Where "Gringo" Follows You Through Town

The first thing you notice is how bright Honduras is. As glaring is the contrast between old and new, rich and poor, often separated by walls, barbed wire, and armed guards. A thoroughly modern megamall stands next to the slums and squatter villages that extend out of the city. Horsedrawn carts plod by American fastfood chains that are among the most expensive restaurants in town. A new state-of-the-art university campus separated by walls and a moat from goats grazing under a rusty corrugated tin roof.

Locals whistle "gringo" from cars, motos, and old painted school buses that race crazily by on the main highway that runs along the Mico Quemado (Burned Monkey) mountain range. El Progreso, the provincial city we're in, is a busy maze of one-way streets off this highway. Elsewhere narrow dirt roads, only a car-width wide, proceed up into the mountains framed by palm fronds and mango trees. It's a beautiful place.

Between the stares, shouts of "gringo", and the language, you're constantly reminded how foreign you are. $1 buys 20 Lempiras, which means that a relatively small amount of American currency translates into a thick wad of Honduran bills. Relative wealth is palpable, especially in a country where our hotel (the nicest in town, with a courtyard garden, pool, etc.) is $7/night, and a steak dinner at the city's premier restaurant translates to about $5. Most importantly, beers are cheap. Salva Vida is the best domestic beer in Honduras.

Our project is slowly taking form as we meet with members of Dan's organization, an American student-run nonprofit called Students Helping Honduras. We have also been having meeting with students and faculty at the local technical university, Universidad Technologica de Honduras. It's opening up options for us. We are considering implementing our computers in a learning center being built by SHH in a village of cinder-block houses they are building to move people out of a squatter community. First, we have a lot of work surveying these populations for our research on the effectiveness of internet connectivity to transform a developing community.