Oldies!

Woah.

The feeling of separation that hits you when the oldies leaves hurts more the second year.

I imagine it's probably because I only spent about two months with the other oldies, and I spent a year and two months with these guys.

The first day that the oldies weren't around, the house felt absurdly empty. During a bit of free time that day and during Holy Hour, I wrote down some things. Reading over them again, those things are not particularly positive. I think it reflects how overwhelmed I felt in the moment, both imagining what it would look like for the eleven people who stayed here to suddenly be doing all of the work when nine people got into the car and left, and imagining what it would be like to not have those people around for the times when you have questions about how to manage your new job, when you want to be able to turn to another person and say, "I'm not being crazy, right? That's a weird thing that our community does!", when you want somebody else to agree to participate in an event you'd like to organize, when you want enough people at holy hour to hold a tune together, when you need to know how to say a word in Spanish, when you want to play a game of american football, when you want to watch a good movie on [once every two weeks] movie night and everyone else is voting for something silly, when you want to try and steal a chicken from one of the kids on his or her way back from the bodega, or when you want to throw oranges at house two and/or its inhabitants.
Those are times I'm going to miss.

I think those are the moments you carry with you in your head until they fade with time and/or are replaced by the experiences you have with those still around you. Some of those new experiences have already happened, but there are more yet to come. You've just gotta figure out how to pick yourself up back off the ground and keep on keeping on till the memory of those oldies is simply fond, not sad!

We cleaned the house Thursday, and again yesterday, and somebody made the intelligent observation: "We may not be able to help whether or not the oldies left, but we are able to help what our house looks like!" Oddly enough, cleaning the house, for me, fit into that category of new experiences to ease the pain.

Okay, I gotta run, but I'm actually doing fine guys, even if it doesn't sound like it!

Fake Blog Posts

So I suppose first I'd like to thank you all for coming to this meeting. I think we're all in agreement that at this point it makes sense that, instead of actually producing any feasible blog post, we've dropped down to the level of simply making a list of the potential blog posts that could have been written in the past several months, had time been more readily available.

Having said that, please let me present you with the options:

1. The rat killing competition.

The rat problem in our house grew out of control right around the time that the newbies got here. They, less accustomed to living in such squalor, got our act together for us, since we didn't seem like we were going to, and organized a two-week-long competition to see which group of missionaries could trap and kill the most rats. I, as one of those omega males who can't stand the sight of killing things and has at least at one point in my life been a vegetarian, struggled with this competition. My team proved reasonably capable both at trapping rats through ingenious construction of awesome traps and at remaining humble, but we struggled in the actually-disposing-of-said-trapped-rats department. In the end we managed to lose 50L (lempira), or about $2.50 to the team of Kevin (Kuehl, not me) and Harrison, aided by the fact that the latter of the two seemed to have no semblance of a moral quandary regarding doing away with the rats.

This blog post, were it to be written by someone who was actually good at doing the whole blog production thing, would've come complete with photos of all of the different types of traps constructed over the course of the weeks, from the "Look! Here's some food floating on an island in the middle of water too deep for you to stand up in! You should probably come get it!" traps to the "I don't know... let's just put a giant bag over the hole where they come in and hope for the best?". Thorough readers could be left pondering both the best way to capture rats too intelligent for normal traps and what it is about the soap in the mens' bathroom that the rats find attractive (besides its disuse).

2. Graduation of 9th grade

The 9th grade class this year consisted of six kids who will be heading off into the world next year, having completed the first stage of their academic career. The hope is that all of them will continue on into higher education, but the nature of the Honduras education system and the opportunities available to these kids don't necessarily dictate that as the next step. Perusers (people who peruse?) might actually get a chance to see one of those elusive photos of the writer and his 9th grade math students, or at least those of them who still liked him enough to be willing to be seen in a photo with him, and would be provided with the opportunity to ponder the relationship between education and opportunity in the third world.

