Nourish goes to Honduras

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.

For the most part, you and I have not yet felt the first tangible effects of climate change. But here, the poor hillside farmers are already in trouble. The rainy season this year came much later than in the past, according to research by Louisa and Mario in the community of Ojo de Agua. What does this mean for the farmers? Without access to computers or weather forecast, many rely on the sky to determine when the rainy season has arrived so they can plant. In early May, a cold front came through Honduras  and some began to plant. But the twenty dry days that followed left those campesinos without seeds. Although we now see rain almost every evening, it is too late for those who planted with that first cold front.

In Ojo de Agua and other communities which work with FIPAH, families are measuring humidity, temperature and rainfall to determine the size of the change and figure out what farmers can do to minimize the effects on crop yield. The first people to be hurt by climate change will be the least fortunate, and they are trying to keep up.

-Max

Little by little, bit by bit.

To mirror the sentiments of my recently posting compatriots Jonathan and las dos gringas, the time we have left in Honduras and the sustainability of our efforts has been very much on my mind.  I think the spanish phrase ¨poco a poco¨sums up very well the reality of this work.  Changes in the basic realities and livelhoods of the people we work with and around the world is rarely speedily accomplished.  To quote the title of a book by Paul Loeb, the impossible will take a little while.  Though it may often be difficult to see it directly during our short time here in Yorito, it is clear that ours efforts supporting our stellar partner organization, FIPAH, are indeed helping, if only little by little. 

On a more tangible note, we have a little bit over 2 weeks left here in Yorito, and will certainly be busy every minute of it.  For the last two weeks or so, we´ve had a schedule worked out where we´re working with the same 7 or 8 youth CIALs each week, which has allowed us to go much more in depth and spend more time with each group.  For example, at ISP (Institute of San Pedro, a local high school), Diana has been working with a group of 6 or 7 youth, and in the past week has been helping them work their ideas into a short play.  With any luck, by the end of the next two weeks we´ll be able to have a good-sized production for the youth to feature their work to the community.  I´ll leave it to Diana to talk more about ISP´s theatre developments, so be on the lookout!

Claire and Carolyn here on another rainy night in Jesus de Otoro.   For more than two weeks now the only communication we have had with the group in Yorito is via this page. When all six of us gringos were staying in Copan we had the luxury of debating development approaches over dinner and into the night. Now, with our group split into two different provinces of Honduras, this discussion will have to take place in a more public forum: our blog!

Dear Jonathan,

We understand where you are coming from. After a day of activities with the youth groups we always feel more connected to their lives. The prospect of moving on to another group, leaving behind the relationships we have formed in a day, does make it all seem a little too ephemeral.  But dear Juanito, our contribution is by no means inconsequential. Our work fits into the larger and much more developed and sustainable work of FIPAH and its partner communities.  We got a little bit excited about this so we came up with three reasons why our work is important. The First - -

1. Foundation

-A full day of activities and immersion provides a solid starting place for their English studies – they just started this month!

-We created a bilingual and interactive story outline (worthy of Oprah Winfrey’s Must Read List) to develop over the course of the day. After they illustrate and present their stories, the final product is left on the classroom walls.

- Most groups don’t have a base of ‘notes’ to learn from. We created a worksheet with colors, numbers, days of the week and greetings that they can take home at the end of the day and use as a study guide. That way we leave behind a reminder of our lessons as well as something tangible for further practice. 

- In their first year (or years) of study, this may be their only opportunity to work on pronunciation with native speakers.

Stay tuned for the next two reasons.

P.S. the greenhouse project is coming along really well. We love our new friends, beans, chaco tan lines,  Enrique Iglesias, our Donas’ coffee, bananos (and mini bananas a.k.a minimos), running at dawn with a vista of the greenest mountains, and the way the kids laugh when we teach them the color “purple”. Say pur-ple ten times and you’ll understand.

- las dos gringas

As we have traveled around from community to community, teaching a mix of english, computation, and theatre, our introductory lines have become practiced and our first conversations often similar, but a constant throughout has been the interchange regarding the question of how long we will be in Honduras.  After answering with the usual "until the end of June, after the Feria" (that´s right, we will be here for the big festival of the year!), it never fails that whoever we are speaking with says something to the effect of "ahh, so short a time."

Although we view a month, or the two months I will be away from home, as such a long time, our stay is miniscule in the lives of those in Yorito.  Each time I hear it, I can´t help but feel somewhat inconsequential.  Although I see our classes as important, and I am happy to say that I think our partner is happy to have us here and sees our role of supporting the youth throughout the municipality as constructive, 3 to 6 classes per group of students is only a little time for exposure to new skills in an otherwise difficult, often opportunity-lacking environment.

