exactly how you expect any young adult to act. I would never have realized the deep physical and emotional scars he has to bear, and I admit to myself that I have underestimated him, and probably many other youth before him.  I still have very little understanding of the reality of growing up Honduran, and the hard choices one must face every day. 

I am, in fact, awed by the resilience shown by Arnaldo and thousands of others, and that keeps the spark burning that there is hope for positive change. 

Falling in Love in a Foreign Language

Yep, you read that right.  I am officially, head over heels, never-felt-this-way-before, one hundred per cent in love.  Augusto is a one of a kind person who has learned to live each moment to the fullest and appreciate the small blessings (a large bag of fresh strawberries, a perfectly grey morning to stay in bed, inventing new fresh juice flavours), and little by little, I am learning to see the world through his eyes.

  It took me a while to get used to life here in Tegucigalpa. The noise, the pollution (think 35 year old buses, garbage-clogged rivers, and overflowing sewers), the ever present sense of possible danger around the corner, the traffic - it wasn´t until I had been here a while before I relaxed and was able to enjoy the great things about life in this crazy city. Sometimes still, I get overwhelmed by the blatant government corruption, the lack of opportunities for this country´s youth, and the long uphill battle that is the fight for basic human rights.  Having Augusto’s shoulder to lean on has been a huge comfort.  Now, each day is a new adventure, as we zip around on his Yamaha scooter, beating the traffic and finding hidden gems around and outside the city.

A taste of some of our adventures: Santa Lucia, a beautiful old, cobblestoned town in the hills with a view looking down onto Tegucigalpa, with great little cafés and restaurants. There is even a little pond with row boats people can rent out. One night, on a whim, we went out to Santa Lucia at night to have a glass of wine and a milkshake (I chose the wine, although the milkshake was also calling my name) and enjoy a chilly evening (by Honduras standards) by an open fire, watching the lights of Tegucigalpa twinkle below us.

Yoga in El Picacho: There is a beautiful park up in the mountains about 10 minutes’ drive from the center of Tegucigalpa, and once a month, Alexa, an American expat, gives a free outdoor yoga class there.  It´s a great way to experience a breath of fresh air combined with one of my favorite activities.  I introduced Augusto to yoga there for the first time – it was a funny reminder of how difficult yoga is if you´ve never tried it before!

Having an omm moment

The view from El Picacho

Discovering our own hiking paths in Valle de Angeles:  Valle de Angeles is about a half hour outside of Tegucigalpa, and is a tourist hotspot for artisan arts and crafts.  It is also nestled in the valley right below La Tigra national park, and so is surrounded by (mostly) forested lands (the pine beetle, called the gorgojo, is steadily munching through all the pines, and much of the park is now bare).  Instead of paying the entrance fee, I, Augusto and a group of friends decided to wing it, and just started walking on a road that lead out of town.  We lucked out, the road wound in a big circle and ended up leading us back into town about 8km later, so we got a good walk out of it and didn’t get lost.

There is a small theatre in Tegucigalpa’s center called Teatro Memorias where we have seen a couple of plays – one of them was ‘The Vagina Monologues’ which I’m sorry to say I had never seen before!  It was a great show, and I realized happily that my Spanish has progressed to the point where colloquialisms and rapid speech no longer trip me up.  

A bar that is just around the corner from my house has just opened up, after having been shut down a year ago (technically for being in a residential area, but the word is that it became a meeting place for los indignados , and that was the real reason for it being forced to close) and they offer a variety of live music, art and poetry, which is a nice change from the reggaeton  and 8-inch heels one finds in the other bars.

My biggest adventure, however, has been internal, as with Augusto’s encouragement I am learning to enjoy each moment for what it is, and to be pleased with small accomplishments.  I have stopped feeling guilty for resting if I feel tired, or staying up talking past midnight if I feel inspired.  My dreams are now almost all in Spanish, and it’s only when I get really tired that I lose my fluency and start speaking mangled Spanglish which Augusto gamely tries to follow. Previously, I had considered that I had a completely different personality in Spanish than I did in English, but I guess I´ve reached the point where the two personalities have melded, because I´ve never had felt so truly myself. 

