Feliz Día de la Madre!

Día de La Madre!

This past Sunday was Mother’s Day! In Honduras, mother’s day is a BIG deal. Schools close, families travel across country, all to celebrate the Honduran Mamas.

Our first, second and third grade students at the Villa Soleada Education center practiced all week for the big mother’s day celebration. They performed several dances and recited poetry as well.

The day ended with a lunch of rice, chicken and of course the preferred drink in Honduras, PEPSI (for those of you who don’t know, hondurans are mildly to completely obsessed with pepsi, especially when it comes in a 3 liter bottle aka JUMBO)

At least once a year, honduran mothers recieve a well deserved GRACIAS from their kids.

As for my honduran mama, she enjoyed a delicious dinner, cooked by the one and only..ME.

Que Vergüenza!

The date on my last blog is October 16^th 2011. In Spanish I would say, Que Verguenza or How Embarrassing.

Almost 5 months have passed since I last updated my blog. As you can all tell, blogging is not my favorite thing to do. It’s mostly the slow Honduran internet that persuades me to do anything but try and upload photos and stories to the internet. However, I am not going to let that stop me, I promise.

During the last 5 months, my relationships with the kids, teachers, community members and students helping honduras staff have grown immensely. I feel a part of a community, an insane community but a community nonetheless. When 11 children from your community come to pick you up from the airport after a trip, you know you must be doing something right.

The news surrounding Honduras in the last 5 months has been extraordinarily negative. The headlines have read “Murder Capital of the World”, “356 Die in Jail Fire”, “Peace Corps leaves Honduras” and all imaginable combinations of gang violence, drug trafficking and poverty. It saddens me to see a country that I have grown to love put under such a negative light by the media. The news is an exaggeration of the reality on the ground in Honduras and it is unfortunate that some people base their opinions solely on the media. During the last 7 months I have never felt unsafe or uncomfortable. If anything I have felt over-protected by all of my Honduran friends and co-workers. Come see for yourself! Come visit.

A lot of people talk about the gang violence and drug trafficking as the most pressing issues in Honduras. For me, the most dangerous aspect of Honduran society is the education system. Teachers are constantly on strike and pride themselves as “huelguistas”, people who protest. Not getting paid is a valid reason to protest but I do feel that too often the teachers take advantage of their “huelguista” reputation and unjustifiably cancel classes.

Each week school is canceled at least 2 out of the 5 days and when school is in session it lasts for 4.5 hours with one of those hours allocated to cleaning. A generation of uneducated Hondurans is a lot scarier than what Honduras is experiencing now. A generation of uneducated Hondurans means that the number of gang members, acts of violence and percentage of Hondurans living in extreme poverty will increase. A government as weak and corrupt as the Honduran one will not be able to manage the increase in violence. It’s not unheard of for a government to keep its population under-educated. With education comes social mobility, middle class growth and social awareness, all things a corrupt government does not want. Why would a corrupt government want to increase social and political awareness among its people when it can continue manipulating their under-educated population to their needs rather than the needs of the population.

A month ago I started a scholarship program for 6 high school students. All 6 were not going to attend school because of what some call the “backpack barrier”. They did not have the money to purchase the uniform, notebooks, markers, pens and other required utensils needed to attend school. In Honduras, a uniform is required and if families can’t afford it the kids simply stop attending school. I want this scholarship program to become more of a leadership program than anything else. The program will play a critical role in the empowerment of the youth in my community. They have the potential to empower themselves and their community to be better. I believe in them and hopefully with time they will believe in themselves too.

Below is a photo from the 6th graduation of two of my students with their proud family. I was their “god father” for the ceremony which just means I had to walk with them and sign their diploma. In Honduras making it to 6th grade is an achievement, I hope I can be there for their 12th grade graduation!

Demaris and Juan at their 6th Graduation!

I promise to keep this blog updated! Future blogs will include more info about the scholarship program and how to donate.

Hope all is well!

Adam

a bit off topic but always amazing:

Gringo! Definitely Palestinian! Or is he Israeli..

Hey All!

Before I am forced to leave the country and head off to Guatemala to renew my visa I thought it would be a good idea to start this blog…

For those of you who don’t know, I am currently living and working 15 minutes outside of El Progreso, Honduras on a one year teaching fellowship with a DC based non-profit called The Global Playground (www.theglobalplayground.org). The Global Playground currently has 5 education based projects in 5 different countries: Honduras, Thailand, Uganda, Cambodia and Vietnam.

In Honduras, I am working in partnership with Students Helping Honduras (SHH) at an education center in a community called Villa Soleada. The education center serves a community of 44 families as well the surrounding communities of Las Brisas, Primero de Enero and Montes de Los Olivos.

A few of my brightest students: Dani, Gerson & Edwin.

It is important to have some context in order to understand the challenges I am facing and the types of students I am working with. Montes de Los Olivos is an extremely poor squatter village a few minute walk from where I live where people live without running water, electricity and share 4 bathrooms amongst 30 families. Both Villa Soleada and Montes de Los Olivos are isolated from the city of El Progreso making it difficult to find employment. Villa Soleada is a Student’s Helping Honduras project which helped 44 families move from one of the most dangerous and poorest areas of El Progreso to the other side of the city. Over the span of two years, the families in collaboration with SHH built 44 homes. On a good day, there is electricity 24/7 and running water for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening. There is an Education center which serves over 200 students ranging in age from 5 to 25 years old, a children’s home which will open in a few weeks and a volunteer house. I’ll update you all a lot more on the education center in my next blog post. (To learn more about Villa and SHH check out their website, http://www.studentshelpinghonduras.org)

Education Center in Villa Soleada

I don’t what it is about my appearance but no matter where I am in the world people question my nationality, always with a suspicious tone as if they know I must be American but for some reason can’t believe it. I usually respond the United States or Connecticut if I think they know where that is. Their response: yeah, but where are you really from? I sometimes have fun with it but I decided to be honest with these people since I am going to be living here for next year and don’t feel like keeping up with an elaborate lie about my family in Lebanon. I explained to them that my ancestors are from Russia, Poland and Spain and that I am Jewish. For the few who knew what Judaism was, I immediately became Israeli. For those who didn’t I remained Palestinian. I laughed to myself and began to explain why I thought this was hilarious (which should be obvious to most of you) but quickly gave up. So I went from being American,  to Palestinian to Israeli.  No matter what they think I am, I will always and forever be, a Gringo.

More updates on what I’ve been up to for the last 3 months when I get back from Guatemala next week!

And finally Manu Chao with my anthem for the past 3 months..