Nourish goes to Honduras

Big news! Chuchi, the unofficial pet dog of the FIPAH office in Otoro has given birth to puppies!  The strange thing is that during the whole visit, we were all perfectly unaware that she was with chil… uh, pup.  While contemplating this happy occasion, I began to wonder what else was growing in Otoro without us knowing, and realized that much of our work there was all about beginnings.  We taught English lessons with the intent to inspire the youth to continue in their education, we cleared land that I’m sure already nurtures the seeds that mean vitality for so many people, and we started relationships that are sure to continue for a very long time.  I’m beginning to understand that although we still have much work we would like to do with our partners at FIPAH, much of our project this year was about the unseen.  Sometimes the best things need a little time to grow, and I believe that the seeds planted in Honduras and within all of us will continue to surprise us in beautiful ways as they mature and bloom.

It has been awhile since we last checked in and much has happened.  Our project for this summer came to a close with a really touching going away ceremony where Diana and I got to show off our dancing skills to the whole FIPAH community, including our other half from Otoro.  I won´t go into to the somber goodbyes and the striking absence of our dear friend Francisca, whose baleada making skills (unrivaled by any) personally sustained the Yorito group for 5 weeks.  We spent some time evaluating our project while lounging around which is where this post really comes to a head.

During the evaluation there were (of course) differences of opinion on a variety of small issues but one thing stood out: the team´s commitment to working towards continuing Nourish´s relationship with the wonderful people at FIPAH.  All of us were continually impressed by the level of integration FIPAH has with each community in which it works and the excellent work guided by consideration of all possibilities to help better those communities.  At the moment we are preparing a report that will go over what we did this summer and some ways to continue our work which we hope to have posted on the blog by the end of the month.  Until the fall we will continue discussing the direction of this partnership before presenting it to the UNC International Projects Committee.  Regardless of what happens, we will continually remember the people of Yorito and Otoro and the invaluable things we have learned by living and working with them.  Such things do not escape you.  For example, on a bus in Guatemala yesterday I couldn´t help kicking my foot back a bit and mouthing the words to “Mi Vecinita”, one of my famed dance numbers courtesy of Rio Arriba.  I´m finding it hard to wrap anything so special up so I´ll leave it at this - ¡Que le vaya bien!

Today is our last in Otoro for this trip, but there is much more to do here. Only three percent of the people in the surrounding communities completed a single year of high school and less than half a percentage point ever stepped foot in a university, according to numbers compiled from FIPAH interviews.

From what we have seen in our English classes, this does not happen from lack of desire. We have met students who walk three hours each way, up and down mountains to get to seventh grade classes. They have hung on to our every word, and when we leave they will go back to listening to their English CD and using their English books. But once they finish 9th grade here, they usually run out of options. Campanario 2, a gorgeous community with a road that is uncrossable when it rains, is 16 km from the nearest high school. As a result, only two people of 93 interviewed by FIPAH have gone to high school and none to a university.

FIPAH and Educatodo are working to increase opportunities for rural youth in Honduras. A better educated generation of Campesinos could do wonders for communities which scrape by without electricity and at times with only one bed for families of 8. The desire exists, but someone needs to give the kids a chance.

-Max

Reflecting on my trip so far and realizing how quickly it seems to be coming to an end, I realized that one thing has remained uniquely constant: my continuously growing respect for the many Honduran women I’ve met and befriended here in Jesus de Otoro and the surrounding communities.  At 9:20 pm I find myself a wilting gringa after a night of a little less sleep than usual and a full day of Cambio Climatico Linea Base interviews.  This however never seems to be the case with the women here, who posess an inner strength and work ethic unlike any I’ve ever seen.  Countless times I’ve been amazed how tirelessly these Hondurenas work, and the past weekend spent constructing the greenhouse in Ojo de Agua was no exception.  After a day of working on the greenhouse in Ojo de Agua followed by a lively “culture night” with the community, I could have slept in until almost noon.  However I was awoken by the sound of beans and tortillas cooking in the kitchen and the happy morning greetings of Dona Isi’s large family at about 6:00 am.  I lay in my sleeping bag thinking about how even this morning was a late start for Dona Isi, who usually has to wake up at 4am, prepare breakfast for her family, and make the hour and a half journey (mostly walking on a steep mountain path) to the FIPAH office in Otoro.  Many of the women here wake up first in the morning to begin cooking (which is a much more substantial task when literally all of the food is prepare from scratch), take care of most of the house affairs, wait until everyone else is fed before eating, and are most often the last to go to sleep.  As I hopelessly try to keep up with these women I can only hope that some of their quiet strength will rub off, and after 5 weeks here I am only beginning to understand what it means to be a Hondureña.

Update: Today the first poles were planted for the greenhouse in Ojo de Agua! Our FIPAH friends explained to us that the greenhouses should be built in the highest communities, who are already challenged by a more extreme climate. I didn’t realize that high meant 1400 metres. I hope to soon be posting some pictures of the greenhouse site - - it boasts a view of the entire valley.

