"But, to be honest, you're only teaching an elective. The kids are supposed to have fun in your class. I mean, it's not like you're teaching something serious like math or history."
Recently, I've been hearing this sentiment a lot about my classes. Being said to someone who not only takes her job seriously, but also both of the subjects she's teaching seriously (considered pursuing a career in both of those fields at one point in her life), it doesn't really sit well. I refuse to be a glorified baby-sitter that these kids have for 45 minutes a day where they get to sit around and not learn anything. My job is not to waste time before they have to go to their other classes... Unless I read my contract wrong...
And that's not to say that I don't want my students to have fun in my class. Of course I do. All teachers want their kids to have fun because when they're having fun they learn. And when you're having fun with them, you are a better teacher. I just don't think it's my responsibility to have the kids cut out shapes of paper and glue it on other paper, not learn any skills or new information whatsoever, while being rowdy and disrespectful to me, my class, and the school without any punishment for bad behavior because, Hey! I'm supposed to be the chill art teacher that doesn't give a fuck?
No.
The average American, or at least the ones I've talked to for the most part, know the basics of music and art. They know who the famous composers and artists are, more or less, basic music theory (like what a quarter note and a rest are), and what primary vs. secondary colors are. These are some of the subjects I've covered in my class so far, and the majority of the students didn't know any of it. But that's the thing: we take advantage of our education of music and art in the United States daily, and so we don't think it's difficult or meaningful or important material.
The idea that right-brain knowledge is not as important as left-brain knowledge is a learned mindset. The history of Western civilizations' values holds logic as the be-all and end-all of intelligence, and mainly this logic that humans have is what sets them apart from the animals. People who are more right brain oriented were considered inferior to those who were left brain oriented, and that belief has persisted to this day for many Westerners. Basically, this thought process devalues a full half of what makes humans human as important, and in effect ostracizes entire units and subcultures of populations.
Personally, I'm an egalitarian, and I believe every part should have have equal import to the whole; learning what to think and learning how to think and how to feel and how to emote and how to rationalize are all important.
The idea that teaching art or music is a joke is absurd because it requires valuing one subject over another. To think about this logically, then: math is another language, like Spanish or music, and helps you communicate something to another person, like any language or music, it's universal, like emotions and music, and it stretches your mind in a different way than other subject... like music. Actually, music more than any other subject in school, it's been shown that students that participant in this one subject are more likely to do well in the rest of their subjects. Music is a language, an arithmetic, an expressive, creative field, and more, yet math and Spanish and philosophy are more highly valued.
But, we do value travel. People who have seen many parts of the world have a lot of cultural capital, and why? Because they've experienced other cultures, saw art, heard music, tasted food, talked to friendly people they don't know; not because they did math with a guy in India. Well, unless it was a meaningful experience or interesting story, then that would be cool... but then the math part would have very little to the message of the story.
Why would public education have dedicated so much time and money into teaching elementary students these subjects at least once a week for 7 years of their lives if it isn't important? Why would public schools even continue to allocate money toward funding any music or art programs at all if it's such a joke, bullshit, fuck off subject like so many people are bound to believe?
Let's do an activity: in your mind, make a list of all of the geniuses in the world, throughout history. Add to that list people who are the main holders of cultural and social capital, through time. How many of those people are either artists or musicians? And how many of those people are considered both geniuses and holders of cultural capital? I'm willing to bet that it's somewhere between 70-90% of the list.
Someone would have to have an incredibly good excuse for why people like Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Picasso, Dali, and DaVinci, to name a few, were not geniuses. I would also like to hear someone's explanation for why modern music and art, like music from the 1960s and hip hop and street art, are not legitimate forms of social expression and how that is not a legitimate thing to learn about. We have old letters and writings and excavations, but the artistic remnants of a culture can tell us something nothing else can. Viewable art and audible art are expressions of the human experience, which any human should find valuable.
Interestingly enough, I've recently put into words what my thesis is for my classes this year:
"The students will learn about part of the human experience through the medium of music and art in the historical and cultural context in which it was created."