Food Food Food Food Food

Wow, this month has passed so fast I needed a reminder that I haven’t written a blog post yet for this month! Thanks Tricia! I had promised in my first blog post to write a post about food, and so this is it folks, your moment to live vicariously through my taste buds.  (I’ve started working out more than ever trying to fight against the fact that most of the food here is not helping me fit into my pants).  Most Honduran food contains beans – they use red beans here, not black, and a meal is not complete without corn tortillas to accompany.  The proper way to eat a tortilla with a meal is to roll it up and take bites of it in between bites of other food.  I prefer to make little tacos with whatever is on my plate.  It’s not diet friendly.

Ok, the first food that needs to be mentioned is the Honduran baleada.  This word literally translated means shot (bala=bullet). There is a dispute as to why they are called that, and the name has made way for many urban legends – one version is that a woman in San Pedro Sula used to sell flour tortillas and was caught in the crossfire of a gun fight (in some versions she dies, in other she lives), another is that the beans make you fire ¨bullets¨ from your butt :P, and there are various other reasons how this dish earned its name.  Baleadas are made from thick flour tortillas (the best ones are almost like naan bread), and inside are mashed beans, cream, cheese, and the option to add avocado, chorizo, tomato, eggs, and various other things.  They are grilled and served folded in half.  There is a place in the market in the centre of Tegucigalpa, Baleada´s Lourdes, that sells baleadas for 8 Lempiras each (about 50 cents).

The next food that needs a mention is the Anafre.  Anafre is a dish of beans (are you beginning to see a theme?), cheese and various spices and chorizo that is made in the Anafre clay pot – see below.

The bottom contains hot coals that heat the beans and melt the cheese, and keep the dish warm while you eat it, with fresh tortilla chips.  The perfect anafre will have strings of cheese a foot long when you dip your tortilla chip and guide it with love and excitement to your mouth. 

Of the foods that I have tried and loved:

Cow tongue

Bean soup

All of the various fresh cheeses

Pupusas (Thick corn tortillas with cheese and beans and meat inside) – to stick with the theme, actually a dish from El Salvador but commonly eaten all over Honduras.

Fresh fruit juices made from star fruit, passion fruit, melon, watermelon, pineapple, or strawberries and bananas (to name a few), that I buy fresh from the market. Oh and mangoes….

Quesadillas here are a sweet cake like bread made from sour cream, eggs, milk and sugar, and of course, cheese – nothing to do with the Mexican version of the quesadilla.

Similarly, enchiladas here are nothing like the Mexican version either.  Enchiladas are made with a base of a tostada which is then topped with ground meat and various vegetables and cabbage. Curtido, pickled cabbage with onions and jalapeños, is a common topping for pupusas, baleadas, and enchiladas. 

Tacos here are rolled fried tortillas filled with some sort of meat and topped with tomato sauce and dry cheese.

I haven’t even gotten to any of the Garifuna  dishes from the Caribbean side of the country – think coconut milk, sea food, and spices – but as I haven’t done a proper culinary tour of that area of the country yet, that will have to wait. 

The only thing I've tried and wasn't crazy about was Sopa de Mondongo - tripe soup.  I'm just not a fan of animal stomach, in any form, I guess.

So writing this has made me hungry – a man just passed by the office selling fresh bread – I´ve just bought a loaf of pan de yema – eggyolk bread, dense and sweet that goes great with the afternoon coffee that my coworker is brewing in the kitchen right now.  I’ma go eat now!

Honduran Spanish - learning to speak Caliche

Having been in Honduras for just over 5 months now, I am starting to get the hang of Caliche -Honduras’ particular brand of Spanish. 

