Two Months, exactly, in Honduras

After last week's sort of scary, more depressed about the security of the country blog, this one is a little more upbeat. Overall, we have been exceedingly blessed and continue to be so.

The children are making good progress in learning Spanish. Jack is doing a good job practicing…just talking, trying out new words and combos. It is great to hear him work on that. Henry and Aspen are learning and seem to understand a lot, even if they aren’t speaking back. Abe still is working and Calla is still (though less than before) uncomfortable when everyone around her is speaking Spanish. She furrows her brow and just looks displeased. However, she keeps surprising us with the Spanish words she knows. Jack asked her today, “What does venga mean?” and she correctly answered, “Come.”

In Honduras February is the Mes de Amistad (Month of Friendship). Friendship is a theme throughout the month. I think we should do that in the US.

We went insect-collecting this past Thursday afternoon until about 8pm. We set up a mercury-vapor lamp near a white sheet to attract a lot of moths and other insects—mostly moths. Likely we attracted a new species in this place. It was a higher elevation, forested region about 1 hour from campus. I will try to post a few pictures of some cool moths that we saw. This one was a little bigger than Monarch-butterfly size. The trip to Santa Inez was a VERY bumpy ride over very bad roads with huge rocks in them. We were in a converted ambulance that had benches on the sides for people to sit in with all the stuff placed in the middle. It was hard to sit and not fall all over the place as we rode along. Plus, the generator was leaking gas the whole way, so we got a little buzzed going and coming. I am sure my brain is now 41 years old having lost about a year’s worth of brain cells in that atmosphere. I would definitely go again, though. Dr. Schlein is a real entomologist and knows his insect families. It was great to be out in the field with a real expert. Reiniery Ortiz was our driver. He is an excellent driver and tireless worker. He was collecting insects like a pro. He has been working for the University as a driver for the science fieldtrips for about 14 years. A driver does way more than just drive up and sit around. He also helps teach the soils class and did a lot of work with us collecting insects. He probably knows enough to have a BS in Biology!

Reiniery and I are also in the Branch Presidency together. I would put him up there with any other counselor I have worked with or known. He has been a member of the Church for about 4 years and is totally dedicated and is a great worker and speaks up, with great ideas. He is outgoing and a solid guy. I can see him moving upward in the future. I think of him as a friend and his wife, too. They remind me of the Fife’s—Solid, good, funny, friendly, totally honest, smart people. We also had great food at their house a few weeks ago. This is getting long, so I will have to write a little more about them another time.

This week was interesting in a number of ways. We went to Valle de Angeles, a town that caters to tourists and is made up of shop after shop filled with things tourists would like to buy: purses, dresses, paintings, sandals, sculptures, magnets, machetes, and so on. We had been once before, but just to look. Now we went with clear goals of what to buy.

Aspen: I looked and looked for a dress and finally found a traditional Honduran dress. It has a white shirt and white skirt, with red, green, blue stripes [of rickrack—those are the ribbons on the upper and lower edges of the dress. It is really quite nice and Aspen looks like a bleached out Honduran.]. Dad came to my class to talk about science. I knew most of the answers.

Abe: I had a party at Valentimes day. I had orange soda and sprite. I got some chips and pizza and I got a Valentine from Nadia. It had Elmo and superheroes on it.

I got a chair in Valle de Angeles. It has these sticks, without bark on them. It has a leather seat with a horse head carved on it. [It is a three-legged chair. The leather seat has little pockets for the sticks to fit into so it stays on. It fits Abe perfectly. I am thinking to get one for everyone for camping. They’re very cool little three-legged stools.]

Henry: I bought a machete and a hammock with my own money in a little town called Valle de Angeles [Henry calls it Angelos Hanjelos]. The machete has the seals from all the different countries in Central America. It has a black leather case that has a part cut out of it so you can see the little seals on the blade. My hammock is orange, black, blue and yellow. The hammock was $15.

There was a skunk at school and it sprayed a girl in the face. I saw the skunk. She had to go home, [as you might imagine!]. She was in 4th grade. She came back to school two days later.

Jack: I bought a hammock that is black with red and white stripes. It also has some other stripes, but I can’t remember. I got the hammock for $15. I also got a little bracelet. A girl at Church today said,“¡¿Bob Marley?!” because the bracelet has green, yellow and red stripes.

I went bug collecting with Dad, Reinery, some students, and Oliver [Dr. Oliver Schlein from Germany, working as the director of the insect collection. He is funded by GTZ, which is the German gov’t equivalent to USAID. I worked for them in Indonesia in the ‘90s]. All of the native villager people came up to us to ask us what we were doing. We just told them we were collecting bugs. I kept catching little bugs in my hands. I stood around talking with people in English and Spanish. We had these super-filling dinners and Henry started eating mine.

