05.28.09 Mio dios. Dios mio.

Well it’s been awhile since I posted, but the transition from having time to actually analyze my life here has transitioned to having no choice but to just live it…that said, my computer is actually working tonight, so I’ll do a quick recount of what has been my recent life stuff…

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Last night I awoke to a vibrating feeling. The bed was moving. Shaking. In my feverish state (sick) I thought it was the rats! I had seen one scurry along the rafter before going to bed and I was then imagining a monster-sized one gnawing viciously at my bed legs. (It’s possible, they will eat anything…rusty nails, candle wax, panty crotches…) Only this morning, when buying my mandarin-flavored gatoraid did I receive the news; Earthquake! Apparently the most damage happened in municipalities a good 4 to 5 hours travel from Copan, near la Ceiba, Roaton, Lima, El Progresso…but here we all felt the shake. Some stayed up all night fearing their already weakly standing houses would just give out upon them…I, after switching the lights on and off to scare the giant rats, went back to bed and slept in till 9am.

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Yesterday I fulfilled a lifelong fantasy of mine—I ran away with the ice cream man…kind of.

It was lunchtime, scorching hot, and I was waiting by the town gate for a ride into Sta. Rita with no luck and a face full of sweat. The little bus that does the trip routinely was parked in the parque with no chance of leaving for at least another 40 minutes. Then I heard it…Conos por 5 lempira…chocolate, vainilla, fresa… and the music was blaring…it was the ice cream man, making his rounds. I didn’t really know the protocol about getting rides from carros parlantes (literally “speaking cars”) but I put out my thumb and when he did finally stop, ran over and jumped in. The truth is, from the inside, the ice cream truck kind of looses its magic. It was like any other car interior, the only exception being the huge freezer in the back which held the classic flavors. And the woman who did all the scooping. But still…when we got to Sta. Rita and the ice cream man put on that peter piper music and all the work men drooled and handed over a 5 limp bill…I felt kind of privileged to be there in the truck, with the paper napkins on the dashboard and the extra packs of cones on the floor. After the second stop I decided to take my exist from the fantasy, since I couldn’t very well be his second assistant, and the point was to get to Copan. Being the chivalrous ice cream man that he was, he wouldn’t except any money, so I just thanked my hero for the day and took off looking for the next quickest ride.

05.11.09

Well today was an exciting one…after my morning errands making convocatorias y solicitudes y sending emails for the curso of nxt week I came back to town only to be called 5 minutes into lunch, by Yolany telling me that there were tourists in the pulperia looking to rent horses! Apparently they had followed their guide books and ended up here! Or was it the add in the San Pedro paper? Either way, the town is a buzz with potentialidad for tourism! Pues…I went a-running to the pulp. to see what the deal was, and as it turned out it was the 3 white dudes I had seen earlier that day in sta. rita! Apparently they were staying in Sta. Rita and from there they made their way to Cabañas in a car they had rented! So I called Moncho telling him the sitch, that we had tourists and we needed to act Quick! They had all the day to spend with us…so I first took them to visit the goat farm project since Moncho had to make a run to sta. rita and we needed to figure out where we could go! I think I or moncho came up with the idea to go to la Cumbre San Lucas where there’s the farm of Don Juanquin Solis and so we did! Once I got back with the guys from the finca Moncho was back and Daniel was ready to lend us the car w/chofers in tact. From my house we jumped in the truck, picked up moncho y juan and then drove up to la finca. At the finca we toured the cultivos, chilled, ate a big lunch, road horses, relaxed and tried different foods and then before the brewing storm hit, road back into town. They were also cool guys, down to earth, curious and interested in the culture and learning about Honduras, so in everyway the kind of tourist that would arrive in our little tranquilito town.

Over all it was just a great day, and moncho just proves to me what an amazing person he is, and without him, there would simply be NO project for tourism in cabañas.

And the tourism project, is just…To be in the mountains and relate to the people who live there… to be in the back of a pickup truck flying up the mountains early in the morning…waving and calling to those you know, ducking from a low-swung branch…there is something so unforgettable and rich and lush/full of life about those journeys. I am so very grateful. More than I could ever say.

05 21 09

Clapsura.

What could be a better way to end to our 3-day Curso de Papel Natural Reciclado (Natural Recycled Paper Workshop), then to have the municipalidad order the invitations for our town’s feria to be made from the paper the women have made! Alicia and a few others plan to work tomorrow and Sunday to complete the order. I did a quick “molde” (design) for them for a simple invitacion: envelope, card, name insert.

It has been an intense, very busy, but happy three days in el curso—and the final products that were displayed today were incredible for just two days of work…since they just learned how to make the paper the day before!

It was a little hard for the girls to change where we worked everyday, but in the end we needed to be where we were, when we were there. For the first day one big table was the best place for group learning and demonstration. For the second, pure fabrication of paper and manualidades (crafts) Alicia’s house was the only solution…and for the last day, for finishing up manualidades and creating the presentations, the salon de iglesia (church hall) worked out best.

The women did a great job making displays of their work and canal 20 (local tv station) even sent a guy to film the work of our women. Also, the folks from the muni. came by to check out what we have been up to…and the truth is the women in town have been up to a lot of great stuff recently. I am proud of them, and so fortunate to be here to work with them.

...just wanted to introduce my new niece (sobrinita) Maya to my friends, amigas, amies...

and let you know how in love with her I am.

I awoke to the crashing sound of pura tormenta at 5am and thought: “Oh…mierda…here we go again… this mala suerte after having nightmares about not making it to paint the mural for the kindergarden yet again!” However, to my relief, by 7am the morning revealed itself to be overcast but Not rainy. Merril, the young woman living in Copan doing a Fulbright study, had agreed to help me with the kids and paint job and thus showed up with Ellen’s supplies in Cabañas around 8:15. The mural for the Kindergarden playground up at Rio Negro was the last step to a project that Ellen (Jewish American lady doing small educational projects) had started during her first months in Honduras and has been itching to get done for months!

Unfortunately, time, rain, commitments and Honduran life in general had kept us from getting our butts up there. So to have the week of planning and coordidaation actually pay off was a miracle in itself. Napo (the mayor) got my neighbor to drive us and one of his muchacho-jack-of-all trades to pick up some paint thinner, thus astonishingly by 9:45 we were standing infront of a yellow wall being washed by the school children of Profe Lila in the aldea of Rio Negro. There were about 6 little girls and an equal amount of little boys all awaiting our arrival swinging on swings, sweeping dirt, and machete-ing grass.

