America Abroad

REFLECTION NOTES:

            It appears as though, through my research and internal analysis that there are an undeniable amount of people living in North American mainstream society that feel something amiss. There are a large portion of people who do not feel satisfied with their lives and where they are going and have an extistential void that they are attempting to fill. Most of us don’t know what makes us happy. I continue to hear over and over and over that people are yearning for a better sense of community. And some out of this countless unrest group actually go in search of a community that is a community or attempt to construct their own.

            When I have continually asked people ‘why community’ most of them tell me about some type of transitional stage in their lives; breaking up with a partner, finished or dropped out of school, was fired or quit their job, etc. People are in search of a support team, unconditional love and/or something new or different. Yet, the reality of living in a community is never as glamourous as it appears. People forget about the bug bites, sunburns, blisters, and lack of Starbucks until they have all ready dove in. Once this reality phase registers some put on their gallaches and get their hands dirty while others filter themselves out.

            Communities can be challenging and frustrating but if we get the right group of people together and approach the challenges with the right attitude, it is worth it. One must remember that a community will never be perfect. It will never be Utopia there will always be room for change and progress because a community is what makes a community, people. And since people will never be perfect nor will our communities but it is worth a shot.

Interview with Chevy Anton:

Why community?

“There is a lack of communities in mainstream society now adays. We don’t even know our neighbors’ names anymore. I can’t go on going through the motions and never really getting a feel for anyone in my “community” at home. I want to create my own with the property me and my sisters have bought in Africa.”

            What are challenges you have faced within your community or in communal living?

            “I have yet to be part of a community in which is not my own. People will put more energy into it when it is part of a collective but a collective community does need leadership. There are student groups within my community coming in from the outside world-creates level of inconsistency because there are so many different people. There is an endless amount to be done always and there is never enough people to do it. Or the system is not set up to do it. There is a certain can’t get ahead type of feeling. Money- different type of hierarchy or community system-if you are paying me it is different than collectively living together. “

            What are characteristics, which enable communities to be successful?

            “Having specialized workers that are able to teach each other. Consistency equals a solid foundation. Clear communication-is not the room but the door into the room. Communication is also a sustainable skill. Another huge part is balancing self with the community. “

“You have to at least hold your own like wash your own dish!”

“I think it is important to be selective about members entering community….How do we create a system where we all don’t burn out? Ion communities there are a few selective people who work hard but then burn out.”

New field Journal Page:

Drug and Alcohol Abuse:

            Recently interns brought cocaine to the farm. Several of the community members had issues with usage of cocaine on the farm and within the community grounds of Punta Mona.  After an extensive discussion within older members and staff of the community, the interns were asked to leave.

            This is an example of an ideological split within a community. One group thinks that it is fine and acceptable to bring and do cocaine of the premises of the Farm while the other members of the same community were and are not accepting of those activities at the least, on the property and while being in the community.

            This may undermine many people’s conceptions about communes or intentional communities as being deviant and members tend to be degenerate. Older members of the community thus far do not accept excessive usage of anything, such as drink with the intention to get drunk. If someone want to be inebriated, they tend to leave and go to a nearby town and partake in activities there-away from the community’s property and not to bring it back there.

Field Journal:

            Punta Mona Notes:

The longest standing residents of Punta Mona, a family of three, have decided to head on their way, closing the Punta Mona chapter in their lives. The family joined the Punta Mona community in June 07 and are leaving for good in March 08. This will be a huge change for Punta Mona and the community.

            This will be a shift in the community for several reasons. First, the longests standing members of Punta Mona will have only been there for a little under 10 months. With this comes a large loss of knowledge about the food the community, how things are run, how to cook this alien food, and our higher purpose.

            This is about to be a time of transition, which is always true at Punta Mona. I am interested in seeing how the power dynamic will shift once the family leaves. I am also interested to observe who will step up and who will not. And whether or not Steven and Norman Brooks, the bosses who are based out of Miami, FL will deal with the situation if they choose to deal with it at all.

