Since the last post about my Christmas in Mexico, not a whole lot has happened, but I figured I'd put in a few words to keep the fam updated on my status and whatnot.

Days have been lazy and slow. We drive or hike somewhere most days, check out a few new sights, and spend most of the day lazing around the hotel, reading, and swimming. I bought myself a mask and have been diving around the rocky areas looking at the fish. It is really pretty incredible. I probably saw more different kinds of fish (in the wild) in the first 30 seconds than all the rest of my life put together. It's like a huge aquarium. There are even some small blobs of coral in places. One challenge has been resisting the urge to go off swimming by myself more often.

There's an old Canadian couple in the room next to ours who just sold their house and are spending their time travelling around now. The guy, whose name is Art, gave me a book that he wrote with some of his own creative scientific theories in it about continental drift. I didn't really have the heart to tell him that the continental drift theory was replaced about 20 years ago. He and his wife are both obviously very lonely, and they are really friendly and helpful and want to visit as much as possible. They're also both pretty old and somewhat loopy, especially Barbara, the lady. It must be pretty sad and lonely travelling away from your home and friends like that in your declining years, trying to see as much of the world as possible while dealing with failing health and memories. I don't think I'd do it. Better to be among friends, even if it's in a retirement home or something. Interestingly, they live in the Bridge River valley in British Columbia, where I expect to be doing a fair amount of field work next summer. Art says they only leave BC in the wintertime when the cold is hard to deal with, so I have promised to come visit them next summer when I am up there.

We are going to be cooking some turkey (not a turkey, since we have to do this in two toaster ovens, but some turkey, i.e. two legs and a breast) for Christmas and some other veggies and stuff. Amber and I went to a supermarket in the large nearby town of Manzanillo the day before yesterday and brought back a ton of food, so we have plenty of gringo eats for Christmas. I bought Amber and Link some gifts in the states and brought them with me, but I don't have anything for Terry (Amber's mom) or Barbara (her grandma - yes, another Barbara). They both buy stuff from the shops constantly so I'm not sure what I could get them that they don't already have. Hopefully a thank you will do. Maybe a card. The opportunity to go on this trip was pretty awesome in and of itself.

Okay, rambling. Time to stop. Love to everybody; have a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year. Sorry I'm not in Washington to be there with you.

G

Wow... sitting down to write a blog post after so much time brings back strange memories. Namely of typing these things up on sticky keyboards in the stifling heat of Choluteca, my backpack and several bags of groceries sitting next to me. It's strange that only traveling seems to motivate me to do this.

We had an epic journey getting here. When I left Bellingham on Wednesday afternoon, there was about an inch of new snow on the ground and it was piling up fast. Mount Vernon already had at least three to four new inches as I drove through. Amber, leaving Bellingham around 1:30, later reported to me that there were already four inches of new snow by the time she left.

Seattle was bizarrely clear; I spent the rest of Wednesday there visiting with Maya and Jake while waiting for the flight out at 5:00 a.m. on Thursday. The plan was to meet Amber & co. at the airport. She called me at about 9:00, however, to say that our flight to Phoenix had been cancelled and the next one didn't leave until Friday. We resolved to drive down to Portland and catch another flight leaving at 11:20; from there we could catch a later flight from Phoenix to Puerto Vallarta.

So that night, Maya dropped me off at a hotel in Sea-Tac where I got about four hours of sleep before we piled into the car again and continued on through the dark and lots more snow, four hours down to Portland. As we parked and walked to the bus stop to go to the airplane, it was snowing so hard that my bag was covered in seconds. Things looked grim, but it cleared up almost immediately afterwards and our plane was able to take off without incident.

Because the delay resulted in us arriving in Puerto Vallarta at 9:30 pm, we had to stay the night at a hotel there and finish the drive to Melaque, another 3.5 hours by car, this morning. We got settled into our hotel and have been relaxing and exploring our surroundings. In some ways this town reminds me of the Honduran beach town of Tela. It's about the same size and has a similarly laid-back atmosphere. The beach is stunningly beautiful though, better than any I have been on before, and the town is clean and quite full of gringos.

So much of this area reminds me of southern Honduras, and so much is different. Oddly, the trees are similar but the small plants are not. One of my favorite sights has been the plantations of light blue agave plants, hiding behind big front gates and elaborate wooden signs of the inevitable tequila distillery in the middle of the plantation.

Our hotel is beautiful and not the least bit ostentatious. Nuff said about that. The weather is absolutely frickin gorgeous. 80-85 in the daytime, cool at night, sunny.

Travelling with Amber's family is going to be an interesting experience, I can tell already. She is a rock and her grandma, the trip sponsor, is a travelling expert. Link and Amber's mom, however, are pretty green. They have enjoyed the heck out of themselves thus far though, which I'm especially glad is true for Link, since it's a bit hard for him to be outside his comfort zone.

I expected this all to be a big jolt (weather, culture, suddenly being back in Latin America), but it's almost ucanny how natural it feels to be here. The two weeks that stretch in front of us, which I first worried might be a bit long, now suddenly seem far, far too short.

Love to everybody,

Gabe

OK, I'll admit it - I achingly wish I were as awesome as this guy: http://xkcd.com/archive/

On the other hand, it's very comforting to know that my generation is coming up with this kind of stuff.

Got into a long and interesting discussion with mom today when I mentioned that I don't give a damn about contributing something to society, because I think that society is an abstraction that will never be convincingly or permanently impacted by my actions nor do I think that there is any way that one person can concretely improve upon it. People who make such claims are bullshit artists extraordinaire. If you change human beings' external circumstances but invest no time, friendship, or knowledge in those actual human beings you're pretty much just slapping a new coat of paint on the same rusted-out, busted-ass, rickety old ocean liner. Or so I said. This is one of those conclusions I came to via the Peace Corps. Furthermore, I said that trying to fix social problems on a large scale was a big waste of time and that social changes were simply a completely uncontrollable process. I also claimed that the events we mistakenly identify as having triggered social movements were in fact just the first convenient excuse to come along at time when social change had become inevitable given existing social conditions.

Mom cited some contrary examples, none of which I can recall right now but she made some excellent points. Ok wait, here's one - the interest other countries have recently taken in Columbia causing the Columbian government to get all embarrassed, get off its butt and deal with the FARC. If other nations hadn't intervened, would things in Columbia still be the same today? Maybe. Given the rudimentary understanding we had on this topic, both viewpoints were based mostly on speculation.

If I had to personally take my mom's side of this argument I'd probably want to mention outstanding leaders such as Ghandi, Hitler, Jesus Christ, etc. It's pretty hard to say that outstanding individuals haven't had real effects on human history. Was there some social necessity present that created these leaders? Some void into which someone inevitably had to step? If Hitler hadn't led Nazi Germany, would someone else simply have emerged and done the same things? Or was it the individual will of these people - their unique existence and their conscious choices that was the real driving force behind the social changes that surrounded them? I'm pretty sure this is a topic that has been hotly debated by the historians, and I'm no authority to present my views on the matter, but it sure is an interesting question to think about.

When it comes to my own life, however, I've found that it's most fulfilling and appropriate to concentrate on the small, concrete, and human. When I said I didn't give a damn about society, I was being entirely honest. Society certainly doesn't give a damn about me, so it'd be pretty meaningless to invest my mental or emotional energy in that particular one-sided relationship. It's just about as abstract as a devotion to God, which is another thing that many people find meaningful and I just can't get on board with. Nope, I don't think I owe allegiance to anything besides the people in my life that I have enough contact with to understand on a personal level and if I want to make a difference in the world, I'd do best to start with trying to make a difference in their lives. In fact, I don't believe I have the right to go even that far if it involves neglecting myself, because then I'll just end up contaminating them with my own problems. If you can't even keep your own shit in order, what business do you have presuming to improve other peoples' lives?

Footnote: This blog post was definitely made possible by Kurt Vonnegut. I know I'm under no academic requirement to cite my (unofficial) references here, but in this case it feels ungrateful not to.

The other day I suddenly got all emo and uninstalled all my online multiplayer computer games

in one fell swoop. I have previously vacillated back and forth with how I feel about being a gaming geek; some days I feel like I've wasted colossal chunks of my time doing it and some days I scoff at that kind of silly crap and accept that for some reason or another, it's been an important part of my life. Both of these things are probably true. Computer gaming got me an internship in California with somebody I'd never met before who then became a great friend of mine, and gaming has, if anything, been immensely helpful to my social skills. As a hobby it's cheap, fun, and accessible. I love the imaginative voyage of single-player games and I love the competitive challenge of online games.

However, I guess I just decided I wanted to try and allocate my time in different ways. A large part of it had to do with my gradual disillusionment with the world of online gaming - its inability to advance beyond anything more than a hedonistic playground for foulmouthed teenagers. There is a vast, VAST untapped potential for this medium. And what do we get? Derivative, uninspiring, and often unfinished pieces of software, designed to be ever more efficient at shocking your senses and testing your reflexes. Overall, computer games have actually gotten noticeably LESS deep and mentally challenging in the last decade, and I think most older gamers would agree with my opinion in that matter.

I disapprove of "quitting" games because it rarely works - usually, just wanting to not do something anymore isn't a good enough motivation - you need something tangible that you'd RATHER be doing that takes you away from the other activity. This is why most people who say they are quitting are full of crap. The people that really quit just disappear from the online world, because they've found something that holds their attention more. I guess we'll see if that happens to me or not.

I won't say that I'm done with games because that would be silly - it's something I like to do, and I try not to say things that could make me a liar in the future. It's just that in the last couple of years, I had a chance to get used to not playing computer games very much, and these have been unquestionably some of the best years I can remember. My life was different in a lot of other ways in the Peace Corps so I can't be too sure that those two things are connected, but I'm going to try this idea for awhile and see how it goes. I feel like I'm doing it for the right reasons now finally - not out of shame or guilt for enjoying a "nerdy" or "childish" hobby, but because I want to move on to other things.

Well, I guess updating this blog every week was a big fat lie. We'll just have to see how often I can do it.

I've started working as an on-call emergency substitute teacher in the Burlington-Edison school district, and hopefully I will be employed by the Mount Vernon S.D. by next week as well (since

only having on-call jobs in one district is making it difficult to work often enough). Being back inside our public school system for the first time really since I left it upon graduating high school in June of 2000 (was it really 7.5 years ago? My God...) has given me an interesting new perspective on all kinds of things that I took for granted or didn't notice when I was a student.

As a substitute, your main challenges are to maintain order in a room full of 30 kids who are urged to make trouble by childish impulses or raging hormones , to understand and adapt to all the unique rules and standards in your various working environments, and if you manage the first two, to try and follow along with the absent teacher's necessities as closely as possible so that they don't lose a day with their kids doing nothing in the hands of an inept substitute teacher. I never imagined it as being a particularly stressful job, but it is somewhat, because managing other peoples' kids feels like a pretty big responsibility and once you find yourself in that role, it's hard not to worry about whether or not you're doing it as well as you possibly can. As with most things in my life, the biggest challenge is not taking myself too seriously.

Our public schools in and of themselves are really fascinating environments, and have a significance that most people probably don't think about. Our whole social order in miniature lives within every one of those buildings, complete with government, laws, criminals, and justice. In fact, it seems to me that the real purpose of public schools is less to educate children about the physical reality of the world than to imprint them so strongly with the norms and rules of our social system that when they emerge, they'll be able to function instinctively in our society.

Take for example the simple act of sending somebody to detention. A wrong of some kind is committed in the classroom and the teacher, acting as policeman, writes down the kid's crime on a piece of paper and removes him/her from the rest of the class, where he/she goes to sit in an office somewhere isolated from the rest of the group and watched by a school official. In order to get out, the student usually has to talk to the school official and provide some kind of justification as to why they know what they did was wrong. It's almost exactly like sending an adult to jail and releasing them through a parole hearing.

Another interesting thing is the way teachers are isolated from students both socially and physically. We don't use the same bathrooms, don't relax in the same spaces and don't discuss sensitive topics with them. The whole effect is to discourage kids from thinking of their teachers as normal, fallible human beings whose ideas can be called into question. A little more disturbing even is the way the school faculty extends their influence through willing "student leaders" who often act as representatives of the school among their colleagues.

Don't get me wrong, a functioning modern high school of 1200 kids is a miracle of social control. Given the parameters, I don't think the situation could be any other way. There aren't enough teachers, and the basis of the our education concentrates too much on the intellectual, and not enough on the human, development of children.

All this makes me think that the old feudalistic model of making society function through the more powerful controlling the less powerful hasn't really changed as much as we'd like to think. We've just gotten a lot more subtle about it; better at it. Is it possible to have schools, or a society in general, based on caring and human relationships rather than a controlling outside force? Does man's nature even allow it? I know one thing for sure; we're not going to find out anytime real soon. There's just too damn many human beings in the world.

Gabe’s Peace Corps Book Log

Now with ratings!