After mixing the paint in the plastic buckets with the thinner we brainstormed ideas, and the best one seemed to be flowers made with the little kids’ hands and grass using their fingers. The girls picked to do the flowers in teams assigned by colors and the chicos got to work on the grass. We succeded in decorating all four-sides of the playground wall pretty quickly and with much enthusiasm, but when it came to get the paint off of our skin there was mucho anxiety b/c it was oil paint and we only had so many rags and paint thinner to clean ourselves with. We finally got the paint-covered children somewhat clean and relaxed again before taking some pics of our masterpiece and the kids playing in the playground. The teacher then treated us all to icecream cones with pasas. The final mural really did look nice +kid-crafted and all the people who passed by commented on how “bonito” and “lindo” the kids’ work was.

If only all days could involve kids, paint, and icecream…it makes me want to be a kindergarden teacher for real! The Children are so much fun to be around, they just give you an energy unlike any other. Profe Lila was also nice enough to offer me and Merril an almuerzo of frijol, tortilla y verdera before we rode back into town speckled with paint and very content. Lesson learned: sometimes, it doesn’t rain and life lets you win.

I have ground corn, made tortillas, tamales, tikukos, montucas, and everything that is possible to concoct with corn…I have eaten nances, patastes, frijolitos, queso seco, cuajada, ricason, loroco and drunken enough sugar-coffee to fuel-power a small jet…I have listened to ranchera, danced to reaggaton, sung along to chapo…I have washed clothes in a pila, washed-up in a dirty river, fallen down countless derrumbes, bucket-showered, lit a fogon, jalon-ed near and far… I have worn color-coordinated jewelry/outfit ensembles, called everything under the sun “bonito” or “bonita,” sat squished between campesinos holding their chickens, culantro y packets of consume, I have even licked a consume packet myself after use like the niños… I have said “si dios quiere, gracias a dios, and que dios le bendiga” at least once a day for a year…and I think that only tonight have I truly reached true Honduran woman-status.

Tonight and tomorrow I have three teenage campesina girls staying at my house. (The experience thus far has shown me just how far from integration we are as PCVs, or I am as the town gringa… a title much like that of the town bolo—el unico.)

Despite that sidenote, I have taken some major steps these past couple of days: Firstly, I had 2 little girls do things I had to do (clean bolsas de churro (chip bags) and paid them in comida (food) –which I successfully/medio-exitosomente pulled-off—a very plato típico (sans tortillas) consisting of rice w/consume, frijoles cocidos, tomate w/sal y queso. Instead of coffee or coca cola I substituted purified water (save the teeth). I’m not sure if they were thinking—damn this gringa can’t cook—or if they actually liked it, or that it tasted like normal food to them? I guess I’ll never know…but it was actually nice to prepare food for kids in my own kitchen. I felt so… motherly.

Now here I am, in my room, with the chavas(girls) flirting via saldo(cellphone minutes) I sold them…oh the giggles…and how alta their voices! I honestly didn’t expect them to actually sleep here, but here they are. When Eugenio Rosa from the community of Naranjito called me and asked if they could stay here, I just thought they would somehow know someone in the community besides me…not that I mind hosting them, but I feel like they would be more comfortable with family or primos(cousins)… or primos of primos…

The three pairs of giggles on the otherside of my drywood-wall belong to the females selected from their communites to participate in a curso of manualedades (craft class—for lack of better translation) that via Mancomunidad Chorti/Proy Norte and el Comite of Turismo de Cabañas we are giving to 4 distinct groups of women: 3 small groups from the communities of San Manuel, Peñas II and Naranjales, along with a larger group from Casco Urbano of those who form part of Conmich (an indigenous group of los Maya Chortis). And it is actually going pretty smoothly.

I had a bit of the normal pre-workshop stress since no laptop works with the projector but that of Juan Carlos, even though Yamileth didn’t see the need to tell me that hers had never been used with the projector when she lent it to me with the projector…alas after 15 minutes of failed attempts, I called her to tell her that in fact it did not work, and then she tells me we only ever used juan carlos’s laptop, but that he just left…(leaving out the fact that she had the key to his office, where he always leaves the laptop) I called elma to get his number, but he did not pick up, I then called my neighbor who has an ipod (with the assumption that if you have an ipod, you most likely have a laptop, since no other laptop in the Muni works with this freak’n projector) and I had guessed right. He said in 15 minutes he would bring it. So then, I ran into my friend Mauricio, who I told about my sitch, he then calls juan carlos, he picks up, passes him to me, I explain the problem, he tells me that he did in fact leave the laptop in the office and that Yamileth has the keys…Entonces…I went to Yami’s house got the keys, went to the office, got the laptop and with that, technical problem resolved!…My neighbor did show up with his dad’s laptop telling me if anything happened to the machine he was a dead man…good thing we didn’t need to use it after all I told him…In the mean time, I had Delme, a friend of mine, man the listado de paraticipantes, and I called the merienda people to make sure they were on the ball.

We started the workshop with the “What is Tourism?” presentation to orient the ladies as to why we are here and what are the goals of such a workshop and their own ambitions. Lic. Carmen Martinez and the course instructor Sandraa came just as I was finishing up the presentation, and so we had merienda (crackers and hot coco) and then Sandra took over with her curso of Haciendo Hechos de Deshechos…translated: Making Goods of ungoods? Basically we learned how to make jewelry and hand bags out of discarded chip bags. (The bags were all collected by the neighborhood kids after I promised to show them all how to make jewelry after the workshop) The process is very simple and just takes some practice. The women in the workshop all picked it up fairly quickly and we were able to produce one handbag per group, several pairs of earrings, and bracelets.

In total the workshop lasted 3 days, and the women did a great job with accomplishing the production goals of the course, and many did perfect their skills as well by the end of the 3rd day when we did presentations of what each group produced. The Lic. Carmen from Proy Norte put some pressure on me to make sure the women who will be working in these courses are committed and not just here for fun, but ready to work. Her goal being that we reach a decent level of quality and quantity to commercialize the products and export. It’s a bit much to think about today considering the women are just learning the craft…and are in need of organization and training if they are to form a micro-empresa de veras, but perhaps with the help of a business volunteer we could get them to that point…my only concern is that it be something the women actually want for themselves. That’s the point right? To help them find work that is satisfying to them and will help them to improve their and their children’s quality of life.

Well, back from isla paradise adventure. Sooo good to be home!

Below’s what I wrote in the Tela Bus Terminal + SPS Terminal on my way home hoy:

…I’m in Tela terminal once again-this time alone. This marks the end of extended Vaca. Foggy-headed after what seems like weeks doing nothing but tanning, swimming, snorkeling, drinking, dancing and playing with fellow PCVs and new friends. The private Isla Sandy Cay, off the coast of Utila, was honestly a pequeño paraíso. I arrived in la Cieba on the 5th and met up with friends @ the pier to take the ferry over to Utila—a funky little diving-spot with hippie-like vibes and transient beachgoer/backpacker-town feel.

