Next Saturday, I’m heading to Guatemala. I’ll be there from October 13-22.

I’ll be making a promotional video for a donor to Mennonite Central Committee, on a food security program. I’ll get to see a couple
different sites around the country, some of which I’ve heard are really
beautiful. (I’ll take pictures, I promise.) I’ll be going with a friend
of mine from the college, so at least I won’t be traveling alone.

Maybe I’ll even see a Quetzal. (Doubtful)

Before I left for the DR, my brother convinced me to get a pair of Skechers that are basically leather sneakers. Great idea. I so enjoyed getting my shoes shined. Now that I’m back in the U.S., I am faced with the decision between paying $10 at an airport for a shoe shine or having dull, lifeless shoes.
In the DR, shoe shines were 15 pesos, about 50 cents. Cheap. But still quality. I walked up to a shoe shiner at “Nueve,” a big intersection on the north west side of Santo Domingo, and they would jump out of their seat, and I would sit down. I was impressed that they went over each shoe twice, ending with a snap shine that impressed the other people in my group.
But nothing prepared me for the Honduran shoe shine. I paid 20 lempiras, about a dollar. I felt slightly ripped off, until the shoe shiner got working. My shoe laces were out in seconds, and I had sock guards protecting my socks from the 13 different liquids being thrown at my shoes. I just sat there, reading a newspaper, and when I looked down, my shoes absolutely gleamed.
I really wish there were some 7 year old shoe shiners hanging around the park here…

Photos: Shoe before, Shoe after, and the shoe shining booths in San Pedro Sula

Flour tortilla
beans and cream slathered folded
Splurge on eggs and meat

I’ll admit. I’m not ready for American food. When I went to San Jose, my stomach was weird all week. I was so happy to come back to beans, eggs, and tortillas for breakfast; rice, meat and tortillas for lunch; and beans, eggs, and tortillas for supper. (Okay, so there is more variety, but that’s the most common.)

But the crown of all Honduran food is the baleada. A baleada is a flour tortilla, filled with at least beans and sour cream (the sencilla). Other possible ingredients include scrambled eggs, meat, tomato, avacado, cheese, and well… whatever you want.

There are some great places to get baleadas, from the street vendors to Baleadas Express and King Baleadas to gas stations. The best places hand make the flour tortillas fresh. The edges of the tortilla should be slightly thicker than the middle, but sturdy enough to hold a nice glop of sloppy fillings.

I’m definitely going to miss baleadas.

Sure, it was probably provoked. But still, this isn’t healthy protesting, in my view. (I’m a sucker for Ghandi’s approach, personally).

This morning what really blew my mind on the news was their daily question. People can call a certain number to answer “yes” to the question and another to say “no.” The question today was “Are you in agreement with police brutality?” It was tied. Fifty percent said they agreed with police brutality. That boggles my mind.

I find it really interesting that working and living conditions here remain so low despite a long history of social organizing and unions. I feel honored right now to be working with a women’s organization that is working with health and education, in the long tradition of women’s organizations here, but still wonder why this tradition hasn’t made this into a better society than it is.

When I was with Justicia Global in the DR, they taught me a bit about social organizing, and how it often has been corrupted throughout Latin America through a variety of means. For instance, if the government or another larger organization starts funding a grassroots organization, it generally destroys it. Before, the workers were working for social change, but now they are working for a paycheck. When unions started here in Honduras, there was a lot of power struggle. The less radical ones (and the ones backed by North American corporations) were recognized, leaving the more radical ones to die.

I went to a youth retreat of the local Mennonite church, and had a blast. We played some soccer in the rain (and then threw people in the mud afterwards). It was in the mountains- cold and foggy. We also roasted marshmallows over a fire… inside.

Sunday we went to the Mennonite church in Tegus. After church, the youth (about 20 of us) went out to eat Papusas (a Salvadoran tortilla stuffed with cheese or fried pork skin). Then we went to Picacho, a park on top of one of the mountains surronding Tegus (although the city now extends all over these steep mountains as well). There’s a huge statue of Christ overlooking the city, as well as a United Nations Park, and a replica of a Mayan pyramid.

