The return

Many weeks after my return I still wake up surprised there are no roosters and pigs signaling the start of a new day. I miss many things but I am also surprised how easy it has been to settle back into your old life, and to be tempted by old routines.

Every so often, a little thread sneaks its way into my cell phone, or through inconstant facebook chats or emails, and I am reminded through tiny updates and glimpses of what life was for me last year.

Today I received an email from Guillermo Anderson, a popular musician in Honduras who I invited to visit our town for a kid’s concert about respecting your environment. He is doing some amazing work with drumming circles for youth violence prevention. Please visit his blog at: http://guillermo-anderson.blogspot.com/

I will continue to publish and share these glimpses on this blog, and hopefully make it a site where Community Arts in Central and South America are showcased in all the variety and richness of the work.

La Radio Novela

Afiche de ¨Amor sin Fronteras¨

Tras muchos meses de trabajo, hemos logrado 5 capítulos de un historia. Voces, ideas, sonidos, risas, han quedado talladas en la memoria de una grabadorcita pequeña, luego cortadas en pequeños pedacitos, mezcladas con música y soltados a volar, a ver quien la comparte con su gente, quien le saca verdades a los personajes, a las anécdotas y al proceso de producción.
Por favor, compartan el trabajo!

Aqui se pueden oir y descargar todos los capítulos:
http://synergychronicles.podomatic.com/

Bairon Zelaya interpretando a Alejandro, el protagonista

The radio-play is the thing

Recently our Valley was rocked by horrible news from the border. In Tamaulipas, Mexico, 74 people were murdered on their journey to the U.S border. Some of the victims came from small towns nearby El Nance and Tacualtuzte. The only two survivors are a Honduran and an Ecuatorian man who endured the dessert for days and have now returned to their countries. In many towns in Honduras, every family has undocumented members in the U.S working and sending part of their wages to build a house, for a birthday party, a medical exam or school fees in Honduras. Every single person in our youth group has a family member in the U.S who have crossed some part o the dessert to get there. Most of the migrants live in New Jersey or New Orleans and got there with the help of very expensive “coyotes”.

I walk with my kids. A little heard, a tiny cluster of young life, we wade through the heat from one town to the next. Its a short road from Tacualtuzte to El Nance. My legs move like small-town-Catracho legs, my feet drag the stones, the sun blazes overtop and sweat drips from my back quicker than I advance. The kids exaggerate how they will melt, faint and dehydrate on the 10 minute walk. We slug over to the bus shelter and rest.
Only ten minutes, and we are already exhausted. How can you survive the desert for days?

These days we are working on a radio-play. We have meetings in either El Nance or Tacualtuzte and develop the story, the characters, the sounds, the scenes. A unanimous decision was made by the group: the radio-play will be a romantic immigration story. We decided this before the Tamaulipas massacre, and now it seems so much more pressing to talk about these issues. In a strange foreshadowing, the kids picked this migration theme because it is a huge, and undigested part of their lives. There’s no moment where they have communally analyzed the reasons, the histories and the repercussions of these migrations. To start this work, the kids will be doing interviews to the people in town to gather as many stories as we can about the people who have gone abroad and their reasons for doing so…more work and updates will follow….

The rain months

Working under the drizzle

As the honeymoon period ends and I grow angry over the many nuances of living in a small, poor country, I’ve realized that all my blog entries are so happy and hopeful. But this year gets more real every day, especially after hitting the 6 month anniversary, as the rain season is in full bloom. The frustration alive and present through my work here has often been overcast by the joy of the work, and the rewards I feel we are harvesting. But today frustration shone through as rain showers uncovered a list of the many things that have been pricking at my heels. I no longer have a boss, in a sense this is fantastic, because there is no one looking over my shoulder making sure I meet deadlines in processes that are impossible to date. Carolina was my “bossa-lady”, an engineer used to quantifiable, calculated and tightly scheduled projects, who found the organic, laissez-faire attitude in community-arts very messy and in need for a corset. But not having a boss sucks because practically all my administrative support is gone. Little perks slip through my fingers, and I feel more orphaned than when I first arrived. From the beginning of our youth group my ex-boss, and then I, made a clear promise to the kids that we would take them to Copan at the end of the year. Copan is a tourist, Mayan-ruin site in Honduras, very, very far from where we are. With the departure of Carolina the funds for the trip are compromised, floating in the air like a coy, elusive butterfly, whose actual size I’ve never seen. Now our youth group bears the weight of fund raising. Fund raising can be uncomfortable here. Although there are wealthy families with expensive horses and lots of cattle, there are also very poor people, who are supported by an amazing, motherly, web-like, intuitive system that keeps the most vulnerable in the community afloat. The reality is that there is not a lot of disposable income, and I feel guilty at times, fund raising for a hedonistic (yet highly cultural and educative trip), when most workers here have never really left their valley and struggle financially in their own way.