The group of us only stayed there one night and the next morning we went to wait for Barry (Son of owners of the isla) to come pick us up and drive us over to the island. We were waiting for over an hour and we didn’t know what Barry even looked like, so I started asking people if they knew barry, and then I asked this random dude if his name was Barry, and he was like “yeah…but how do you know me?” and I was like, “Well, I am Elaine’s friend,” (thinking this would spark recognition b/c Elaine rented the isla) but he said “Who’s Elaine?” (This is when things were obv. amiss. And I asked: “Don’t you own a private island, Sandy Cay?” and he replied: “Uh, no…” and so…I said: “Oh, ok, then I guess you’re not the Barry I’m looking for!” Random…I mean, how many Barrys are there, really?

So finally the real Barry shows up, and we take a quick and wet boat ride to the isla.

And can I just say: Amazing!

I was just blown away with how pristine and beautiful this little mass of land was--a simply perfect untouched place! It was certainly small (less than 10 minutes to walk around the entire exterior) but for the size-group we had, it was a good fit. The islander group was a mix of mostly H12ers, H11ers, 2 siblings, and 2 friends. We spent the days enjoying the small topless beach the girls initiated, going snorkeling in the surrounding coral reefs (which housed an insane amount of underwater world wonders), playing tons of games (drinking and non-drinking), some went deep diving on near-by islands, but mostly the time was passed just hanging out, chatting and drinking.

The snorkeling was one of the most exceptional things—the variety of fishes and their movements, the coral formations, the color of the water, this entire silent world that has existed and evolved long before we came to be…I just loved the sensation of trying to be a part of that world—or more like becoming a spy or intruder trying to swim along with the schools of fishes, or float above their coral-housing complex with all the marine-life inhabitants going about their normal business…and you feeling like this huge obese mammal-creature just trying to blend in and observe.

Its back to work tomorrow. But so far, 2009 has been a very good year...

I realize I haven't updated the blog since october.

I guess I fell off the blog wagon so to speak...

Here are some pics por lo menos and a brief update on how I have been during a unexpectedly muy pumpkiny November (I still have a 103 ounce can of pumpkin in the fridge, which I can't seem to make a dent in no matter how many pumpkin muffins I cook up and give away...

Below is my girl Patí, making banana tacos for the honduran cookbook I and some of the expert cooks in my town have been working on:

Next is a pic of the Holiday Bizarre at the US Embassy in Teguc. where various groups producing local craft-like work and supported by PCVs went to sell their products to the employees of the Embassy and anyone else who might have someone gotten into the Embassy past all the security. Overall it was a really successful event and the young, small business owners that came with me from our Asociacion de Microempresas AMICCOH in Cabañas all enjoyed themselves and we all definitely learned alot about our products and what else is being produced in the country. It was def a good way to motivate the group.

We plan to go to a feria in El Salvador early next year...In the mean time Jorgito is making me some CowGirl boots similar to the ones in the pic below:

With the same group of small business owners from AMICCOH, Laura (a near-by Business Volunteer), and I put together a two-day workshop on business basics and how to create a business plan. The workshop was alot of work, but Laura was great and the group we had from Cabañas and two other municipios were equally great to work with. Here's a group shot and one of us doing a dínamica called: prestame un martillo, where the participants have to pretend to hammer, iron, and then become a human blender...it's a bit hard to explain actually...

So that's it for now.

Currently in Tegucigalpa for a meeting to present the Project Citizen dillustrasions. I'll let you know how it goes...and hopefully post some of the designs.

October

10.02.08

There are witches here in Copan. So I am told. The Mayas had witches and practiced witchcraft, friends of cabañas inform me...even though all I know of the Mayas is their sun gods and honey gods, their water and earth and have-a-good-harvest gods…that they lived with the earth instead of against it, invented the calender, were masters of astrology, built intensly complex civilizations, and that...en fin the Spanish came, kicked their butts, killed their innocents with bullets or disease and built a church. Converted them to their faith, and left them believing.

Let’s jump forward to the present. Many people here have a severed view on their true ancestors, attributing only negative characteristics to los indios (Indians), when that is who they come from…why is dark “ugly” and light “beautiful”? Where does that come from? All this I am currently contemplating and confronting because I want to throw a Halloween event in my town.

The halloween event plan: A noche cultural (a night of traditional dances, jokes, food, with trick-or-treating in my town followed by a scavenger hunt and a dance party). The plan for the morning: a hike from Cabañas to Copan Ruinas (where the annual Halloween party is taking place). The slogan is: I do it the hard way. I have the t-shirts designed and ready to print. The food paid for by a local NGO. The decorations donated from friends and family from home. The kids in the dance troop and in the school band ready to go. The local mariachi band composing a song about funny things gringos do. The local women ready to cook up some plato tipico with empenadas and ticukos as extras. A place for us to sleep, 30 some sleeping mats and fans for the lending…the hike mapped out and a handful of tour guides to lead the way…

Alas, now there is to be Major drama over whether the Halloween event will even take place in my town, how it will take place, who will support it and who will not.

The drama all started yesterday with a late night phone call from Javier Mata (member of tourism committee) who told me that he could not participate in the event because the pastor and those of the congregation are going to protest. Going to try and convince the mayor that we will be patronizing with witches. It is so ridiculous. Or, rephrase that, I think it is ridiculous. Apparently the pastor is afraid that witches will come or posses the American volunteers. He wants “his people” (2 thousand and total he tells me)to protest and block the road so that we may not enter into the town… I’m worried, I really can’t afford to loose the support and confidence of the people in my town, that is very important to me. I’ve worked a year for just that.

10.05.08

Cool breath, tight squeeze, now you’ve got the shivers.

Today I escaped to La Cumbre San Lucas Farm to see my friends Delila y Eva Lidia. I really feel at ease up there. The temperature is cooler. Its far away from Cabañas. There you don’t have to see anyone if you don’t want to. Solitary. Small town chisme (gossip) can be unbearable! But even up in the mountains, in my escape, I heard on the radio that same pastor telling people to pray one hour each day so that the witches dont come.

When I got back down into town, Griedy, Rudy, and two other little girls came over to draw in my house per usual. They asked me more stuff about what the pastor had been saying about me, asked me if I was a witch, if I was going to bake them a cake that gave them nightmares. I sadly explained to them that their pastor was confused, and it was just lies, mentiras… The kids drew their pictures and I worked on the two logos I needed to finish for the next day. We cooked a little dinner of fried plantans and fresh squeezed orange juice and I spread out a blanket for our meager picnic. I didn´t have salsa so the girls dipped their tajadas in soy sauce and actually loved it!