I will not stop being hard on my kids. My job is to teach them something and I cannot teach them when they are not receptive to it, and they have to be both physically and mentally receptive of what I have to teach. That, for children aged 12-14, means discipline and hard work. It means being taught respect and empathy, and how to think more deeply about subjects they know, and being introduced to subjects they've never had to opportunity to be introduced to before. It means that these kinds are hopefully going to expand both their skills and their knowledge, and hopefully they will be more fluid in how they think about the world.
Music has consistently been a very big and important part of my life, and I will share with them my knowledge and teach them that language. I have had many friends and family members who have been artists or have taken art seriously as a passion, including myself with photography. I will never consider these subjects to be just electives. I am surprised and disappointed in anyone who does.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Corn Festival and Lago de Yajoa
Two weekends ago, a few of us went to a Corn Festival in a town called Danli. Every year, every town in Honduras has a week-long celebration of their town, and Danli combined corn with theirs. Juticalpa is going to have ours in December and according to the Administrative Assistant that works for the school, my boss's daughter who drove us there, the Juti celebration is mostly just drinking and stands selling clothing and nic-nacks. There were planty of nic-nacks here, too, and suprizingly not very much corn. In fact, there was only one stand grilling corn! Not pictured that is a big thing here is this corn pudding thing. It's supposed to be more like a warm corn smoothie, but what we got was more of pudding. If they hadn't put sugar in it, it would have been really, very good.
One of the parts of the festival was a horse and cow show... I'm sure there's a more legitimate name for that, but I can't remember. The second ones you see are the stereotypical cows. Dairy cows. The first are another kind I've only seen in those 50 cent tattoos you get from grocery stores, but I think they're more for meat. Also, these guys I'm pretty sure were entered into fairs. There were also about 30 horses, and people could pay to take a ride.
The army had a booth set up. I think mostly just to show how much power they have with their weapons, because, when there's a stop in the road on the highway (which is pretty frequent) every army dude is carrying an automatic weapon and have at least one of these, shown.
When we got to the more corn-y part of the festival, the streets were decorated with fancy corn-husks.
These stands were basically biscuits made out of corn that you eat with coffee. The free samples were really good. There was a spicy one, though, which I cannot see being very pleasant with hot coffee.
Vino de Maiz! Corn wine! It was really good. Very sirupy, which means that it's more of a sipping, one small glass kind of thing rather than a dinner drink that allows for multiple glasses. There's another kind of alcoholic corn drink called chicha, which was not as thick and a lot better. Both, though were very good. Had I any cash, I definitely would have bought some chicha.
Like all Central American-based festivals, there was a group of kids ding a traditional dance. I've always loved those outfits.
Ok, on the hill, if you can find it, there's a cross. Almost all towns and cities have a cross on the hill above the town in order to protect against evil.
These are the traditional cups used by traditional people in Honduras.
This is what pupusas look like. They aren't as green as these look, obviously. Just a tortilla filled with beans or beans and queso or beans and queso and carne. I get just beans. The salad that comes with it is mostly cabbage, and the other is chile. So good.
We went to the town's museum.
Traditional grinder for making corn tortillas, for any of those anthropologists out there.
Part of the festival was a cultural presentation. Shown here is a Japanese school in town doing a traditional dance.
I love these shelves. How clever to use forty bottles! More likely that not, these bottles are Imperial... I would love to have something like this some day.
Honduras.
Every day when school is over, this is what we see. One of the things that we need to be consistently aware of living here is now beautiful it is. This view is a wonderful, daily reminder.
~Two weeks later~
Lago de Yajoa is the biggest lake in Honduras, that according to the travel books, has just recently gotten a lot of tourist attention. The main reason we went was to go to the only microbrewery in Honduras called the D&D Brewery, and the beer was mostly pretty good. The only thing that I wanted to do, which apparently is a very big deal, is go to Los Naranjas, an un-excavated archaeological site on the lake that was found around 1998. There's a 4 mile hike, an awesome museum, and the site itself. Unfortunately, everyone else was going along with what some of the other teachers wanted to do, and a group of us ended up hanging out at a waterfall for a few hours while everyone else paid to go under the fall.