1 – Teh Suck

2 – Bad

3 – Decent/good

4 – Very good/excellent

5 – A++, would read again

Title – Author – Rating

(x2) = read twice

1. Wicked – Gregory McGuire – 3

2. Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon – 2.5 and a WTF

3. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson – 4

4. Siddartha – Herman Hesse – 3

5. Ishmael – Daniel Quinn – 3

6. A Blessing on the Moon – Joseph Skibell – 3.5

7. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe – 4.5

8. The Handmaidens’s Tale – Margaret Atwood – 3.5

9. The Education of Little Tree – Forrest Carter – 4

10. (x2) On the Road – Jack Kerouac – 5

11. (x2) Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller – 5

12. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair – 4

13. (x2) Slaughter-House Five – Kurt Vonnegut – 5

14. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut – 5

15. (x2) Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe – 5

16. Romeo and Juliet – Da Bard – 4

17. King Lear – Da Bard – 3

18. (x2) Timequake – Kurt Vonnegut – 3

19. (x2) One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez – 4.5

20. Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions – Richard Erdoes – 3

21. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway – 3.5

22. The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene – 4

23. Angel of Darkness – Caleb Carr – 3

24. The Street Lawyer – John Grisham – 2

25/26. Wheel of Time 3 + 4 – Robert Jordan – 2.5

27. Victory – Joseph Conrad – 4

28. A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson – 4

29. The Aquitaine Progression – Robert Ludlum – 2

30. Valhalla Rising – Clive Cussler (Worst. Book. Evar.) – 0.5

31. A Brief History of Time – Steven Hawking – 4

32. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain – 4.5

33. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho – 3

34. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs – 3

35. (x2) A Confederate General from Big Sur – Richard Brautigan – 3.5

36. (x2) True History of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey – 5

37/38/39. Wheel of Time 5, 6, + 7 – 3

40. The Man with the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren – 4.5

41. (x2) La Sombra del Viento – Carlos Ruiz Zafón – 5

42. Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates – Tom Robbins – 5

43. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown – 3

44. Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal – J.K. Rowling – 4

45. (x2) Zorro – Isabel Allende – 4.5

46. A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul – 3.5

47. Candide – Voltaire – 4

48. Plainsong – Kent Haruf – 4

49. Jayber Crow – Wendell Barry – 5

50. Ironweed – William Kennedy – 4

51. Ratking – Michael Dibdin – 3.5

52. On the Beach – Nevil Shute – 3.5

53. The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad – 4

54. Nostromo – Joseph Conrad – 5

55. The Farthest Shore- Ursula K. LeGuin – 3

56. Moby Dick – Herman Melville – 5

57. Typee – Herman Melville – 3

58. Wheel of Time 9 – Robert Jordan – 3

59. (x2) As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner – WTF (tentatively rated 4)

60. The Beach – Alex Garland – 4

61. Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurty – 4

62. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner – 4

63. The Portable Faulkner – 5

64. The Rocket Boys – Homer Hickman – 3.5

65. Cosmic Banditos – A.J. Weisenberg – 4.5

66. The Bonesetter’s Daughter – Amy Tan – 5

67. Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jarod Diamond – 4

68. Anthills of the Savannah – Chinua Achebe – 4

69. The Sparrow – Mary Doria Russell – 3

70. Lazarillo de Tormes – Anonymous – 3

71. The Ghost of (Canterbury?) – Oscar Wilde – 2.5

72. Franny and Zooey – JD Salinger – 4

73. Tristes Tropiques – Claude Levi-Strauss – 3.5

74. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides – 4.5

75. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison – 4

76. The Monkey-Wrench Gang – Edward Abbey – 5

77. Batman and Robin – Michael Jan Friedman – A TEN!!!!!

78. Sick Puppy – Carl Hiassen – 3.5

79. Angels and Demons – Dan Brown – 2.5

80. Fong and the Indians – Paul Theroux – 3.5

81. Herzog – Saul Bellow – 4

82. The Songlines – Bruce Chatwin – 3.5

83. Falling Off the Map – Pico Iyer – 3

84. A Stillness at Appomattox – Bruce Catton – 5

85. August 1944 – Robert A. Miller – 3.5

86. The Botany of Desire – Some Dude – 4.5

87. Cold Fire – Dean Koontz – 3

88. The Giver – Lois Lowry – 4

89. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera – 4

90. Jack Maggs – Peter Carey – 5

91. The Kite Runner – Khalid Hosseini – 3.5

92. The River Why – David James Duncan – 3.5

93. Friday Night Lights – H.G. Bissinger – 4.5

94. Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac – 4

95. The Mother Tongue – Bill Bryson – 3.5

96. The Eternal Game – David Shenk – 5

97. The Magician’s Assistant – Ann Patchett – 4.5

98. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez – 3.5

99. The Ordinary Seaman – Francisco Goldman – 4.5

100. Eats, Shoots, & Leaves – Lynne Truss – 4

101. Great Short Works of Edgar Allen Poe – Guess Who – 4

102. State of Fear – Michael Crichton – 3.5

103. His Dark Materials Trilogy – Phillip Pullman – 5

104. Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded – Simon Winchester – 3

105. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush – Eric Newby – 4

106. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley – 3

107. Green Hills of Africa – Ernest Hemingway – 2

108. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles – 4.5

109. The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood – 4.5

110. My Name is Asher Lev – Chaim Potok – 3

111. Skinny Legs and All – Tom Robbins - 4

Well, I knew that my blog was going to be updated less frequently once I got back into my old lifestyle, but man I didn't expect to go over two months without writing anything here. I really enjoyed writing about all my experiences in the Peace Corps, but I think a large part of the motivation that kept me doing it on a regular basis was that I felt that I really had something interesting to share; something worth writing about. I got a fair amount of positive feedback and encouragement to keep writing, which was very much a pleasant surprise. Knowing that there were actually people out there reading this blog gave me a greater sense of duty to keep it updated.

Then when I got back, as I should have forseen, everything changed. Suddenly I was doing nothing that seemed interesting or noteworthy enough to bother writing about. In one sense it was helpful, because I was able to slide rather easily back into a comfortable routine. As I understand it, other returned PCVs may get a little more singed on their re-entry back into the atmosphere of the regular world. Unfortunately for me, my urge to put up anything on my blog died immediately and almost entirely. It was exactly what I was hoping wouldn't happen.

One thing I have learned from the positive feedback that I got for this blog is that I'm a much better writer when I'm simply trying to describe real things exactly as they are. This makes sense, because I've gradually come to understand that my character tends towards a very dry, factual assessment of the world. Many of my personal attributes are directly related to this. I can be very naive about other humans' tricks and schemes, I'm absolutely terrible at lying, and try as I might, I suck at writing anything that requires making stuff up. So when the factual events in my life are too tedious to bother describing, I really don't have anything I can write about.

I have to figure out a way to change this, because now I'm facing the prospect of nine months without any decent challenging projects or intellectual hobbies until I go to grad school (assuming I get in) and I feel like I'm rotting on the vine. Therefore, I am going to try and keep finding interesting things to talk about here at a frequency of no less than once per week - even if it's something really short, and I'm the only one reading it. Therefore, the content is probably going to take a drastic turn for the geekier, since I'm pretty much just indulging myself now.

I already have something else interesting to talk about, so I won't cheat and claim to have fulfilled this week's requirement already and just save this until next week.

Someone had posted a link on an internet forum that I frequent to an article talking about how testosterone-driven male behavior leads them to attempt humor a lot more than women. (article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7153584.stm ). I posted a couple responses and was ridiculed by some other forum members for trying to act clever and intellectual. I kind of like what I wrote though.

Quotes from the article:

"Research suggests men are more likely to use humour aggressively by making others the butt of the joke. "

"Often the men's comments were mocking and intended as a put-down. Young men in cars were particularly aggressive - they lowered their windows and shouted abusively. "

I thought the article was really perceptive, and I wonder if that aspect of male psychology has really been studied much. It makes a lot of sense if you think about the way males are, in the human species and otherwise.... always trying to outdo each other in order to impress the females. In our society there's really nothing that's generally considered funnier than a good "burn" (the internet provides many examples of this) but I have a great appreciation for people who can be funny without having to put others down. Mocking is certainly the easy way to humor. But is it really the only, or even the best way to be funny? Not at all.

I acknowledge, of course, that I am weird and most people find this kind of thing hilarious. But then, most people don't like to think very hard, and as I said, put-downs are the easy route to humor. Why? Because they require no creativity. Human beings are full of flaws and it's easy to find them and point them out if you are so inclined. Add a few swear words that are easily mixed around with each other in amusing combinations, a dose of superior attitude, and there you have it. Insulting humor goes down easy because it's always comforting to have more ways to rationalize yourself as being above other people somehow, especially if you're insecure.

There are, in fact, nobler routes to being comedic. A good example of someone who's an expert at non-negative humor is Ellen DeGeneres. To me, she is extremely clever and genuinely funny. Or how about the movie The Big Lebowski? Many people from my generation would cite it as one of the funniest movies ever made, and it relies almost entirely on silliness and surreality.

Don't get me wrong; I think satire can be hilariously funny when done in a subtle way (see: Stephen Colbert roasting GWB at the White House Correspondent's Dinner), but I think that put-down humor is often used as a crutch by people who aren't really funny and clever but want to be seen that way.

There. I wrote about Something Interesting.

A warning to other readers: I am mostly making this blog entry in the interest of preserving an account of what-all I did during my last couple weeks in central america, because I know I will be glad to have it later when I can no longer clearly remember the trip, but it will be long and boring to read.

After I finally left La Ceiba, I spent a day and a half in the town of Tela on my way back towards Tegucigalpa. I pulled into town in the morning, and while checking into the sketchiest dive hotel I have ever stayed at, I suddenly ran into a couple of European travelers (one woman from Germany and one from Austria) who were looking to do the same thing as myself that day - namely, see the Lancetilla Botanical Gardens on the outskirts of Tela, an area of approximately 2,000 acres that used to be an experimental station for the United Fruit Company. We quickly hired a cab to take us out there, and once at the reserve, hired a guide to show us around the farthest reaches of it. Your vacation expenses can actually stack up pretty quickly in Central America in this way, but sometimes it is worth it - most of the best things to see are private and require an entry fee, and paying a guide will get you a very interesting source of information that you otherwise would not have. I normally am not the kind of person to have much interest in guides, but I am always curious about the biology and physical/human geography of any place, so having a knowledgeable local around to pester with questions is a major plus, even if you have to pay for the service.

This was the case in Lancetilla, although I quickly tired of our guide Pedro's inane jokes and leery attitude towards the European women (at least they weren't phased by it). We got to try like 8 different fruits that I've never had before in the arboretum, saw some ridiculously huge trees, and got photos of a fantastic butterfly. We also saw a humongous freakin' snake slide across the path at one point and into a pile of dead branches. It was black and yellow, probably four inches in diameter and eight feet long. No anaconda, but the biggest snake I've ever seen in the wild. No pictures, unfortunately.

The next day I left Tela, attempting to reach my friend Josh's village (El Majastre) that afternoon. I had to get on the bus at like 5:00 am, and I still didn't make it to El Majastre - traffic in the city of Tegucigalpa, which I had to pass through, tied down my taxi cab and I missed the crucial 11 am bus out to the municipality of Guimaca, the main stepping-stone to El Majastre. I ended up spending the night in Guaimaca and randomly running into Josh there the next morning - he was on a standard trip to town with his wife and step-family. We ended up hanging around Guaimaca the entire day, finally leaving for the village at about 7:30 pm.

I had planned to briefly visit Josh and then hop over to another friend's site on the other side of his protected area (Montana El Chile) but the fact of losing essentially two days in Guaimaca forced a revision of plans. Instead I hung out in El Majastre for two days, helping fertilize about an acre of coffee the first, going hiking the second, and savoring my last taste of slow-paced country life. Josh's step-family are some of the friendliest, most hospitable Hondurans I met during my time there, and they cook some amazing country food. It was another difficult parting, but they are all people that I fully expect to see again in the future, one way or another.

The time had finally come to pick up my brother Sam from the airport and start our (shortened) trip around Central America. I spent my final night in Tegucigalpa and picked The Brah up from the airport at 9 am the next day - Tuesday, October 9th. Our plan was to first make a brief visit to Agua Fria before continuing on to Nicaragua and Costa Rica, but getting there the same day would have been unlikely so we tarried awhile in the capital, having some coffee and a brief visit with Claudia, my former Project Specialist and collaborator (ok, boss) in the new volunteers' training program. During the time we worked together with the trainees, we had become really good friends and never got much of a chance to socialize outside of a work setting. Just getting to have one last coffee was a little sad, but I was glad of at least that opportunity.

Sam and I left for Choluteca that afternoon, and rolled into town at around 5 pm, making sure to check into an air-conditioned room at my favorite budget hotel downtown, the Santa Rosa. We visited a little, rested a lot, and had a classic Choluteca dinner of fried chicken and beer.

The next day, misfortune struck our planned trip to Agua Fria in the form of relentless precipitation that stopped the public buses and all the private vehicles that could have taken us to my village. We analized the situation carefully and decided to cut our losses rather than lose a full day in a hot town with very little to do and no guarantee of good weather or transportation the following day (the opposite actually being more likely). Instead, we caught a bus to the pleasant town of San Marcos de Colon near the Nicaraguan border and spent the rest of the day wandering around the deserted streets and the surrounding area and planning out places to visit during the next seven days. In the evening we caught Annie at home (the current volunteer in San Marcos) and had a nice visit with her.

It was Thursday morning, then, when we really began our trip in earnest, getting up early to cross the border at El Espino and begin a whirlwind succession of buses and taxis through Nicaragua that got us to the colonial city of Granada by about 2 pm. We spent the rest of the day leisurely exploring the beautiful colonial part of town and trying to stay as cool as possible in the sweltering heat. After evaluating the different options, we decided to try and hike on the nearby Volcano Mombacho during our subsequent layover day.

The next morning, we got up early and caught a bus about fifteen kilometers out of town to the main turnoff up to Mombacho. There was transportation available from the base of the volcano up to the visitors' center on top in the form of a large army truck outfitted to carry groups of tourists, but we decided to walk up and save the money as well as see more of the countryside. I estimated that it was about 7 or 8 kilometers to the top from the main road, and the majority of the hike was through coffee plantations with maybe a 1.5 kilometer stretch of protected cloud forest near the top.

