Rabbit Redux

Today the teachers surprised us with a grand convivio to celebrate the completion of our project. Thanks to the skipper's diligence, the centro informatico now consists of nine computers, a security system, and air conditioning. They rented out a nearby open-air restaurant with a raised dias for dancing and a U-shaped table around it. The affair was one of traditional dances by the students, grand speeches by the faculty, stuttered thanks by your quite nervous trulies, and the exchange of diplomas and comprobations. I was humbled to watch them crease plastic bags over the certificates we printed acknowledging their 30-hours of computer training (even if they hadn't beat Bowser). And we were given certificates saying (loosely translated) that we are Heroes of the Soviet Union. Cano gave a speech describing how we had searched all over Honduras and singled out his school, and how four major world powers, the United States, China, Argentina, and Germany (like the real Stalin, he mistook this ally, for some reason thinking Brandon was German) had combined to build his computer lab.

Despite their gratitude, there is little cultural respect for the uptight stranger at such a party. Without even giving us the chance to liquor up, the girls were sent in their traditional dancing costumes to give us a very public trial-by-fire in the 'Choluteca running polka'. Stalin's next human wave of teenagers subjected us to a pounding and somewhat scandalous reggaeton song. And finally we had to play musical chairs, where the loser was to sit and pop a balloon that would contain the next humiliation. Rodrigo had to dance salsa like a monkey, Dan like a horse, Tian the punta, Brandon merengue, and me, of course, to a dreaded reggaeton beat.

I swear I heard Director Cano begin to choke up as he said that we had chosen his school for their refusal to strike, that they now had the best school in the district, and it was sure to grow and expand in enrollment, prestige, and financial means. Then we trotted out to the lawn and drank Salva Vidas until I passed out in a hammock, while El Boludo played on the swingset with the fourteen-year-old girls.

Tomorrow I return to the United States, si Dios quiere. Because of a continental.com screw-up, I will make this final trip without Rodrigo or our trusty comrades, who depart Friday. Bring on the culture shock, and some pictures, hopefully.

The Last Crusade

Our 'wake up early without a strategy' travel strategy worked famously on the way to La Antigua Guatemala, and Rodrigo, Tian, and I were in that gorgeous old city in the mountains thirteen hours and dollars later. At one time the capital of Spanish Central America, Antigua is nestled between three volcanoes and home to some of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen. When one was ruined by an earthquake, the Spanish would erect a grander one elsewhere in the city. For that reason it looks like Old Europe deposited in the middle of volcano jungles. The shrine of Peter of St. Joseph Betancur at San Francisco Cathedral was particularly impressive, and its relics included the 17th century saint's rope underwear. That's the inspiration I needed to tough this trip out reusing mine.

On Sunday we climbed Pacaya, an active volcano popular for the lava oozing out near the top, with a group including a few Israeli girls who had just finished their compulsory service. We intended to roast marshmallows over the lava, but it was so hot that we could not stand any closer than a few feet away, and so contented ourselves throwing sticks, rocks, and the marshmallows into the lava and watching them immolate on contact.

Rodrigo got burned almost as badly at chess on Monday, after we bought a handcrafted set (including one plastic pawn, we later discovered) during our tour of the city. We strolled through the market, and bought some souvenirs before discovering how broke we all were. For example, I have less than $100 in the bank and a trip from El Progreso to San Pedro to Houston to Washington to Baltimore to New York to Stamford ahead of me.

But these things work out, gracias a Dios. We had no problems at the border, except for the Guatemalans who had never seen a Chinese passport before and scrutinized Tian. On Tuesday, however, we arrived in the Copan region of western Honduras to discover no buses were running to San Pedro Sula. The single road was blocked by strikers, which is why we saw so many tractor-trailers pulled over to the side of the road in Guatemala. But we refused to be stuck like the other desperate tourists. What was a simple $5, four hour leg of the trip to Antigua became an adventure. A bus from Copan to Santa Rosa. Then a chicken bus to the traffic jam behind the bridge the strikers had seized. Next we walked through the protest itself, a lazy affair of dance music, only evidently political by the graffiti, rocks strewn across the street, and a line of watching police. Then we took another chicken bus from the other side to San Pedro, and escaped the fate of the untold thousands stuck on the road in the traffic jam.

Rodrigo and I have become pretty arrogant about our aptitude for traveling across the region, and it has brought us closer together. Except yesterday I made the trip with a Mayan-knit floral-pattern tote bag souvenir I bought for my grandmother's birthday. Amid all of the chaos and despair, Rodrigo took the time to comment that I looked like a fag.

The others stayed back and got lost on a mountain. Dan took our friends from the squatter community to KFC for dinner, but they threw up the mashed-potatoes-and-gravy. Then the fourteen year old girl proposed to Dan. The skipper leads adventures of his own sort.

Tomorrow, Rabbit redux.

'Pijineando' with Stalin

Pull the iron curtain on this one. It's a wrap. The C.E.B. Alvaro Contreras computer lab goes online tomorrow, the last formal day of classes, and in go two air conditioning machines next week.

It won't look like much. But unlike the completely refinished facility down the street, it will have computers. When Rodrigo and I met with the superintendent to get information about the district, we discovered that of the seven computer labs promised by the government's Proyecto Aprende since 2005, only one was installed.

Director Cano, Rodrigo, and I were personally stuck in this bureaucratic machine trying to buy internet Tuesday and Wednesday. So Director Cano took us to his favorite bars yesterday and the day before to botar bolas, joder botellas, or pijinear, depending on your chosen slang term for 'slamming some back' (although Rodrigo swears there is no true English equivalent). Nine rounds Tuesday and eight rounds yesterday makes pijineando with Edgardo Cano sound more like a boxing match than a few drinks on a weekday afternoon.

Once he shouted down an Indian chief. Another time he beat his father-in-law up when the unfortunate man thought to strike his wife. In a Panamanian military school, he walked around with half his mustache shaved for three months to earn the right to wear it. To avoid getting kicked out, he found a well-connected thug to break his best friend out of prison, where they had ended up for verbally assaulting a black policeman. He goes to strip clubs and divulges the unsavory details of his teachers' sex lives, like the divorce following the discovery of his third grade teacher in bed with a black man. He kicks at sick strays to ward them off and lambastes the mariachis for their poor voices...

...but on his softer side goes over and feeds the pathetic animals scraps from his meal, and pays the mariachis anyway because they're very poor fathers of his students. Had Edgardo Cano not told Rodrigo and I it would be "perfectly fine" to approach his students older than fourteen, and was surprised we hadn't, I would have few reservations about his character. Maybe it's more beers than he can handle, machismo, or the fact girls are sexually active much younger here. More likely it's cultural up to a point, and you have to accept the fact that the only open school in the district is kept running by a very complicated compassionate toughguy sleazebag.

"An all-out prick," summarized one of the SHH interns who only had the pleasure of his distracted handshake and growled pleasantries. Not exactly, sister. He is forcing his staff to teach through the strike, including his eighth-grade teacher who is in the awkward position of being the president of the large teacher's union that called the stoppage.

So much for black-and-white. As I read over these posts I realize that coming down here you need to grow up all over again. You learn the culture as you ride the school buses. At first the world is horrifying, then a magical place of good and evil, and now my Honduran 'soul' (as Tian would put it) has caught up to my American perspective. There's both good and bad and sometimes these contradictions are wrapped up in conflicted individuals. In the absence of a functioning civil society to provide for children and punish the criminally insane, you have wider latitude here to do greater goods and worse evils. For that, you have your Stalins.

Time to go back to the future.

Gigantic Saturday

We went to the Kremlin-on-Quebrada-Seca last night for the second-best nacatamles we have ever eaten. Not to impeach Doña Micaela's fantastic cooking, but even a one-time visitor to the Teran household must admit that their Nicaraguan nacatamal is the world standard.

On the subject of beating animal flesh into a mealy pulp, the popular televisions show 'Gigantic Saturday' treated us to that once-popular centerpiece of America's fantasy world, "professional wrestling". Before these steroid-enhanced spandex-wearing troglodytes with dyed hair assumed the role of cultural ambassadors, the Miami-based show featured an undocumented widow living in the United States speaking with a lawyer about how to avoid deportation. Unless something was lost in translation, she was concerned that a homoerotic bodybuilder was going to come to her home and suplex her.

