Is It Hot In Here? Or Is It Just Me?

Fact: I have not stopped sweating since I got here. Soy muy sudorosa. It doesn't matter how many ceiling fans the classrooms have, my shirt will be soaked by the end of the lesson. Oh well, there could be worse things. I'm saddened to inform everyone that I think my camera may have died today. I'm hoping it will resurrect itself but there was a neon picture then poof! off it went.

Throughout our time here, Dr. Don has given Karin and I different articles to read discuss. My perspective of poverty has changed since being informed about the mistakes many people make in their assumptions about poverty. A lot of people view poverty simply as a deficit, such as lack of running water, food, clothes, homes. While this is true for many, impoverished people are in their situation because of much more.
1. Broken Relationships-exclusion, labeling, etc. Even well meaning people have the mindset of, "oh these, poor people...look at all of their misfortunes." This mindset categorizes people and labels them as insufficient.
2.Misused Power-people use their power over others to benefit themselves. A lot of people give to others, not because they really want to help, but because they want to feel better about themselves or not guilty because they didn't do something.

Another thing Dr. Don has been enlightening us on is the adverse affects of short term missions. Having lived in Honduras for several years and seen short term teams come and go for weeks at a time, he's seen the aftermath. So many gringos (white guys) come here thinking they're going to save Honduras and its people. They hand out clothes, food and build them houses. But what these teams are blinded to is that by coming and building this house, they have taken jobs away from capable Hondurans and given them an attitude of, "why should we do any work when we could just wait until the gringos come down and do it?" Dr. Don's also witnessed parents tell their children to put on their dirtiest, rattiest clothes and then walk the streets when mission teams come through. No doubt that Honduras is a poor country. It battles Nicaragua for the second poorest country (to Haiti) in Central America. What people don't realize is that when they do things for people that can do for themselves, they impoverish them even more. Some people might say, "so are we just not supposed to help them?" Dr. Don practices an earn and reward system. If the schools he visits wants ceiling fans or books, he makes them learn the alphabet or numbers or stories, whatever so when they finally do receive the ceiling fan, Dr. Don didn't just give it them; they receive the fan as a result of their hard work. I also want to clarify that in emergency situations (like hurricanes or earthquakes), people can't do for themselves so of course they need help. But when we freely give away things, we create an inferiority complex in the people. That they're not good enough to provide for their own families and it causes dissension among family members, etc.

So yeah, sorry if none of that made sense or it seemed that I was going on a tangent. Just sharing what I've learned and thought was interesting thus far. Oh also, for those of you curious about the weather, we're fine. Apparently Tegucigalpa got hit with quite a bit of rain and is in a state of emergency but we're fine here in la Ceiba. I think the heat index was about 122 degrees today. A little rain would actually be welcome!! In summation, all is well, poverty sucks but so do some well-intended efforts. Whatever. Ok well I have to go teach English in a few so hasta mañana ó posible viernes? No sé pero te amo mucho!!