-ING

This last week everybody in Tocoa has become accustomed to the toques de queda (curfews). On Monday and Tuesday, I was forced to push my night class back to 4 PM, because the toques started at 6 PM. But by the Wednesday the curfew had been pushed back to 10 PM, so I could hold class during regular hours. This week we had begun working on the present progressive verb tense. I am eating, you are sleeping, we are studying, etc. The students had a rudimentary grasp on how the verb tense functioned, but they needed practice on combining the “-ing” with the infinitive, as well as conjugating “be” with the corresponding subject.

I found this game online called Harry Potter. Basically you make one quarter of the group Voldemorts and the other three quarters Harry Potters. The Voldemorts chase the Harry Potters around outside until the Harry Potters are tagged. The Voldemort orders the tagged person to do something (“eat!” “run!” “sleep!” etc.) And they have to perform that action in place, until another Harry Potter approaches them, tags them, and asks, “What are you doing?” The frozen HP tells them, “I am running!” then they are unfrozen, until tagged by another Voldemort.
We’ve played this game for a couple of days as a warm up activity. The kids absolutely love this game and are disappointed when it’s not on the schedule.

A couple of Fridays ago we watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I don’t usually show movies in class but this day was an exception. The series is as popular in Honduras as it is in the States, though there is no movie theatre in Tocoa. The place you need to go to see a new movie is in San Pedro Sula, and that is 6 hours away!

Sunday was largely a rainy day. I passed some of the day watching Spanish Fast and the Furious. During a commercial break there was an ad for a cell phone plan with TIGO, the local service provider. They were offering a “Gringo Plan” for people to call the United States. I thought it was pretty funny.

I went to the TIGO center in Tocoa to renew my internet service for July. There was some confusion on my account, and long story short I ended up talking with the branch supervisor. She said she understood the situation I was in but could not help with my account, like how I could not help her get into the United States. It was an interesting exchange of words after that.

Where Does it Hurt?

I spent a large part of my day working on a website I have promised my host brother. He is deeply involved with a local soccer club and asked if I would make a website for the club. So basically I have been fooling around with Adobe Dreamweaver and Photoshop. It isn’t easy to create an attractive website! I haven’t done any work on this software in months, so I spent most of the day relearning both programs. When I get closer to a finished product, I’ll be sure to share it.

I haven’t written much about my in-class activities. I will share something we did last Thursday. I have been teaching my students body parts vocabulary (e.g. head, shoulders, knees and toes, so on and so forth). We have played Simon Says, drawn ourselves on poster board, labeling body parts, we even played an ESL rendition of twister.

On Thursday I tried this new activity. Teaching the verb “hurt” to my students, they learned how to say, “my elbow hurts,” or, “my stomach hurts.” Incorporating this into simulation, I had the students pair up. Each turn, they would play rock-paper-scissors to decide the role they would play (doctor or patient). The doctor says, “Where does it hurt?” The student playing the patient responds, “my arm hurts,” or whatever body part depending on a card I would pull from a hat. The doctor would then ask, “Can I help you?” and then would wrap up the arm, or the leg, or the foot in toilet paper. By the end of the class period I was surrounded with young Honduran mummies. It didn’t take that much toilet paper and they all seemed to have a great time.

I was walking home from the centro (town center) in Tocoa today at 6 PM. People were crowding the intersection near my house. At first I thought it was some protest to a 6 PM toque de queda (curfew). This was not the case. An eight-year-old girl walked out into the middle of Calle Chela and was hit by a car. She was thrown several feet upon impact, and suffered a severe bone fracture in her leg. I missed the accident by barely a minute, and the girl was carried to the hospital immediately before I arrived. Most of my neighbors were in tears, as this is a close community. It was an emotional experience; most of them saw the accident happen, including the four-year-old son of my host sister.

Calle Chela is a very busy and dangerous road. Traffic laws outside of the States aren’t as strict, and this served as a harsh reminder of that fact. Drivers here have no worry of traffic police, or speeding tickets, and have only their own discretion to govern their driving habits. These laws become merely suggestion.

I found out tonight that the young girl is going to live, and keep her leg.

I taught some friends tonight how to play Presidents and Assholes. If you are not familiar with the game it is a lightning paced card game popular in most universities across the country. Here is a link explaining the game. I tentatively renamed it Presidentes y Tontos, mostly because we were playing with a twelve year old. They were fascinated with the game, and even more so with the titles bestowed upon the winners and losers.

If you don’t know how to play, we can play when I come home.

Manuel Zelaya, the Honduran President exiled one week ago, is arriving back in Honduras. I have taken the advice of a friend here and will be spending the day at home. Nobody here knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, so I’m going to lay low.