Thanks, America. You can just feel the Director laughing at us, demanding an explanation, a silent re-enactment of the Moscow show trials of 1936. Yes, Comrade Stalin. This is our brand of toughness. Artificially-enhanced, staged, and, yeah, just sort of gay overall. You win.

That sounds much like my chessplay against Tian yesterday, who ripped apart a fancy hypermodern opening I tried to play but did not know well. We have found a time-consuming diversion, Tian and I, which is better than rereading my short stack of books for a third time.

An addendum to the new language/new soul idea. I can understand why Tian is so logical, and would like to put in for a Chinese soul. Apparently meiguo, the Mandarin word for America (the United States of... you need to clarify down here), means "beautiful nation". Given the beauty and simple logic of that language, no wonder it crafts a soul so adept at chess.

As far as the high-stakes game, Saturday was not the first time the Director outmatched us. You will have to pardon the Russian Revolution references ad nauseam, but with six weeks of growth on my face (and given our new friend Taylor's criticisms of SHH these days), I feel okay turning this blog into Animal Farm. So Dan was Trotsky on Friday. His urgent desire to open the school up for public internet classes brought the Director's proverbial icepick down on his head. Cano positioned him in a corner and told the rest of us why this was a dangerous idea, how he hadn't been able to get this through the skipper's head, and that if we didn't stop El Boludo, he would kick us out of his school and keep the computers.

I've agreed broadly with the Director the whole time, to slow down and not overestimate the importance of complicated and novel schemes for 'sustainability' and a 'social business model'. I take my fashionable Muhammad Yunus books with a dose of Benedict XVI. I took a little solace in the encylical he wrote midway through our project, doubtlessly with us in mind. "All of humanity is alienated when too much trust is placed in merely human projects, ideologies and false utopias". Better to trust an oldschool caudillo like Cano, the proven method in these parts.

For that, Rodrigo and I played Zinoviev and Kamenev, living to be humiliated another day. Hopefully we fly out before that day comes, because Gigantic Saturday (featuring All-American Jack Swagger, in a blue spandex unitard, thighs bulging out of something even UVA waterpolo would be scandalized to wear) was embarrassing enough.

"...porque Ustedes son sencillos"

I recently read a UNDP report that included this statistic. 65% of city-dwelling Hondurans are too intimidated by gang violence to go anywhere on foot. Out of necessity, we walk everywhere in Progreso, and people notice. Surprised we had not yet been robbed, murdered, or even threatened, Reina surmised it must be "because you two are simple".

In the context of the extreme effort conversational fluency in Spanish takes me, I understood the pretty Comidas Rapidas waitress as saying "because you too are such pathetically stupid simpletons, even hardened killers would feel bad robbing you." To my great relief, Rodrigo later re-translated: "because you are obviously well-meaning penniless foreigners."

Tian says he wants to learn Spanish (as if this is obvious) because, "you know, when you learn a new language, [pregnant pause] you get a new soul." Tian's Chinese proverb and Reina's flirtatious soundbyte get at what I like most about Honduras. This is an easy place to be a simple kind of man. We wake up early, and earnestly do unambiguously good things, as best we know how, in a world of unambiguous evils we can scarcely imagine.

It's a black-and-white world of shotguns, dirty-jeans, wide-brimmed hats, and good vs. evil. And at some point you realize that this isn't some TCM Western you're projecting in your mind, but actually the real world. Expressions of love and hate are right up in-your-face. It's the guards all around the city and riding on trucks with duct-tape wrapped shotguns, instead of a B2 flying over the All-Star game. It's the mother breast-feeding her children in the middle of the construction worksite rather than paying for good-quality daycare. The skeletal ordering principles underneath society, fear and love, are just visible here. We are the ones able to forget that this is the way human beings are. When you take the Honduran perspective, America is the fantasy world. And for that reason, all of them ask me to help them hatch their plans; "well where are there more jobs, where you live around New York, or in Virginia?"

Potsdam [from left]. Stalin. Truman. Atlee.

Director Cano, the principal that Tian astutely remarks bears a striking resemblance to Stalin, approaches us like we come from this fantasy world. Dan's vision for the computer lab clashes with his gritty cynicism and notions of the way things in this country must be done. The old bastard came to his school several years ago, fired all of the teachers there, hired new ones, and explains "I have no friends, only acquaintances". He runs the school with an iron fist, ignoring the corrupt superintendent (a 'faggot'), and he gets his teachers to work every day despite a nationwide teacher's strike in support of Zelaya (a 'Hitler'). Somewhere along the line we stepped back in time to Stalingrad, 1942. A simpler world where men conceal their emotional complexity and not their hardened opinions. Or simpler maybe, but equally terrifying, my world is almost exclusively comprised by men. Of all the things to prepare me for, Regis.

In short, the sustainability of this project has a Stalinclad guarantee. We know about machines, he knows about men. And in the afternoon we try to toughen ourselves up a little bit by doing plumbing work with tough Honduran slum-dwelling untouchables who freely offer how many men they've killed (I once heard a somber, deadpan 25), not to mention illegal immigration and cocaine-related deportation experiences.

In a few months, a couple hundred people in Las Brisas will be both shitting indoors and surfing the internet for the first time. The combination of these is a huge change in someone's life, and I guess I like very simply to have been allowed be a little part of that.

If anyone sees Mel Zelaya, he has gone missing and has threatened to sneak into the country with Nicaraguan and Venezuelan support and launch an insurrection. Please let me know.

Virtualization

Vir tu a li za tion : 1. (computing) to run a program in virtual storage 2. (travel) to experience a foreign country as if it were virtual reality.


The first definition is all Brandon and Tian, who are installing some fancy shortcut to run a Linux operating system "virtually" from Windows so that we can use free, open-source educational software. You can see it in action above, which should be proof that we actually work here. Sometimes. The second definition approaches an idea that I often have. Honduras is simultaneously too fantastic and horrific to be a real place. The straight rows of palm trees in the palmeras go by our bus every day like a movie reel. The places we stop are either the stuff of charity infomercials or tantalizing commercials set in tropical paradises.

My prediction proved correct, except Sra. Cano invited us to lunch, not dinner. This is an all afternoon affair of fresh corn tortillas, chicken and rice, and pancakes with honey for dessert. And a guava tree in the backyard. Our entire hotel room smells like guava, now. So instead of smelling like five sweaty men every day, it smells like five sweaty gay men.

We escaped this thought today to Pulhapanzak, an impressive waterfall. Because of Mass and because Rodrigo and Dan are not immune to the endemic SuperMario craze we introduced to the city, we got a late start. Worried we would not be back at any safe hour, I voiced my doubts. No sooner did I conjecture we would end up dead in San Pedro Sula, the old Atlanta Public Schools bus we were on started pulling out of the El Progreso bus station. The sensation (at least for me) was like being a little kid on a roller coaster. You know it's supposed to be fun, but you're uncertain and very nervous, and then there's nothing you can do about it.

And what a ride it was. Chicken bus to San Pedro, all the while I couldn't lean back because the one-armed campesino behind me insisted on putting his stump behind my head. Crazy minibus through the San Pedro market to the other bus terminal, with some clown in a yellow soccer jersey hanging out trying to hustle people in to ride with us until this glorified minivan held no less than nineteen smushed $0.30 fares. Chicken bus to Rio Lindo. Hike through Nowheresville to the cataract we doubted the whole time was actually in this unassuming little mountain town.

Pulhapanzak is not the largest or most breathtaking, but in typical Honduran fashion you can pay a guide $5 to brave the currents with you, show you where you can safely cliff-jump, and crawl through the spray at the middle of the falls. Past twenty points you could ever take a camera. You can swim underneath and see the little caves and crawlspaces under the waterfall where Americans would only see potential lawsuits. You are buffeted by spray that is so strong you need to stay on all fours. When the only way down was a 25ft jump down a little waterfall into a tiny pool (the guide needed to throw a rock to show us where to aim our landing) Rodrigo and I gave it a "Wahoowa" for all our friends back in Hoo'ville. In the adrenaline rush directly under the plunge, we remembered to scream thanks to our JPC benefactors, though the ensuing laughter was lost in the crash of water around us.