Mural painting at El Nance high school

The rain has also slowed down our mural painting, and it is clear that we are at the mercy of the clouds. Today we faced a wet, ingrate wall that rejected our brushstrokes. All efforts dripped dissatisfied. Mosquitoes, bred in a frenzy brought on by the rains, bite the fattier parts of my body. Each bite is a possible infestation of dengue (the “classic” version – 7 days of aches and fevers – or the more dangerous “hemorrhagic” type – where you apparently bleed from any hole in your body). They are everywhere now, and are especially active when we paint the exterior high-school walls in the afternoon. Todays wishes: I wish people would never, ever, promise to do something and not do it. I wish the weather-watchers were more accurate about these temperamental valley rainfalls. I wish my blood wasn’t so tasty to female mosquitoes on the hunt.

Mural building blocks

Landscape painting`

The first week of June we organized a camping trip to a natural reserve where various endangered endemic species are protected. The kids were ecstatic, but unfortunately only four women were allowed to come (their parents perpetually worry about their virginity) and the rest of the crew were young men. We watched the environment, drew with our eyes and painted with the actual colours of nature. Then we played lots of water-balloon games, covered a house with mud (standard valley-homes maintenance practices), and had a huge fire pit with impromptu fire breathers. Now we must condense these experiences into two murals, one in the high school and one in the elementary school of each community. Pictures of the mural are soon to come….stay tuned for updates…

Bird watching chart

Bossa-lady and I

“Agatha”; the storm to end the drought

Ignacio and the brush

Our first step was to make paintbrushes from recycled materials. We used old cans, horse hair and sticks or old broom handles. After the workshop some paintbrushes look incredibly professional. Others looked like Frankenstein’s tools; created from bristles of different colours, sharp, uneven metal pieces and crooked nails. Around town, a few horses sport shorter tails. The second step is to watch nature and let it inspire our brushes. We are planning a environmental camp to the “Emerald Hummingbird” natural reserve. The area protects many species endemic to the region and will serve as inspiration for murals in the youth-group’s communities. But if “Agatha”, winter’s child bride, gathers force there will be no camp.
The clumsy low-pressure system, has a traditional British name, but lacks British politeness. “Agatha” knocks on the doors of Central America at midnight. Her water rises and enters houses and outdoor markets uninvited. Agatha’s small rivers overstay their welcome and invade banana, pineapple, red bean and corn plantations. Most sewer systems in Honduras are too small or blocked with garbage to contain her callowness.
Winter in the valley comes with mixed feelings…

In the very dry tropical forest, trees loose all their leaves during summer. The earth cracks, the creeks dry up, the river muddies, and hundreds of yellow, green or orange butterflies fly around town in search of puddles. Winter came the day all butterflies escaped eastbound, running away from electric storm clouds gathering in the west valley. Constant flashes of green, yellow and orange crossed the air in exodus, marking the beginning of the rainy season. Things that looked dead suddenly burst into emerald, olive and lime tones. Mountain ranges that used to sit yellow and light brown against baby blue skies, now stand a deep blue in front of constant grey “Agatha” clouds. I wait, unable to trust meteorologists, hoping the camp will go as planned, that my budget won’t disappear, that my boss won’t have a fit and decide to cancel it all, that the buses will take us there, and that the kids will find permission from their parents to go.

