You never know what to expect in Maraita.
Leaving work at the Municipal office, I hear music playing at the school and decide to be nosy and see what's going on. I walk in on the end of the school year celebration for the teachers. Well, I should say the AFTER PARTY celebration since all the parents, and most of the children and teachers had left. Now there is just 6 teachers sitting around a table and 3 empty bottles of bacardi gold and another bottle about to get there.
I'm greeted with cheers and am immediately served a drink which I believe was half a cup bacardi and only had a splash of coke since the whole town knows I am the only person there that doesn't like soda. Keep in mind its about 3 in the afternoon. I tried to "fijase que" give excuses to why I can't drink right now.... like you know... its day time or we are in a school with children but none of these worked.
You all know me- get one drink in me, and I was cheering the rest of the afternoon to first "Maraita" then to "Los Catrachos" or Hondurans then to the "Gringos" then to "The hardest workers in Maraita-the teachers" then to "The invention of Zambos (plantain chips) or the greatest thing to put in your mouth after a shot" ya there was no stopping me. We were all laughing and having a great time.
Then one of the teachers slips me a piece of paper, and when I ask "what it is" all I get is a little wink and a "Thats my number" Next thing I know, I am peer pressured by the group to dance with him. NOT JUST ANY DANCE but the music was a live band of "Conjunta" which is basically glueing your whole body onto someone and doing a step-backward and forward/left and right with tons of spins or in other words dancing well suited for drunk horny folk.
During this dance, I get the honor of being bombarded by this teacher begging for my number so that he "can show me his school" but I keep waiting for the rest of that sentence something like "where I can be the teacher and you can play the student rawr"
As soon as humanly possible, I run away back to the table only to find my cup has mysteriously been filled to the brim with that devils acid again. And that just plays out in a circle, I go dance and then I come back with my friends filling my cup and telling me to "Tomalo de un solo, apurate!!!!" or "Chug it, hurry up!!!" So I would just sneakily pour my drink in other people's cups where they were more than happy to help me with my predicament. Thereby getting my companeros wasted, and not myself.
Dang, it was one of the best parties ever! No one can day drink like the teachers of Maraita can :D
Is this what Peace Corps meant when they talk about community integration and cultural exchange in their application materials?
Friday, November 18, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Daily News: Honduras Becomes Cocaine Hub
Honduras becomes Western Hemisphere cocaine hub
By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — On Honduras' swampy Mosquitia coast, entire villages have made a way of life off the country's massive cocaine transshipment trade. In broad daylight, men, women and children descend on passing go-fast boats to offload bales of cocaine destined for the United States.
Along the Atlantic coast, the wealthy elite have accumulated dozens of ranches, yachts and mansions from the drug trade. And in San Pedro Sula, local gangs moving drugs north have spawned armies of street-level dealers whose violence has given the rougher neighborhoods of the northern industrial city a homicide rate that is only comparable to Kabul, Afghanistan.
Long an impoverished backwater in Central America, Honduras has become a main transit route for South American cocaine.
"Honduras is the number one offload point for traffickers to take cocaine through Mexico to the U.S.," said a U.S. law enforcement official who could not be quoted by name for security reasons. A U.S. State Department report released in March called Honduras "one of the primary landing points for South American cocaine."
Almost half of the cocaine that reaches the United States is now offloaded somewhere along the country's coast and heavily forested interior — a total of 20 to 25 tons each month, according to U.S. and Honduran estimates. Authorities intercept perhaps 5 percent of that, according to calculations by The Associated Press based on official estimates of flow and seizures.
The flow is hard to stem, said Alfredo Landaverde, a former adviser to the Honduran security ministry, because there are few other sources of cash income here.
"We have to recognize that this society is very vulnerable," Landaverde said. "This is a country permeated by corruption, among police commanders, businessmen, politicians."
The country's isolated, impoverished Atlantic coast, remote ranches and largely unguarded border with Guatemala — where much of the cocaine is taken — also make it a haven for traffickers.
"When the traffickers are unloading a go-fast boat in (the Atlantic coast province of) Gracias a Dios, you can sometimes see 70 to 100 people of all ages out there helping unload it," said the U.S. law enforcement official. "The traffickers look for support among local populations."
