Hello again, apparently I have picked up the blogging attitude.
Today, instead of baseball we played kickball. Baseball kind of fizzled out and now every other Saturday we have some kind of sport or activity for kids. We didn’t quite get the attendance we wanted, but that meant we got to play and not just be coaches. It had been a LONG time since I had played, but it was a good time! We had a few new kids and some we hadn’t seen in a long time, so that was good. Kickball, an activity that only needs a soccer ball and its fun for all ages, I recommend it.
Also, I am getting in better shape, a friend and I have started running. It was kind of weird, she knew I ran every once in a while, so one day she asked me if I wanted to run in the morning, and now we are running buddies three days a week. The first time we ran we both tried to bring our dogs and that was a disaster! First they only wanted to play and so getting them to go straight was interesting and then one little dog came up growling and ended up getting hit by a car. Since then, we just run without dogs. Occasionally S comes along and runs too.
Funny story, so I go to the post office and the guy tells me there is no mail for us. Then, he comes out and has a letter with my name on it and says there is a package. This is why I like the woman, she knows me. Turns out, the letter was mailed in August of last year! It had been hidden in the wrong box for almost a year. I started reading and got very confused because it had odd references to things that happened last year. The package was great, treats for me and for Seca!
Another note: I highly recommend the movie Memoirs of a Geisha. I know it came out a few years ago now, but I thought it was rather well done. I had avoided seeing it for a long while because I liked the book and did not see how it could be made into a movie without skipping a lot, but my congratulations to the movie makers, they did an excellent job. No two hour movie could have all the detail of a 200 page book, but the imagery was amazing and they were faithful to the story line.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Pictures!
Making wood-burning stoves. Update: the families that have the new stoves are happy to report they use 1/5 to 1/7 of the wood they were using before which saves them money, and protects the environment. With the chimneys, the smoke is leaving the houses and no longer accumulating in their lungs.
Two little chicks! So cute.
Bride prep!
Going to the chapel, and Erin's getting mar-ar-ar-aried!
Make-up time.
Hair stylin'
Gift boxes with chocolates
Manicures and pedicures, too bad we almost drove Erin crazy trying to find the place!
Walking to the restaurant to start the bachelorette party!
View on drive up Tuscon's Mt Lemmon.
Rex, while not getting squished by backpacks.Dengue
Dengue
Instead of doing my normal moment by moment account of what I have been up to lately, I have decided to talk a little about one topic. Today’s topic is dengue fever.
This is a very important topic for me and all those in Honduras (as well as many other countries). This year the dengue epidemic is very bad, the public hospitals are full and have to turn away patients. There have been many deaths this year due to hemorrhagic dengue. The rainy season is the perfect time for this to spread.
The virus is carried by a mosquito. The mosquito bites an infected person, and then can transmit the virus to the next person it bites. Dengue is a virus, so there are no preventative measures such as vaccines that can be taken. The best defense is to use mosquito repellent.
The rainy season provides all kinds of stagnant water for the mosquitoes to breed in. The amount of water held by half an egg shell is all the water they need. Now, keep in mind that this country relies on pilas, or open cement tanks to store water, and you have a perfect mosquito breeding spot in or right outside the house. Available through public health centers are what is called “abate,” which kills mosquito eggs in the water, and this needs to be placed in the pilas to prevent mosquito reproduction. The puddles and other water sources in homes are another risk.
Due to the almost limitless amount of spaces for the mosquitos to reproduce, the government is sponsoring a major fumigation campaign. This is a lot bigger in the capitol, Tegucigalpa, because that is where the majority of cases have been so far. My area is also seeing high numbers. Last night the school across the street from my house was fumigated in an effort to protect the kids. My host Mother, who had dengue earlier this year, has fumigated her house twice in the last few months.
The virus itself needs five days in the body before it will show itself. The symptoms are general cold/flu symptoms with body aches, fever, tiredness, etc. The scare is hemorrhagic dengue which comes about when the blood platelet levels are very low. After five more days, a very itchy rash is common. Then, your mind wants to be able to go back to doing normal things, but your body needs more time to recover and gain strength or else you can come down with an opportunistic infection.
