Parades, bachatas, dinosaurs, etc.

Por fin, something that's actually "about my time in Honduras"!

Wednesday, el 15 de septiembre, was Honduras' independence day. After practicing marching on Monday and Tuesday (which meant that, although I technically had class in the mornings, no one was in any place to do anything; and after a terrible class Monday morning, I learned my lesson and just played soccer with them on Tuesday morning), on Wednesday we went to Talanga, the nearby town, and participated in a parade with a bunch of other area schools.




These two are two of the boys from my hogar.

When we came back, everyone was totally exhausted. While waiting to eat lunch with my hogar, everyone fell asleep, including me and the tíos as well. I had a child asleep on me, there were kids on the tables, on the floors, all over. It was super cute, and also felt very, well, familial. They also put on bachata music, which I discovered is super relaxing. Today I picked up a CD by the group we were listening to, Aventura.

Then we had Thursday and Friday totally off, and a bunch of us travelled up to Lago de Yajoa, a gorgeous lake about 5 hours (and a number of bus trips) from Tegus. It was much more tropical in that region, and often what I'd stereotypically imagined Central America too look like.



More than anything, though, I was struck by the lake- it felt very old and natural (primordial would be the fancy word), and I wouldnt've been surprised to see a dinosaur wander by in the distance. I guess one thing about Honduras' relative lack of tourist infrastructure is that, taking a row boat out on the lake (which was an adventure in itself), besides a few fishermen, we were really the only people out there.
All the northwesterners (most of the volunteers are from Oregon and Washington) say they're used to this kind of scenery, but for me it was very beautiful. Click on the picture to see it full size.

Jane Jacobs is a Baller

I generally don't use that phrase but it seems appropriate here. Totally unrelated to Honduras, I recently started trying to make my way through The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and so far its pretty awesome:

There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to spend --the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars-- we could wipe out all our [urban problems]...

But look what we have built with the first several billions: Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Middle-income housing projects which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life. Luxury housing projects that mitigate their inanity, or try to, with a vapid vulgarity. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums, who have fewer choices of loitering place than others. Commercial centers that are lack-luster imitations of standardized suburban chain-store shopping. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.

...There is nothing economically or socially inevitable about [this]...On the contrary, no other aspect of our economy and society has been more purposefully manipulated for a full quarter of a century to achieve precisely what we are getting.


What's really impressive is that this was written in 1961, but it seems like many of the problems she lays out we are still facing today (even, in many ways, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras). Its also just so well --and hard-corely-- written!

What if Calvin and Hobbes were written from the teacher's perspective?

I've been having some great emails with Theresa Tensuan recently, and this is one response I wrote that I thought was pretty interesting (though edited to make more sense and sound less obnoxiously intellectual...I felt like I could indulge myself since I was writing to a professor).

Theresa had written to me about "kids' creativity and resourcefulness in countering adult authority", noting: Here I'm realizing, a la Solnit, that often, as we think we're imparting one one kind of lesson the folks we're trying to reach are learning something else entirely.


The same evening I read the email, I found myself reading a Calvin and Hobbes book before bed, and was thinking about the fact that exactly what makes the comic strip so funny is that Calvin is on an entirely different plane of existence than the logic of the adults and general outside world.

Or, to use some language from English class, Calvin is always undermining the structures of our day-to-day adult logic-- and thereby, he often exposes that these structures really aren't quite as important, or logical, or infallible as they seem to be when we're saying them.

And whereas I general like to think of myself as siding with the 'underminers of social structures' in these kinds of situations, I suddenly find myself as the person who is trying --more or less-- to impose structures onto others. (Here you could make a pun about imposing 'grammatical structures' as well as social ones...).

So I was also thinking, if I were Calvin's teacher, what would I do? Or similarly, what if Calvin and Hobbes were written from the point of view of his parents, or of his teacher? It might still be entertaining, but probably would be a very different kind of comedy (...or, I like the idea of Calvin and Hobbes as more of a 'Freedom Writers' or 'Dangerous Minds' style drama, too).

- - -

Additionally, I had just finished reading Daniel Wallace's Big Fish, and as I finished the book I was really moved emotionally (I love the movie too, which really does a good job capturing the book's spirit).

In the end of the book, the narrator has to accept that is father IS the stories and jokes that he always tells. In other words, accept that his father can only be the 'myth' made up of the stories he's wrapped himself in, rather than idea of 'what a father is ' that the son has always wanted him to be.

And that acceptance is what I think is so moving for me. In the case of working with kids, I guess it means really being willing to accept who they are, rather than my idea of 'what they are supposed to be'. With both the humor and the frustration of their ability to be "learning something else entirely" from what we're trying to give them...and I guess use that acceptance as a starting point for figuring out how to teach/work with them?

(It seems like it would be more ideal if it there were more humor and less frustration, though...Why does frustration seem like an inevitable part of the process?)

Como Calle Trece?

A conversation while training one of the 9th grade boys for an 'Oratory and Poetry in English' performance that we had to do last week (as part of a week of 'talents' while some of the big funders of Talleres --the informal name for Centro Vocacional N.P.H.-- were here).

We tried to give him Shakespeare's 'To Be or Not To Be' from Hamlet, but quickly realized it was too complicated. So I tried to explain why we were giving up on it:

Me: Bueno, las obras de Shakespeare son muy complicadas para las personas que ya hablan inglés, porque él tiene sus propios ritmos, palabras, formas de rima, etc...

Bryan: Ohhh, sí. ¿Como Calle Trece?


(Me: Well, Shakespeare is really hard for people who speak English too, because he has his own rythyms, words, rhyme forms and so forth...

Bryan: Ohhhh, yeah. Like Calle 13?)


We did have another student -who's also really good at English- read the Gettysburg Address, though. And when she read "Es totalmente justo y propio que obremos de este modo", I was suddenly brought back to Mr. Miller's 11th grade History class, in which I seem to remember him often repeating the phrase 'It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this'.

Some Tegus Street Art

This last one is a picture from an art show we went to on Saturday afternoon. One of the pieces was a series of photos of the artist going around the city correcting the spelling and grammar mistakes of other graffiti. Apparently the political graffiti --which is everywhere in the city-- got a lot more common/intense after the golpe (coup) last year.