holy week

This week is always one I look forward to. Now that I live in Honduras, it is fun to enjoy the national "spring break," but aside from that, I always anticipate Easter week because I relish the traditions. There is something reassuring about traditions, and I have come to value them even more now that I am living in a culture with traditions very different from my up-bringing.

One thing that I find frustrating is that the Protestant churches in Honduras don't seem to do much in the way of holy week traditions. In Latin America as a whole, the catholic church dominates local traditions, with sawdust carpets, processions at all hours, mass, etc. From what I observe, the evangelical churches so deeply fear being anything close to catholic, they turn 180 degrees and don't do much to commemorate Easter. It makes me sad because what more should the church be celebrating if not the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ? Even a church skit, for example, will focus all its energy on the suffering and and death of Christ but barely touch upon His return from the dead. How sad when we should celebrate that we are people of the Resurrection!

But I digress...so trying to enjoy as many traditions as possible, I went to check out the sawdust carpets here in Santa Rosa. It is a labor-intensive process, followed by a long processional with stops at each of the stations of the cross. I must admit, it is too long to make it through all the stations, but I did catch the beginning, and enjoyed reflecting on the different symbols of Easter as we walked along the 10 blocks of artistic celebration of Holy week in Santa Rosa. Enjoy!

one of the stations where the processional will stop 

the start of the procession. apparently these people carry the crosses, Jesus figures, etc.
for the entire procession, without relief.

translation

The past few days I have been working on translating the end of project report that ACDIM has to submit to MCC. It has caused me to reflect on various aspects of translation, language and the bridge-building that it requires.

words that don't translate well:
Now that I have been immersed in Spanish for a long time, there are many words and phrases I have come to know and use that do not have direct counterparts in English. There are also a lot of phrases we use in our work that don't always translate well...like "capacitation"--its like capacity-builiding wrapped up in a more succinct verb. This causes many delays in my translation.

papadas:
This is a word that basically means "something that is full of it." Or as I like to use it, describing the hot air that many Hondurans spout off on a regular basis; things that are said that will never actually happen or be followed through on (read: BS). When writing documents, Hondurans want to fill the empty space with lots of these "papadas" or meaningless phrases. Again, not easily translated to English, and it makes the English version about 1/6 as long as the Spanish one :)

a foot in 2 worlds: Through many years of study and hard work, I have come to learn the ins and outs of another language. The grammar and proper use, of course, but also the more subtle shades and tones in slang, joking, and daily interactions. This has given me so much insight into the culture that I live in and helps me get around, be more independent, and enjoy deeper relationships with people.

building bridges: this is what my fellow Honduras dweller Elise and I always talk about. We are privileged to have some experience and enough language skills to get a handle on the context here. It allows us to build bridges between Hondurans and people from North America. Whether it is a report that higher ups will read in MCC (a necessity for the funds for our work), or my family that comes to visit (a necessity for me to share my life with them), it is an honor to help them understand more about life here and communicate between the two cultures.

march meeting madness

Although March is just beginning, I feel like it is already over! Well, lets just say, there is a lot going on and continues to be a lot of meetings and commitments on the schedule in the upcoming weeks.

me, oscar and ruth

Last weekend was the annual meeting for ACDIM and so we had a lot of things to prepare. Oscar and I gave a presentation on the current project with the 4 women's groups and a financial report. A new board of directors was elected and we organized new committees for intercessory prayer, development, agricultural projects, etc. Of course, moments like this are important for any organization and it is exciting to see progress. This is the first meeting of the "general assembly" of ACDIM in a very long time. But, after almost 18 months in my assignment, my optimism is also tempered by a good dose of reality!

Why so skeptical, you ask? First of all, Hondurans love meetings! They love free food at meetings (well, who doesn't ) and they are very intense about following the legal procedures for carrying out the meeting of a given organization (whether it be church, civil society, schools, private orgs, etc). It seems that many Hondurans feel that simply by filling their schedule with meetings, they are accomplishing a lot.

My problem with this is that I fail to see the "rubber hitting the road" from all these meetings. There are books and books of minutes, committees listings, and who voted for whom as the treasurer...but who is actually making something happen? When is there time outside of the endless meetings to get things done that you decided on?

I hope that this will not be the case for the new year of ACDIM. I hope that our current work motivates people as they see we are moving forward with the project; that they understand our need for other people to be a part of what we are doing. I hope that there will be new volunteers and fresh ideas for how ACDIM can continue in this project or in other new projects.

the new board of directors for ACDIM