I am very good about applying the repellent, and take my naps under my mosquito net to make sure I don’t get bit then. There are four versions of the virus and a lot of volunteers come down with at least one during their time here.
Instead of doing my normal moment by moment account of what I have been up to lately, I have decided to talk a little about one topic. Today’s topic is dengue fever.
This is a very important topic for me and all those in Honduras (as well as many other countries). This year the dengue epidemic is very bad, the public hospitals are full and have to turn away patients. There have been many deaths this year due to hemorrhagic dengue. The rainy season is the perfect time for this to spread.
The virus is carried by a mosquito. The mosquito bites an infected person, and then can transmit the virus to the next person it bites. Dengue is a virus, so there are no preventative measures such as vaccines that can be taken. The best defense is to use mosquito repellent.
The rainy season provides all kinds of stagnant water for the mosquitoes to breed in. The amount of water held by half an egg shell is all the water they need. Now, keep in mind that this country relies on pilas, or open cement tanks to store water, and you have a perfect mosquito breeding spot in or right outside the house. Available through public health centers are what is called “abate,” which kills mosquito eggs in the water, and this needs to be placed in the pilas to prevent mosquito reproduction. The puddles and other water sources in homes are another risk.
Due to the almost limitless amount of spaces for the mosquitos to reproduce, the government is sponsoring a major fumigation campaign. This is a lot bigger in the capitol, Tegucigalpa, because that is where the majority of cases have been so far. My area is also seeing high numbers. Last night the school across the street from my house was fumigated in an effort to protect the kids. My host Mother, who had dengue earlier this year, has fumigated her house twice in the last few months.
The virus itself needs five days in the body before it will show itself. The symptoms are general cold/flu symptoms with body aches, fever, tiredness, etc. The scare is hemorrhagic dengue which comes about when the blood platelet levels are very low. After five more days, a very itchy rash is common. Then, your mind wants to be able to go back to doing normal things, but your body needs more time to recover and gain strength or else you can come down with an opportunistic infection.
I am very good about applying the repellent, and take my naps under my mosquito net to make sure I don’t get bit then. There are four versions of the virus and a lot of volunteers come down with at least one during their time here.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
old post that I didn't put up
Incredibly brief update:
Not much happening around here except for a ton of rain.
I started a project to create catchbasins and an actual rainwater removal system. Most of the road around here are dirt. Those of you who have ever lived on a dirt road know how much a good rain can damage the road. Now imagine a good sized storm everyday- the roads are in pretty bad shape right now. I went and for some critical areas, did some measurements and the municipality might put in some storm drains. Who knows, it might just be a pipe dream.
Baseball last week was interesting. One kid brought a small soccer ball, so while waiting for more kids to show up, we started passing the ball. As more kids showed up I became goalie and they pretty much did corner kick drills. It was a lot of fun. Only four kids actually showed up, and after a while of soccer, we switched to baseball. We practiced throws, pop-ups, then I taught them how to bunt. That was a little hard to explain especially considering the new kids who have now batted three times in their life.
I just had such a good time playing with the kids. What am I going to do in the states to match that? My nephew is several years away from being able to play catch or soccer with his aunt. If I tried to play with kids in a park I would be considered a predator. There is always little league sports but who wants to deal with crazy parents?
There was an inspirational concert the other night. Basically, these singers that would never make it on the big stage are put into this concert and the message is to live more peaceful lives, without violence, and preventing teen pregnancy. It was ok, not something I would go to again, but for one night it was fine. Walking home afterward there was a group of guys smoking, well, not tobacco. Great job, a concert to get away from things like drugs and you smoke up a doobie right afterwards. Then they didn’t get it when S and I weren’t interested in them. Shocking.
I did a day of translating, and was very happy with how that went. The Episcopal church has missionaries here end a water ministry that has well drilling machinery. Well, when they go into a town to put a well in, they have a class on water hygiene and health. While they have trained and hired Hondurans to help them there is still a woman that comes down from the states to do it and she doesn’t speak Spanish, so I helped her out. I thought what they had done was good. She gave me a large bag of hersheys kisses as a thanks which thoroughly enjoyed.
