Busy and busier!

Manu in Tegus and all around

Our lives have been very busy these last couple of weeks. Manu was in Tegucigalpa in a meeting about natural resources. He stayed in a house of his friend who is also a human rights lawyer. For Manuel this time was very rewarding as his evenings prolonged until the night as they were changing experiences and most of all, Manu learned about the reality of a human rights lawyer here in Honduras. There is still so much work to do in this beautiful country.

Manu started giving classes of english and for his suprise there were loads of people who wanted to participate. So we decided that we will form two groups and Pauliina will teach the other one even though she is quite busy with her dance classes and preparation of coreography that she is doing after work. Well, the groups are great, so we are enjoying this extra efford, too.

Manu is getting busier also with the UN food programme. This is one part that he enjoys as he can go more to villages.

Moments together in La Ceiba

We took a short break and we went to La Ceiba. They say here in Honduras that Tegucigalpa works, San Pedro Sula thinks and La Ceiba enjoys. We certainly enjoyed! First of all the fact that we could walk without fear at night in the streets was very liberating (here in Tocoa it is not such a good idea for the security´s sake). Pauliina enjoyed the capuccinos and Manuel the bookstores. At night we had a calm and quite romantic seafood dinner. As Ceiba is one of the centers of punta-music, we decided to go practising! We think we are getting better! At least the local garifuna people were smiling at us. Hmmm, we wonder why.

Pauliina learning different ways of research

Pauliina has been travelling all around Honduras. Firstly she was again in Santa Rosa de Copán visiting earlier mentioned Chabe and Reca. This time she also participated a course about gender and participative research that this wonderful couple gave. Pauliina found the course highly enlightening. On top of that she had again a chance to spend some quality time with Chabe and Reca. Hopefully we´ll see each other soon again!

The legends of Cico

Soon after Pauliina went with Daniel and Roxana (collegues from FSAR) to Cico. Cico is quite near to the Nicaraguan border and the voyage was very long. Getting closer to Cico the streets started to get worse and worse. We had to pass one river with a small ferry (basicly some wood put together and a small motor in the back), we passed deep rivers by car and we had to close the windows so that the water doesn´t come in, sometimes there were herds of cows which blogged the way and we had to close the windows again so that the cow´s horns won´t hit us. All the time we were enjoying and laughing! We also saw some beautiful garifuna villages, we stopped in some deserted beaches and swam in the Caribean, we admired the view of the mountains and admired the curious animals of the jungle. Finally we were in Cico in a small village called San Alonso Rodriguez. These peasants are building houses with the local materials like adobe and FSAR is supporting this proyect. Pauliina made some interviews and put the village to work together using participative research methods. The results were very enlightening for both sides. After hours of hard work we sat with one of the families with whom we prepared some "cafelito, tortillitas y frijolitos" in their owen made of earth. These villages don´t have electricity nor other luxuries, but they do have tight family and community ties, loads of local knowledge and a wonderful sense of humour. We listened our eyes wide open stories about how they have survived storms, floods, puma´s, hunger, diseases, narcotrafficants, multinationals ecc. They also told us some local fairytales and legends which would be worth writing down for the future generations. All this under the full moon which painted the view indigo blue and the sounds of the jungle. We were treated with such kindness and hospitality even though they don´t have much (except loads of little children). In this work these moments are the ones that truly reward all the travelling and the bites of the strangest insects suffered. Unfortunately our camera is getting fixed so the pictures will have to come later.