What Does Gratefulness Do?

I gripped the motorcycle with my knees as it sputtered like a balky horse. It was the second day of my two-week internship for “Growers First,” an organization that works with coffee farmers in Honduras, and we were spending most of our day checking on coffee projects and interviewing farmers and their families. All these families lived up in the mountains, and the roads to get there rivaled any dirt bike course.

We were late getting back, and I only just had time to pull off my sweatshirt and muddy rubber boots and run a hand through my motorcycle-whipped hair before my host family here took me to a Thanksgiving dinner.

At one farmer’s house in the morning, we had sat in plastic chairs on his concrete floor; looking out a window with no glass at a pit latrine screened by tattered sheets. He had given us dark coffee with so much sugar it stung at the back of my throat.

This taste was still in my mouth when I sat down at a table laden with every kind of good food. We had two forks each, I remember, and two spoons. With turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and three kinds of pie, it was a Thanksgiving meal to rival any. So what was I supposed to do? I gave thanks.

I have so much to be thankful for. I could start with great parents, and siblings who are some of my best friends. I love my school. I love what I’m studying. I have enough food to eat, more clothes than I can wear. I’m safe and healthy. I have incredible friends and an amazing boyfriend. But I’m starting to realize that the question isn’t what I’m grateful for, but maybe what is grateful for.

What does grateful matter if I don’t do anything about it?

If you ever wonder what upper-middle class Hondurans talk about at Thanksgiving dinner – it’s probably exactly what your family talked about. Politics. How good their kids are at technology. Whether or not they should buy an iPad.

And I sat, smiling at the jokes, stuffing my face. The house where we ate had more Christmas lights than Bronner’s Christmas store, and all I could think of was the bicycle at that one house in the mountains that had been turned into a generator. By pumping the pedals by hand, a single light bulb in the house would flicker on.

What does it mean that so many people don’t have the things I’m grateful for, let alone the things I take for granted? As my intention span dozed in and out of a conversation about children’s grades and a new proposed tax, I thought about what it means to be grateful. I think, in the end, it’s:

1) The recognition that something is good, and

2) The recognition that it was not you who made it so.

So, Gratefulness isn't Self-Congratulation. If I come back from Honduras remembering the poverty I saw and thanking God that it’s not me who uses a squat latrine, then my time here will have been wasted. If my takeaway is “I’m glad I’m not them,” then I have everything backwards. Because that brings with it the ludicrous assumption that it was me who put me in my position. I did very little to be where I am. I owe a God who made me, parents and teachers who helped shape me. However, I need to be careful not to go to the opposite side and loathe myself for what I have…

Because Gratefulness isn't Guilt. After spending three months taking cold showers, am I ready to give up warm showers forever? Heck no! I can’t wait to get back to a warm bath. See, part of recognizing that something is good means enjoying it. Are you eating a sumptuous dinner surrounded by loved ones? Don’t begrudge yourself the happiness! This is a good thing. But…

If these are really good things, then gratitude goes beyond simply acknowledging them. Gratefulness does. Do I recognize that my family is a good thing? Then how am I caring for them, showing my appreciation for them, supporting them? Am I thankful for warm food, a comfortable bed, or entertainment? If these things are good, then how can I share them with others?

I can’t say it’s easy to accept the reeling proximity that allows me to see subsistence in the morning and feasting in the afternoon. But giving based on guilt is only charity. It is to soothe the giver’s conscience.

Giving based in gratefulness comes closer to the needs of another’s heart. What is it you most cherish? What is it you most miss? How can you share this with others so that they’ll know the same joy? As you count your blessings and I count mine, let’s think of what to do with all of them. Let’s not leave our thankfulness as a list recited one day a year, but let’s make our gratefulness do. 

No Deep Thoughts

I have less than three weeks left in Honduras, and I'm struggling to gather my thoughts. There are a lot to gather. I've seen, heard, and learned so much over the last three months that I can hardly begin to make sense of it all. I want to write all the deep thoughts I have, but I'm not ready to put them into words.

I expected to come back from Honduras a changed person. I think I was hoping that the change would be obvious, dramatic, and exciting. I didn't expect to be the same person, weighed down by a few more thoughts, struggling with a few more convictions. Turns out, it's not that easy to change.