Everything worked out well on the trip back, with the help of the same manic yellow-jerseyed minibus pimp we caught the last chicken bus to El Progreso, which had the same beggar lady with her same mentally-ill seven-year-old "baby" in the same grotesque poofy pink dress.

Pulhapanzak and monster babies. Virtually the best Honduran day imaginable.

Ganging Up On the Maras

Ibran Bueso, our good friend here and the director of the local university, imagines an international coalition. The University of Virginia's Jefferson Public Citizens Foundation. Universidad Technológica de Honduras. Students Helping Honduras. Rotary International. Secretaría de Educacion de Honduras.

In return for a modest report on our progress, Abogado Bueso gave us (most importantly, the skipper) a new long-term goal. Our job, to provide a cost-effective model for improving education resources in gang-infested neighborhoods and identify more potential sites. His job, to supervise the progress of this envisioned expansion and harrangue the Honduran government for matching funds. So it's not the Gran Torino or Boondocks Saints approach to gang violence (both of which we studied this week) but an exaggerated version might be a passed-over script for a half-decent girlie movie. Besides, we might feel a little bad bad calling Tian "egg roll" or "zipper-head" all the time.


















If none of this comes to fruition, Rodrigo, Tian, and I can say we did the least skilled of the unskilled labor at Villa Soleada these afternoons, working on trenches, carrying doorframes, and climbing mango trees. At the latter we were absolute failures compared with the 40lb children who shimmy up to the uppermost branches after fruit. Lu Tian remained earthbound letting the smaller children take photos like this one, by Nicole (who never fails to charm me into playing "burro"). Notice how much higher the little kid can climb than Rodrigo and I.


I discovered yesterday that Tian has been taking classes at the university across the street for three weeks. He simply walked over, his confusion convinced the administration desk to send for an English-speaker, and he asked if he could reverse-audit an introductory English class to learn Spanish for free. People just gravitate towards Tian and the down-to-earthiness that apparently befits the meaning of his name. Not only did the professor say yes, he drove Tian to San Pedro Sula (almost an hour from here) to buy a primer textbook.

Director Cano drove Dan to San Pedro this afternoon (through heavy traffic and demonstrating crowds) to buy four more computers. But the skipper hadn't thought to follow-up beforehand and the machines weren't ready. Still, he pointed out the day was not a total failure. He did beat the "Bowser level" on Brandon's hacked SuperMario download. Not a day after Abogado Bueso warned us not to let the kids waste time in the computer lab, Mario Brothers replaced cocaine as the most addictive controlled substance in Las Brisas. That's Progreso.

And if the regime is reading, the whole martial law curfew thing kills the whole idea of Friday night, cheque?

Requiem for a Dream

"See, we're five men without any mothers or girlfriends or anything to take care of us. Moreover, we're foreigners. So there's nobody to say, 'Come eat' or 'Shave yourself'."

This brief summary of the past five weeks served as compelling enough logic (combined with my scruffy appearance) for the fine ladies who teach at Las Brisas school to make us brunch every day. When they surprised us the first day with food, it was the answer to a prayer. Just that morning Tian joked, "Is that why we call Dan the skipper? Because he makes us skip breakfast?" No more. The teachers come bursting with enthusiasm for their computer classes, and we come expecting to be bursting with tajadas, stewed beef, and cabbage and by the end of class. Their food is delicious; drinking Coca-Cola with breakfast, not so much. Tomorrow we have been promised empanadas, which Tian calls "those big dumplings". (Doggedly persistent in using the Spanish he has learned here, El Chino endears himself to everyone he meets.) Their generosity is such that you might believe the Director's whispered allegations that these Zelaya supporters are communists ready to 'Heil' Castro and Chavez. The Subdirector and only other Micheletti supporter among the teachers was so kind as to demonstrate the salute.

Alleged communists though they are, we are fortunate to work in the only school in the district where the teachers are not striking. Not completely, at least. Our computer class for them starts at 10am, to the delight of the schoolchildren who therefore will get two weeks of half-days. Now, the teachers let us loose at noon, when we pry them off the new wonders of writing schedules and gradebooks in Excel, looking at Google Earth, and playing Solitaire. And the real work begins when we go to the Villa Soleada construction site behind Las Brisas to dig trenches. (Tian leaves there to girls crying "I love you forever" and only half joking.)


Remember the police came while he was programming the security system? That's our bombmaker Tian.

Trenches are the only security feature Fortress Brisas is lacking, I think. We have been slowly adding security and maintenance components to the computer lab we installed at the end of last week. Also taking shape are the exact parameters of our research project.

A climactic team meeting today decided to abandon Dan's dream of using the Brisas School as a springboard for a long-term project for marketing artisans' crafts over the internet. The skipper was none to happy with the mutiny of the rest of his group when we argued that our research suggests we need to focus on education. And not only our survey responses from Las Brisas, but there is a body of literature about the need to improve educational standards to keep kids out of the maras, supergangs that initiate children as young as 11 into a culture of violence that is called the greatest obstacle to Honduran development. It is certainly the grisliest of the problems we have found in Las Brisas, which our research suggests is a good case study of the country as a whole.

All of the white papers I have read by USAID, the United Nations Development Programme, and various NGOs recommend improving the education system to fight gangs. So now we have a clearly-defined mission, to provide a model for how an engineering team can maximize the resources at a school's disposal with with a relatively minimal investment of time and money.

We are group of five poorly-shaved, formerly poorly-fed young men living in a third-world country rocked by coups and earthquakes. Add "and now we hang out with gang members", and I can expect the good women of Brisas will soon be feeding us dinner and tucking us in at night.

Love in the Time of Swine Flu

Weakly supporting Zelaya is a masterstroke of United States foreign policy. Our vacuous support for the ex-president takes the wind out of Chavez's sails, who doubtlessly wants American credibility to be impeached as decisively as Zelaya himself was one week ago. But we have just sat back and joined a chorus of protestations, allowing the Latin countries of the OAS to take the stage of this circus. What might have been the three-ring act of Chavez, the U.S., and Honduras (the only member of both ALBA and CAFTA and thus a predictable flashpoint) is a minor side-story while we prioritize Iraq and make strides with the Russians. Well done staying out of this one, Clinton State Department. Except that the role of geostrategic noninvolvement played by Mrs. Clinton is on a decidedly personal level, it seems.

Fortunately, Manuel Zelaya's aerial stunt did not result in the "bloodbath" the archbishop forewarned, despite his public invocation of the spiritual strength of Christ's blood and promise to raise the crucifix over Honduras. I was floored by the audaciously messianic overtones of this failed seventh-day return, but my incredulity was unfounded. The military curfew that was abruptly changed from 10pm to 6:30pm extended to actual Saviors, and the 7pm Mass was canceled. Of all times and places to overthrow the state of grace!

On the topic of forbidden love, a taste of spiritual orphanage might well have been the punishment our Heavenly Father slyly meted out to our skipper. (Yesterday Dan learned that half-drunk hook-ups with Honduran orphans are also forbidden by the laws of man). And in another incidence of love in the time of swine flu, a particular clique of girls from Las Brisas (some who can almost-believably claim to be our age) are constantly calling Dan and Rodrigo to profess their undying love.

It was not only spiritual nourishment we were denied, and gorged ourselves on baleadas this morning before going out to Las Brisas for a coup of our own. Indeed our first day of classes were wildly successful, the teachers were as enthusiastic and excited as the throngs of squealing children who gathered around the machines to watch their luckiest peers play pinball, minesweeper, and solitaire. Among all these screaming kids you can see the hope for tangible results that only the skipper could see before.

Of course it was our knowing where not to get involved (periods of personal noninvolvement nonwithstanding) that was the masterstroke, here.

Americans Fire Rockets On Honduras

And the rockets red glare / the bombs bursting in air were not Venezuelan fighter jets dropping their first payload on El Progreso or the military shooting down Zelaya's plane. No, we were bringing a taste of independence to the Hondurans living under martial law, blasting open the curfew with bottle rockets, an old fan stand, and Bobby's American ingenuity...

...which you can see here, as we learned that the mortar could be easily in converted into a bazooka by someone sufficiently under the influence (of love for America) to take a faceful of sparks. We should have brought our alarm system along, except that it was installed yesterday in the (I am proud to report) now fully operational Alvaro Contreras Centro Basico computer laboratory.