First of all, Hondurans refer to themselves as Catrachos. The term Catracho comes from the mid-19th century Honduran General Florencio Xatruch whose army defeated American William Walker, whose purpose was to conquer Central America. Over time, Xatruch turned into Catracho.

This being a machista society, many words that are commonly used in Caliche focus on the male member, body parts, or the act of copulating or other sexual meanings.  

For instance, both the words pija and verga are slang terms that would literally translate into di*k or co*k. However, here, a normal conversation would go like this:

¿Por dónde queda el supermercado?  Where is the supermarket?

¡Es muy lejos! Esta hasta la pija!  It’s so far, it’s di*k far. (Doesn’t really work in English)

Or

Que gran vergeo anoche.  Can be negative or positive depending on the context – could mean, what a great party last night, or what a co*k-up last night.

Similarily, pijin means to get drunk and pijinear means to go out and get drunk

Paja means to masturbate or to lie

Chupar means to suck or to drink alcohol.

Una chupa which would literally translate as “a suck” can mean a party.

Words that are synonyms for the male member.

Pija,

Pito,

Paloma (literally means dove, have no idea how this word came to be)

Verga

Palo (stick)

Pepino (Cucumber), and basically any phallic shaped fruit or vegetable

Words that refer to your bottom:

Culo: A*s

Culero: A*shole or gay man

Culito (little a*s): good looking

Que pedos: what's up? (a pedo literally is a fart)

Enculado: To be in love

Cagar: To poop, but can also mean to mess something up (Lo cagaste)

The literal meaning of the work coger in Castellano means to take, but here it means to fu*k.

There are also some complicated ones like hacer el mandado which literally means to run an errand, but depending on the context can mean to have sex.

Here I am referred to as a gringa or more commonly, a chelita which refers to someone with blonde hair, but could also mean “small beer”.

Hondurans also love to use words that start with CH, similarly to Guatemala and El Salvador. There are so many that I can’t even list them all, but here are some examples that you won’t find in a regular Spanish dictionary:

• Chance: Permission, real Spanish word - permiso
• Chamba: Work, real Spanish word -trabajo
• Chepa: Police, real Spanish word - policia 
• Cheque:  Everything is good, everything is ok , real Spanish word - bien
• Cheto: beautiful woman or a woman’s butt, real Spanish words - bonita and nalgas
• Chichi: Recently born baby, or a woman’s breasts (I may be wrong on this one), real Spanish words - bebe, infante and cenos or tetas 
• Chucho: Dog (usually referring to a street dog), real Spanish word - perro 

I could go on and on, but I just wanted to give you all a taste of how confusing it can be to think you speak Spanish, and upon arrival in a new country not understand a word anyone is saying!

I haven’t even mentioned all the hand gestures that people use, but here’s a decent video in English explaining some of them: https://youtu.be/3_BcwtHIqPI

Another difference in Honduran body language – people point with their lips here, not with their hands.  If they want to point something out, they will purse their lips in the general direction of the thing they are pointing out.

So, that’s all for now folks – hope you feel as confused as I did when I first arrived here!  

Born Lucky

I’ve been neglecting my blog lately as both my work life and my home life have gotten busier. I recently took a trip to Roatan, one of the Bay Islands off the Caribbean coast of Honduras, where I met up with Lauren, one of my good friends from my Guatemala days.  Lauren is from Australia, and I hadn’t seen her in almost 4 years, so it was a wonderful coincidence that her family just happened to decide to vacation there this year. Roatan is like another world within Honduras with its crystal clear aquamarine water, white sand beaches and, something that I didn’t realize how much I appreciate until now, safe streets. I could happily wander the streets of the island without wondering if someone was going to rob me at gunpoint or hit me with their car. Right off the coast one can find healthy vibrant coral teaming with sea life.  I spent hours snorkeling and playing in the ocean, and catching up with Lauren (with a few too many rum and pineapple drinks – the West End where we were staying is quite the party spot).

I enjoyed my trip to paradise immensely and headed right back to work midweek.

