Nourish goes to Honduras

Fresh off a busy campaign season, Chapel Hill can now celebrate the historical election and look ahead.  Here Nourish has been trying to develop new partnerships for Summer 2009 projects, while Claire, our Honduras counterpart living in mainland China right now, has put together a fantastic recruitment letter so kick off student interest in a trip this coming summer to return to Honduras.

We have also received an update from Luis, who has taken the youth CIAL in Río Arriba to great heights with his wife, Rosa.  He said they will soon have running electricity (two weeks from Halloween!), are taking computer lessons, and receiving English classes.

If you’re interested in joining the 2009 Honduras experience, check out this letter.

( Link not working?  Copy/paste: http://sites.google.com/site/nourishinternationalunc/Home/documents/ApplyTodayhonduras1.doc?attredirects=0 )

It has been some time since our summer in Honduras, but with school getting off to a start with tons of fresh first-years, we have had the opportunity to share our experiences with new and familiar faces!  Our own Jonathan organized a Campus Y Summer Project Presentation Night, which gave the stage to various organizations in UNC’s Campus Y on Monday night, allowing them to showcase their experiences and share their perspective on verano 2008.

As part of the Nourish International Honduras presentation, Jonathan and I spoke to the crowd in the lounge, accompanied with a slideshow, and played this nifty video at the very end.  It’s very short (we budget time carefully), but I think it still captures the spice of the summer.  I wanted to share it on the blog for your viewing pleasure.  So, enjoy!

Find more videos like this on The Nourish Network

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!