The team split up. Brandon, Bobby, and I set out early to acquire an arsenal for the evening but had no luck in the centro. We asked one shopkeeper in a store full of policemen, and his expression of pure terror gave us the suspicion (later confirmed) that fireworks are illegal in Honduras. Particularly under martial law. And particularly past curfew. But the two Roberts were having serious America withdrawal.

The credit goes to Bobby, who contacted a man who knows these things, and drove 45 minutes into the mountains to a password-protected factory where they were making bottle rockets and firecrackers wrapped in yesterday morning's La Prensa. Did we trust them completely? No. But we were intent on recreating the Battle of Fort McHenry over the house across the street. Turns out we were packing some serious firepower.

Photo credits to Walker.

Of course a spontaneous party of Honduran girls-school students, itinerant backpackers, and our gang immediately collected around food, plentiful drink, and loud explosions. It raged long past the curfew, which we marked by firing a salvo of bottle rockets off to the blaring National Anthem. No doubt believing that the Marines had finally landed, the Honduran military stayed in their barracks and did not enforce the toque de queda. Good decision, catrachos. It was a night of firsts. Tian's first Budweiser. Dan's first kiss. My first time firing self-propelled explosives out of a short metal tube inches from my very-flammable-seeming beard.

Brandon and Tian had been replaced by Messrs. Beam and Kharkov by the time we staggered back to our hotel, rang the buzzer next to the gate, and got a bewildered look from Jose Santos, who must be absolutely convicted that our survival to date is only through constant miraculous divine interventions.

He probably has that right.

Phase Two: A Rocky Start

Last night our friends Sam, Michelle, and Christian left us to go back to the United States. We had a lot of fun here with them, and we hope they can survive the torpor that returning to life in such a blessedly boring country must be. The going-away party was cut short by the curfew, and actually we left a little after the 10pm toque de queda had started. I remember us being not-so-mildly inebriated and jogging through the dark the "block" or so to our hotel slanging around what we thought at the time was convincing military operational lingo. We were not to intoxicated to not feel the compunction that the SHH trio was not there to provide covering fire (and in the case of Rodrigo, that Michelle would not be taking up positions at his flank these nights). Safe trip, guys.

Today we spent ten hours at the school getting dirty. Our friend Moises came to help us weld iron bars on the doors (will sunglasses will really keep him from burning out a retina?) and bolt down cages to house the computers. We put our two machines on his ghetto-looking customized tables and ran the alarm system wiring through plastic tubing we had to drill into the cinder block walls. When it comes to collapsing to sleep on sacks of UN food aid, corn is definitely the best. (Red beans are too hard, rice too soft). After all the labor was done, the alarm system keypad stopped responding, and neither Rodrigo nor Tian could reprogram it. It was about to get dark, we were alone in the school, and we were all exhausted. There was really only one thing that could make things better.

We got stoned.

What do you expect from five college students in one of the world's most active international drug pipelines? We panicked when the first rock banged off the tin roof, and ran to lock the doors and gather our equipment when the second came through the window. Fortunately it was only some school-age punks emulating their probably riotous parents (we found out only as we tentatively stepped out of the gate) and not a gang coming to steal the Alvaro Contreras computer lab the day it was installed.

So it was a bit of a rocky start. But I am prepared to believe that it is all part of some beautiful divine plan to have the ribbon-cutting on July 4th. God bless America. Though down here, sometimes, one is sorely tempted to conclude He had precious little left over. Remember Honduras in your prayers this weekend, too.

P.S.: I will link an article from today's NYT that is the best journalism I have seen thus far about the ongoing crisis. Unfortunately I can't find the worst, a story in the today's La Prensa (the national daily) titled "The People Love Their Armed Forces".

The System Is Armed

To make our martial law-imposed curfew movie night more comfortable, we barricade the mattresses into a makeshift couch. The room is a mess. Everywhere you look are opened-up computers, and the alarm system is strewn out all over in a mess of different-colored wires. To complete the bombmaker-chic look, our machetes and Sandinista paraphernalia are also lying around on the floor.

Enter fifteen policemen with helmets, body armor, and semiautomatic rifles. They're walking by our window looking for the prominent Zelaya supporters staying in the hotel. But we don't know this, and dash frantically to stash away our cache of suspicious-looking equipment. Aware that most guests here are Americans leaving Honduras, we are a little worried for the first half of Walk the Line. A good choice. The runner-up, Enemy at the Gates, might have seemed like an ominous choice.

(Hopefully you're laughing at us. We were perfectly safe the entire time.) The point is that when the excitement happens here, it's a little more crazy and confusing then the international press presents it. But of course the New York Times only has so many inches to devote to a country like Honduras. It's not a straightforward right-wing military coup resisted by a marginalized left-leaning underclass. The laws matter less than the guns behind them, and both sides hold them in contempt. So right now it's a panicked situation where frightened people are making decisions under tremendous pressure.

That's the idea if any would-be thief breaks into the administrative building of Alvaro Contreras school to steal the computers there. We spent today playing with power tools, drilling holes in the cinder block to install the control box, keypad, siren, and motion sensors for the alarm system we purchased. Tomorrow, on go the grisly-looking metal doors that look like something out of a horror movie. Then we will finally be able to move the computers and our hotel room will return to looking like a primitive armed encampment, rather than a highly sophisticated terrorist hideout. It's good to be physically putting things in place. At the end of the day we were dirty, hungry, and exhausted. I took a brief siesta on piled sacks of donated World Food Programme corn.

We think it might be poetic if we go operational on the fourth of July.

This will be an awfully fun report to write. We have been here for earthquakes, rising gang violence, a veritable mass murder next door, and now a coup d'etat. And that was only the first month.

How to Survive a Coup d'Etat

1. Be unpredictable. Travel back into the country and through the capital city on the very day the coup takes place.
2. Don't panic. Especially if you are wondering why nobody is in the largest bus terminal the night the president is forced into exile.
3. Head for the hills. Or in this case, don't let the State Department dissuade your travel plans to to tropical islands.
4. Relax. May I recommend snorkeling in the world's second-largest barrier reef system? You will see some truly otherworldly beauty.
5. Have a stiff drink. This is crucial. Don't let martial law and a nationwide curfew stop you from finding a dive and boozing.
6. Never back down. So the police are carting curfew-violators off to jail? If you were promised free seconds, don't pay the full meal.
7. Pray. Four hours of this will do the trick if riots are blocking the only bridge out of town. Your bus will get through on its third try.

The events of the "coup" are all over the news, although we are surprised that word is being used so much. Until Sunday, President Zelaya's actions were widely interpreted as a bid to give him unconstitutional power. The referendum to extend his term limits were declared unconstitutional by the court, and his decision to fire the chief of the military looked like a desperate political move to counter his unpopularity by seizing control of the army. So is it the old Latin American military coup or the other two branches of government intervening to save the constitution from a Chavez-style semi-takeover? Depends on who is really in charge now, which is very confusing for everyone here. Interestingly, the newly-declared president is from El Progreso.


Three guerrilla fighters in Utila outfitted in matching faux Ray-Bans.

We have traveled the length of the country, from the Nicaraguan border to Utila in the Carribean Sea, as the coup has unfolded. Except for more police checkpoints, worried conversations, and a small demonstration in the port of La Ceiba (that blocked a bridge and delayed our return here to Progreso by four hours) the country we have seen is tranquil and confused. There is a 9pm nationwide curfew, though the only difference is this seems to be decreed by martial law instead of the gangs.

We're safe despite earthquakes, gangs, and the putsch. More worrying to us is the probability of a teacher strike that would delay our project indefinitely. And threats resulting from gang disputes in Las Brisas that have made our partner organization temporarily pull out of our work-site.

Better than safe, actually. Utila is a mecca for divers and backpackers, which makes it a tropical paradise that is both cheap and predominantly English-speaking. Though the average Utilitarian has no sense of justice (see #6), most are the very interesting and off-beat people. We would really like to go back and get our diving certifications; the reef and its fish are strange and beautiful and vividly colorful. And you can go either for L25 ($1.25) or if you buy a beer. Ironically the most relaxed I have ever been in Honduras has been in the middle of this military coup of sorts. So I thought I'd share some tips.