In the past year, authorities seized 12 tons of cocaine, according to the Honduran government — a vast improvement from previous years, but still a small portion of the estimated 250 to 300 tons that come through annually. Most of the cocaine arrives in Honduras via the sea, in speedboats, fishing vessels and even submersibles. In July, the U.S. Coast Guard, with Honduras' help, detained one such craft that had been plying the waters with about 5 tons of cocaine per trip.
Fishermen who once worked catching lobster now look instead for a much more prized catch, the so-called "white lobster" — bales of cocaine jettisoned by drug traffickers to either escape detection or to be picked up by another boat.
Honduras is also by far the region's biggest center for airborne smuggling. Of the hundreds of illicit flights northward out of South America, 79 percent land in Honduras, said the U.S. official. Ninety-five percent of those flights hail from Venezuela, which also has become a link for cocaine produced elsewhere.
Landing aircraft in Honduras was once so profitable and planes so easy to get that traffickers would sometimes simply offload the drugs and burn the aircraft, rather than take off again from dangerously rudimentary clandestine landing strips. Last year, however, they started reusing the planes to ferry loads of bulk cash back to Colombia, the U.S. State Department report said. Authorities found one load of $9 million in U.S. cash stuffed in plastic bags in the trunk of a car, and millions at a time in suitcases at local airports.
Earlier this year, as aircraft became more difficult to obtain, traffickers stole a military plane from the San Pedro Sula army base on the Atlantic coast, said Landaverde, adding that soldiers were accomplices to the theft.
"The plane is left outside," he said. "Some guys turn it on and take off. Nobody leaves a plane like that, ready to fly." In fact, one of the soldiers involved in that incident was later arrested in September with other ex-soldiers as they allegedly waited to meet a drug flight on the country's Atlantic coast.
It is not just poverty-stricken fishermen and corrupt soldiers who are the beneficiaries of the emergent cocaine republic. Last week, authorities seized 13 luxurious homes and ranches and 17 boats in the first such mass raid since the country enacted a drug-properties seizure law in 2010. All were owned by local people.
Key members of the region's business community who have hotel, real estate and retail holdings have been named as associates of the cartels, often for money laundering. Nor are the drug trade's ripple effects restricted to the coast.
Copan, a Guatemalan border province popular with tourists because of its Mayan ruins, is a lawless area dominated by business interests tied to the drug trade, said a radio station owner who asked not to be quoted by name for security reasons.
"These people move without shame in politics and the business world," the station owner said. "They are involved in large-scale businesses in tourism. This region has been separated from the nation's territory. It is their lair."
At the other end of the economic spectrum are local street gangs, who are often paid in drugs as well as cash to move drugs north. Their ranks are growing and competition among them has pushed up the country's escalating homicide rate to one of the highest in the world. The country of 7.7 million people saw 6,200 killings in 2010. That's the equivalent of 82.1 homicides per 100,000 people — well above the 66 per 100,000 in neighboring El Salvador.
Others are becoming players in the bulk trade, the U.S. official said, remarking that, "Lately, we've seen some gangs that will purchase the cocaine and resell it."
The high volume of drugs coupled with the alarming homicide rate is tough to address in a nation where many police and army officers are working with drug gangs. Corrupt law enforcement officials had a fierce foe in the person of former Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez, who was fired by President Porfirio Lobo in September after proposing a law to purge the police force of corrupt cops.
Alvarez had said publicly that some corrupt police essentially act as air traffic controllers for the drug flights. When a suspected drug flight was detected in August, Alvarez was quoted by a local newspaper as saying that two police officials not assigned to the district were in the area — their cellphone signals were traced to the control tower where the plane landed.
Alvarez claimed he was fired because of his campaign to clean up the police force, saying, "It was easier to get rid of a minister than to get rid of a corrupt cop."
But his replacement, Pompeyo Bonilla, said that given Honduras' highly protective labor laws, a mass firing of police officers probably would have been quickly followed by the reinstatement of many. He also claimed that Alvarez overstepped his authority by sending his proposed police cleanup law to congress without even telling Lobo.
"The president heard about it on television," Bonilla said.
Alvarez, who left for the United States soon after his dismissal, was not available for an interview, according to an unidentified woman who answered his U.S. cellphone number.
