Hey everyone, I’m kind of surprised I made it down today but here I am. I am teaching an optional English class on Saturdays and it puts a pretty good dent in the ‘ol weekend. Also I had a really productive coffee meeting today. Coffee producers from my site are trying to form a cooperative, it is a slow process but we’re chucking away at it, trying to lay out the logistics and come up with a name. As I mentioned before I live in an almost entirely indigenous community (pura Lenca). An engineer suggested we use the Lencan name for Cruz Alta (I can’t pronounce it or spell it so I’ll leave it alone), but it translates to “Place of Witches.” Spooky eh? The producers didn’t like it much when the engineer suggested it. A witch is a dangerous thing here, there are good witches, curanderos, that heal people. I guess there are a few in Cruz Alta, they use traditional herbs, medicines, and spells to cure people. There are also Brujos that hurt people, in basically the same way. Two weeks ago a man died in La Campa. Supposedly, he used to be very tall but right before he died he shrank noticeably and nobody could explain his strange illness. So I’m living in a place of witches and as long as I am careful and respectful I shouldn’t come out of this any shorter. Also they can turn you into a toad if you’re not careful, I wonder if that is a cross cultural witch thing: turning people into frogs and toads. No quiero ser sapo.
Also the police caught the guy that killed my landlord’s kid this week. Some of you asked me about that in email. There isn’t any death penalty here, most likely he’ll serve ten years or so. It depends almost entirely on what the victim’s family wants. If they tell the police to put the kid away for life then that’s the way it is going to be. If they are forgiving his sentence reflects that.
So after my class today I started to walk down to La Campa in the rain. Elias went with me, he assured me the rain would stop as soon as we descended past a certain point. No dice. I was lucky and hitched a ride as soon as I hit the road but it rained on me the entire hour walk and 30 minutes in the back of the truck so you’re hearing from one mojado gringo. Wet but still grinning, talk to everyone soon. Love Joe.

Ok, kind of a strange start to the week, I wasn’t planning on being back on a computer so soon, but I was in La Campa this morning for a funeral and figure I’d catch up a little. So this weekend a kid I knew was killed in a machete fight. His brother was also seriously hurt. It just happened Sunday so I’m not sure about all the details other than alcohol was involved and I heard the fight was over one of the boy’s sisters. The kid that died was also the sun of my deceased landlord (the guy that was drunk and fell of his horse last September). This is really a sad time in Cruz Alta. Everyone new him, he had tons of family, and if you weren’t family you were a neighbor. He was only about twenty five. Machete fights aren’t extremely uncommon but they usually are not fatal (surprisingly after how sharp they keep them). I’m told the object of the fight is usually just to give someone a few scars. I didn’t know the guy all that well but had talked to him a few times, and he was a nice guy and offered to help me if I ever needed anything with my house. I know this will probably worry some people back home and I’m not even sure if I should post this. But I’m trying to be honest with my experiences down here and this is a big one. This incident has nothing to do with my safety, it was a personal matter. I’m told that this has never happened in La Campa. There aren’t violent people here, this was a drunken dispute and it ended badly, it was stupid and completely uncalled for. I stayed up all last night thinking about it so I’m pretty tuckered. I’ve got to head back and get some sleep before class otherwise I’m going to be one worthless gringo. Alright, have a great week everyone and I’ll be sure to post more soon. Love joe

Hey hey, been awhile. I’ve been pretty busy up in site since Chicago. Throughout my service I’ve been working with a group called EDUCATODOS. They’re the ones that provide the books and materials for my classes (the kids pay for the books and CDs and EDUCATODOS delivers them, usually). The EDUCATODOS program is centered on teaching using audio materials, last year cassette tapes, this year MP3s. The cassettes never worked, our tape player is garbage and the kids don’t like them anyways. So we just worked out of the books. Well this year we have a new promoter and the system isn’t good enough. She wanted us to teach only using MP3s (a fairly new digital format). So basically the kids have to come up with enough money to buy a CD player that supports the MP3 format, not something that is easy to come by in the “3rd” world and if you do they are incredibly expensive. So I went to Chicago and with the help of my parents found and purchased one, carried it up to site, and gave it to the class. The bad thing about it is that the mp3 player pretty much fazes me out as a teacher. It also didn’t do anything to change the fact that the kids still don’t like learning from a CD player.
So right now I sneak in lessons when nobody’s looking. It made me feel awesome when the kids asked me to teach, when they told me they’d rather listen to me than the cheesy “learning is fun” songs put out by the program (some of my students are in their twenties). So as with everything there is a compromise. I’m finding balance in my service. I will not be there merely to press play and change the CD when needed. It isn’t cool that I have to sneak around, but hey what can you do? I’m also still working with a coffee cooperative. It is such a slow process and it is extremely unlikely that I’ll see any closure by the end of my service. But it is amazing that these guys are pretty much doing it on their own. I’m just there for support, helping out where I can. The cooperative is much more sustainable if it doesn’t require outside input. I’ll fill you guys in on this as we go along. I hope to see as many of you northerners soon, I’m heading to the homeland in about a month. Until then peace, Joe.