 Some Americans live in the United States. Some Americans live in Honduras. In fact, everyone who lives in the Americas, North America, South America, and Central America, is an American. Honduras is in Central America, next to Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Most of the country is mountainous, which makes it difficult to build roads and to farm. While there are several large cities in Honduras, most people live in small villages in the mountains. The mountains also affect the climate. It is cool in the hills and mountains, while it is hot and humid along the coastal plains. Mario Vasquez and his family are farmers. This is his mother, Candida, and his father, Don Gregorio. They live in the mountains in Semane. Nearly everyone in Semane is a campesino or a farmer. Every morning, Mario gets up at 5.30 so that he can work on the farm before school. This year, his father gave him his very own plot of land. Mario is clearing the field to prepare for his first crop of corn. Mario says that the most important person in his life is his father because he teaches him. Someday, Mario wants to be a farmer just like his father. In a few months, Mario will graduate from the local school. His formal education will end with sixth grade. Mario and two of his younger sisters walk about 20 minutes to get to their school. The teachers live farther away, so they usually ride in on horses. The local school has about 150 students in grades one through six. Classes start at 8 o'clock and end at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Most of the students are in the first and second grades. These children get a free meal at school. For many, this is the most nutritious meal that they will eat all day. Many of the older children stop going to school after second grade so that they can help their families on the farm. However, some children are able to stay in school. These older students in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grades share one classroom and have the same teacher. Magdalena works on the same lesson as her older brother, Mario. This is a reading class. The students are using new vocabulary words to describe the objects listed on the blackboard. They will then read these words in stories. Besides learning traditional subjects, the students also learn how to farm. Boys and girls take care of the corn and bean fields next to the school. During recess, the girls usually play games or sing and dance. Most of the older boys play soccer. Mario is one of the school's best players. He likes to play the position of forward. Peace Corps volunteer Laurel Pacien is a soil conservationist who works with local farmers. He lives near the school and loves to teach the children new games. Living in Simani is a daily adventure. I sort of expected to be going to an area where there wasn't any electricity and there's no running water here. I had to fight with the ducks to be able to take my bath. The hard thing for me to get used to was distances and transportation. No one that lives here has cars and hardly anyone has even horses. And the fact that what do I spend most of my day doing some days is just walking like getting from here to there. And Simani often feels sort of like the wild, wild west. After work, Laurel likes to spend her free time with Mario's family. She usually helps his mother and 14-year-old sister, Confessora, in the kitchen. There is always corn to grind to make tortillas. Life is hard here. These people work all the time. Gregorio gets up at three o'clock in the morning and he's not kidding. And he goes out to the farm and he starts working. And she's usually boiling the corn and then washing it and then starting to grind it. And he's already out in the field. Working in the kitchen is just as hard working out in the field. These women work from the moment they get up in the morning to the moment they go to sleep. It never stops. But at the same time, people are always laughing and talking. There's so much interaction between families and the kids. The older kids always help their mom and their dad with the younger ones and everybody has their jobs in the farm. They really listen to one another. Zero sense of unity. People helping one another. Mario's favorite day is Saturday because he can spend all day working on the farm. Mario and his 16-year-old brother Alejandro helped their father make dulce or processed sugar. Alejandro puts sugar cane stalks in a sugar mill to squeeze out the juice. The juice is cooked, cooled, and then poured into wooden molds where it will harden into blocks of sugar. Don Gregorio is the only campesino in Semane who makes dulce. It can be used to sweeten coffee and to make fruit preserves. Some people eat dulce like candy and some women put it in bread to make it sweeter. Mario's mother makes sweetened bread in an adobe oven. She must first burn firewood for two hours. When it reaches the right temperature, she'll put the pans of bread inside. It will then only take about 20 minutes to bake. Mario's family has lived here for two years and were planning to move again after this harvest. Traditionally, farmers cut down and burn areas in the forest and then use this cleared land for their crops. After several harvests, the fields can no longer be farmed because most of the nutrients in the soil have either washed away or been used up. Families then move to a new area in the forest where they start the cycle of slashing burn again. Laurel, Don Gregorio, other farmers in Saimonde are developing techniques that put nutrients back in the soil. When farmers