U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kubiske said she expects to work well with Bonilla. "President Lobo's administration is totally serious about fighting the cartels," Kubiske said. "When you talk to them, counternarcotics is almost the first word out of their mouths."
Alvarez was accustomed to dropping bombshells, including the claim that fugitive Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman had visited Honduras' border region next to Guatemala.
In March, police under Alvarez's command raided a remote mountain lab in northeastern Honduras. Alvarez said the lab processed cocaine from the paste of partly processed coca leaves, the first time that would have been done outside South America and an ominous development for Honduras. The lab, however, had apparently not yet been put to use. Bonilla said the lab was a small one, quickly dismantled, and no other such lab has been discovered in Honduras. "We are rather more a transit route" than a producer or processor, Bonilla said.
Some doubt the lab was intended to process coca paste; it may have been simply dedicated to cutting and repackaging imported cocaine, which is usually cut many times before it reaches the street.
"We haven't seen any evidence of cocaine processing taking place in Honduras so far," the U.S. official said, adding, "Twelve thousand kilos of cocaine were seized in Honduras this year, and we haven't seen a single ounce of cocaine paste."
Associated Press writer Luis Alonso in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — On Honduras' swampy Mosquitia coast, entire villages have made a way of life off the country's massive cocaine transshipment trade. In broad daylight, men, women and children descend on passing go-fast boats to offload bales of cocaine destined for the United States.
Along the Atlantic coast, the wealthy elite have accumulated dozens of ranches, yachts and mansions from the drug trade. And in San Pedro Sula, local gangs moving drugs north have spawned armies of street-level dealers whose violence has given the rougher neighborhoods of the northern industrial city a homicide rate that is only comparable to Kabul, Afghanistan.
Long an impoverished backwater in Central America, Honduras has become a main transit route for South American cocaine.
"Honduras is the number one offload point for traffickers to take cocaine through Mexico to the U.S.," said a U.S. law enforcement official who could not be quoted by name for security reasons. A U.S. State Department report released in March called Honduras "one of the primary landing points for South American cocaine."
Almost half of the cocaine that reaches the United States is now offloaded somewhere along the country's coast and heavily forested interior — a total of 20 to 25 tons each month, according to U.S. and Honduran estimates. Authorities intercept perhaps 5 percent of that, according to calculations by The Associated Press based on official estimates of flow and seizures.
The flow is hard to stem, said Alfredo Landaverde, a former adviser to the Honduran security ministry, because there are few other sources of cash income here.
"We have to recognize that this society is very vulnerable," Landaverde said. "This is a country permeated by corruption, among police commanders, businessmen, politicians."
The country's isolated, impoverished Atlantic coast, remote ranches and largely unguarded border with Guatemala — where much of the cocaine is taken — also make it a haven for traffickers.
"When the traffickers are unloading a go-fast boat in (the Atlantic coast province of) Gracias a Dios, you can sometimes see 70 to 100 people of all ages out there helping unload it," said the U.S. law enforcement official. "The traffickers look for support among local populations."
In the past year, authorities seized 12 tons of cocaine, according to the Honduran government — a vast improvement from previous years, but still a small portion of the estimated 250 to 300 tons that come through annually. Most of the cocaine arrives in Honduras via the sea, in speedboats, fishing vessels and even submersibles. In July, the U.S. Coast Guard, with Honduras' help, detained one such craft that had been plying the waters with about 5 tons of cocaine per trip.
Fishermen who once worked catching lobster now look instead for a much more prized catch, the so-called "white lobster" — bales of cocaine jettisoned by drug traffickers to either escape detection or to be picked up by another boat.
Honduras is also by far the region's biggest center for airborne smuggling. Of the hundreds of illicit flights northward out of South America, 79 percent land in Honduras, said the U.S. official. Ninety-five percent of those flights hail from Venezuela, which also has become a link for cocaine produced elsewhere.
Landing aircraft in Honduras was once so profitable and planes so easy to get that traffickers would sometimes simply offload the drugs and burn the aircraft, rather than take off again from dangerously rudimentary clandestine landing strips. Last year, however, they started reusing the planes to ferry loads of bulk cash back to Colombia, the U.S. State Department report said. Authorities found one load of $9 million in U.S. cash stuffed in plastic bags in the trunk of a car, and millions at a time in suitcases at local airports.