The farmer research group in Ojo de Agua found and prepared all the wood needed for the construction of the greenhouses on their land and had macheted the land free of weeds and brush before we made it up to the site this morning. As usual, I’m amazed by the commitment, organization and engenuity of the agricultores.  

While this morning we were giving computer lessons to youth, the roles were entirely reversed when we got out to the construction site. Students who had been shyly navigating microsoft word in the a.m. were leading us through mountain paths, hoisting poles into the mountainside and excavating roots in the p.m.

Tomorrow we’ll go back up to Ojo de Agua to work on the greenhouses. We’ll be spending the night in the community and waking up Sunday morning to another day of construction.

Thanks for tuning in. Hasta pronto!

Una amiga es una flor.  Una amiga es brillante y amable.  Una amiga es una hermana.

A friend is a flower.  A friend is brilliant and kind.  A friend is a sister.

I can hardly believe week 2 of the (somewhat grueling) Theatre-English teaching schedule is almost over!  Only last week we were just finishing up doing Round 1 of lesson plans.  In the process, we learned the strengths and interests of each group, helping us to tailor future lessons depending on the community.  Using the same formula of warm-ups, improvisation games, and cold reading of a short play, we did our own version of a FIPAH trial with theatre in each youth CIAL. 

After noticing that the kids at La Ladera were terribly shy when it came to ad-libbing, I noticed that they took immediately to writing their own dialogues and performing those.  For the next class, we provided a template for a poem using repetition.  A few of the results are above.  Everyone wrote touching, imaginative, and beautiful sentences about their best friend. 

Towards the end of the class, I had them narrow down their life into 10 major events, such as: ¨My brother was born,¨ ¨I started acting,¨ ¨My grandfather passed away,¨ ¨I graduated from high school¨ -  to use a few of my own.  However, they were not to read theirs aloud; they were to be kept private.  Tomorrow, when we see them, we will have them map out their life with the 10 events as place markers on the guide.  Then they will use the stage as a space to express their life in mime, following the ¨map¨ for acting and movement direction.  I think they will take to it wonderfully.

But before we get to La Ladera tomorrow, we have the opening of the school in Rio Arriba, where the youth CIAL will perform two plays - they took immediately to the cold readings.  Shaping theatre to give each of the communities a valuable and diverse experience has been a thrill.  It feels great to stretch my artistic muscles again.

PS:  In lieu of a photo, here is a far-less-than-accurate digital representation of the coffee we enjoy nearly every morning.  Better to close your eyes and imagine.  What an aroma…

Yesterday we set off towards a community called la Fortuna at the early hour of 5am.  After about a 3 hour ride through central Honduras, we finally arrived in a small town nestled in the middle of some of the most beautiful mountains and rolling plains I´ve ever seen.  After a quick breakfast, we hiked a short way over some of the aforementioned beautiful plains (seriously, they were gorgeous) to a large greenhouse.  We took some measurements to help with planning for future greenhouses and learned a bit about the different techniques they´ve developed to increase productivity while remaining entirely organic.  For example, they´ve developed a mixture of sugar cane and fish (a little fuzzy on the details) which has proven extremely effective at detering insects and other pests from feasting on their crops.  We spent most of the rest of the day checking out a few other greenhouses in the area and hanging out with the local youth CIAL.  All in all it was a great day filled with bouncy car rides, beautiful landscapes, and many a discussion on the finer points of greenhouse construction.  We´re still a little behind on sleep, and have some serious dancing to do tomorrow morning, so we´re off! 

Monday to Saturday we’re in the office, in the mountains, and on the road working with FIPAH. But each Sunday someone takes us home to meet their family. This weekend Veronika, the twenty-something brilliant agriculture economist who Carolyn and I are living with, took us home to Marcala. After a lovely breakfast with Veronika’s parents, we decided to check out the local environment…

We stared down at the sixty meter drop. The cascades of the Chiflador roared and its spit filled the air. We wandered down a path that looked like it might lead us to the base of the waterfall. But twenty steps forward on this slice of a camino I slipped in a patch of mud and was soon hanging down the mountainside. I dug my fingers into the soil and roots in the path and climbed back up.

We kept on walking and the path seemed to be getting narrower and more slippery.  Suddenly I heard shouts from behind. I backtracked to find Veronika, Eduardo, Max and Carolyn all starring down the side of the cliff. Carolyn had taken off her backpack to slip under a pipe on the path. She lost her grip and the bag tumbled down the cliff. While we wanted to retrieve the sack, the path ahead had quickly become a choose-your-own-adventure rock climbing course. We stared down at a narrow, rocky crevice – the only way down. We decided to head back up and look for a friendlier descent. After a few dud trails we realized that we were going to have to jump back in the truck and look for a road into the base of the waterfall.  We drove down the mountain and pulled into the finca of one of Veronika’s friends.  It was a colorful adobe house surrounded by orange and grapefruit orchards and a few blooming coffee plants. At the finca, a beaming ten-year-old volunteered to guide us to the base of the waterfall.