From the visitors' center, we could hike on a very short trail around one nearby section of the park by ourselves, but if we wanted to hike the longer and more remote trail we had to hire a guide, for "security" reasons. It would have been a disappointment to do the free hike and only see like a mile of the cloud forest after all that effort spent getting to it, so we grudgingly forked over about fifteen bucks and went with a guide to see the longer trail. It turned out to be quite a challenging hike, almost all on steep up or downhill slopes with lots of stair climbing. The conditions sucked (it was clouded in and drizzling/raining the whole time) so we got none of the promised amazing views and also didn't see any wildlife, but our guide was energetic and full of interesting information, and the cloud forest itself was a joy to behold (though permeated by mysterious sulfury smells most of the time - guess the volcano isn't entirely inactive). We ate lunch at the visitors' center afterwards, hiked back down the mountain, and were back in Granada by midafternoon to take showers and relax for the rest of the day.

The next stage of the trip was to travel south from Granada across the border of Costa Rica to the town of Liberia, a medium-sized provincial capital in the northern part of the country. It was another day of travelling that took less time than I had expected, even though we got stuck for almost two hours at the border crossing, mostly just waiting in line to get through. We had a couple of questionable ex-patriates to talk to while we waited, but that conversation got old pretty quick.

Anyways, Liberia was another stiflingly hot and humid town, and it rained even more there than it had in Granada, which just seemed unfair. During the three days in that town, I don't believe we saw the sun there once.

We stayed in a cheap, mosquito-ridden hostel (nevertheless, nicer than that place in Tela) and took another layover day to hike in the nearby Rincon de la Vieja national park, another volcano that had lots of interesting things to see around its flanks. There were some mud pots and bubbling pools, some really nice places to swim, and the hike to the top of the volcano was supposedly a great one, but we didn't get to do it because the trail was closed due to bad weather. So we hiked around in the tropical dry forest - so-named because it gets really dry during the dry season - and avoided swimming because of the danger of flooding (it rained even more than on our Mombacho hike). The highlights were probably the fantastic gnarly strangler figs that seemed to be the dominant species in that forest, and a couple good wildlife sightings of medium-small mammals. We also passed a pretty dramatic waterfall, which according to the sign posted near it, does not flow at all in the dry season.

Our final stop was to be the cloudforest reserve of Monteverde, a point that I might normally avoid because of its being a super tourist hotspot, but we had very little time at that point and couldn't get too far off the beaten path. Regardless, we almost didn't make it there because of - you'll never guess - bad weather. This was the exact reason I missed out on Monteverde the first time I was in Costa Rica, travelling with mom, and I wasn't going to be deterred again. Unfortunately, there are no paved roads that go all the way to Monteverde and all of the three or four dirt access roads were in critical shape. We left Liberia a little late and ended up having to backtrack at one point because of bad information that we had gotten, so at four p.m. we had to break down and spend a (relatively) large sum of money on a four-wheel drive taxi that got us up the hill to the town of Santa Elena, the main stopping-off point for people going to the reserve.

Santa Elena, surprisingly, turned out to be relatively cheaper to stay at than other places we had been previously, our hostel was really very nice, AND there was a much-needed laundromat there. We pulled into town pretty late, got ourselves installed, and prepared to take a trip to the cloudforest reserve the following day.

Hiking around in Monteverde was probably the best experience of the trip, in no small part because the rain actually let up for half a day, allowing us to finally get some views out over the surrounding countryside and hike comfortably dry instead of soaking wet. The cloudforest itself was a gem, and we saw more wildlife, most notably a butt-ugly central american porcupine, an orange-and-black tarantula, and a posse of howler monkeys. We concluded the day drinking and socializing in our hostel's kitchen with the other foreign travelers staying there.

The final leg of the trip was to travel from Santa Elena to Alajuela, just outside of San Jose, and spend the night there so we could get to the airport early enough for my 6:30 a.m. flight the following day. The trip to Alajuela was pretty quick and we got there around noon, which left me time to do a side trip that afternoon and visit some organic producers that I had been wanting to see in the town of Alfaro Ruiz, near Zarcero. These were the guys that had come to Agua Fria on a couple different occasions representing the Costa Rican NGO CEDECO as part of an agricultural extension program to support producers starting up with organic agriculture in other Central American countries. After a bit of searching around, I found their fresh-foods packaging facility and had time to visit briefly with a guy named Henry, who had gone to Agua Fria the second time CEDECO sent extensionists out there. It was pretty cool to see how far they had come since starting, and helped me end my experience in Central America on a positive note, seeing that the challenges faced by COCAGUAL could actually be surmounted.

The next day I got up at 4:30 a.m., and just about 20 hours later, I was home. This, then, concludes my blog entires about my time in Central America (at least, THIS time). I plan to continue posting things here, but they will probably be much less frequent because now I have a cell phone (GASP) and my family can call me whenever they want. I would like to write a little about what coming back has been like, but maybe some other time.

Gabe

After I posted that last blog entry, I spent a couple more days in Tegucigalpa fixing up things and finishing my service. I meant to leave the city Friday in the afternoon, but a miscalculation related to opening my bank account forced me to stay one more night. Apparently, when you deposit money in the bank (and sometimes when you open a new account) those funds are not available the same day. I put ALL of my cash into my account and then got an ATM card, expecting to take a small amount of funds out later that day to get me to Siguatepeque. I ended up broke and stuck in Tegucigalpa, and I had to bum off my site replacement, the newly-sworn-in volunteer Elizabeth to get a hotel room and survive the evening. Hilarious. I will be able to pay her back when I visit my site with Sam, at least.

That wasn't the last of my bank troubles. This morning I was getting money out of an ATM here in La Ceiba so I could head out to the city of Tela, and the damn machine ate my card. This time I got the cash at least, but I most likely will have to stay here another day while I wait for a technician to go fix the ATM in the afternoon. I've already been in La Ceiba for three days and would like to move on, but I don't feel inclined to get too upset about it, because I know very well worse things could happen.

Since I got to La Ceiba late on Monday, I mostly spent that evening settling in. I was tired out from nights staying up late and hanging out with friends in Tegus, so I went to bed early and got up late on Sunday. I meant to try and get out and see some of the national parky stuff around here, but absolutely everything was closed and I couldn't really get any information about where I might want to go. So I just hung around La Ceiba; walked out on the pier, learned the town, went to see an awful movie (Evan Almighty), and took it easy. Just after noon I wandered into a really beautiful park off the center of town in the property of the Standard Fruit Company which is still based here, albeit in the hands of Hondurans these days. There are large fields of pineapples, bananas, and african palm all around belonging to them. I talked to a guy hanging around one of the buildings and he told me that the brand we see in the states for this fruit is Dole. So when you eat a banana with the Dole sticker in the U.S., it may come from here.

Yesterday, I finally did manage to make it out of La Ceiba and went hiking on a trail in Parque Nacional Pico Bonito. I did a lot of asking around and it seems that for the most part, there really aren't hardly any hiking options for this park. Most tourists go out to the Río Cangrejal to raft, or just stay at a lodge up at the base of the park, but even these two focal points don't really have any trails. There is just the one I went on, which was apparently built by a USAID project. It was short but very sweet, passing two significant waterfalls, several nice places to swim, and going through some really nice elevated-canopy rainforest. I was there all by myself, probably because it was obvious all morning that the weather was going to be bad.... and it was. I got absolutely poured on, but somehow even that made the experience more fun. I stood on a rock at the edge of the river and watched it slowly rise during the storm. Unfortunately, I forgot the stupid camera. D'oh!

While the sights around La Ceiba, and Honduras in general are not too shabby at all, I think my favorite thing about travelling in this country is the openness and friendliness of the people. On Sunday, when I got out of the movie theatre I found that the streets were totally flooded from the heavy rainstorm that had fallen while I was inside. I had to cross a part of the road with over a foot of water in it, and to avoid getting my tennis shoes soaked, I started walking myself along the side of a chain link fence that ran next to the road. About halfway down it, a guy on a motorcycle pulled up alongside me and offered me a ride to the other side, which I accepted with delight. This kind of thing is not uncommon around here. I wish we could learn not to be so afraid of each other in the USA so people would be more open to such random acts of kindness.

-out-

I left my site for the last time (as a Peace Corps Volunteer) on Monday morning, and by Friday I will no longer by a U.S. government employee at all. It's kind of wierd.

The last few days up to my evacuating Agua Fria were pretty busy ones, filled with lots of urgent appointments both work-related and social. It wouldn't exactly be accurate to say I "finished" my "projects", unless you accept a definition of both words so broad that it'd be a statement worthy of an American politician. Nevertheless, I feel pretty good about my service overall. Perhaps I ruminate most often about the specific things I really wish I'd done and hadn't, but I think it's in my nature to concentrate more on negative outcomes and think about what I should've done differently or how to fix existing problems. As others have pointed out, I am typically my own biggest critic.

Leaving Agua Fria was harder than I expected. Up until the last couple days, I hadn't thought about it that much, and I don't think most people were all that clear about when I was actually leaving, so it wasn't until those final days that I was really saying a lot of goodbyes to people and imagining what it would be like not to see them again. Based on the kind of conversations I had throughout the rest of my service about my eventual departure, I was a little apprehensive about the goodbyes because I expected them to contain a large amount of people asking what stuff I was going to give away when I left. It was an extremely pleasant surprise that, when it really got down to the last few days, I heard almost none of this. Just people telling me how sorry they were that I was going, that they'd miss me, that they appreciated the work we'd done, and that they hoped we could stay in touch somehow or that I would come back to visit sometime. It was very touching. Suddenly, it seemed a lot harder to leave than I'd expected.

On Saturday, my final day with the Maestro en Casa kids, we had a little party and cut a cake, and they all signed a Maestro en Casa uniform shirt for me to take home. That same day, I went down to talk with the captain of the soccer team I'd played with most often, to see about exchanging the team's old ball (signed by all the players) for a new one that I'd bought the previous week. Instead, they decided to give me a signed team jersey, since the old ball was so stripped and soggy that it was impossible to write on. They also decided to plan one last soccer game on the following day, Sunday, my last day in site.

The game was a typical one for us, on a rocky and rutted field in hot, humid weather and played rough. I got a going-away present from the other team of severely overextended quad muscle that I haven't hardly been able to bend past 90 degrees until today, but before that happened I managed to sink a penalty kick (my teammates insisted that I take it) and we went on to win 5-4. After that we signed the jersey and talked about all the fun times we'd had.

Later that evening there was a small going-away party in the cooperative's office, with wonderful food made by one of the women members, orange juice, and coffee. Just some of the people I had worked most closely with were in attendence, and we talked mostly about the different projects we'd done, expressed appreciation for each others' contributions, and speculated about the future of middle-school education in Agua Fria and the coffee cooperative. It was really nice; ideal for my personal preferences. I got some more going-away presents and everyone went home to sleep at bedtime around 8:30 pm. :)

That's pretty much all that happened worth mentioning. I've been in Tegucigalpa since yesterday now, and will be here until Friday (and maybe Saturday) fixing administrative issues and doing my final medical tests. I was invited to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the new trainees tomorrow at 11 am, which should be interesting. Working with them has been kind of like watching my own service come full circle.

I'm going to miss being part of an organization that I'm proud to be part of. I don't think I've especially felt that way about other labels I've carried previously in my life, besides maybe family surnames. High School Student at Lakeside. Kid from Washington. Geology Student at Western. Cross-Country Runner. I just didn't have any emotional attachment to them (but then, I've never given much of a damn about being a member of any specific group anyways). But I've truly enjoyed being able to say that I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer. I guess now I understand a little better that aspect of the appeal of political parties and religions - belonging to something you believe in.

After I officially sign myself out of service on Friday, my general plan of action until Sam gets here October 9th is to go see some of the cool stuff on the north coast of Honduras that I've never gotten to see yet (like the national parks and wildlife preserves, which are reportedly awesome; the best in the country), and visit a couple volunteer friends on my way back. It should be good times. I'll try to keep some small updates posted here.

One more thing before I end this post - I took my Spanish interview yesterday, and got rated Superior (the highest level you can achieve in the type of evaluation we use). Considering where I entered the country at, this is an achievement worth feeling good about. And I do, very much so. It was a goal I'd had for myself but was more wishfully hoping than expecting to achieve. Going into the interview I didn't feel like I was doing very well, and expected to get what most other people in my group who started at a comparable level to me got - Advanced High. I was pretty psyched when I heard the result, and have been feeling awesome about it since yesterday. Now I can officially claim (with evidence to back it up) that I am fluent in my second language. Schwing!

Gabe

Well, the time has finally come (sort of). My peace corps service officially ends the 28th of this month, and I need to spend the three days previous to that date dealing with pending administrative and health issues in Tegucigalpa, so I only have about twelve full days left in my site. This week and next I’m going to be working on fixing as many loose ends as I possibly can before I scramboozle (which certainly isn’t as many as I’d like to), but if I stuck around until everything I have been working on was definitely concluded, I’d be living for the rest of my life in Agua Fría.

Probably what I’m going to get the most closure on is my Maestro en Casa 9th grade class, although even there I won’t be able to stay until they finish this school year. I have had to make some tests to be applied and graded in my absence, but I’ve gotten to the point of knowing who the capable people around here are that I can leave this kind of job with, and I’m not extremely worried about it. Right now we have a couple extra Saturdays, since it suddenly turns out that we’re ahead of schedule, so I’m doing a small presentation on AIDs that I learned two weeks ago along with the trainees. I think this is a pretty great idea and I’m glad I got to learn and implement it before leaving.

The proposal to get a Centro Básico built around here that I started working on a couple months ago is now officially turned in, but I suspect there will be follow-ups necessary to keep it moving. In Honduras, simply having 70 sixth graders annually with no access to further education isn’t enough to get a project built on its own merits. You need to have political connections as well, send five proposals, stage a demonstration outside the regional office of Public Education, etc. Either that, or start greasing palms left and right, which isn’t really a viable option for myself or the Agua Fría community organizations. The least I can do, I guess, is recommend the project in the strongest possible terms to my replacement (still don’t know who this is going to be just yet, but I will next week). As I may have mentioned previously, it’s really a shame I fell into this idea too late to follow it all the way through.