Next to the brewery was a coffee plantation, where they brewery buys their coffee. This was the best coffee I've had since being in Honduras. Nothing beats fresh coffee...
For breakfast on the second day there, I had two cups of coffee, a baleada, and a glass of pale ale. Nothing wrong with that.
Pana Blanca is the town next to the lake, about a 20 or 30 minute walk from where we were staying. There's only one ATM, which was broken, so I was very strapped for cash during this trip. Maybe for the best, then I wasn't able to go to Los Naranjas.
The waterfall was very beautiful! Pretty big, and interesting thing to see.
This is just a tree that has roots that start above ground, which is very cool. I also love that one of the roots that was cut just started sprouting more roots... Like a little alien creature.
One of my co-workers was mot feeling very well on this trip. The rest of us did what we could to make her feel better.
Once we got back to the Cabañas Ecológicas Paradise, where all 13 of us were staying in one cabin, we got pretty creative with how to drink our guaro and Fresca drinks. Guaro is basically Honduran Everclear made from sugar cane.
We finally got to see the lake as we were driving back. The man in the boat is dragging a certain kind of plant that was foreignly introduced and has been killing all the fish by sucking up all of the oxygen. They now use the plant to make things like bags and hats to sell, some of which have recently been being exported.
Apparently, pregnant women at this rest stop need their own parking space, too. The most confusing part is how small the parking lot is.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
First Tegucigalpa Weekend
Friday - We left Juticalpa at 5 pm on a charter bus to Tegucigalpa, which took about 3 hours. I was expecting something a little more trashy or dirty, but this was pretty nice. The buses in the US are probably grosser, but I've never taken one, so they're probably pretty nice, too. We got to the hotel, Hotel Granada 1, got ready to go out and ate dinner at TGI Friday's in the MultiPlax mall. I got this pasta thing that definitely didn't do good things to my body, but everyone else really wanted American food. What I really wanted was a good beer at a good bar, and this was fulfilled on Saturday.
After this, we went to a bar that was called something that had to do with Mexico. The performers had a Blues Brothers dance routine and sang in a karaoke style. It was really fabulous. This bar also completely reaffirmed my thought that Spanish men are way more aggressive and space-invading while dancing than Central American men. This is why: I went onto the patio to smoke a cigarette and started to talk to this younger, Spanish man. An older (in his 60s) Spanish man came out and started talking to us and eventually a song came on that he wanted to dance with me to. The way he did this was by licking his finger and rubbing it down to his butt. I thought he was joking until he started unbuttoning his shirt, licked his fingers again, and rubbed his chest while bending his knees. I tried to tell him I was going to go dance with my friends, but he followed me. So, I got my roommate to dance with me until he left. Not the first time we had to do this, but the difference with Central American men is that they ask if you want to dance first, then you act like you're together and say "no," and they leave. Or you just say no and they leave. Or you say yes and you dance not touching, just together. Spanish men do not ask if you want to dance, they just start being a pervert (and this happened in Barcelona, too, and at least this time they didn't resort to rubbing their junk on you until you have to walk away). It's similar to going out in El Paso, TX, or even Las Cruces, NM, where all of the sudden someone is rubbing on you. After that, though, a group of us Americans danced together and it was one of the best going out experiences I've had so far.
Than I went back to the hotel.
Saturday - We all slept in until about 11 and went to get breakfast/lunch after changing hotels to Hotel Granada 3, which was a lot nicer and a block away. I ate at what is apparently the biggest baliada chain in Honduras, and it was the best best baliada I've had yet. It only rivals the ones that set up a tent in the park.
I was planning on visiting Helping Hands for Hound Honduras, an animal sanctuary in Tegucigalpa, but I couldn't get ahold of the woman who runs it, so I couldn't. I did have an entire conversation in Spanish over the phone with her neighbor, though, which was really cool.
