perhaps too young for cake...

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Little Matthew
(Really, they named him Mateo Josue)

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Coming to Honduras

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The other day in philosophy class I was teaching about existentialism, a philosophy with which I have myriad problems. The universe is absurd, life is meaningless, authenticate yourself with irrational leaps of faith! Hopeless and disconnected from reality if you ask me. Get out of the café Camus, mix with some common folk! Nevertheless, as I was introducing the material I mentioned that the existentialists really probed the questions of Life's meaning and purpose: "How do I create myself to be unique and significant?" "How do I live an authentic existence?" "How do I give my life meaning and purpose in an otherwise meaningless universe?" These seem to be questions that are attendant to societies that possess extreme wealth and privilege and an over-abundance of leisure time. I have serious doubts that 15th Century English peasants or even nobles for that matter, spent much time contemplating how they might make their lives unique or leave a...
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I've lived and worked in Honduras for 10 years both as a missionary, serving the very poorest of society and now as teacher, where I give philosophy and history classes to the children of the very wealthiest. I don't pretend to be an expert on Honduran society and I certainly cannot claim to have many answers with respect to issues of immigration. The whole topic strikes me as far more complex and nuanced than what many voices on either the Right or the Left make it out to be. Nevertheless, I know the milieu in which I live, I know why many poor Hondurans choose to emigrate illegally, I know why many wealthy Hondurans fly to Miami or Atlanta to give birth to their children and I know that all else remaining constant, this current caravan is only the beginning. A poor Honduran lives his life with little to no hope of ever achieving anything approaching financial stability. The people I know make their livings off of garbage collecting, selling unripened bananas and day-laborin...
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So here's an example of injustice, greed, political corruption and a general screwing of the poor and powerless and it just fills me with raw anger. Stay with me here because some of this gets tedious but I think it's necessary for understanding the problem we're facing. Very often I get asked about how the people here in the garbage dump survive, what do they do for a living? Well now you're going to find out. Many men work as day laborers in construction, a few as night watchmen and quite a large number buy green bananas that come in from the plantations of Tocoa and then sell them throughout the La Ceiba area on the back of rusting-out pickup trucks. However, the largest form of income by far here in the community is connected in some way or other to the garbage collection process. No one scavenges directly off the dump anymore, those days ended almost 10 years ago when the city privatized the dump had it covered over, converted into a landfill and barred the residen...
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