March 8, in case you missed it, was International Women’s Day.
At an interpretation
assignment with an 11-year-old girl and her father, I learned she is now taking
Prozac. I have seen her off and on
since she was about 9. She seems to have improved dramatically on the Prozac,
actually friendly to me when she was so withdrawn before. Psych drugs can have
some amazing effects.
I joined a dozen
others, mostly young people, at a meeting of a local Spanish-language book club, discussing a slender volume by a
Colombian author. La Perra (The Dog, a
Female Dog or Bitch). I had not actually read the book, having just come back from
Honduras, but glanced at someone else’s copy. The book opens with the dog’s death
by apparent poisoning. From the discussion, I gathered that this dog had had
human-like aspirations for partnership and motherhood, all set against a
Colombian backdrop involving actual humans. Something I have not mastered in my
own writing is that often less is more, that much can be conveyed with a few
carefully chosen words, as in this novel. What also impressed me is how book
publishing has changed in the digital age, allowing a book not even written in
English, likely with a very small circulation, to end up as a printed book,
also available electronically or as an audiobook. The group’s next read is El oido miope (The miopic ear).
Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony has certainly showcased partisanship. At his public
hearing, Democrats focused on Trump, while Republicans emphasized that Cohen has
admitted lying before, so why should we believe him now? They asked nothing
about Trump’s alleged misdeeds and used some of their brief time allotment to
express support for “the wall” and other Trump administration projects. Trump
must have felt torn being so far away in Vietnam with Kim, but even that was
not enough to distract the public from his troubles here at home. Nonetheless,
Republicans have a point. If Cohen lied under oath before, how do we know he is
telling the truth now?
Trump
has been stubbornly resistant to Obama’s assertion that he was born in Hawaii
and rejects the mounting evidence on climate change, but he has been quick to
believe Kim when he says he did not
know about the mistreatment of American Otto
Warmbier and gives the benefit of the doubt to Saudi Prince Crown Mohammed bin Salman in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
I’d like to see a
2020 Democratic presidential candidate other than tried and true centrist
stalwart Joe Biden, but, of course,
if he should be the one running against Trump, of course, I would vote for him.
Is it antisemitic to criticize Israel? That country and its leadership can be subjected to
criticism, just like anywhere and anybody else. Did Minnesota Congresswoman Omar
go too far? Quite possibly, that’s a question of judgment. Of course, Trump has
led the way in disparaging people, both as individuals and as members of ethnic
or other groups, including women.
Pope Francis was once a fresh face leading the Catholic church, an inclusive and big-hearted
pope from Latin America, popular around the world with people of all faiths. Now
he is mired in one church sex scandal after another, first, clergy preying on
underage boys, then priests sexually assaulting nuns and other women as well as
male seminarians and everything being covered up. As many of us have long
advocated: open up the Catholic
priesthood to married persons and women. While adult women occasionally do seduce
underage boys, mostly cases of female teachers getting too close to male students
(another power dynamic), such incidents are relatively rare compared to sexual
aggression perpetrated by adult males. Nor is marriage necessarily a hedge
against sexual exploitation, as Weinstein, Cosby, and Sandusky have amply
demonstrated. We are talking here only about averages and about reducing the probabilities of sexual exploitation. The
Catholic church also has a substantial shortage of priests which would be
addressed by a more expansive measure. Francis seems open to the idea of
married male priests. That at least would be a start.
One
has to wonder if the celibacy
requirement for Catholic clergy has encouraged gay men ad pedophiles to
join in an effort to curb their sexual desires? It does seem that priestly
ranks have attracted a disproportionate share of each, or is only that we are
seeing such men being prominently discovered within the ranks of one of the
world’s largest religions?
And
while we are talking about reform within the Catholic church, there also needs
to be a flattening of the hierarchy and encouragement of more lay responsibility
and authority; at least, that’s on my own wish list and something that seems to
actually be happening, though only very slowly. Yes, I have a wish list not
only for an American government free of Donald Trump and all vestiges of
Trumpism, but of a Catholic church free of sexual exploitation and excessive
top-down authority. These are not impossible dreams and I, along with others, must
do my part to help make them a reality both in our country and in the church.