Miriam has been working for the project for 9 months, or since it began.  She is a prominent member of the patronata, the village government.  When Reid and Patricia came to town looking for land to build on, they went down to Cacao and asked if there was a member around.  Miriam happened to be around, and they got to talking.  The americans noted the inerest she had in the project and asked her if she´d like to work there, and she accepted.  To raise awareness for the project, Patricia, Reid, and Miriam, together with 4 foreign volunteers, split up into two groups and walked through the village, knocking on doors and telling people about Las Sonrisas.  Miriam said that they told the people about the benefits to the community and to the children that they would gain by having the project there.  She didn´t specify, but an interview Vallee did with another volunteer, she claimed that  they went around asking people if they would like to have a Guarderia and whether they would consider it useful.  I find it an interesting discrepancy. 

Another interesting thing, regarding the issue of whether there was a need for a Guarderia, is that Miriam told me she used to organize something similar, when I asked her what she did for work before Las Sonrisas got started.  She said that she, ¨played with children outside, like a volunteer.¨ I asked her what, specifically, she thinks Las Sonrisas brings to the community...how does it benifit from having the project here?  My translation:

¨Well, in Cacao, there are many poor families.  It benefits them to send the children here...they don´t have to use that amount of rice for lunch and can save it for the next day.¨   That was it.

I asked if there was anything else.  ¨The kids can come here and play with other kids, and can learn different types of things.  English, the stories.  Sometimes when I´m at home with Jeffrey, I ask him, ´what do you like in the night´? He tells me, ´the owl´, and that´s how I know he is learning something from the stories.¨  This is a reference to a particular book we sometimes read at story time.  She went on, ¨Many mothers stop by my house to chat with me, and they tell me that the kids are happy.  They say the kids tell their mamis, ´i want a toothbrush and toothpaste, because that´s how we do it at the Guarderia´.  In the homes here there isn´t much affection, and sometimes there just isn´t time to give them much attention.  Here they have their food at the right time, their cup of water, in a cup, how children like it.¨

I asked what type of comments, good or bad, people in the village say about the project.  She explained, ¨Sometimes I go out looking for kids (to come to the project) on my own time, and sometimes they answer me badly...they tell me they don´t want to send their kids.  The truth is that sometimes we´re a little selfish here.  Maybe they have enough food, but they don´t have time to read or to give them affection.  There are kids saying that here they hit kids.  But I tell them that isn´t true, that here there isn´t permission even to hit your own children.  There are kids that want to come but their parents say no.¨

I wondered if it was difficult to have to mediate between Las Sonrisas and her own community.  ¨I tell you,¨ she said, ¨it´s not that difficult.  WHen I ask them if they want to send the children, there are some that say yes adn some that say no, but 100 percent of the people in Cacao say that this project is important.¨

Miriam talked about teaching the children manners. She said that they´d learned that the words please and thank you are very important to us.  I took this to mean that they aren´t that important to them. That´s one of those things that I teach reflexively, without even thinking of it as a purely cultural value.  It´s a good reality check on my own assumptions. 

It turns out the the Fundacion Adelante, the the organization I interviewed last week, had tried to set up a project there in Cacao.  I guess, from wht they told me about choosing their sites, that that makes Cacao home of ¨the very poorest¨.  Miriam said that she had received the information packets, she said, ¨about how to utilize what we have¨.  She also said that the Foundation had been trying to convince her to start a cooperative there, but she didn´t want to.  ¨When I have work, I don´t need a loan.¨

Every day Reid teaches a casual Englsih class for about half an hour, and Miriam is one of his best students.  She explained that the reason she wanted to learn English was because she sees the lagoon at the end of town as a tourist attraction.  Many Americans come to see it, but nobody can explain the history in English, and it makes them (the tourists) sad.  She said that, even if there´s not an organized tourist industry, when they come they leave a little pool of money.  In tips, or what have you.

One of the most interesting things, I thought, was her explanation of the connection between the project and tourist income.  Rafael is the director of a Spanish school here in La Ceiba, and a friend of Reid and Patricia´s. 

