High School Graduation and... DONKEY POLO!!!

Qué más hay de nuevo acá?

Graduation, December 2nd

A couple weeks ago I was invited to the town high school graduation ceremony. High school graduation rates are a heck of a lot lower in this country than they are back at home, so it was a pretty big deal for the students. There were some nice speeches and all of the traditional procedures one would expect at a graduation ceremony, though it felt like the whole thing took forever (as with any graduation ceremony). I swear it lasted almost three hours, after starting an hour late. 

When it was finally done all of the students sang a couple celebratory songs together, with the music teacher playing the guitar. After that, the speakers blared a cover of ‘We Are the Champions’ as the students returned to embrace their friends and families and file their way out. A joyous time was had by all.

To cap off the night, I was invited out for a meal with all of the high school teachers at a local restaurant. I don’t know the high school teachers as well as I know the elementary school teachers, so it was a good opportunity to network for a bit. I find that it never hurts to at least make myself more visible in the community.  After the meal all of us made our way to the local discoteca/dance hall. I didn’t do much there, as the crowd was mostly the graduated students (17 and 18-year-olds). There were also groups of people that were both younger and much older. There’s a part of Honduran culture that I have a hard time accepting, which is that it is acceptable for a high-school administrator to dance very closely (and somewhat provocatively) with someone who was still a student 24 hours earlier. But who am I to judge?

Donkey Polo, December 10th

The following weekend I went to go meet up with a large group of volunteers at the feria (a type of fair that each town in the country throws once a year to celebrate their patron saint) in Yuscaran. The big draw: a Donkey Polo competition! It was something I had been anticipating to check of my Honduran culture to-do list for quite some time.

I arrived a little late to Yuscaran after my bus broke down on the way. After a rolling-start to get the bus going again, and a bit of walking, I was still able to make it just in time to play. I changed into shorts since it was raining and I didn’t want to ruin the only pair of jeans I had with me, yet this may have backfired a bit. I was definitely showing a lot of very pale leg as I was sitting on a donkey. Muddy jeans are temporary, but Facebook photos are forever. Oh well.

The match was of Hondurans vs. Gringos. It was a bit of a ‘crap’-show, both literally and figuratively. I say ‘literally’ because there was a bunch of uninhibited donkeys running around. I also say ‘figuratively’ because we stood absolutely no chance against the home team. They were using their own donkeys that they trained themselves and had ride every day, whereas pretty much all of us had never even sat on a donkey before. They don’t really listen, despite all the strange noises we made nor how many times we slapped them in the rear or the head.

My goal at first was to simply make contact between my polo stick and the ball. Upon doing so I considered the event to be a successful one, as my donkey basically just walked around randomly and favored standing still uselessly in the corner. I took a break and let someone else ride, only to get another opportunity on a separate donkey a little while later. This donkey was a little smaller (my feet could touch the ground!), but I was able to steer it by pushing its head in the direction I wanted it to go. Sitting atop my six-legged donkey, I hovered around the offensive side of the court (somewhere just outside of the three-point line, más o menos) where eventually I got my chance… A teammate somehow knocked the ball towards me and I took the opportunity to strike, reaching back with my mallet and smacking the ball towards the goal as hard as I could. The shot rang straight and true, and it flew right into the goal! I got some cheers from the gringo crowd, hoisting my mallet triumphantly into the air with pride.

We ended up losing roughly 41-2, but it was still a great time. After the game we all got off the donkeys and meandered around the court for a bit. As we were standing there a bunch of Honduran kids ran onto the court and we spontaneously started up a soccer match without saying the word. Again, it was Hondurans vs. Gringos (a.k.a. white people; I’m not sure if I’ve defined ‘gringo’ for the folks back home yet). I was mostly preoccupied by trying to not step in donkey poop as we ran around in the drizzling rain, but it was still a lot of fun. As a side note, the Honduran kids were definitely a lot more carefree about where they stepped. After about ten minutes of madness we called the game to an end, and got together for a final group shot. Oh, the memories…

We ended up all hanging out and partying for the rest of night, though I took it easy for the most part since I was feeling a little sick. Thankfully I still felt well enough to stay up and hang out with everyone else. There were a bunch of people there I hadn’t met before, and I had a good time getting to know them a bit. There were also some cool fireworks celebrations in the park, including the Latin-American equivalent of the ‘running of the bull’. This would be the infamous ‘toro’, a slightly bull-shaped mechanism stuffed to the rafters with fireworks. Essentially someone holds it over their head and runs through crowds of people as fiery explosives shoot out of it in every direction. Classic Honduran fun!