That morning I woke up to a Seca emergency. I get out of bed and Seca was being more clingy than normal. I pushed her off and started going about my business. A few minutes later I look down and her face was HUGE!!!! She must have tried to eat a bee or hornet and got stung. I didn’t even think I ran to my med kit and got out the Benadryl and shoved one down her throat. She was acting normal and she ate fine although her mouth was huge and her eyes were almost completely swollen shut. I ended up giving her another Benadryl and when I was satisfied the swelling was going down I left to do the translating, I did get distracted several times during the course of the day hoping that she was fine. No lasting side effects. I wasn’t even around to see if she got doped up on the meds.
Ok, so I did something stupid. I was making pizza and it came time to take it out of the oven, and I could only find one oven mitt, so I put it on my right hand and started to take it out. Well, my pizza tray is wider than my oven so the tray has to go in at a bit of an angle. I tried to take it out and it started to rotate, and yep I did the dumb thing I reached out with my free hand to stabilize it. Burned a few fingers but good. I couldn’t immediately treat it though because the pizza slid off the tray and onto to heat coil things at the bottom of the oven and caught on fire. I was worried I was going to burn my house down for a minute. However good sense returned and I grabbed a towel to protect my left hand and put the pizza on the tray again and took it out of the oven. Then I put the blistering fingers in water. So, now I sit typing this with one hand because the left hand is wrapped around ice. Does this type of stuff happen to other people? Or is it just me?
Not much happening around here except for a ton of rain.
I started a project to create catchbasins and an actual rainwater removal system. Most of the road around here are dirt. Those of you who have ever lived on a dirt road know how much a good rain can damage the road. Now imagine a good sized storm everyday- the roads are in pretty bad shape right now. I went and for some critical areas, did some measurements and the municipality might put in some storm drains. Who knows, it might just be a pipe dream.
Baseball last week was interesting. One kid brought a small soccer ball, so while waiting for more kids to show up, we started passing the ball. As more kids showed up I became goalie and they pretty much did corner kick drills. It was a lot of fun. Only four kids actually showed up, and after a while of soccer, we switched to baseball. We practiced throws, pop-ups, then I taught them how to bunt. That was a little hard to explain especially considering the new kids who have now batted three times in their life.
I just had such a good time playing with the kids. What am I going to do in the states to match that? My nephew is several years away from being able to play catch or soccer with his aunt. If I tried to play with kids in a park I would be considered a predator. There is always little league sports but who wants to deal with crazy parents?
There was an inspirational concert the other night. Basically, these singers that would never make it on the big stage are put into this concert and the message is to live more peaceful lives, without violence, and preventing teen pregnancy. It was ok, not something I would go to again, but for one night it was fine. Walking home afterward there was a group of guys smoking, well, not tobacco. Great job, a concert to get away from things like drugs and you smoke up a doobie right afterwards. Then they didn’t get it when S and I weren’t interested in them. Shocking.
I did a day of translating, and was very happy with how that went. The Episcopal church has missionaries here end a water ministry that has well drilling machinery. Well, when they go into a town to put a well in, they have a class on water hygiene and health. While they have trained and hired Hondurans to help them there is still a woman that comes down from the states to do it and she doesn’t speak Spanish, so I helped her out. I thought what they had done was good. She gave me a large bag of hersheys kisses as a thanks which thoroughly enjoyed.
That morning I woke up to a Seca emergency. I get out of bed and Seca was being more clingy than normal. I pushed her off and started going about my business. A few minutes later I look down and her face was HUGE!!!! She must have tried to eat a bee or hornet and got stung. I didn’t even think I ran to my med kit and got out the Benadryl and shoved one down her throat. She was acting normal and she ate fine although her mouth was huge and her eyes were almost completely swollen shut. I ended up giving her another Benadryl and when I was satisfied the swelling was going down I left to do the translating, I did get distracted several times during the course of the day hoping that she was fine. No lasting side effects. I wasn’t even around to see if she got doped up on the meds.
