| February 5, 1999 |
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Calvin College Chimes
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Semester in Honduras: By Gabrielle Darnell After four months of study, travel, and living in Honduras, every single group member returned a changed person. There were 18 of us, 13 from Calvin and five from University of MI, Westmont, and Asuza-Pacific of California. All the students took one class every month, the classes were: The problem with poverty, Development Theory and Practice, and explaining a Third World Society. In addition to these classes, each student took Spanish class that helped them at their individual level of Spanish speaking ability. Each person lived with a middle-income Honduran family, which is similar to a lower-middle-classfamily in the US. Living with our families allowed us to experience Honduras to its fullest - with food (beans, tortillas, chicken, bananas), language (Spanish), religion (Catholicism and Protestantism), and family outings to the grocery store or to the beach. However, our studies filled most of our time. Kurt Ver Beek and Jo Ann Van Engen taught the development classes while Honduran professors taught the Spanish classes. The development courses forced us to face the problem of poverty in its historical, cultural, and geographical contexts. Our greatest challenges were coming to grips with the enormity of poverty in our world today and searching for solutions to the developmental problems in both powerful and weak nations. What do we do about the fact that more than 3.1 billion people in the world live on less than $2 a day? How should we live if the North American extravagant lifestyle is not sustainable in a world of disappearing resources? What does it mean to fully and responsibly heed Godís persistent call to love the poor andbring about a just society? These questions continue to haunt us as we re-adjust to life in the United States. But we brought back more than disturbing questions. Good memories of trips and celebrations soften the memories of the harsh realities we experienced. Our studies were not confined to the classroom. Kurt and Jo Ann led many trips within Honduras to such places as US-owned factories, Chiquita banana plantations, and ancient Mayan ruins. The most influential of these trips was aweek-long stay in a rural village in themountains of Honduras, where we lived in mud and stick houses, picked coffee beans, and went to bed at 7:30 when the sun set. During our vacation, our group split up to explore various parts of Central America, including Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. In the middle of all the studying and travelling, Hurricane Mitch stomped across Honduras. The destruction, death, and increase of poverty was and remains horrifying. The hurricane deepened our questions and made the search for solutions all the more complex. The Honduras we left in December was drastically different from the Honduras we arrived to in September. And how we view our own country also has drastically changed. If you are interested in hearing some of these viewpoints and further stories, visit our website at <http://www.sdnhon.org.hn/~calvin4/> and come to our Feb. 22 chapel entitled, "Semester in Honduras: More Than a Hurricane." |