There was a big fire in a town called Comayagua where more than 350 people died [you might have heard about it on the news…it was very massive in this Tennessee-sized country]. We also saw a fire in Comayagüela when we were in Tegucigalpa on Saturday. [Comayagüela is the other half of the capital city. It is also one of 3 Honduran LDS missions here—Teguc, Comaya., and San Pedro Sula.]

There was a safety party and I bonked my chin on the floor while I was doing the worm. We had a gift exchange for Friendship month in YM/YW on Sunday. I got a haircut. We rode in a mototaxi again today. I got to ride shotgun this time.

Ranae: So, having a maid is great. I have enjoyed Miriam’s company this week and deeply appreciate her help. The children are wowed by the good work she does. Besides keeping our house spic and span, doing laundry, and helping with meals, she helped remove a splinter from Calla’s foot, mended Abe’s torn blanket, cleaned Calla’s well-used baby dolls, and taught me how to make tortillas from just plain corn. On Monday she taught me how to make tortillas from Maseca (a kind of cornmeal you buy at the grocery store). On Tuesday she brought a bag of dry corn kernels and lime powder, which we boiled till the corn was soft. After Miriam took the corn home and ground it that evening, she brought back the resultant masa (dough) and we made a big batch of tortillas. The fresh-corn tortillas are tasty and . . . corny. We laughed and talked as we made tortillas. Wow! I laughed and talked in Spanish!

I was touched by a gift Miriam brought for Dia de Amistad—a package of cookies and a little card—and by her honesty when I was about to pay her ten extra lempiras on payday. She pointed out the 50¢ error, which won my heart. I am just really happy to have her as a help, a Spanish teacher, and a friend. She is cheerful, hard-working, and patient. I hope that our arrangement is favorable for her and that she feels comfortable as a dear friend in our home each day.

Here are Ranae and Calla next to an oregano tree (the tall, branchy white blossomed tree to the upper right) and a Poinsettia. I have seen a lot of oregano, but never this big! I always wonder if you could make something out of oregano wood--a table, and small hutch or something...maybe I'll do it someday.

The Yellow Wallpaper, Fresh Tortillas, and the Case of the Missing Pajamas

To begin with, this is a shot of the chapel/multipurpose room. When the electricity went out this past Sunday, we opened the window you can see behind the podium to provide light. The subdued light (I think) made it one of the more reverent meetings so far!

This week passed by as it were unto us as a dream. We continue to find new creatures nearly every day, for sure every week. This week, we found a purple-legged centipede-the legs were really very purple (deep lavender).

Henry: The electricity went out at Church, just before we were to begin. We got a maid who makes our bed every day and sweeps. Her name is Miriam and she used to work for our friends the Packs before they moved to Ecuador. At school I was in the English-language spelling bee. I got 2nd place because of “poison.” I am going to go to Tegucigalpa for the English spelling bee. It is verbal, not written [in California, the spelling bees are written]. I tried baleadas, which are a typical Honduran food. They were very good, except for the platanos. We invited some friends from Church over to eat lunch with us. I am doing my science fair experiments using paper airplanes. I will see how wind will affect different designs of planes.

Aspen: Didn’t report anything this week, though she is bright and beautiful and happy. Aspen is as imaginative as ever, which does require the need to urge her on, sometimes, to get the essentials done. But she is a good, tolerant, generally peaceful 7 year old. She is getting ready to be baptized and is quite excited about that. The font here is outside, and the (untreated) water is pretty cold. It is also above-ground, which is interesting and new. A eucalyptus tree hangs over and so we regularly have to clean leaves out of it. That is where Abraham found his big tarantula last week.

Abraham: Didn't report anything this week, though he is regularly getting candy in his preschool class. He always saves one for his little sister, Calla, at home. Great boy! This cute, little blond boy in Honduras is a hit with the Young Women at Church. However, Abe is as uninterested in them as can be. He is regularly mobbed by people at Church, which is difficult for this sensitive 5-year old. I taught him to use his elbows defensively and to say "NO,", I was also trying to think of short words that would communicate something useful and came up with "Dejame!" ("leave me alone") and "No quiero." We practiced and he did assert himself more this past Sunday, which was helpful and good. But people are not so easily dissuaded, and it seems that the notion of "No" really meaning "Yes," is present here. Occasionally intervention was still required. Hopefully, progress will be made from both sides as we live here longer.

Jack: I won the spelling bee in my class this week. The electricity went out at our house and at Church. I got 18 bags of skittles for my science fair project. They cost 13.30 lempiras each. I was sick for 1 day of school.

Stuart: Last week people got sick—a virus, I think—that has finally made its way through everyone. I was the last to succumb on Thursday night and am about 90% today (Sunday). This the 2nd time this has happened to us in about 6 months, but had never happened before. I lost my phone on Monday. While it was very inexpensive ($12), it had a lot of numbers on it I had acquired over the weeks. I got a new one on Thursday when I was in Tegucigalpa on Thursday.