Also, I got my first tick today, in the ankle! It was really big and I had to use tweezers and slowly pull to try and get the bugger out. It took a few minutes but eventually it had to let go or loose its 3-pronged head. Perhaps we are all as stubborn as a tick?

10.06.08

Monday. Today I heavy heartedly went to the municipalidad to get the official word about the Halloween event from Napo the mayor. As I had suspected—Cancelled.

He said he didn’t want to cause unrest in the town or problems for me... Some sixty to seventy people went to his house to demand he cancel the event. The pastor had convinced everyone that witches were coming...

Thus my life here will just continue, all the plans and potential for tourism flushed down the drainn for now, but I will not make a fuss of it. It has been a few days of really bad feelings, and last night was surely the bottom, but what can I expect, for everything to go my little gringa way? Hardly…

But as my older sister knows, I’m a really sore looser.

What September entailed –or-

What’s in your thought box?

el Día del Nino

Here in Honduras they celebrate el Día del Niño the 10th of September. It is kind of like a birthday party for every child in town since many do not get to feel very special on their actual birthdays (due to families’ financial situation). Instead of birthdays for each child, every child’s life is celebrated on the 10th, usually during school, or somewhere in the town.

The 9th and 10th of September was (for me) el dia del nino. The 9th I, Elma, Obeniel, and Ellen went to Haciendo San Juan to visit the small group of students of the one-room school house they have there. My favorite part of the whole trip (besides the kids dancing with oranges squeezed between their foreheads and seeing them full-body swing at the piñata) was talking with Oscar’s (the community leader) 17yr old son on the way back as he diligently led my horse along the trail. We talked about all aspects of life, and about what it is to really be poor. In the country vs in the city kind of poverty. Food and health. Electricity vs happiness. I don’t see poverty when I look at the people of his small rural community. I just don’t. I don’t feel bad for them. I think they honestly have a beautiful little town and all their teeth looked really healthy compared to most the kids in the casco urbano. (Probably because there are no pulperias where they can buy dulces every hour) I’ve only been there a handful of times and for only a few hours each time and thus I couldn’t possibly know their health problems, or any of the struggles they may have…but even so…. My question is, are people who do development work always seeking to see poverty? Or label things as poor or not poor? I just don’t trust people who, I don’t know, think they can shoot out a sappy email, get money sent from the states, and poop out some proyectito in a community…without ever speaking to the people…and is there no scale to measure the positive vs. negative of such breeds of development work?

Perhaps such self-imposed uneasiness is a result that my entire thought-box has changed, it’s like all the kinds of thoughts I used to think fit in one box, and now, all the things I think, are from another box completely.

09.17.08

Dear God, please send 50,000 lempira so we can build improved stoves in a poor town…

How can they, anyone, expect us to start from scratch, from nothing, and create a stove, or a schoolhouse, or a new economic opportunity? Is that what is really expected of a volunteer? In my case, I have been asking for financial support from local NGOs, who are getting their funds from Church groups in the United States. Basically, we are all depending on the generosity and business-like functions of the Ole´American Church. Its so very strange to think about, when you really actually think about where the money, and thus the “scratch” is coming from…

Last night in our grupo intercambio, I and my friends in town got on the subject of people who go to the US to work, illegally. And ya know, it finally hit me for the first time just how judgmental I’ve been on that matter, I, who has always had whatever opportunity I could ask for, who has Never wanted for anything in my entire life, not even now…and I couldn’t help but see things (at least slightly) from the perspective of someone who has NO apparent opportunities to find in their area, in their town or perhaps in their entire country! Who didn’t have an education because their parents did not have one, and you don’t need to know how to read to work on the farm with your dad. But ya know, they will never make any real money in their lives. They will never be able to build their own houses from materials they themselves picked out, on land, they bought…they wont ever have money to buy a car, or a nice outfit, or different food for a change. They wont ever, ever go on a vacation. Wont ever travel.

…..And here I am, waiting for NGOs funded by churches to give me money to give a few women and kids some cookies and soda and try to inspire them to develop tourism in their town, even though I’m not 100 % sure how to do it either…or if it will even work. It’s just an idea after all.

I´ve come to the conclusion that pretty much you can’t do development work without raising money…like the guy at CASM, Juan, told me today, there is tons of work, tons of projects, or potential for both…its just a question of getting money to do it…

...and so I´ve recently been bombarded with thoughts about how to raise money...like instead of buying a pair of Seven jeans, donate the money to a school so they can have a mini reading area...Or uniforms...OR instead of buying a drink at the bar for seven bucks, or a double skinny latte at Starbucks, put that money in a jar at the bar and then use the entire crowd´s money from that one night/day to fund a letrine project...

08.08.08

The Loroco Rock

This AM at 5:30 I went to purchase loroco (local edible flower) in Bo. el Tigre with Olfania, the lil sis of Elma. I took pictures of the white flower and the petit woman as she climbed up the slippery log ladder to pick the flowers from the canopy upon which they grow and then toss them down to her awaiting daughter who collected them one by one. Back in mi casa I added a section on the freshly picked flower to the cookbook's layout. (I started a new project for me-myself-and I: a Traditional Copan/Honduran Cookbook)

After that, I went with Monchito to visit the Mayan Chorti Goat Farm Project. There we talked with brother Herman about his collaboration with a group of women in la Pintada, Copan to see if they would give Capacitationes to our group of Chorti women. (The Chortis are an indigenous group here in Honduras, basically the descendants of the Mayan Indians) Herman was keen on the idea and said that we could even do the workshop at the finca! So that is the plan as of now—teach our Chorti woman of Cabañas how to make dolls out of tusa (dried corn husk) and other crafts to sell in their future microempresa (small business).

After that we went to the Monitores de Salud (health monitors) meeting to find me two counterparts to go to the Taller Emergencias Obstétricas in Gracias, Lempira this upcoming Tuesday. Finally found two women willing to go, and so I sent the info to those organizing the taller and I guess we are off this Tuesday to Gracias.

***

The second Project Citizen session in the elementary school in Bo. Morazan went great this past tuesday, the kids really liked the activities I did with them, were appropriate and very participativos…so that was great. I didn’t have time to finish all we needed to do before I leave for next week, and so I am going in tomorrow to talk them through the next step: Identifying the problems in the community.

English Classes in Bo. Morazon are also advancing and I have pretty much left the PC TEAM manual in the dust, but will refer back to it again sometime. I need to think of some different ways to engage the students, esp. since the levels are so uneven in some cases. Here that is a huge problem…how the learning process can be hindered because some kids slow others down…it must be frustrating for all: The quick and the slow. I can only imagine…they hardly have enough teachers let alone time and resources available to divide the kids into levels of advancement.

