God Bless America!

So today we celebrated Honduras Independence Day! I spent all morning in the sun, watching a parade of schools of all ages. School after school , after school marched by presenting their "acto civico". As far as I understand every school in Honduras has to make a some kind of presentation in the town square within the the first fifteen days of September, culminating until today, (we did it the first Monday of September). The parade began with two fireman, and a handful of military veterans, and then began the two and a half hours of numerous schools.. The schools had marching bands—only one of which had something other than percussion instruments, many girls in elegant homemade dresses depicting Honduran countrysides, a dance team, and little kids parading holding things representing the country. It is a funny thing to have this “acto civico” and all this parading forced upon the students. It was amazing to see all the schools that are here, and how sincerely people want to change their country for the better, by showing they are educating the young, however, I kept thinking that in the US we don’t have this extensive parading of schools. Our school’s patriotism is always shown at football games and sporting events where we begin with the national anthem, and our parades are businesses and military who want publicity as being patriotic. What a contrast!
People stay in the US, because they have all their needs supplied, I’d even say that a lot of American’s aren’t even necessarily proud of being American, because they would rather claim to be “citizens of the world.” Patriotism in the US seems to be more of an added bonus, to be proud of where you live. But here, people are more intimately connected with the earth, there is not as many artificial things that separate man from nature like in the US. There is not air-conditioning, little electricity, even for harvesting crops there is less mechanical equipment, and most of the people live in the countryside selling what they grow on their farms. Patriotism lies deep it is here that they have their culture, their food, and their family. I spent September eleventh driving to the countryside of Intibuca to the house of one of the girls, so she could visit her family that she hasn’t seen since July. What should have been a two hour trip took six hours to get there, because the road were so bad. We actually couldn’t even make it to her house because of the mud, so we stopped and hiked about twenty-five minutes up and down some hills to get there. What a gorgeous land it was, full of pine trees, banana trees, corn, and potatoes. Her house in the shade of the pine and banana trees, was homemade out of wood and adobe so the roof reached maybe six and a half feet high. It had three parts/rooms, an outdoor bathroom, and an outdoor water station, with water straight from the mountain they lived on. It was quaint and pretty much the bare bones, they hadn’t been able to go to a store in a while because of the roads, so they had killed one of their own chickens for us and made the most amazing tamales, atole, and corn on the cob for me and the sisters. I loved it, and they loved their home too!

Tracy and some of our girls!

I think that the government assumes that there is a true need for patriotism, so that people don’t just leave their country, but I don’t know if this is the way to make people stay. Patriotism just doen’t suffice to keep people here. No one here wants to leave the land that holds their heart, yet, after years of working, after receiving the best education you could afford, and still your family is struggling to survive, it is hard not to want to leave. Ohhh God Bless America!