Speaking of the trainees, I finished my last section with them last week, which was probably a good thing since I was starting to get strange paternalistic feelings towards them. This group of PAM volunteers is quite substantially different than my training group was. Very few of them have the kind of background you might expect for a Protected Areas Management volunteer (Only a couple are real educated hicks, like several people in my group were). They’re also so cool and unflappable with the cultural adjustments, at least as far as I can tell. I seem to remember that we had a much harder time with it. Then again, as a whole they speak much better Spanish than we did. Furthermore, they seem to have a minimal interest in partying. The entire time I was with this group, I don’t think I ever heard a discussion about being inebriated. You couldn’t spend five minutes with my training group without that subject coming up. I think my overall assessment is that they’re going to do a great job, as long as they’re patient and stick it out.

I’m starting to reflect a lot on my service: the good times, the bad times, the fun, and the frustrations. Certain vignettes stick out especially. I clearly remember the feeling I used to get walking from my house up in the middle of freaking nowhere down to Agua Fría every day, marveling every time that I was actually living in another country, I was actually walking to work through coffee farms and tropical deciduous forest, seeing tropical birds, tasting tropical fruits, and working with people who spoke a different language. It was so cool. That kind of excitement wore off a long time ago, but I can easily recall what it was like.

I remember with a distinct shudder all the conversations I had with the director of the Maestro en Casa program, trying to work out a solution between us and the elementary school so they wouldn’t lock us out of the classrooms on Saturday. I’d try to drown out her bitching about the elementary school’s director by imagining what it’d be like to stand up and say “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? THESE ARE TRIVIAL PROBLEMS!! THE ONLY REASON THEY EVEN EXIST IS BECAUSE YOU AND PATRIK BOTH PUT YOUR PERSONAL PRIDE BEFORE THE EDUCATION OF 80 STUDENTS! HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT PEOPLE LIKE YOU CAN BE EDUCATIONAL DIRECTORS?” But of course I didn’t say anything. Then I’d have to go and play both sides of the argument, reasoning, pleading, and cajoling until I got them to come to some kind of agreement through me, hating every second of it. Was it worth it? ABSOLUTELY.

I recall the way all the conversations I have with Isaí go, the both of us alternately defending or denouncing Honduras or the United States, discussing what was wrong with the world or awesome in Agua Fría, or going over the miniscule details of his agricultural methods. Every conversation with Isaí is a kind of argument, but somehow you’re always in agreement at the end.

I clearly remember something a técnico said yesterday in the middle of giving a training session on small agribusiness management. He was talking about how it isn’t good to blindly follow the directions of other people; how it’s important to try things out and see them for yourself. He then gave the example: “If I hear a preacher say something, for example, in church, I don’t just going to take his word for it without thinking at all myself! I go home and consult my own bible, and see if he got it right!” Cue hand-over-eyes-forehead-slap. Incline head forward and shake slowly, if desired. Talk about stifling cultural paradigms.

Another incident that comes easily to mind was the cold, windy night in January 2006 when we started loading up the 2005 coffee harvest to send out in trucks the next day for Siguatepeque. It took three times as long as anybody thought, and at 11 pm I finally started pitching in just so the poor workers, who were all threatening to go home, could get the job done. At about 2 am we gave up and I half-slept curled up in the middle of a nest we’d made of full coffee bags on Doña Ada’s front porch with cold air leaking in all night (somebody had to be there so they wouldn’t get stolen).

I remember lonely nights spent in the middle of the city of Choluteca, and nights spent alone but happy in my house, well-accompanied by a candle and a book or a pen. I also remember the night I spent during my first October here when a thunderstorm rolled in around 7 pm and raged until after ten, the lightning strikes hitting so close that I’d count less than half a second between the blinding flash and the earsplitting crack. I sat out on my front porch for awhile as that storm started, and actually had to go cower inside because it got so violent I was too scared to stay out any more. Half a bottle of rum saw me through safely.

I could go on like this with recycled material all day, but you get the general idea. Right now I mostly feel impatient to finish going through all the motions that need to be gone through, and anxious to see my family again (and Washington!). Stand by ‘til October 19. :)

Thinking about getting involved with, or donating money towards an international development organization (known more commonly these days as an NGO, non-governmental organization)? Maybe you want to know a little more about the directions in which international development is going these days. Maybe you want to know about the kind of work that different NGOs are doing in reality, on the ground. Maybe you just want to know where to send your used socks and baseball equipment (if that’s the case, don’t bother reading this – you won’t need it).

Honduras, famously the second-poorest country in the western hemisphere, has a ton of international aid organizations currently at work, ranging from large projects from foreign governments (like USAID) to small local groups, such as the coffee cooperative that I work with which sits at the extreme “small” and “local” end of the spectrum.

This isn’t really my area of expertise enough for me to write much of an analysis of international development in general, but concretely, I can point out some of the characteristics of NGOs and their projects here that, in the opinion of myself and other Peace Corps volunteers, do good work, and why:

Effective NGOs tend to be run on a local level, by local people. The bigger and more remote a project is, the more money gets wasted in administrative costs, the less contact there is with beneficiaries, and the less knowledgeable about local situations the project designers tend to be. USAID is a good example of an organization that routinely commits all these sins and is generally held in low esteem by Peace Corps volunteers. Homegrown NGOs are finally starting to get their act together around Honduras and my opinion is that they generally do much better work than the big projects, even though they may be under-funded and have less technical capacity.

Effective NGOs tend to concentrate on basic social services projects. A good project should benefit everybody in the village or town where it is built, and the more specialized the project is, the less people are going to participate in it. The three types of projects that are most built, most all-inclusive, and most effective are those that deal with water, education, and health. Seriously, you can’t go wrong with a water or latrine project. One of my favorite projects done around here is the water system-with-water-board. Water is important enough that the water boards function a lot more commonly than other community organizations because people put pressure on them to function. The necessity of making a water board work also teaches accounting practices, leadership, organizational skills, and community responsibility.

Contrast this kind of project with the expensive irrigation systems USAID was donating (and still is, I think) to produce huge quantities of jalapeños - complete with market contacts to sell them. Those projects tended to benefit only a few large producers with the capacity to make them run, and despite being supposedly highly profitable, are now mostly abandoned. This style of development has been mostly phased out by now on a worldwide level, but USAID is to this day still supporting it. Why waste time with this crap when Honduras has lots of places with no water, no latrines or health centers, and a national educational system that never should have made it out of the 18th century?

Maybe the Honduran government shouldn’t be getting so much of a free pass to neglect water, health, and education, but there’s probably a way to apply pressure to them to get their act together while continuing to support basic social services projects.

Effective projects don’t give stuff away. Charity sucks. It undermines local production and makes people dependent. Charity on a large scale does more harm than good. This is not an exaggeration.

I guess I hit on all the most important topics, especially in my first point. If I had one suggestion to make to people interested in international development, I guess it would be this: Either just support basic social services projects, or actually go to another country and spend some time working with the people there. Some development projects do in fact cause more harm than good, so be careful.

A final note - it may seem like I'm picking on USAID a lot, but they certainly do some good work as well, and there are many other organizations that make the same mistakes they do.

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This week has been pretty weird. I came back from working with the trainees and traveling a lot, to find that there wasn’t anything to do real immediately in my site besides prepare for future events. I’ve finally gotten close enough to my Closure of Service (COS) date that I’ve started to think about it quite a bit, and this has produced a large range of mixed feelings. I really want to see the States again, but I don’t want to leave my beautiful little house in the mountains. I really want to have running water and hot showers again, but I don’t want to deal with regular working hours. I really want to see my family and old friends, but I don’t want to leave my friends here.

This might partly be made easier by the fact that most of my best Peace Corps friends in Honduras are gone – my normal COS date was August 12, so now the only people left from my training group are the ones that extended their service – myself, my friend Joshua, and Nicole Hubby, who lives WAY up on the north coast. And I’m all by my lonesome down in the south. :( I suppose I am going to have to become a nostalgic has-been with the new trainees and load them with all my hopes for everything that I didn’t accomplish as a Volunteer. It’s kind of funny, how young and green and enthusiastic and idealistic they are – just like my group must have been two years ago.

I don’t know if I had mentioned this previously, but the large project that I have been working with COCAGUAL to apply for got approved by FORCUENCAS and we are all set to start working (we started this grant application around April). I haven’t talked about it in much detail here because of past experiences with trying to get money and not wanting to say too much until it was solid, but it is now – so here is what will be done:

- Build a roofed area and a shed to make and store solid/liquid organic compost for sale as a source of income for the cooperative.

- Produce 1,000 baby coffee plants for each member of the cooperative to use in the renovation of their plantations – replacing old and decrepit coffee.

- Provide seed for 100 meters of a special kind of live barrier (erosion control method) for each cooperative member.

- Do several different training events related to organic certification, plantation management, commercialization, and how cooperatives work.

- Go on a field trip with 12 people to Nicaragua to see a technologically-advanced organic coffee farm and how it works.

- Get some equipment for the cooperative like a telephone and antennae for the office where I work.

- Implement to a small degree some other improvements in people’s farms, like worm composting, drying with screens, and making better traps for honey-waters (a contaminating by-product of coffee processing).

FORCUENCAS is putting in 700,000 Lempiras, which is like $35,000. The entire project probably costs about $50,000 when you factor in all of the work that will not be compensated, and will directly benefit about 45 producers and their families. I’m pretty happy about the project because it was essentially formulated by members of the cooperative (especially Isaí) with me helping to direct their ideas. Most (maybe all) of the work will be done after I leave, but at least I have the satisfaction of getting a freaking project approved, which would not have been the case if I’d put all my hopes on the BCIE (Central American Bank of Economic Integration -jerks!!). I only regret I wasted so much of my time with the BCIE and we didn’t start working with FORCUENCAS until it was almost too late, but that’s how the cookie crumbled I guess. The person to replace me in Agua Fría will not be bored at least. They’ll get to teach English to my Maestro en Casa class in October too, haha. Good times.

Smooches to all my homefries,

Gabe

A few weeks ago I noticed a couple white bumps on my left elbow, pretty much like pimples but a little bigger. I drained them and figured that would be the end of it. Instead, after a little scab formed, they got infected again. This isn't extremely unusual for me around here, especially with the climate, so I drained them again. After over a week of this they still weren't healing, which is somewhat outside the norm and had me a little concerned. Each time I cleaned the two spots, they got infected again and the scab grew a little bit bigger.

After a couple weeks, I noticed that some recent mosquito bites that I had gotten on my legs and scratched had gotten infected too. This is also not uncommon for me here, but before they've always just been red and sore for a little while and then gotten better. This time, the same thing started happening on my leg that I had on my elbow. Puzzling, considering these were scratches where I'd BARELY broken the skin.

Last Saturday (not yesterday, but the Saturday previous) I went to the Feria of San Marcos de Colon, a nearby town, and had a great time. However, the next day I noticed that I had another infection on my hand, this time from a scratch so minor I didn't even remember getting it. My theory is that I did it with my own fingernail while riding a mechanical bull. By Sunday night it was horribly infected, and I had a sore red line creeping up a tendon along my arm. That's when I finally realized I had to go to the doctor and get some antibiotics, because my immune system was getting its ass kicked. At this point, I was in Santa Lucia getting ready to start working with the new Peace Corps trainees the following day and I didn't want to miss work, but there didn't seem to be any choice in the matter.

The doctor at the Peace Corps office cleaned all my infected spots (six total) with iodine and gave me an oral antibiotic as I'd expected. The following day they took a culture of one infection and did a blood test on me to see if I had any kind of chronic disease (apparently diabetes can cause this kind of thing; who knew?). I kept cleaning myself and taking the antibiotics per doctor's instructions, but it wasn't until a couple days ago that it became clear I was definitely getting better. My blood test also came back normal.

I know I don't have very good habits with regards to taking care of my cuts and scrapes, but on the other hand I'm used to healing from scrapes as minor as the ones I had. This thing sprung up literally out of nowhere and was, to all appearances, getting the best of me by the time I went to the doctor. It makes me wonder if I'd have fought the infection off without the aid of modern medicine, or if it would have just kept getting worse. It seems kind of silly because I did absolutely nothing really damaging to my health. But it's the kind of thing that could've killed me without antibiotics.

Despite that minor drama, things have gone as smoothly for me as I could reasonably have hoped this week, considering I had to run back to Agua Fria loaded down with all my crap over the weekend just to give class yesterday, and then return to Tegucigalpa today for the second half of my two-week stretch with the trainees. So far that has gone off without any real serious problems, although my role here isn't quite as involved as I'd imagined it would be. They already have most of the training explicitly planned out and ready to roll; my job will essentially just be to be present and help the trainees along with whatever we're doing. I did get to design one session (the day when we learn about coffee) but that won't be for awhile yet.

The new recruits seem just about like my group was back when we were in training - fresh, idealistic, inexperienced, bad at spanish, appalled by the greasy food, etc. There were originally supposed to be 15 of the PAM trainees, but 3 canceled at the last minute and never made it out of the states, and another dropped out during training. Nobody from either project in my training group did that, but I guess we might have been more of an exception than a norm. I heard that of the training group that followed mine, 35 started off and only 22 are left. We were 32 I think, and 28 made it to the end. Sheesh. Volunteers these days. Standards must be slipping...

