Up hill

Top to bottom: Leidi, Kenia, Wilmer, Berto. These guys took me on a kid tour around Brisas. Their (new) houses, the kindergarten ("kinder," in the front room of one of the new houses), the trail where they like to play, an orange wheelbarrow. The last stop was the library.

From Copan. A little boy walking after the day's rain. Up hill.

Up hill. Probably best describes this round in Honduras. Four months in and we still don't have a building. The books (in empty corn sacks) and some of the furniture is stuffed in a back room in Cecilia's house. The rest of the furniture is in the carpenter's workshop. Some of the books got wet. Only a few of the women really get how to run the library. The teacher never comes to the school in Brisas. A lot of the bean crop has been ruined by the rain.

Whenever I ask Jose Manuel how the project is going, he always says the same thing. "Subimos." Translated, it means "we're progressing" or "we're moving forward." Literally, it means "to rise" or "to go up." And that's what this whole thing has been about. Slowy, I suppose, we are rising up. There are books. There will be a building. It will stop raining.

The rest comes after.

Deep river blues

Let it rain/ let it pour/ let it rain a whole lot more/ 'cause I've got them deep river blues.

Outside of Cecilia's house in Brisas. Chickens huddling over the fire pit, under the rusted tin overhang, out of the rain. Whenever it rains, they all get together and watch from the same spot.

Luisa watching the rain through the kitchen window. The people all get together and watch, too. We huddle inside the house. After the rain, someone usually takes the broom and sweeps all the water off of the porch.

Radio cure

Listen while you work. A radio hanging on the wall is a village staple. Battery-operated, scratchy reception.

In Brisas, we usually listen to Radio America or Honduras Radio Nacional. "H - R- N! La voz informativa del pueblo!" Mostly news. Sometimes soccer or the same woman singing (church music and old love songs). Commercials for coffee and cell phone service. The kids know all of the words.

Despacito

Lots of progress with training. Not a lot with the building. Still working on the foundation. (It's been raining for days, nonstop. Tropical Storm Matthew).

Cutting wood (with machetes) to make corner guides.

Laying the level line around the building's perimeter.

Josafina (front), Kenia and Leidi playing in the library's footprint.

Home?

Buffalo, but not Cleveland?

The globe in the library in Copan.

Field trip

To the public library in Copan. Everyone's first time visiting a library, of any sort. The idea was for the women to see how a library looks, how it works.

Talking with a librarian. He explained how books are organized, a little about the Dewey decimal system. Here, he's explaining what a dictionary is.

The library in Copan is run by a Finnish NGO. They're having a meeting in Copan of all of their librarians in October. To talk about how things are going, share ideas. And they invited us. Dona Santos exchanged numbers with one of the librarians. Hopefully they'll stay in touch, and someone from Brisas will go.

The library has story hour twice a week. Once in Spanish, once in Chorti. The Chorti story hour is more about telling stories, not reading them. Dona Cecilia liked that idea. She can't read. One of the librarians told her that a library was a place for sharing stories from memory, not just from books.

So, a pretty successful trip. Ideas, advice, connections. To celebrate, we bought books. A dictionary and two atlases to grow our tiny reference section.

Finished

6 women, 12 purses. Everybody finished one practice purse with hands.

Now we're working on second purses, with different designs.

Four of the women gave me their finished purses. Para recordar. To remember. Really nice of them, but I felt a little weird. The idea was to sell them and make a little money.

Morning commute

From my almost-daily hike into Brisas.

I usually take a taxi from Copan to Las Sepulturas, part of the Mayan ruins. Then, someone from Brisas meets me and we hike in together. Forty minutes, depending on the mud. Sometimes we walk in from Copan. An hour and ten minutes. Better to take the taxi. L20 - $1.

Jose Manuel's machete in the trail.

Don Genaro near part of Las Sepulturas. Pretty cool, walking through the ruins every day. Las Sepulturas are seperate from the main site. Not many visitors. Quiet, impressive. Lately, they've been flooded because of all the rain. A temporary lake. Here's where the machete comes in. To avoid the water, we head off the trail and into the woods. Yesterday, Genaro hacked a new path for us through ropey vines and around ceiba trees.

Owl babies

Las Lechucitas. Martin Waddell.

Reading with kids in a somewhat-dark house in Brisas. From left, Berto, Kenia, Santos, Jeny.

Mother, daughter

Cecilia, left, with her daughter Catalina.

Cata, working on las tarjetas familiares. Each family in Brisas gets a notecard. Last name on top, then names of family members who can take out books. The cards will stay in the library. When someone comes to check out a book, the book's card from the card catalog will get paper-clipped to the family card. Then, into the "out" box.

Independence day, con't

Scenes from the parade.

Front line. Escuela Mayatan, the bilingual school in Copan.

Students all in white. The drill team.

The history section. Different Honduran historical figures on posters, framed in blue. Lots of moms looking for kids, running up to them with bottles of water and cameras, telling them to drink and smile.

Bringing up the rear. The marching band from another private school. Pine needles on the ground. (Honduras' national tree is the pine). The parade route smelled like a forest.

