More of an Introduction
August 26, 2001
Greeting from Honduras (the land of dust, sun and 3 legged dogs)
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Jen’s perspective – Shawn’s editing:
Please prepare yourself – this is a four page email. You may wish to print it to read later for leisure. Shawn thinks I may be overstepping my boundaries with the length of my letter. He reminded me how many times long email chain letters get deleted. Don’t worry – I understand if this is too long for you to read…but I had to write all my details. I consider it my culture shock therapy. Enjoy!
Over the last week I have been missing some of the luxuries of our Minnesota home. If don’t mind a little reading, I thought I would share a few examples…
Showers: In my last letter I talked about cold showers. We have since encountered a new dilemma. The water is shut off every night from 6 pm till 6 am to conserve the water supply. The country is currently going through a major drought. Because of the heat and dust we often feel pretty grimy by the end of the day. One starts to really miss running water! The simple act of washing your face becomes a creative task. We have resorted to using “wet wipes”! But, our supply is limited – so we are learning the true definition of “rationing”. There are no Walmarts in Honduras, yet!
Water: Everything in Honduras is Hot (besides the showers that is)! Drinking water is boiled, so we usually wait at least a day for the water to cool to room temperature before drinking. Shawn got crazy today and put some of the water in the fridge…what a concept! Cold water! Usually the fridge is used only to store vegetables, leftover beans and some cheese (yes, these are the only 3 items you will find in the fridge!)
Snacks: Back to the fridge…I was craving a snack today. It’s Sunday afternoon…a perfect day for a snack. I went to the fridge and took a piece of cheese for Shawn and I to share. This is a grand treat to begin with. Let me explain…the typical Honduran cheese is a very salty goat cheese. You can only tolerate extremely small portions or you could overdose on salt. To my great delight however, today I noticed Erika (our host mom) had Kraft cheese in the fridge. I then had a brilliant idea – what an even better day it would be if we could have a piece of bread to make toast or (if it wasn’t too outrageous of a thought) maybe even some crackers. The thought lingered as I dreamt of cheese and crackers. But, snacks don’t exist in the typical Honduran kitchen. Groceries, meals and incidentals are prepared the day of. It is quite uncommon to purchase items in advance. This system works great for freshness of food. This system can sometimes be disappointing when all you are craving is a cracker. Day dreaming ceased. I came back to my new reality.
While we are on the topic of snacks, I also find it humorous that the grocery store sells individual packets of microwave popcorn when probably only 5% of Hondurans (if that) own a microwave! Although, I did run into our neighbor last week who told me he would let us come over any time to borrow his microwave to make popcorn. I thought that was very sweet and a bit humorous as well. Can you imagine walking over to your neighbor’s house to pop your popcorn: “Hi, Fred – Greetings, Wilma! Can I pop this popcorn in your microwave? Oh, thanks! Sorry to disturb you…no can’t stay long…don’t have enough to share…just wanted to send this great buttery scent through your house and now I gotta run! Maybe I will be back tomorrow. Thanks, again!” Microwave popcorn…what a dream!
I do have to give Erika credit, however, because one night she decided to make us chocolate covered bananas. I was so excited. Bananas are one item in this country that there seems to be a surplus of. We spent the evening peeling bananas and putting them in the freezer. Our plan was to dip them in chocolate the next afternoon after they were frozen. The next day came and went – but the bananas were not frozen. I guess our freezer doesn’t really work. This makes me somewhat leery of the meat I have seen in there, but oh well we haven’t gotten sick yet! Erika then brought the bananas to her neighbor’s house to freeze overnight (yes, this is the same neighbor who owns the neighborhood microwave.) 3 days later we had chocolate covered bananas. No one said Honduras was fast. Side note: the frozen bananas were awesome.
I was thinking about baking chocolate chip cookies. I have found melting blocks of chocolate, but the actual chips don’t exist here. I wonder if there is such a thing as banana cookies? I have no trouble finding bananas. In fact, Shawn and I have decided to have a banana recipe contest. Anyone who is interested is welcome to mail or email us your best banana recipes – be it muffins, breads, pancakes – whatever! We promise to list the winners in one of our upcoming letters. One thing we find lots of here – is time. The Honduran’s motto is: “Hay mas tiempo que vida” – There is more time than life. It’s true. The days are long and lazy. I just hope I don’t become like the Peace Corp’s Donut Phantom. Tradition has it that there was a Peace Corps volunteer who had not talked to her director in months. The director grew worried, so he decided to pay her a visit. When he arrived in her village he found her house filled with donuts – all 3 rooms. The volunteer was hovered over a kettle of grease – frying donut after donut. She had been doing this activity for months – maybe out of boredom – or maybe she was just in search of that perfect snack!
One of our greatest treats this week was a care-package from Mom Silvera. She sent trail mix, slim jims and flavored coffee packets! Shawn and I are keeping the trail mix hidden for a snack emergency. We are also rationing the slim jims. Included in the package were circus peanuts (the orange soft marshmellowy candy shaped like a peanut – most people find hideous, but I absolutely love!) I ate those before we looked at anything else in the entire package. I know I was greedy not to share with my host siblings, but I felt so connected with home! Mom S. also sent cartoon pencils that we gave to the children. (so don’t feel too bad for them).