I was in the capital at the US Embassy to attend a “required” State Department security briefing as a requirement of my Fulbright award. The information provided there was quite interesting! Mostly, it was scary and for a few days made me very concerned about staying here longer. I am better now, though lingering thoughts still persist. The embassy was very pleasant to be in. It was very relaxing and considering going back out into the city where crime is so rampant was a serious letdown. I just wanted to stay there longer. To be sure, Zamorano and environs is a safe place compared with the capital. Just like S. Central LA is not a place to go hang out and visit without being very alert and aware, the LA outskirts are quite pleasant and generally peaceful. My mission was more preparation for this trip than I had imagined! Besides the language, I had plenty of exposure to MS13 and 18th Street gangs (which were exported to C. America, with the same names).

Friday night Ranae and I went on a date to the pool and reclined in fine pool chairs under the coconut palms, gazing up at the star-filled, tropical, evening sky. In that circumstance, how could I be nervous about anything! There were so many stars, if you weren’t careful or hadn’t seen the constellation, Orion, you might not have been able to pick it out! It was so relaxing, I could actually feel the muscles in my back and neck getting less and less tense. It was truly idyllic.

Ranae: I’ll be honest. Life with five young children in a developing country that is ranked as the homicide capitol of the world is not all fun and games and tasting tortillas. After Stuart came home from his meeting at the Embassy, we both were sobered by the statistics and instructions he heard. Our sense of security was toppled. They reassured him that Zamorano is an island in this country, a little bubble of serenity and safety. Still, we do think we’ll keep our trips into Teguc to a minimum. Our prayer continues to be that we will be safe from harm, that we can be at ease when all is well, and that we’ll have a clear sense of danger if and when necessary. Faith is trusting that that prayer will be answered.

So now we have an employee, a maid. Such is the stuff of luxury and something we definitely couldn’t afford in America. The fact that we can afford help here reminds me that our middle class in America is upper class in Honduras. We are very blessed.

Miriam is fantastic. She is industrious and cheerful, patient with my Spanish, and willing to correct my mistakes. When we talk, I always have my Spanish-English dictionary handy, and we often write down our words so we can understand each other better. Having fresh tortillas, on demand, hot and ready in a tidy towel-wrapped packet, is luxury. Every day is clean bathroom day. Every day is mopped floor day. My house sparkles! I am not used to this! It is nice.

The other night Stuart and I were getting ready for bed and he couldn’t find his pajamas. We finally found them, neatly folded and tucked under our tightly-pulled-up sheets on our bed. Henry and I were treated to well-scrubbed tennis shoes, which now are white again. If we can pry it away from Calla, Miriam will give her doll a bath. Miriam makes lunch and chops veggies for dinner.

But there is a but. Miriam is fantastic, but what do I do now? I have a new understanding of women in the Victorian age, who had servants to raise their children, keep their houses, and do their cooking, and who had very few opportunities for engagement outside of their homes. What did they do? They had social clubs and philanthropic ventures, organized picnics and learned French. I can understand the discontent and even insanity some of them felt at not having work to do that is daily, demanding, and satisfying. (Did you read The Yellow Wallpaper in high school English class?)

The older four children are in school, and my common household chores are passed off to someone else now. What do I do? Visit the neighbors and volunteer at the school, organize dinner parties and learn Spanish. Calla and I take walks around the compound and find bugs and sticks and palm branches to play with. But if I do not do something that requires labor, I will really go batty. Either I have to have some work, or I can’t have Miriam come. I am confident that I can figure something out. The Spanish immersion and fresh tortillas are worth finding a way to shift things around in my schedule and make room for Miriam.

Mototaxis, Employment, and a Tarantula

2/5/2012

Abraham: When we were cleaning the Church, I was cleaning out the outside baptismal font, I saw a tarantula. It was in where you got baptized. It runned into my dustpan, because I was cleaning out lots of leaves that were in there. It kind of startled me. I didn’t get to ride in the mototaxi this Sunday. Almost every single day, I eat chocolate chip cookies when we are having snack at school. There are only four swings on the playground. Every day I always get candy at preschool. [Abe always requests one to bring home to Calla, who is at home and doesn’t go to school.]

Henry: Yesterday we saw a teeny, teeny scorpion scurrying across our dining room floor. We picked it up in a jar and it is sitting on our counter. We cleaned the church and I got to mop the chapel. Aspen and I were sick this week. I missed 2 days of school and watched a lot of movies. I rode in a mototaxi. Mototaxis rule!! One mototaxi is yellow and has a spoiler. It looks kind of funny.