Instead, I ended up going to Valles de Angeles with everyone else. Valles de Angeles is basically a tourist town that exists off selling stuff that says "Honduras" on it to tourists. It would completely adorable and felt like being in Epcot and gave me really great ideas for gifts for me family and for myself. At the end of the day, four of us decided to get a bite to eat, not knowing that in an hour the last bus to Teguc was leaving. By the time we got our food, we had to shovel as much food into our mouths as we could, pay, and run to the bus. It was the most expensive meal for the least amount of food I've had yet. A 16 limp baliada in the park it way better than a 200 limp three tortillas filled with beans. But what can I say? It was a tourist town.
That night we went to a Cuban restaurant for dinner (the music was crazy loud), and the 10 of us split up. Myself and 5 others went to a Canadian bar called Angry Beavers, which is where I finally had a real beer: New Castle. After drinking nothing but super light beers for a month, this was such an amazing flavor. The man who owns the bar sat down with us and talked until 2 am, and told us that we should come back at any time and he'll close down the bar but let us stay as long as we want. It was exactly what I needed: a chill bar that played music that every so often we all stopped to sing to that had good beer. We even talked about politics! I was a little drunk at this point, though, so I mostly ran my mouth, but overall the conversation was great. This bar definitely hit the spot. Next time we go to Teguc, I guess we're going to go to what has been described as a "hipster bar."
Sunday - I woke up at around 7:30 am so that I could meet the woman from HHHH. She picked me up and took me to her house that doubles as the sanctuary. She has about 15-20 dogs living there, 3 cats, and 4 birds that she has rescued and has a story for every single one. We mostly talked, but she definitely needs help. Her house is a mess and she takes care of close to 30 animals every day, mostly on her own. Next time we're in Teguc, I'm planning on spending an entire day there cleaning and feeding the animals. She's in her 60s and has been doing this for about 20 - 30 years, so she knows what she's doing, she just can use some help. She could also use monetary support to fix some stuff around her house and buy food for the animals, so if you want go to Animal-Kind International's webpage and donate some moneys, she could use it. It would be nice if this could turn into something bigger, have an actual location maybe, with more hands, like, perhaps, a hired veterinarian on hand. It's not the only animal rights organization in Teguc, but it is the only one that has connections to an organization based 20 minutes away from my home town, so it's the one I'm choosing to support.
After talking for a few hours and giving me a Spanish/English book to read about the organization, she dropped me off at one of the malls. We spent a few hours there, I bought a shirt at a store called Charley and Siddhartha in Spanish so I can work on my Spanish with a book I know well.
I'm not much of a shopper. I usually just wonder around bored if there isn't something I'm specifically looking for. That store Charley, though, was an eye-opening experience. I understand now why people like shopping... The shirt I bought I wore out of the store because I loved it too much, and I think I'm going to start a tradition. Slowly, over the course of the year, I am going to add to my wardrobe with items that are a mixture of Annie Hall and the early 90s, and wear them out of the store. This is exactly the style I've wanted for a while, and now it will happen, dog-gonnit.
We got on the bus back around 3 pm. When we got back we had no water in our house, apparently since Saturday. Today is Tuesday and still no water. If it doesn't turn back on soon I'm seriously going to need a shower. The chic head scarf thing can only last for so long.
It was a really great weekend. This upcoming weekend is promising to be really great, as well. This year could potentially be punctuated by the weekends.