Anyways, since now there's only 11 of them and two are married we're pretty stretched thin for filling all the sites that people were going to be sent to. Agua Fria should still get another volunteer, but La Palma, the site I recommended and that had a volunteer for 3 months before he got kicked out for a stupid reason, will not. At this point I can only hope that the rest of them stick it out through training and at least get to their sites. If anyone going to my site quits early it would have to be someone who really shouldn't have done Peace Corps, because my site is a great one and it has tons of work. I guess you can guess by my tone that I'm a little worried, but at least I'll get to have a hand in picking the person who replaced me in Agua Fria (well, I think I will). The good news is that THREE of them are "advanced"-level spanish speakers, and a few others are close to it, which is one of the things Isai and myself specifically consider important for someone who's going to be working with COCAGUAL.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, and Wednesday I have my COS (Closure of Service) medical exams and I'm going to be trying to get up to Santa Lucia (which is pretty near Tegucigalpa) in the afternoons to work with the trainees. We'll see how that goes. Also I'll find out if I have any outstanding intestinal parasites or other notable infirmities. Whee!

Love to everybody,

Gabe

Note that this is not intended as a criticism of anyone, except possibly myself.

CHARACTER INFORMATION

ENTER THE NAME OF YOUR CHARACTER:

- IdealisticYouth

IDEALISTICYOUTH, ENTER YOUR EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND:

- BS, natural sciences

INSUFFICIENT QUALIFICATIONS FOR PEACE CORPS ADVENTURE QUEST. YOU MUST SPEND SEVERAL WEEKS DOING VOLUNTEER WORK THAT WILL HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR MISSION IN PEACE CORPS ADVENTURE QUEST.

- But…

JUST DO IT!

(three months pass)

- Now am I qualified?

ENTER YOUR DENTAL RECORDS AND MEDICAL EXAMINATIONS:

- Here you go.

NOW ROLL THE DICE FOR YOUR COUNTRY ASSIGNMENT:

IdealisticYouth rolls dice.

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ASSIGNMENT IN (COUNTRY)! YOUR MISSION WILL BE THE FOLLOWING: SAVE THE EARTH. ARE YOU PREPARED?

- Yes

LIAR! YOU WILL FIRST BE REQUIRED TO SPEND THREE MONTHS IN PRE-MISSION TRAINING.

- Oh, ok.

CHARACTER SUCCESSFULLY CREATED. YOU'RE READY TO BEGIN PEACE CORPS ADVENTURE QUEST!

INTRO

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a Hero, who lived in the prosperous land of “Yousa”. The Hero lived a happy, carefree childhood, frolicking with his friends in the forests and cities of his country. But as the Hero grew older, he began to learn of other lands, far away from Yousa, where the people were not happy or carefree. He heard from his elders that there were places where the people were sad and miserable all the time because they had less stuff, and gradually he began to feel that he wanted to do something to help these people in the other, less happy lands, such as (country). So the Hero set out on a quest to (country), to make everything all better for the people who lived there, so that everyone in the world could have lots of stuff and be happy, forever.

TRAINING

WELCOME TO (COUNTRY)! asd!”·$ weeble 241 lkja jork blarg?

- What?

YOUR LEVEL IN THE LOCAL LANGUAGE SKILL IS INSUFFICIENT. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND WHEN YOU REACH LEVEL "MEDIUM". BEGIN TRAINING!

IdealisticYouth trains 12 hours.

YOU ARE READY FOR YOUR FIRST SUB-QUEST. YOU MUST GO TO THE MARKET AND BUY SOME FOOD.

IdealisticYouth goes to the market

Man: Glarble blork buy weru sok gonk mango?

- What?

Man: Mango nerk ouwen snark you buy?

IdealisticYouth buys mango.

Dire Mango: Triple threat stomach attack!

Idealistic Youth vomits

Idealistic Youth vomits

Idealistic Youth gets horrible diarrhea

IdealisticYouth loses 5 pounds

- Oh well, I didn’t want ‘em anyways.

IdealisticYouth trains some more

IdealisticYouth levels up!

YOU ARE NOW LEVEL "MEDIUM" IN LANGUAGE! YOU ARE WMERL TO BEGIN SIJ MEK IN PEACE CORPS ADVENTURE FWITZ.

- But I still didn’t understand…

SURE YOU DID. OFF YOU GO.

THE QUEST

YOUR FIRST SUB-QUEST IS TO LOCATE LOCAL PEOPLE AND GAIN THEIR TRUST. READYSETGO!

- Now this, I can do.

IdealisticYouth encounters Local Guy 1.

Local guy 1: What’s your name?

- (name)

Local guy 1: Beef rib?

- (name)

Local guy 1: Walleye?

- (NAME)!!

Local guy 1: Okay, Meester. Nice to meet you.

YOUR NAME HAS BEEN CHANGED TO MEESTER!

Local guy 1: So you’re a Hero, huh, Meester?

- Well, I wouldn’t exactly put it that way.

Local guy 2: Sure he is. He’s from Yousa. I hear everyone there lives in a marble palace and has superpowers.

- Not me.

Local guy 1: Wow, a Hero!. Hey, wanna be our friend?

- Uh…sure.

YOU HAVE MADE TWO FRIENDS!

FIRST SUB-QUEST COMPLETED.

- Wow, that was easy.

DON'T GET TOO COCKY, WISE GUY.

YOUR SECOND SUB-QUEST IS TO ENCOUNTER THE MYTHICAL LOST TREASURE OF THE PROJECT GRANT FUNDING AND USE IT TO MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY, FOREVER.

- Leave it to me!

Meester does essentially nothing for a few months

Engineer Man: Project Grant Funding! Getcher Project Grant funding here!

- You know where the lost Treasure of the Project Grant Funding is?

Engineer Man: Of course I do. All you have to do to find it is fill out this ancient Application Form, and you will find the mythical Project Grant Funding in four to six weeks.

Meester fills out the ancient Application Form

Engineer Man: And find the legendary artifacts “Map of the Project” and “List of Beneficiaries”

Meester finds the artifacts

Engineer Man: And prove ye worthiness in the ancient rite of “Cost Analysis”

Meester undergoes the ancient rite of Cost Analysis

Engineer Man: And provide…

- Why didn’t you tell me about all this in the first place?

Engineer Man: Your mind was not yet prepared, my son.

- So what else do I need to do to attain the mythical Project Grant Funding?

Engineer Man: To prove ye worthiness, ye must also make a “Timeline” of the “Activities” ye will undertake with the mythical Project Grant Funding. Then ye quest will be fulfilled in four to six weeks.

Meester makes Timeline of Activcities

Meester waits for six months doing essentially nothing

Engineer Man: Hearken! The format of the ancient Application Form has been updated. Ye must now fill out the Modern Application Form! Then in four to six weeks ye may obtain the mythical Project Grant Funding.

Meester fills out the Modern Application Form

Meester waits three months

Engineer Man: Hear me, meester! Ye must undergo the ancient rite of “Cost Analysis” once more, because ye failed to divide a part of the mythical Project Grant Funding in observance of the sacred custom of “Paying Me to Supervise.”

- Are you just making all of this up?

Engineer Man: Ye dare question the Engineer Man?

- Fine, I’ll undergo the ancient rite of “Cost Analysis again…”

WHOOPS, YOUR PEACE CORPS ADVENTURE QUEST TIME LIMIT HAS RUN OUT.

- What? Did I complete my quest? Did I save the earth?

- Hello?

- …Hello?

Avast, rambling soap-boxing dead ahead!

Being in a third world country makes you think a lot about differences in social class and how they are expressed/reinforced. Here in Honduras, rich people do a lot to set themselves apart from the lower classes. They live not only in their own neighborhoods, but in, like, their own towns. They have their own schools, hospitals, and restaurants. They go to their own clubs (they don't mix socially with poor people). I had this somewhat explained to me when I went through training a long time ago, but mainly just being in a different country made me take a special interest in a lot of things that I hadn't thought too much about before, and that was one of them.

I began to realize how much more aware of class I'd become when I went back to the states last week. I had never thought of my family as wealthy before, but suddenly we seemed super rich. I mean, grandma has all kinds of beautiful wood furniture and a real piano in her house! Is that not the height of opulence? I was hard pressed to see even one beat-up or old car in her neighborhood of Olympia fields. All my relatives walked around the house with their personal mac laptops constantly online with the wireless internet network, loath to leave our air conditioned splendor and go outside into the muggy Chicago heat. Is this really a normal standard of living for us?

You could make the case that we're not as class-oriented in the states, and we may not be, but: those differences exist, and once you start to see them, nothing looks the same anymore. The airport is a place where we especially go out of our way to make rich people feel like superstars and everyone else feel like cattle. Seen at a departure gate in Chicago: a blue carpet ringed with gold cordons and a sign that said "special elite access" or something to that effect. Hey, why can't I walk on the special elite access carpet? Then there was the fact that literally almost every single person in my family had their freight-class flights delayed or canceled trying to get out of Chicago. I wonder if that happens to the world class business travelers? You think they get assigned the same level of importance as everyone else and bumped down when a little cloudburst rolls in?

Thinking about this kind of thing had me in kind of a pensive mood when I got to Atlanta, where I had a 12-hour layover. Long enough to justify a hotel, something I can't really afford. Neither can the majority of American travelers! So myself and at least 100 other people were stuck in - guess where - the shopping center of the Atlanta airport, trying futilely to find a way to get comfortable and sleep. This was a big, circular atrium with four stories of shops ringed around its edge and some pieces of airport art scattered around the middle and a few hard vinyl chairs. I looked all around it for a decent place to sit and found every corner occupied by sleeping travelers. So I went and checked out the Delta airlines desk at like 11 pm to see if I could get my boarding pass and go out to my gate, where there would certainly be more (and more comfortable) places to lounge. No, the well-groomed Delta representative said. Not until less than six hours before my flight. I could go relax in the atrium, if I wanted. "No seats", I muttered, turning away. There was nothing he could do, of course.

So I went and tucked myself up against a potted plant on the beautiful shiny (freezing) stone floor and tried to get some Zs using my backpack as a pillow. It didn't work very well.

Why do we put up with shit like this? In Central America, at least it's okay to be poor. There are many poor people, and they take care of each other. Almost anyobody can afford a hotel for a night if they really need one. Almost anybody can manage to find a meal if they really need one. A person doesn't have to own a car to be treated like a human being.

On the other hand, the defining superficial factor for getting respect here has more to do with the color of your skin. It may even be less pronounced in Honduras than in other countries (like Guatemala), but racial prejudices are still so deeply ingrained in the society that most people aren't even aware to the extent that they exist.

This point was driven home on the third leg of my three-airplane trip from Chicago to Tegucigalpa, when I did a miniscule puddle-jump from San Salvador. When I checked in, the person working at the TACA airlines desk printed me out a business-class boarding pass. I didn't even notice until I was getting on the plane and tried to find my seat. Probably, she was too afraid to ask me what class I was flying and look disrespectful, because of course EVERYBODY knows that all gringos are rich. After what happened in Atlanta (A lonely, depressing night by any account) it was poignently ironic and lifted my spirits quite a bit. Practically every time I board an airplane I wonder what it's like to fly first class and if I'll ever do it. Apparently, the chairs are nicer and they give you a free newspaper. Also, you get off first which means being at the front of the line to go through Immigration and Customs (my favorite perk).

Even living at the economic level of a completely normal Honduran (somewhere just above secretary and below taxi driver, or thereabouts), it would be a lie to say that I really feel the sting of discrimination here. How can I? I'm white. I've just gotten the barest glance of what it's like to be treated like a second-class citizen. Living with it all the time must be pretty hard on a person's sense of self-worth. This talk of reducing or erasing poverty in the U.S. and the world is ludicrous without assuming some kind of change in our social mentality. If no respect is ever given to the poor class, how can they respect themselves?

As this year continues, I have gradually been feeling more and more situated with regards to my current activities and my future plans, with a kind of sureness I haven't had in quite a while. This, I'm starting to realize, can be quite comforting. When I left the states and came down here, I didn't really know what to expect and I wasn't even attempting to think of my long term future, which was exciting. It's wonderful to see your adult life opening up, free of plans and constraints. But after awhile, you start to get concerned about your lack of direction. What do you want to do with yourself, really? Where would you like to be in five years? In ten years? I've learned enough by now to know that whatever those goals are, you aren't likely to achieve them without planning. So then you start to look for opportunities, see what catches your eye or your interest, and you necessarily are forced to set constraints on your own freedom in order to follow any specific path. It's a trade-off, for sure.

I had gone a long time without any clear idea what I wanted to do besides work in a scientific field. I was never real sure about it, besides the fact that I enjoy science and simply pursuing knowledge. In retrospect, I can say that the indecisiveness that has so long plagued me had a lot to do with not having enough real-world experience to base my judgments on (although, more than other people perhaps, it's also just a part of my character). Then, through the course of this year, I've finally grabbed onto the idea of wanting to be an educator of some type and I feel pretty darn good and pretty certain about it. It was an idea that before I'd always held in reserve, as a kind of "If things don't work out, then..." but I got to a point where it just seemed really appealing to me. Then, the more I thought about what my goals in life really are, the more sense it made.

I noticed from Sam's last email (some of you may have read it as well) that he's experiencing something similar to me right now, like a feeling of purpose, and I find it interesting that we've both, in our own ways, gravitated towards working with the development of youth. I'm sure he was exposed to other possibilities during his studies and time working with natural resources and tourism, and I even remember a time when he and some of our other friends talked about having their own guided outdoor adventures company or something of that nature. But I think Sam, like myself, always had a nagging suspicion that something better waited over the horizon, something worth waiting for and investigating.

A lot of those necessary constraints that are already starting to make me feel tied down again have become more defined in the past month or so, which is exactly what I was expecting would happen, but on the whole I feel pretty darn good about things. At the very least I should be extremely busy until december or so, which is how I like things to be anyways.

This month of July, I first have to go to Chicago for grandpa's funeral which is going to cut into some of my plans here but really, it can't be helped. I thought about it and feel good with my decision. After that, I need to advance as much as I can in finishing my little projects in Agua Fría (mainly the finca maps and a proposal to get state funding for an all-week middle school in Agua Fría), and try to set up the rest of this school year for my 9th graders. Starting July 30th, I will be working as an "acompañante" (helper) in the peace corp's new volunteer training program for the new group of trainees. I more or less know what to expect since I passed through that program myself two years ago. It should keep me very busy and be an excellent experience in adult education.