use soil conservation methods, they can then farm the same fields without having to move. Adapting new ways of farming takes time. Therefore, many campesinos still use slashing burn techniques so that they can grow enough food to feed their families. However, slashing burn farming, along with cattle grazing, firewood cutting and unregulated logging are destroying many forests in Honduras. There are many people working to solve the problems of deforestation throughout the country. Peace Corps volunteers Christine Turnbull and Drew Stoll are environmentalists and live along the northeastern coast. To help people here understand the problems caused by deforestation, they also work with Hondurans to help protect the tropical rainforest. A tropical rainforest's life system is at different levels. You have the canopy, you have the mid-level, and then you have the ground floor where the mammals are and all the insects, most of the insects. So it's multi-layered. A tropical rainforest is very important in Honduras because Hondurans get all their drinking water from watersheds, from rivers, basically. And all these rivers come from forests that are in the mountains. Drew, Christine, and the community are working together to try to solve environmental problems. One of their most important projects has been helping the Honduran government establish a national park along the coast. This park is called Puntasul and is the third-largest protected area in Honduras. Throughout Puntasul, there are many small villages like this area called Miami Beach. The people who are already living here will be able to stay, but further development of the land will be controlled to protect the environment. San Juan is another town in Puntasul. They are having their annual Patron Saint's Day celebration. Most Hondurans are Roman Catholic and have a festival each year to honor their town's patron saint. The Hondurans who live here are called Garifuna, or black caribs. They're descendants of escaped African slaves who first lived on Caribbean islands and eventually settled along the Central American coast. Irene Randleman was a school teacher in Philadelphia and is now a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in several of the Garifuna schools. I would say to the students in the United States of studying Central America and South America that there is a segment of history that needs to be included within the total history of black history. The Garifuna, when I was in school I never heard about the Garifuna. The Garifuna does have a culture. It does have a history. Garifuna culture is a combination of their African traditions and Native American heritage. One important expression of their culture is dancing, particularly the style called punta. These Garifuna students often dance the punta and play traditional music during school assemblies. While the Garifuna are concerned about losing their cultural identity to the Spanish majority some of their traditions are influencing the rest of Honduras. Far from the Garifuna villages the punta is a popular dance in cities. Mercedes Padilla and her younger sister Maria practice the punta in front of their house. Mercedes is 10 years old and likes to dance. Someday she wants to study ballet. 12 people in Mercedes family live here including several cousins. Her mother works at home taking care of the large family. They live in San Pedro Sula. The city has become the business capital of Honduras. During the past century many companies from the United States have set up banana plantations in the surrounding fertile valley and coastal flatlands. The industry prospered and many, many people moved to the region to work on the banana plantations and for new businesses. In fact, San Pedro Sula has become the fastest growing city in Honduras. Mercedes studies for one and a half hours. She hopes to be a teacher someday like her older sister. Family has their own responsibilities. Mercedes helps by washing her school uniform every day. After the chores are done children in the cities of Honduras enjoy many of the same things that children in the United States do. Mercedes and Maria like to play with their dolls. As in many families the kitchen table is where everyone meets to talk about the day. This afternoon, Mercedes' cousin, Jesse came home with some exciting news with the help of Peace Corps volunteer Dana Messinger. Jesse and 14 other students have set up a real bank in their high school. Jesse is the bank manager. The student bank runs exactly like a big bank does and it is a bank that is only for students. The students are able to go to the bank to deposit money and go to the bank and borrow money. There's even a credit card that is issued through the bank that they're able to use in their cafeteria and the essence of the program is to allow these kids to make their own decisions. The day begins early for the Padilla family. Mercedes starts school at 7.30 in the morning during the coolest time of the day. Classes end at noon when it starts to get hot. All the students are responsible for taking care of the school grounds. While the girls sweep the breezeway the boys cut the grass with machetes. Each class also cares for its own garden plot. Mercedes and her fifth grade class are learning new vocabulary words just like Mario's class. As the teacher gives them a new word the students look it up in their dictionaries. Later they will write their own stories using the new words. Mercedes, Mario and all the children in Honduras are especially proud when they sing their country's national anthem at school.