Next: some tips for surviving third-world regional conflicts when the Venezuelans send the Nicaraguans over the border.

Adios, Nicaragua

Adios, Nicaragua. We said our goodbyes to the Terans and their enchanting country of lakes and volcanoes. Valeria could not have been a better guide. We spent Friday in Managua, where the scars of this nation's history are most evident in its near-abandoned main plaza. The ruins of the old cathedral, abandoned after a devastating earthquake in 1972, stand eerily between Sandinista shrines and disused government buildings. We later got the chance to tour the stately national theater, named for Ruben Diario. For good reason, I think, Nicaragua loves her poets better than her politicians.

Today we again woke at 3:30 to take the Tica Bus back to San Pedro Sula. The clerk at the Managua station tried to swindle an extra 100 cordobas from Rodrigo and I (about $5) but was thwarted not by our shrewdness at 4AM, but because we spent our last cords on a hammock dyed UVA-colors and Sandinista paraphernalia.

We had been warned that the situation back in Honduras was especially tense. While we were in Nicaragua the president, Zelaya, sacked the head of the joint chiefs in a bid for control of the army. This was condemned as unconstitutional by the country's congress and supreme court. Sr. Teran told us that soldiers were leaving their posts, and we might find unrest in the ramshackle capital.

We were twice detained at police checkpoints and had to submit our passports, although despite this we made better time between Managua and Tegucigalpa. Fortunately, our worst problems stemmed not from the tense political situation in the capital, but torrential downpours that washed out the road to the port of La Ceiba. So instead of heading straight out to the islands, we came back to El Progreso to spend the night with a suspicious-looking taxi driver angry that we had argued him down to a cut-rate fare. At one point during the trip he rummaged through the glove compartment, giving Rodrigo and I the same impression that he was about to pull his gun on us.

It was a long day, especially when you're running on a glass of milk at 4AM and a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies. Time for another vacation. So tomorrow will be another early morning, setting out to join our friends on the coast.

Sandinistas, Sand, and Islas

We're on a boat, and it's going fast, and... lightning over Lake Nicaragua at nighttime illuminates the silhouettes of distant volcanic islands and, for fleeting instants, connecting the stars above us. A grand presentation of the Teran family isletas worthy (dare I say?) of backing vocals from T-Pain. The first stage is the plaza of the gorgeous port city of Granada, its beautiful yellow cathedral (which does not suffer a Sandinista monument like the cathedral of Leon), and a particularly strong Michelada on a soft-lit very old-colonial-looking street. Then comes the aforementioned boat trip, another delicious dinner on the island, and cue eight-hours of suspense in the dark waiting to see the paradise we stood upon.

And in the morning, of course, it was beautiful. Palms and mango trees everywhere. Hummingbirds among the hibiscus flowers. The less-fortunate tourists floating by in canopied boats. I finished Coetzee's unseasonal Master of Petersburg laying in a hammock. The only thing reminiscent of the book on St. Isabel Island are flies floating in my glass of milk; the gnats (the lone source of annoyance here) swarm over this overripe land.

These islands were vomited out of Mombacho (speaking of which, Rodrigo is feeling much better!) in 1570. It gives you the sense that you stand on the very newness of the New World. You can picture the pirates that plagued Granada from their volcano-island redoubts. Rodrigo prefers to picture us as the pirates, absconding with treasure from the university (to the tune of $72/day, we calculated), to terrorize Central America. We're not quite William Walker yet, but give us time (and those Marines who still haven't been deployed...).

We were not intercepted by real pirates while water-skiing through the maze of islets and along the shore of the volcano. There was, however, one close call where a couple of spider monkeys on one of the skerries swung out and attempted to board us, but thought better of the possibility of plunging headlong into the water. Rodrigo categorically rejected this logic, but did ultimately get up on the skis (his first time). A good sign that he's hale enough to pass the swine-flu inspectors at the border.

A final note from President Ortega and the Sandinista Front for National Liberation: "To serve your country is to serve God." No lie. Happy 30th Anniversary of the 1979 Revolution.

Mombacho y Cerro Negro

"I cannot carry your sandboard Mr. Frodo. But I can carry you!"

Despite a fever and stomachache, Rodrigo retains his sense of humor. And despite our adventures, for us there is still that deep-seated nerdiness. So I admit that the second guided volcano climb in as many days looked an awful lot like Mordor from the Lord of the Rings movies, all black volcanic rocks and boulders. And that Rodrigo was starting to look like Frodo. This is Cerro Negro, which lies outside the very beautiful old city of Leon, one of the world's most active volcanoes.


And this is me 'sandboarding' down (with Rodrigo taking notes) flying along the lava rocks after a long s-shaped climb to see the two steaming sulfuric craters. It's a lot like snowboarding, except in the breezy tropics where you can see miles of rainforest all around you. Valeria has clearly planned out a really marvelous week for the two of us and Hana.

Which is fortunate, because our beloved Autopollo, next to our hotel in El Progreso has apparently in the meantime been the scene of a quadruple homicide. We have informed our project team we do not plan on returning until it is reopened. (And cleaned, somewhat.)

Yesterday we climbed Mombacho, an older volcano overgrown with cloud forest with rare fauna (including seven of the ten species of Central American orchids), howler monkeys, and wild cats. Well first the SUV climbed it. Then we hiked a few miles around the circumference of the main crater, whose 1570 eruption formed the chain of islands that we will travel down to tomorrow evening.

(Dennis and Tim, this is a road trip that needs to happen.)

Rodrigo and I are in a happy home. We have been seeing a lot of Vale's family, including her sister and sister-in-law who have dropped by to share jubilantly news that they're expecting. And the food! If only I had half the vocabulary or the palette to explain exactly what it is, I am sure I could double the length of these trip-notes going on and on about Gallo pinto, Tostones, Quesillo, Cacao, Michelada, &c. The latter is beer, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, Tabasco sauce, and salt. Tabasco on mangoes, anyone? Or guava jelly on potatoes? Tough to say whether this has been a greater adventure for my eyes or my taste buds.



If scaling the Black Hill and a quick prayer in Leon's beautiful cathedral (intended for Lima until a blueprint mix-up) didn't do it for Rodrigo by tomorrow morning, we will have to find Fernet-Branca.

"Bus Diaries"; Not Quite That Ring, But...

Coming down out of the Comayagua Mountains, I was shook into the realization that everything had gone right. See, the suspension on the bus was so shot that we all bounced about like Mexican jumping beans (if you'll please pardon the somewhat culturally insensitive metaphor). Things had really fallen into place. That morning our ride left at 3:45 for San Pedro Sula, where indeed a bus left at 5:00 for Tegucigalpa. And on cue, the mountain pines became palms once more, the lush tropical plains west of the Comayaguas came into view, and raindrops leaked through the roof of the bus just to remind you it wasn't South Florida. We arrived in the sprawling capital at 8:30, and found a handsome city built into the hills, with neighborhoods on cliffs and muddy rivers that cut through.

Dan and the technical team were left behind for implementation week, which may or may not include electrifying the new computer room at the Brisas school in order to turn any would-be thieves into refried beans (if you'll please pardon the somewhat culturally insensitive metaphor).

There appears to have been some double-talk. Rodrigo's visa troubles proved to be a bureaucratic phantom, daunting only in invented legalese. It was very easy to convince the Americans to let us escape to Valeria and Nicaragua, all our problems solved. The Americans were about as much of a hassle as the Nicaraguan customs officials who did not even ask to see our passports. A nod will suffice, probably because we qualify as asylum-seekers. So were in Managua in time for the 7:00 Mass (to which Rodrigo was dragged) and a sumptuous dinner afterwards which strongly suggested we are in a country of great culinary virtues. A delicious jalapeno and cream sauce on the beef. Even the beans were tastier. (And of course the impossible-to-pronounce Worcestershire sauce).

The Terans are exceedingly hospitable, and we are feeling at home here already. Every hallmark of civilization has been noticed. Four-lane highways with painted lanes, good beer that's not overcarbonated, and flushable toilet paper. Tennis courts and baseball on the front page of the newspaper. Looking at the christmas trees still up in the roundabouts (but now topped off with the number 30), you almost feel a tinge of ironic national pride on this thirtieth anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. And some things that are better than home, like the eight fruit trees in the back yard, which include two or three varieties of delicious mangoes.

