Honduras, finally some news!

Excuses to everybody who has been waiting for some news on this blog. I have been busy coming home in the meantime: Meeting and greeting old and new friends, starting to deal with new responsibilities, getting used to Honduran living again. Now I will share my first impressions with you.

This picture I took from the airplane shortly before I arrived.
The air and countryside is dry at this time of the year. Tonight, after more than 3 weeks of having been here, it rained for the first time!This picture I took from Marie's (my colleague) place, where I am staying temporarily. We could smell the smoke of the burning hill inside the house. Although it might also have come from somebody, burning his waste on the street.
The streets of Tegucigalpa ... after having been to Quito, Tegus seems like a small village: The streets are narrow, the traffic -mostly stuck in slowness- is not as threatening as in bigger cities. Yet, the black clouds that the old American schoolbuses leave behind are unsurpassable.
I am careful on the streets, trying not to step on cucarachas, orientating myself between whistling and kissthrowing men of all ages, watching out not to be followed, recognizing the beautiful blue sky with its colourful clouds during sunset while it is getting dark within minutes.
I walk home from work, wondering about the heavy life of the people here, feeling sometimes small and unworthy, next to the suffering, yet smiling women and children with worn-out feet and clothes - looking at me with big, curious, hopeful eyes.
Still, life in Honduras has a lot to offer!
Even though it looks dry from above, lots of trees and plants reflect juicy fertility!

In the mornings I wake up hearing chants of exotic birds. I get up easily with the sunshine entering the window - looking forward to taste fresh and ripe mango, papaya or watermelon for breakfast. How lucky I am... I feel honoured to be able to work with enthusiastic social-artistic facilitators within Arte Acción. I feel at the right place, when I see their vision and mission of creating a stimulating alternative for people with poor opportunities, believing in their possibilities and strengthening their development.

CREATIVE THERAPY
I have started to integrate myself again within Arte Acción - lots of well-known faces and voices share the day with me while I work in the office.
During these weeks I have been updated by Marie - she is more than motivated - working intensively with her clients, who already have gone through some up- or deepgoing process in their personal therapy. The art therapy room is nicely decorated, there are quite a lot of materials, neatly put into shelves and boxes. On the door, there's Marie's calender - sometimes it is still a struggle to make appointments and really realize them, yet art therapy has gotten a much bigger priority within Arte Acción than before. The attended kids I talked to, seem proud and very happy to be in therapy. There is even a waiting list for more to come, who are longing for this personal, therapeutical, artistical attention.
In a couple of workshops with some of the kids I tried to find out what they know, imagine and think when they hear the word creative therapy. I was very surprised to read and listen to their answers, as they have a good picture already of what our subject is about. (Later in this blog, I will summarize the answers of the youngsters - once I spoke to more of them) Thanks to the continuous work of three years, carried out by CT-students, Art Therapy is integrated more and more within Arte Acción. Me, then Miriam (check out her Dutch Weblog if you want to know more about her internship experience: www.miriaminhonduras.blog2blog.nl) and now Marie (visit her Blog, if you like to read in German www.marieenhonduras.blog.com).

Tobacco is a strong medicine

I would like to share one last special situation of my time in Ecuador. One weekend we went to Tena, a little village on the Amazonian border. We stayed with a Kichwa family, enjoying the humble, natural and very friendly atmosphere.

Fausto, son of the family, guided us through their personal piece of jungle, introducing us to the beautiful virgin rainforest and some of its secrets. Only one night before we arrived, the family's father had received a treatment of an experienced shaman. In a cleansing ritual he was first bathed with water that had boiled with fresh tobacco leaves - then he was covered by powder of dried tobacco leaves from his head to toes. The treatment took no longer than 30 minutes, yet he felt incredibly exhausted afterwards. He slept all day the next day - we met him only in the evening - he told us he didn't want to eat anything, his stomach was feeling sick.
For me this story was an eye-opener. The shaman had applied the tobacco only externally. The man did not even smoke, swallow or gurgle with the tobacco - but still it had such an impact on him that he was bound to his bed for more than a day.
In his family there is nobody who ever misused tobacco. As Indians, they are most conscious about the strong effect the tobacco has on the human body.
Isn't it incredible how this medicine is used as a daily consumption product by so many people?!
Well, I can tell you that my personal interest in smoking has decreased enormously!
Until now I stand strong as a non-smoker. ;)
Here you can see the tobacco leaves being dried and conserved traditionally hanging within the never ending smoke of the cooking fire.

Latin American Impressions by Ecuatorian artist GUAYASAMIN

Dramatherapy in Quito

The last day of our activities passed easily and with visible succes. We „played“ with a group of nine children. Although there were more interested ones to participate, we gave a clear limit and carried out the activity with little disturbance.

We started with a game to stimulate concentration and focussing – on oneself and one another. Only this game obviously showed how much the children are lacking these simple abilities, even for a few minutes. Personal attention is needed – serious and straight forward stimulation towards each child.

After we finished the introduction, while most of them stayed quietly listening, we played a game, learning to express a sentence with different emotional charge. It was good pretending it's the emotion of the mask each child had made and not a personal emotion – this makes it easier for the children to strongly express negative emotions, without feeling personally confronted or insecure.