As I’ve tried to show in my books and in the example of my own life, even
ordinary people like you and me can and do make essential contributions to humankind
and to the weaving of the ongoing fabric of our shared human life here on earth.
Dare
I mention the role of testosterone
in promoting sexual and physical aggression? That seems to be largely ignored.
Testosterone production in human males as well as animals influences both physical
and sexual aggression, as well as the development of strength and endurance.
Women’s ovaries also produce testosterone, but at relatively low levels. And
men also produce low levels of estrogen,
which in women promotes breast and scalp hair growth and other female
characteristics. The whole controversy now around male-to-female transgender
athletes is based on the fact that such athletes, if they transition after
puberty, still maintain high levels of testosterone, giving them a huge
advantage in terms of speed and strength in sports competition beyond what
females from birth can usually achieve, no matter how hard they train.
Male
primates and other warm-blooded animals are more sexually and physically
aggressive than females for reasons having nothing to do with social norms. While
human boys and men can be socialized to curb their physical and sexual urges,
these are probably stronger in most men than in most women and stronger than
many women realize. Some women don’t understand that male aggression, including
sexual aggression, is not just a matter of self-control and proper
socialization, though that is important, but also of biology. Acknowledgment of
this fact has sometimes been overlooked in discussions of the me-too movement and of male celibacy in
the Catholic church, as well as of male sports prowess and excessive incarceration
rates, as though human behavior is rooted only in cultural and social norms. Most
men do have more challenges than most women in curbing urges toward sexual and
physical aggression.
Dreams are often intriguing if
we can remember them. I had a very vivid recent dream about a neighbor who
drove his daughter and me to the airport post-haste, lest we miss our flight to
Hawaii. At the airport, we ran into my late son Andrew, alive and well, as he
usually is in my dreams. I asked him if he was going to Hawaii too, but he said
he was just returning from there.
Such a dream was an odd mixture, harkening back to the
attendance by this man’s daughter and me at my daughter Stephanie's wedding in
Honolulu in 2003. It was a memorable outdoor event held by the seaside. I had
traveled all the way from Peace Corps in Honduras to attend. As my Honduras book recounts, I also had
memorable dreams during my Peace Corps service, fueled, it seems, by anti-malarial
drugs. Our unconscious can be quite imaginative and entertaining.
A
longtime Amnesty West Africa staff member stationed in Paris, Gaëtan
Mootoo, 65, committed suicide last
year, saying he felt overwhelmed by the work. There was a hue and cry on-line
about how much AI pressures its employees and now AI is giving his family the
equivalent of almost $1.3 million in compensation and 7 top AI officials have
offered to resign after another suicide of a younger staff member working out
of the Geneva office. (https://www.theguardian.com/global-development.) Mootoo
memorials are being held at AI conferences around the globe. Perhaps the amount
of compensation is fully justified, given that Mootoo was a veteran employee
supporting his family. And I do not belittle the work pressures, as human
rights’ work is never done. I am a witness to that myself, even just as a
volunteer for the last 38 years, which is why I have recently taken on 2
helpers for the Caribbean, one for Jamaica, the other, the DR. However, I would
question whether AI work pressures alone were to blame for Mootoo’s suicide,
though probably confronting the many human rights challenges in his sphere
contributed to his sense of helplessness and inadequacy. Looked at objectively,
was it rational to confront those challenges by completely absenting himself
from the world? At age 65, after so many years, he might have retired or resigned
in dignity, or even taken a leave of absence as other AI staffers have done. He
could have insisted on getting more help. Was AI too quick to take major blame
when usually personal, health, and relationship factors contribute
substantially to a suicide? Just asking.
Va.
Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax, like Clarence Thomas before him, characterizes
the accusations against him as a “lynching.” That line of defense is no more
credible for him than it was for Thomas. In fact, it seems to have reduced his
credibility.