Earlier this year, as aircraft became more difficult to obtain, traffickers stole a military plane from the San Pedro Sula army base on the Atlantic coast, said Landaverde, adding that soldiers were accomplices to the theft.
"The plane is left outside," he said. "Some guys turn it on and take off. Nobody leaves a plane like that, ready to fly." In fact, one of the soldiers involved in that incident was later arrested in September with other ex-soldiers as they allegedly waited to meet a drug flight on the country's Atlantic coast.
It is not just poverty-stricken fishermen and corrupt soldiers who are the beneficiaries of the emergent cocaine republic. Last week, authorities seized 13 luxurious homes and ranches and 17 boats in the first such mass raid since the country enacted a drug-properties seizure law in 2010. All were owned by local people.
Key members of the region's business community who have hotel, real estate and retail holdings have been named as associates of the cartels, often for money laundering. Nor are the drug trade's ripple effects restricted to the coast.
Copan, a Guatemalan border province popular with tourists because of its Mayan ruins, is a lawless area dominated by business interests tied to the drug trade, said a radio station owner who asked not to be quoted by name for security reasons.
"These people move without shame in politics and the business world," the station owner said. "They are involved in large-scale businesses in tourism. This region has been separated from the nation's territory. It is their lair."
At the other end of the economic spectrum are local street gangs, who are often paid in drugs as well as cash to move drugs north. Their ranks are growing and competition among them has pushed up the country's escalating homicide rate to one of the highest in the world. The country of 7.7 million people saw 6,200 killings in 2010. That's the equivalent of 82.1 homicides per 100,000 people — well above the 66 per 100,000 in neighboring El Salvador.
Others are becoming players in the bulk trade, the U.S. official said, remarking that, "Lately, we've seen some gangs that will purchase the cocaine and resell it."
The high volume of drugs coupled with the alarming homicide rate is tough to address in a nation where many police and army officers are working with drug gangs. Corrupt law enforcement officials had a fierce foe in the person of former Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez, who was fired by President Porfirio Lobo in September after proposing a law to purge the police force of corrupt cops.
Alvarez had said publicly that some corrupt police essentially act as air traffic controllers for the drug flights. When a suspected drug flight was detected in August, Alvarez was quoted by a local newspaper as saying that two police officials not assigned to the district were in the area — their cellphone signals were traced to the control tower where the plane landed.
Alvarez claimed he was fired because of his campaign to clean up the police force, saying, "It was easier to get rid of a minister than to get rid of a corrupt cop."
But his replacement, Pompeyo Bonilla, said that given Honduras' highly protective labor laws, a mass firing of police officers probably would have been quickly followed by the reinstatement of many. He also claimed that Alvarez overstepped his authority by sending his proposed police cleanup law to congress without even telling Lobo.
"The president heard about it on television," Bonilla said.
Alvarez, who left for the United States soon after his dismissal, was not available for an interview, according to an unidentified woman who answered his U.S. cellphone number.
U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kubiske said she expects to work well with Bonilla. "President Lobo's administration is totally serious about fighting the cartels," Kubiske said. "When you talk to them, counternarcotics is almost the first word out of their mouths."
Alvarez was accustomed to dropping bombshells, including the claim that fugitive Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman had visited Honduras' border region next to Guatemala.
In March, police under Alvarez's command raided a remote mountain lab in northeastern Honduras. Alvarez said the lab processed cocaine from the paste of partly processed coca leaves, the first time that would have been done outside South America and an ominous development for Honduras. The lab, however, had apparently not yet been put to use. Bonilla said the lab was a small one, quickly dismantled, and no other such lab has been discovered in Honduras. "We are rather more a transit route" than a producer or processor, Bonilla said.
Some doubt the lab was intended to process coca paste; it may have been simply dedicated to cutting and repackaging imported cocaine, which is usually cut many times before it reaches the street.
"We haven't seen any evidence of cocaine processing taking place in Honduras so far," the U.S. official said, adding, "Twelve thousand kilos of cocaine were seized in Honduras this year, and we haven't seen a single ounce of cocaine paste."
Associated Press writer Luis Alonso in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Am I crazy?
I've come to the conclusion that I am 100% certified crazy. Here is an evaluation tool for yourself to see if you pass the test or not:
"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."