I can see the next few months play out like a movie. I come home passionate about helping the poor and marginalized who I've met, or outraged at the injustices I feel I understand. I come out too strong against certain things. I'm a little too ignorant. A little too self-righteous.

I can see over time, how the temptation of comfort will creep up. Eating sustainably is way too hard. Taking the bus is inconvenient. I would give, only I need this money for something else. And the memories fade a little. Passions are muted. Everything goes back to the way it was.

Dear Lord, let it not be so.

Here in Honduras, justice is right in my face. We spend hours every day learning about what it means to eat justly, to shop justly, to care for the environment and elect good leaders. We're excited about it. We're seeing things happen right in front of our eyes. It's real.

When I go back to Michigan, I'm going to have to look for it. I'm going to have to work to get to the same level of passion. I'm not going to have professors guiding my thought processes or friends studying the exact same things. It's going to be a different sort of real. Who I am isn't going to be handed to me: I'm going to have to decide.

Right now, I'm still in the middle of what's been the most interesting and intense four months of my life. But in three weeks, that will be over. If I'm realistic about it, I know that all I'm experiencing now isn't half as important as what I do with these experiences next month, next year, and for the rest of my life.

Studying abroad will change your life. But it's not a passive thing. You don't let Honduras happen to you, you jump in and engage the culture. You ask questions. You start to form those deep thoughts.

The thing about study abroad is that it ends. But the changes don't have to. What I want to start asking now is how to keep these things real. To transfer my Honduran real life to my Michigan one. How to remember the things that are important even in a complete change of scenery.

So I don't have any deep thoughts now. I think it's going to be a while before I can form experiences into opinions and opinions into a transformed life. It's not going to happen automatically. But I'm determined to make the effort.

Observing Election Day

**note, all facts are as I understood them, and may change as more information is released**

On Sunday, November 24th, I watched the Honduran people elect Juan Orlando Hernandez as their next President, with about 34% of the vote. Opposition candidates Mauricio Villeda, Xiomara Castro, and Salvador Nasralla pulled in 28, 21, and 15% of the vote, respectively. After learning about these candidates and following the race for over three months, it was an incredible thing to watch.

My Honduran dad has been running for mayor of our town, so I’ve seen a little bit into the political process. He’s not running as a third-party candidate, but as a sixth- or seventh-party candidate.He doesn’t have any posters up or anything, but he’s definitely informed.

I voted early. Well, not me, personally, but my Honduran brother did take me to watch him vote. (above, walking past the political parties' tents on the way back) We stood in lines outside the grade school, just like the lines in the United States. The streets of Santa Lucia were full of people, but they were quiet. Even the vendors hawking dulce de leche seemed more subdued.

He voted for one President (he wouldn’t tell me who), one Mayor (his dad, he told me), and twenty-three Congressional representatives. The ballets are three separate pieces of paper with the faces of all the candidates on them, so that even those who can’t read can mark the one they want to choose. With over one hundred Congressional candidates, one of the sheets approached table-cloth size.

On the way out, he got his pinky blackened with indelible ink. “That was really calm, right?” he asked with a grin. He wiped his pinky with a cloth to try to rub the ink away, but it only smeared onto more of his finger. “This is going to be here for days.”

Tension has been high over the last few weeks. Two brand-new parties have challenged the traditional two-party system, creating a four-way tie for a while. People feared violence and fraud. Some people stocked up their pantries. My family told me not to go out at night. The new Libre party, whose candidate is the wife of the President ousted in the 2009 coup, attracted the most outspoken following; while the National party controlled more of the government and military police. No one knew exactly what was going to happen on Sunday.

We had an invitation to go and observe the elections, but our professors told we’d wait and see how things turned out. But as I watched the news with my family they turned to each other and admitted – everything was pretty calm. So we went down to the capital city.

It was eerie. Public transportation was suspended for the day. Malls and stores were closed. The streets were empty and quiet, except for the hubbub around voting centers. We drove up to a storefront where in a small office on the second floor, a friend of our group runs a polling center. He managed phone calls from each of the 18 departments of Honduras, compiling the exit polls into an accurate picture of the vote.

