I have ground corn, made tortillas, tamales, tikukos, montucas, and everything that is possible to concoct with corn…I have eaten nances, patastes, frijolitos, queso seco, cuajada, ricason, loroco and drunken enough sugar-coffee to fuel-power a small jet…I have listened to ranchera, danced to reaggaton, sung along to chapo…I have washed clothes in a pila, washed-up in a dirty river, fallen down countless derrumbes, bucket-showered, lit a fogon, jalon-ed near and far… I have worn color-coordinated jewelry/outfit ensembles, called everything under the sun “bonito” or “bonita,” sat squished between campesinos holding their chickens, culantro y packets of consume, I have even licked a consume packet myself after use like the niños… I have said “si dios quiere, gracias a dios, and que dios le bendiga” at least once a day for a year…and I think that only tonight have I truly reached true Honduran woman-status.
Tonight and tomorrow I have three teenage campesina girls staying at my house. (The experience thus far has shown me just how far from integration we are as PCVs, or I am as the town gringa… a title much like that of the town bolo—el unico.)
Despite that sidenote, I have taken some major steps these past couple of days: Firstly, I had 2 little girls do things I had to do (clean bolsas de churro (chip bags) and paid them in comida (food) –which I successfully/medio-exitosomente pulled-off—a very plato típico (sans tortillas) consisting of rice w/consume, frijoles cocidos, tomate w/sal y queso. Instead of coffee or coca cola I substituted purified water (save the teeth). I’m not sure if they were thinking—damn this gringa can’t cook—or if they actually liked it, or that it tasted like normal food to them? I guess I’ll never know…but it was actually nice to prepare food for kids in my own kitchen. I felt so… motherly.
Now here I am, in my room, with the chavas(girls) flirting via saldo(cellphone minutes) I sold them…oh the giggles…and how alta their voices! I honestly didn’t expect them to actually sleep here, but here they are. When Eugenio Rosa from the community of Naranjito called me and asked if they could stay here, I just thought they would somehow know someone in the community besides me…not that I mind hosting them, but I feel like they would be more comfortable with family or primos(cousins)… or primos of primos…
The three pairs of giggles on the otherside of my drywood-wall belong to the females selected from their communites to participate in a curso of manualedades (craft class—for lack of better translation) that via Mancomunidad Chorti/Proy Norte and el Comite of Turismo de Cabañas we are giving to 4 distinct groups of women: 3 small groups from the communities of San Manuel, Peñas II and Naranjales, along with a larger group from Casco Urbano of those who form part of Conmich (an indigenous group of los Maya Chortis). And it is actually going pretty smoothly.
I had a bit of the normal pre-workshop stress since no laptop works with the projector but that of Juan Carlos, even though Yamileth didn’t see the need to tell me that hers had never been used with the projector when she lent it to me with the projector…alas after 15 minutes of failed attempts, I called her to tell her that in fact it did not work, and then she tells me we only ever used juan carlos’s laptop, but that he just left…(leaving out the fact that she had the key to his office, where he always leaves the laptop) I called elma to get his number, but he did not pick up, I then called my neighbor who has an ipod (with the assumption that if you have an ipod, you most likely have a laptop, since no other laptop in the Muni works with this freak’n projector) and I had guessed right. He said in 15 minutes he would bring it. So then, I ran into my friend Mauricio, who I told about my sitch, he then calls juan carlos, he picks up, passes him to me, I explain the problem, he tells me that he did in fact leave the laptop in the office and that Yamileth has the keys…Entonces…I went to Yami’s house got the keys, went to the office, got the laptop and with that, technical problem resolved!…My neighbor did show up with his dad’s laptop telling me if anything happened to the machine he was a dead man…good thing we didn’t need to use it after all I told him…In the mean time, I had Delme, a friend of mine, man the listado de paraticipantes, and I called the merienda people to make sure they were on the ball.
We started the workshop with the “What is Tourism?” presentation to orient the ladies as to why we are here and what are the goals of such a workshop and their own ambitions. Lic. Carmen Martinez and the course instructor Sandraa came just as I was finishing up the presentation, and so we had merienda (crackers and hot coco) and then Sandra took over with her curso of Haciendo Hechos de Deshechos…translated: Making Goods of ungoods? Basically we learned how to make jewelry and hand bags out of discarded chip bags. (The bags were all collected by the neighborhood kids after I promised to show them all how to make jewelry after the workshop) The process is very simple and just takes some practice. The women in the workshop all picked it up fairly quickly and we were able to produce one handbag per group, several pairs of earrings, and bracelets.
In total the workshop lasted 3 days, and the women did a great job with accomplishing the production goals of the course, and many did perfect their skills as well by the end of the 3rd day when we did presentations of what each group produced. The Lic. Carmen from Proy Norte put some pressure on me to make sure the women who will be working in these courses are committed and not just here for fun, but ready to work. Her goal being that we reach a decent level of quality and quantity to commercialize the products and export. It’s a bit much to think about today considering the women are just learning the craft…and are in need of organization and training if they are to form a micro-empresa de veras, but perhaps with the help of a business volunteer we could get them to that point…my only concern is that it be something the women actually want for themselves. That’s the point right? To help them find work that is satisfying to them and will help them to improve their and their children’s quality of life.