Then – and this is amazing – we went to a place that has 2 lempiras baleadas. Baleadas deserve a post of their own, but basically are flour tortillas with refried beans and sour cream, and occasionally with eggs, avocado, or whatever else. But 2 lempiras (10 cents US) is less than half of the usual cost. So that was an amazing supper.
Then Nelson and I made some rounds with Henry, a bus driver who we were staying with, as he made his rounds. We finally got to bed around 11.

By the way, if anyone has a couple thousand dollars to spare, I have a GREAT idea for a prank in Tegucigalpa. Email me.
For more photos from the trip, click here.

I was in a service with about
20 people, in a small room, and yet the pastor was yelling into the
mic, with the sound system at full blast. At times, the mic cut out,
and everyone could hear just fine. I know someone who wears earplugs to
services because they are too loud.

But why? Here are some reasons that have crossed my mind:

• A pastor was asked why church was loud. He replied, “It says so in the Bible.”
• It’s
  used to alert people around that a church service is going on, who
  then, theoretically, they will come in.
• It’s
  used to drown out competing churches, or in the case of one retreat I
  was at, the bachata coming from a nearby bar
• It’s used to enhance the emotional experience, or help people feel “the Holy Spirit.”

It’s
probably a combination of them all, plus other reasons. But the idea
that it is used to enhance the emotional experience kind of scares me.
When does it cross the line into creating a false sacred experience?
When does making sure the music is at the right level cross the line
into manipulation? Recently a Ugandan pastor was caught with an
electric shocker the government claims he was using to convince people
he touched that they were having a sacred experience (Link). I’d say that crosses the line. I
know I felt manipulated when a pastor put his hand on my forward, with
his hand shaking forcefully. I’d say that it is good to create an
environment where one can meet God, but it goes too far to create the
meeting with God itself.

From what I hear, after Hurricane Mitch, the city grew frantically as people came in search of jobs and houses. I’ve heard stories of how bad it is now, but it’ll be interesting to see it with my own eyes.

I’ll let you know how it goes, and take some pics if I can get my camera working.

So he filled me in quickly on the history of Honduran Coke. It used to be made in Tegucigalpa, the capitol, but the water was too bad and the Coke had a bad flavor. They had to run it through 3 water filters. So of course, they take the production to San Pedro Sula, instead of trying to make the water supply better for everybody there.

I definitely feel better drinking soda here than in the US. The soda here actually has real sugar. For those of you who have been paying attention for awhile, last summer I tried giving up High Fructose Corn Syrup for a month. HFCS is the sweetener used in US soda, and I learned that it is terrible for you, and almost impossible to avoid. So I?m reveling in the sugar here. Plus, it tastes better.

I’m all for getting sugar back into our drinks in the US. So is this person.

Anyways, the Festival Junial is kind of like a month long celebration for the city of San Pedro Sula, since the day of San Pedro (Saint Peter) is near the end of June. So it’s full of parades, carnival type things, and probably general debauchery, but my host family has shielded me from this if it does indeed exist. It started a bit early this year, due to both Sampedrano futbol teams playing in the finals (read more here: España wins, España!!!)

So this week was the culmination of all of this, with roads blocked for juegos mechanicos (amusement park rides), and every kind of food stand and bootleg video place imaginable. And this doesn’t just happen in one place, it happens in several places throughout the city. The queen of all places, though, is Expocenter, where I ended up going today.

There were vendors from all over Latin America, selling Mexican sweets, Peruvian Pan Flute music by some guy named Tupac (not the rapper- I asked), and more. Lots of stores from Honduras, even hair cutting salons, temporary tattoos that last 15 days, and piercing parlors that claimed to be painfree. I will call that false advertising despite not testing the claim.

Of course, there was tons of food, which I felt safer not eating, and lots of rides, bumper cars, etc. (The last picture is of my host sister and her boyfriend on one of the rides).