After this, we went to a bar that was called something that had to do with Mexico. The performers had a Blues Brothers dance routine and sang in a karaoke style. It was really fabulous. This bar also completely reaffirmed my thought that Spanish men are way more aggressive and space-invading while dancing than Central American men. This is why: I went onto the patio to smoke a cigarette and started to talk to this younger, Spanish man. An older (in his 60s) Spanish man came out and started talking to us and eventually a song came on that he wanted to dance with me to. The way he did this was by licking his finger and rubbing it down to his butt. I thought he was joking until he started unbuttoning his shirt, licked his fingers again, and rubbed his chest while bending his knees. I tried to tell him I was going to go dance with my friends, but he followed me. So, I got my roommate to dance with me until he left. Not the first time we had to do this, but the difference with Central American men is that they ask if you want to dance first, then you act like you're together and say "no," and they leave. Or you just say no and they leave. Or you say yes and you dance not touching, just together. Spanish men do not ask if you want to dance, they just start being a pervert (and this happened in Barcelona, too, and at least this time they didn't resort to rubbing their junk on you until you have to walk away). It's similar to going out in El Paso, TX, or even Las Cruces, NM, where all of the sudden someone is rubbing on you. After that, though, a group of us Americans danced together and it was one of the best going out experiences I've had so far.
Than I went back to the hotel.
Saturday - We all slept in until about 11 and went to get breakfast/lunch after changing hotels to Hotel Granada 3, which was a lot nicer and a block away. I ate at what is apparently the biggest baliada chain in Honduras, and it was the best best baliada I've had yet. It only rivals the ones that set up a tent in the park.
I was planning on visiting Helping Hands for Hound Honduras, an animal sanctuary in Tegucigalpa, but I couldn't get ahold of the woman who runs it, so I couldn't. I did have an entire conversation in Spanish over the phone with her neighbor, though, which was really cool.
Instead, I ended up going to Valles de Angeles with everyone else. Valles de Angeles is basically a tourist town that exists off selling stuff that says "Honduras" on it to tourists. It would completely adorable and felt like being in Epcot and gave me really great ideas for gifts for me family and for myself. At the end of the day, four of us decided to get a bite to eat, not knowing that in an hour the last bus to Teguc was leaving. By the time we got our food, we had to shovel as much food into our mouths as we could, pay, and run to the bus. It was the most expensive meal for the least amount of food I've had yet. A 16 limp baliada in the park it way better than a 200 limp three tortillas filled with beans. But what can I say? It was a tourist town.
That night we went to a Cuban restaurant for dinner (the music was crazy loud), and the 10 of us split up. Myself and 5 others went to a Canadian bar called Angry Beavers, which is where I finally had a real beer: New Castle. After drinking nothing but super light beers for a month, this was such an amazing flavor. The man who owns the bar sat down with us and talked until 2 am, and told us that we should come back at any time and he'll close down the bar but let us stay as long as we want. It was exactly what I needed: a chill bar that played music that every so often we all stopped to sing to that had good beer. We even talked about politics! I was a little drunk at this point, though, so I mostly ran my mouth, but overall the conversation was great. This bar definitely hit the spot. Next time we go to Teguc, I guess we're going to go to what has been described as a "hipster bar."
Sunday - I woke up at around 7:30 am so that I could meet the woman from HHHH. She picked me up and took me to her house that doubles as the sanctuary. She has about 15-20 dogs living there, 3 cats, and 4 birds that she has rescued and has a story for every single one. We mostly talked, but she definitely needs help. Her house is a mess and she takes care of close to 30 animals every day, mostly on her own. Next time we're in Teguc, I'm planning on spending an entire day there cleaning and feeding the animals. She's in her 60s and has been doing this for about 20 - 30 years, so she knows what she's doing, she just can use some help. She could also use monetary support to fix some stuff around her house and buy food for the animals, so if you want go to Animal-Kind International's webpage and donate some moneys, she could use it. It would be nice if this could turn into something bigger, have an actual location maybe, with more hands, like, perhaps, a hired veterinarian on hand. It's not the only animal rights organization in Teguc, but it is the only one that has connections to an organization based 20 minutes away from my home town, so it's the one I'm choosing to support.
After talking for a few hours and giving me a Spanish/English book to read about the organization, she dropped me off at one of the malls. We spent a few hours there, I bought a shirt at a store called Charley and Siddhartha in Spanish so I can work on my Spanish with a book I know well.