We have decided that Central America is the perfect part of the world for an American to stretch a summer vacation out of a small research stipend. And while we came for a change of scenery and a little relaxation, volcano hikes and tropical islands, our official academic footprint will look something like this:

Robert and Rodrigo travelled to Managua, Nicaragua this week for a summit meeting of regional JPC projects. Valeria Teran (ecoMod, Southwest Virginia) hosted the two along with Hana Abbas (Sustainable Social Enterprises in Bluefields, Nicaragua). As part of a week of social research during ongoing technical implementation back in Las Brisas, Rob and Rodrigo visited the offices of a major Central American regional initiative behind a Nicaraguan call center than demonstrates wealth-creation strategies centered around English-language learning. &c.

But don't worry about us working too hard.

No, no. We're on Val's back porch being served fresh mangoes and diced bananas in chilled glasses, watching a little yellow bird with a white plume dip itself in her pool...

The Last Don(s)

Days like this make me feel that this may not in fact be the anal tract of the North American continent.

Rodrigo and I woke up early (despite a beer pong run that rivalled our last appearance on the U.S. circuit) feeling quite refreshed. Our breakfast baleadas at Comidas Rapidas were especially delicious. I have been a little remiss in describing this routine. We walk into this little busstop restaurant and order three baleadas and pear juices. The young manager hurries to kick the Honduran patrons off their plastic benches so that Rodrigo and I can (unlike everyone else in the establishment) each have our own. Then come the baleadas, which are eggs, butter, and (surprise!) refried beans on (surprise!) a tortilla. It is delicious, cheap, and an exemplar of good service. I highly recommend it to anyone who has the misfortune of passing through here.

Then it was off to Alvaro Contreras School in Las Brisas for a meeting with Director Cano about installing our computing project there. English and computation skills come at a high premium here in Honduras, but they are necessary for getting good jobs in the cities. The director complained that corrupt officials had stolen computers from him. To prevent their theft this time, he excitedly talked about electrifying entire building (doors and metal bars) where the computers would be held. Imagining a six-year-old getting fried, Dan was able to talk him into using a simple alarm system instead.

As a quick aside, Hondurans either look very young or very old to us. Apparently the reverse is true; we are often pointedly asked "are you married?" or by the most hopelessly confused, "how many children do you have?"

Therefore, it is as 'Don Rodrigo' and 'Don Roberto' that we will be teaching classes starting the week after next at Alvaro Contreras. I could not be more excited. I am also excited that we have finally stumbled upon a practical plan for our service work.

After our very productive meeting, we caught the bus to Tela and spent another day on the beach, this time complete with a frisbee and a little avocado that doubled well enough (for one of us) as a tennis ball. The freshly caught fried fish were once again up to par. And although it apparently rains in paradise sometimes, the general consensus was that this only made bathing in the sea more refreshing.

Maybe as refreshing as having clean clothes, hand-washed in some dirty river, beaten on a rock, and sun-dried. We all smell like we are coming from a barbecue, except someone switched the charcoal with old tires.

Tomorrow we stake out for Nicaragua, some way, some how. The basic plan is that if we leave here at 3:45 AM, we will not need a good plan, and will be able to stumble and barter our way to the grand visage of civilization (enthroned on porcelain) that lies to the south.

Keep praying for us. (We can't outrun those.)

Phased Withdrawal Plans

You know you are in Honduras, Rodrigo says, when the ladies of the night come out at 8pm. And when they are in fact men, it is irresistible even for a CNN hero to send El Boludo their way.

Yesterday we finished our Brisas surveys with military precision. This is the end of that routine of calling "Hola, Buenas", plastic chairs being brought out, and fumbling through questions. We spoke with the director of the village school, where we plan to implement our computing project. So baseball lessons for the youngsters (in exchange for fresh mangoes) will continue long-term. The boys of Las Brisas looked convincingly crushed that Arkansas beat Virginia.

Also convincingly crushed were our clothes, which were washed by a kindly matron from Villa and dried by beating them repeatedly against the rocks. It was high time.

Our next task will be to compile and analyze the survey data and prepare our report, which will also be used by Students Helping Honduras to pursue a grant to build a learning center in the new community being built behind Las Brisas. Rodrigo and I will take our work on the road, a withdrawal from the war-zone for a few days which will include a visit to our friend Valeria in Nicaragua via the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. So it's off to the southern half of Central America, which looks like the very heights of civilization from here.

This morning we went to visit a nutrition center where malnourished children aged one to five years are brought from orphanages and poor homes. The volunteers play with the children, they eat periodically like machines, and go to scoot around on plastic pots until they have discharged their last meal. Then it's siesta-time.

The good news for this week is we found a site which allows us to draw up a tangible plan for implementing a service project and launch a social business with a lot of growth potential. And after spending some long days compiling our data, it's time for a little vacation (from our vacation).

"Don't Walk Around So Confidently"

A new question on our survey asks about security concerns. If we make the obvious comparison between dusty, scorched Las Brisas and Iraq, then on Sunday Rodrigo and I walked through Fallujah. Our newest questions got some zingers. The mud houses at the back of the colonia, furthest from the (relative) safety of the highway, back up to a palm plantation where the gangs hide out and carry out their execution-style murders. After hearing some grisly stories, an old woman scowled at the two of us and advised, "Don't walk around with so much confidence."

When we walked back from the cathedral after dark, it occurred to me that we had passed two people on maybe a mile walk through the center of town, not counting the shotgun-toting guards. People just don't walk around here at night. Better to speed around in a pickup truck blasting country music with a dozen or so other gringos. And yet we are surprised when the young women we interview in Brisas say they recognize us.

Which, I might add, makes it easier for Rodrigo to tack on "what's your phone number" as a final survey question. (Or did, once.)

To rebuild our confidence when we are flying solo, this morning we walked into the bustling market at the center of Progreso and bought the three most lethal-looking machetes we could find, two of which fit snugly into the briefcase I keep our surveys in. The perfect thing for young men our age to play with. (Straight out of Crocodile Dundee. "Rod-rye-go. That's not a knife. That's a knife".) Between these fearsome blades, our increasingly grungy appearances (though we are in the process of contracting out our first loads of wash to one of the village women), and our growing number of friends in the village, I think we have never been safer.



I am also pleased to report that Las Brisas has fielded a promising youth baseball team. The youngsters are now aware the diamond has four bases, not five, although they still play with sticks and a small plastic soccer ball. Still, considering just yesterday they were playing a primitive game kicking that ball between two stones, their progress is remarkable. I am half-expecting to find paved roads and maybe a Wal-Mart when we go out there today. Though I would settle for the Marine Corps.

A Man Called Christmas

Rodrigo and I are tired out from a week of sweating through t-shirts surveying Las Brisas. I can only imagine having to perform actual labor in this heat. Or you can just see the wear on the bodies of the people we interview. Again, Natividad (the man called Christmas) comes to mind like a Motorcycle Diaries montage. But mostly for us, I think Rodrigo is on to something, being so out of place and helpless takes a psychological toll. I have not started dreaming in Spanish, yet, but I realized today that my dreams are eerily in the washed-out colors of this sun-bleached country.

The great disparities between rich and poor has become a way of life for us as well. By day we go through the shanty towns in the back of the colonias. At night our friends come over for parties by the pool. Rodrigo and I have a new favorite eatery, Autopollo, next door. The open-air roadside bar only serves chicken (halved or whole) with a side of sliced bread out of a bag. A massive dinner and two beers for $4. We gorge ourselves with food and drink, head to the pool, and fire up our laptops to reflect on what might be wrong with that.

Sadly, Jose Santos, the man who stands outside our door at night with a pump-action shotgun, exposed the false rumor that a couple dozen contestants for an international beauty contest were staying in our compound. Just more Baptist missionaries.