 I’ve been conducting focus groups with youth from different areas of Tegucigalpa to find out what the real story is about unemployment in the city. On Friday I went out to one of the areas where I was introduced to the reality of life for many Tegucigalpians. The “colonia” I visited is part of Tegucigalpa that technically should receive the same funding as the rest of the municipality. It lies on the hills to the west overlooking the city and the view is the best thing it has going for it. The roads are unpaved; there is no police presence, no health centers and no running water. Gangs and drugs have made sure that this colonia suffers from violence and insecurity.

I and the driver of the van belonging to CDH (Centro de Desarrollo Humano, the NGO I work for) started driving up the hills to get to the neighbourhood and promptly got stuck in the mud as it had rained the night before. I quickly offered to jump out and help push, but the driver told me that it was too dangerous for me to get out of the vehicle and so we sat there for a few minutes before some young men came along to help push us out. I felt very helpless and a little afraid as I could see that the driver was nervous, and had told me repeatedly how much he disliked going to this area. After getting stuck a second time I called the local youth who had helped me organize the focus group to accompany me to the Community Hall where we were to have the session as the van could go no further. We walked the rest of the way through the mud to the hall which was a simple concrete building with no facilities or glass in the windows. Of the 15 people who attended the focus group not a single one had a job. The situation seems dismal and the mindset of the people matched it. There’s little hope that things will change and people have resorted to doing what they can to scrape by by selling tortillas, making homemade jewelry or finding day labour. Two of the women there were attending university, a sacrifice in itself as going to and from the university from the colonia costs about half of what you would make daily on a minimum wage job, plus the cost of books and the fact that there is no way to work while attending University because part time jobs don’t exist in Tegucigalpa.  Many people are of the opinion that that it’s not worth it to go to university because even after getting a diploma there is no guarantee of getting a job. Many people from this neighborhood have faced discrimination from the companies they apply to work for, who, upon finding out what neighborhood they live in, refuse to hire them for security reasons. Recently, three families from this area were forced to leave their homes due to threats from the local gangs. The chances of someone who grows up in this neighborhood being able to leave or better their situation are slim. One of the young women, who was very beautiful, told me she was about to leave for Panama to try her luck there. Her brother had already gone before and was lining up work for her.

On the drive back into the main part of the city I reflected upon the unfairness of life in that no one can choose where they are born.  Having been born in Canada was like being given a gift upon birth, to be able to have opportunities, choices, safety and to not have to think about where my next meal was coming from.  I grew up poor by most people’s terms but I never once had to fear for my life or fear that there wasn’t going to be food on the table at the next meal.  A part of me feels guilty for being born lucky.  I know this is a little ridiculous, I shouldn’t feel guilty just for having been born where I was, but I do think that with the opportunities that I’ve been granted in this life and the abilities I have, I should do as much as I can to create goodness and balance in life and I think this is what drives me to do the work that I do. 

What the... how is it possible that I'm about to turn 30?

I’m about to turn 30, and although I’ve known it was coming, I can’t seem to wrap my head around this fact – I’m going to be #$%& 30 years old and that means I must definitely be an adult, even though I still feel about 18 inside.  There have been a lot of mixed emotions keeping me up at night as I contemplate my impending real-adultness.

One of the biggest emotions is guilt.  I have spent around 8 of the past 12 years living far away from my family and closest friends. I missed the birth of both of my sister’s babies.  I missed my childhood best friend´s wedding and the birth of her first child.  I missed my other best friend’s 30^th birthday. I somehow blinked and my oldest niece is legal drinking age and living on her own and my oldest nephew is driving a car.  I am living abroad in a dangerous and difficult country and when I consider how much I am missing, I struggle to remember why I decided to come in the first place.  Am I really going to make a difference here in Honduras? Is it worth it to miss the milestones of my friends and my nieces and nephews, and the sense of community that comes with living close to my family? Do I really need to be so far away to fulfill my sense of purpose and challenge?