08.15.08

Get into the groove. It’s a Mitzvah!

So after a rough start in August I am now officially learning my trade. Who I am and what I am suppose to be doing here. I guess it does take about a year to integrate, 365 days, give or take a few.

First thing first, you’ve gotta be able to communicate. And not just in the local language, but in the local customs. Speaking Spanish only gets you halfway in the door, you’ve got to speak it in the way of the people with whom you are addressing—or you might as well be speaking it backwards, or with a big post-it on your forehead that reads: you may find me to be slightly retarded or stupid, but just smile back please. That is that.

***

Today will forever be known as the Honduran Mitzvah, because today is the day that I met Ellen. A real nice Gringa y Jewish lady who never leaves home without gummy finger puppets in her purse and used to play bass guitar in a church band.

Anyway, Ellen is going to be working in the Copan area helping raise funds for educational projects. She came to Cabañas because she somehow heard about a project for a kindergarten in Montagua. It turned out, the price for a school was too much for her or her group, but I’m going to work with Obeniel to see if we can do a proposal for a school where the Municipalidad provides one portion of the funding/materials and her group donates another. Small projects are what she is interested in instead of doing something really big, so we can get some projects done and documented and then perhaps do a bigger project… She was very emotional in meeting me, saying she had been waiting to find me, and had goosebumps. I guess she rrreally wants to help out. It’s actually a perfect team because I have the contacts now in the community that took me a yr to make and she has the pisto and the ability to get more of it! Score, no? Double win? We will see, right?

Anyway, after I had that brief and unexpected meeting, there was the meeting of the corporation municipal, and in that I presented the tourism project and had juan monroy sign the compromiso so that we may pass for his property, make new cenderos (paths), make different places where the tourists can rest, ect, ect. …Napo said one day he, I and monchito will go to Teguc to present our project to the Institute of Turismo, and try to secure funding for it…so I will have to have some stuff prepared for that and bug Napo so that it happens. Then Lastenia from the OGN of OCDIH showed up and she gave me the list for the participantes for the capacitacion that we will have here for the mujeres that are going to be learning how to make Tusa dolls for the microempresa they will establish…so that is todo cheque. Once I get the go ahead from brother Herman, we will teach our ladies how to be crafty!

Anyway, all and all, a really good day. No hay luz. But did go for a run and took the icy cold shower that I know, a year before, would’ve brought me near tears. I am proud. Will not hide it.

08.17.08

On the floor

I don’t know why, even though I now have furniture that I am still happiest in my house when I’m sprawled out on the cold tile floor…could be that the floor is kept muy clean, that its my house, that this is my only true home in the world. It’s so crazy to think about that Home=honduras and job=community development worker.

Went off to Copan today to meet with the only other blue-eyed blond-haired Jew in Honduras, Ellen, who with the help of churches is going to do some projects in the schools of Cabañas. Backs are both scratched, and she said she would like to help me with funds for my cookbook, so that is really exciting, it could really happen!

From idea to accion, in just one brief meeting.

***

I was thinking today, as I cleaned my all-tile floor, how I love this job, how I can’t imagine doing any other kind of work…getting to connect with people, in all the frustrating and rewarding ways that can happen, and also getting to use my talents when ever I can…its great.

Big question for the day: Is fund raising an essential part of development work? Is that really sustainable? Will the buzz word always be sustainable?… Not so sure… but at least its helping the schools. And that is something I felt was missing from my service.

08.23.08

And the high rolls on

It’s nice to be home. And mean it. A bit of sweeping, vegi-cleaning, cereal and detergent buying, con una caja de jugo de naranja en el refi and I’m all set…I wont jump right back into work, give myself the rest of the day to unwind post-taller...

The workshop, Emergencias Obstétricas, done through the PeaceCorps’ health program, run by Helmuth was the best capacitation I’ve been to thus far. Not only was the material interesting, well presented, and extremely applicable and important for Honduras’ most remote communities, but the people + counterparts there were really great.

I brought a monitora de salud, Nelly de Carmen from Peñas I and a Partera (midwife) from las Lomas, Maria Valle. I didn’t know them at all before this, I’d seen Maria Valle before in meetings, but never Nelly. Maria had a great attitude the whole time and I feel like I really lucked out with her.

The last day of the capacitation we did a practica in one of the nursing schools there and it actually went a lot smoother than I thought it would…

That evening we had a nice dinner and then the diplomas were presented. We also had to create a plan de accion with our counterparts for how we are going to implement the project in our sites. For our team, we decided we could do a session during the monthly monitores de salud meetings in el centro de salud. So I actually think it will be implemented here with little resistence if we can truly blend into those meetings that are already existing…I will talk to the nurses at the health center tomorrow…

08.27.08

Today was the second part to a capacitation/modulo/civics class 101 about the political parties here in Honduras and the history of corrupt leaders and the wack voting system that has existed for years and is just recently being modified to be more, eh, democratic! Oh the word poder…power and politics, what the hell is power and politics anyway…just another way to end up in war. Tranquil existence was obviously not our species’ destiny. I honestly thought today, why did we evolve to where we are, these utterly ridiculous systems and complicated ways to win and loose money, and live and die…has anything our species accomplished, or accidentally stumbled upon actually benefited us or the earth’s existence? Not to mention other species? ….deep, deep sigh.

***

Ermas came over tonight for grupo intercambio, even though it was the second time this week that only he came…thanks ladies! Way to get the band back together again! He went off on this tangent about hanging out with his friends in the barn in the back of the pick-up truck just drinking beers and talking and talking and just being on the same page…and man do I miss that, so much!

It made me pretty damn sad because I rarely think about the kind of friendships I am missing out on while I'm here. The true deep connection you can feel with people who you know and love and can finish your thoughts/sentences and just touch in on every level and just hold your mind in their hands and put you at ease with whatever it is you are contemplating…I think a million things in a day that I can’t share with anyone here because as I told Ermas, I’m scared to offend the culture, the people…I want to yell at men here who pissst and catcall for my attention, but I can’t call them f***** pendejos because ladies just don’t talk like that…damn this environment can be suppressive! Small town life, right?

…God I miss Ben and Jerrys Chunky Monkey…I miss eating ice cream in bed and having a glass of wine. I miss walking the city blocks on cool summer nights… miss feeling sexy and alive, miss being a woman in America, never thought I would understand what that really meant, leave it to a small Honduran village in the western part of the country to teach me who I am, who I can’t ever be, who I would like to be, one day…

08.29.08

Charla-ing – or the Art of the Charla

I’m where I ought to be perhaps, discovering my own charla-ing power.(A Charla is kinda like giving a lecture) Though yesterdays Project Citizen session didn’t go as well as I would’ve hoped, I blame the material more so than the students or I…though they were not sooo attentive this time. The way I see it, doing it this time around I am definitely learning what works and what doesn’t work—the activities that are best understood, and useful for the project, and thus this will help me when I implement it in centro basico, which is where I’d like to go next with it.

