Estamos muy bien pero, como siempre, hemos estado muy ocupados!
and I think we´re all starting to realize that:
OMG, ONLY 5 WEEKS LEFT OF THE PROGRAM! where does the time go!?!?
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| Dig it! |
This weekend will be our mid-project camp, then we leave for the
holidays to visit our counterparts´ host families for a few days. . .and
by the time we get back it will pretty much be January!! Then we will
be back in snowy Canada on the 23rd! Unbelievable.
As I mentioned in Spanish, we´ve been very busy the past couple of weeks.
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| Co-operation, makes it happen |
We made a garden in the Youth House where Gaby works a couple of weeks ago. We dug the beds, put in an irrigation system and planted
some seeds. Hopefully something other than grass will grow!
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| Irrigation system. . .the ground looks vertical. . .o_O |
2
weeks ago we started off with Gaby (my counterpart) and Guillaume´s EAD
which was focused on HIV/AIDS awareness and education to prepare us for
our activities during HIV awareness week. After their presentation we
were invited to a panel discussion by Norman (our Honduran supervisor),
the Gracias coordinator for HIV awareness, Dr. Mazier (my host dad. .
.who is involved in EVERYTHING) and another presenter who I didn´t
know. This year´s focus for HIV awareness week was to raise awareness
about Human Rights of people living with HIV.
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| Copan Ruinas |
That week we participated in a parade to raise awareness in the
community, followed by street fundraising throughout Gracias. We
also had a board game tournament in the central park for youth in the
community who we played games with and simultaneously educated about HIV
and safe sex. We finished off the week with a futbolito tournament. .
.which is basically 15 min soccer on a smaller field. The youth in the
community had to make teams of 6 and compete against each other.
Between games we again, had educational activities.
The next day we crammed into a bus for a 3hr drive to the
Copan Ruinas!! Although it was a rough ride for all of us, we really enjoyed the day in Copan. And for all of you familiar with the
World Heritage Site obsession of Japan, I've got another one checked off now!
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| Copan Ruinas |
The next day, after a full day of site seeing and bus travel, Julia
gave a presentation about the political state of Honduras and gave some
more perspective into the military coup last year and motivations
behind it. There´s an interesting article which shares some of her
sentiments
here.
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| Iglesia in Gracias |
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| Gracias street corner |
The next day was Julie and Dayana´s EAD where they gave us a tour
and some critical thinking activities related to IHNFA (Instituto
Hondureño de la Niñez y la Familia) where they work. Their EAD had a pretty strong
impact on our group and produced a strong desire to take some action to
make the conditions for the children at IHNFA better. As much as I
appreciate the sentiments of our group and hope to affect positive
change, I am also concerned about considering the kind of help that
would be most beneficial and would induce the least amount
of negative consequences. Our program is only here for 3 months and we
are the first year of a 5 year program. I have a hard time believing
that we can possibly understand the full situation of Gracias in
only the short time we´ve spent here and I would hate for our
group to end up having a negative effect on the community because of
very good intentions manifested in a very damaging way to an already
existing and functioning organization or other system. Another dilemma
in development work! One of our Project Supervisor´s posted an
interesting article about some of the negative effects of short term
volunteer work from the
telegraph. The comments are interesting too.
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| Huh! Fancy that! |
We also took part in a campaign to inspect people´s backyards for
potential mosquito breeding grounds. It was part of the health
organization´s campaign to prevent Dengue. The same week, one of the
major H
onduran soccer teams came through to play a tournament in Gracias
so we were volunteering to help them out as well. I guess some of
the players were on the national team as well and played in South
Africa.
During that time we had a few issues within our
group. 2 of the volunteers got caught breaking rules of the program and
were almost sent home. We had to have a big meeting with the
supervisors about it and have now all been given a number of extra rules
that we have to follow. It´s been quite dramatic and kind of tiring.
Fortunately, most people are still in good spirits and it hasn´t had too
much of a negative impact on the group. . .other than the week that it
happened. Hopefully it will help to bring out some of the underlying
issues of our group dynamic and make us stronger.
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| Baleada making! |
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| mmmm street food |
Finally, this week was my EAD! Luz Dariela and I talked about Human
Rights and about Canadian company Goldcorp, who have gold mines in
Honduras. There is a very interesting 6 part documentary about it here.
It´s about an hour in total and I highly recommend it to everyone.This weekend will be our midproject camp! Can´t believe we are already at midproject!
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