Parrots, Poachers and Corn Flour Dough

Baby Parrot

Here, Nature has two faces. Honduran, Cristian-faith, agriculture-based towns understand nature as a dual entity. It is here to shake us down when god wishes to strike down with fury. The tale of Sodom and Gomorrah repeats itself in every natural disaster, perpetually signaling the end of the world. Thunder and lighting are god’s course words. But nature is also here to provide us services, to make human lives easier, all at the fate of our human consciousness and god-given privilege. Hunters of all fauna cross barbed wire fences meant to mark natural reserves. They capture or kill for either food or enjoyment. Annual rituals tackle specific animals, scavengers walk up the mountain side, machetes and slingshots in hand, searching for targets. April and May are parrot months. Throughout the Aguan Valley, skin and bones baby parrots, still too small to grow feathers, are captured by the hundreds and given as gifts or sold to unscrupulous pet store owners. Conservation laws have almost no weight when communities believe they have unrestrained rights to all that grows and lives around them.

See pictures inside a poachers’ homes

Other stories of Honduran animal poaching

Sambo Creek

Turtle shell instrument

A stage was brought and built in near the beach. Garifuna dance and music groups from nearby towns came for the celebrations. Flocks of seagull children came for field-trips from the city. For the most part of the day the organizers waited for the president of Honduras, while they read excerpts or whole articles about Garifuna history, advances and demands to the government. Finally the president arrived, spoke a few words and danced awkwardly to punta beats. Nation-wide news-channels and small local networks had their cameras on this main stage, and they were all missing the real thing.
At each corner of town, away from the sounds of the stage, men played complementary drums, maracas, turtle and conch shells. They sang, and most people walking by knew the songs and joined them sporadically. People made an intuitive circle around these musicians, and dancers took turns walking in the circle and leading the beat of the drums. The drummers followed the dancer’s footsteps, anticipating their stomps on the sand. The better dancers wore white masks and very colorful clothes. They walked from circle to circle, weaving their way around people, bursting into dance and color, then moving on to greener rhythms. Today they celebrated the 213th year after their exodus to the shores of Central America. But it didn’t happen on-stage. It happened under small palm-roofs shacks, where the river meets the sea at Sambo Creek.

Ceiba floods

I can’t find screen-printing materials anywhere. I went to La Ceiba, the third largest city and most important tourist port in Honduras. The first day I decided to chill out with the Spaniards, a couple of artists from Barcelona who speak Spanish and Catalan, and are working in a community in the tip of Honduras. We went to a Garifuna community (Corasal) and walked on the beach for the most part of that cold, cloudy morning. In the afternoon we rode the bus back to Ceiba smelling of salt, fish and mangoes and with the legs of our pants still wet with sea water. The next day I woke up determined to be as productive as possible considering I am on caribbean coastal time. But it rained torrentially all day, eventhough its supposed to be summer. I had to walk from small store to small store asking where I could find the materials I need. There are no artist supply stores. I went to some printing places and asked for help but they thought I was a spy, and refused to tell me their secret sources and contacts. I walked downtown. La Ceiba’s century old drainage systems couldn’t drink all the rain, and the streets were completely flooded. I waked in knee-deep waters that were clear at first, then collected dirt from fruit markets, apothecary corners and cars. And I still couldn’t find screen-printing materials. On the way back home I got a lift from a man who knows the entire history of the Banana Republics and he recited the imperialistic story from beginning to end, without breathing, pausing only to remember exact names and dates.

A Necklace of Fish Eggs

Yesterday we went down to the river after working in reforestation with a group of children. They wanted a reward after working hard cleaning the greenhouse and carrying hundreds of little black bags filled with fertilized soil. Hundreds of little mahogany trees have their little mouths open, waiting to be watered. I walked around town asking for permission to our last-minute excursion.s The river is south of large banana, papaya and pineapple plantations that belong to Standard Fruit, also known as Dole Industries. The export fruit to your supermarket, and have had a century-long economic hold on the region. If Standard shuts down an “hacienda” or farm, the population of many adjacent towns is almost completely unemployed. This happened shortly before I came, when workers organized a strike against a policy of 3-month contracts that prevents them from gaining benefits.
The river has no owner, but we ride our bikes through dirt roads that belong to this multinational corporation. We sneak through their  barbed-wire and are watched by their fruit-guards, who have harsh opinions against small-time thieves.
The water and its contents have no owner. The crabs, river-shrimp, small fish, tadpoles, and rocks are free. The children hunt big shrimp with hand-made harpoons. They store the fragile animals in their pant pockets or eat them fresh. They collect crabs and pull their claws with ridiculous ease.
We swam in our clothes, wore fish-egg necklaces and carried baby fish in a turtle shell that was found basking in the sun. It was a fantastic

Mahogany baby tree