La perrita se murio. I found our puppy dead outside the house today. I’ll miss her, she was joyful. I liked her. Our funeral consisted of a neighbor tying her body to his bike and riding her out of our yard. This morning while we were waiting for the bus we could smell rotting meat as two vultures finished off the funeral of our little perrita. A gecko also died yesterday as Monche for fun lynched the little lizard with yarn on a nearby bush. Shes also the same woman who stabbed a crab and then chased the kids with it at the river. I like her, she’s a very warm, playful, sweet woman, when she’s not torturing animals. And yes, I’m a squeamish city girl who eats meat but can’t bring myself to kill the animal I’m gonna eat. But despite that, I think I can still say that there should be a moral line between killing a living animal in order to eat or for other necessary reasons and killing an animal in a way that prolongs their suffering without reason. Still working on figuring out how to evangelize monche with that idea… There were a few other deaths that night as well- the mice in the house ate the poison and died out of site in the roof, only the smell remains. And amidst all this death, some hope survived in the animal kingdom as a mighty stupid tribe of termites decided to migrate and build a new life on top of my bed while I was sleeping in it at 3am last night. That was a shock.

But not to worry, the termites have since been terminated and my recently funky gastro intestinal system is back on track today with a little help from a friend I like to call “aunty-biotic”.So, I’m back to eating my meat and tortillas and coke and bananas. And waiting for Kenya to kill that cow one of these days.

What I'm doing here

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What exactly am I doing here? I’ve asked myself that a few times since arriving. That is becoming a little clearer as the days go on. I’m trusting that this experience will carry me along and change me as I need to be changed and that I will be able to flow into a new life here with joy and newfound strength. But there are definitely a lot of growing pains along the way. Poco a poco, I’m finding the joy in everyday moments and I’m beginning to fit into the rhythm of life and am constantly being surprised by what or who each day brings. Learning that if you’re living right, there’s no such thing as boredom, even when there’s seemingly “nothing to do”.

And in terms of what specifically I’m going to be doing here, besides living… well..

I’ll be working as a community artist through the organization ARTCORPS, which sends artists to work with NGOs in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. I’m paired with a local organization here in Honduras, AJAASPIB. AJAASPIB works with over 20 different rural communities surrounding the city of Olanchito. They help these communities to self organize to protect their rivers, their only water source. Each of these communities has its own council that manages the water for the community including collecting a water tax, managing the functioning of the water system, and planning for the future sustainability of their water. Much of this includes reforestation and environmental conservation efforts around the mouth of the rivers- negotiating with property owners (cattle ranchers and farmers) to buy parcels of land around the protected river area or gain their participation in reforestation and conservation efforts. It’s actually an incredibly organized volunteer system that AJAASPIB and these community members have managed to create. They’ve realized that the government here isn’t going to provide any help in providing this basic life necessity and so have taken the matter into their own hands to self manage their own water. There is still much work to be done in the communities in terms of educating everyone about how trees and forest and livestock all affect their water supply the water supply for generations to come. And the water as yet is not potable in any of the communities but they hope to change that in time.

My role will be to work with the youth in 2-3 of these communities. I’ll be forming a creative youth group to use art to develop leadership skills, confidence, interest in community improvement, and environmental stewardship. I hope to use a mixture of mural painting, drawing, game playing, theatre, environmental education, and whatever else the youth want to do with our group. The hope is that these youth will go on to be the future leaders and stewards of their communities’ natural and cultural resources. I hope to continue with a group of youth from El Nance, who were part of a group formed by last year’s artist. And then we plan to form a new group with a different community here, San Lorenzo.

