Happy Water Day!

Today, October 2nd, is National Water Day here in Honduras.  Our school principal encouraged the science teachers to decorate and raise awareness, and it came at an opportune time in our 10th grade curriculum when we had a couple of lessons on the properties of water and its biological importance.  Unfortunately, at the staff meeting, I thought our principal said "International Water Day" instead of National Water Day, so the 10th graders did a lovely job decorating their classroom door with some slightly incorrect information.  Oops!

Perhaps Honduras doesn´t celebrate World Water Day (March 22nd) with everyone else because it usually falls in what Hondurans consider to be their "summer" (March-April) during the hottest and driest months in the country.  The irony of celebrating water during national drought is not lost on many local journalists...

See:
http://www.latribuna.hn/2010/03/22/honduras-festeja-%E2%80%9Cdia-mundial-del-agua%E2%80%9D-en-plena-sequia/

However, all this talk about water has caused me to reflect on the ways in which water is used and delivered here in Honduras as opposed to in the States.  I feel like I save more water here in Honduras but it is not necessarily of my own volition.  Let´s compare the houses in the States with some of the living situations I have encountered here in Honduras.  Where I lived previously in the States, houses have hot water tanks, 99-100% reliable water delivery (unless they are repairing a pipe in the street), and drinkable--even tasty--tap water.  Washing machines are included in any house/rental, as hand-washing clothes is truly a thing of the past.  You are only considered to be at a disadvantage if your house doesn´t come with a clothes dryer. 

When I first lived in the teacher housing that my school provides, I had an electric shower head for "hot" water, a cistern backup storage tank, and an electric pump to provide the house with water.  Although it is a common practice to dump a little household bleach in the cistern to keep it mildly sanitary, it is still not exactly potable, so everyone must buy large 5-gallon drums of purified water to drink.  We also had a (sigh! the luxury!) washing machine.  In June 2010, I moved into a tiny apartment closer to my husband´s (then-fiancee´s) family´s house.  There was no washing machine, no hot water, but at least there was a cistern and pump.  This weekend, I moved into a larger house where there is a set-up for hot water shower heads (but we haven´t bought them yet), no washing machine, and as far as we can tell, no cistern/pump.   That means we have to rely on city water which only is available for about half the day every day until we figure something out.  Because of the unreliability of the delivery of city water, every house in Honduras has a pila, or basically a big wash basin with a built-in washboard that you can fill and use for washing clothes, dishes, or anything else (like hauling buckets of water over to the bathroom to flush the toilet).  However, if your pila is empty and the water goes out, you are basically screwed.  Most city-water houses also keep a large barrel of water in the bathroom for "bucket baths" and for flushing the toilet without having to go out to the pila.

Since I have gotten used to cold or lukewarm showers in Honduras, I have definitely saved not only water, but also energy.  In the States, I was the kind of person who would turn the water up as hot as it could go, and just stand under it for a few minutes, enjoying the warmth before I would start washing my hair, etc.  Here, I have become accustomed to taking "sailor showers," or turning on the water just to get myself wet, then turning it off to shampoo, scrub up, then turning it on once again to rinse.  Almost no one has hot water tanks in Honduras because of the expense to buy one, the expense to operate one, and the fact that the coldest water here is nowhere near as cold as it is in the States in winter.  Electric shower heads are the cheap and space-saving solution, although they break easily and either don´t warm the water up very much or they give you fun (mild!) electric shocks... hence the nickname, "suicide showers."  Without hot water to strip away your skin´s oils and in a hot climate where you sweat a lot, your face always feels a little greasy... just another thing you get used to.

I still enjoy looking at sustainability and "ecological footprint" websites and I like raising awareness when I teach about human impact on the environment, but those websites are geared towards usage in the States.  The fact that water is not reliably delivered by local governments forces Hondurans to save water, plan ahead, and use it wisely or do without.  The fact that there is no real winter and no need to heat anything means that water and energy use in the tropics is much less than in the States.    What I described in this blog entry is my experience living in a Honduran mid-sized city.  As you can imagine, in rural areas of Honduras, people rely on wells and creeks, or have to haul buckets of water long distances to be able to use it at home.  Life is just that much harder for them because of it.  There are many charities focused on bringing water to people around the world so that they can spend some of their time and energy on something besides just basic survival.  If you are at all interested in development work or in making a difference in the lives of people around the world, please consider donating to a water project.

http://water.org/
http://www.justadrop.org/
http://www.hydraid.org/act/donate.html  <-- has affordable water filter projects in Honduras

If you know of any other great water charities that people should know about, please leave them in the comments section!

No matter where we live, fresh drinking water is a precious resource and should be conserved.  I encourage everyone to think of ways you can be less wasteful with water today, Honduran National Water Day, and again on the real World Water Day on March 22nd.   Thanks for reading!