Last night Rodrigo and I went to the big nightclub in town, 504, with some friends from Students Helping Honduras (Shin, Samantha, Michelle, Christian, and Walker). No sooner than we were in the heavily-guarded door than the game of "which one is the woman of ill repute" began. Fortunately I lucked out at first with a friendly soft-spoken young woman who awkwardly taught me the Bachata. The next time I guessed wrong to a particularly aggressive reggaeton song (complete with discordant tractor-trailer horns), and when she started talking about money and leaving, I suddenly pretended not to understand a word of Spanish, and sought out the rest of the gringos.

Rodrigo, however, was a sight to behold. Literally for the entire nightclub. In the truckbed on the ride home, he explained that he quickly realized that the timid Honduran men had not even his modest salsa confidence. For the better part of an hour he and Michelle (who also gets the credit of being a good dancer) were virtually the only ones on a dancefloor ringed by awed Progreseños (and me).

We had to get up for another work day today, compiling survey data and meeting with officials from another village, Las Minas. Rodrigo sat next to a MS-13 gangbanger on the bus to Santarita who showed him his gunshot wounds (one in the back of his head), L.A. County jail and deportation papers, gang tatoos, heroin needle scars, and the drugs in his pockets. He recounted unrepeatable stories in unintelligible ganglish. Rodrigo was happy to get off at the bus.

There one of the community leaders, Don Hermelindo, insistently told us five college students on an internet connectivity project in this place that, "The United States is a practical country!" Actual irony, at last.

The Breeze of Liberty

Today was our third day of conducting surveys in the town of Las Brisas de la Libertad (The Breeze of Liberty). As our fearless leader, El Boludo, likes to explain: " Estamos conduciendo encuestas." This translates to "we are driving surveys."

The first two days were pretty rough, partly because we were still experimenting with the format of the surveys, but mostly due my inability to hide my dry personality and awkwardness for the whole situation. It's not easy to walk in to a wooden shack and ask a work-hardened, middle-aged woman about her children's education, her financial status, and how familiar she is with computers. The humility and melancholy in the villager's eyes can be contagious. By the end of the day, my shame and frustration at being so ignorant to these people's situation was clearly evident and was begging to sink into a depressive mood.

Today, I knew I had to take a different approach or I wasn't going to make it through another day. Our group's goal became less going from 1 to question 2 but rather engaging the people in conversation. And it seemed to work: we were more friendly, we cracked jokes, we talked to the children and the people replied by being more open and sharing more of their personal lives. We actually got a couple of pretty cool stories.

One man was a US citizen on vacation staying with his wife. He is a metal worker in Baltimore and he explained to us the history behind the word "gringo." According to him, around the time of Cold War, the communist states bred distrust in Honduras of Americans out of fear of US control of Central America. Thus, when the Americans came down and handed the impoverished Hondurans dollars as a sign of charity the people disliked the green currency and said: "green, go!" From here rose the word "gringo."

Another woman asked us to examine a sheet of paper that she had been keeping since her retirement from one of the local sweatshops. It was in english, so she had no idea what it was but she knew it was important. After looking over it, Rob and I realized that it was a stock title for 2 shares of the Gildan Athletic Wear company, which we later found to have a value of about $34. In very simple terms, I tried to explain to the woman what she had in her hand (mostly because even I didn't know how talk about stocks in Spanish). As the newly appointed stock brokers for this community, we promised her that we would return with the price of that mysterious piece of paper.

As we continued our interviews, we began to be amazed by the number people still suffering from the effects of Hurrican Mitch in the late '90s. One group of 9 adults and 4 children were sharing a property consisting of mud and stick house with wood oven outside. One old man complained about how the flooding had forced them to sell everything and move to this infertile higher ground. "You find work where you can," he said, "it's too hard to farm here." Yet even in these words I found a hidden enthusiasm that encouraged me to keep going and find out more about the interesting stories behind the lives of these people.

I Know It's Not Precisely "Irony"

I realize that five sweaty Americans riding around in the back of a pickup in Honduras isn't exactly called "irony", but you would know what I meant. That's what we spend a lot of our time doing. Last night we went ape back there with a case of the cerveza nacional on the way to the El Salvador-Honduras qualifying match in San Pedro Sula. The atmosphere of a Central American grudge match (keep in mind a major war was fought over this exact match forty years ago) is pretty memorable. First you have a 20ft trench running around the field, the inner wall of which rises into a 15ft fence inclined towards the stand, barbed wire running along its length. Should the mob break through, you have the cordon of riot police and soldiers around the entire circumference of the field. They also had to add a second line of riot police on either side of the Salvadorian section, after a major fight broke out. Lest you think the law has the upper hand anywhere in Honduras, the stadium packs 50,000 and beers are 75 cents. And we couldn't resist buying a round every time the guy in the Virginia Cavaliers shirt passed by selling his.

Honduras won the match 1-0, which means free drinks tonight at all the bars. We survived the human tide squeezing itself through the little gates back into the (chaotic) parking lot after the game. You can actually feel the crowd surging back and forth, as if the entire mass of people wants to get through the two-person-wide gate all at once. Dan and I also survived the irresistible turtle eggs one of the vendors was peddling. It just tastes like washing something of a strange consistency down your throat with hot sauce.

We have begun surveying one village, Las Brisas, to determine what kind of media access and education levels exist there. For such an awkward scenario, they have been going pretty well. The villagers, although politely confused, are for the most part enthusiastic to participate. Their children (curious and out of school because the teachers have gone unpaid) trail us through the streets so that by the end of the day we have a massive following of shirtless kids parading behind us. Our clipboards and American accents grant us some legitimacy, even if I walk around all afternoon with a tired toddler on my shoulders explaining in rambling four-year-old Spanish how best to be a burro. It's cute.

The sum of all the little things here push it beyond reality. Dan shimmies up a palm tree to get a coconut when we're thirsty. No flushing the toilet paper. The giant wad of L.500 you shell out for two soccer tickets, a relatively enormous expense, is actually $25. The shower shocks you because live wires run to the electric showerhead water-heater. A young girl shows Dan and Rodrigo proper machete technique. A tethered monkey climbs on the roof next door. And there are still no traffic laws.

I know its not exactly irony, but nothing here really syncs with any reality I am familiar with.

Rabbit, King of the Murcielagos

We've settled into a nice habit of sipping gin and tonics in the poolside courtyard garden next to the ice machine, Rodrigo and I.

Day Two in Copan, the Mayan ruins three hours away on the Guatemalan border, and its lovely little town with its cobblestone streets, three-wheeled taxis, and more hippie-gringos with Macbooks than I would have thought possible in Honduras after my experience in grittier Progreso. Unfortunately we missed Secretary of State Clinton on the chicken bus, she was whisked in and out by helicopter yesterday. Copan is the most intact example of an old Mayan city-state, once called the Bat-City/Ciudad de los Murcielagos (A second compelling reason, Dennis and Tim, to visit). The king who built the massive stone temple and ball courts was named Rabbit, further convincing me that I am his reincarnation. Turns out to be a more epic nickname than Joe Jablonski might have expected, I'm pleased to discover. Except for the part about the king having to pierce his tongue and genitals in front of the people as part of a religious ceremony.

Maybe worse, imagine what kind of hell it was carrying stones on one's back to make these altars of human sacrifice in the middle of a jungle. Appropriately, our guide was one Virgilio. He was pot-bellied with an outie as enormous as his smile. The city of the mucielagos was eventually brought down by a rebellion of the lower class in the 800s, for those who would claim that Honduras is the only Central American republic without a major leftist revolution. When the Spanish arrived, they found only ruins; archaeologists like Virgilio have been trying to put it together for about a century. Except for the Americans who stole Eighteen Rabbit's stone (all the kings have hieroglyphs that run up the huge staircase of the pyramid-temple) and brought it to the Peabody in Boston. Where he is living without a visa, a smiling Virgilio added.

We took some good pictures climbing around the temples (and you will spot more than the occasional macaw) that I will share as soon as I find a way to upload them.

Huge ceiba (silk cotton) trees grow out of the temples and their gigantic roots (think Tarzan-scale) crumble the ruins. For the Mayans, they were a symbol of life, stretching down into the underworld and up into the heavens. Rodrigo commented that its a great image of nature outlasting and overpowering passing human civilization. But you can also see it as a dramatic symbol of the great life of this civilization. So I enjoyed the vibrant two-hour Mass, the only white person in the Church of San Jose, conspicuously standing two heads taller than everyone else and fumbling with the Spanish. The Mayans still do human sacrifice right.