After observing the polling process, we went out to the streets, visiting three voting centers before we went back home. Each center we saw was orderly and professional. People were happy to show us the boxes that were filling up with the paper votes – they would later count each by hand. Representatives from each of the eight political parties sat at each table in each room in each building. Most were there from well before the stations opened at 7am until 3 or 4am the next day when all the votes had been tallied. By sheer number of people observing, they hoped to eliminate the possibility of fraud.

And everything went without incident. Maybe the military stationed at every corner with stern faces and bulky guns helped keep any protests down. Or maybe people were just taking their decision seriously – around 65% of Hondurans showed up to vote, the highest in over a decade.

After getting back, I watched the news with my family all night long. Results trickled in from different departments. After a preliminary exit poll showed Xiomara in the lead, she announced her victory on public television even as results showed her losing by several points. Just after, Juan Orlando announced his victory, one that was more supported by evidence.

I've spent a little time on Google, and the headlines I read seem inflammatory. “Tension increases in Honduras, as election sparks competing claims of victory, fraud” or “Honduras Presidential Elections in Dispute as Activists Defy Violence to Back Ousted Leader’s Wife.” It’s true that Xiomara has not backed down her claims to the presidency, however, as contested votes come in, her position is becoming weaker and weaker. All evidence points to her losing by 5-6%.

The winners of Congress have yet to be announced, but it seems clear there will be a house split at least four ways between the different parties. In a system that demands majority vote, that could cause some slow government over the next four years. A lot remains to be seen.

My dad didn’t win mayor. I don’t know if he really thought he would. But one of the people working at the tables yesterday told me something important: It’s important that Hondurans get involved in politics. But if things don’t work out the way they like, it’s important that they don’t give up.

There was a lot to be thankful for yesterday, even if the result wasn’t what 65% of the population wanted. Relative peace. High voter turn-out. Few indications of fraud. If people channel the passion they had for political parties into the issues those parties supposedly stand for – security, education, anti-corruption – then Honduras really will keep moving in a better direction.

Whatever happens, I feel a little bit of responsibility and a little bit of pride. Whatever happens, I got to watch it start.

Being Gringa

In Michigan, there’s a light-hearted debate over whether we should be called “Michiganders” or the clumsier “Michiganians.” (The governor agrees with the former, as does my computer’s spell-check.) People from Ohio are Ohioans and Hoosiers come from Indiana, for some reason. There are as many names for residents as there are states, which is why I was so flabbergasted when I sat down to write something about my home country and realized there doesn’t seem to be a word for someone from there.

“I’m proud to be an American,” but so are Guatemalans and Peruvians – technically, the term refers to everyone from Canada to Chile. Yes, the United States of America is the only country with “America” in its name, but the blind coopting of the term “American” can still be offensive to the rest of the countries that make up the "Americas". This is even worse because of the already-stark power imbalance between the rich USA and countries just an inch south on the globe who struggle with widespread poverty.

It's interesting coming from the majority culture in one of the most powerful countries in the world: before I came to Honduras I'd never experienced being the only one of my race on a bus or in a downtown market. I'd never realized how subtly minorities were marginalized. Did you know clothing stores still light-pink items in the color "nude"? Being in the majority, whether that's race or nationality, brings with it the privilege of being the "default." Culturally, you're "normal," everyone else needs to define themselves by their distinction from you.

Here, I look like less than 8% of the population. But even that doesn't completely change the power dynamic. Imported U.S. media, music, and films perpetuate ideals of a certain body type or hue of skin. Even Hispanic telenovelas feature actresses who don’t look very much like the typical Hispanic woman. But I’m still a small minority here, and I have my own name:

“Gringa!” a little boy shouts, giggling as he tucks his head back into the window to hide. Most adults are too polite to use that to my face, but the children will point and shout if their parents aren’t watching. Some North Americans don’t like it -- part of the objection over labels may come from never having been labeled by someone else before -- but as long as it’s in love, I don’t mind “Gringo” or “Gringa.”

There is a word in Spanish for someone from the United States – “Estadounidense” – but it’s a mouthful and I’ve never heard it used. More often I’ll hear “Norteamericano,” but technically that lumps Canada and sort of Mexico in with us. And when we ask Hondurans to tell us their thoughts about the USA, the use of the word “American” is often one of the first things they mention. “We’re Americans too,” they tell us.