Ok, so I did something stupid. I was making pizza and it came time to take it out of the oven, and I could only find one oven mitt, so I put it on my right hand and started to take it out. Well, my pizza tray is wider than my oven so the tray has to go in at a bit of an angle. I tried to take it out and it started to rotate, and yep I did the dumb thing I reached out with my free hand to stabilize it. Burned a few fingers but good. I couldn’t immediately treat it though because the pizza slid off the tray and onto to heat coil things at the bottom of the oven and caught on fire. I was worried I was going to burn my house down for a minute. However good sense returned and I grabbed a towel to protect my left hand and put the pizza on the tray again and took it out of the oven. Then I put the blistering fingers in water. So, now I sit typing this with one hand because the left hand is wrapped around ice. Does this type of stuff happen to other people? Or is it just me?
it's not that long, i promise
Long, long time and no update. Well, things have been moving pretty slow around here. I have also lost the desire to blog and share every miniscule detail of my life, because everything here has become so normal to me. My dog ate something of mine: normal. Heavy rains: normal. Blunders in Spanish: normal.
Three weeks ago now I left to go to the states. I went to Erin’s wedding in AZ, hence why no one knew I was in the states. After some snafus trying to get there, I had a wonderful visit. I gained at least 5 pounds on the trip thanks to eating all that wonderful food.
Most of the visit was hanging out and getting ready for the wedding. Kelsey was there already so it was the three of us. One day we went up into the mountains and drove around. Did you know there was a ski resort right outside of Tucson, AZ? Yeah, the mountains are high enough that it snows there. Amazing.
The wedding was gorgeous, eventually I will put up a pic or two. The wedding was in the Catholic church that the groom’s parents belong to and the reception was at a country club. Now, the four of us (adding Devika now) met/ became good friends due to playing tennis together in college, so we took some shots on the tennis courts there; some fun ones where we are playing tennis using the bouquets as rackets and some pretty posing pictures as well. I can’t wait to see those!
Since then I have been on post-vacation vacation. The last few days I have finally gotten back into doing a little work- little being the key phrase there.
What work I have done is mostly for a stove project. The people who live in the villages, and a good portion of those who live in towns and cities have wood burning stoves for cooking. These stoves are generally very inefficient and cause major health problems because the smoke sits in the room and enters the eyes and the lungs of those in the house. Therefore the designs for these stoves have been modified to reduce the amount of wood needed and adding in a simple chimney to remove the smoke from the household.
In the community of San Lorenzo (note you will not find this community on ANY map) I have been working on a stove project in conjunction with a missionary who lives in the city nearby. I help with the building of the stoves and training of the women on how to build them, and she provides the money basically.
A note on small villages here: Each community kind of has a community board for community projects. These include small things like organizing workers to clear the sides of the road of debris, to big projects like building schools. Now, this community currently has 2 big projects, they are building a park (designed by fellow PCV Nathan) and a community center (also designed by Nathan). Each household is required to send people to work on the project. Not doing so does have consequences.
What the missionary has done is to increase participation by rewarding extra work. The big budget items for the stoves are the metal plates that serve as the cooking area and the chimney. Now, it costs less than $30 to build a stove, but if you are a subsistence farmer, this can be a lot of money. The missionary stated that those households that contributed two extra days of work to the projects can get the metal plate and the chimney.
We have used one lady in particular in the stove projects and she has become the leader for the project. A few months ago she was brought to a Women in Agriculture meeting to learn me about better farming practices and how to become a female leader in a very male dominated area. She returned to town too shy to actually try to be a leader, but through this project those things she has learned are coming out and she has taken charge.
You may have noticed that I have used “the women” and “she” a lot, well this is because this is a women’s project. Because women spend hours a day cooking (beans take a long time to make) they are the ones with the worst health problems coming from the poor stoves. It is also to say that if you want something, you must do it yourselves. And this has certainly done its job in San Lorenzo.
When we started the project, I had the women help me with the making of the stoves. Now, men are involved in that they cut the adobe blocks into the shapes that are needed for the stoves and to cut the hole in the roof for the ceiling. Nobody takes a machete away from a man. The first few stoves consisted of me doing the majority of the work, with me explaining why I wanted the blocks shaped in a certain way and why they should be arranged in a certain way.