Until Next Time…

That’s all for now! It’s crazy to think Christmas is only one week away already, and I’m going to try to write one more post before the holiday. The other day I had a fun field trip to Teguz with a group of teachers in my town, and there were also some interesting celebrations the following night at home after the championship match of the Honduran soccer league. Stay tuned…

Thanksgiving!

As I mentioned earlier, work has scaled down a bit lately, though there have been plenty of social events around Honduras to keep me busy, starting with a Thanksgiving celebration…

Thanksgiving Weekend

This is the first time in my life that I had to celebrate Thanksgiving away from home, but I definitely made the best of it. There was a plethora of Peace Corps volunteer celebrations around the country, and I decided to celebrate with a group nearby in my department, in the city/town Danlí. It’s only about an hour and a half away from my site, and it’s the closest place to me that has other volunteers. We ended up getting together the Friday after Thanksgiving, since it wasn’t exactly feasible for all of us to travel on a Thursday. As you might have guessed, it is not celebrated by Hondurans, and many of us had to work on the actual day.

I didn’t really know most of the people that would be there, but as usual all of the volunteers were really cool people. We had a great time preparing some food together (mientras disfrutando algunas cervesas). Traditional Thanksgiving foods are far from typical in this country, but thankfully most of the ingredients could be found at a large supermarket nearby. In total we had all the essentials: turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and more. It was probably one of the best thanksgiving meals I’ve had. Also, in true Thanksgiving fashion, many Hondurans were invited to the meal (thus peacefully bringing together two distinct cultures). In total we must have had about 25 of us eating together.

After dessert, I knew it was officially Thanksgiving when I was so stuffed that I felt sick. Que rico!

Since we were all together as a group, we decided to enjoy our time off. Danlí is a much bigger place than many of us live in, so there is a lot more to do during the night. We wandered around town a bit, and spent most of our time dancing at a bar that was right next to one of the volunteer’s houses. The interior of the bar was actually quite nice, and for a moment it felt like we could have been back in the States. It was on the expensive side, with drinks costing what equates to $2 at the least. For a Peace Corps volunteer, that’s mucho pisto!

After taking a break from dancing I sat on the leather furniture and looked around the room, which was mostly lit by some sort of green strobe-light/laser display. I relaxed for a bit, listening to the pumping music and taking it all in. I spend so much time immersed in the poverty that exists in this country, and it just felt strange to juxtapose that reality with the ambiance of the bar. Just as when I get to visit the mall in Tegucigalpa from time to time, I realize that it’s not what I had imagined Peace Corps to be beforehand.

After a while we went to go home and stay at the nearby volunteer’s apartment. However, some of our group had gone into the apartment complex, and they couldn’t open the door to the building entrance from the inside! They slid the keys underneath the door, and we still couldn’t get it open from the outside! The main gate was broken, and there wasn’t anyone we could call for help at 1:30AM… We initially decided to worry about it in the morning and go sleep at another volunteer’s house (as there are 3 total in Danlí). At the last minute before giving up, we realized that there was a place on the balcony that was low enough for us to climb to, with the help of a boost from below. One by one we climbed up top, and were able to enter the actual apartment without a problem. We fell right asleep, and woke up to find that the lock had been fixed by the complex owner early in the morning. Only in Honduras…

On Saturday, I decided to stay in town for an extra day to help out with a project that one of the volunteers in town was doing. She was doing a project where she was painting a mural of the world map on the outside wall of a school with the help of students. About 16 middle school students showed up on a Saturday during their vacation, which I thought was a very successful attendance mark. In addition to painting, we helped lead some activities and games to test their knowledge about geography. The whole group enjoyed pizza for lunch, and then we walked home.