-Steve Jobs
This craziness I realized is what has come to drive me forward, it gives me meaning to my day, and most importantly has given me the ability to love life. I mean, isn't it remarkable to think that with just one conscious thought, decision, or act, we can choose to make our world better-here and now-helping another human or animal breathe easier? And to have this opportunity and privilege on a daily, hourly, minute to minute basis- is in and of itself an absolute miracle.
And sometimes it is so easy to do - complimenting someone, donating $10 to a charity, encouraging advice to a friend, helping a friend network into a new opportunity or experience, the gift of time spent with someone, a meaningful conversation that brings new knowledge, etc.
But as of late, here in the country of Honduras, it has also has become a great source of struggle for me. I am realizing now-more than ever-the Himalayan sized mountain of a challenge that exists to create real sustainable developmental change in poor countries. Its so hard to even identify and agree upon what is development? Is it a better economy? Is it having stuff in your house or shoes on your feet?
No-
For me it is having your basic needs met, having all possibilities open to you, being able to bring dignity into your own life by finding meaning for it, and to experience all forms of love (of self, other beings, and the world). This must be encompassed by a world that reaches to exist without discrimination and violence.
The one thing that almost always can keep me going is the extraordinary capacity we have as human beings to feel other's pain. Empathy. It is this experience of having this shared feeling, and knowing that I am an actor in the world that excites and fills my life. We all are connected, participate, and contribute to either the positive or negative energy in the world. (whether we consciously moralize about it or not)
So its time- here and now. It takes courage but we must as individuals moralize, decide, and act with consciousness inorder to take ownership of our life.
"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."
-William James
If our world is to be healed by human efforts, an awakening to a life of meaning with love and compassion is our only hope.
"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."
-Steve Jobs
This craziness I realized is what has come to drive me forward, it gives me meaning to my day, and most importantly has given me the ability to love life. I mean, isn't it remarkable to think that with just one conscious thought, decision, or act, we can choose to make our world better-here and now-helping another human or animal breathe easier? And to have this opportunity and privilege on a daily, hourly, minute to minute basis- is in and of itself an absolute miracle.
And sometimes it is so easy to do - complimenting someone, donating $10 to a charity, encouraging advice to a friend, helping a friend network into a new opportunity or experience, the gift of time spent with someone, a meaningful conversation that brings new knowledge, etc.
But as of late, here in the country of Honduras, it has also has become a great source of struggle for me. I am realizing now-more than ever-the Himalayan sized mountain of a challenge that exists to create real sustainable developmental change in poor countries. Its so hard to even identify and agree upon what is development? Is it a better economy? Is it having stuff in your house or shoes on your feet?
No-
For me it is having your basic needs met, having all possibilities open to you, being able to bring dignity into your own life by finding meaning for it, and to experience all forms of love (of self, other beings, and the world). This must be encompassed by a world that reaches to exist without discrimination and violence.
The one thing that almost always can keep me going is the extraordinary capacity we have as human beings to feel other's pain. Empathy. It is this experience of having this shared feeling, and knowing that I am an actor in the world that excites and fills my life. We all are connected, participate, and contribute to either the positive or negative energy in the world. (whether we consciously moralize about it or not)
So its time- here and now. It takes courage but we must as individuals moralize, decide, and act with consciousness inorder to take ownership of our life.
"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."
-William James
If our world is to be healed by human efforts, an awakening to a life of meaning with love and compassion is our only hope.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Health Care in Honduras
Also on a tuesday as I was working in my municipality, someone came up to me asking me to donate money to a 16 year old boy who had just gotten home from the hospital. He had been goofing around with his friends, drinking and trying to jump from a moving car as i understand it when he fell and apparently was run over. His name is Augustine. He lost his right leg. He is 16 years old and had it amputated from the top of his hip, at his waist.