“Gringo” really isn’t a slur. Usually it just means “someone who’s not from around here.” I’ve heard conflicting stories about its origins. One version says it stems from American troops who marched and sang either “Green Grow the Lilacs” or “Green Grow the Rushes.” “Green Grow” became “Gringo” to those who didn’t speak English. Another version says it stems from a protest cry; that Mexicans or Central Americans would shout “Green, go home!” at the U.S. soldiers who were either dressed in green or wore green stripes on their uniforms.

Academically, linguists thinks “gringo” may be a version of the word “griega,” which means “Greek.” Spanish, too, has an expression that translates into “it’s all Greek to me,” and foreigners who are unintelligible are said to be “speaking in Greek.” Regardless of its origins, over the 150+ years the word has been in use, the word has become pretty neutral. If it’s yelled at me in the street, it’s not my favorite thing; but between friends, I’ll own the term with a grin.

Words are never unimportant. Labels affect the way we see things, both consciously and unconsciously. Even if Panamanians and Uruguayans didn’t mind that we use the word “American,” how does that affect the way we think about ourselves and our place in this hemisphere?

Whether the terms I hear are ideal or not, I am a foreigner here.  If labels bothers us, why not think about the terms we use with "others" when we're back in the majority? I know I'm not exempt from this system. While I’m waiting for a shorter, more neutral, or catchier word to describe where I’m from, I’m okay with being “Gringa.”

I Visited Your Sponsored Kid

When we walked into a brightly-painted classroom and twenty adorable children burst into a performance of a Bible song, I almost turned to look for the hidden cameras. At another project, teachers proudly showed off children who were doing so well in school that they were tutoring the grades beneath them. Compassion International’s after-school program and one of World Vision’s schools offered us just a glimpse of life for a few of the tens of thousands of Honduran children who are supported by international “sponsors.” While this glimpse was encouraging, I still wondered what difference child sponsorship really makes.

Sponsorship seems like a beautiful idea. One (wealthier) family sends a monthly check to an organization which then will support one (poorer) child in the family’s name. The child and family exchange letters, and the family receives regular photos and updates from “their” child.

It’s hard to ignore ads with the pleading faces, and the promises that a small monthly sum can transform a life. It’s hard not to let your heart melt when you see six-year-olds who are excited about reading the Bible. But one lesson I've learned this semester is that things that seem obvious can be much more complicated than they seem. And these organizations are definitely more complicated than one check going directly to one child.

While Compassion International and World Vision have similar goals, they follow very different strategies. When you sponsor a child through Compassion, that child immediately begins to attend after-school programs two or three times a week. These programs teach Bible stories and offer homework help, and many also offer leadership programs and skills classes for older children. All of Compassion’s work is partnered with a local church. The church gets to choose which children will attend the programs, and generally hosts the children in the church building and uses church volunteers as staff.

On the other hand, World Vision has moved to a more community-based form of sponsorship. While the child whose picture is on your fridge does get benefits like academic and health monitoring, the money for each individual child goes to support community programs. I interviewed World Vision’s education coordinator earlier in the semester, and she explained their reasoning.

“When you give [the money] to that one child, they get the school kit, they get the nice uniform,” she said, “But what about the other children?” She pointed out that that type of sponsorship can foster jealousy within families and communities, and a dependence on foreign aid. Instead, World Vision works to empower families and communities through schools, agriculture programs, and other projects.

There are pros and cons of both Compassion and World Vision’s approach, and both are full of anecdotal evidence that their programs are changing lives. But is sponsoring a child the best use of donation dollars? Unfortunately, real scholarship on the effects of sponsorship is lacking, 

When we visited Compassion, they insisted that sponsorship was the best way to do their programs. Not only was it a good way to keep them accountable for the money they spent, they said, they thought the cross-cultural connection was important for both child and sponsor. They also mentioned the power of people internationally praying for the children and their homes. It’s true that the children we met knew the names and home-towns of their sponsors, and were required to write frequent “thank-you” letters for any extra gifts.

But in all honesty, the reason that organizations do sponsorship is simply that it raises more money than any other type of fundraising. Donors feel connected to “their” child, and many will sponsor for years. This is a good thing, because one of the biggest problems with child sponsorship is that it can be ridiculously expensive.

World Vision employs many people just to track the 21,200 children participating in its Honduran programs. “They report back six times a year,” the education coordinator told us, “It’s a really hard job, to monitor all these things for all these children.”