Aspen: I was sick this week. I missed 2 days of school, but now am better. We went to the Martinez’s house for dinner. We played red rover [it was “red rover” since no one knew the name in Spanish]. We had pan de pan for dessert [she didn’t get sick from the pan de pan]. The night that we had it, I threw it up. That is how I got sick.

Ranae: I gave my first employee interview--in Spanish! Tomorrow our empleada, Miriam, will start working for us. She’ll come for about 5 hours in the morning and do housework and some cooking, with the intent that then I can be more immersed in Spanish. I will volunteer at the children’s school for a few hours each week, helping Mr. Carlos with his art and music classes, which are taught in Spanish. I will also have to communicate with Miriam. Part of my interview was to make clear to her that I need her to talk to me in Spanish and correct my mistakes. I hope she will take seriously that portion of her job description. She comes highly recommended as the past empleada of the Pack family. How strange it is to contemplate having a maid! But as Stuart said, I’m not going to learn Spanish by washing dishes all day.

Today I taught our Nursery lesson in Spanish. I think the little Honduran girl understood me. Calla did not. I was worried that I could not understand what the little girl is saying, taking it as a comment on my Spanish skills. But the woman that comes to help with music in Nursery told me that none of the Hondurans can understand her, either. Such is the way with some 3-year-olds. Calla continues to love Nursery and learn the gospel each Sunday.

Wednesday evening we enjoyed a real Honduran dinner at the Martinez’s home. The menu was platanos, corn tortillas, tomato salsa, chorizo and carne asada from the BBQ, creamy beans, and queso fresco. To drink, we had pineapple juice and for dessert, an awesome flan/custard dish called pan de pan. The food was delicious and worthy of importing to America.

It seems I am always reporting something about food, but truly, navigating a new cuisine, cooking for a family of seven, and providing and cleaning up after four homemade meals each day (that’s including the immense after-school snack) occupies much of my time and energy. I do think that having Miriam come will be a great help.

Jack: I rode in a mototaxi. I wasn’t sick and went to school all week. I get to go to the Tercero’s house on Friday. [we wrote about them in a blog post back. They live in a remote area, that is a 30 min hike from the road that is very, very steep.] I had a dream that I was the goalie for a professional soccer team. The game was on Valentine’s Day. All the kids of the soccer players got to come out and play instead of their dads. Instead of a soccer ball, it was a cheap plastic golf ball. I kept blocking the goals. There were a bunch of chubby little kids running around.

I have to write 1.5 (small) pages each day for school homework. I wrote a story for school. The story was about giant evil turnips that lived on Titan, a moon of Saturn (or Jupiter). There were big floating, tan balls.

We cleaned the church. Part of the Church we have to clean is outside. A eucalyptus tree drops leaves. We swept them up and didn’t really have a place to put them, so I dumped them over the edge. I accidentally dumped them into some lady’s pila who lives below the Church. A pila is a small open reservoir people use as a source of water, for washing clothes, or other things. She came and knocked on the door and asked who was dumping stuff off the back of the Church. We came down to help clean the leaves out of her pila.

Stuart: Jack and Henry rode in mototaxi from Church. Mototaxis are small, red, three-wheeled vehicles that have small engines (Henry says they have lawnmower engines). They have been wanting to ride in one for a long time and I finally brought the 12 Lempiras to pay for it. They rode with Hermana Penalva from Church, since she rides one from Church to the bus stop each Sunday. She agreed to go with them. We took her daughter with us, then gave them a ride so they didn’t have to ride the bus. The mototaxi doesn’t have doors closed usually, and even if they were, they’re cloth. Jack kept sticking his head out to watch us from behind. Hna. Penalva took a picture of them in the mototaxi.

I finally met with the Branch President. The president of the branch is the leader of the congregation in the local area. We call it a branch since it is small (<100 active members), which makes it different than a “ward” which would have >100s of members. I am his counselor, meaning I help him do whatever needs to be done in the branch to minister to the folks. We met this morning with the other counselor. He (the President) asked if I would conduct the meeting in February. This means that I run the main worship meeting. Welcome, song, prayer, announcements, etc. and basically direct the meeting. It was a total surprise about 40 minutes before the meeting started. I had done it a lot of times when we lived in Madison since I was in (essentially) the same position there and it turned out I wasn’t even nervous and the whole thing went smoothly .

I finally signed a contract here as an empleado. That finally gives me the privilege of driving the car being insured. We had been driving (locally) for the time that we had been here. But now we can go wherever in the country. That is pretty liberating, so we went to the grocery store! We have plans to go to cooler places eventually, but we did get some yummy food at the store. All the store workers (ladies) were commenting and staring admiringly at the children, esp. at totally blond Aspen and Abraham. They are amazed at the blue eyes of the rest of the children. One lady kept giving them free doughnut (“donas”) samples, which was VERY well received by the children!

Another happy week in Honduras!