Twas the night before Navidad (Christmas) and all through the casa (house), not a creature was stirring not even a raton (mouse). Ok well that is just patently untrue (except for the mouse part, I have finally won my war against those furry intruders). If this classic story had been written in rural Honduras it would read more like “and bullets and fireworks were whizzing past the house.” That’s because unlike North Americans, Hondurans celebrate Christmas Eve, not by having a relaxing dinner with the family and going to bed early to await the arrival of a present bearing, fat man, but instead eat a whole bunch of tamales followed by gallons of cheap sugar cane alcohol (guaro) and then take to the streets to shoot of fireworks and guns till all hours of the morning. Honestly, if Santa Claus were real (sorry kids, but I honestly didn’t expect you to be reading this), and he delivered presents to Honduras, he would be doing so at his own peril. Rather than coasting in smoothly on his reindeer drawn sleigh to land comfortably on apartment building roofs and sturdy shingle, like in the States, he would have to fly a stealth mission through a hail of gun fire and fire work explosions, like some WWII bomber pilot, and then try to set down on a roof of easily shifting teja (brick tiles, that you have probably seen if you have travelled through the American southwest). He would then have to try to squeeze his sizeable girth through the chimney of a fogon (traditional wood burning stove), and once inside, rather than delicious milk and cookies, he would likely be greeted with left over tortillas.
Well now that I have thoroughly analyzed that hypothetical situation, I would just like to wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah (hopefully my spelling of that is somewhere in the ball park), and Spectacular Kwanza (not sure what adjective goes there so I just picked a positive one) . This will be my second Holiday Season away from home, and the 23rd of December will mark my 19th month away from the USA. This year’s holiday celebrations will be bitter sweet, because they will also represent my last few weeks in Honduras as a volunteer (at least for a while). I don’t want to dwell on this sad news, as I are already working on some touching entries to try to sum up my service in this country. The only thing I know now is that I will be home in DC around the 15th of January (for anywhere between a month, and permanently) and would love to see all of my friends and relatives back in the USA. This comes as a result of the increasing violence levels in this country, that have recently resulted in a Volunteer being shot in the leg by a stray bullet during an attempted bus assault.
But looking past this unfortunate event and the major changes that are steadily approaching, I would like to briefly look back over my year in Honduras, and point out some of the highlights. I may not have done the best job of using this blog to keep people informed about the work I was doing here; instead I have chosen to concentrate on ridiculous anecdotes and various animal related shenanigans. While I do not regret this choice, I will use this entry to fill you guys in on what I have been doing when I am not dodging bullets at futbol matches and battling vermin in my house. My major projects over the past year have been: acquiring funds to buy desks and chairs (My sincere thanks to everyone who donated) and setting up a computer lab using said desks and chairs, designing an excel spread sheet with formulas that will calculate yearly interest and teaching the local caja rural (micro-finance organization) how to use it (as opposed to their current system of calculating it all by hand using calculators and then recording the information in various badly organized books), helping my counterpart in the Catastro department of the mayor’s office (he is in charge of collecting municipal tax’s and maintaining property documents) to create a digital property map of the casco urbano (the town center), helping my counterpart in the Women’s Office set up a Red de Mujeres (basically a support network of women to promote women’s health issues and create job opportunities for women, and to try to offer help to victims of spousal abuse) at a municipal level, with representatives in the various communities, and continued my work with a group of women who I helped to start a local bakery (we already have plans drawn up to have the municipality build them a café/bakery using funds from the central government that are earmarked for promoting economic opportunities for women). (side note: I know that was the longest sentence ever, but I am feeling far too lazy to go back and figure out how to handle the punctuation).
As a conclusion to this makeshift Christmas letter (at least I didn’t include a picture of a dog, apparently Sarah Palin hates when people do that), I would just like to say that I hope you all have had as rich and fulfilling a year as I have had. It has been trying at times, and I would be lying if I told you that my life here is easy, but I guess that is why they call Peace Corps, “The toughest job you’ll ever love”. (Now I just hope they decide to let me return and continue loving it for the remainder of my contract)
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