To sponsor a child through Compassion costs $38/month, while World Vision asks for $35/month. But of the $420 donated yearly per child to World Vision (we didn't learn specific numbers for Compassion), $305 never leaves the main office, going instead towards things like strategies, marketing, curriculum, translating children's letters, postage, and other overhead costs. Of the $115 that makes it to the headquarters of each country, $72 then makes it out to the local office to do the projects, after-school programs, and everything that World Vision is really all about.

This money isn't disappearing -- I'm sure you could find an honest accounting for each dollar on their websites -- the sponsorship model in general is just very expensive.The truth is that for every $2 you give in child sponsorship, about $1 goes to the programs benefiting the child, and $1 goes to taking their picture and mailing it to you and all the other steps that go into monitoring tens of thousands of individual children.

A more subtle objection to child sponsorship comes from the pleading faces in the ads. Campaigns based on guilt can be manipulative, and many people are misled to believe that their donations are what are keeping a child from starvation, which is hardly ever exactly true. Sponsorship can also undermine families and local communities, damaging local agency and filling parents with the shame that some North American is able to provide for their children when they can't.

Finally, the very accountability that Compassion workers praised can also be a hindrance. Direct sponsoring means that organizations must answer to donors who seldom understand what’s actually needed in any region. It can be very hard to “sell” your donors on latrines, for example, if they would rather build an orphanage.

So do I support child sponsorship? That's still a complicated question. Because of the high cost of tracking individual children, something that’s exclusively for my benefit, I think my donations are better spent elsewhere. But if that connection is important to you, I wouldn't tell you to stop. I've seen with my own eyes the children benefiting from the existence of these programs. But, knowing the expense, make it worth it. Write letters to your child – they treasure them. Go out of your way to learn more about their country. Let your sponsorship stretch your giving muscles and your global awareness, broadening your "world vision" (if you'll permit me that one) and your "compassion."

Mud and Coffee, but Mostly Mud

The tire exploded without warning. We jerked forward in our seats and clapped our hands over our ears, looking back to see shreds of rubber strewn across the road behind us. The bus lurched and dragged, but its seven remaining tires pulled it steadily to a tire shop that was just a hundred yards away. In retrospect, this could safely be described as foreshadowing.

Our class was on another long weekend trip, this time to a more rural part of Honduras to learn about coffee and microfinance. Even with a new tire, it was tough going, especially when the paved road ended. But downhill is always easier than going back up…

Over the weekend, we spent two days and two nights climbing through coffee fields in the rain, meeting coffee farmers in the rain, and learning about microfinance… in the rain. It was a great trip, but I had to buy cheap rubber boots just to get around.

The morning we left didn’t bode well. The air was still damp, and my friend Bethany was miserably sick. She curled up in the back with a blanket and pillow, and we jolted down the soupy roads; Carlos, the driver, trying not to make her bounce too much.

We crept along until a hill that had seemed inconsequential when we’d arrived stopped us in our tracks. Carlos gunned the engine and sped up as fast as the heavy bus could go, but the tires started spinning and we slipped backwards.

A handful of men and boys who lived nearby came out to watch. “Every bus gets stuck on this hill,” they told us. We started to climb out to observe the damage. The wheels spun helplessly, flinging mud onto our clothes and hair.

What else could we do? We all pitched in. The onlookers, too, joined us in finding sticks and stones from the side of the road and throwing them under the tires, hoping that the traction would be enough to get us up. We made an assembly line, throwing muddy rocks from hand to hand and dropping them in the path of the bus. It started to rain again.

We tried pushing the bus; we tried pulling it. A pick-up truck tried to tow us, but the thin rope it used nearly snapped. Carlos revved the engine over and over, but each time one wheel caught for a moment on the rocks or twigs, the others would mire down again.

Soon a large, empty delivery truck came up behind us, waiting for its turn to attempt the hill. This truck wasn’t heavy enough for its wheels to catch, so we all climbed onto the back. The rain was light, but it was enough to smear the mud that coated us and stick our hair to our faces. We jumped up and down together on the back of the truck, the smell of burning rubber in the air as the tires spun around and around in place.

I’m from the suburbs. As we jumped up and down on the back of the battered truck, and I looked out over hill and the distant coffee farms and the dripping-wet banana trees, I laughed at how very different the world can be from what I’m used to.