3. House 3 and banana plantation injustice.

As part of their afternoon activities schedule, Kit decided to work with house 3 to create a business selling topogigos, a fancy delicacy here in Honduras also known as frozen koolaid in a baggie. Since taking Zuko or Tang (the two Honduran Koolaid companies) packets (4L or 20 cents each), mixing them with water (free), and pouring them into a baggie (no idea) is a relatively cheap process, topogigos tend to sell for quite cheap, on the order of 1L (5 cents). House 3 and Kit, because they're brilliant, decided to try selling them for 2L each instead. That worked.

Anyway, so think of a lemonade stand where they give you koolaid in baggies instead of lemonade in cups, but where the liquid is actually frozen solid if you get there early enough and mostly liquid if you don't. Then think of the most obnoxious group of kids you've ever seen trying to sell something to adults... I'm thinking of some girl scouts in front of a Walmart I used to know. First sad, then pushy, then even angry, all a series of emotions carefully designed to weigh on the potential consumer until he or she realizes that for the sake of these young children's well-being, he or she must not, at all costs, ever purchase anything from them when they're acting like that. Then envision that you discover that these kids want you to purchase their products, but really what they want you to do is to purchase their products for them. Aka Sample House 3 Boy wants me to pay 2L to his store in order to allow Same Sample House 3 Boy to eat/drink Sample House 3 Boy's product. Here's the other thing... I wasn't present during any success they may've had with this strategy, but I have no doubt that it worked. Through these actions they also clearly demonstrated their business savvy by showing that they were disciplined enough to not eat all of their profits, or atleast without making other people pay for it.

Kit realized that, as our kids aren't allowed to have cash, she needed to come up with another way for them to use the 85L received during their sale. I use "85L received" because this can and should be distinguished from profits, an astute observation made by Kit, who promptly reminded the kids that the supplies for their business cost 40L. I'm pretty sure she actually just took those supplies from our house, and while they very well may've cost 40L, I don't think anybody noticed their absence nor has any interest in recuperating that loss. That leaves 45L divided amongst six house 3 boys. At the end of the sale, Kit offered the kids the opportunity to eat their profits. I believe the way in which this was communicated was "You can, if you'd like, spend your part of the money on buying topogigos of your own from the leftovers." Another astute reader will, at this point, clearly point out the flaw that casa 3 failed to see in this logic. If supplies for all of the topogigos that they made cost 40L, and there are 30 extra topogigos left over, the members of house 3 have actually made a profit of 7.5L and 5 topogigos each. Unfortunately house 3 fell into the logical trap placed before them and, in their eagerness to participate in the consumption of said topogigos, allowed themselves to purchase them, presumably from Kit, using their own profits, until their financial resources, so recently acquired, were thoroughly exhausted. At the end of the day Kit went home with 85L in her pocket, the kids went home happy, and the rest of the people who purchased topogigos went home, some with topogigos, and all slightly less beat-up than they would've otherwise been had they not purchased topogigos.

"So where, in all this, does banana plantation exploitation come into play?" As a good blog reader, you will have remembered that the title did make such an allusion. Depending on how much attention was paid to the previous paragraph, one might have already identified the connection. If not, the blog post would here lay out the situation of the lowly plantation worker and the existence of the company store, the only place in the surrounding area where workers could purchase supplies, supplies consistently set at unreasonable prices. Such a setup allowed all of the money distributed for labor done to consistently flow back into the company. This was also common in the West during gold rushes and many mining operations.

In an effort to avoid continuing the cycle of exploitation of the workers, bloggers might also request knowledge of the whereabouts and whatsitgonnabeusedfors of the 85L in question in Kit's topogigo pyramid scheme. She (and I) would like to ensure everyone that she's using the 85L for arts and crafts activities with house 3.

Greetings Finca Follower!

Hello!