Independence

Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence. --David Ben-Gurion

Once a week, I share a (hopefully inspirational) quote with my students and ask them to share their thoughts, opinions, reactions, and reflections. Last week, because of the Honduran Independence Day holiday, I chose the above quote to get students to reflect. I asked students what they were celebrating Independence from, and they, of course, said Spain. I asked them if Honduras was independent today. The immediate answer from a couple of boys was, "Yes, of course!" but a girl in the front said quietly, "No." Then more people spoke up and we talked about how Honduras depends on international aid, among other things. Then we talked about what national independence really meant to them.

To my students, as teenagers, moral independence meant not going along with the crowd, or doing what you know is best for you. Intellectual indepence meant not discriminating against lower income people just because of the reputation of the school or university they attended. To them, it meant making objective, unbiased decisions.

To me, moral independence means standing up to corruption, in or outside of positions of power. It means being responsible for good parenting decisions and not perpetuating cycles of abuse and neglect just because it is common. Intellectual independence to me means preventing "brain drain" as Hondurans decide to study in Mexico, Spain, or the United States and stay there because of better opportunities. It means a greater focus on education for Hondurans at all levels in order to have a prosperous, responsible, and conscientious nation. It also means coming up with solutions to Honduras´s problems that work for and are tailored to the Honduran people... not just trying to be a carbon copy of other countries.

In the end, we focused on how they as the future leaders of Honduras could work on making this country a better place, starting with themselves.

Five Thanksgivings

Who knew that I would end up celebrating Thanksgiving FIVE TIMES here in Honduras!!! I guess when you can't be with your family, you have to make up for quality with quantity, but I will say that many of these celebrations were pretty high quality, too!!

#1 -- Thanksgiving at the Teacher Houses

We had a lovely potluck Thanksgiving on Saturday, November 21st at the teachers' houses... At the last minute we realized that no one had signed up to bring turkey, so someone ordered out for roast chicken :) Elisa's stuffing was pretty amazing, and Matt made some great mashed potatoes. I, of course, baked the pumpkin pies with a little help from Elena :) I even had a brandied pie filling recipe... mmmmm :) We enjoyed quite a bit of wine and ended up going dancing afterwards (not a usual Thanksgiving tradition, but hey...)

#2 -- Thanksgiving at the Military Base

On Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to be able to experience the Thanksgiving dinner at one of the dining halls on the nearby military base (technically, the Americans rent the space from the Hondurans, and it is dually patrolled). Not everyone gets to go on base, and we got special permission because one of the ninth-graders' moms worked on base and requested for a bus of us to come. It was also odd to pay the dining hall cashiers only in dollars for our meal--Lempiras not accepted. The dining hall was all decked-out (see place-setting picture) and I got to teach some of the students words like "cornucopia." The food was actually pretty good (except the stuffing was like glue--Elisa's still wins. I had to explain to people that that wasn't the way it was supposed to be) It was really nice to see all the effort that the staff on base went through to make the soldiers feel like they were home again. We all felt really very welcomed and I, as an American, really appreciated all their hospitality. I met a very friendly woman from Wyoming who was stationed there and she pretty much couldn't believe that a) I was over 18 and b) that I just up and came to Honduras to teach. It was a little awkward, however, when she warned me very seriously, in front of all my Honduran, English-speaking students, to be safe and really watch out for myself. Um, watch out for all the sketchy Hondurans? That I'm sharing Thanksgiving with?? Oh, well.... Overall, we had a great time, and the parents that came really enjoyed themselves as well!

#3 -- Thanksgiving at School

Technically there were two smaller Thanksgiving celebrations at school... apparently, bilingual schools are the only "cultural" entities in Honduras to celebrate Thanksgiving, and they gave us only Friday off mostly due to the presence of the American teachers. For lunch on Thursday, the support staff decorated the library for us with fall-colored table cloths and gave us a meal of roast chicken, pasta salad and rice (not very Thankgsiving-y, but the decorations made up for it). They also made us little hats with colored feathers in them... awkward moment number two... isn't it a little offensive to still dress up like stereotypical "Indians" on Thanksgiving? But the entire school staff was so proud of themselves and all the work they had done that I didn't want to say anything. I didn't end up wearing my hat, and told other people to turn in backwards so it looked more like a turkey tail than an "Indian" headdress.

We also had a small "celebration" during the last period of the day on Thursday, which for me was 11th grade biology. I baked pumpkin cupcakes decorated with candy corn brought especially for me from the States (Thanks, Sheila!!! I owe a blog about your visit! YOU WIN!) and handed them out to my students only after they got up and said something they were thankful for. A lot of them thanked me for being an awesome teacher (AWWWW!!!) I got a little self-conscious and was like, "um, guys, don't feel obligated to say that," but they were like, "no, we really mean it!!!" So when I got up to say my piece, it went something like "I am so thankful for all of you guys, and I'm thankful for the interesting turn my life has taken in bringing me here... and ... oh my gosh I'm gonna cry..." and then I did a little :P Most people didn't notice (I hope) because they were eating their cupcakes and talking. But I really do love these students and I'm happy we got to share that time together.