I'm not much of a shopper. I usually just wonder around bored if there isn't something I'm specifically looking for. That store Charley, though, was an eye-opening experience. I understand now why people like shopping... The shirt I bought I wore out of the store because I loved it too much, and I think I'm going to start a tradition. Slowly, over the course of the year, I am going to add to my wardrobe with items that are a mixture of Annie Hall and the early 90s, and wear them out of the store. This is exactly the style I've wanted for a while, and now it will happen, dog-gonnit.
We got on the bus back around 3 pm. When we got back we had no water in our house, apparently since Saturday. Today is Tuesday and still no water. If it doesn't turn back on soon I'm seriously going to need a shower. The chic head scarf thing can only last for so long.
It was a really great weekend. This upcoming weekend is promising to be really great, as well. This year could potentially be punctuated by the weekends.
Monday, September 3, 2012
The Tough Stuff
I've never really be surrounded by this kind of suffering before. It's pretty shocking. Most people from the United States haven't unless you're in an extreme circumstance like war or homelessness or work at a shelter of some sort. There, it's more emotional suffering than anything else. Thank goodness for the psychiatrists.
Living in a place like this, there's a lot of ups and downs. Everyone is to expect the crazy amounts of poverty, and I think I was pretty emotionally and mentally prepared to see homeless women eating out of a pile of trash on the side of the road and dirty, shoeless kids and adults running around. I was prepared for the homeless people with schizophrenia talking to themselves, and people (mostly kids) asking me for money. I was definitely prepared for all the cat-calling and harassment the gringas get when walking down the street.
In a place that is so aesthetically beautiful, I definitely was not prepared for this level of pain.
See, I work for a school where the rich kids go. They are the entitled ones. The president's grandchildren go to the school I work for and a handful of them have body guards that hang out in the front of the school during classes. At lunch, the kids have people deliver hot meals to the school's gates. Not all of them, but a lot of them are rude, disrespectful, and very clearly think they are better than. With those kids, it is a constant battle, and since I'm the art teacher, those kids are less likely to take my class seriously.
Because of this, I do not feel that I am doing much to help anything in this country or this community. While I'm working at this private, bilingual school, the public schools don't have books, sometimes desks. While I have enough to eat every day and the worst is that sometimes when I ask for something without cheese it still has cheese, animals are starving to death. I no longer can count how many starving animals I have seen. Sometimes they're pregnant. Sometimes they have a broken leg. Here, there is poverty and there is sadness, but I have not seen suffering like that of the animals. It is constant neglect and starvation and pregnancy and scavenging and fear and fighting. Every single day it is an emotional battle, the desire to help and the knowledge that in my situation, I'm not sure of if or how I can. And it doesn't really seem to bother anyone and I don't want to become de-conditioned to this.
In fact, I think this is going to make me just more motivated to fight for animal rights. I'm definitely including it in my classes.
But that does not change the fact that this battle is going to rage for the next 10 months.
Sometimes I think that the only reason I have ups at all is because the downs are so intense that laughing at a joke seems like the best thing in the world. True joy is what I was expecting from people, because they do have a rougher time of it, it would be balanced by the joy. However, it feels pretty empty here. Even the happiness is tinged with pain. But imagine growing up and living your life in a place where this pain is a daily occurrence and observance. People who work at factory farms are more likely to be abusive and have mental health problems. This is not nearly as bad as that, but it can cause a place to be less than joyful, to say the least.
I blame that assumption I had on the ethnographies I've read and a few choice teachers that I've had that have done something to glorify the pain. There's always the study that comes out that says poorer countries are happier and even though these children are starving to death in Africa and don't have any vitamin A in their diets, they still dance, you betcha. I had also convinced myself that humans have it way worse than animals in Honduras, and therefore any animal suffering should pale in comparison. And so I didn't see it. I looked it in the face and was blind. Over the past 4 weeks, though, the light has gotten much brighter and I feel that I am seeing very clearly.