Week 3

Adjusting still to this new life of mine. Its been hard at times- it ain’t easy to integrate into a culture and place different from all that has been familiar, not to mention the unique rapid Spanish spoken here. While my time in Xela, Guatemala was a new cultural experience for me, it was still in many ways familiar- I think city-dwellers around the world have their own culture and understanding that is unique to the urban environment. And I’m living now in the countryside where cows are the way of life and you live your life out in the open alongside your neighbors. Church is the only nightlife other than sitting in a hammock feeling the night air. The biggest news of the day is gossip about what the neighbors down the street are doing, or how me and Cassandra went swimming and got chased by a goose, or the fact that the water is running again, or that there were 6 more people that got killed in an armed robbery on the road last night. It’s no major surprise here that a group of local men have been invited and have gone to perform in rodeos in Texas. And everyone seems to have either a sister or brother or cousin or somebody they know that’s working in the US. We hang out with the neighbors several times a day either at their house or our house, at church, at the river, and inevitably we see somebody when we go into Olanchito. Everyone seems related in some way. It’s a town of aunts and cousins and sisters and brothers and grandparents. Life here is local local local (In general, I have no idea what is going on in the world outside of Olanchito). Life moves slow. Lots of seated silences in between the ebb and flow of relaxed conversations. I’ve had lots of time for journaling, reading, drawing, reflecting. Going to bed by 9-10pm, and up at 6am to run. Yes, I’ve realized the need to convert myself into an early morning runner here. The diet of coke three times a day, meat and fried plantains at every meal, and a fair share of candy in between is gonna fatten me up by the end of the year if not also rot out my teeth (so yes, I’ve also started flossing AND using mouthwash).

The Beginning...

So, I’m here in San Lorenzo Bajo, Honduras. About 1.5hrs outside of Olanchito, our nearest city. 3-4hrs from La Ceiba, the next closest biggest city and gateway to the famous Bay Islands. I’m living out in the campo in a small rural community where most of the people work in cattle ranching of some kind- Land of the cowboys, bananas, and hot hot sun. I live with Kenya, one of the community leaders of the water council here, her two teenage daughters, her mother, and a whole slew of visitors from our community that drop in through out the day. There is a lot of land around the house and the house is flanked by porches and hammocks. Kenya and her mother do all the cooking outside in a wood-burning stove and make traditional breads once a week in their clay oven which they then sell to their neighbors. They also make cheese to sell with the milk, which is aplenty in these parts. Apart from the sad fact that I’m lactose intolerant, I’m considered a very good “eater”, a fact that they like to share with each other. We have three dogs (one puppy), all with fleas but I still pet them every now and then, a bunch of chickens, two parrots, a turtle, and the occasional horse or cow that wanders into the yard. There are plans to get me on horseback soon. The family is very close, spends most of the day outside cooking, cleaning, sitting in hammocks, visiting with neighbors that will drop by. A very relaxed and happy routine. For the first week here, we were bathing and washing clothes in the river as the water pipes weren’t working (which happens often and had been the case for the last 3 months). Its been a fun surprise- more of an excuse for play time with the kids and other women. Today me and about 10 other kids, women, and youth had a huge water fight and played water games for a couple hours in the river- Although its always scary when the cows decide to come down to enjoy the river as well and mass screams and panics ensue as they end up walking all over our stuff and inevitably pooping in the water (I prefer not to think about the implications on water quality…). Tomorrow we have plans for a day of washing clothes at the river, making a fire and cooking lunch, and hanging out there all day. Although today the community got the water running again so it’ll be nice to enjoy bathing sometimes in the house. Oh, and Kenya is going to kill a cow tomorrow.

Painting and Adjusting

I arrived in Olanchito after a a two day bus ride from Antigua with my new co-worker Reina. The Spanish I had learned in Guatemala flew out the window when confronted with its fast Honduran counterpart and I could barely keep up with what was going on let alone remember how to use the subjunctive. I ended up staying with my other co-worker Lety and her huge family for the week while the Municipal workers were on strike and the office building was closed. Even though I stayed in the house for most of those days with the family sitting, watching TV, eating, doing “nothing”, I was exhausted every night. Adjusting to a new family, a new language, new food, different customs was hard and I was missing all things familiar and comforting. But luckily I bought some kids tempura paints while in town and the kids and I started daily painting, drawing, jewelry making sessions. We weren’t doing any amazing “art for social change” guided activities necessarily, just painting- passing the time, hanging out, talking, bonding. And this was what I needed-Comfort, familiarity, a purpose for the day… friends. So my first best friends where my co-workers kids, bonding over a shared love for painting and game playing. From tempura paints, I transitioned to nail painting with the teenage cousins in the family and received a schooling in the art of nail polish. And with my newly faboulous nails, I was ready to leave the city and move out to the land of the cowboys and mountains, in my new community in San Lorenzo. I can only hope that my new friends here will like painting too…