That night we went out to dinner. We went to a place that was supposed to have Mexican food, and I had a strong craving for some fajitas (or at least something slightly closer to the Central American food I had hoped for before I got here). The restaurant ended up being fresh out of fajitas (again, only in Honduras), so my friend Alex and I decided to leave the rest of the group and look for somewhere else to eat. We stopped by a small restaurant that is actually owned by an American man from Texas. I can’t remember his whole story, but apparently he moved here years ago and got married to a Honduran. Now he lives in Danlí and owns a small restaurant that serves ‘American’ dishes. I enjoyed some ribs, mashed potatoes, corn, and bread. It tasted pretty darn good!

We ended up going out dancing again to the same place as the night before. Thankfully, however, the apartment locks worked just fine and we were able to get home at the end of the night without incident. On Sunday some of us went out to get breakfast at the same American restaurant, and we all enjoyed some pancakes, eggs and bacon. I decided that I would try to come back and eat there as soon as I could. Around noon I was able to hop on a bus to go home. It was already full, so I ended up having to stand on the steps by the door the whole time. By the time I got back I was quite exhausted, and spend the rest of the day relaxing in my room.

Overall, did I miss being home and having Thanksgiving with my family? Of course I did. Even so, at the same time I couldn’t complain about the great time I had celebrating in my new home with my new friends and family.

More to come…

I have more to write about (since it took me so long to write this post), so expect some more posts very soon, possibly early next week. Between the town’s high school graduation ceremony, a Donkey Polo competition, and an upcoming Honduran wedding that I will be attending this weekend, I’ve been quite busy socially. Heck, I might even give some updates on work projects I’ve been doing lately, though they are admittedly sparse. I also just realized Christmas is coming in ten days…

El tiempo vuelve!

- Peter

School's Out

No More Pencils, No More Books…

The school year has ended here in Honduras, and thus begins a drastic change in my daily schedule. Naturally, since all of my programs and counterparts are in the public schools, I have no real formal work at the moment. Thus, I’m going to have to get creative to stay busy.

One thing I have done so far is start to teach English classes to a couple groups of sixth-graders here in town. The project was suggested by my director from Peace Corps when she came to visit with my counterparts several weeks ago. Whereas I was worried that teaching English would pigeon-hole the perceptions of how I am able to help the community (I really don’t see it as something that will help this country by itself), I do see it as an opportunity to get to know better a group of students. I will also get a chance to see for myself what it is like to manage a classroom of Honduran students first-hand.

I had the support of my counterparts in advertising the classes and selecting a group of students. Originally the plan was to just have one section of about 20 sixth-graders (who are just about to enter High School). However, there was such a demand from both schools that I ended up agreeing to do two sections of 20, one from each of the two elementary schools. On paper I was set to go, with a list of students and a clear schedule (one hour a day for each class, five days a week, for 5 weeks).

I thought it would be a great activity to keep me busy until just about Christmas time, but things haven’t been going as well as I had hoped. Despite the apparent demand to take the classes, attendance has been the number one problem. For example, at one of my elementary schools (Escuela Francisco Morazon) a group of 24 students was selected out of a total of 80 or so students, the majority of which eagerly claimed to be interested. However, on the first day only about 15 came. I thought that would be fine enough, but each day less and less students came. I had to cancel class the other day when only three students showed up. There are some meetings at the school this week, so I plan to talk with the teachers to think of how we can improve attendance.

