Out and About
Trip Start
Mar 28, 2003
1
7
20
Trip End
Jul 23, 2003
Tegucigalpa,
Honduras
Thursday, April 24, 2003
It was tough to get back to the daily grind again. It was especially difficult to get back into speaking Spanish again since everyone spoke English in Roatan. And my Spanish sucks already, so it was a big set-back. Tuesday I went with the USAID office and the PAS (public affairs) to a local elementary school for their Earth Day celebration. It was great to see children in Honduras learning about the importance of not destroying the environment. This is a country where people think only of how they will provide for their families TODAY--they don't care much about what the planet will look like for the next generation
Children greeting the Ambassador
. So it was fairly promising. The rest of the afternoon was spent doing some cleaning up as our office admin just returned back from 3 weeks of personal leave. Yesterday I had the most amazing day yet since I've been here. I was invited to go on a "field trip" with the Ambassador and the head of the PAS office to Santa Barbara. Honduras is split up into districts or states...and Santa Barbara is one that is located about 2.5 hours NW of Tegus (Tegus is in the district of Francisco Morazan). So I arrived at the embassy at 5:45 am to be picked up. We then went to pick the Ambassador up at his house. He is a very laid back guy from Atlanta, Georgia.
Upon arriving in Santa Barbara, we met with a World Food Program (WFP) representative who's working on the school feeding distribution program. The US donates basic foods like rice, beans, corn, and corn meal to these schools. Our purpose was to go see how the schools are using the foods and how well it is being distributed to the children. As you can imagine, it is a huge privelage for these kids to even be in school. Although the schools are public, parents do have to pay for the uniforms and some supplies. Also, they are paying b/c they are giving up a child to school who could
instead be working and providing for the family
Children waving flags
. Second, the food provided through this program is for many children, the only meal they will see all day. So the first school was the largest with about 1,000 students and they welcomed us with great fanfare--banners, music, and a procession to the town square. We toured the school and saw each classroom distributing the food. The other big part of the program is the parental involvement. There is a rotating schedule at each school of the mothers who do the cooking. So while the basic staples are the same, the mothers do different things with them such as: rice with corn meal cereal or corn tortillas with beans and
rice, etc. Also, each student has to bring their own utensils--if you have no utensils, then you don't eat. Some kids had a nice big bowl, cup, and spoon. Others maybe had only a cup to fit everything in, so it was hard to see some kids deprived of their portion b/c of this.
All in all, we visited 4 schools. The second one was much smaller, but had tons of parental support and the kids had uniforms. The third was by far the poorest we saw. None of the kids had uniforms, let alone much clothing. I think only a few kids had shoes. I can't forget this boy who was 8 years old-but b/c of malnutrition he looked like he was maybe all of 5 or 6 years old
Honduran girl for the WFP
. The parents asked me to help serve food and so I was in charge of giving each child their three small tortillas. I felt like such an asshole standing there in my 3 piece suit and ALDO shoes serving these kids who had nothing. But like I said in one of my previous emails--seeing this kind of stuff doesn't mean I need to live this way as well to feel better about myself. I felt that my presence there was enough. The final school was also fairly poor. Some things really stood out in all of this. First, theses children and their parents were so excited to see you there. They understand that it is the US that is giving them these things and they appear to appreciate it. Every kid wanted to shake my hand and all of the parents and grandparents hugged and kissed me and said continuous thanks. It was strange b/c at one point I was talking to a 10 year old girl and she asked how old I was. When I told her, she asked me how many children I had. I told here I had none
and her jaw dropped open in shock. I had to remember that here, I'd already have at least 3 children. Also, Santa Barbara is known for the people having blue eyes and lighter skin and lighter hair. I even saw some kids running around with red hair and freckles but with dark skin! Finally, it was a bit shocking to see how old some kids were compared to what grade they are in. As well all know in the US, there are fairly strict rules about what age you can be in what grade. We were in a 7th grade class and the kids went around and told their ages: 12, 18, and one was even 20! I also met a 12 year old girl who was in 1st grade. As you can imagine, here it is even a miracle that there are 7th graders and they don't care how old they are-just that they are in school. The average Honduran has no more than a 6th grade education
Malnutrition is real
. The trip home was cool. The Ambassador bought us lunch and had even brought a cooler of beer for all of us to drink on the drive home. When it comes to driving here-it's like the Wild West...there are no rules! And even if there were any, everyone would break them and the Police wouldn't be bothered to enforce them.
Nothing much going on today. The entire city has been enveloped in a low cloud of smoke for days. The rainy season starts in a few weeks, so everyone is burning their crop fields to prepare for the new season. Of course it's environmentally and technically not the best way to do things--but they've done it this way forever and that's just how things work around here. The other interesting news here is happening at the Dept. of
Labor. Hondurens spend all day in line to sign up to be sent to Iraq to help in the reconstruction. The newspapers are saying "Goodbye to the American Dream--Hello to the New Iraqi Dream." These people are so desperate for work that they'll go anywhere to get it.