I'm doing well. Please don't think my lack of posts means otherwise! I do care about you, the reader, even if my relatively weak list of authored works up to this point in my Finca career might indicate otherwise. Rest assured that such an indication is far from my intention.

The main reason for my silence is, well, I haven't been to the internet for a while. That's perhaps the first level of reasoning. Perhaps the second might be that I've been very busy recently and haven't had much time to make it to the internet, but that seems to be asking you to ask me a question. So go ahead, if you'd like, and ask me why I'm so busy!

I'll just wait here.

The Bus

Dear People Voluntarily Subjected To Reading My Blog Posts,

Although the temptation to continue to edit the previous post was quite strong (I really wanted to toss in something about the part where we were handed a 70 page book, asked to open to page 48, filled in half of that page, and then took pictures of ourselves in front of the previously pasted signs holding up the books), I've since decided that that is not as productive a use of my time as writing about an entirely different topic. You're welcome.

Instead, I'm going to briefly describe the experience of traveling from La Ceiba to Trujillo, and what one might experience.

Assuming that there isn't already a trip planned for the same time you'll be traveling that'll be using one of the Finca vehicles, the most likely scenario is that you'll be traveling by bus. Now depending on your luck, this trip could be either in something similar to a greyhound or a bright yellow school bus that still has "Northside Independent School District" pasted onto the side of it. Leaving the apartments in downtown La Ceiba, you're best bet is to hop into a taxi that'll take you to either the COTUC or Cotraipal station... one of which takes you directly to Trujillo. I can never remember which... and the taxi drivers always argue with you if you want to go to the further one, "Cause it's the same... they both go direct!" (Lies!)

Let's say that you've managed to make it to the station correctly. There's a decent chance that they'll have an actual building open where you can go in and by a ticket, but never fear, you can still purchase one on the bus if it isn't open! They just might not have change immediately. Their method of dealing with this is to give you a piece of paper with a number of Lempira on it that they still owe you. You should probably keep track of this paper... and nag them about it.

Okay, so you're on the bus. Sit back, relax, and three hours later, you're in Trujillo. Oh wait, I forgot the roadblock where everyone has to get out and show their identification to the military! Well okay, there's that. Otherwise you're good. In fact, if you'd like, for a really cheap price, people will come up to your seat and sell you any of a large variety of different foods and/or other goods!

You can buy an entire classic Honduran main course of fried chicken ("POLLO FRITO, POLLO FRITO, POLLO FRITO! BUEN PRECIO!") and tajadas (fried bananas that were picked while still green), and to cleanse the palate can buy snow cones, cookies, bread, a ridiculous option of fruits (the mangoes are spectacular right now), dietary vitamins that are a wonder drug you can only buy right now with this special tv offer! (oh wait, scratch the tv), or the all time favorite of both Erin Marina and Allison, some sticky popcorn balls known as alborotos:

In fact, if you don't want any of these foods, you'll still be made alert to their presence via the 50 vendors that walk past your seat at some point during the trip. "Mangos! Mangos! Mangos! Buen Precio!"

Congratulations! You've successfully survived the trip to Trujillo! If you got there early enough, maybe you'll be able to negotiate a taxi driver down to a fee of 150 limps instead of 200. Either way, you're almost home!

P.S. Look! I added a picture! If only I'd actually taken it myself... =)

Natural Disaster Awareness Training

Dear friends, family, and whoever else is reading this blog,

I'm setting a new record for the speed of my blog posts. Going through all of the effort to actually write a blog post generally dictates that I ought to write it about something, however. Herein lies the problem. I don't have anything specific about which to write, or at least nothing is really ringing a bell.


I think I'll talk about my experiences with how Honduran institutions operate.

