Honduras Día 6

---

Hola! I can’t believe it is almost the end of my stay here in beautiful Honduras. I have had so many amazing experiences and met so many incredible people. I will be bringing home lots of stories, memories, and stuff I bought today… Did I mention today was our trip to the market and last day of work?



So the trip I have been looking forward to all week- El Mercado! One of my favorite stops during all of my travels, where I can buy things for friends and family, but most importantly add to my classroom museum where I display cool things from foreign countries. And did I make out well! Fortunately I had my new buddy Hector with me; to let me know if the final price I was given was truly the best price. He even told me I bargain better than most Hondurans! And bargain I did! I am looking forward to displaying all of the new collectibles in my classroom next year: wood puzzle of Honduras, ball in a cup games, hacky sack, pecking roosters (you have to see this one to understand it) and machete. Well, that won’t be coming to school with me. As we only had about an hour to shop, and time goes quickly when I am spending money, our meet time was arriving. So I grabbed the last few things and Hector and I made our way to the door. Only to find out that since we got a flat tire on the way, we had to wait another hour and half until the tired could get replaced! What does this mean? Well, for those who know me, more shopping! This was actually a good thing, because I was able to pick up a few more things that I “needed”. And no, I did not spend the full hour and a half buying more stuff, only about 45 minutes. The rest of the time Hector and I got to know each other a little better, and I got to learn a lot more about Honduras.

Hector told me a story about his childhood, which I will not share on here, but I will say he had me stunned. Just knowing where he came from and where he is now is pretty unbelievable. He is in school to be a teacher, and has been teaching some of the American students here more advanced Spanish language and grammar. He lives in Progreso, the main city in the department of Yoro, and his mom and two siblings live in Miami. We are already friends on Facebook, and have agreed that when he finally makes it to the US he will come to NJ to stay with me. (Hope Robert is cool with that!) So while we were on the topic of education, we spoke more about the state of education here in Honduras. I have already written about how corrupt the government is, and how the money set aside for education goes to places unknown. I just didn’t understand why such a poor country wouldn’t want more educated people, in order to bring in more money. Hector explained his theory to me: the government doesn’t want educated people here. The less they know, the fewer questions they will ask about the state of the country. Keep ‘em dumb! Corruption leads to all of the wealth remaining in the hands of the few. In addition, I learned that the tax rate here is 12%!!! 12%! What struck me as the most interesting was seeing the gas prices here, which average around $4.00 / gallon. Since the average income daily is about $10, this means those who have cars here pay almost half of their daily income in gasoline. I would assume the majority of people earning $10/day probably do not own cars, which is why there are so many bikes and busses on the roads. The busses that we see are all US school busses that are no longer able to pass inspection in the states. I also learned from Hector that salaried workers get taxed an additional 1% that goes towards “Homeland Security,” a bullshit extra fee that no one knows to where the money is going.

And unfortunately, not only are teachers getting the short end of the stick, nurses are lacking funding as well. We actually saw a group of nurses marching in the streets, striking to make the government aware of the unfair conditions in which they work.

But enough with the bad, let’s move on to the exciting and fun part of the night! Dance lessons and dinner out! I can’t say I danced a whole lot, but I did a little bit of merengue. We were given lessons by two very well-known Honduran dancers, who had recently won a dance contest at one of the local clubs. A few of the boys from Villa came with us, but I didn’t get to dance with any of them. Hell, I’m a married woman! So I danced with girls all night 😉

Tomorrow a la playa!

---

Photos

Enjoying my mocha frozie drink thingy
aka: mocha grancino supreme

El Mercado
"I bought Honduras!"

Comments

[Priscilla]

Welcome Home!
What an amazing trip and experience for you! I can't wait to hear all about it (in person) and see more pictures.