This morning I went over to the centro de salud to do the first charla from the capacitation for emergencies obsetricas that we went to Gracias to learn. The two other women who went with me were not at the meeting so they could not participate, but hopefully next time I will give them a call ahead of time so we may have something prepared as a team. The little charla went really well, and I can feel myself becoming a better speaker in front of the Hondurans, a few frases clavos and you can present almost any tema (topic) better. It’s also a question of intonation, and knowing how to build up a question and then give the response, also how to fish the audiences out for a response—these are all skills I am learning here…I guess I’m honestly learning how to be a better public speaker, which is a huge part of the job. Being motivational tambíen, doesn’t hurt.

So today I’ve gone from preparing for grupo intercambio to English classes to tourism comitee reunions to proyecto ciudadano sessions to proyectos pequenos escolares proposals to emergencia obstetricas charlas…what next? It’s great though to be able to accumulate projects one-by-one and hopefully realize something in the end. Whatever, whenever the end may be. . .

07.23.08

Today was another busy day where I felt mostly on my feet, my aching feet. Not that I’m complaining. When the rain gives me enough time to walk from one point to another without falling, believe me, I am grateful. I imagine that the roads as well are grateful for a chance to give the people a good couple of hours to shovel dirt where a tree used to be, but now is nothing but a hole, well, a landslide is more like it….

That is what I passed by today on my way to give a workshop on Project Citizen in one of the schools across the underwater bridge (see pic) and up the mudslide mountain. I saw a man, who looked about 50 maybe 60 yrs old, along with his wife and their two small children—all shoveling dirt from the hillside to try and temporarily fill in this huge gap in the dirt road that was storm-by-storm degrading into the farm valley below. That was the fifth or sixth spot along the road that looked like that. Others had one or two entire trees uprooted and laying in the way. Or the occasional huge chunks of red rock that had dislodged from the hillside blocking the way. Today a few of the trees’ trunks were being made into firewood for the fogones.

And the Workshop with the teachers? Well, after the one male teacher of the group basically cut me off in mid sentence to ask me if we could end the capacitacíon early and not continue until Monday, even though it was them who solicited the project, and agreed to the capacitatíon…I was feeling a bit, um, dejected. Had to again remind myself, everyone else is just trying to do their normal job without too much extra effort, without volunteering for too much. Like most people in any place in the world, they would actually like to make their lives easier, not harder. Silly me…

So…my dejection and I walked back home the long way; down the mountainside through another neighborhood where the abuelita of my host family lives, alone in her little house with a beautiful avocado-and-lemon-tree-filled backyard. I think she is such a beautiful woman, with her wrinkle-free almond-sheen cheeks, brilliant green eyes and thick lasso of black hair down to her butt. She of course invited me in and we spoke of the poor conditions of the roads, the storms, the rains malice, and how a woman gets used to living alone. (Since we are both in the same waterlogged boat.) She had a basket of the lemons and avocados from her trees sitting in the kitchen and began to fill a plastic rice sack with the ripe ones for me to take home. It dawned on me, even before today, that you just give people what you have because the earth has given it to you, and you can’t possibly consume it all, and thus it will go to waste, so it is with a fully generous and open heart that you give to your family and friends. This is how people do not go hunger. With the earth and human love naturally intertwined and…yes, generosity. Unquestionable. Its moving.

Another thing, the women here always seem to miraculously have something cooking on the fogón, a big soup, a big pot of beans, a heap of tortillas, a kettle of coffee, warm milk and rice with cinnamon…this too, is to share, to bestow upon not only your family, but your next unexpected guest who is surely far from home, or doesn’t really know when their next meal will be that day. The soup was made for these unexpected yet perfectly expected guests. There really is no such thing as extra, all and nothing is extra. And those who can’t afford to give to the visitors? If all things follow the good nature of the system, they are receiving a visitor who has too many mangos in their trees.

And to think, all my food used to come from the supermarket…and it was Organic! Ha…

India Bonita

07.22.08

This past Sunday was the national holiday el Día de Lempira (Lempira, who the money here is named after, was an Heroic Indian Warrior who fought against the conquistadors, but eventually bit it to the Spanish bullet). The day was filled with preparations for el concurso de la India Bonita. (Competition for the prettiest Indian.) I had been helping out the maestros of the community of Llano, and thus became really attached to our dress winning! Alas, we did not… I was obviously biased, but thought for sure we would win…for the details…but when I saw all the other robes, I realized we ALL thought the same thing…and it was really great to see how much effort everyone put into the event and the dresses and the pride that is involved in all of it. We used a shit load of glue to stick the all-natural materials (beans, corn, feathers, pine needles, flowers, seeds, hair…) onto the fabric. If it had been a contest for the heaviest robe, we would’ve won, hands down. The poor niña who was our India bonita could barely walk in it! Anyway, see the pics for all the hard work we put into that thing!

Five seconds of Juramentacíon and Julio’s wisdom.

07.16.08

Waiting for pasta to cook. I just came back from a visit with Flor and Julio. Sometimes I think Julio really gets it, more than anyone else here. It’s odd because he is one of the few people who will say things that make me really uncomfortable, but that are true just the same. I think we all need that person to put us on the edge every once in awhile. You need different kinds of people who mix with you in different ways to keep you churning around. Anyway, Julio and I talked a lot about immigration to the United States. About what it is to work hard; To be satisfied with your life; To know what makes you happy; The power of your own thoughts. The way you can be positive and survive it all. And patience. This is key. He says that some nights at church he gives speeches about staying in Honduras and making life better here, rather than running away to the United States to work like a slave in dangerous conditions, without any rights, without doctors, or a sense of security. Living with fear. I wish there were more Honduran people who thought like him. Who gave inspiring speeches that touched such themes.

Yesterday I was extremely nervous about the Juramentacíon del comité de turismo. I am always a bit out of the loop about how the stuff will go down. But in the end, it wasn’t Napo (our mayor) who did the Juramentacion, it was Jose Alberto Salzar, my landlord! Who is also an official regidor for the la comision. (It’s like a board of directors who works with the mayor to make decisions about projects and funding for the municipio and report back to the national government) Entonces, we were only missing three people from the group, but the majority of those voted onto the comité were there; the ones who held the most important roles—my core group of guys. I took a foto to commemorate the event.