The largest source of my interactions with the Honduran government are typically somehow associated with the school, La Escuela San Pedro (St. Peter's School).
We're currently in the process of government-offered (mandated? I'm not sure) natural disaster training.
These meetings are scheduled to start at 8 am and run until 4 pm, and they happen during the school day, so we've obviously gotta cancel school.
A typical day in disaster awareness training:
8: arrival to the school.
~8:40: arrival of the government group
8:50: The European Union and some organization in Norway have kindly offered to sponsor these events. As a result, we'll focus on getting comfortable in our seats while several posters are pasted up on the walls.
9:00: It's time for the icebreakers!
9:20: Okay, let's go ahead and turn on the projector and get down to the real gig. Assuming there's electricity (60-40 shot), we're going to open with the all-important faith-based motivational powerpoint.
9:30: We're splitting up into groups now to discuss the possible natural disasters we might experience while living in Honduras.
9:50: A debate has now been brought to the table: a tsunami is or is not a viable possible natural disaster here in the bay?
10:00: Let's assume that it is. Given that, we've got documentation saying that in the event of a tsunami, we'll have about two hours of warning... or wait, this other thing says 20 minutes. Well I guess that concluded whether or not there's a possibility of tsunamis. Good. Let's move on.
10:15: Great, well, it's been quite a while since we started now, so let's go ahead and have the merienda (snack).
10:45: Okay guys, let's go ahead and make and then give our presentations on the possible disasters available in the area. Group 1, you guys can start. Okay group 2, you guys, although you've got the exact same list, should probably go up and present as well. Let's take a pause to paste those presentations to the wall as well.


I'm really excited about this post, so I'm going to continue it later, but for the time being, you get the gist, and I gotta run.

- Kevin

Hanging with the Teens

As always, it has been an absurd amount of time since my last blog update. I think I've finally come to peace with that. Perhaps keeping a more well-updated blog would be more conducive to donations and providing prospective Finca applicants with a better sense of the experience beforehand, but there's also something to be said for living the experience in the present. I don't often have enough time to make the trek required to get to the internet, and as someone living in rural Honduras, I think that's alright. If I'm really living in solidarity with my Honduran neighbors, the less-fortunate of those neighbors have access to the internet even less often than I do.

About a week ago I realized that three weeks after returning to Honduras from my vacation I had yet to make it to the internet. I also checked a statistic that Google keeps for you on how often I checked my email when I was in the states. I averaged 12 times a day. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I'm very bad about self-moderation and the internet, so I find that living in a place that makes it kind of difficult to use the internet is a very good thing for me. I was thinking recently about the way I spent my free time in the states or in Honduras, and I can't help feeling that the way I spend it down here is closer to how God intended us to live... or at the very least is much healthier for me. Reading, spending time with kids, living the life that's currently around me, and occasionally maybe even having the presence of mind to reflect on my life as I'm living it... those sorts of activities seem to be much more conducive to personal growth than television and the internet. I really do have it good down here.

Anyway, the main reason I sat down at the computer this morning was to give a bit of a spotlight to Fase II (Phase II) of the Finca, so after that long digression I'm actually going to get down to it.

Probably substantially less well-known than the farm itself, Fase II is essentially the point at which our kids, some of whom have spent nearly their entire lives at the Finca, have the opportunity to go to high school in La Ceiba, a much bigger city with better academic resources than Trujillo can offer. They live in La Ceiba in a boys' and a girls' apartment under the supervision of two of our second-year long-term volunteers, Sara and David. It serves as the place in which they transition from Finca kids under constant supervision into a self-sufficient Honduran young adults.

Right now I'm sitting in a Burger King/Church's Chicken in La Ceiba, about thirty feet from the apartments. I just purchased a Biscuit Helado (a Church's Chicken biscuit covered in Strawberry syrup and with two scoops of ice cream on the sides) for 29L (lempira) or approximately $1.45. I borrowed the aforementioned Sara's computer and am taking advantage of the opportunity to pay 29 limps for the use of the free wifi provided by the place for as long as I'd like rather than going somewhere else to pay 28L per hour for internet that doesn't come with a Biscuit Helado. This is absolutely the better deal.