Between that and wrapping stuff up in Agua Fría I doubt I'll have time to catch my breath before October and my (hopeful) vacation with The Bro and return to the States. Then I need to put myself full-time into college applications (maybe find a temporary job, though that's hard to think about right now). My undergraduate grades aren't the most superest so that means I need to own it up on the GRE, which I plan to do.... I already started studying. Hopefully I'll find an interesting program with a Peace Corps Fellows school (You can get a master's degree and a teaching certificate in two years with this, even if your undergraduate study had nothing to do with teaching). Maybe I will be able to figure out more specifically what kind of environment I'd eventually like to work in.

We'll see how things work out, I guess. At least we finished the FORCUENCAS proposal, yay! They're going to review it for approval next week. If it passes I will have been a key factor in getting this coffee cooperative $35,000 to work with. :)

Love to everyone,

Gabe

That means "the wedding". I went to see my friend Josh get married this weekend, at a medium-sized town near his site just a little bit northeast of Tegucigalpa (this is the same Josh who I'm going to be working alongside to help the Protected Areas Management staff do the training for the new PAM volunteers that arrive July 11). For awhile now he's been engaged to a Honduran teacher in his site named Urania and they sent out invitations to their wedding the last time everyone in our training group was together; at the COS conference in Tela last month. I think maybe over half the invitees showed up, but a lot of people didn't.... lameasses!

It was a nice wedding. They brought down a bilingual Catholic priest from the states who did the ceremony in both English and Spanish (but mostly Spanish), along with a full regular catholic mass. He did it pretty quickly though and he was an excellent guy to boot. When I first got into Guaimaca I went looking for Josh and ran into the priest instead, who immediately offered me help finding a place to stay for the night (the reason I was looking for Josh) with some of the groups of people who were there and then he gave me a diet soda. When he said he was the father I thought "But Josh said his dad had a beard...." Then later, I was like oooohhhhhhhh....... right.

After the wedding was the reception (I guess this is standard procedure) with cake, food, some beer brought down from the states (YAY JOSH'S PARENTS!!!), and of course dancing. I tell you what, that is something I will miss greatly about this country... the dancing at every justifiable occasion and sometimes just around the house. When I was an awkward middle schooler mainly looking for a way to make myself invisible at homecoming dances I never imagined I'd get to like it this much. Later, I found out about a miracle drug for my problem commonly known as BEER. Having broken the barrier though, now I just like to dance whenever. :)

After the reception, we got a ride up to the site of Lindsay Galpin, another PAM volunteer who lives close to Guaimaca, in the back of a big covered bread truck. There was an old guy picking bolero tunes on his guitar and singing in that classic warbly voice all the way along as we zoomed through the misty night. At Lindsay's it was your standard Volunteer Gathering, sitting around and visiting, but really at this point any occasion to hang out with those guys is great since all of them will be leaving kind of soon (August 12 or before). In them - the members of my peace corps training group - I've certainly found some of the best friends I could have hoped for.

That was last night, so today I went back to Choluteca and here I am. I did miss a day of Maestro en Casa classes because of the wedding, but I found someone to cover for me who I know to be capable and I left a good set of materials for her to keep them busy with, so I'm not too worried. Unfortunately, the program on the whole has been kind of staggering because of personal issues between the current director of the school (who gives us permission to do classes there) and the retired former director (who happens to be the director of Maestro en Casa in Agua Fría). It's some pretty silly crap that's been going on since the Maestro en Casa program was started here almost three years ago, but it could honestly sink the program and I've already had to play the idiot and mediate between these two people who are both too proud to put aside their differences for the good of 70 students. These are not issues I like to even think about much because they don't merit the mental energy I'd waste worrying about them, but I DO want my students to graduate this year.

As far as other news goes, there really isn't much. We still haven't finished the FORCUENCAS proposal, which is starting to worry me because of the time frame issue. It'll get done, but if we don't hurry up things could get pushed back. Sam and I are now officially planning a trip around central america after I finish, and it is going to eclipse every other trip ever done in the history of mankind with its epic awesomeness. Totally.

Love you all.

Gabe

I just clicked on my Blogger profile by accident and it says I was born in the Chinese year of the Dog. I never knew that. Seems about right, though.

Since the wet season started, rain has been off and on in about equal portions but last week several days passed where nothing fell from the sky. I'd hesitate to say "dry" days, because there was still so much humidity that you'd have to wring a towel out after flapping it around in the air for a bit. It kept getting warmer and warmer, too, because the evening storms are absolutely essential to cooling things down at night at this time of year. A few days last week were some of the hottest and sultriest I have seen yet in Agua Fría. I didn't dig it much. Almost everything else about life in Honduras has gotten to the point of being pretty much normal to me now, but the heat only seems to get more intolerable. Blah!

Something I forgot to mention in that last blog entry was that I signed on to help out with the training of new volunteers during the last 11 weeks of my service. This means that I will be working in my site and in Santa Lucía (near Tegucigalpa), alternating every two weeks and travelling home for two days in the middle of the volunteer-training periods to give classes in Agua Fría. It's going to be a ton of work and will take away a substantial amount of my time for working with the cooperative, but the fact is that I have to separate myself from them at some point and this way they'll get a chance to practice filling in the stuff I used to do but still have me sort-of-around to help out. It will also be an awesome thing to put on my resume, I'm pretty sure.

Here's another good animal story. The day before yesterday, I was just sitting around in my kitchen packing up my bag to get going for the day and this animal bounded right in through the door as if it owned the place and ran over to the table area where I was sitting. It was a ferret! I had no idea they lived around here. I stayed as still as possible while he checked around the various corners of the room and ran right up to within a foot or so of my leg, at which point I got a little nervous that he was going to climb up me and made some slight movements. He backed off a little but stayed there watching me, the insolent little bastard. I made as if to get up and he finally bounced back out the door, like he was in no particular hurry. By the time I had walked outside, he'd disappeared completely. I was thinking about putting out some meat or something and see if he comes back, but I'm probably just asking for trouble. I hope I see him again, though. His attitude kind of reminded me of Baron Weasel, an animal described in the book My Side of the Mountain (which I have read at least 3 different times).

It's been awhile since I've posted much decent news, so I better do that. The most relevant thing that has happened lately was my COS conference (the acronym is from Closure of Service), where we start doing all the things necessary to wrap up our service and prepare for life after the Peace Corps. This was last Wednesday-Friday in Tela, a town on the north coast, which was kind of an interesting coincidence because that was the same place we went as trainees on our very first vacation on a 3-day weekend during the first month in Siguatepeque. They put us in a nice beachfront hotel with great catered food, which was a nice way for Uncle Sam to show some appreciation for all the work we have done, I guess. During the conference we spent about a day and a half in various different activities, such as preparing for the job search, hearing about possibilities for Returning PCVs, and going over all the formats and other things we have to turn in before leaving. This includes doing our Description of Service report, kind of a final wrap-up summary of what the hell it is we did exactly, that is going to go and rot in a file somewhere in Washington.

I also met the new Peace Corps director, who is stricter than her predecessor in terms of adhering to the Peace Corps Washington rules and guidelines, as many people trying to end their service a little early or extend have found out. My friend Joe almost had to cancel his wedding plans, and my petition to stay until the end of October was shot down out of hand, because apparently it's bad to have two volunteers in a site at the same time, even if it's just for a month. There is a certain rationale behind this, although I think I can make a stronger argument in favor of my idea (especially since it was essentially suggested by my community partners.... and who are we doing this work for, exactly?). At any rate, I just got an email stating that my extension has been approved until september 28, so I'll just have to make the most of the extra month and a half. And there you have it, everyone who has been asking.... the date when I will officially be coming home.

Besides that, I'm still plugging away at with my 9th graders - we finished Math and are already getting close to the end of Natural Sciences. I have been impressed with their responsiveness lately, which is heartening because since the beginning I have been insisting on running my classroom with some significant stylistic differences from the Honduran teachers, which caused difficulties. Maybe after all this time they're finally adapting to the way I do things, which is what I was hoping would happen.

Work continues with the cooperative as well, still polishing this grant proposal that we're going to submit to FORCUENCAS (although it's actually just about done, I think). I'm going to turn in what may be a final draft today, after I burn it to a CD. We're also plugging along trying to improve the coffee producers' documentation of the work they do, which is essential for organic certification. I'm about halfway done with the maps of fincas, but the other ones should be a little easier because they are all closer to me. They also have to keep registries of all their applications of fertilizer, de-weeding campaigns, all the days worked by the laborers they employ, and all of their incomes and expenses. As you can imagine, this is a significant challenge for those guys, some of whom are barely literate, or not at all.

As some of you may know, that bus ride from Agua Fria to Choluteca or vice versa is a huge bummer. It's long, hot, bumpy, and can be ridiculously crowded, which was the case this morning. I counted at least 70 adults and maybe another 15 babies and small children (this is on a US school bus, mind). It was so bad that I was desperate for something to get my mind elsewhere, and came up with.... anagrams! My name, if you use the full first name and no middle (Gabriel Hensold) is damn-near perfect for making anagrams. The possibilites are endless. In two hours, the best I could come up with was:

I shall b geo nerd

Which takes some liberties with the spelling of the word "be", but is pretty satisfactory otherwise. Nonsensical results that I like nevertheless include "Beheld L.A. groins" and "Greased hill nob".

Cheers,

Gabe

I keep pretty good tabs on my overall health - how I feel physically (energy level, fitness, illness/injury or lack thereof), mentally (concentration, creative energy, etc) and emotionally. The state of those first two factors can almost always be explained by outside events. Do I feel exhausted and crappy in the morning? Maybe I'm coming down with a cold. Do I just sit there and stare at the wall after dinner and not feel like picking up a book? I probably wore myself out so much during the day that I can't even summon the mental energy to read. Those kinds of days, the best thing you can hope for is a thunderstorm for some front porch entertainment.

My emotional state, however, is not often as easily explained. I can feel like crap because of a cold, be bored and without work, and still keep a generally positive outlook. In other moments, I might have a great day working, the weather could be fantastic, and everything could be generally peachy and sometimes I still feel sorta blue. I don't know if it's still the wierdness of my 'new' life that I'm adjusting to, although I think in general I've always sort of been this way.

The main truism about me is that I seem to have a pretty hard time keeping a bad mood or any kind of negative mindset for a significant amount of time, and if this is a simple fact of my character then I also know that it's something to give thanks for. Mom spent many years struggling with depression and later described it carefully to us kids so we would know what to look for - lack of energy, lack of motivation, a general feeling of being worthless, etc, and how it colors the entire world, even though from a practical point of view maybe things could be a lot worse. It's hard to understand this kind of testimony if you haven't been through it yourself, especially because we like to think that fixing emotional problems is just a matter of changing your attitude. For me, it sort of seems like I got the opposite end of the stick, then. I'm relentlessly, irrepressibly, irresponsibly, and naively optimistic, even when I'm in a situation that should be acknowledged as problematic.

In the large scheme of things, I know I don't really have anything serious to complain about, but then, does anyone? I can't help but feel that if I were a poor Honduran I'd probably be just as happy-go-lucky, maybe moreso. There are difficult aspects of my life that could probably get me down if I chose to dwell on them. My childhood was quite a bit more unusual than I used to believe, but then how could I have the perspective to notice that until I'd left it far enough behind? I could ruminate about being by most accounts a pretty average person when I used to imagine that I was somehow special, or about having half-assed several important goals in my life like my college experience and now, getting on to grad school. I could depress myself thinking about the fact that I don't really have any close friends that I can visit with on a regular basis and I almost never have. I could whine about my apparently permanent lack of female companionship.

But why bother? Most of those 'problems' just have to do with who I am. That's me. And nobody else is much better off in the long run. When I think about where I've been and where I might be going, I can never manage the effort to really feel dissatisfied. I'm always reminded of a quote from the movie American Beauty, which comes right at the end and I think more than anything else was what made me love that film, because I immediately identified with it:

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst...

...and then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...

That's me when I get philosophical. Amazed and grateful. Is it possible to not be all that impressed or even necessarily satisfied with yourself; who you are and what you've done, but love life anyways? Well, I'm going to give it a try.

Well, I’m back from a rather long and patchwork vacation, in which I spent the week mostly visiting other volunteers and otherwise participating in events related to Semana Santa.

Semana Santa, or holy week, is a holiday mostly observed over a period of five days – from Wednesday until Sunday, celebrating the events immediately before, during, and after the crucifixion of Jesus. In the states we generally only celebrate Easter Sunday, and now that I have a somewhat outside perspective on the situation, I have to say that we have some pretty strange customs considering the actual significance that the event is supposed to have. But whatever.

Here, as everywhere in Latin America, the greatest festivities take place on Good Friday, when Jesus was actually crucified. There are long processions, costumes, re-enactments, mannequins, crosses, you name it. Most of the activities on Friday and all the other days of the week have to do with some kind of re-creation or remembering of all the original characters and events that took place on those days. It’s a fun holiday; serious and very authentically traditional but energetic at the same time, filled with that Latin flair for the dramatic.

I didn’t quite set out to spend much time checking out the “genuine” Semana Santa festivities; it’s not a holiday I’ve ever celebrated much (not even Easter) and the fact that nobody works at all that week makes it an ideal time to go on vacation and visit friends. That’s exactly what I did, but by chance I managed to get in some cultural sightseeing as well.

I left town way before dawn on Sunday the 1st of April, starting the trip up north to the area near Lake Yojoa where my friend Jeremy lives, one of the Protected Areas Management volunteers from my training group. His birthday was that same day and I wanted to get there at a decent hour in order to participate in some of the festivities, hence the ridiculously early start.