Then we formed three groups of three children, in order to create some little scenes, making use of the masks and the emotions that they liked to express the most. Fortunately, we were three adults to give company to the three little groups. Ellen, Lily (the teacher) and me.

We tried to stimulate the children to make up a place and situation in which their scene should take place. The three girls of my group soon decided to play a typical family situation. The oldest one played the mother, the other two the daughters. The mother was in love; one daughter felt sad and the other one happy. When I asked why would they feel this way, the mother answered that she fell in love with another man, one daughter said she is happy, because her father used to beat her and now he had left the house – and the sad one felt sad because of air in her stomach - that she got when she went to carry wood for the fire in the forest.

When they started to play the situation, every girl lost herself a bit in her own situation – everyone wanted to carry out the play in HER way, not listening to the others. I told them maybe it is also an idea to create three monologues. One after the other could tell about their personal story – and in the end the public realizes that the stories are all connected.

The girls liked the idea, decided who comes first and who last, then started practicing actively. With much enthousiasm and truly emotional acting they put themselves in front of the imaginary public and practiced...

After 10 minutes, there was the REAL presentation, all the children came to sit together and we were the chosen group to start the play.

This was far more problematic than I thought. After disappearing behind the stage, after various applauses and calling for beginning, the girls were two afraid to show themselves and start... In the end, with much animation and stimulation, they finally came out of the corner – nervously presenting one or two sentences, with great shyness and confusion.

Although the content of the presentations lost much of its former liveliness, it was a big step for these children to stand in front of public – even alone – to receive an applause and appreciation of the others.

This is what creative therapy on a small scale is about. The overcoming of insecurity and fear, the surprising acknoledgement of unknown abilities and strengths.

Workshop+Individual Attention= Paint+Glitter all over

Our combined workshop of Drama and Art Therapy started two days ago.
As a lot of times down in the South, things did not go the exact way we planned them to go, especially due to a much bigger group of attending children than expected...

We felt quite well-prepared, with 17 plain masks ready to decorate for the children. Of course, in a project where there's up to 80 children each day - it is difficult to decide whom to "play" with.
There are 4 groups, of different ages, accompained by the teachers - we thought we worked with one of them. In the end another teacher didn't come that day, why we chose to work with two groups. We weren't worried about it, as few children of both groups had shown up so far.
But during the day, more and more children came to join us, curious about the other busy painting and decoratoring children.
We couldn't resist to improvise some more plain masks, so that all the children could take part in the activity.
It was chaotic at times, as you can imagine. Especially when on the second day, even more children came to participate and Ellen stayed at home because of a little illness. Fortunately I had help by two volunteers and two of the teachers.
Individually, I talked to some of the children - I saw their joy and happiness, playing with the paint and the glitter, identifying somehow with the mask when I asked them what emotion they expressed.

In the end, we reflected on the activity with about 30 children between 7 and 15 years. Today we will give a clear limit - we will work with only one group - either the older or the younger one, but not with both. Making use of the created masks, Ellen is going to introduce a drama activity - playing some scenes and evaluating them with the children. I am happy to be able to observe today and to learn from her.

Para dar Esperanza (To give hope)

This is the name of the project, where Ellen is working. From her house, we travel one hour, changing buses twice to arrive at Santa Maria, an area at one of the high city's borders, from where you have a spectecular view of Quito.

The first day we spent at the project, which consists of no more than four LITTLE rooms with a grassfield in front, I got an idea of the working circumstances in the project here in Ecuador. Ellen and I were by ourselves - as it was still carnaval, the children stayed at home.

The next day, it was quite different - as soon as we arrived, LOTS of children hustled into the playing and learning place, hugging me (even as a stranger) immediately and wanting to play. Some children called for attention more expressively -others more shyly- but all of them obviously, only through their fierce and hopeful look in their eyes.

The project hosts up to 140 (!) children, usually there are around 70 attending during each day.

The youngest are only two years old, the oldest are 15 , some of them helping actively to give company to the younger. Most of the children are between 6 and 12.

They come to the project to play, distract themselves, eat a good meal- but also to learn: They learn about hygiene (washing their hands before entering the rooms, brushing their teeth after the food) but the educators also treat typical school topics with the children - helping the ones that go to school with homework etc.

There are only 3 native teachers, besides the North American directrice Ella, who gives classes to the elder ones. One psycologist, one volunteer and Ellen as a drama therapist join the team at the moment. They hope to get supported by two German psycologists soon, as well as some more volunteers, like they used to have before.

As you can imagine, there can be quite a chaotic atmosphere. When we were there with the children one teacher had to give class in the little, little kitchen, where two big pots of rice and beans were boiling on a hot gas stove; the huge flames heating the whole room instantly.

It is very surprising to see how calm the teacher stayed, how concentrated the children (apart from some exceptions of course) worked on little drawings of the Ecuatorian flag. A typical task for children, it is natural to stimulate national consciene - I have seen this in Honduras very often. Also I recognized that all the children were longing for using a ruler. It is not easy for them to create a straight line, yet very important - even for drawing the flag, that could imaginably float in the wind without no straight line. As an art therapist I would analyse the fight for the few rulers that were accessible as some big necessity for structure and control. It makes sense, when children come from a surrounding where they are mostly left by themselves, having to create their own structure and rules of life.