Coffee, beans, and culture shock

This morning I was just sitting down to a typical Honduran breakfast--coffee, beans, and crema* (in the beans, not the coffee)--when my daughter approached and asked what I was doing.

"I'm eating breakfast," I replied.

With surprise and a bit of what passes for derision in a three year old she declared:

"But beans aren't for breakfast!"

And I doubt most Honduran children would know what to make of her AppleJacks® either.


* "What is crema?", you may ask. I'm not entirely sure. I know that it is made from milk, has a consistency a bit creamier than sour cream, and that I like the taste far better than sour cream. I would say it is not as tangy as sour cream.

Colorblind?

Most Hondurans are brown. Like most people groups there is a range of pigment in the population. They are not as dark complected as other Latin Americans, and are darker than others.

I don't bring this up just as a ethnic curiosity. My actual curiosity is in how much of the advertising I encounter here seems oblivious to the ethnic reality choosing instead to portray very Caucasian looking models. And it is not just a matter of North American companies duplicating their ad campaigns here. Even the advertising for exclusively Honduran (or Central American) businesses like my bank tend to use very anglo-american looking models.

My curiosity with this is in part due to the excessive political correctness observed in much American advertising. Who hasn't chuckled at the absolutely improbable groups of fresh-faced ethnically diverse young people gracing the web pages of colleges and universities. (If it is a Christian college, at least one of the young people will be holding a guitar as well.)

But more importantly I wonder about the message that is being sent. Why are white people the standard? To whom are they appealing? Are the advertisers appealing to what they believe is a wide tendency to regard the European/American model as the image of what is desired? Are they trying to create that image? Are they heedless of their audience? Or, if the ads target the rich and the rich have North American tendencies, what messages are being sent to the rest of the people who see these billboards?

I honestly don't know. But it niggles at me.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat...

Today we received our first piece of genuine mail here in Honduras. We have previously received bills delivered by the issuing entity (electric, water, cable, etc.) and mail through a forwarding service (we have to pick this up at their office). But today a motorcyclist rang the doorbell and delivered a Christmas card from the states (Thanks YK!). We weren't even sure this sort of service existed!

For the detail oriented:
1) The envelope had a 98¢ stamp affixed as well as 2 airmail stickers.
2) It was postmarked from upstate NY on 16 Dec 2011.
3) It was stamped upon arrival to the airport sorting center on 27 Dic 2011
4) It was further stamped by the Empresa de Correos on 28 Dic 2011
5) It arrived mid-morning 28 Dec 2011.

Well, at least they're not dead...

Pastoral ministry typically includes a measure of illness and bereavement care. The pastor plays a special role ushering people from this life into the next. I don't have a great deal of experience with this, though I know that I don't like it much more than the next guy.

Due to the makeup of the congregation here, hospital and funeral care are not a significant part of my duties. I have attended a wake but funerals are rare. (And I am legal forbidden from performing marriage ceremonies). However, I have already discovered that there is a parallel responsibility: ministry transition care. If that sounds like a euphemism, it is. I could have written "helping people leave" or, as above, "ushering people from this ministry life into the next." This involves counseling people about ministry decisions, helping people sell their belongings, writing references, and taking people to the airport.

So far, I don't like it any better than funerals, but at least they're not dead.

Things I don't miss about America

At this point in our sojourn in Honduras (5 months and counting) you might be expecting a reasoned analysis of aspects of life "back home" for which we long wistfully. I might be able to write that post; I haven't given it much thought. I have thought about a few things that I don't miss about "home."

