Sunday, October 27, 2013

Harvest Day

The corn was thick in the air as we walked up to Amigos' maize field. Like a display of fireworks, the ears hit their peak and gradually descended, each at a different moment.

It was harvesting day for Amigos' maize (corn) and all the jovenes, or teenaged, boys at the hogar had been enlisted to help. The 20 of them worked their way in a pack up and down the field, a row at a time. The dried out ears had to be pulled off and then catapulted to the nearest of several large piles that had been cleared out in the midst of the stalks. In nearly two acres of corn there were five or six piles, and that's why the corn flew through the sky at such a great height. It's also why, despite the heat, several of the boys seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Maize is what we gringos know as yellow corn, several months later. At the point where sweet corn would be ready to harvest, the stalks are doubled over and allowed to dry out for several more weeks. Once harvested, the hard, dry maize kernels are ready to be ground into the flour that constitutes the tortillas eaten at every meal - two tortillas a person, breakfast, lunch and dinner. The maize we harvested that day, in grains, weighed 4,500 pounds, enough for six months worth of tortillas here at the hogar.

Beginning at 8 a.m., the boys and other employees of Amigos' agricultural program, Agro as it's referred to here, were at work pulling the brown, crinkly maize cobbs off of doubled-over, waist-high stalks. The sun was fiercely strong by 9 a.m. and the work is best done in long pants and sleeves, since the dried stalks are prickly and scratchy, sometimes dangerously sharp, and lots of creatures (read snakes) like to live in the field. 

It's unsurprising that among the-high schoolers, there were those who didn't relish the hard work. What's more surprising is that some of them did. When I asked one of them why, he said throwing the ears the distance to the piles was fun, and that he liked seeing how far he could throw. Then he gave a reason I didn't expect. He said he also liked walking from plant to plant, pulling the corn off the stalks. To me, a first-time maize harvester, this seemed like the least fun part of the job. My legs and arms were scratched and itchy and I was constantly worried about what insect I would see next crawling out of a corn ear. Sweat was pouring down my face and I had a bloody gash on one hand from an especially sharp stalk. Harvesting maize is brutally hard work and that's the daily reality for many Honduran farmers, one that really struck me in the field. But this kid also saw the beauty in the process. He was able, even in a long-sleeved shirt drenched in sweat, to appreciate the kind of satisfaction harvesting your own food can bring.

Amigos uses about eight acres of farmland. Currently the hogar produces all its own milk, chicken, maize, and beans. Beans will be planted next in the same field as the maize. There are two harvests a year for both crops and each plant replenishes the soil for the next in a beautiful, ageless cycle. The boys at the hogar who work in the agro program are learning about a crop and a cycle that has been a staple in the lives of Hondurans for generations. I learned a saying in my first week here that is catchy in Spanish: Sin maíz, no hay país, which basically translates to, the country falls apart without maize.

We walked back from the field dehydrated and exhausted, at least I was, but also on a strange sort of high, the kind that comes from doing a hard job through to the end. The boys were making whooping noises for no reason, giddily laughing. The tortillas at lunch that day didn't taste quite the same.

Saturday, October 12, 2013

A Day in the Life (Part 2)

We left off at 2:10, the end of the school day. Usually I need a rest after the end of a school day so I try to come home for awhile to take a break. I go back to the volunteer house and drink some coca-cola (I've become a total addict here; I think I crave the sugar), and to prevent myself from never moving from the sofa, I try to wash clothes.

Here, as in most of Honduras, clothes are washed by hand. Every house I've seen has what's called a pila, a waist-high, rectangular concrete basin that fills with water. Imagine a lid on the basin and a large square cut into the top of it. The two remaining sides have washboards and a drain built in and that's where clothes are washed. We have bars of clothes-washing soap that we rub on to the clothes, you scrub them, and then you dip b uckets into the basin for water to rinse. For the kids, washing clothes is a daily chore, and I try to once a day as well or else it really piles up. Even when I have to skim the floaties off the top of the pila water; even when I can never ring all the soap out of my jeans; even though all my clothes are now hopelessly stretched out; even when I find bird poo on the clothes hanging on the line (okay, that one is a stretch), there's something I love about washing my own clothes. Maybe it's the feeling each day that I've accomplished something, or the peacefulness of standing at the pila after a long day, or the camaraderie I feel with the other volunteers when we wash clothes together, or the mindless productivity that allows me to think and process the day's events, or the feeling that by washing my own clothes by hand each day I'm a little closer to the daily experience lived by a vast majority of the world's population.

After taking an hour or two at home to rest and wash clothes and do some lesson planning or internet work in the office, I try to spend the rest of my afternoon with the kids. Every afternoon is different. Sometimes I've made plans in advance with a kid; someone in one of my classes who wants help with the homework I've given or needs to get caught up on a lesson; someone I promised to study English with; one kid in particular who likes to go up to the big white cross on the hill and have me tell him a story. When the kids have birthdays, the volunteers take them into the closest neighboring village, a 20-minute walk down the road, with a few friends to buy soda and snacks, so those "birthday parties" are usually afternoon activities planned in advance. A lot of other times, there's nothing planned. I'll wander out to see what's going on in the rest of the hogar and if there's someone I can play with or talk to.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

A Day in the Life (Part 1)

I have to apologize again for the long delay! This time my excuse is a broken computer keyboard, and things are not easy to get fixed here. The cliché is actually super true - we really do take a ton for granted. The ability to hop in a car and drive a computer somewhere it can be fixed, maybe even be left over night with confidence, and come back to get it the next day, for example, is not something I or anyone has here.

There is so much going on here all the time, I thought it might be good to bring everyone up to speed on what a typical school day is like here, at least for me. It should help to give a little context.

The day starts at either 6 or 5:30 a.m. when I get up to go to breakfast and do whatever internet chores or class prep I have to do (since we don't have internet in our house). Breakfast varies, but during the week it invariably includes beans and the signature corn tortillas. My favorite breakfast is hole beans (verses mashed) with steamed plantains and a delicious sauce they call mantequilla, which is kind of a liquidy, cheesy, sour cream. We have it every Monday with banana licuado, hot milk with some sort of add-in, a lot of times rice or oats.

The jóvenes, or teenagers, here get up at 5:30 every morning so that they can leave for high school by 6:15ish. It's a half hour walk and school starts at 7. So breakfast is a casual affair in the comedor, with kids, teachers, madrinas and padrinos filing in at different times depending on their schedules. At a little before 7, the metal bell outside the comedor that serves as the signal for the beginning of every activity here, rings for all the elementary school kids to line up outside to walk to our school, which sits behind the big soccer field at the back end of the campus. They all wear light blue button down shirts and brown pants. Their uniforms usually look really nice during this time each day (they get taken off and washed immediately after school); after a couple hours, it's amazing how un-bonito they look.