The Strike is Over!

I was awakened this morning my host family blasting the news the strike had ended! It was such a glorious time everyone was happy including the kids that they could finally go back to school. It was such a great sight to see the kids in their uniforms once again instead of playing marbles in the streets and getting into trouble. I even ran into one of the kids in my neighborhood that I had been worrying about lately. I had been worrying because he seemed to be hanging out with kids much older him that were going to influence him in the wrong way and the cute 10 yr old little boy that I first befriended was suddenly too cool to play with the other kids in the neighborhood and me. Instead he sat around and played marbles and whistled at girls as they walked by with the older guys. Although I saw him on his way to school this morning and he was excited to be going back and learning and that gave me hope that now that he’s back in school with kids his own age he hopefully won’t go down the wrong path. That is how I feel about all the kids of Honduras. School is not only a great place to learn but also to grow in a safe environment where they aren’t going to play in the streets and fall into trouble.
In other news I have been busy as usual these past few weeks. I gave a charla on project design management which was a very boring topic and very very long and we had to give it to a group of high school student that had no need to learn it. However, it was good practice because I will need to help the people in my municipality and teach them project design management. I also gave a charla to an older audience with one member from the municipality and several parents about what global warming is, what is means for Honduras, how to prepare for disasters and how to create a local disaster relief committee. It was difficult because none of the people had even heard of global warming before, and although from hurricane Mitch in 98 they know that disasters are very possible and that flooding and landslides happen all the time they didn’t want to think ahead and prepare they just had the mentality that it won’t happen to them or that they don’t have the money or resources to prepare. All in all I thought it went ok I made them all prepare their own maps of threats around their houses like a river that could flood or trees that could fall, and then draw in their resources they could use in an emergency like the fire dept and a friend with a car or where they could buy water or food. However, I guess they didn’t think it went so well because we prepared another speech to give to them about transparency today and they canceled on us.
Other than speeches I went to a proyeico school which is a school directly paid by the government from funds from NGO’s. After hurricane Mitch the other countries gave a lot of money and demanded schools in the outlying villages for the children and the proyeico schools were founded and they are the worst of the schools in Honduras its several grades in a large room with an unlicensed person teaching. Although it’s better than no school and the proyeico schools couldn’t go on strike they always attend 200 days of school. It was sad how much less these schools have and the manner of teaching is just writing things on the board and having the children all shout out the answers at once. The education system in Honduras definitely needs reforming.
Also the other day the medical brigades came to town. They are a group of students from around the world that go around to the villages and give free exams and medicine to the poor people. After getting passed the armed guards that keep the people under control me and a few other volunteers offered our services if they needed anything. I helped by reading off the names and handing out the medicine and giving the people directions on use and also afterwards I went to the table and translated for the nurses asking them if they had any symptoms, allergies and what medicines they were taking. It was nice to be able to help because very few of the people in the brigades speak Spanish. I also went to a school and planted trees with some children and they will then care for the trees and when they grow large enough transplant them to a microforest where they will help the purity of the water
Also the other week we had our cultural day my host mom taught me and a friend to make catrachas which are fried tortillas with beans and cheese on top. Then we brought our dish to the fiesta for cultural day. At the party the Hondurans prepared several traditional dances and also kids danced on stilts which are also very popular culturally for this region. One of my firefighter friends teaches dance and actually taught the dance for the kids on stilts and he dressed as a wolf and went and danced with them for a bit and it was hilarious. My group did a demonstration of swing dancing to show American culture and then we taught everyone to dance it. Also the other night me and two of my friends made cookies for our host families and they all liked them very much. So it is safe to say the cultural sharing is going very well.