Debriefing, a period of about 2 days at the end of our 6 weeks was a time to recuperate, buy gifts (the hat I am wearing is a gift for my grandfather), and prepare to return to our homes in the United States. We spent those last few days in a place called Valla de Angeles, a small tourist town about 30 minutes from the airport. Then it was time to say goodbye. After taking pictures with our routes and partners, we parted ways and made for home.
Another one of our projects was this champa, or shade structure. We noticed that there were a few already surrounding the soccer field, however many of them looked like the small shabby one on the left side of the second picture with many gaps in their thatch roofs and major structural issues. The people use these every Sunday to watch
their community teams battle it out for bragging rights.
The main reason they use them is not to protect themselves from the rain but from the sun which can be overwhelming at times. We felt like this project would be used regularly and considered useful by the community. We saw that we were correct when we installed these benches right before a Sunday soccer game. The spectators loved it. This champa was paid for by a combination of municipal funds and a fundraiser done by the colegio. A generous citizen donated the benches.
In addition, we rebuilt these two champas in the courtyard of the colegio. The champas that preceded these were made of thatch that had rotted almost completely away. We restructured the roofs and then replaced the thatch with this sturdy, long-lasting corrugated metal. We saw these structures being used everyday during school weeks so we knew that our work would be appreciated.
Our friends helped to build these structures were members of the Segundo bachillerato, a level of the colegio equivalent to a junior or senior. In order to graduate, they were required to do 300 hours of community service. Our projects helped this guy, Maynor, a really good friend of ours, to complete his requirement; he was the first one.
One of the projects that we completed while we were in Honduras was this mural that we completed on the back of the front gate to the colegio, or high school, the one that says, “Salvar el Planeta es trabajo de todos…’Ayudanos.’” This means, “Saving the Planet is the work of all… help us.” The girl in the yellow shirt came up with the design for the mural and several of us spent the afternoon painting it. It turned out quite nice.
Before we came, this park was in ruins. The slide had holes in it, the teeter-totter was missing a handle, the swings were completely gone, and the basketball goal was missing a rim. We fixed all of these issues and got to see our work appreciated by the local kids. The work for this part of the project was paid for in a combined effort of AMIGOS and the community, and the work was entirely done by the community members.
One of the more odd cultural traditions they have in Honduras is the Mujiganga. Our last week in community overlapped with Feria, the catholic week of celebration. Every day during Feria the Mujiganga these cross-dressing men in creepy masks would dance in the street and scare the children, sometimes to tears. I never really understood why they held on to this tradition or even began it in the first place.
Another tradition related to Feria was this competition called “India Bonita.” Various schools would enter “Indias” or little girls dressed in these beautiful dresses. It was much like a beauty pageant in that the girls would walk down the runway, walk back, and then recite a short speech and answer some questions relating to Honduran culture and their community’s history. Each dress is hand made from burlap, beans, corn, banana leaves, and various other organic materials that represent the flora of Honduras. My host mother and her friends made the dress for the India that their school entered in the competition and ended up winning first place.
Everyone participated in the festivities of Feria, even the high school kids. These guys were roughly the age of freshmen, but they could perform the traditional dances like pros.
Honduras had many unique traditions, which was especially evident during Feria, but due to the rising exposure to American culture through their media and various outreach groups they are adopting many American traditions as well. For roughly 40 cents a bottle, coke in the glass was always a welcome treat. Ole Miss, the Braves, and Fort Campbell were also represented. Additionally there were a large number of Titan’s jerseys. I saw at least three Titans jerseys while I was there and only one other NFL jersey.
This is a photo of the “Calle Principal” or main street. It was one of the points of pride among the community since it was paved only two weeks before we arrived. Not many small communities in Honduras have a paved road like this and many considered it a luxury. On beautiful days like this one you could see the mountains that created a backdrop to our community. Many of the citizens had coffee farms up there that they would work to generate an income. Our community’s main export was coffee. One of the farmers had submitted his coffee to an international taste testing competition in Texas where it had won the number one slot in the flavor category. Needless to say the community held him in high regard. One more note about coffee in Honduras, everyone drinks it with sugar. There is no such thing as strictly black in Honduras.
