Soccer

So I guess it’s been a bit since I wrote last, sorry about that. I told people that I was hoping to play some soccer here and hopefully use soccer as a way to make friends. I’ve been working on finding a group to play with since I arrived. I live about 3 or 4 blocks from a couple soccer fields but was told that you have to watch who you hang out with there. So I looked for guys from church who would take me out to play so that I wouldn’t have to worry about the crowd. I wasn’t having much luck until I got the invitation to play street soccer that I mentioned in my last blog post.

I play with a group of guys who range from about 15-ish to a few years older than me. We play on certain section of street that divides an elementary school. The school has buildings on both sides and these buildings have outside lights for security. There are a couple houses next to the school that have outside lights as well, adding to the visibility and safety of the game. The dirt road has many rocks to watch out for, plus an array of potholes scattered throughout the field.  When it rains the potholes fill with water and become mud pits. The first couple of times I played I had to get used to obstacle soccer. Cinderblock walls on either side topped with razor wire have claimed their fair share of soccer balls. We kick around whatever ball we have, sometimes it’s a normal soccer ball other times it’s a plastic 50 cent ball. We score on little 2-foot homemade wooden goals. The games are quick and usually 3 v 3. When you score, you yell “quadra” and the team that lost is quickly replaced by a team waiting.

We play most evenings after it gets dark.  I wasn’t sure people preferred to play by the sparse light after the sun the sun goes down.I’ve figured it has to do with a combination of it being cooler, people having more free time, and there are fewer pedestrians later in the evening. It is a decently traveled street with most of the traffic being pedestrian. Since every time someone mistakes our soccer field for a normal street.  We have to pause our game to let them pass safely, and then the game starts again just as quickly as it stopped. It’s always fun even though I end up with scrapes of some kind about every other game. Nothing too bad, but enough to sting when I apply disinfectant afterwards.

My world can be a little small here sometimes with a language barrier and pretty much all my time spent with family, work, and church. I’ve put a lot of energy into knowing people in these settings but it feels constricting to have that be my entire life.  I’ve been working on getting to know more people in the community and neighborhood street soccer is great for that. It’s a setting where I can interact with youth while playing and also meet people walking by. And as a result I have had some conversations with people who live really close, but might not have met if I didn’t have a reason to go to their street. It’s fun to look down other dirt roads flooded with inhabited buildings and barbed wire fences, and think of the possible friends or conversations that might exist.

Last week our street took a collection and bought a truckload of dirt to fix up the sloppy sections along our road, mentioned in the last post. I got to help filling in the mud pits with most of the guys who live on our street. My understanding is that the government is technically responsible for maintenance but couldn’t possibly keep up if they really tried. So it defaults to community responsibility. It was really cool to see the community working together to pay for and fix their road. Another moment to stop and compare cultures. The road is much better these days and it is possible to walk to work and not have to watch and calculate your every step.

Other News:

School is winding down and my trimester will end the first week of December. Then the next week I will go back to Copan for another week of Spanish classes to hopefully help my grammar become more natural.

I had Thanksgiving here. The country reps Andres and Amy Zorrilla invited MCCers who were able to come over for a Thanksgiving meal. We had turkey and a whole delicious traditional Thanksgiving meal. Incase you who were worried that I’d be missing out this year.


Thanks for reading.

Expectations

Insert your favorite cliché stating that you should resist the natural human desire to have expectations or assumptions. Things taken for granted often don’t translate cross-culturally, but you already knew that. But a personal example is I had the assumption that the lines painted on the road mean something… so far it looks like I’m wrong. Also I didn’t expect that the next neighborhood over would be exclusively black for what I’m told. I have yet to get myself into too much trouble because of misguided assumption, but I have been thinking about the topic lately.

Back in August at SALT orientation, one piece of advice that repeatedly offered was “have low expectations.” This concise phrase was to remind us that even though we are young (thus invincible and can accomplish anything we set our mind to) and volunteering for a year (where a year in enough time to accomplish anything), that the visible effect we make might not be as drastic as we have dreamed it will be. Maybe it’s because of 17 years of teachers encouraging confidence in my abilities, but I find this advice hard to swallow. As I’m approaching the 3 month mark, there is a tug-a-war is going on in my head about what I’m accomplishing compared to what I feel I should be accomplishing. In the classroom I can see progress, but in the community I still feel like that white guy down the street. I have few community members who are more than just passing greetings but I’m just starting to accumulate enough courage to initiate a conversation with a stranger.

The other evening I church I arrived with my family on time, so naturally we were early. I sat in the back by myself because my host family decided not to sit down. Then sometime during the service a middle aged lady sat next to me; I knew her face but not her name. Services have many scripture reading and most people have a Bible to follow along, she was no different. When the pastor announced the closing scripture, she found the passage and then noticing I didn’t have a Bible she offered her’s to me. I accepted her offer but insisted that we share because I didn’t want to deprive her of being able to follow along in her Bible. She recited the last verse in unison with the pastor, took back the book, and asked me if I could follow along with reading. I thought it was an odd question but assumed it was an indirect question about my Spanish ability. I responded saying I could follow along and understood most of it. She looked impressed, and then told me that she could not read and that she memorizes the passages that get read often. It was my turn to look impressed and that was the extent of our interaction for the evening. Since then a congregation of Bibles has taken a different meaning.

I have also been on the receiving end of the assumption process. I was leaving work to go home a number of weeks back and met Luis from church. Luis is a 15 years old and plays the keyboard church, also the guy who recently cut my hair. He told me he was going to play some soccer and I asked where he played trying to sound interested. I got an invitation to go play some 3 vs 3 street soccer with him and his friends. When we walked home he told me that he didn’t expect that I liked to play soccer. Well he knows better now, and came over the other evening to convince me to come play some mud soccer. It wasn’t that tough a sell.

Some random fun facts:

White socks are not for mud soccer.

The Mennonite church here has had 2 food fundraisers so far, Hamburgers and Tamales. They’re good cooks.

The rain has turned some of the roads, including a section in front of my house, into mud soup. So my walk to work now more resembles an obstacle course.