This is an account from a nurse from the USA who saw him right after he was brought home from the hospital "I was shocked to see how they sent him home. No supplies to change the dressing, no medicines for pain or infection, nothing. He had a soiled dressing on and i opened it to change it with things I had brought. it was stuck to the open wound that was closed with only 6 staples. The incision is about 16 inches long so with just a few staples there are many gaping holes in his incision. I went to get him antibiotics and pain medicines and a lot more dressing supplies. Hope he doesn't get an infection as he heals. I was back Monday and today. I asked when he was supposed to return to the Dr and they seemed surprised and said " he never told us to come back". His wound is really draining and his home is very dirty. it is a 2 room house with no furniture. His mattress is on the floor. I attached a photo of a "wheel chair" someone made for him with an old frame and a broken plastic chair. I gave him a Bible, but can't talk to him about Jesus yet until Miguel returns from working with a team in San Pedro Sula this week. I can only imagine the depression he is probably in, knowing he will be spending the rest of his life with only one leg. That means there is little hope for work for him without education and mental skills."
The bad thing is that this story is told over and over again here in Honduras.
The good news is that this nurse is building a hospital right near where this boy lives to serve any and all Hondurans with better medical care. Its amazing how one person can really make a difference, and be that light for someone, one person at a time.
This is an account from a nurse from the USA who saw him right after he was brought home from the hospital "I was shocked to see how they sent him home. No supplies to change the dressing, no medicines for pain or infection, nothing. He had a soiled dressing on and i opened it to change it with things I had brought. it was stuck to the open wound that was closed with only 6 staples. The incision is about 16 inches long so with just a few staples there are many gaping holes in his incision. I went to get him antibiotics and pain medicines and a lot more dressing supplies. Hope he doesn't get an infection as he heals. I was back Monday and today. I asked when he was supposed to return to the Dr and they seemed surprised and said " he never told us to come back". His wound is really draining and his home is very dirty. it is a 2 room house with no furniture. His mattress is on the floor. I attached a photo of a "wheel chair" someone made for him with an old frame and a broken plastic chair. I gave him a Bible, but can't talk to him about Jesus yet until Miguel returns from working with a team in San Pedro Sula this week. I can only imagine the depression he is probably in, knowing he will be spending the rest of his life with only one leg. That means there is little hope for work for him without education and mental skills."
The bad thing is that this story is told over and over again here in Honduras.
The good news is that this nurse is building a hospital right near where this boy lives to serve any and all Hondurans with better medical care. Its amazing how one person can really make a difference, and be that light for someone, one person at a time.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Its drizzling in Honduras
Its the strangest thing.... We are in the rainy season here and In Maraita its been drizzling constantly. BUT just drizzling....
Somehow this drizzling has caused tremendous flooding to come off the nearby mountains so much so that the town bridges have been flooded and no one (bus nor car) could get in or out of the town.
Photo to be inserted but don't hold your breath....
Then some pipe must have burst somewhere so we didn't have water. The floods went down, the water came back, but it still comes out black. Fun shower time :D
Right now, I have about 1 year of service leftt as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras. I have had the privledge to be a Municipal Development volunteer in one of the most corrupt countries in the world along with the wonderful UN statistic of having the highest murder rates in the world for a non-war country. I live in Maraita, a small mountainous town, two hours from the capital- Imagine a tiny town with 700 people in the center, with the smell of either coffee, beans, or tortillas; everyone knows everyone’s business but there is such a close knit community that you really feel a sense of family immediately. Maraita is included in the 50th poorest municipalities in Honduras, so their are a lot of challenges but overall I've been pretty successful in my projects I started- creating a participatory municipal budget with the public to improve transparency, training women in how to run and manage a micro-business, supporting a community bank to give locals a way to save money and take out loans, creating a functional property tax system (measuring and evaluating land and houses so that the local government can charge property taxes like in the states).
Another side project actually comes partly inspired by Martin Luther King Jr- I am working with fellow volunteers and a local NGO to create a leadership, tolerance and diversity camp for high school students.
I want this to be spectacular so send me any thoughts, quotes, activities, etc that I can use.
Hey that means you all my ex-RA friends :D
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Pastelitos
Here is a Honduran food recipe to try, its delicious and a fluffier version of Mexican empanadas:
2 cups white flour
2 cups wheat flour (if not just use white)
1 tb spoon yeast
1 tb panela molida (aka natural sugar cane if not use reg sugar)
1 pinch of salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
Filling! you can use guava/pineapple jelly, or shredded coconut, or shredded apples with cinnamon, or veggies, get creative!