Care Package and the Kids: Mom Silvera knows how to make a hit with our host brother and sister. She sent an activity book in English for Allison (8) and Jorge (6). They are very intrigued by the book. Today about 5 of their friends came over and I found it quite fun to watch 7 kids hover over 1 book for at least an hour. They are extremely interested in the English language. Many kids will ask us “How do you say my name in English? How do you say Julia? How do you say Juan? How do you say Alberto? They love to hear English pronunciation.
Drinks: Posol. This is a drink I don’t recommend. But, I do need to write about. Erika surprised me one day by bringing home a favorite Honduran beverage called “Posol”. This is a drink with the consistency and flavor of cream of corn soup. Add vanilla and sugar and you have replicated the warm beverage. She brought home one drink for Miguel and I to share (Shawn’s new name here is Miguel…the kids can’t pronounce ‘Sh’ …actually we have yet to meet any Honduran who can pronounce ‘Sh’ sounds, so Miguel has become his new name.) Anyhow, Miguel decided to tell our host mom that his stomach wasn’t feeling well that day, which by default left me to digest the “Posol”. I thanked him kindly for his generosity.
Ok…back to luxuries. This is my favorite story from the month.
Baking: I had been craving something baked this week, so I decided to make a cake with Erika. I not only thought this would be a great way to satisfy my craving, but a good cultural experience as well. I wanted our host family to try the “all American dessert”. Little did I know this would turn out so eventful! For starters, Erika has not used her oven since her husband went to Japan in May (he is part of a 10 month program exchange for his work and will return in March 2002). Erika is fearful of using the oven because it is a gas oven without a pilot light and needs to be lit by hand each time it is used. She is afraid of an explosion. Fortunately she trusted Miguel to start the oven. I was elated and in celebration we baked a chocolate cake. Now that was the easy part. If you knew me well in the states, you know I love to bake. I especially love to make cakes with a whip cream/pudding frosting. Mmmm! When I went to the little “pulperia” (store) to look for whip cream it did not exist. I did, however, find whip cream in a box. An ok substitution (so I thought). I then went to 3 different stores before I found pudding. The only pudding I could locate was the regular pudding pie mix (NOT INSTANT – this is a very important part of the story). Couple cooking tips…whip cream in a box does not form into any type of consistency other than liquid if you do not own a mixer. In fact, when the box says mix with mixer for 3 minutes and mix by hand for 10 minutes – THEY ARE LYING! It must be pure marketing. YOU CAN NOT MAKE WHIPCREAM BY HAND IN 10 MINUTES! Erika and I took numerous turns mixing and mixing and mixing…only to make soupy sweet milk (far from whip cream texture). I really miss good ol’ Cool Whip! We gave up on the whip cream and went for the pudding. This went ok – boiled and all until we tried to stir it. The pudding turned very clumpy. Maybe one of our problems was that when I re-checked the milk I discovered it was going sour. I don’t know. I felt like I was on some bad re-run of “I LOVE LUCY”. To make matters worse we added the “soupy sweet milk” as an attempt to salvage the already sorry looking frosting. My host mom kept asking me what it was supposed to look like and in my broken Spanish I tried to explain “NOT LIKE THIS!” We were both laughing by this point. We kept tasting our invention as if we could convince ourselves that even though ugly, the mixture still tasted good. Unfortunately, it was hard to convince ourselves of this…maybe the sour milk played a part of the “bad taste”. I finally conceded and went back to the store to buy Pillsbury pre-made frosting in a can. It looked like it had been on the shelf for 3 years (since I think only North Americans who fail at homemade frostings end up buying the Pillsbury supply). Our day was so consumed by the cake making activity that we skipped supper all together and feasted on chocolate cake with old Pillsbury frosting. I noticed the 2 year old (Gerardo) licking the bowl to the clumpy frosting disaster…maybe it wasn’t a total failure after all.
I went to bed that night making a list in my mind of everything I miss in a kitchen! Promise me to be thankful for: instant pudding, Cool whip, freezers that work, microwaves, milk that isn’t spoiled, ICE!, water from the tap, variety, options, good cheese, crackers, no ants on the cupboard and most of all the famous electric mixer!
FYI – for anyone sending snailmail…our address labels were wrong. Our correct P.O. Box is # 3158. We noticed some people have the correct address and some do not. Please make this change for the future. So, far we have received mail either way. Honduras is very familiar with “Peace Corps” mail.
Statistics for those interested: When we received our invitation to serve in Honduras we were told 73 people were offered positions. When we arrived in Miami for training we found out 65 people accepted the offer, but 64 actually showed up. Once in Honduras, one of the volunteers needed to be sent back for medical reasons (down to 63). Last week another volunteer decided to go home to her boyfriend (making the group 62 in total). A couple of days ago yet another girl decided to ET (otherwise known in Peace Corps lingo as “Early Termination”). She just got engaged 2 days before our group left the states (no, I am not sure how that was supposed to work for 2 ½ years). Anyway, she finally decided it was best to return making the grand total 61! Pray for us and for our strength! Shawn and I are hoping to complete what we have started.
Our next update will come in the beginning of October. During September, Shawn and I will be doing specific job training in separate cities and will not have our laptop with us. We hopefully will still be able to check our email once or twice during the month (so please send your responses) however, the long update letter will be written when we return to our host mom’s house. Thanks for reading. Until next month,
Jennifer and Shawn-Miguel
P.S. Don’t forget about the Banana Recipe Contest!