The second emotion is anxiety – this is the first time I realized that my youth isn’t going to last forever, and that if I want to have my own family one day, I better start focusing in that direction before my ovaries expire. I can’t seem to meld the two parts of myself into a cohesive lifestyle – the part of me that is filled with adventure and wanderlust wants nothing to do with the part of me that is getting broody and eyeing up males for the strength of their genes.  I found my first grey hair not too long ago, and I no longer have the option of going braless.  Like it or not, time is marching on, and I have to keep up or else.

I do feel a great deal of satisfaction, however, when I review my life thus far.  I have never owned a car or a house, but I am the owner of incredible, unforgettable experiences that have taught me to take each day as it comes, and have given me strengths which have allowed me to survive and cope with the highs and lows of my adventurous life.  I have loved ones on all corners of the earth, and continue to draw strength from them regardless of where we are.  I have traveled to Europe, Africa and Central America, and learned a second language.  I have bungee-jumped, zip-lined, climbed volcanoes, surfed, kayaked, white-water rafted, cliff-dived, and survived in the most isolated villages and some of the biggest cities. I have avoided being bitten or stung by (knock on wood) scorpions, snakes, stingrays and jellyfish, but I have hugged a cheetah, snuggled a sloth and walked through a jungle filled with howling jaguars (remember that Mom, in Tikal?).  I have made some really, really bad decisions, and I have learned from my mistakes.  I finally finished my undergrad degree after 10 years of on and off studying.  I have fallen in love and had my heart broken.  I have laughed so hard my stomach muscles were sore for days afterward.

My life is not ordinary, and it doesn’t follow a plan.  I have no idea where I will be next year, or what I will be doing. If I judge myself based on the lives of others, I may not have made it very far linearly speaking, but in the end, is that what I’m aiming for?  My aim for my 30´s?  Spend more time with my family, spend more time with my friends, and spend less time judging myself or others. And keep on feeling like I'm perpetually 18. 

Climate Change and Cashews in Choluteca

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Choluteca, in the south of Honduras, to learn about Cashew harvesting and production.

Choluteca is in what is referred to as the “corredor seco”, or dry corridor, as it lies in a part of the country that has been in drought for many, many years.  Winding down from the hills of Tegucigalpa, we reached Choluteca in about 2 and a half hours.  As soon as we hit sea level a wall of heat rolled over us and we put the air conditioner on full blast.  Daily temperatures range from high 30's to low 40's (celcius).  The only plus is that it’s a dry heat, and so in the shade there is some relief.

I´ve never seen an example of climate change as drastic as what I observed in Choluteca.  90% of the bridges we crossed were over completely dry river beds.  Some of the rivers have little pools of water left in them, where the women of the families that live nearby must haul their clothing to do the washing. Miles and miles of dead trees that used to be orchards spread out on either side of the dry, dusty highway, and when we get to the more rural areas, the dust from the dirt roads is so bad that visibility is almost zero. 

The land is parched.  Life is hard in this part of the country.  Most of the rural population has no electricity, and use communal wells for water.  Their crops often fail because of lack of irrigation and unreliable rains in the rainy season. The cows are all thin, and the farmers resort to feeding them melons for lack of other food and water source.

The strange thing is that this part of the country is where some of the juiciest fruits grow– melons, watermelons and mangos.  Those with irrigation systems can produce fruit year round.

This year´s cashew harvest was ruined because of an ill-timed rain.  It’s ironic – a place that is so hungry for rain, and yet when the rains come when they shouldn’t, it can wreck everything.  The delicate flowers of the cashew tree were all destroyed by the rains in January and February, and there is nothing the farmers can do but wait for the tree to flower again. Luckily, the cashew tree is hearty, and is one of the few plants that flourishes in dry hot climates, and thus is a huge opportunity for development in Honduras.

