So its been 3 weeks since I arrived in Porvenir, and I haven´t had regular enough internet access to really write any kind of update. The other day I found an internet cafe that I can ride my bike to, so hopefully I’ll be online more often now (assuming the power stays on).
I’m currently living in El Porvenir, a small village about 20 miles west of La Ceiba, the biggest city on the Carribbean coast of Honduras. La Ceiba is a modern city with a shopping mall that could be in America; it has Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, and American style department stores.
El Porvenir is a totally different world. There’s probably about 10 thousand people who live here although the neighbooring towns all kind of run into each other, and there is one block of concrete in the middle of town with the rest of the roads all being dirt and gravel. There are basic markets that sell rice, beans, fruit, water, and other necessities, but for most shopping you have to go to La Ceiba. The bridge that goes to Ceiba is broken and right now we are rerouted through a dry river bed, but if it rains heavily before they fix the bridge it will be almost impossible to get to the city for supplies because the river will flow through the road.
The town is squeezed between the beach and the Pico Bonito mountain range, which is a national park and extremely beautiful mountains that are over 7,000 feet tall rising straight from sea level. Between the town and the mountains there are miles and miles of pinapple fields that hug the mountains to take advantage of the extra rainfall there, for whatever reason it rains twice as much by the mountains as a few miles away. Most of the men who live in town and have jobs work on the pineapple fields for long hours and little pay. Dole owns almost all of the land in the town, and its because of this that there is no money to build a dump in Porvenir. There is trash on the beach and pretty much everywhere else, but the only way to get rid of it is to burn it which is far worse for the environment than leaving it to decay. A lot of the Americans who first get here are disgusted to see people littering everywhere, but when there’s nowhere to put your garbage how would you ever learn to take pride in your community and keep it clean?
I guess this is part of the utopian future Sarah Palin envisions for America. The huge corporations will own so much that the evil “big government” won’t even be able to afford building a dump. and the children will have to breathe in the toxic fumes of burning plastic whenever the wind blows in a certain direction.
Pretty much everyone we have met in town is extremely friendly. Whenever we walk anywhere we get stared at pretty constantly, although my tan and stereotypical Latino haircut (it seems like it was the only way the guy knew how to cut it) will hopefully cut down on the stares a little. Sometimes it will seem like people are glaring at us but when we say “Ola” and smile they will smile back and start a conversation. Everyone pretty much lives on their front porches since the houses get too hot and everyone is always willing to talk for awhile, which makes it really easy to practice Spanish here. My Spanish is improving quickly, but I find that there are some people I can understand easily and some people I can’t understand at all. Its usually the better educated people who are easier to understand even when they speak fast, it seems like the lower educated people usually don’t pronounce things as well and are often impossible to understand even talking slowly. Obviously there are exceptions to this and some uneducated people who speak very well, but in general it seems to be the rule.
Anyway, I am out of time and still have a lot to write about. I’ll try and write in the next couple days about the work I’m doing at the school.
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