While I'm here at the internet, Arturo and Angel David, the two current inhabitants of the boys' apartment, are off to Pais (the Walmart-owned supermercado), to purchase food for the coming week. Afterwards they're headed to el mercado (the market) to buy cheese and then back to the apartments to make corn tortillas with which we'll be making mexican enchiladas for lunch.

I've been in La Ceiba since yesterday morning, on a trip to:

(1) Finally receive the card that shows that I'm a resident of Honduras (so I don't have to either leave the country every 90 days or apply for 30 day extensions)

(2) Drive back with Erin Lucia (Erin Bradley) to Trujillo (we're not allowed to travel alone and the person with whom she would have otherwise be traveling, Harrison, is staying in La Ceiba for the week to stay in the boys' apartment while David is on vacation in the states)

(3) See off three wonderful summer Finca missionaries, Jamie, Carolyn and Krista, who stopped in for the summer to fill in gaping holes left by long-term missionaries who've vacation in the states. These three awesome members of our community more than filled those roles! If you happen to be reading this and know any of them, please thank them for us!

(4) Hang out with Arturo, Angel David, Marina, Nolvia, and Nelly, the five teenage Finca kids living in La Ceiba.

Speaking of hanging out with Arturo and Angel David, I ought to go. They guessed they'd be done with the tortillas about 12:30 and it's already 12:50 pm. I'd need to head up there so that we can get started on the enchiladas... if not, we may not have enough time to finish both Risk and Settlers of Catan today. I knew we should've started Risk yesterday after Monopoly instead of playing ping pong on the kitchen table!

A Brief Visit Home

Disclaimer: This blog post was published in April of 2014. I started to write this blog post about 10 months ago, but since I never finished and it seems strange to me to go back and fill in where I didn't complete what I'd wanted to say, I'm just going to hit publish and rely on google's tool that allows me to pick a time and date for when it should've been published.


Hola! I'm back in the states for a brief vacation!

For Hondurans, the school year runs from February to November.

You may be wondering how those two statements are compatible. Never fear, I'm about to tell you about it.


For those of us (the missionaries) who are teachers, it turns out that pretty much the only time available to go on vacation is during the school year.

That sounds vaguely oxymoronic, but well, here I'd like to give a shout out to the University of Notre Dame's International Summer Service Learning Program (ISSLP), a spectacular program run by those wonderful people at the Center for Social Concerns. The ISSLP pairs ND students up with international service organizations for a summer. We're one of those organizations, and we're quite grateful to welcome two rising ND juniors(?), James and Carolyn, to the Finca for the summer.

One of those two lucky individuals is currently down in Honduras trying to decipher my extensive and probably convoluted (but hopefully completely clear) lesson plans, and is well into his or her second week of covering my classes. Thank you kind and good sir or ma'am! You are a gentleperson and a teacher of scholars.


Going on vacation means stepping away from a project that I've been heavily involved in for nearly a year. I live where I work, and as the place is quite different from the states, my thoughts on my experiences down there can often feel very much like a dream. However, stepping away can give one a different and perhaps, better, perspective.

I won't go into terrible detail on all of my thoughts regarding the Finca, primarily because most of you would be bored. As a result, I'm pulling the ol' switcheroo and changing up entirely the direction it seemed I was going. I'll instead make two lists, one of the things that I really missed and/or talked about incessantly while at the Finca, and things that I miss about the Finca now that I'm back in the states. I'll try and hit all the cliches on the head.

List #1: Things I Missed (or at least thought I did) From The States
1. Shakes (half off after 8 pm)
2. Mexican food (sounds silly but true)
3. Hot (or even mildly warm) showers (First one in ten months!)
4. My pre-finca friends (this one's accurate)
5. The ability to watch a movie whenever I so desired (turns out I don't care that much about most movies anymore)
6.



I'm back in the United States for about a month! If you'd like to talk to me during that time, feel free to shoot me an email! I'm sure if you'd like to talk to me, chances are pretty decent I'd like to talk to you as well!