#4 -- Thanksgiving out on the Town

Since I had already celebrated with 9th grade at the base and 11th grade in class, it was serendipitous that 10th grade chose to have their own Thanksgiving dinner out on the town at one of the nicest restaurants in town (full, amazing meal still about $5-6.50), La Casita. It was more a time for them to all relax together outside of school (and unfortunately not everyone came) than it was a traditional Thanksgiving celebration, but we did say a quick grace. I was happy that they invited Besi (their "homeroom teacher" while Mircia is out on maternity leave) and me (the 10th grade "assistant"). Besi also brought her 10-year-old son, Samuel (can you find him hidden among the 10th graders??) I had a good laugh because they spent most of the meal taking pictures of each other and looking at them on their cameras rather than actually having conversations or eating, but hey, they're 16...

#5 -- Thanksgiving up on the Volcan

It was a wonderful surprise to be invited up to the farm where Karen, a teacher at the school, and her husband, Ed, live. I've heard that Karen's place is beautiful but it was certainly an amazing experience to find out for myself. This was definitely the most traditional Thansgiving celebration of the bunch, complete with a day of relaxing and watching movies, and taking "digestive walks" around the grounds. Karen lives up on the "volcan" and grows coffee, pineapple, bananas, among other things, and has quite a menagerie of animals! You can see the aviary in this picture where she has 3 parrots who are delightfully noisy :P I also enjoyed playing with her cat, her 4 dogs, and one amazing KINKAJU!!!! It's kind of like a lemur... with a big long tongue and hands that feel like human hands. She was so sweet. It was such a wonderfully restful day, and one that I really needed (sometimes you feel all cooped up in the city, and it was nice to feel some "wide open spaces" to quote the Dixie Chicks).

I am so thankful for all the blessings I have recieved and all the wonderful experiences I have had here so far in Honduras. I hope Thanksgiving was fabulous for my mom and dad, all my friends and their families this year. :)

a little taste of fall...

Right now, we are in the "cold season" here in Honduras. This means that it gets down to about 60 degrees and all the Hondurans bust out down coats and ski hats. :) I think it's rather refreshing--slightly overcast days, finally pulling out more than just a flat sheet to sleep with at night, and enjoying not being covered in sweat on the walk into school. Everyone thinks I'm crazy because I still walk around in short sleeves, enjoying the cool breezes! There have only been a few cold spells of 60 degrees over the last two months, so mostly we enjoy it being ~80. I personally love it because it's my favorite in-between weather. I absolutely love fall and am sad when i miss it, so any kind of fall-like weather is more than welcome in my book!!

To help celebrate fall, my roommates put on a Halloween party at our house and we had a lot of fun with the makeshift costumes we came up with. I was waffling about whether or not I would even have a costume, because I couldn't think of anything good and just wanted to bake stuff and be done with it. I remember going clothes shopping with my friend Elisa a few weeks before Halloween and seeing a black and yellow striped dress. At the time, I was like, hahaha, that dress looks like a BEE!! Who would buy that??? Later, finding myself in a pinch for a Halloween costume, it looked like one of the least-heinous options. I bought the dress and made some antenna out of a headband, pompoms, and pipe cleaners :) Elisa ended up going as a flower, so our favorite party trick was "pollination." These costumes also helped us get into one of the discotecas with no cover the next night. AWESOME!! There is also a classic picture of our fellow teacher, Matt, dressed as the sterotypical American tourist. That's a Spanish dictionary in his hands, and not pictured are his black socks and sandals :)

Our school has been "funny" about celebrating fall holidays as well. All the doors were decked out with fall-colored leaves (even though those are never seen here in Central America) because most of our workbooks and decorations come from US sources. Our conservative-Christian principal outlawed the celebration of Halloween at our school, even though it is not a Christian school. As it turns out, and was explained by another member of the administration, Hondurans don't really have an accurate picture of what Halloween is like in the US. The way he put it, "if you ask an American kid to draw a picture of Halloween, he would probably draw a pumpkin, a happy-looking witch, and candy. If you ask a Honduran kid to draw a picture of Halloween, he'll draw what he has seen on TV--chainsaws, murder, etc." Because there is a lot of petty crime in Honduras, trick-or-treating would pretty much never fly here. It's such big part of the American holiday and what makes it "nice" and "wholesome" for kids, but people hardly have a concept of that here. Anyway, we tried to celebrate it as best we could on our own time, and even brought facepaint for those who didn't dress up.