The juramentacíon ceremony involved everyone touching the Honduran flag and taking an oath to work towards the project…and that was it! 5 seconds of touching a flag after I had spent all morning and that week fretting over the affair. But that 5 seconds was enough to prove their dedication, and in a way, their faith and support of me and the project. Yes, we are now official

Israel, amazing:

Paris, oh la la...

check out the rest of the pics @ Flickr, just click on the mini pics to the upper right |-->

Proyecto Ciudadano

In the start of May, I and my muy muy amiga/colleague, Elma, traveled to Tegucigalpa to join my fellow Muni-D volunteers and counterparts for a workshop on Proyecto Ciudadano (Project Citizen- A civic education program developed by the US Center for Civic Education for schools in Central and Latin America to teach kids how to recognize problems in their communities and how to come up with their own public policies to solve these community-based problems.)

Our Project Director has been leading the effort to create a new+improved Honduran-stylized Manual for Project Citizen. I have been asked to do the illustrations for this manual. So far we have had several meetings to collaborate with two NGOs of Honduras (FOPRIDEH, OFALAN) and USAID. Now we are waiting for those collaborating with us to step up and do some of the rewriting, so that we can finalize the content and then work on the new format. It’s been a bit drawn out process-wise, but I’m used to that by now…

Elma and I are actually not planning on using the program in the schools (as of yet) because I could not get any of the teachers to give me four days of their time. To be fair, it’s not like they could get substitutes and Teguc seems insanely (un-godly) far away for everyone in my town…entonces…the plan? Via the Comision Ciudadano de la Transperancia (CCT = citizen transparency council) we are going to do the workshop with the newly elected Controlores Sociales. These community members were recently elected to monitor the projects being implemented in their communities using the ERP funds (Government Funds specifically destined for projects to relieve extreme poverty in the country) These Monitors will be asking questions such as: Are the projects being executed by the community members? Are the materials being delivered and used for their intended purpose? Is there any type of corruption going on during this process? Ect…

It’s all about getting rid of the sticky fingers and deep pockets of the government (at least on the local-level.) Basically Elma and I, along with the CCT and the NGO CASM are going to use Project Citizen to teach these Monitors how to identify problems in the community that are the fault of bad or non-existent public policy. We are thus empowering these Controlores with the knowledge of how to draft a proposal for a new public policy and how to present such to the appropriate local authority. The end goal? Having people in these rural communities aware of their own capacity to implement change in their lives; imparting the importance of their rights and responsibilities; and recognizing the problem, the solution, and the appropriate steps to achieve positive reform. Be it improving two houses that needed new roofs, or petitioning for a whole new water system to be installed—these problems have very obtainable/reasonably simple solutions and with a few strong leaders in the community armed with the right information, improvement is obtainable. We hope.

Escondido

Moncho and I went to visit yet another community the second week of May with a potential tourist attraction. A waterfall positioned very close to the cascada of Naranjales where we went in April. Here we found a birds nest hidden behind the churro of water. Appropriately, “Escondido” is the name of this particularly charming waterfall. From the waterfall we hiked back towards the community of Naranjales, past a really interesting farming project funded by the NGO of PRODERT. This purely organic farm is built with ERP and NGO funding and then the grains and animals are on loan by PRODERT. The project is done with the intention of the farm owners eventually being able to pay them back and make a profit to live off of. Here the family invited us in for lunch. (We enjoyed fried fish, which they ran to catch out of their fish farms (Pisceras) and all the just-picked ingredients, which made up an impressively huge almuerzo.)The first winter storm was threatening to start and so we ran through the coffee fields and up the mountain to a friend of the family’s house, making it to the porch just as the hail started to fall.

I have to say storms here just feel different. One has the impression that the roof is always about to collapse. (Sadly, in many situations, that is exactly what happens when the wood is rotted or the aluminum too old or poorly installed.) I have never been so inspired and moved by storms. But here, the lights always go out and thus, the forces of nature have the undivided attention of all of your senses.

El día de la Madre

The second Domingo in May is el celebracíon del día de la Madre here in Honduras as well as back home. Mother’s day is HUGE here. It reminds me of Christmas! (obv. without the tree) I went the day before the celebration to visit my friends up at the farm on la Cumbre San Lucas. (“cumbre” is a mountaintop)

Here I sat back in awe as the women of three generations prepared an insane amount of food. I watched them stir a giant bucket of dough to make homemade bread in their traditional clay-earth oven. The one man that was part of the meal preparation was chopping away at an entire pig body just killed that morning. A cousin was stirring a smoking pot over an open fire filled with pure pig fat to make chicharrónes (pork rinds). The grandmother was sorting through a pile of banana tree leaves, tearing them into rectangular-shaped pieces to wrap the tamales in later. Another sister was stirring a huge vat of ground cornmeal, milk, butter, salt, and seasoning to make the tamale batter. Another girl was mixing a pot of deep red tamale meat sauce on the stove. The mother of my friends was preparing café with one hand and flipping tortillas with the other while supervising the pig cutting efforts—all with an expert’s eye. My close friend Eva Lidia was making the cheese, which involves using a cheesecloth to separate-out the white curdled part of the milk from the transparent-yellow liquid that remains after the cuajada (cheese curdle) is separated out. She then put the mound of curdle on the grinding stone and kneaded away, making three separate, soft, round balls of cheese. So much work went into preparing for this meal. Queens of the kitchen, la casa—is how the women in Honduras are called—and it is undoubtedly true. They are some of the most exceptional caregivers I have ever seen…vive la madre!

Invierno

This past week the signs of winter’s approach suddenly appeared:

The rain of winged-ants, black and red beetles, huge toads, and gecko poop. I feel like I’m in Egypt! I spotted a chiquito baby gecko behind my toothbrush this morning, named him Oliver. It makes it extremely hard to fall asleep with the swarming of the bugs…I read somewhere that this is their final attempt to mate before the winter storms come (estacion de las lluvias). We already had a bunch of storms last week, and thus the end to consistent luz and agua is upon us…with the rains comes fickle times. A positive note is my little garden has finally begun to really blossom! I had been dowsing the plants with water at least once a day in the summer months, and now…Mother Nature is doing the work for me!

Y Tambíen…I just started giving English classes in one of the neighborhoods up the hill on Mondays and Wednesday before the group I already have. Its mostly boys so, so far its been interesting…At least their catcalls will be grammatically correct if I have anything to do with it! And I love making wanna-be cowboys sing their ABCs!

Saturday its up the mountain again to take some measurements for a new water system that the just-arrived volunteer in Copan is going to help me with! Yeah collaboration!