The backpack was most likely stuck in a tree in a thick of vines, bushes and mud on an 80 degree incline on the side of an impressive waterfall. I had made peace with not seeing its zippers again. But Veronica, in the true FIPAH spirit, was not deterred by a little backcountry hiking.  

As we set out walking,  I expected a fifteen minute stroll along the riverside.  We  followed little Francisco, hopping from boulder to riverbank, through a canopy of banana leaves, stopping when our guide pointed out wild edible mushrooms or to taste a sweet, red, coffee bud.  We would watch Francisco nimbly scale a muddy hill and jump onto a boulder three times his height in the middle of the river in a matter of seconds.  I would follow with less grace and beginning to wonder about safety, risk management and the rest of UNC ‘s travel clinic suggestions . 

I was so entranced with the flora that I hadn’t been paying attention to how long we had been tarzaning through this equatorial jungle.  An hour must have passed before Francisco finally stopped and smiled and pointed to the glistening air above the river – spray from the waterfall ahead. We were getting closer.

I pulled myself up over the last hill, I wiped the sweat from my cheeks with muddy hands and looked up to an immense, roaring rush of water.  The sound alone was enough to send me tumbling backwards but I grabbed a tree and looked ahead. Francisco was already tip-toeing on fallen logs and rocks to make it to the other side of the falls.

Once Carolyn and I made it across, we knelt in a cave at the base of the falls and stared at each other in amazement. Carolyn’s arms were shivering and she shrugged, “I’m not really worried about the backpack, you know. Maybe we should head back.”  But our campaneros were already mapping our ascent. They pointed up the cliff of the waterfall – that’s where the backpack fell right? Let’s head there.  It was a steep incline covered in a thick layer of mud and big leafy green plants. For the first time there were no deep roots to grab on to and any rock that I grabbed was quickly released from the soil. I hugged the mountainside like a bear cub holds its mother and tried not to think about the impossible descent that would follow. Half way up the mountain there was a ledge of flatland. We stopped to evaluate. We stared at the base of that steep, rocky crevasse that earlier in the day had made us halt our course. This time however, we were at the bottom – not the top. The options were either to slide down the muddy cliff and surely land in boulders and rapids, an unknown path that would probably snake along the riverbank in the same risky way we’d come, or to go vertical. We chose up.

Well I’m alive today and blogging so our adventure had a happy ending. Thanks to Veronika for an incredible day off. This week we’re helping her carry out baseline research via farmer interviews for the climate change program. Hasta pronto!

In a place like Yorito where, to be quite honest, there isn´t exactly much to do, its not uncommon for dance to come up.  On the weekends there is usually dancing in the community salòn, and ¨do you like to dance?¨is a question I´ve received numerous times.  Lately there has been frequent talk of the upcoming Feria, the town festival, that will start next week but really get going on the Saturday and Sunday to come.  The Feria and dance are inseparable, as people dance until the wee hours of the morning to a combination of punta, reggaeton, merimba, and American rap.  I was definitely looking forward to seeing this dance and maybe getting dragged in myself, but I had no idea I was going to get a taste of it at 8 AM in a small community called Rio Arriba.

Having recently woken up and been looking forward to a day of theater to prepare for a small play at the dedication of Rio Arriba´s school on Friday along with some English classes, I didn´t expect to hear that we would be dancing today upon arrival.  Oh and we danced.  After watching for a bit, Diana and I were called up (I´m sure Logan would have stepped right up as well if he wasn´t home with a bit of a stomach virus that has since passed), and we learned how to dance to punta.

By the end I was drenched in sweat, there had been a lot of laughing - most likely at me, and I had been told by our friend and teacher Luis that he ¨needed more movement¨from me.  Our audience had been our students among other older visitors who I am pretty sure just stayed around to see us.  We practiced again and again, for it to be just right for the dedication on Friday as well.  As awkward as I felt trying to learn these new dance moves (to add to my already bursting repetoire) to this new music, it was definitely fun…although I don´t know if I´m exactly looking forward to Friday, when our FIPAH friends and maybe even the mayor will be in attendence.  Hopefully I will be able to borrow some black pants, or I will stick out even more…although I think as the awkward gringo I do that pretty well already.  As much as we try to impart our knowledge about english and theatre, today was another day of cultural education for us, and some good practice for the Feria.  Regardless, we had a reason to dance…if only it had been to ¨Jump Around¨I could have channelled Danny Green who, if you haven´t heard, is back for his senior year at Chapel Hill with Wayne Ellington and Ty Lawson - you can´t stop being a Heel even if you are in a different world.