The last time I went there (this was the fourth trip for stoves) I wanted to back out of the building part and make sure the women could do it themselves, making it a sustainable project. The first house I went to that day was to the leader of the project and she already had several of the adobe cut and the rest arranged on her adobe table in the shape of her stove. Clearly she understood.
The second house was a woman who had only helped on one stove. A few women come up to see what is going on and in the end they wound out helping with the stoves. Now, my forever stomach problem came up in the middle of this stove and I had to sit outside when there was a lack of work going on inside. The women stepped right up and finished, doing an excellent job. Now, thanks to my stomach ails, I decided to take an extra long lunch break and listen to the world cup match on the radio with the man of the house. Towards the end of the match he let me get on his horse and ride about the community a little. It was fun.
On the ride, his son (who was walking ahead of the horse so that the horse would just follow him and eliminate my need for learning how to drive the beast) takes us to a house which I was getting a stove. I am happy and excited, and tell them that I will be down in a bit to start their stove. I go ahead on the horse a little more and head back to the house. After regulation period was up (this particular game went to overtime and penalty kicks) I went down to the house and realized I had misunderstood the conversation. The house was slated to get a new stove that day, and while I was listening away to the radio and chatting it up with Tito, the ladies of the community went right ahead and built the whole stove without me. Good for them!
Then I go to another house where the women were in the process of building a stove. I like to build the stoves without the mud to see how the blocks need to be cut and to size the thing, a dry-build if you will, then the actual building of the stove takes a few minutes. This build was great though. The women were on top of everything. They were ordering the men on how to cut the adobe, they were discussing the sizing of the stove, and how they could modify their own stoves, and at one point a man tried to tell them they were doing it wrong. This was a great moment. They women banded up and pretty much told him to mind his own business because they knew what they were doing. I was offered a chair and just watched this unfold from the sidelines.
I hope you don’t think I am man-bashing here. That is certainly not my intention. This is a very machismo culture, very man oriented where women are often treated as second class citizens. By enabling women, you are impacted that half of society, but then they are educating their kids differently in the home, making certain changes in attitudes permanent. If these women and men can see what they can do on their own, they can make improvements in their daily lives and see eventually need less direction from the outside. These people are villagers and they are always going to be villagers (again not using villagers as a derogatory name, but to classify them differently from someone who lives in a city and has more interaction with the world and technology) so the goal is not to change that but to help them live more comfortable lives.
World Cup action: I hope that some have you have at least noticed that the FIFA World Cup passed. As I am writing this, the third place match has yet to be played, nor the final, but who knows when I will actually post this.
Honduras qualified for the tournament for the first time in a LONG time. The whole qualification process was a big deal for us. Honduras did not make it past the round robin play. They lost two matches and tied the third (0-0). The US did better, but was still eliminated early on.
Whenever there is a match here, the town is empty. I live right near the park and when Honduras was playing, it was empty. This is very abnormal. The park is always a busy place. I watched half of one game on a big screen at a bar, but the smoke got to be too much and we left for someone’s house. This is a soccer country, so everyone can tell you details about all the teams and who they support.
Carnecerias: Roughly translated as butcher shops. I learned something new this morning, and it was when the butcher shops get their meat. I left my house a little after 5:30am to walk my dog. There was another activity planned for later, so I wanted to walk her early, plus I was awake. Anyways, while on our first circuit around, I see two guys lift what appeared to be half a cow out of the back of a pick-up truck and into the market.
I had never considered myself a city girl, but have appreciated the fact that I can get my meat in little Styrofoam packages in the supermarket. This, in my opinion, is good. Those people who complain about the lack on knowing where your food comes from is baloney, I know it was once a cow, but I don’t want to be reminded of that by seeing half a cow pulled off a not so sanitary truckbed. The thing had large bars around it, which means live cows probably ride in their occasionally so that means that the meat is resting on top of cow poo. See, separation of meat from the farm is good.
