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.