The view out over the community from the “cerro” or hill was spectacular. You could see every single house, business, and school. In the background you might be able to make out some cell-phone towers. Yeah, EVERYONE in Honduras has a cell. It doesn’t matter how rural you are. People there certainly value being connected.
On top of the cerro there was a large field where the kids would go run, play, ride dirt bikes, and even fly kites. I was honestly rather excited to fly kites with them. It may seem silly, but I had been craving to fly a kite for a long time. Every time we went to the beach I would ask my dad to buy me a kite but that never happened. I guess it took going all the way to Honduras to fulfill this dream.
This photograph held several layers of irony for my partners and me. The object that the donkey is eating out of is actually an improvised trashcan made from half an oil barrel. These trashcans were the project that the AMIGOS group from the year before had implemented. As you can probably infer, their project was rather unsuccessful. Honduran culture is to throw trash wherever they are standing, littering. As a result, the trashcans became feeding troughs and the trash is lined up along the side of the road. We vowed to make our project more relevant.
The two photographs above show my partners and me hanging out with the local youth. The boy in the first photo is the 2-year-old host brother of my partners’. In the second photo we are hanging out with my host brother Dani (far right) and several other kids after one of the lessons that we taught. We taught lessons to the elementary school aged kids 2 hours a day, five days a week for the first four weeks of our trip. We discussed the topics of health, the food pyramid, the water cycle, conservation, and many others.
My host family consisted some of the nicest people I have ever met. They had volunteered to host me for six weeks. They made some great food, kept a clean house, and gave me some incredibly generous gifts when I left. I hope that I can live up to their generosity here in the US.
This is Dani (11), Vicki (7),and Droopy the family dog who certainly lived up to his name. I spent most of my time at home hanging out with these guys. They were some of the beautiful kids alive. They would play together all the time, and Vicki had the cutest laugh that you could always hear throughout the house.
This is the house that belonged to my family and the room that I stayed in. My family’s home was relatively nice compared to others in the community. It was bright, open, and relatively spacious. There were four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a kitchen. There was an electric stove for the times when there was electricity, a wood stove for when there wasn’t, and electric lights in every room that usually worked.
After landing in Tegucigalpa, all the Honduran AMIGO volunteers were bussed to this mountain retreat in the city of La Paz. La Paz is both a district and a city in Honduras. A district is the equivalent to a state in the US. In La Paz we had a 3-day long briefing session to review the basics we had learned in chapter training. We learned important lessons about health and safety, cultural sensitivity, and AMIGOS protocol. After the three days were up, we were assigned routes and partners. A route was basically defined as all the volunteers assigned to a single supervisor who would visit the volunteers in community once a week. (I am the guy in the white shirt in the upper right hanging of the arch.)
This was my route.The ten of us were assigned to Megan (the woman standing to the right with her thumbs up). At 19 years old, Megan was not much older than the rest of us.She was fun to hang out with when she came to visit us in community, but she also kept up with our progress and provided us with the resources
we needed to finish our projects.
These were my partners: Emily Gao (left) and Sarah Goldman (right). We were assigned to Santiago-Puringla a small community in the district of La Paz. We were all from very different backgrounds and parts of the country. Sarah was from a private girls’ school in Connecticut and Emily was from a public school in California. We learned a lot from each other and became great friends.
This summer I went to Santiago Puringla, La Paz, Honduras with an organization called Amigos de las Americas. AMIGOS is an organization that is devoted to creating sustainable projects in rural South and Central American communities that will help to strengthen the cultural ties between the Americas while promoting youth leadership. My partners and I finished several projects, met some amazing people, and learned some real lessons about leadership. My experience this summer could not have occurred without a generous gift from the Wilson family. Their contribution made possible a trip that will leave a lasting impact on my life.