Quite
obviously, former TV star Jussie
Smollett has done considerable harm to future victims of actual racist and homophobic attacks. However,
if he wanted more publicity, he certainly has gotten it, and some of his fans
will defend him no matter what, just as fans defend Trump and also the late
Michael Jackson, despite contrary evidence.
After
my return, my daughter Melanie and I were able to visit son Jon in Berkeley
Springs, W Va, a town he moved to after being injured by a robber in Honolulu.
Now, about my Honduras trip
Before
I left, I gathered some items in my living room.
I
was fortunate to meet up with former Peace Corps health volunteer Sandy, who, like me, has health
projects in Honduras, in her case, for clubfoot, something I have tackled in
the past.
I also met again with Luis,
who had worked with me in the Peace Corps office in La Esperanza, now stationed
in the capital with the Honduran Red Cross. He has told me that the Red Cross
tries to help deportees threatened in their original homes move to new
locations. [photo]
Honduran newspapers and TV
news reports are not
shy about showing lurid photos of blood
and dead bodies. Newspapers are 80+ pages thick with lots of classified
ads, including some showing photos of houses or cars for sale.
Relatively few
private homes have internet access. Most people pay by the hour at internet
cafes.
At
a home in the capital, Tegucigalpa, the
maid Maria showed me how to make round tortillas,
not by rotating palms, I had been taught to do, but by pressing round balls of
dough flat under a piece of wax paper.
That home had two tiny but
very shrill barking dogs set off by any unfamiliar sound. Like all Honduran
dogs, they were hardly lap dogs, always staying outside, in this case in an
interior patio.
The
daughter in this family donned a costume for a function at her private school.
I
also visited a public school in the
capital, where many students are US-born, having been deported with their
parents. While I consider Honduran public education to have overcrowded
classrooms and too much reliance on rote learning, as well as stereotyped gender
roles, the children still enjoy going to school and are getting more education that
many of their parents.
No
photos appear here from the residential
school for the blind in Tegucigalpa, which absolutely forbids photos, lest
they be used for phony fundraising. The numbers of children in the residential
school keeps shrinking, with most now coming from rural areas where
mainstreaming of students with disabilities has not yet taken place. That integration
of blind and other students with disabilities into regular schools was
encouraged by me and others and is now actually taking place.
In
walking outdoors almost anywhere in Honduras, my balance is challenged by uneven streets and sidewalks, as well as by
huge holes and, sometimes, by fallen power lines. Back home in DC, going out on
errands or to interpretation assignments, I am able to navigate on fairly
smooth sidewalks and across paved streets to and from metro and bus stops. But
in Honduras, I experience balance problems walking on unfamiliar terrain,
mostly because when I was in Peace Corps there, a lightning strike and
thunderclap landed frightenly close to my right ear (as described in my Honduras book), permanently affecting my
equilibrium and also my hearing in that ear, but fortunately not killing me.
Before
leaving from Tegucigalpa for the south, I gave a bunch of dental supplies to a dentist there to distribute as she saw fit.
Traveling
this year on commercial buses between
cities, although many vendors still got on and off to sell food and patent
medicines, I did not see any vendors this time who appeared younger than 12. I
wonder if they have been outlawed?
On
the bus from Teguc (pronounced TEY-goose) to Choluteca in the south, we
passengers were hit by a sudden familiar blast of stifling heat as we descended
into a lower altitude. I carried my personal belongings with me in the
passenger section, reached only by climbing up enormous steps. The wheelchair,
walker, and suitcase of medical supplies I was taking with me had been stored
in the bus’s underneath compartment. Our bus stopped 3 times at convenience
stores and fast food establishments along the way, presumably facilities operated
by friends of the driver. The driver of this and other buses used only a manual
shift, as do most cars in Honduras, including cabs (and they also favor diesel
fuel). The bus driver is always accompanied by a youthful fare taker who
collects from each passenger. Because the various stops delayed our trip south,
I had to use the restroom at the last stop, something to be avoided if at all
possible. The smell hits you before you actually get to the open door where a pila (large cement water basin) divides
2 windowless open dark rooms, one on the left for women, on the right for men. No
toilet paper, of course. When finished, you are supposed to scoop up water from
the pila using an empty can left
there to flush, but I skipped that step in my eagerness to reach fresh air.
