guatemala3

Yesterday we worked for half the day, and both sites are nearly half completed with foundations and up to the windows of the houses. We then had lunch with our families, with many tears over how quickly people can become attached and mean something to one another. We then had an official "despedida" or goodbye party, with both families, again more speaches and a lot of emotion.

After that, we went to a house dedication for another family. It was great to see a house that was completed, especially for the students. The National Board for Habitat was there, as well as Luis, the Director of HG. I met several of the board members, including the current president and the founder of HG, which was terrific. Linfield College was mentioned several times, and the President of the Board mentioned how impressive it was to have these students working on their spring break. They also saw how our students immediately started playing with the kids, including a pick up game of soccer on a dusty field nearby, before things got going. Linfield students are amazing, as they generally are very positive and willing to go with the flow of things--very little happens on schedule here, but they deal with it well.

We are currently in Antigua for a bit of an afternoon off. We have been to markets and bought coffee, and relaxed a bit. We will have our last dinner together tonight, and then we fly out at noon tomorrow.

guatemala habitat 2 posting

We have literally had about ten minutes per day for down time, so it has been hard to get here, much less possible to get any pictures up.

So far, things have gone well. The group is working hard, and we are now laying a lot of cement block. I have moved back and forth according to the need at the site, so that I could mix cement and also be able to move mountains of cement block. good times. The families are great, and very appreciative. We had a birthday and they brought donuts, something to drink and sang happy birthday for Sam.

Last night we had a guy who fought for 13 years in the Guatemala war, as a guerrilla, talk to the group. It was very powerful, as he joined at the age of 12, after his father was kidnapped and subsequently killed by the Guatemalan military. He talked about the physical and psychological scars, and despite this, managed to introduce some humor into it. He was also was very frank about the U.S. involvment in the wars and spoke specifically of the U.S. green berets and other special forces that he would regularly see directing the massacres at villages, and also responsible for the training of their counter-insurgency groups. Hard to hear at times.

Tonight I am talking with Luis (head of Habitat Guatemala) about possibly helping with a research project that they need done. Might involve HAVING to fly back here a couple of times--what a bummer that would be...

Tomorrow we head to Momostenango to see Thelma and Luis, the weavers, and that will be fun. We will work half a day, which I think will be a welcome respite after two full 8 hour days.

Habitat Guatemala

We made it to Quetzaltenango after missing the flight out of Houston. We were booked on a very tight layover, and then the plane was late out of Houston to Portland, which meant there was no way to make it back to Houston for the Guatemala flight. We arrived here on Friday then, and drove directly up to Quetzaltenango, or Xela, as it is known here. We made it in time for an orientation and to meet the two young families for whom we are building in Colonia Esperanza.

Saturday we have had a very full day. We were up early for breakfast, and went out and worked half a day at our sites. We dropped one group off, their foundation is poured and building is beginning. Our other site was dug out and set up, but we poured the foundation this morning which meant a lot of cement mixing, cement hauling, and then we moved about 400 concrete blocks down the hill.

We returned for lunch, and then went to the hotsprings near Zunil to soak our wimpy American muscles and bones. Tonight we have found out that there is a soccer match, so we are going to that. Tomorrow we head to the Chichicastenango market, before a long week of work.

One note-you may have heard of the kidnapping of 11 students in Guatemala City. Habitat folks are quite upset, as they felt that the group should not have gone to that region, and then on top of that were traveling well after dark. We have been fine, no problems traveling, and no security issues that we feel at the moment. There are also some conflicting stories on how the events took place. One issue that is a frustration of how anything outside of the U.S. and Europe seems to be "barbarous" and somehow too wild for members of civil countries to travel. While there are never any guarantees, it is important to remember that taking all of the possible precautions one can is key. We hope those kids are fine, of course but also feel that the story and the parental reaction seems to be a bit over the top.

It was the economy, stupid...

Once again, the idea that the Republican "strategery" is to criticize the new president for not understanding economic principles demonstrates the perils of "faith-based" economic ideology, as opposed to having any semblance of understanding how the system works. In part, I would argue, the problem is not so much the issue of economic theory, but a fundamental disconnect from having to deal with the consequences of their policies in any substantive way. It is possible to be faithful to this economic ideology (rather than understanding economic principles) because people like JIm Boehner and Newt Gingrich do not suffer at the hands of their failure.