The second part of why this is important relates to dogs. As the butcher shops carve up their halves of cows and other assorted animals, they have some bones lying about, and being nice people, they throw them out into the street occasionally for the dogs to eat. Thus, around 6am, there are packs of dogs that travel from butcher shop to butcher shop. Luckily for me, they have a healthy fear of people, and don’t approach while I am walking Seca.
Mail: I haven’t received any mail in over two months. This is crazy. Someone, and new people are definitely allowed into this bandwagon, should send me a letter. Nothing fancy, just write on paper “How are you? I am fine,” and possible a few other details about what is going on in your life.
Three weeks ago now I left to go to the states. I went to Erin’s wedding in AZ, hence why no one knew I was in the states. After some snafus trying to get there, I had a wonderful visit. I gained at least 5 pounds on the trip thanks to eating all that wonderful food.
Most of the visit was hanging out and getting ready for the wedding. Kelsey was there already so it was the three of us. One day we went up into the mountains and drove around. Did you know there was a ski resort right outside of Tucson, AZ? Yeah, the mountains are high enough that it snows there. Amazing.
The wedding was gorgeous, eventually I will put up a pic or two. The wedding was in the Catholic church that the groom’s parents belong to and the reception was at a country club. Now, the four of us (adding Devika now) met/ became good friends due to playing tennis together in college, so we took some shots on the tennis courts there; some fun ones where we are playing tennis using the bouquets as rackets and some pretty posing pictures as well. I can’t wait to see those!
Since then I have been on post-vacation vacation. The last few days I have finally gotten back into doing a little work- little being the key phrase there.
What work I have done is mostly for a stove project. The people who live in the villages, and a good portion of those who live in towns and cities have wood burning stoves for cooking. These stoves are generally very inefficient and cause major health problems because the smoke sits in the room and enters the eyes and the lungs of those in the house. Therefore the designs for these stoves have been modified to reduce the amount of wood needed and adding in a simple chimney to remove the smoke from the household.
In the community of San Lorenzo (note you will not find this community on ANY map) I have been working on a stove project in conjunction with a missionary who lives in the city nearby. I help with the building of the stoves and training of the women on how to build them, and she provides the money basically.
A note on small villages here: Each community kind of has a community board for community projects. These include small things like organizing workers to clear the sides of the road of debris, to big projects like building schools. Now, this community currently has 2 big projects, they are building a park (designed by fellow PCV Nathan) and a community center (also designed by Nathan). Each household is required to send people to work on the project. Not doing so does have consequences.
What the missionary has done is to increase participation by rewarding extra work. The big budget items for the stoves are the metal plates that serve as the cooking area and the chimney. Now, it costs less than $30 to build a stove, but if you are a subsistence farmer, this can be a lot of money. The missionary stated that those households that contributed two extra days of work to the projects can get the metal plate and the chimney.
We have used one lady in particular in the stove projects and she has become the leader for the project. A few months ago she was brought to a Women in Agriculture meeting to learn me about better farming practices and how to become a female leader in a very male dominated area. She returned to town too shy to actually try to be a leader, but through this project those things she has learned are coming out and she has taken charge.
You may have noticed that I have used “the women” and “she” a lot, well this is because this is a women’s project. Because women spend hours a day cooking (beans take a long time to make) they are the ones with the worst health problems coming from the poor stoves. It is also to say that if you want something, you must do it yourselves. And this has certainly done its job in San Lorenzo.
When we started the project, I had the women help me with the making of the stoves. Now, men are involved in that they cut the adobe blocks into the shapes that are needed for the stoves and to cut the hole in the roof for the ceiling. Nobody takes a machete away from a man. The first few stoves consisted of me doing the majority of the work, with me explaining why I wanted the blocks shaped in a certain way and why they should be arranged in a certain way.
The last time I went there (this was the fourth trip for stoves) I wanted to back out of the building part and make sure the women could do it themselves, making it a sustainable project. The first house I went to that day was to the leader of the project and she already had several of the adobe cut and the rest arranged on her adobe table in the shape of her stove. Clearly she understood.