The flicker of time that is our stay in Honduras leaves me wondering about the sustainability of teaching these classes and the lasting (or fleeting) impact that they will have on the students.  As an organization that views sustainability as our primary priority, it is no doubt necessary to be self critical in these instances in order to see how we can make our project better and learn from the experience.  Although the main facet of our project from its implementation, an investment in building greenhouses for the Youth CIALS in which to both grow and experiment with different vegetables, is sustainable in my opinion, the classes are not at this moment.  This has been on my mind continuously, especially after I considered my work of last summer, teaching english in Argentina for a month, and its relative sustainability (that being lacking).  Luckily we do have a bit of a lead on making this a bit more sustainabile:  one of the Peace Corps volunteers in Yorito may be interested in taking over our english classes when we leave, and one of our younger FIPAH friends will be continuing the computation classes after the month as well.  I am excited for this, but I also wish I was not someone just spending a little time on such a project that demands a longer term commitment, especially when future involvement is up in the air.  I am not worried, however.  Our partner is top notch, and I am sure they are considering the same issues and know our Nourish chapter well, I hope for a future for this program.

To give some background to what has gone on since we were out of touch, we headed to La Ceiba to meet up with our partners, FIPAH.  After a few days of getting to know a bit of the area and enjoying our short time in the Carribean with our new compañeros, our group split up to head off to two separate areas in which FIPAH works: Claire, Max, and Carolyn to Jesus de Otoro and Logan, Diana, and Jonathan to Yorito.

Although we are no longer together, our experiences have been similar: all who work with FIPAH have welcomed us to the community graciously and we have jumped into the work.  Our first week was spent largely experiencing the work FIPAH does and realizing our role in the process.  We were lucky enough to sit in on meetings regarding FIPAH´s ¨Right to a Future¨program to provide basic education to all who want it but do not have access to it.  The program is extremely comprehensive, encompassing classes on cosmetology, woodworking, and electical wiring as well as workshops to impart knowledge of their rights and the importance of protecting the environment.  We helped out with beginning interviews to gauge the impact of climate change on planting patterns, and all the learned about agriculture and the food that we generally take for granted with little regards to its impact on people and the environment.

We experienced the process first hand with the members of the Youth CIAL of Higuero Quemado, a small town a forty minutes truck drive from Yorito up the rolling, rocky, mountain roads.  Rising at 5 am to make it up to the town to start planting early, we followed the lead of one of the CIAL leaders along a muddy path, out into a clearing at the bottom of a huge field spanning the side of a mountain.  Claire´s description of the hillside farming is unfortunately common here as well, as the marginal hillsides are what´s left after the export-oriented goals of the banana and palm oil plantations are realized.  The day was cool as the cloud blew through the fields which made the work of clearing the land with machetes a little more comfortable but no less difficult.  The deft swings of the CIAL members, ranging from around 10 to 24 years old, made the work look quick and easy and as I saw quickly when I tried myself, it was anything but that.  I had blisters within minutes and a sore arm not long after.  Soon the whole CIAL was there: 22 young community members working together to plant 469 tomato plants.  We dug the holes, mixed the soil, and transplanted the tomatos, all in a beautiful, yet somewhat harsh setting.  The whole process was so vital and alive.  The cohesiveness the group exhibited and the patience and eagerness they took with explaining to us every action made the experience, despite being rather exhausting, not only educational but intensely enjoyable.

To top of the day, I chose to ride on the back of a motorcycle down the mountain in a light rain (hence the title).  Although somewhat deathly afraid, the ride was uneventful, yet exciting, bumpy, but fun.  It´s not everyday that you get to briefly fancy yourself as a young Che Guevara, however controversial, traveling across South America.  One of our FIPAH partners, Nahún put it best after we arrived back in Yorito: ¨That´s just part of this kind of work¨... and right now I wouldn´t have it any other way.

The life of a farmer, or agricultor, isn't easy even on flat, rich soil. But the agricultores that we've met cultivate beans, corn, rice and coffee at inclines of 45 degrees. In Honduras, the flat lands go to those who can afford it - generally large, often transnational companies - and the left overs, the mountain tops that slice through the Honduran clouds, are where the poor farmers reside. These marginalized communities that can only be reached by a long uphill hike or a drive in a vigorous Toyota pickup are the focus of FIPAH's work here in Jesus de Otoro.

Since our arrival here less than a week ago, FIPAH and the town of Jesus de Otoro has welcomed us with open arms! We've visited farmers at high altitudes, met many of the youth that we will be working with, been to farmer's meetings, hung out with the mayor and were even guests on a program at the local radio station!

On Friday we met with representatives from the seven youth groups from communities surrounding Jesus de Otoro to plan the weeks ahead. To compliment their regular activities that include agriculture research, fundraising, and capacity building we are going to be spending an full day with each youth group working on arts and english. We will also be spending a few days living and working in each of the communities that are building greenhouses in the weeks to come. It is a long way up the mountain to Campanario and Ojo de Agua. With afternoon rains the steep roads become slippery - which is a perfect excuse for us to spend a few uninterrupted days getting to know these soon-to-be guardians of 5m by 10m greenhouses.

 After many months of communicating with FIPAH by internet it is wonderful to finally meet the faces and lives behind the incredible work of this organization. It is one thing to read academic papers about the concept of food sovereignty and an entirely different sensation to sit down to righteous meal of rice, beans and corn tortillas.

Well its 9pm which, as our backyard rooster knows well, is way past my bedtime. Hasta pronto!