There have been some positives in spite of some of the difficulties, however. For example, on my first day at the Luis Portillo school, I was a little frustrated when only 5 girls of the 20 students showed up. However, I decided to make the best of the opportunity. I had a list of the entire group of 20 students, as well as a small group that happened to know where everyone lived. I decided to ask them to help me look for the rest of the class. The girls were really helpful and agreed to lead me from house to house all over town (for almost two hours in the hot sun, without complaining at all!) to remind the other students about classes the next day. I actually had fun with them, and it was also a good opportunity to introduce myself to some parents and families. Along the way I got to see some other parts of town I hadn’t seen before, including this view from a hill, which features a panoramic view of the whole downtown area of Teupa. I don’t have the best camera, but hopefully this will still give you a sense of how things look:

The trip around town was mostly a success, as the next day we had a group of about 13 or so, and a consistent group of ten for the rest of the week. The following week, however, the group dwindled down to only 5 students. Though I’d love to have a larger group, it’s not so bad to work with the group that’s the most interested and fun to work with. We did another trip around the neighborhood this week, so hopefully that will help again as time goes on.

Outside of the English classes I have no real formal work. My counterparts are telling me that it’s going to be very hard to convince parents and families to attend any kind of events during the vacation, so I’ll just have to stick it out. I plan on doing some slightly informal activities, such as playing soccer with kids in the town park. Almost every kid in town knows my name, so I’m thinking it might not be too strange if I just show up at the court and ask to play. Like I said, it’s nothing formal, but hopefully it will help me to build trust with the students and make myself more visible to the community.

Yuscaran

In other news, I finally got to meet some more Peace Corps volunteers a few weeks ago! Most of the volunteers from my department came. The departments are basically equivalent to ‘states’ back in the U.S. For perspective, the I’ve heard the country of Honduras is about the size of Tennessee, and thus I would estimate that more or less each department is more or less the size of Rhode Island.

Anyways, they had a welcome party for me in Yuscaran, a really beautiful town that’s only about 2 hours or so from Teupasenti. Yuscaran is definitely one of the most picturesque towns I have seen in this country, and as I was shown around the cobblestone streets and saw the spectacular countryside views from the mountains, I definitely felt quite jealous that I wasn’t living there. Here are some pictures:

That day as a group we hiked through the mountains a bit in search of some waterfalls. It was a nice hike (and not too tough), and along the way there were some cool sights. For example, here’s an old gold mine that we came across (I don’t remember how far it dates back to):

It was pretty creepy, but wasn’t all that deep. It maybe went in about 15 or 20 feet.

Then of course there was the waterfall. I decided to go in the water, which was quite cold:

The hike was a lot of fun, and it was cool getting to know the other volunteers along the way. On our way back we took a break on someone’s rooftop/porch, where there was perhaps the best view of all. You can literally see Nicaragua in the distance:

After all that we had a nice meal at a local comedor, which is sort of like a laid-back restaurant that feels more like eating at a neighbor’s house. We then grabbed a bit of ice cream, and loaded up on some ‘beverages’. We then spent the rest of the night consuming said ‘beverages’ and playing ‘beverage-related’ games. It was simple but a lot of fun.

I also used the time to copy a ton of movies and TV shows onto my hard drive from the other volunteers here. There’s a whole system set up where the volunteers share files, so now I have a ton of stuff to watch when I get bored. I may or may not have watched four entire seasons of How I Met Your Mother in the following two weeks.

Finally, we all slept in the house of the volunteer that lives in Yuscaran. The next day I felt surprisingly well-rested after sleeping on the hard floor with nothing but a sleeping bag in a room full of volunteers. We all took a bus home early in the morning, and a few hours later I finally made it back to Teupa.

Qué Más?

Coming up I have a decent amount of social events to keep me busy, and hopefully will help me through the dry spell of work. There’s Thanksgiving this weekend, Donkey Polo in Yuscaran December 10^th (And yes, that is playing Polo on bareback mules. Be jealous.), Christmas, New Year’s, and then finally, my birthday. It’ll be tough to spend the holidays away from my usual friends and family. However, I do have new friends and family to share it with. The plan right now is to visit my old host family in Las Cañadas for Christmas (who basically are a second family), and the rest with my new PC volunteer friends.

Once all the fun stuff has passed, I’ll only have one month to kill before the next school year starts. I have plenty of planning and preparations to take care of, so by then I should be plenty busy.

That’s all for tonight, and as usual, I miss and love you all.

-        -  Peter