The second house was a woman who had only helped on one stove. A few women come up to see what is going on and in the end they wound out helping with the stoves. Now, my forever stomach problem came up in the middle of this stove and I had to sit outside when there was a lack of work going on inside. The women stepped right up and finished, doing an excellent job. Now, thanks to my stomach ails, I decided to take an extra long lunch break and listen to the world cup match on the radio with the man of the house. Towards the end of the match he let me get on his horse and ride about the community a little. It was fun.
On the ride, his son (who was walking ahead of the horse so that the horse would just follow him and eliminate my need for learning how to drive the beast) takes us to a house which I was getting a stove. I am happy and excited, and tell them that I will be down in a bit to start their stove. I go ahead on the horse a little more and head back to the house. After regulation period was up (this particular game went to overtime and penalty kicks) I went down to the house and realized I had misunderstood the conversation. The house was slated to get a new stove that day, and while I was listening away to the radio and chatting it up with Tito, the ladies of the community went right ahead and built the whole stove without me. Good for them!
Then I go to another house where the women were in the process of building a stove. I like to build the stoves without the mud to see how the blocks need to be cut and to size the thing, a dry-build if you will, then the actual building of the stove takes a few minutes. This build was great though. The women were on top of everything. They were ordering the men on how to cut the adobe, they were discussing the sizing of the stove, and how they could modify their own stoves, and at one point a man tried to tell them they were doing it wrong. This was a great moment. They women banded up and pretty much told him to mind his own business because they knew what they were doing. I was offered a chair and just watched this unfold from the sidelines.
I hope you don’t think I am man-bashing here. That is certainly not my intention. This is a very machismo culture, very man oriented where women are often treated as second class citizens. By enabling women, you are impacted that half of society, but then they are educating their kids differently in the home, making certain changes in attitudes permanent. If these women and men can see what they can do on their own, they can make improvements in their daily lives and see eventually need less direction from the outside. These people are villagers and they are always going to be villagers (again not using villagers as a derogatory name, but to classify them differently from someone who lives in a city and has more interaction with the world and technology) so the goal is not to change that but to help them live more comfortable lives.
World Cup action: I hope that some have you have at least noticed that the FIFA World Cup passed. As I am writing this, the third place match has yet to be played, nor the final, but who knows when I will actually post this.
Honduras qualified for the tournament for the first time in a LONG time. The whole qualification process was a big deal for us. Honduras did not make it past the round robin play. They lost two matches and tied the third (0-0). The US did better, but was still eliminated early on.
Whenever there is a match here, the town is empty. I live right near the park and when Honduras was playing, it was empty. This is very abnormal. The park is always a busy place. I watched half of one game on a big screen at a bar, but the smoke got to be too much and we left for someone’s house. This is a soccer country, so everyone can tell you details about all the teams and who they support.
Carnecerias: Roughly translated as butcher shops. I learned something new this morning, and it was when the butcher shops get their meat. I left my house a little after 5:30am to walk my dog. There was another activity planned for later, so I wanted to walk her early, plus I was awake. Anyways, while on our first circuit around, I see two guys lift what appeared to be half a cow out of the back of a pick-up truck and into the market.
I had never considered myself a city girl, but have appreciated the fact that I can get my meat in little Styrofoam packages in the supermarket. This, in my opinion, is good. Those people who complain about the lack on knowing where your food comes from is baloney, I know it was once a cow, but I don’t want to be reminded of that by seeing half a cow pulled off a not so sanitary truckbed. The thing had large bars around it, which means live cows probably ride in their occasionally so that means that the meat is resting on top of cow poo. See, separation of meat from the farm is good.
The second part of why this is important relates to dogs. As the butcher shops carve up their halves of cows and other assorted animals, they have some bones lying about, and being nice people, they throw them out into the street occasionally for the dogs to eat. Thus, around 6am, there are packs of dogs that travel from butcher shop to butcher shop. Luckily for me, they have a healthy fear of people, and don’t approach while I am walking Seca.
Mail: I haven’t received any mail in over two months. This is crazy. Someone, and new people are definitely allowed into this bandwagon, should send me a letter. Nothing fancy, just write on paper “How are you? I am fine,” and possible a few other details about what is going on in your life.
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