¨We have benifited from this project.  It´s like a chain.  Sometimes Rafael sends people here, like 5 or one time, twenty.  And we earn a little money that way.  I want to become a guide adn start a restaurant.  This area is well-visited by gringos.  There should be a place where they can buy everything they need.  We also need a little hotel.¨

I couldn´t shake the thought that most of what she was saying about the benefits of the project were indirect.  That it could be any English-speaking gringos here, doing anything really, and it would have the same benefits.  But she´s really into it, and I can´t argue with that. 

Last week, I interview a woman from Belgium who had told me several times prior to the interview that she was staying in Honduras for one year but informed me once we sat down for the formal interview that she was, in fact staying in Honduras for a total of seven months. This is not the first time that a volunteer has been inconsistent with the amount of time they plan to spend, one other volunteer has often said she would be in honduras for a year but is only staying for five. Both are unflinching in their apparent contradiction which makes me think of trustuli and the truth to be found in inaccuracies. Do they feel that their time here is worth more in their life experience?

My interviewee (I have yet to find a working printer to get her signature so will refrain from using her name) was very eager to be interviewed and spoke animatedly and much. She was most interested in her initial reasons for coming to Honduras and the subsequent changes to her perceptions and plans. She first decided to come to honduras ¨to take a bath of culture¨ and did not think much of her volunteer placement beyond that it would allow her to access culture. She chose honduras because ¨i wanted to practice my spanish so asia and africa were eliminated but i wanted to experience a new culture¨ She found a volunteer placement among the Garifuna, a group of people of african decent whose ancestors were survivors of slave ship wrecks. They are known to be fiercely proud and protective of their language and customs. Her placement was going to be one in which she ¨could play with the kids and do farm stuff. which is better (she didn't say what it was better than) not like a miestra with lots of work and duties.¨

To her great disappointment, she arrived in Honduras only to find that the project was no longer in existence and she would have to find a new volunteer placement. Shortly after finding the project in which she now volunteered she realized that honduras did not have ¨real culture¨ and that she would not be experiencing it how she had wanted. She decided to dedicate herself more to volunteering and that she hadn´t realized the ¨extreme psychological burden¨ that is placed upon the volunteers.

I was especially excited to talk to her about the transformation that the project has gone through in the last few months, when she arrived in el Cacao, she was the only volunteer and has watched that number swell to its height of ten. When talking about the earlier days she used the word intense five times in a fairly short period. There were at times sixty kids. ¨there was never a moment for myself. Working all the time. There wasn't one moment to sit down. it was almost too much...it was really hard, really intense. It was such a huge difference from now, I was always worried that I wasn't doing enough there wasn't one moment to rest, not one moment for yourself...now there are too many volunteers. I think it might have changed too much far to the other end of feeling of useful was lowered. Now i look around and the kids are playing by themselves with toys and in groups and i think, when i was little, i never had someone coordinating my play. Never had events. And i think they don't like it. That's why I changed (projects, at the time of the interview she had been working at a school for a week, she has since returned to the project) Too many volunteers, the work is not as intense¨ This feeling of usefulness is a huge concern for all of the volunteers. many have chosen the project based on how ´desperate for workers´ the volunteer organizations seem (not a quote of the above volunteer)  and I'm looking further into the implications of this.

I am also delving more deeply into volunteers conceptions of safety and security. My Belgian interviewee spoke at length of the need to ´guard´, ¨rescue¨ and ¨protect¨ the children while ¨giving them a childhood¨ This idea that the world outside the fence of the daycare is a scary abusive place is a large idea to deconstruct and I am planning on asking my next few interviewees more pointed questions on this subject. 

On another note, last week we received two new volunteers that arrived in Honduras ON A CRUSE SHIP and who compare the things they have seen in Honduras as being ¨Just like africa¨ despite the fact that neither have ever been. I am looking forward to those interviews like a crazed child awaiting Christmas. oh the packages of joy that await me.

Before we decided to come to honduras, Sonia spoke with a friend of hers who had been here for several months, she warned sonia that honduras was not the most wonderful central american country, that it was lacking in culture. We discussed it, and decided that this -lack of culture- could be interesting in itself. 