After seeing how the seed (what we call the cashew nut) is harvested, I now understand why they are so expensive!  Each seed grows on the bottom of what is called a false fruit, which is about the size of an apple and red or yellow in colour.  You can eat the fruit fresh; it is pulpy and juicy and acidic and sweet at the same time, but often quite astringent.  In the processing plants they make dried fruit, juice, and wine out of the fruit.  The cashew fruit contains 5 times more vitamin C than an orange, but because of its delicate skin it is difficult to transport, and without the seed attached to it will start to decompose within a matter of hours in the heat.

The seeds themselves are surrounded by a double shell which is manually removed by the workers at the plantation.  The shells contain anarcardic acid, a skin irritant, so all workers must wear gloves.  Even the skin of the fruit contains this toxin, and if a drop of juice falls onto your clothing, it will stain it immediately.

Every time you pop a cashew in your mouth, if it comes from Honduras, it has been processed by hand, twice.  First they are dried in the sun, and then fried quickly over a hot stove to release some of the oils, and then the outer shell is removed with a quick bop of a wooden hammer, or with the assistance of a nut-breaking machine (manually operated).  The (mostly women) people working in this area of the plant get paid around 25 cents per pound. If they work steadily all day they can usually get about the equivalent of $5 per day.  After the hard outer shell is removed, the next step is to remove the inner shell, which is usually done with a knife.  If the cashew breaks, the price the workers receive per pound gets cut in half.  From there the cashews are roasted and mixed with spices or honey or salt, packaged, and exported.  I bought as many bags of cashews as I had cash, about 2 and a half pounds for $10.

Above: Making wine by squeezing cooked cashew apples  Below: Cashew “raisins”

We made a rambling trip back to Tegucigalpa, stopping to buy jumbo shrimp and prawns at the port, fresh cheese at a small colonial town, and watermelons and mangos from a vendor on the side of the road. After experiencing the heat in Choluteca, I will no longer complain about the heat of Tegucigalpa.  A little perspective never hurt anyone. 

Where is home to a traveller?

Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Central America is taken very seriously.  Most people get the entire week off and head to the beaches with their families if they aren’t religious, or if they are, they take part in elaborate processions and ceremonies.  One of the most famous places to go during Semana Santa is Antigua, Guatemala, where millions of people come from all over to observe the processions and intricate sawdust carpets (alfombras) that are made in the street.

Having lived previously in Antigua, I knew that the town was going to be filled to the brim with tourists, and that the normally calm cobblestone streets would be almost impossible to navigate due to the crowds.  However, as I wanted to take advantage of my week off, I decided I would brave the crowds and head back to Antigua, after not having seen my friends there for over 2 years.  I told almost no one I was coming, and enjoyed the varying levels of shock and surprise when I would casually walk up to their workplace or house and greet them like I had never been away. 

I lived for almost 2 years in Antigua, but worked 12 hour days and almost never had a chance to take in the town as a tourist would.  It was an odd sensation to be back in a place that I had once felt a sense of belonging to, to see that I was just a drop in an ocean of a constant stream of expats taking up residence in the beautiful colonial town and that the moment one of us leaves, another one steps in to fill our place. Living now in Tegucigalpa, a city with very few foreigners, I found myself gawking at all the variations of humans in Antigua, having gotten used to my own face in the mirror being the only outsider I see.

I was struck many times by a sense of melancholy – the passage of time marked by the marriage of friends, the growing of their children, the evolution of their lives somehow made me feel like I had been treading water in a pond while everyone else had learned how to swim in the ocean.  As happy as I was to see everyone again, I felt also very insignificant, because my life no longer has any cause or effect in that part of the world. It is strange to realize that the impact I make in the world is not measured by any physical evidence, but simply in the experiences I have shared with others.  Once those experiences no longer have any relevance I too, cease to have relevance in that part of the world.  Good thing that memories last a lifetime, because I know I will always have the friendships created by those shared experiences.

In total this week I spent 29 hours on a bus getting to and from Guatemala.  I slept little, drank lots, ate lots, laughed lots, surfed (my back is not happy with me about that), hung out with lots of babies, friends old and new,  and in the end arriving back in Tegucigalpa, I was shocked by how much it felt like coming home.  I guess home for me is where I create my sense of belonging - a place that I have purpose, goals, and a semi-comfortable bed, and for now that place is right where I am. It's nice to feel that I'm right where I am supposed to be. 