Life is suffering, yes. I have begun my journey of coming to terms with that in my own self. But the thing is, all of this that is here is man made and consistent. As we have created it, it is our job to stop it. It is not something that we should just come to terms with.
Being surrounded by suffering that you are actively trying to alleviate, like building houses and wells, or organizing food shelters and medical supplies makes the suffering bearable because you know that even if what you are doing isn't a lot, at least you have a hand in something. You are digging away at a pile or shit with a teaspoon, but at least you have a tool. I have no tool. I swim through that shit to get to my fancy job or my fancy house and I cannot get my tunnel vision to turn on.
I need to find a spoon.
Living in a place like this, there's a lot of ups and downs. Everyone is to expect the crazy amounts of poverty, and I think I was pretty emotionally and mentally prepared to see homeless women eating out of a pile of trash on the side of the road and dirty, shoeless kids and adults running around. I was prepared for the homeless people with schizophrenia talking to themselves, and people (mostly kids) asking me for money. I was definitely prepared for all the cat-calling and harassment the gringas get when walking down the street.
In a place that is so aesthetically beautiful, I definitely was not prepared for this level of pain.
See, I work for a school where the rich kids go. They are the entitled ones. The president's grandchildren go to the school I work for and a handful of them have body guards that hang out in the front of the school during classes. At lunch, the kids have people deliver hot meals to the school's gates. Not all of them, but a lot of them are rude, disrespectful, and very clearly think they are better than. With those kids, it is a constant battle, and since I'm the art teacher, those kids are less likely to take my class seriously.
Because of this, I do not feel that I am doing much to help anything in this country or this community. While I'm working at this private, bilingual school, the public schools don't have books, sometimes desks. While I have enough to eat every day and the worst is that sometimes when I ask for something without cheese it still has cheese, animals are starving to death. I no longer can count how many starving animals I have seen. Sometimes they're pregnant. Sometimes they have a broken leg. Here, there is poverty and there is sadness, but I have not seen suffering like that of the animals. It is constant neglect and starvation and pregnancy and scavenging and fear and fighting. Every single day it is an emotional battle, the desire to help and the knowledge that in my situation, I'm not sure of if or how I can. And it doesn't really seem to bother anyone and I don't want to become de-conditioned to this.
In fact, I think this is going to make me just more motivated to fight for animal rights. I'm definitely including it in my classes.
But that does not change the fact that this battle is going to rage for the next 10 months.
Sometimes I think that the only reason I have ups at all is because the downs are so intense that laughing at a joke seems like the best thing in the world. True joy is what I was expecting from people, because they do have a rougher time of it, it would be balanced by the joy. However, it feels pretty empty here. Even the happiness is tinged with pain. But imagine growing up and living your life in a place where this pain is a daily occurrence and observance. People who work at factory farms are more likely to be abusive and have mental health problems. This is not nearly as bad as that, but it can cause a place to be less than joyful, to say the least.
I blame that assumption I had on the ethnographies I've read and a few choice teachers that I've had that have done something to glorify the pain. There's always the study that comes out that says poorer countries are happier and even though these children are starving to death in Africa and don't have any vitamin A in their diets, they still dance, you betcha. I had also convinced myself that humans have it way worse than animals in Honduras, and therefore any animal suffering should pale in comparison. And so I didn't see it. I looked it in the face and was blind. Over the past 4 weeks, though, the light has gotten much brighter and I feel that I am seeing very clearly.
Life is suffering, yes. I have begun my journey of coming to terms with that in my own self. But the thing is, all of this that is here is man made and consistent. As we have created it, it is our job to stop it. It is not something that we should just come to terms with.
Being surrounded by suffering that you are actively trying to alleviate, like building houses and wells, or organizing food shelters and medical supplies makes the suffering bearable because you know that even if what you are doing isn't a lot, at least you have a hand in something. You are digging away at a pile or shit with a teaspoon, but at least you have a tool. I have no tool. I swim through that shit to get to my fancy job or my fancy house and I cannot get my tunnel vision to turn on.
I need to find a spoon.
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