Finally, with the help of the rocks strewn in the road and our weight balancing the back, the tires of the truck turned and the truck lurched and it shot up the muddy hill. We all screamed victory.

Energized, we put our shoulders to the back of our own bus one last time. We threw more rocks underneath the wheels and backed out of the way as the engine roared and finally propelled the bus up the hill and around the muddy corner. With mud caking our hands and our rubber boots, we climbed aboard and sat down ready for our next adventure.

Bethany lifted her head up wearily from the back seat. In the rain and mud and madness, I had forgotten she was sick, forgotten that throughout all the jolts and bumps and failed attempts, she’d been wrapped up in the back seat.

“How was it?” we all asked her.

“Well,” she said, already sounding better, “I was sleeping through a lot of it.”

A Brief Over-Simplification of Honduran Politics

We dropped into Honduras right as the Presidential race was beginning to heat up. It’s now a month before the election and things seem even crazier than they were two months ago. With the acknowledgment that I am a North American student whose Honduran political knowledge is younger than some of the food in the back of your fridge, I present to you… a gross oversimplification of the 2013 Presidential race.

Historically, Honduras has had two political parties: the Liberal and the National. People compare their ideologies respectively to the Democrat and Republican parties of the United States, but it’s also widely acknowledged that the two parties are functionally the same.

The regular exchange of National and Liberal candidates was halted in 2009 with a coup to oust then-President Mel Zelaya, a Liberal candidate who made waves partially by trying to pass movements that would allow himself to be reelected. Zelaya was replaced by an interim President, Micheletti, until the current Presidential term started.

In 2010, the National candidate Pepe Lobo became President. I don’t know enough to tell you if he’s been good or bad for Honduras, but I do know enough to tell you his name means “Baby bottle Wolf” in Spanish. In case you wanted to impress anyone with some Honduran trivia.

The 2009 coup was hugely controversial, with the country split between supporting it and protesting it. Zelaya, who was marginally popular before, actually gained popularity after being ousted. But one of the biggest changes the coup caused was the end of the two-party system. There have always been third-party candidates, but this year, the race is between four candidates from four different parties. Here, the who’s who in the 2013 Presidential election:

Juan Orlando Hernandez is from the National Party, and is the current President of Congress. Though Hondurans will openly admit that all politicians are corrupt, Juan Orlando is seen to be particularly shady. He has a massive amount of money to spend on his campaign that is coming from somewhere and as a result, posters of his face hang from almost every telephone post in the country.

Mauricio Villeda is the Liberal Party’s representative. We met him at a debate, where he chatted with us in English and shared a story about ordering a hamburger in Ann Arbor. People consider him the most honest candidate, but also, perhaps one of the weaker. Charisma is not his strong point. “He might make a good President,” someone told me, “but he’s a terrible candidate.” He also suffers from the new weakness of the Liberal party that comes from…

Xiomara Castro. The wife of Mel Zelaya, who has no previous political experience outside of being first lady, formed her own party after the coup. The Libre party, a splinter of the Liberal party, is now nearly as strong or stronger than the two historic parties. Stop and think for a moment how crazy that is. Imagine a strong personality from the Democrat Party forming her own party and within three years having a chance to win. Xiomara has found her place farther left than the Liberal party, and appeals to low-wage workers, teachers, and other people desperate for change.

The fourth player is Salvador Nasralla, better known for being a beloved sports announcer and the host of a Sunday morning game show. He jumped on the small Anti-Corruption party, and the strength of his name has won him more followers than he otherwise might have. Again, stop for a moment to ponder this. The best analogy I can think of is that guy who always announces the Olympics. Bob Costas for President, 2016?

With 30% of the population currently undecided, it’s still anyone’s game. Polls show Xiomara and Juan Orlando near-tied with Villeda a close third, but at this point polls are partly speculation. What is certain is that no one candidate is going to get more than a third of the vote, meaning an election were the majority voted against the winner. (This doesn’t only happen in the States, I guess!)

It’s a huge privilege to be right here in the middle of this, meeting the players that are going to affect Honduras over the next four years. We’ll be right here watching the voting and, even more interestingly, the results. No matter what happens, this is a historic election for Honduras. And now that you’re (at least a little bit) informed, you can turn your eyes this way and follow along with us!