A few months later, when we arrived in Honduras we were suprised to see a Dunkin Doughnuts, Pizza Hut or KFC on every corner. Many people are stylish enough to walk the streets of NYC with pizazz, there are huge shopping malls and American Pop music. I have to admit, upon seeing these things I felt a twinge of disappointment-it lacked what i thought true athenticty would look like. Our attention to pizza hut however was short lived,  the streets in front are filled with women making tortillas for DELICIOUS balleadas (i regret that i stopped counting how many i have eaten, just yesterday i had eight), children hawking what we thought were sweet mangos in cinimon (turned out to be pickeled mangos in pepper) and old men selling some form of lottery tickets. The pizza huts and Dunkin Donughts stand on the sidelines in much the same way as honduran cafetieras or clothing stores. Pizza hut here is not the pizza hut we know in the united states, here it has been turned into a sort of street food, people buy stacks of boxes of pizza and move through crowds selliing it by the slice. As appiah says, on thing that is common in pizza huts existence in the united states and in honduras is that people like pizza, this doesnt in any way effect the culture to a point of nonexistance as sonias friend had warned.  I enjoyed appiahs point that a wish to keep other cultures pure and authenitic is deeply condesending and, i think, selfish on the part of the gazer. Cultures are in a constant state of change and adaptation and a wish for them to remain pure is a wish for them to stagnate.

We mostly focused our discussion around the idea of ¨authenticity¨.  I have been saying for a while that the term itself is almost never self-reflexive...it is always a way of categorizing the Other.  I also think it is temporal--a longing for a particular remembered past, as I am in agreement with Appiah that ¨cultural purity is an oxymoron¨. But, ¨how far back must one go?¨ (p.107) So every stage of change and development is as authentic as any other.  And yet, and yet...in a way, the pursuit of authenticity (in anthropology and tourism etc.) is a way of buying into the ultimate cosmopolitan ideal-- it is the drive to learn about ways of life that are different from what you know, and (hopefully) to be able connect with individuals in spite (and because?) of that.  Our posts are filled with stories of moments of joy and connection (often non-verbal) with people of very different value systems.  The search for authenticity is a way of ¨taking an interest in the practices and beliefs which lend (particular human lives) significance.¨ (p.xv).  But the cosmopolitan ideal falls short when we are disappointed to see some of ourselves in the Other.  This is the part where we should be reaffirmed in our common humanity.  Or, at least, some common desires for certain goods.  It´s interesting to think that, since cultures are constantly borrowing and sharing, and have always done so, everything that´s even discussed in the vernacular as ¨authentic¨ is actually a sort of localized homogeneity or assimilation, especially since ¨people in each place make their own uses of...global commodities.¨ (p.113).  So glocalization is really an expression of the strength of a culture forcing a global commodity to conform to it, and assimilate within it.  This seems logical, but I don´t know if I buy it.

Just for fun, imagine a hundred years from now that Wendy´s falls out of favor in the U.S. (Who goes to Wendy´s anyway?!) and all the buildings and images are destroyed by time and new fast food chains.  Nobody here every really cared about Wendy´s because it was just one in a million fast food corp.s so it´s pretty much forgotten.  In Honduras, though, it´s flourished and become more and more a fixture in the local economy and psyche.  Maybe Wendy even gets a tan, and some brown hair.  Nobody alive then can remember a time without Wendy´s, and some of the buildings are old and quaint, and the one on the square is preserved as an historic relic!  Ta-dah! It´s authentic! 

ANYway, I think I have to take issue with his refutation of the cultural preservationist argument that ¨they have no real choice¨ on p. 106.  I think he´s oversimplifying things by summarizing the pereservationist argument as saying ¨theyre too poor to live the life they want to lead¨.  I think there´s a whole world of association that goes along with a desire to wear t-shirts.  It´s not just because cotton is so lovely, but Western goods could also represent a desire for other things associated with the Western world, say freedom from political oppression (spare me the shpiel about how we´re not actually totally free...), or the possibility of social mobility (that one too...).  And anyway, who knows whether if people got richer they would ¨still run around in t-shirts¨.  Thats exactly the point, they´re not richer, and at least some portion of that has to do (in Honduras at least) with meddlesome American economic policies.  I do agree, however that cultural preservation should not necessarily be about objects. 

People are yelling at me to get off the internet. Peace.