Friday, November 28, 2008

Honduran Turkey

Normally, volunteers gather for holidays to celebrate and take some time to speak English. Last year, if you've been following our blog that long, you read about how Alice and I did just that. Our sitemate invited people from her training group and Alice and I cooked all day for 12 or so people to attack it with the fury of people who'd eat dirt if you covered it in enough gravy and called it Thanksgiving dinner. 

This year there were various gatherings and get-togethers in all corners of Honduras, but Alice and I once again opted to cook it all ourselves. Besides just liking our own cooking, I am currently very busy with various projects that I am trying to get to a midpoint before the country shuts down for the holidays in mid-December. After talking to a few friends here and there it sounded like it was going to be just Alice and I for dinner, and so we started recruiting Hondurans to celebrate with us. In the end, we ended up being 11, with food for 20. 

Cooking here is relatively easy, but cooking something specific gets more complicated. Say for instance, you want to make dinner, there are at least 5 options at any given time in local stores, however, if you would like to cook green bean casserole or stuffing, you are looking at a trip to Teguc to scower the city looking for ingredients. If you are determined to cook a full thanksgiving dinner, you should count on at least 3 different stops, and then plan on looking foolish on the bus back. With enough grocery bags it looks as if you could feed an entire village, you should plan on getting a fair amount of confused looks in a country where people shop weekly, sometimes daily. In all, we had to shop at 5 different places to get everything, 3 in the city and 2 back in site.

Alice put a fair amount of work trying to explain the holiday,why we celebrate and why we eat what we do. Some are easy. "Well, the native americans brought turkey when they saw the pilgrims didn't have enough food for everyone." Others aren't. "We eat greenbean casserole because the enterprising campbell's soup company has convinced us they had 'cream of mushroom soup' at the first thanksgiving, and we must continue cooking with it at least annually, but more often if possible."

Alice, after finishing her explanation, insisted that everyone give thanks for something before eating. I, of course, then explained that in the United States it was traditional to put all the food on the table, start passing the food around the table, putting portions onto your plate, when someone, usually an aunt of uncle in my family, suggests that before we eat we all say something we are thankful for and the whole table slouches just slightly and eyes thier plate carniverously while we wait for our turn to give thanks. I said thanks to Alice for continuing that tradition and promptly loaded my plate. The most memorable thanks came from my host brother, who had been watching us cook all day. He inhaled deeply as if ready to give a long speech, thanking everyone and everything from his parents to the moon when he said in a loud proud voice, "Thanks for the FOOD". 

Of course, we added some honduran touches. There is no such thing as breakfast sausage here, and for the stuffing that requires it, we used honduran chorizo and ground beef mixed, which turned out better than any other stuffing I've ever had, however, as I explained to my real Mom later in the evening, "You put enough gravy on anything, and its bound to come out tasting at least okay." We left our pepper at home and were were forced to replace it with especias in everything that needed pepper. Especias is Spanish for spices, and if you ask at any store what kinda of spices they have, they usually put a bottle of especias on the counter and look at you like "What do you mean, what kind?" We learned that outside of a few things like cinamon and cumin, you should just be prepared to use especias, because its what there is.

After Dinner we enjoyed a break, and then had pumpkin pie (the spice issue came up here too, I susbstituted nutmeg for cloves and something else, it still tasted pretty good). The evening came to an end around midnight when we all still felt slightly full and decided we should sleep.

What did I do today? Turkey and rice soup!

(please excuse my spelling. My spell check seems to be non-functioning today, and cut and paste is too much work). 


Felipe, a friend and incredible artist, with our dog/monkey Lizzy


3/5ths of our host family. Emilia, Balbina, and Basilio. Missing: timid older sister Elena and dad, David


Our friend Maria Jose. 


Our host brother continuing to show off his personality.


Me, having not shaved for 3 days because our house is having water issues, Alice, my always lovely wife, Otho, an American educated engineer and Themis (Dennis) the dalmation.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

About time for an update

I always feel like I am falling behind on the blog, but in all actuality I probably have something to tell about once a month, every two weeks during good times.

As we have talked about on many occasions Alice and I have put a great deal of time and effort into a civic education project. One group of students we had present in front of a group of national policy makers in an attempt to get the ministry of education (that’s right, we have ministries here, not departments) to adopt this particular program into the national curriculum.

Well, we were nearing the end of the school year and we had to plan something both of our schools could participate in. And we did. And it went great. We ended up with 3 groups presenting: one on poverty, one on drug use, and a third on deforestation. The presentations impressed even my, since two of the groups did a final practice the day before and seemed kinda shaky, but they pulled it off in style.

Following the presentations, invited community leaders are given a chance to ask questions or offer comments. I must censor myself now, to avoid future consequences. One of our invited community leaders started talking, and I zoned in and out, concentrating more on what I was going to say next, when a comment got my attention. The person who had the floor was making some audience inappropriate comments and I was immediately confused. I suppose while the time and place of comments is important to me, some folk consider what they have to say so important they forget to censor themselves. Consider that your lesson of the day. Think twice before speaking in front of people about what you’re going to say.

After comments we had lunch with the students and gave them certificates. Alice and I were both a little sad to big goodbye to our students, but we have been invited to teach English next year and we probably will.

We went to the big Halloween celebration in Copan this year, and that was okay. It could have been far better, but I lost our camera and the next day ate something nasty on the way home and enjoyed a case of diarrhea while on an 8 hour bus ride home and the following two days.

I went to the South again and went swimming in a good old fashioned swimming hole. There isn’t really a story there, but I did it, and I like saying that.

Lately I’ve been in the beginning stages of an improved stove project. Most stoves here are three small brick walls with a cooking surface on top, which work fairly well, but eat firewood like cookie monster eats cookies. (That sesame street reference was in honor of my nephew, Nathan, who loves Elmo and Nemo. I am working on a Nemo reference.) One of my counterparts is in charge of community-based projects to benefit the water shed and the quality of life of the people living in it. So thanks to a German NGO we are building 250 improved stoves in 6 communities. The improvement is the addition of a firebox and a chimney which greatly reduces the usage of firewood and gets the smoke out of the house, which should greatly improve the health of the people cooking who currently work in a constant fog of smoke.

In other news, I hurt my knee and may end up being evacuated for knee surgery. I apparently have a ruptured ACL, which is, apparently, not good.

I will try to keep everyone updated on the stoves and my knee, but until then, just keep swimming. (I knew I could do it.)