Women's Day - A Celebration or a Call to Arms?

Today is International Women’s Day, and to me, it has never been more important to celebrate women, and to continue the fight for equal rights.  Growing up in Canada, in a household in which both mom and dad shared the burden of working and raising children fairly equally, I was blissfully unaware that in many countries of the world being born a female means being born into a silent war.  A war to have a voice, to live free of fear, to have the right to earn a living wage, to own one´s own body, a war simply to be able to walk down the street and be respected. Since arriving in Honduras, I am constantly being reminded of the long road to equality for this country and the word. It seems to me perhaps we are celebrating prematurely; we haven't won anything yet.

Gender based deaths in Honduras have reach epidemic levels, with 12 of every 100 000 deaths being labeled “femicide.” Most crimes remain unpunished, with an impunity rate as high as 98%. Abortion is criminalized, as is the morning after pill, and access to birth control methods are limited due to religious pressure and beliefs. There is also a “narco” culture, which is represented by powerful, armed, violent men, drinking, taking drugs, with a posse of available women hanging off their arm.  Unfortunately, this image becomes an ideal to young men who see no other representation of masculine power. Women are told that if they dress a certain way, they are inviting men to harass them.  Even I have noticed that if I wear a dress, on my walk to work, I am apt to receive twice the comments from men than if I dress in pants.

Quoting an article from Honduras Weekly:
But of course women can be blamed for machismo!" exclaims María Eugenia de la Vega. "Look how they treat their children: a crying girl is comforted, but a little boy who cries gets scolded because real men don't cry. A boy squatting down to pee is told that he shouldn’t, he’s not a girl! And you should see how sons are being served like princes at dinnertime, often by their own sisters!" If there’s someone who knows about machismo, it is María Eugenia de la Vega, a woman from Chile with fifteen years of experience in the gender field, now working for the United Nations in Tegucigalpa. 

There is little solidarity among women here, and little education for both young women and men, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, and it doesn’t mean that there aren’t strong men and women fighting for equality and human rights. 

I want to write about a woman who, to me, was the embodiment of female power in Honduras, and the world.  I want the world to remember her, and take up her fight for the planet, for indigenous rights, and for women’s rights.

On March 3^rd, 2016, Berta Caceres, an indigenous Lenca women and environmental activist, was shot and killed in her own home. Berta co-founded and coordinated the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations in Honduras (COPINH), and won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015 for her successful fight against the world’s largest dam builder, Chinese owned Sinohydro, who pulled out of the Agua Zarca Dam. The 4 large dams were planned to be built upon the Gualcarque River, sacred to the Lenca people, which to them not only represents the female spirit, but provides drinking water, irrigation, fish and sustains their way of living.  This dam was planned with no consultation whatsoever of the Lenca people, and in 2012 the Honduran Company Desarrollo Energeticos SA (DESA) started construction of the dam, destroying Lenca property and fields. Berta Caceres and COPINH started a successful street blockade, and raised awareness that the dam had broken international law by failing to consult the Lencan people. In 2013, the Word Bank Group and Sinohydro pulled out of the project due to human rights concerns.

Berta Caceres received multiple death threats during the street blockade and subsequent protests in the capital. She was not cowed however, as she said “I bathed in the river, and she spoke to me, and told me that I will succeed”.

 During her acceptance speech for the Goldman Environmental Prize, she said “We must shake our conscious free of the rapacious capitalism, racism and patriarchy that will only ensure our own self-destruction.”

I hope the world will listen.