Independence day

El 15 de septiembre. Feliz dia de independencia.

Statue of Francisco Morazan, Honduras' big national hero, in the park in Copan. Decorated with wreaths for today.

The central park, full of people and Honduran flags. Lots of vendors cooking tortillas, selling snow cones. Cakes under netting to protect from flies. Water and juice and horchata in plastic bags in coolers. Peeled oranges and sliced cucumbers for sale with salt on the side, the Honduran way.

Push cart

From Copan.

The ice cream man. An old wooden cart, bicycle wheels, umbrella. A dying cow bell. The cart has two coolers, ice and ice cream. An old-fashioned hand grinder to make ice shavings for snow cones. Reused two liter bottles full of fruit-flavored syrups. Fresa, naranja, uva.

The snow cones get topped off with thick milk and honey. Also a spoon and a straw, neither of which are very helpful. The only way to eat one of these is fast, before it melts or the bees pick up on it.

Burger queen

Gender equity, fast food style. The Burger Queen restaurant, parque central, Copan.

Hands

Making a pattern. Cata traces her daughter's hand to use in a purse design.

Yellow hand, in progress.

Progress

In Copan, staying with the local peace corps volunteer. Hiking into Brisas almost every day and working with the women. Cecilia, Cata, Luisa, Soyla, Marina. Exhausting, but good. The library itself still isn't much to see, but I've been focusing on a different kind of work. The women have been working with the books, learning how to wrap them and prepare them for the library. Soon we'll be starting in on the Dewey decimal system and the card catalog.

Wrapping books. We worked outside. Lots of chickens and skinny dogs running around. One chick got stuck on a piece of contact paper. Below, Oneida, Luisa's daughter.

Weaving. The women in Brisas already know how to weave pretty well. Purses out of yarn on small hand looms. They use plastic combs to push the rows of yarn together. We worked on making different kinds of designs. I showed them how to make hands. From left, Cecilia, Marina, Luisa.

Making flowers out of fabric to decorate the finished purses.

Lady, Jose Manuel's daughter, with a library book. Eric Carle. El canguro tiene mama?

Made in Cleveland

Driving home from the office yesterday in the rain. We pulled over to let a group of guys (workers) hitch a ride in the back of the pickup. Standard Honduran road etiquette. One of the guys was wearing a Cleveland Indians hat. The old kind. Blue with a big Chief Wahoo. The hat was pretty worn, but that toothy grin was still bright. All those pearly whites. A little reminder of home.

A lot of people down here wear clothes donated from the States. You end up seeing some funny things. When I was working in Copantle with Don Juan on his house, he kept wearing the same lime green t-shirt. "Mount Sinai High School Senior Trip: We're Going to the Best Place on Earth." On the back it said "Disney World."

Las luciernagas

From La Moskitia, the jungle in eastern Honduras.

The indigenous people there have this cool belief about fireflies. Las luciernagas. When they come at the end of summer, everyone opens their windows at night to let them in. The fireflies are the spirits of the dead, back to visit.

Split

From El Heraldo, the daily newspaper in Tegucigalpa.

"Partido" means "party," as in the Liberal party. Also "parted," as in separated. The third sense is "game" - of soccer, of politics. The split in the Liberal party over the Resistance has been a pretty big topic down here.


Since the coup, the Resistance (FNRP) has refused to support the new government. The rest of the Liberal party is trying to move forward. In the meantime, lots of infighting.
"Each one for his side"
- "Coup-supporting trash!"
- "Delinquent rustler!"

City chaos

Rain rain go away.

Things have been a little crazy in Tegucigalpa lately. The rain will not quit. A week ago, it washed out a 12 meter section of the north road into the city. Now there is this big crater and the road is closed. We have to take a circuitous route to get into the city. Over a muddy half-road and onto an unfinished highway.

In the afternoons, when it pours, people stand in their doorways in the barrios with plastic brooms and try and sweep the water into the street.

Also, the teachers are on strike. Again. This time they are in the streets with the unions. An increase in minimum wage, etc. Yesterday we could hear their bucket drums and air guns from the office. Exciting, but also a little old. Students have missed a big chunk of the school year because of striking teachers. I read an editorial in the paper advocating a do-over. Cancel this school year and make everyone repeat it starting next year. 2010 redux.

Pepper tea

At home in Tegus. Last night we had pepper tea and new tortillas.

The pepper tea is made from leaves of the pepper tree - the kind that goes with salt, not the vegetable. The tea ends up pale red. Vaguely spicy.

New tortillas are different from regular tortillas. Made from fresh corn, as opposed to dried. The corn is cooked for a few minutes. Then it's ground and made into dough. Gives the tortillas a different taste. A little richer.

Graffiti

Lots of great political graffiti around Tegucigalpa. Alongside the highway and on the sides of buildings. Mostly coup-inspired. A sampling:

URGE MEL

Short for "Es urgente que Mel regresar."