On
the subject of bath rooms, in Teguc and in the much colder climate of La
Esperanza, shower water is heated, if at all, by an electroducha, a scary looking electrical switch turned on in the
shower head, which often doesn’t work. In Choluteca, even in the fanciest homes,
there is only cold water, because who needs a warm shower in that climate? In
El Triunfo, it’s just a matter of pouring pila
water over your body. A pila is a cement water collection tank filled up
when only water is available. On the side of a pila is a corrugated built-in
washboard and a drain for the outflow of wash or rinse water scooped up from
the pila with a plastic bowl.
Above are the clothes I washed.
My
friend Gustavo, a judge in the
Choluteca court (as per my Honduras book), opines that the southern region is less
attractive to criminal gangs because of the intense year-round heat, usually
rising to 100 F and above during the six months or more of the dry season. Even
in the rainy season, and in the slightly shorter days of December, or at night,
it rarely descends below the high 80’s. In my more than 2 years living in the
south with the Peace Corps, I always slept with an open window, an electric fan
(if there was electricity), and a mosquito net. I have known Gustavo since
1992, when we both were invited to a Spanish-language course in human rights
conducted by the Inter-American Court of Human rights in San Jose, Costa Rica.
While
Gustavo is a judge, Honduras, like other Latin American countries, does not
have jury trials, too dangerous for jurors, subjecting them to perhaps
life-threatening pressures. For the same reason, security officers wear black face
masks covering all but their eyes when arraigning prisoners or bringing them into
court.
Gustavo's family above with live-in servant and her sister, who stays with her..
Before
traveling to El Triunfo to donate a wheelchair, walker, and medical supplies to
the health and rehab centers there, I stopped by San Jose Obrero, a Choluteca Goodwill-type store featuring donated
goods from the US. The Cuban priest who operates it is able to transport
donations back to Honduras free-of-charge in empty banana shipping containers.
He has offered to transport items for me for free as well, but I have not been
able to get them into the containers when they are in port in Miami nor to
arrange for their transport from La Ceiba on the Honduran north coast, where
the ships dock.
All
the donated wheelchairs at Obrero had missing footrests, just like the ones I
had to get rid of after they donated to me last year. And those chairs were
exceptionally pricey. The priest in charge explained to me that he had to
charge high prices to support his own rehab center. However, I did buy a set of
crutches there to take to El Triunfo.
In
Choluteca, I also visited the market stall, El
Regalon (the Give-away), family of Lesly, a young doctor I worked with in
El Triunfo, now married to former Peace Corps volunteer Sam. She is working as
a nurse practitioner, and living with him and their 2 daughters in the US. I
called them Loni and Seth in my Honduras book for their privacy, but now they
don’t mind being identified. Lesly’s dad says chicken sales are generating less
income now because of competition.
Above,paterfamilias at market stall
Granddaughter eating lunch and with brother showing magic towels.
Pinatas are for sale in a neighboring stall.
I’d
scheduled my trip to El Triunfo for Thurs., Feb. 14, but, alas, Valentine’s
Day, I soon discovered, is a big holiday in town. I didn’t recall that from the
time I lived there. The health and rehab centers were both closed and band and
concession stands were being set up in the park. Nonetheless, because I’d
advised in advance about the date of my arrival, Doctora Jeanette and a few
other staffers were waiting for me at the health center, though not technically
on duty.
Above, staff who showed up to greet me, with items I had brought.
A few patients also had shown
up. The staff told me where to deliver the wheelchair, to an 82-year-old man
who had suffered a stroke, paralyzing his left side, meaning the stroke had
occurred on the brain’s right side, so he still had speech, though was barely
audible. He was lying in bed, naked except for an adult diaper because of the
heat.
When his sons placed him in the wheelchair, he smiled and thanked
me. They wheeled him around and even outside. His granddaughter is holding one
of the magic towels unfurled.