Among the two greatest failures of the RNC over the last twenty years are George W. Bush and Newt Gingrich. The former now seems like a distant memory, exiting to Dallas with barely an afterthought from his own party. One would not have known that the RNC worked in tandem with GWB over the past eight years helping pass the finishing touches on an economy that is now devastating the U.S. and creating tent cities. Gingrich fell out of power long enough ago that he can apparently rise out of the ashes to reaffirm conservative economic ideas, such as small government and a faux free-market ideology that is actually no such thing in their application. Thus, we hear arguments that certain businesses cannot fail, while "greedy" individuals who have too large of a mortgage are treated as if they have sinned mightily.

Among other things, there is a major concern about the plans for us to re-start the economy. The first is that there seems to be no accountability for those who occupy the upper echelon of the system, be they the de-regulators in congress or the corporate hierarchy that took advantage. It is not economic policy, but a political spin of moralization that creates low-level economic sinners and leaving the policy saints in the clear to benefit. In the case of the RNC, they are arguing that somehow they deserve to be architects of future policies to combat the very disaster they constructed. In the case of the corporate elites, they seem prepared to buckle down and do the work of creating jobs for the rest of us, after having been greedy at a rate one thousand times over that of the average home buyer. The same people who convinced the average person to buy a home beyond their means, because they "qualified" for it, are doing another sales job on us.

It should be interesting to see what new products they will now produce for us, so that we can later be blamed for our greediness... We can best help them out by asking for less government oversight, socializing banks but not healthcare or home loans, cutting education, ending pork-barrel spending (because they obviously did so during the past 8 years), and btw, the president needs to be more positive. It is not polite to be negative about receiving a gift from someone, even if you've been re-gifted a Depression economy.

The List. Yes. No. What?

+YES+
+The closing of Guantanamo Bay by President Barack Obama. You can't lead the free world by undercutting the very laws, philosophies, treaties and ideals which make you free.

+Dick Cheney showing up in a Spy vs. Spy hat and in a wheelchair for the inauguration. Where was Peter Sellers when we needed him?!?!? "Dr. Strangelove, or: "How I learned to stop worrying and love torture"

+I spent Wednesday helping friends at Wednesday Wines get a group up on Facebook. Very cool way to spend part of an afternoon.


-NO-
-Rush Limbaugh, "I hope Obama fails. Somebody's gotta say it." No. You don't. Amazing that anything but unquestioning support for conservatives is unpatriotic, but somehow this is not. I remember being told by Eliot Abrams in the Reagan administration that we were not patriotic for the failure to support arms to the Contras. True patriotism is fighting for a better country, and clearly Limbaugh would hate to see that.

-Again, the economy may not support environmental policy change because they are "expensive." In the same week that they suggest trees in the Northwest are dying at twice their usual rate; at what point is it just too expensive not to make changes? Is this still really about economics?

-Bush suggesting that while we might not agree with the decisions he made, we would at least agree that he made the tough decisions. I also agree that gravity exists, and seem to have had about the same amount of input on that.


?What?
?Collagen in my Black Forest Ham. My ham says "wrapped in edible black collagen." the mind reels--where does black collagen come from, and are there other colors? Why does it have collagen and yet the outside of it is still wrinkled? If we are 25% collagen, and it is our connective tissue, will I take longer to decompose? Who thought of wrapping my ham in edible black collagen in the first place? Not happy about my edible black collagen...

?The complete frustration in watching Portland Mayor Sam Adams spiral into oblivion with the intern scandal. It is frustrating to watch the bedroom politics, but equally frustrating to know that his own staff was trying to warn him about the appearance of what he was doing. How does such an astute politician get into this mess?

?Sarah Palin sparring with the press for going after her kids, and then for Couric and Tina Fey "exploiting" her. If I care less, would you please go away.

?Palin redux...A book deal? Well, that's just great...

America's Sense of Self

While many would like to attribute Bush's perspective on being right on all things to him only, this tendency is one that we should examine in America in general. As we end the Bush administration and enter in to the Obama administration, it is interesting to listen to the way in which the outgoing president portrays his decisions. Hearing Bush deny that the U.S. has an image problem or is seen in negative ways, that he has worked with strong allies beside the U.S., and that we have helped lead the world as a beacon of liberty, is truly an amazing thing. What is interesting to me about it, however, is how much of a sense of self we have as a nation, and how hard it seems to view things from the point of view of the other.