Copan Ruins

This past week, Cuso had its annual volunteer’s meeting in Copan. We set out on Wednesday morning, excited for the journey, 11 optimistic people in a bus. 13 hours later, when we still haven’t arrived, we are all silent, our behinds numb, wondering if we had entered some twilight zone and that we would be on the bus for eternity.  In actual fact, the distance between Tegucigalpa and Copan is only about 400 km, but the combination of an overly cautious driver, a few stops that included a tour of a colonial town and a huge lunch, plus the roads and traffic made the trip stretch on forever.  It was after 10pm before we checked into our hotel, exhausted but happy to have arrived. 

As soon as we arrived, a cold front hit, so the next day as we met in the hotel for our day long workshop, I wasn’t too disappointed to be stuck inside, as it was grey and cold outside.  In the afternoon, to break up the workshop, we visited a bird sanctuary tucked up in the hills above the town.  They rescue birds that were pets and have been abandoned, or have been injured and need rehabilitation.  Many of the birds were happy to greet us with a shrill “hola!”, which was endlessly thrilling.  We got a chance to hold some of the birds, 3 named Buffy, Missy and JLo. :)

The following morning we set out on a guided tour of the Copan ruins. The city at its peak had over 30 000 residents, and was ruled by kings thought to be gods by the common people.  Our tour guide informed us that magic mushrooms were used by the rich on a regular basis. The wealthy Mayans would paint their children’s noses with bright colours starting from a young age to distinguish them from the poor children, which resulted with the children going cross eyed from constantly seeing their own brightly coloured noses.  They would also modify the shape of their heads with boards, which created a kind of cone head, and purposely pushed their teeth out, so they could imbed the teeth with jade.  So, the most handsome Mayans were cross-eyed, buck-toothed, and cone-headed. 

There were 16 kings in the dynasty, who ruled over a period of 400 years.  All of those rulers died of old age, except for the last one, who was captured by a nearby city and beheaded.  This resulted in the people losing faith in their leaders, as it was obvious that they weren’t actually gods, and the city started to disintegrate soon after that. In their skeletal remains, it appears that there was a lack of resources, and overpopulation may have played a role in their demise.

In the afternoon, we went to some hot springs about an hour into the mountains above the town.  It was a paradise, with a series of pools running down the mountain side. I could have spent the entire day bathing there, and the cool temperatures were perfect for the activity.

The next day we all piled back into the bus for another long haul back to Tegucigalpa.  We made a quick stop at the PulhaPanzak (Mayan for white water) waterfalls, which were breathtaking, clear water falling over green moss covered rocks.

Back in the city, I am back at work at the NGO I work at, the Centre for Human Development (Centro de Desarrollo Humano).  The goal for my year of work here is to do all the initial research and investigation of the current labour market, in order to convince the municipal government to give us a space to start a Youth Employment Centre.  I will be holding a series of participative workshops in order to get the youth involved in the initial stages, with the hope that this will be a youth-run Centre.  Unemployment is extremely high in Tegucigalpa, and the highest numbers of unemployed are between the ages of 16-30.  There are few universities, and the costs of higher education keep many from continuing past ninth grade.  Many companies and businesses have a distrust of young people, as they tend to be the ones involved in gang activity, and are unwilling to give work contracts to people with little experience.  Some companies even require women to undergo a pregnancy test to prove they are not pregnant before they will hire them.

Hopefully, at the end of this year, we will be ready to open the doors to a Youth Employment Centre that will offer job search assistance, entrepreneurship support and links to vocational training.

So, here’s where you come in!  Cuso needs your help to fund this project!  I have raised around $700 of the $2000 I promised to raise when I signed up as a Cuso volunteer, and I’m hoping I can get to $1000 before the end of this fiscal year.  Any donations over $10 receive a tax receipt, and it will be matched 10 times by DFATD (now Global Affairs Canada), so your $10 donation actually equals $100 for Cuso!  Please go to the following link to make your donation, and I promise to keep you updated about my progress! 

https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/FundraisingPage.aspx?registrationID=3166565&langPref=en-CA&Referrer=http%3a%2f%2fwww.cusointernational.org%2fdonate%2fdonate#&panel1-1