Mix all of the dry ingredients first then add the oil. Knead for 5 minutes. Let sit for 15 minutes, then make tortillas with small balls of dough. Cut two large circles out of a plastic bag. Make a small ball, place a plastic circle under and over it, and smash it with a plate that’s flat on the bottom. Add filling of choice, fold over, and seal the ridge well. Place on a greased pan and bake for 10 minutes at 175C or 345F
Enjoy!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
The Life You Can Save
The question is- if you could save someone’s life right now, would you do it? If say, you saw a small child drowning in a shallow pond, would you jump in and save them? Even if it meant ruining your best pair of shoes or outfit? I’d say that for most of us the answer is a DEFINITE, UNQUESTIONABLE YES.
At the same time did you know that UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, estimates that about 24,000 children die every day from preventable, poverty-related causes. The World Bank estimates that there are 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty. Yet at the same time almost a billion people live very comfortable lives, with money to spare for many things that are not at all necessary. (You are not sure if you are in that category? When did you last spend money on something to drink, when drinkable water was available for nothing? If the answer is “within the past week” then you are spending money on luxuries.)
While thousands of children die each day, we spend money on things we take for granted like bottled vs tap water, starbucks coffee, expensive clothes vs thrift stores. IS THIS MORALLY WRONG?
This is the basic question proposed in Peter Singer’s book “The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty”
Its difficult to estimate how much it costs to save a life, but Peter Singer estimates that by donating to international development organizations/charities, the cost can be as little as $200. It means cutting back on a couple of bottled waters or sodas per week, and instead donating it, that in less than year YOU COULD SAVE A SOMEONE’s LIFE!! By switching from bottled water to tap water and donating the savings to charity, any one person can save another human life after just 3 years (http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities)
I recommend this book to everyone I know. From this book I have decided that I am extremely privileged and live in gross excess in a time when people (and animals!) are dying and suffering needlessly. So starting from now on I PUBICALLY PLEDGE TO DONATING 10% OF MY INCOME to international organizations that work in developing countries. I am hoping to increase this percent as I go.
I decided that the call is urgent for the world’s extreme poor and it is time to do something. I recommend taking the pledge too. If not 10% then just something that is significantly more than you have been giving so far. Then see how that feels. You may find it more rewarding than you imagined possible.
Will you take the pledge (http://www.thelifeyoucansave.com/pledge), and thereby encourage others to do the same?
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
Then I saw you through myself, and found we were identical.
- Fakhr ad-din Iraqi (1211-89)
At the same time did you know that UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, estimates that about 24,000 children die every day from preventable, poverty-related causes. The World Bank estimates that there are 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty. Yet at the same time almost a billion people live very comfortable lives, with money to spare for many things that are not at all necessary. (You are not sure if you are in that category? When did you last spend money on something to drink, when drinkable water was available for nothing? If the answer is “within the past week” then you are spending money on luxuries.)
While thousands of children die each day, we spend money on things we take for granted like bottled vs tap water, starbucks coffee, expensive clothes vs thrift stores. IS THIS MORALLY WRONG?
This is the basic question proposed in Peter Singer’s book “The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty”
Its difficult to estimate how much it costs to save a life, but Peter Singer estimates that by donating to international development organizations/charities, the cost can be as little as $200. It means cutting back on a couple of bottled waters or sodas per week, and instead donating it, that in less than year YOU COULD SAVE A SOMEONE’s LIFE!! By switching from bottled water to tap water and donating the savings to charity, any one person can save another human life after just 3 years (http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities)
I recommend this book to everyone I know. From this book I have decided that I am extremely privileged and live in gross excess in a time when people (and animals!) are dying and suffering needlessly. So starting from now on I PUBICALLY PLEDGE TO DONATING 10% OF MY INCOME to international organizations that work in developing countries. I am hoping to increase this percent as I go.
I decided that the call is urgent for the world’s extreme poor and it is time to do something. I recommend taking the pledge too. If not 10% then just something that is significantly more than you have been giving so far. Then see how that feels. You may find it more rewarding than you imagined possible.
Will you take the pledge (http://www.thelifeyoucansave.com/pledge), and thereby encourage others to do the same?
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
Then I saw you through myself, and found we were identical.
- Fakhr ad-din Iraqi (1211-89)
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