There are several reasons, I believe, for this orientation. Among them is the idea of rugged individualism that seems to have caught on as a founding principle of our nation. While this may be true, when one reads documents by those founding members of our country, they are also living, wrestling with, and most importantly, dedicated to the notion of what we do for one another. The idea of service and duty are laid out frequently as part and parcel of citizenship, whereas it is now the case (as the Bush administration once suggested) that we best demonstrate our citizenship by buying and consuming goods to fight terrorism. Perversely, we consciously are encouraged to work and spend as individuals, while the notion of community has taken a holiday.

When I travel abroad, I see another aspect of how we see ourselves as central to the world, through the media. It is fascinating to my students to travel in Latin America, for example, and notice that the news is not Gringo-centric, i.e. stories that involve two actors may actually be written which do not include the U.S.A. as one of them. It is natural for citizens in most societies to have an element of ethnocentrism, it is why virtually all cultures have a creation stories of which they are the focus. However, I would argue that with few possible exceptions, no country has become so practiced at its self importance as we have. This is exemplified in our outgoing president, who literally cannot conceive of the idea of acting in concert with others, at least not in the sense of actually taking their views into active consideration.

As I listen to Bush defend his eight years in office, I must admit that while I am angry about the loss of life (which he still believes was justified in our ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) I am also deeply saddened. It is tragic to me that we had a president who consciously or unconsciously, believed that being a leader was merely "making tough decisions." Even as he justifies policies, decisions, and entire wars, the framework is one which centers around himself, his life, his views, and his personal narrative. He is literally incapable of even understanding that there ARE alternative narratives, much less that he could be wrong.

And so we need to accept to, that he is not so different from many of us in this country. We are a people who need to get out more, listen more, acknowledge other viewpoints as legitimate far more often, and accept that others can come up with good ideas that don't have to be ours, necessarily. We have become a divided nation, not necessarily through arrogance, but certainly through a lack of practice at being humble.

The List: Yes. No. What?

+YES+
+Ellen Goodman's piece on the Bush "No Regrets Tour." He doesn't worry about history in the short term. He doesn't worry about history in the long term. That's because he has people telling him who the good historians are--see Condi Rice below.

+A simpler Christmas and Holiday season, aided and abetted by a Pacific Northwest snowfall.

+Dan Rather making gains on his $70 Million lawsuit against CBS, which seems to be leading to the conclusion that a) the president did pressure CBS and b) CBS caved to the pressure on the Abu Ghraib story.


-NO-
-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggesting that we will soon thank Bush, and when "Asked about historians who say Bush is one of the worst presidents, Rice said those "aren't very good historians." on CNN.com. Yes, because historians aren't normally trained to look back at things and compare them... they just must be bad ones.

-Lexus commercials for reliving your childhood Christmases by delivering a car to your loved one. 1) these commercials have always been ridiculous, and 2) they are just crass at a time when I have spoken with so many people who have simplified and realized how little they miss all the "stuff."

-Dick Cheney on torture on The Moderate Voice.com “Did it produce the desired results? I think it did…it’s been a remarkably successful effort. I think the results speak for themselves.” Yes, we don't have those bothersome principles to stand up for anymore...


?What?
?Evangelist Joel Osteen's blank stares on Larry King's interview with him, when he was asked about gay marriage, and the article in Newsweek contesting the conservative right's interpretation of it. He claimed to not really have looked into the issue of gay marriage (but he can still oppose it), had not read the article, and indeed, almost seemed to be unaware that there was a printed media outside of his own media circle.

?The Madoff pyramid scheme and the losses to people who should know better. What happened to all of the advice about diversifying your accounts so that you didn't lose everything. Goes to show, once again, that greed trumps common sense when deregulation is the mantra. Does this give you faith in privatizing social security for everyone? Of course it does...

?Obama buddy Axelrod on Rick Warren's presence at inauguration as a "healthy thing." Unless you happen to believe in equal rights, not discriminating, or think that there is such a thing as a kinder, gentler homophobia...

?Chip Saltsman, what are you thinking? "The Magic Negro"? "Star Spanglish Banner"? Who knew that the RNC "big tent" would be back, but for bigots... Must have been going for Colin Powell's vote.