Probably the most popular anti-coup slogan. It´s spray-painted everywhere. Bring back Mel. (Manuel Zelaya, liberal pre-coup president).

EL PODER ES EN LAS CALLES

"The power is in the streets."

My favorite.

SI A LA CONSTITUYANTE

"Yes to the constituent."

More power to the people. Most of the graffiti is in simple, thin lettering. Black, red or white spray paint.

SI SABES EL DERECHO, SIGUES LA IZQUIERDA

"If you know what´s right, follow the Left."

On the side of the road in downtown Tegus. Great play on the directions of the political spectrum.

MAS ARTE, MENOS GOBIERNO

"More art, less government."

Under a cool sketch of a cartoon head with giant eyes.

Library update

Sorry for the blog slacking. My backpack fell off the back of a pickup truck. My computer and camera chargers were in my backpack. Still trying to replace everything. So no pictures for now.

Despite all the rain, the library is moving forward. Construction has started on the actual building. The foundation is finished.

Also, Buena Vista has officially changed its name. Brisas del Valle - Breezes of the Valley.

Leaving in a week or so for Brisas to work with a group of women there. We'll talk about how to organize and run the library. They'll learn the Dewey decimal system and how to catalog new books. Also, we'll figure out rules for membership. This should be the best part of the whole project - working with the women to make the library sustainable.

Should be in Brisas for two weeks. I´ll be staying in Copan at the local Peace Corps volunteer´s apartment and hiking in every day.

Language, found

From inside the school at Buena Vista. The Honduran National Anthem, translated into Chorti, language of the ancient Maya.

Buena Vista and neighboring villages are working to reclaim Chorti, their ancestral language. There aren't any living speakers, at least not around here. A few times a week, a teacher comes in from Copan and gives a lesson.

At a meeting inside the school, Jose Manuel asked one of the young girls to stand up and read some Chorti from a chart on the wall. First she read the Spanish, then the Chorti translation. Hello, good day, how are you, mother, father. Language recovery in progress.

Close-up

The outside wall on a new house in Bonete.

A mesh bag, a calendar, nails as hooks, electronics ads, a newspaper clipping, cut-out pictures of dancers.

Buena Vista housing project

For all those who donated, an update:

16 houses are almost finished (20 total). Currently, the community is putting roofs on houses. Next, they will pour floors. Then, move in.

Here's one of the finished houses, roof and floor.

Another house, almost finished. Roof, but no floor.

According to Jose Manuel, all 20 families have one person who learned how to lay blocks through the housing project. Now, those people can find construction work (and decent pay) in town.

Thanks again to all who donated. Your money is helping to build a lot more than houses.

This Machine Kills Fascists

Cerro Azul's finest. This place is really hard to get to - about 40 minutes straight up into the mountains outside of La Entrada. On a recent visit with a Heifer study tour, these guys serenaded us with songs they wrote about Heifer Project and Fundacion DIA and how the projects they received had improved their lives.

Second set. The small guitar was passed on to this guy who sang some traditional "Mexican drunk love ballads." Alba, who is also the local school teacher, helped on vocals. It was great.

The strings on the bass guitar are made from the same rainbow nylon people use to make the hammocks that are everywhere. "Jesus" is written in silver nail polish.

Boss man

Jose Manuel is the chief organizer in Buena Vista. About once a week he meets me at Las Sepulturas, part of the Mayan ruins, and we hike up to Buena Vista together. Fast. He always has on a different hat that looks a little big.

He lives in a house with 12 other people. His wife, Catalina. They have two little girls. One is named Lady, which sounds strange but also beautiful in Spanish. You kind of have to slow down to say it. Lay-dee.

This is it

Work on the library has been slow. I really underestimated the rainy season. It pours for hours almost everyday. The airport in Tegucigalpa has been closed, roads have been tricky, and the river near Buena Vista is swollen.

But this is the spot. And after a lot of planning and waiting, construction was supposed to start yesterday. (Still waiting to hear).

Meanwhile, I've gotten some book and furniture donations from a local development organization. Also opened an account at the hardware store. Sand finally made it into Buena Vista. So did the blueprint for the building. Met with a carpenter and discussed tables and bookshelves.

Things are happening. Slowly.

All work, no play...

...is not possible in the Honduran sun. Don Jose cutting coconuts open for the sweet water on a work break.

For mom

Lots of makeshift scaffolding around the new houses. Hard to capture just how shaky this stuff is in a picture. And every day they got higher. By the end of the week we needed a long ladder to get onto these "puentes." OSHA, where are you?

A-Team

In Copantle, the village divided itself into three groups to work on houses. Each group works on the houses of all of its members. Working with Don Juan:

Lupe and Tomas (r).

Lupe is in charge of the group. He gave me pointers on my brick-laying skills. Also taught me how to make a rebar column.

Tomas was pretty quiet.

Marlen.

The first woman I've ever met who knows how to lay bricks. She's really good. Spends a lot of time fixing our lesser work.

The whole team was great. We got a lot of (hard) work done. Left Copantle blistered, sore and a little sunburned. Earned my campesina badge on this house.