With
a sense of futility, I brought some more books to would-be librarian Pedro Joaquin. More than 15 years on,
we still don’t have the library. My
friend who died last year and had visited me in Peace Corps, insisted that
money for the library was included in her will, but when she died last year, no
money was there. We are still at ground zero on the library, an idea that has
evolved as libraries have evolved beyond just physical books.
Thank
goodness for moto-taxis taking me and my gear all around El Triunfo, saving me
from nearly melting in the heat, though I was
sweating. The little girl is holding her magic towel.
One stop was at the home of the mother of
a girl with spina bifida whom I had helped get a wheelchair and water mattress,
but who had finally succumbed to bed sores. I always give the mother some cash
and this time I also gave her a suitcase, now emptied of its contents. She said
a suitcase was just what she needed to take with her to Teguc, where she was soon
scheduled to have surgery.
New electric stove and refrigerator, but housewife prefers her old open fire wood stove.
Above, kids typically potty train themselves by going bare bottomed.
Pedro Joaquin's twin 17-year-old daughters with his wife. I remember when they were born. (At the time. I gave their mother calcium tablets from my Peace Corps medical kit.)
While
I’ve taken crutches, walkers, and wheelchairs to Honduras over the years, it has
always been only a single wheelchair, represented to the airline as my own. But
now, I am rethinking that strategy. Would it be worthwhile just to pay for one more item of extra luggage,
since I always have to pay anyway outgoing, though not on the return, where I
only have a carry-on? On this last trip,
the layover in Miami for my flight to Honduras approached 4 hours. During that
time, an attendant to whom I gave a $5 tip had parked me in a circle occupied
by other wheelchair users and there I sat among them, unable to go anywhere
else, even to the restroom, lest I blow my cover. I decided it was not
worthwhile just to save a few dollars.
Then
I discovered a WalMart in Teguc!
Going there, I further discovered, yes, an actual wheelchair on display, so I
took a photo. However, I don’t recall the footrests exactly, as in my photo, it
looks like there may be just a sort of belt instead of actual footrests. I was
told that several wheelchairs were available, all of the same type. Those
wheelchairs each cost about $50 more than a basic manual chair in the US.
Heck,
for $50, I would gladly be done with transporting a wheelchair with me on the
plane. I could still take a walker--much easier. Hondurans were horrified that
I would be willing to spend $50 more to avoid flying down there with a
wheelchair, but if I should travel there again next Feb., WalMart in Teguc
seems to be the way to go. I might even buy 2 wheelchairs to take to El Triunfo! It would seem most practical for
wheelchairs to be manufactured right there in Honduras, but apparently no one
has taken on that initiative. It may be because few folks who need a wheelchair
can actually afford to buy one.
The
San Felipe public hospital in Teguc is over 100 years old and occupies an extra-large
city block in a dicey part of town, encompassing almost a small town within
itself, with guards at all entrances, internal parking for staff, interior tree-lined
patios and flower gardens, cafeterias, wards, operating rooms, and confusing
long winding hallways. It is a labyrinth that is hard to navigate and easy to
get lost in.
A sign on the hospital's front door announced the Operation Smile (Operacion Sonrisa) medical brigade.
First, I delivered donated
eyeglasses to the women’s ophthalmology dept.
In the hallways, armed guards
wearing face masks stood stock still,
All
staff, including volunteers like me, worst identifying buttons, citing 75 years of Operation Smile at the hospital. I have been told there has never been a fatality in all the years of such surgeries at this hospital.
.
I also had
to wear hospital garb.
Patients waiting for each day’s surgery had to
fast. Some were having follow-up surgeries. My impression is that because of
better prenatal nutrition, especially of folic acid. There are fewer and mostly less
severe cases.
Baby waiting to
go into the operating room doesn’t know what to expect.
Always, surgeries are at least 2 in each operating
room, even 3 per room in past years.
Then
kids go into the recovery room.
Below, staff and volunteers take a lunch break.
OK,
folks, let’s see what happens next Feb. Abrazos, Barbara