Oatmeal Candy Cane Cookies

I've been unofficially reprimanded about my blog. Not by the Finca, of course, but by friends. Yes, you. You crazy people out there, with your unlimited access to the internet. I'm trying, I swear!

Having said that, one of the complaints was entirely justified. It was pointed out to me that it might be nice if the kids made it into the posts occasionally. Well said.

Taking that into consideration, first I´m going to explain what a pila is:

A pila is basically the Honduran sink. It has a relatively deep section of standing water on the left for use when we don´t have water (about 30% of the time), and a pana (basically a plastic bowl) with which to draw that water. Because we use this water to watch our dishes, we try and make sure it stays as clean as possible... aka, we don´t put anything besides the pana into it.


Sorry for that random, (not) unrelated diversion. Back to talking about getting kids into posts occasionally, here's a brief tale of some cookies:


The Scene:
The Missionary Household

The Characters:
Cati, age 7
Kimberly, age 9
Kevin #2 (also known as Kevincito or Kevincio), first year (aka inexperienced) missionary, with ganas (aka in the mood) to make his family's traditional Christmas cookies

(this probably sounds much more exiting in my head than it does on paper... I'm envisioning someone reading it in one of those voices from movie trailers)

A thought comes into young Kevin's head. "I'm going to continue the family tradition of making oatmeal candy cane cookies!" Such a simple thought.

Poor guy.

The Sala of the Missionary House, thirty minutes later.

There are now two young Casa Uno girls with Kevin, excited and eager to bake. As Kevin pulls out the supplies, the younger of the two, Cati, allows her eagerness to assist to overwhelm her. While our unsuspecting protagonist´s back is turned, our dear niña begins to spread manteca all over her hands in order to grease the mixing bowl (not explicitly necessary), a process she completes with surprising rapidity.

Suddenly overwhelmed by the uncleanliness of her hands and the recommendation of a surprised Kevin that perhaps she shouldn´t have started yet, she proceeds to the pila (see above if you weren´t paying attention) and dunks her hands into the (previously clean(ish)) water. When kindly albeit hurriedly requested to remove her hands from said location, she promptly complies, choosing instead to take the more sanitary route of grabbing an unclean cup out of the sink side and dunking it (along with her hand) into the pila, in order to obtain water with which to clean her hands.


Again caught unawares, Kevin fails to notice that behind this, Kimberly is managing to spread flour all over places that have no business having any flour spread over them, e.j. the floor, the benches, the table, and last but not least, Kimberly´s face. She also accidentally manages to get a bit into a measuring cup, so our adventurers toss that into the bowl and proceed adelante.

Cue other similar happenings for nearly two hours. Possible topics that might be discussed:

- Kimberly´s complete refusal to attempt to form the mix into bakeable items on the cookie sheets, coupled with Cati´s refusal to make her attempts look anything like candy canes ("Kevin, we´re going to bring the ones that look like candy canes back to Casa Uno. ¡You can have the ones that spell my name!").
- The disappearance of one of Kevin´s helpers and the sudden (coincidental) added ability of the hammock on the front porch to yell at him as he attempted to check on the fire in the outside oven.
- Cati´s assurances that they didn´t need to place a shovel in front of the oven to hold up the door of it, because she could do it herself, something she didn´t always remember she had agreed to do.
- Past missionary-cooking-with-Casa-Uno advice that stipulates the need to travel all the way back to Casa Uno with the girls or risk them arriving at their house with empty plates and perhaps slightly fuller stomachs. To their credit, rumors surrounding the cases of the missing cookies often conclude that they´re liable to give away a substantial number of cookies, not merely eat them all.

Anyway, copies of this book on tape (cause I´m really feeling like the voice with which it is read is key) should be available in stores near you in... shoot, I can´t think of a time period I could pick that would be humorous. Oh well.