• Politics. Being at a distance helps me control just how much of the political wrangling (all the more pronounced in an election year) I am exposed to. When you're in the states avoiding political talk is a bit like avoiding air. Through TV and the web I get as much as I want and no political TV ads at all!
• Football fans. I don't care about NFL or college football. But I have lived the last 15 years in Wisconsin and then Nebraska, two of the most football crazy places in the country. The problem with football season as opposed to, say, baseball season is that there is far more talk about football than there is actual football. Wisconsin radio stations spend the entire 165 hours between Packer games reviewing, analyzing, anticipating, complaining, and whining. Since we spend a fair bit of our time with North Americans we do have contact with some football fans but not too many. I have never heard a Honduran talk about American Football.
• Car Commercials. There are car commercials on TV here but they seem to be far fewer than in the states. I don't know what it is about car commercials that bothers me but I have long disliked them. Of course, the trade off here seems to be that we have more perfume commercials which I can't say I'm fond of either. That and they seem to cycle the same commercials more often.
• Telemarketers. My Honduran phone line just never rings. Ever. Praise be.
• Junk Mail. For all intents and purposes there is no mail system here. Bills are delivered by hand by an employee of the company sending them. Accordingly, we get no unwanted mail at all. No credit card offers, no insurance offers, no contest entries. Nothing.

There are probably more, but this is what comes to mind today.

Christmas in July

When I was a kid our church celebrated "Christmas in July". The gist of it was that packages sent to missionaries on foreign fields took so long to reach them that if we wanted to give them something for Christmas it had to be sent in July. So we got together one Sunday evening and listened to Christmas music while packaging up whatever it was we thought would be meaningful to missionaries in Africa and Bangladesh. To my overactive young mind the thought that a package could take six months to get from West Danby, New York to Niger, West Africa was incomprehensible. It seemed like two guys in a rowboat could have gotten across the Atlantic in that time. This was the 1980s not the 1880s after all, wasn't it?

I got to thinking about this this Christmas for a variety of reasons. First, I am sort of a "missionary" now so all those missionary-ish things I remember from my childhood are put in a different perspective. Second, I am grateful that it only takes about 2 weeks for us to get things sent from the states and on top of that, there are constantly people coming and going so it is not that difficult to send or receive goods. Besides, there's not much that I want here that I can't get (perhaps more on that later).

Finally, the main reason that I got thinking about Christmas in July is because, well, to this Wisconsin boy, it's beginning to feel like July at Christmas. We have noticed, however, that in an act of what we regard as selfless solidarity, many of our Northern friends have chosen to celebrate a green Christmas as well.

We love you and hope that you have a joyous season celebrating and anticipating the Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(Note: The poinsettias here are astonishingly plentiful and vibrant. Just one of the many flowers blooming this time of year.)

Money matters

Since our arrival I have found myself carrying more cash than I ever did in the states, which is a little unexpected given the prevalence of petty theft here. Some of this is due to the fact that until a few weeks ago we didn't have a bank account and were living on cash. But when I say that I carry more cash, I don't necessarily mean by value (though that is probably true too), mean by volume. And here's why.



The base currency here is the lempira. At present the exchange rate is about 20 lempiras to the dollar making the lempira worth about $0.05 or a nickel. Lempira bills come in the following denominations: 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500. If you're doing your math quickly you've just realized that the first four of those don't amount to a dollar together. The bills' dollar values respectively are: $0.05, $0.10, $0.25, $0.50, $1.00, $2.50, $5.00, and $25.00. Yes, the largest bill that I am aware of here is worth about US $25.00. 

This means that if you are making any large purchase with cash, not only is the number of the cost very high, but you have to hand over a wad of bills. But it also means that you are likely to carry more bills than you normally would. I do not make a habit of carrying change. I put it in a jar and take it to the bank periodically. But I do carry bills. So here I find myself carrying bills with the value of change that I wouldn't bother to carry in the states.

Ironically, for system with no bill worth more than $25 it is amazing how often you catch cashiers short of change when you pay with a L500. They are forever having to ask their supervisor to break the L500 for them because they are out of L100s. 

Believe it or not, they have coinage too. This is even more ridiculous. The coins represent parts of lempiras or lempira "cents", if you will, and come in 5, 10, 20, and 50. Remembering that one lempira itself is only worth 5¢, doing the math you realize that these are worth: ¼¢, ½¢ 1¢, 2½¢. Needless to say, Ellyn gets these. 

One final note (pardon the pun). The bluish polygon that looks like an inverted ring is transparent plastic. It's the only bill with that feature. It feels very different from the rest which are made with standard paper.