I was going to walk down to the nearby village of La Fortuna, which has an earlier bus than Agua Fría, but the sugarcane workers’ bus caught up with me at about 4 am right after I got down to the main road, and I jumped on it. There were only a few people on it at the time, dressed in ash-smudged clothes and all carrying big water jugs and the same type of wide, flat machete that looks like a cross between a meat cleaver and a scythe. As we went down the mountain, passing through other communities along the way, the bus kept filling up until there were three people wedged into every single seat. They almost all smoked a cigarette or two on the ride, besides the youngest kids, some of which couldn’t have been any older than twelve. It was an extremely rowdy, macho atmosphere; a kind of secret men-only club that I hadn’t glimpsed before here and hadn’t even imagined. They told off-color jokes and made fun of me all the way to Choluteca, laughing about how they were going to invite the gringo along for a day of real men’s work. I imagined what it must be like for the youngest kids, the first day they rode on the men’s bus to chop burnt sugarcane all day in the burning heat of the flatlands, teased and praised by all the older workers. What an initiation into manhood! How proud they must feel to be part of that group, to be going off to blister their hands and earn $5 with “their own sweat”, as the men say here.

I got to the city at 5:30, earlier than I’d thought possible (my previous record was 6:30) and immediately jumped on a bus to Tegucigalpa that rolled up to me as I was walking to the bus stop. By about 3:00 pm I arrived in Jeremy’s site, Cerro Azul. There were already a bunch of other Volunteers there, and more arrived soon after me. We visited for awhile, went on a hike to see a really nice waterfall near his house, visited some more, made some food, played some cards, visited, etc. Everyone left the next morning, and I was left without a solid plan of what I wanted to do for Semana Santa.

I called around to some other Volunteers who I had talked to beforehand, trying to get a feel for what people were up to, and most of my leads petered out (everyone seemed to be too broke at the time to travel), but I finally got a positive response from Suzanne, another geologist volunteer who maintains one of the blogs in my links. She and some friends were going to the city of Comayagua to see some special activities they do there, but not until Wednesday. I decided to keep heading north and use the spare time to see the city of La Ceiba, one of the more well-known touristy destinations in the country, which I had never visited before.

I was in La Ceiba for a couple days and it turned out to be a fairly uneventful leg of the trip; seeing the town and going out once to one of its famous nightclubs. At that point though I was running on three consecutive days without sufficient sleep, and mainly just trying not to nod off and get robbed, so it wasn’t a terribly exciting experience. I mostly strolled around, saw the dirty and drug-dealer-infested beach, sampled some of the north coast’s distinctive cuisine, and visited with Max and Lynette, two volunteers who live there (my OTHER link is their blog). Then on Wednesday morning I caught a bus which Suzanne and her site-mate Christy were already on, coming from their town Olanchito, and we headed back south to the center of the country – the city of Comayagua.

We were in Comayagua for three days, eventually joined by three other friends of Suzanne and Christy – an older couple named Jim and Deb, and a Health volunteer named Robin. We hung out and saw the sights and mostly took it easy. On Friday we saw a couple processions of people depicting various stages of the day Jesus was crucified. In the morning, people had built dozens of colorful “rugs” made of damp dyed sawdust along the processional route for the people carrying the figure of Jesus to walk along. They were beautiful, many of them really detailed works of art, and they only lasted about two hours before being messed up by people walking all over them, and then swept up. I felt privileged to see something made with so much care that was only intended to last two hours.

That same night we went out determined to find some margaritas and realized everything was closed, but we lucked out and found a place run by a young Honduran who’d lived for most of his youth in the US (like fifteen years). We got to talking and I found out that his favorite drink was a White Russian and his favorite movie The Big Lebowski. Small world! He insisted on paying for three of our drinks so I hid a fifty-Lempira bill under a coaster when he wasn’t looking. That’s like $2.50, lest you think I’m bragging about my generosity.

My final stop, starting on Saturday, was the site of my friend Joshua Bogart, just north of Tegucigalpa in a miniscule town called El Majastre. He is engaged to get married in June to a Honduran teacher from his community, and I got to meet her and a bunch of her family during the visit. Josh and I talked a lot and ate some great food and took a hike to some of the most beautiful forest I have ever seen a couple kilometers above his house; a deep and lush grove of immense oak trees draped with beautiful orchids and hundreds of other epiphytes. I’d be tempted to say I liked it even better than the rainforests I saw in Costa Rica. What a lucky bastard! Fortunately, I’m going to be back in the area again soon for the wedding. Josh is going to be sticking around for some time to come, so if my application to extend my service gets approved, we may have time to try an expedition up into the highest parts of the Biological Reserve he lives right next to, which I would REALLY love to do.

On Monday I finally started the trip home, stopping off in Tegucigalpa for a couple hours to confer with my project manager Menelio and drop off my request-for-extension form. I got to Choluteca at night and made it back to my site on Tuesday.

All in all I think it was the best “vacation” trip I’ve taken so far (besides the ones with the fam, obviously). I especially enjoyed hanging out in Comayagua; we had an awesome hotel with a pool and (GET THIS) an elevator, and it cost about the same as a shitty hotel in Tegucigalpa. Suzanne was unfortunately feeling crappy but her friends were a hoot and the weather was unseasonably cool the entire time.

Here’s some trip statistics:

Days: 9

Stops: 4

Kilometers traveled: At least 800

Different buses taken: 14

Interesting new people met: 13

Objects lost/stolen: 1 black leather belt (misplaced somewhere), 1 cellphone (pickpocketed in a crowded bus).

Books read on the bus: The Botany of Desire

Future trips thought up: 2

Since then I’ve been doing more work with the cooperative, mainly polishing the proposal for funds from FORCUENCAS and doin’ the teacher thing. I spent a day making maps of coffee fincas cuz the organic certifier Biolatina is requiring them and most of the producers can’t really make one to the level that they’re asking. So I’m going to be helping out with that (like 6 down…. 36 more to go… should keep me pretty busy). It’s really fun work. I get to go hang out with all the different producers, tour their fincas, and then draw a map of it afterwards.

Lates!

Gabe

I have a blog entry all written up and ready to copy/paste, but it got usurped this morning by something else that happened on the way to the bus stop.

On the route down to the main road that I walk pretty much every day to get to Agua Fría or grab the bus, there is a high pass where I almost always stop and rest for a little while. The wind likes to blow through there even on the stillest days, cooling you off after the climb, and it's also a point where there is cell phone signal so I can check my messages. I stopped there this morning for about five minutes (you have to wait awhile for the company's system to detect your phone and send messages sometimes), then I realized that I was in danger of missing the bus and started off again. Just a few steps beyond the high point where I was sitting, I heard some leaves rustling in the forest up to my left and I looked just in time to see a medium-sized spotted animal with huge eyes. It was an ocelot! I think it heard my footsteps in exactly the same moment I heard its, because I only got an instant's good view of its startled, wild face before it turned tail and disappeared.

I had heard from various people that there was a tigre around (jaguar), which I didn't believe because that mountain doesn't have nearly enough wild range or food for a cat that size. Other people said there was a tigrillo ("little tiger", or ocelot), and I sort of believed it but had been REALLY hoping to see the animal, although I didn't really expect to. Where I saw it was exactly the same spot where other people told me they'd seen it. If I had sat there with my cellphone a few seconds longer, I might have actually seen it cross the road in front of me.

I was walking on clouds all the way to Agua Fría, punching the air and whisper-yelling words of triumph. Just as nothing upsets you quite as much as unexpected catastrophes, nothing makes you feel quite as happy as the unexpected or unplanned good things that can happen in life. It's important to recognize those moments and I feel like I had one this morning. Just last week, too, a hawk landed in the trees right next to my house and I got to take a really good look at it. This may not seem like a big deal but hawks are extremely rare around here, because people shoot them every chance they get (they commit the unpardonable crime of eating baby chickens). Maybe I'm just in a lucky streak.

Alright, back to your regularly scheduled programming:

It’s been awhile since I’ve said much about what I’ve been working on, and I guess now I finally have some activities worth talking about. The Maestro en Casa classes are in full swing; fun times with negative numbers and graphing linear equations. We’ve already had three tests, and, as I should be used to expecting by now, about half the students are passing and most of them are copying. A few of them have already gotten zeroes for copying and I hope the idea finally gets into their heads that I don’t tolerate that kind of thing (they have had VERY ample warning). The problem is that the other teachers always have tolerated it, because otherwise some of them won’t pass, and that means (gasp) more work for everybody. Hence, I’m getting tests back with answers like: 9 - 6 = 15. I’m not making this up. SEVERAL students missed this problem on the negative numbers section of the test, and we’re talking about ninth graders here. A second test on basic arithmetic with negative numbers hasn’t improved the situation much, if it all. Luckily we have a pretty decent amount of time for math (until May) and the book isn’t too extremely long. But still, damn.

Lately I’ve been working with Isaí on some more proposals for financed projects, which is almost like a bad joke for me at this point, but circumstantial evidence indicates that there’s a lot better chance they will pass while I’m still here in Honduras so I can at least help the cooperative get them off the ground. Also, there will probably be another volunteer here in Agua Fría after me (there SHOULD be one, anyways) so even though I might not see all the work being done on these projects, my efforts will have resulted useful for something at least.

The proposals, specifically, are two – one to the Fondo Cafetero Nacional (National Coffe Fund) and another to this NGO I talked a little about earlier, FORCUENCAS. The Fondo Cafetero project is relatively small; producing a bunch of grafted fruit trees in one nursery to give to the cooperative’s members (a very good family income-related project around here because this area is excellent for fruit). There are tons of mangos and avocadoes but they’re almost all wild and aren’t hardly worth anything in the market.

The other project, which we hope that FORCUENCAS will fund, is a whole lot larger. It’s also oriented specifically towards the cooperative and its members (rather than various different communities in a large geographical area, like the interminable Banco Centroamericano tree nursery proposal). We’ve talked to FORCUENCAS a few times about what we’re doing and they seem to be all for the idea, but on the other hand we handed them a piece of paper with all the activities we’d like to do over three weeks ago now asking them if they’d just take a look at it and tell us which they can fund and which not…. and they still haven’t managed to do it, despite the fact that it can’t possible be more than an hour’s worth of work. AND we keep calling and pestering them. So, who knows. I’m not even going to talk about what the project is right now because I’ve learned my lesson about that kind of thing, but maybe in a month there will be good news.

Sometimes I feel a little bit annoyed by the route things have taken during my course of work here, and from day to day it often seems like I’m not really doing anything. However, looking back at the state of things around here (especially with the cooperative) before/after I started working, things have actually changed. This place where I work in Agua Fría was four cement walls and a roof; now it’s a fully-equipped meeting room and office with a small library of technical materials. The cooperative had sold one year’s harvest of certified organic coffee, but it ended up going to the internal market as conventional coffee along with all the other crap. Now, they’ve sold two harvests of coffee to a German importer, getting more than 10% cost premium on average for quality and the organic certification.

It’s not like those results can be attributed solely to my presence (95% at the very least corresponds to the Hondurans), but I unquestionably was closely involved with things. The certification was especially difficult - although they managed to get that before I came here, it was managed by an agency in Honduras of the international company Biolatina that was almost comically inept and lax. When they were folded into the Nicaraguan branch last year and THOSE guys started doing the certification, it was a sudden and major increase in the amount of paperwork and the adherence to the rules. I may have even managed to enforce Isaí’s knowledge, despite how good he is at acting like he knows everything. :P

We’ve also gotten a computer and been working professionally. We have done a crapload of proposal-type stuff, which mostly hasn’t shown any results yet but I’m starting to understand how badly I underestimated the time needed to go through this process, and none of it had been started when I arrived. The Maestro en Casa program, too, as I’ve gradually learned was about ready to go tits-up in 2005 when I got here with incompetent teachers mainly doing it as a for-profit activity and lots of friction between the people running the program. Some of that friction still exists, but between myself and the two new teachers who signed on in 2006 we’ve turned it into something that actually resembles an institution of learning and we are applying academic standards, something you don’t see in almost any of the public schools.

The main thing, I guess, if I want these advances to feel like an actual success of some kind is to look to how I can shore up what I’ve done so far to ensure its sustainability (now there’s the hottest buzzword in international development these days) rather than trying out a bunch of new stuff that I no longer have the time to start. The organic certification, for one, is a continuous process that I’m going to keep helping out with on the level of the producers, trying to work on how to manage registries and the other kinds of basic paperwork they need to fill out. I need to keep working on computer classes as much as I can possibly get people to come to them, because, even though there’s no guarantee that anybody I teach is actually going to stick around here and work in the area, it’s the best I can hope for and SOMETHING needs to be done.

We’re also going to submit a proposal (I know, ANOTHER proposal) to the educational system for a “centro básico” (grades 1-9 school) here in Agua Fría, to take the next logical step from the Maestro en Casa program since there’s obviously so much demand for it – this year there’s over 80 students in our 7-9th grade program, practically twice as much as you see in a lot of the rural primary schools. That same project has been submitted for a nearby community but they haven’t actually gotten off their keisters and done much to make it happen, so people in Agua Fría are starting to talk about building it here. Maybe in a couple years there will be 7-9th grade classes five days a week in this town, with paid teachers and everything.

Working with the Hondurans to make sure they are building the skills necessary to continue on their own after I leave is the most important thing to focus on, I guess, but I’d also really like to make sure this community gets another Peace Corps volunteer after me. Not only that, I’d feel a lot better if they could be given some support during the first period here, because the 3 months of training don’t really adequately prepare you for the specific work you find in your site. The volunteer who was in La Palma was supposed to be the backup plan for that, but now I’m considering applying to extend my service for a couple months so I can work with the theoretical new guy for a bit. I need to talk to some people in the main office and see what they think.