Happy Fourth of July

First Independence Day Abroad

Saturday was the first day in nearly a week without a six o’clock curfew. Since Monday everyone in Tocoa (as well as Colón Department) has been forced to be inside their houses because of an order of the new government under Roberto Micheletti. People have told me that the curfew started at 6 PM in Colón Department rather than 9 Pm for the rest of the country because A) Colón is locally know to suffer from a high level of delinquency (e.g. robbery, assault, etc.); and B) Colón department is thought to be a Zelaya stronghold.

Through government order, four constitutional rights have been suspended to assist curfew enforcement. Among those suspended are the right to see a judge within twenty-four hours of arrest, and the right not to be arrested without charge.

I had seen quite a few police vehicles on Sunday and Monday. People were picked up by local police and carried to the local jail, and released the next day. My neighbors, who seemed to at first defy the curfew on a nightly basis, have been spending their evenings indoors after 3 young women were arrested on their own front porch.

It has been quiet since Tuesday. I have not seen any police trucks on Calle Chela, though this is because I have not been looking for them, being accustomed to the curfew. On Friday afternoon there were rumors swirling around Tocoa that there would be a twenty-four hour curfew, in conjunction with Exiled Mel Zelaya’s return to Honduras. I thought a twenty-four curfew sounded crazy, and was especially skeptical, because curfew rumors had been spreading throughout the week.

It turned out to be false. Saturday is the first day without a 6 PM curfew since Tuesday. I had no class to teach, so I slept in, taking advantage of the weekend. This is the first Fourth of July outside of the United States for me. It is just another day in Tocoa, aside from the political climate. Surprisingly, many Hondurans are aware that this is the American day of Independence, though I have been asked several times from whom did the colonies declare their independence.

golpe+1

(Advisory: Some national and international channels are deactivated by the order of the current government....)

This morning a protest formed on the bridge leading out of Tocoa. The bridge where this took place is the central vein of transportation between La Ceiba and Tocoa. My host brother told me he saw 500 people on the bridge. By the afternoon the police had set up a barricade 2 blocks away, so that no one else could join the protesters.

I went to a local internet cafe today to print some worksheets for class. My normal cafe was closed, which struck me as odd becasue they are usually open seven days a week. I walked around the corner to another cafe that is somewhat closer to my gym. It was closed too. It became apparent that the internet was shut down in town, for at least today.

The ATM's were out of order too. I tried to access my checking account, but could not. Communication lines have been severed.

My students came to school, asking me if we were going to have class. This political crisis is affecting all levels of daily life, young and hold. It feels so strange, everything being upset by politics. I never realized how lucky we in the states are for having a stable country.

Tonight will be the second night of curfews in Tocoa, and all of Honduras. In Spanish they are called toques de queda. After class an eight year old student asked me how she was going to get home. She lives two blocks away from the school, but the curfew had already begun. I told her I would go with her so she would feel safe. As we left I noticed there were some police officers standing a block away. While leery, I continued walking her home.

Suddenly my neighbor, a girl my age, approached us from her house. She told me that I should go back to my home(+school), becasue she was worried I would have problems with the police. As my neighbor is also a teacher, she is well aquainted with this student and brought her home.

I walked back to the family compound, and joined my host mom. She was sitting in the patio, overlooking calle chela, one of the main drags in Tocoa. Within two minutes we saw two cars drive by on an otherwise empty street. The first was a police department pickup truck. In the bed were five soldiers, and 3 civilians or so. The second was a civilian van, being driven by a soldier, and filled with more civilians, at least 6 or so. These people were all rounded up by the military, and were being taken to the local jail to spend the night.

About ten minutes later another police pickup drove by my neighbor's house. There were about 8 people hanging out in their patio. The soldiers told them to go to bed. The mother of the house, a Garífuna woman in her mid-forties replied, "I'll go to bed when I am tired!"

The soldiers got out of the truck, and then chased them all back into their house, six girls screaming. Satisfied, they got back in their truck and left. While those girls stayed inside for the rest of the night, I couldn't but help notice, that I could see faces peering out of most windows facing calle chela. Slowly, the young people crept out of their homes to sit on front stoops, spying the goings on of the almost nonexistent traffic.

I stayed outside for another 30 minutes, hoping to catch another glimpse of this. All I did see was an old man biking home, and a teenager dancing in the street, testing fate as teenagers do so well. He was hooting and whooping, dancing, and had the whole block as his audience. He danced for about 3 minutes, then wandered home.

Several channels are blocked on the television. I can't find CNN. Maybe I've got the wrong channel, but I can't find it. I've attached a photo that shows a message from the Honduran cable company based out of Ceiba. The photo pretty much sums it up (I'm lucky to have a mobil usb internet attachment). People out here are wondering what's going on in Tegucigalpa and the rest of the country. We're waiting for for things to get back to normal. Wednesday, some tell me.

Manuel Zelaya declared today that he is coming back to Honduras on Thursday to finish his term.

US Embassy

I just wanted to quickly share all of the links I've been following from the US embassy in Tegucigalpa:

http://honduras.usembassy.gov/acs_pubannounc2009.html