Tomorrow we start our surveys. God bless.

Horseback Diaries

It turns out that Rob and I skipped the night club last night for no reason. We got up at 4:30 AM to catch the 7 AM bus at San Pedro Sula only to find out that it didn't leave until 11 AM. Disappointed, we made ourselves comfortable at the bus station; 7 hours later we were standing on the cobblestone streets of the City of Copan, home to the most famous Mayan Ruins in Honduras. It is picaresque city surrounded by a sprawling mountain range, this country's version of an old European mountaintop village. The air is crisp, the people friendly, and, contrary to most of Honduras, the streets are safe at night. Our late arrival made it impossible to visit the ruins, so we left it for Monday. Instead, a couple of SHH folks and I decided to take some horses to the top of a local mountain.

I can't quite describe how epic this was. The journey began with a pleasant walk through the city streets as we struggled to steer our horses around the incoming moto-taxis that zip about Copan. We continued over the Copan river and through the local farms, in which our horses normally toil. Being my usual self, I tried to turn our expedition into a race and repeatedly attempted to urge my trusty mare Princesa into a gallop, but she refused to go beyond a quick trot.

Once at the top of the mountain we dismounted to take in our destination, the Hacienda San Lucas. I could not help but be entranced by the breathtaking serenity of this place. On one side, a curtained gazebo covered in cushions overlooked the postcard-worthy view of the Copan valley. A Hippie couple followed us in as we immersed ourselves in the Zen-like atmosphere amid the aroma of cocoa, coffee, and banana. Following in the tradition of the place, we performed a Yoga sun salutation as the Honduran sun began to sink behind the mountains. We then proceeded to quietly sip wine while observing the fantastic view once more.

As moving as this was, I don't think anything got close to my conversation with our humble but very knowledgeable guide Ruben, a local campesino struggling to find work farming corn and beans. He explained how many of the rich families were usurping the fertile lands and refusing to use them for cultivation. As I looked at this earnest, hard-working man fitting so well into this landscape, I couldn't help but picture this as a black and white flashback from the Motorcyle Diaries.

On the ride back down, I was estatic with joy at the fact that I succeeded in urging Princesa into a canter for a total of five seconds. Just for the record, I also won the race.

The night culminated in the "Lun Club", a local gringo bar with a ping pong table that I soon took over. As the night drew to close, our group was approached by and gang of Honduran machos and their girls looking to avenge their soccer loss the US. Their starting man was struggling, so he handed the paddle over the Honduran National Table Tennis Champion. After Bobby was narrowly dispatched, it was my turn to carry the American/Argentinian torch. Despite severe disadvantages, including a heavily Honduran crowd, severe inebriation, and a 5.6 earthquake, I mounted a valiant comeback to win the match 23-21.

Epic day, if you ask me.

Buena suerte la proxima vez, Honduras

As if driving through Honduran traffic wasn't dangerous enough, we decided to put our lives at risk once again by going to watch the Honduras U.S. World Cup qualifying match at the movie theater in the nearby mall. Any doubts we had about how important this game was to the country were quickly dispelled by the entire shopping center packed with Hondurans wearing the national team jerseys. Our fearless leader, El Boludo, caved in to the enormous pressure and actually decided to support the local team by wearing one of these jerseys, for which he received severe ridiculing from Rob and me.

As we walked into the theater, we were greeted by obvious glares from the locals, perhaps a little confused as to why we would try to walk into a standing-room-only theater full of screaming Hondurans. After sitting through an hour and a half of painful soccer the Americans came out on top 2-1 after which our group quickly made our way to the exit. I tried to keep a low profile while Rob and Bobby (a good friend from SHH) wasted no time in talking trash to a couple of ten-year-old Honduran kids in broken Spanish. We were invited to the local club "504" by a couple of very pretty catrachas but decided this would be pushing our luck a little too much. Plus, we have to be up tomorrow at 5 AM to leave for the Mayan ruins of Copan; I think "504" can wait for next weekend (or monday, every day is a party here).

Barenas en Tela

Alternatively to be titled "Best Day Ever".

We went to a village near Tela del Mar called Triunfo del Cruz with three of the SHH folks (Bobby, Samantha, and Christian) where for about $10 you can drink beers on the most beautiful white sand beach you've ever seen and float naked in the clear water of a totally deserted beach. (No fish took the worm, gracias a Dios.) That also included a great fish I had, which had been caught that day and fried up (Fiesta Cove-style) with the head still on him. These are the first photos I'll send back when I can, though I doubt it will reassure UVA that its funds are being well-spent.

Rodrigo observed that you could hold the bottle of Barena (Honduras's Corona) up against any background in sight, and it would look like a commercial for the most fun anyone was having in the world. A few of the local black children brought over their bongos and convinced our fearless leader, El Boludo, to dance La Rumba. By all accounts he failed to shake his hindquarters adequately, and the negritos were not at all impressed. Therefore he had to pay them 5 lempiras.

The road to Tela is one of the most notorious sites for kidnapping in Honduras. (Which in the second most dangerous country in the Western Hemisphere is pretty badass.) This sort of sordid business happens when you have to stop to cross a temporary one-lane steel bridge over a beautiful gorge. We made sure to do both in daylight, and everything went smoothly except for a red pickup truck with a yellow tarp (presumably whose melons were filled with cocaine) that got pulled over at the heavily-armed police checkpoint.

More dangerous was the traffic. The major highways in the country are two-lane roads where you pass over the yellow. Ideally when there is no oncoming traffic, although most Honduran drivers are oblivious to the possible health risks of a head-on collision. We saw approximately six close calls and the remains of a police truck that had no miraculously narrow escape.

Tonight we declined to go out to the club (although Saturday night is where it's at, apparently...) after the Honduran-U.S. soccer game which we watched in a crowded theater (the entire megaplex was sold out and showing only the game). Even though Rodrigo wanted to grind on this orphan. Mostly because tomorrow we'll wake up at 4:30 to catch the bus out to the Mayan ruins at Copan.

Headlocked in the (Sweaty) Armpit of Honduras

"En Progreso?" Hondurans are generally astonished to find Americans working in their country's fourth-largest city, a backwater provincial town on the road between San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba, popularly considered the armpit of the country. A poetic way of explaining why I am always drenched in sweat.

It lacks a functioning postal system. One of the men with one of the nicer homes along the main highway explained to me that his mailbox was mostly decorative; he only received a few bills (for which his address was a lengthy description of his home and location, there are no street names). So while Dan was good enough to pick me up some postcards, I may not be able to send them.

The craziest thing in this dusty city are the walled pockets of wealth, a megamall and new university, built with money from Hondurans living in the States. Another American export is the Baptist mission trip. 20 North Carolinians came through and gave us the temporary relief from being the most obliviously stereotypical Americans in the region. They were on a dental mission to a rural village eight hours away, probably because half the colonias around here, with their "Iglesia Evangelica" signs, are already "saved". (By which I suppose I mean lured away from the salvific power of the sacraments for a bag of vitamins.)

We, by which I mean Rodrigo, gave a presentation on our project at UTH to recruit some collaborators on our project that know the country, the language, and most importantly have cars or trucks. Our surveys, which will compile data both for our project and SHH more generally, have been written and translated. As Rodrigo and I translated them (80%/20%) over at SHH headquarters, Dan, Tian, and Brandon managed to get locked in the hotel room by the maid. They called about a half-hour later, before we had the crisis of conscience to go rescue them, to say that they had been let out and the doorlock had been broken.

Last night we also started making plans for a trip down to Nicaragua the second week of July, which Bobby, one of the SHH volunteers, is possible to make cheaply. The plan would be to take a chicken bus (because they "stop at every piece of chickenshit") first to San Pedro, then down to the capital, and finally go by yet another bus to Managua. Though I don't know if Val (or anyone) would be willing to host whatever we look and smell like after a month here. The trick, we've been told, is to look as much like scruffy penniless backpackers as possible. Dennis and Tim, mark down this stretch of the continent for an excursion (like Eustace Conway), we would be in our element.

So the plan is to break out of Progreso for a few days for a little excursion or two, to the beach at Tela del Mar and the Mayan ruins at Copan, on the chicken bus.