Several days ago I got visited by another volunteer who lives a long ways away and she helped me get a slightly better perspective on my situation. She also taught me a whole bunch about the birds around my place, so it was time very well spent. This week has been the first one in ages, maybe since I finished training, where I actually have a pretty good idea what I’m going to be doing for the next while and a sense of purpose about it, which is not a bad feeling at all. Those two new proposals are practically done so my next mission is to enjoy the crap out of Semana Santa. I think I can handle it.

Gabe

Continuing with my latest theme, which is a complete dearth of news-related topics, here's some of my thoughts that I've written down lately.

I was just now looking back through some photos of Washington that I have stored on this computer and marveling at how strong the memories are that they evoke. Just a few small images of mossy logs, some trunks shrouded in fog, a path carpeted with leaves are enough to transport me back to my western Washington. I can smell the mist, see the damp streets, feel the slick asphalt under the knobby tires of my bicycle. Hear the crunch of wet snow under my feet and above all, the sound of nothing. You might think that the middle of nowhere in Central America would be a pretty quiet place, but it’s at least as noisy as any city I have lived in, though that’s not saying much. Not a moment passes when there isn’t some dog barking, rooster crowing, bird singing, or little kid shrieking somewhere. And the locusts! They last for six months and you wouldn’t BELIEVE how loud they are. I’m not complaining, you know, that’s just how it is. The coniferous forests of my homeland are like a different planet, almost.

I remember when I actually lived in Washington, like way back in the day, I used to sometimes feel a tangible connection to the land, a sense of place or something like that. I have no idea how to describe it. I think the best way would be to say that being able to experience the environment there was a vital commodity for me. Anytime I felt crappy, I just went for a walk in the woods and my internal tranquility reserve filled up again. I never understood why the western Washington ambience depressed people. I loved the cool grey days, the subdued watercolor shades of everything, the light rain and soft sun, and most especially the mist-wreathed greenery. I carry that world around inside me all the time, still as alive as if I had left it yesterday. I’m like an inverted greenhouse; outside me it’s Honduras, but inside, it’s still Washington.

As great as my experience in here in Honduras has been, I’ve never gotten that umbilical feeling of connection to the land, for some reason, and I will say that I think it took me less time than two years living in western Washington to start feeling that way. Perhaps the heat here has something to do with it, the fact that I can’t walk anywhere at any time of the year without sweating through my shirt. In a more general sense, the ambience in Honduras doesn’t inspire that same sense of peacefulness. There’s always something crawling, eating, flying, rotting, procreating, making noise, excreting, or growing. The light is outrageous and exaggerated. The air seems to hum with vitality. If there isn’t a torrential thunderstorm falling, there’s the merciless tropical sun beating down. If my clothes aren’t covered in dust, there’s probably mold growing on them. I dig it for being so MUCH everything, like I appreciate anything that is new or unique, but for some reason it still doesn’t feel like my own. Maybe I passed the stage of life of “taking to” a place. Or maybe it’s just because it’s SO different here.

Here there be some favorites of mine so far during service:

Best Books

First of all, let me clarify that these aren’t necessarily the “best” books that I’ve read, the ones you’re most likely to see in a university text or Oprah’s book list or any of that junk. They’re simply the ones I got the most enjoyment out of reading. I read 100 Years of Solitude twice, certainly a masterpiece of literature, and neither time was it as fun as La Sombra del Viento.

Jayber Crow – Wendell Berry

This guy is Mark Twain’s rightful spiritual heir. Those that know me pretty well will understand the class of compliment that this is from me. This is earthy philosophy, eminently readable and so American it hurts.

The True Story of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey

Fascinating, awesome writing.

Nostromo - Joseph Conrad

Conrad is one of my three or four favorite authors of all time and this is the best book of his that I’ve read, with the possible exception of Heart of Darkness.

Cosmic Banditos - A. C. Weisbecker

Hilarious; Weisbecker has a wonderful style and spontaneous wit. Cosmic Banditos is a ridiculous book with no point that goes nowhere, and wallows in mindless self-indulgence along the way.

All the William Faulkner that I’ve read here

Faulkner’s style is overblown and gets on my nerves like nothing else, and he unnecessarily overcomplicates the structure of his stories, and despite those problems I still can’t stop reading his books. And I’ve just scratched the surface. I still don’t know what to think about some of his stuff, which is always a sign of true greatness. Like As I Lay Dying. What in the hell was that?

Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut

I can’t believe it took me so long to discover this author. Fantastic. Going to read more!

La Sombra del Viento – Carlos Ruiz Zafón

This is probably about the closest thing to a romance novel that I’ve read, apart from that Isabel Allende book mom sent me (I think anything written in the Spanish language turns into a romance something or other, somehow). The author takes some extreme narrative liberties, but the underlying plot and the character development are so damn good you have to forgive him. I’ve never gotten so emotionally attached to characters before. Zafón uses every cliché you can think of and bends them to his evil purposes, and even conscious of the crap he’s pulling, you can’t help falling for it. The English version is titled The Shadow of the Wind, but I read a few pages and it didn’t feel the same. :P

A Stillness at Appomattox – Bruce Catton

Entertaining, dramatic, and beautiful, it feels more like a novel than a history book about the American civil war. I especially love the way he weaves in the touching bits of humanity that were passed between the two sides even during the most brutal fighting ever seen on the continent.

Anthills of the Savannah – Chinua Achebe

Achebe is a master storyteller with a razor sharp sense of irony. The book has a strong moral wisdom to it, but besides that it’s also an engaging story that feels absolutely real, from the characters to the events that take place.

The Bonesetter’s Daughter – Amy Tan

I didn’t have too much interest in Amy Tan before picking up this book on a whim, and I’m sure glad I did. She is an absolute master. Subtly and unpretentiously, she weaves the lives of the characters around you until you suddenly find yourself experiencing life through their eyes, navigating a mysterious story more vivid than reality.

I guess this is kind of a lot of favorites, but lest you think I’m indiscriminately throwing everything I’ve read on here, keep in mind that according to the list I’ve kept I’m almost up to 90 books so far since leaving the states. I’ve read a lot of mediocre books too and a few that just plain stunk.

Best Music

Louden Wainwright III – So Damn Happy

Beautiful.

Salif Keita – Mansa of Mali

I think this guy has jumped to the front of my favorite dudes from Africa that Dad has introduced me to. Hell, it’s a tough call.

My World Music mix CD

There’s this one song at the very end of it that I never noticed much back in the states and I can’t remember who it’s by, but it beats the everloving crap out of everything else on the CD, and that’s saying something. Help, Maya?

Neville Bros – Brother’s Keeper (before it got ruined by the humidity)

One of those CDs you listen to a lot, and then don’t hear for years and years, and when you hear it again it sounds even better than all that time ago.

Green Day – American Idiot (before it got ruined by the humidity)

Glad to see that my once-favorite band has redeemed themselves for Warning. I guess my taste in middle school wasn’t so bad after all. :)

Old Crow Medicine Show – OCMS

I thought these guys were from like the 60s and then found out they’re a new group. Excellent! I just have a soft spot for fiddle music, I guess.

Dad’s Labor Day program CD (really!)

I gave Dad a hard time about his locution when he was here, but I’d only listened to the CD a couple of times and he was right, he just sounds scared more than anything else. I hope my words didn’t discourage him from ever trying a similar project, because after all told I love these two CDs. There are many, many awesome songs on them.

Out of all these, I’d say So Damn Happy has probably gotten the most play. That guy is one hell of a songwriter.

Worst Books

Well, for every best there has to be a worst, right?

Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon

Pynchon might be a genius, but who cares. I’m still trying to figure out how I managed to finish reading this interminable piece of crap. Thank God recent authors have gotten out of the habit of trying to one-up each other with the longest run-on sentence possible.

Valhalla Rising – Clive Cussler

The only proper response is to laugh. Although even that is getting difficult since I realized that it probably sold five times as many copies as Jayber Crow. I’m not sure I could summon a more depressing thought if I tried.

The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

O V E R R A T E D. Brown has a numerologist’s knack for making everything sound like some kind of conspiracy, but underneath the hype and transparent suspense-novel trick of making every chapter three pages long is some really mediocre prose.

Worst Music

Ok, so I don’t actually own all of this.

Regguetón

This genre of music, born in Puerto Rico, takes American rap vocal techniques (more or less) and “cash & b****es”-type lyrics, puts it against the exact same backbeat in every single song, and trades out the black or white bimbos for latina ones. ‘Nuff said.

Candy Shop – Ludacris or something like that (appropriate name)

That toothless, devout, sombrero’d sixty year old farmer on the bus doesn’t know what he’s actually humming along to, but dang, it’s catchy.

Ashley MacIsaac – A newer CD (didn’t see the name)

Sorry Sam, hahaha. Maya says you like this CD. The music is good and all but the lyrics are pure comedy; I don’t think I’ve heard any this ridiculous since Gravity Kills. He should probably stick to the fiddle.

Later guys. :)

The fact that a Honduran read and commented on my blog entry from a couple weeks ago was extremely beneficial for me. First of all, it kind of surprised me (I had gotten lazy and started letting myself forget that what I post here is not a private message to my family, but completely in the public domain) and it reminded me to think carefully about what I write. That, in turn, got me thinking a lot about what I posted last week, how accurate it might actually be and whether or not it was fair to both sides of the issue.

I get the sense that I can be pretty negative here sometimes, which could give someone the misconception that I look down upon Honduras or Hondurans. This is definitely not true, and the interesting thing is that in real life (IRL) I’m an extremely optimistic person. It’s just like the newspapers, I guess…. what is news always about? War, tragedy, economic problems, and occasionally sports. The good news, often the very best news, gets neglected because it’s not as interesting. Really, the absence of bad news is about the best you can hope for most of the time.

I realized one important flaw about what I wrote last time, which was essentially how it sounds like I’m blaming the school system for everything. This was actually more of a problem with my way of thinking before and not just a thoughtless exclusion, but I got to thinking more about it, and the truth is that what I see as the situation in the schools is more like a reflection of the same issues that permeate the society as a whole. It’s all part of the same system. To wit: the aspect which I perceive as problematic is the tendency towards paternalistic treatment of the “lower” classes. This presents itself a lot in the classroom because the teachers are generally from a different class than the students.

A funny thing about Honduras, in fact, is the existence of classes because most people aren’t even aware of them or haven’t thought much about it. When I sometimes ask pointed questions to try and get people’s opinions, I’m often met with simple incomprehension, like, “What do you mean everyone on Honduran TV has really white skin? Isn’t that normal? Aren’t light-skinned people just more attractive?” etc. It’s more subtle than the outright racism in some other countries; more insidious, and so ingrained that it’s just taken for granted. I’m absolutely sure you could trace this back to precedents set a long time ago, foundations in the country’s social history that have probably had lots written about them by people who are more expert about this kind of thing than myself.

Like I say, it’s not that there’s no good news about Honduras. It’s a free society that has a long history of relative political peacefulness. A lot of the corruption has been getting rooted out lately and exposed in their admirably free press, which may not be perfect but is probably better than our own at this point. The fact that it’s taking the country a long time to catch up with the rest of the world, so to speak, is often seen as an inexplicable problem that must be due to some grievous errors on the part of the people “in charge”. The fact of the matter is that we’re not just talking about economic changes that are taking place, or physical changes. These are cultural changes, and that takes a hell of a long time.

Going through these changes is a slow process because people are like that. The laws of physics say that the tendency of an object is to remain in its current state – if it’s in motion, to remain moving, if it’s at rest, to remain at rest. We call it inertia. People have inertia too, and lots more than any normal physical object. People resist change in their lives, and large groups of people display cultural inertia as well, resisting change even more effectively than one person by his or herself. Why do people still employ slash-and-burn migratory agriculture, despite how many times they’re told that it’s bad and unsustainable? Because that’s the way they’ve always done it, since like FOREVER, before the Europeans even got here! That kind of inertia needs patience and time to overcome.

Some people might be tempted to cite those poor countries in Asia that are developing at the speed of light. The thing is, from what I understand they were culturally ready to do this before the technology made it possible. In fact, all the countries that were culturally ready by the beginning of the 19th century have pretty much joined the race at this point, whereas those that weren’t, mostly haven’t. No amount of technology is going to do much about this. It reminds me of the computer center some people have talked about building here in Agua Fría, where I have 9th grade students that can’t write a complete sentence to save their lives! To me, the investment in a computer center seems frankly obscene when there’s a halfway functional school system to fix first, that could really use that money. Am I the only one who feels this way? We need to think a little harder about priorities.

On some days I think the best thing we could do for these countries is to meddle with them as little as possible. If I may arrogate myself to claim this, the main problem Honduras has, “el problema” as it were, is America. Why? Because they’d probably be a lot happier just doing their own thing here if they didn’t have to worry so hard about keeping up with the rest of the world. I appreciate the fact that social justice as well as basic sanitary conditions of living need to be assured, but the truth is that isn’t what seems to be bothering people the most here.

No, what most Hondurans really need these days is more money. More cars, more cellphones, more stereos, etc. I personally know people whose income would probably classify them as some of the poorest people in the world, who have spent two months’ worth of salary to buy better cellphones than mine (granted, I have the cheapest one you can possibly buy). Again, priorities. Congratulations, America. Why is it that our cultural values that I hate the most are the ones we’re the most adamant about spreading around? Einstein proved that position and movement are totally relative. He should’ve expanded that theory and just said that EVERYTHING is relative. Hondurans might not feel so shitty about themselves if they didn’t have our shiny happy people with their expensive clothes and toys on all their televisions, and our products on all their billboards, and our crap in all their stores. But the fact is that their biggest point of reference to compare their own country to is the US, and we’ve somehow tricked them into using our standards to prove that relatively, they don’t measure up.

Am I the only one with the creeping suspicion that this is bullshit?