Then next week I’m going to a reunion in Sta. Rosa to meet all the volunteers in my area and to seek out potentially more collaboration. ( And to beg Peace Corps for a bike…)

Besides that it’s Earth day next Sat. and so the logo I did will be on the t-shirts and banners for that and we will have a kids’ posters contest. Should be good times. The kids have been practicing their drawing skills at mi casa and I’ve been feeding them all the candy that people give me (terrible!! I know! But I also tell them to brush their teeth!)

April Cascadas:

Life is a simple equation that we tend to complicate with trivial things…the stuff we call our stuff. Then there´s the emotional system between people, what we call support. How that works, I´m just not sure, I don´t think it can be explained in words, but is an interchange of gestures and conversations, a wantonly-kind of give and take that in the end, boils down to all the different kinds of love we can experience.

04.21.08

Today is my first full day back @ site after a 4 day trip to Teguc and back. Its always a little rough the first couple of days back in site, the readjustment back to campo-life…but I think its just a bit of loneliness barking at my heels.

I made the Rounds, visited the small collection of families and friends i´ve accumulated in the town…I know I should try to expand the circle, but it seems overwhelming to add more to the mix, I wish too though…

Emails killed me today: kate, snish, snar, dad, laura, brendan, george…missing people just suxª!

Since this Tuesday, things have gotten hectic! Deadlines and projects I care about/feel truly invested in have started to take up all my time. My bathroom falling apart and me breaking yet Another glass on the ceramic floor amidst the flood was just a bonus! (I´m not a good candidate for cermaic flooring...)

The tourism project is all-a-buzz and I´m a bit stressed to do this right. We have a meeting coming up this next Tuesday with two NGOS, Mancomunidad and Proyecto Norte to present all our potential tourist sites within the Municipio. That means I have been planning and running around trying to take pictures of everything (great time for my camera to be busted!) and not leave a soul nor community out of the loop. There are people from 3 communities claiming the same waterfall and trying to be the diplomat has been a delicate task. We´ve discovered some illegal wooding in one of the mountain ranges here that is protected, and thus reported that to our mayor. There was talk of a corrupt employee, but it seems to have been an ugly chisme rumor…pues there´s been some drama as of lately…

04.24.08

Well yesterday I smelled like burnt popcorn and goats. My first stab at making popcorn from scratch, not so hot…half burnt and the stuff left was more kernel than pop…

Earlier that day I went to explore and take pictures of the Mayan-Chorti Goat farm project and the stream and little waterfalls behind that for potentail tourism project.

Today I went to document the cuevonas (caves) we have up in the mountains. I learned an important thing about myself, I do not like caves very much…or perhaps its just the bats and their poop that made me want to get the hell out of there! Moncho and my host brother Adalid had no fear of the bats, and climbed right under their upside down heads to explore the caverns even further. I hovered as close to the ladder as possible, which was my only means of escape as the bats sweep past my face…eeeek!

04.25.08

Ella no contesto. La Carmen se fue. My little host sister packed a suitcase, wrote a note, and left when no one was at home. My host family is torn apart. The thing that is terribly hard for me to understand is the acceptance of these young girls being ¨robbed¨ (as they say here) or running off, and the families not taking action, not pursuing them, or dragging them back to la casa, as would be the case (In my normality as it was) in the States. (Then again, my mom just told me about a polygamy colony the authorities broke up in the States and all the underage girls they found there being sexually assaulted…and thus the backwards thinking can be found in every part of the world)

I know here its all a question of context, perspective, circumstance and overall culture…but its just so hard for me to accept that this beautiful, talented and intelligent 17 yr old girl would throw away all her chances at a career for some older guy she hardly knows (and that the family would not stop her)…perhaps its how we think when we are young and romantic…I know i´m not a stranger to the idea of running away…but it´s just that as someone who loves this girl and wants to protect her from the worst of the world, all I want to do is bring her back home! Her mother feels the same way, and thus is taking the appropriate actions. She is an exception to the rule, as well as her father, so I have hope that I will see her again…soon.

04.28.08

This Sunday we visited the community of Narajales (Oranges), to document the cascada they have near by. This waterfall was the most impressive I´ve seen so far…not because of its height, but for the beautiful natural swimming pool that had formed below. I borrowed a pair of shorts and dove in the muy helado (v cold) water to swim to the waterfall and climb up it in order to catch the best shots of the site.

The family of Oscar Ulloa came with us, along with other children from the community. We all had a great afternoon swimming and playing by the waterfall. The house of Oscar is also in a perfect spot to receive tourists for the terrific views! It´s truly a calm and picturesque place and I would love to share this with those who will come visit and do the tour! I just can´t believe all the stuff there is here, hidden away in the mountains, only known to a few farmers and curious kids.

In Naranjales I also got a marriage proposal from a shirt-less, campo-smelling viejito (old dude) who told me he had chickens, beans and corn and that we should get hitched…I told him it was a very tempting offer, and that I needed to take his picture so that I may send it to my father to ask his permiso (permission)…and I will definitely include that you have Chickens! The line : Tengo Guillinas (I have chickens) must be a classic here!

04.29.08

Well, like so many times in Honduras, we went to the reunion, only to find it canceled.. . so who knows when we will get to present the Tourism Presentation we all worked so hard to put together at such last minute! At least now I will have a chance to visit Mirasolito where they too claimed to have a waterfall worth mentioning. It took us all morning to get to the site where the reunion was suppose to be held, we had to take two different buses and then jalon out to the parque, and once we got there, we got to turn around and do the regresso…my coworker was more than enojada...

The first two tourist groups have come and gone from Cabañas—and the consensus is: Que bueno!

It has really been a great time playing tour guide and sharing my litle pueblito with others! The Rural Tourism Excursion consists of a jalon ride up the mountain to the tranquilo farming community of San Manuel.

Here at the casa of Antonio Cruz we all enjoy a merienda (snack) of Tikukos (Tamale-like dish) with a tomato sauce and refresco of tamarindo. We then mount horses and ride down the mountain path to an opening where the men have made a path to the waterfalls. Here the road gets a bit rough, but the guys from the community all are there to help the tourists not to fall on their butts too much! (All parto f the fun…but we are planning to fix the path up for a less strenious hike)

We stop at three different waterfalls, the last one being a perfect place to rest and enjoy the coffee brought in thermo and homemade bread. Here we all hang out and relax in the beautiful surroundings. Then we hike along the river until we come to the clearing again and remount our horses. We ride back up to the town and do a pass of the community befote stopping to tour the finca (farm)- After that we head back to the casa of Antonio for an Almuerzo (lunch) of plato tipico, that is the best I have ever eaten! I love chimol! AFter lunch we just hang out and talk, learn a bit about the typical honduran farmer life and then eventually pile back into the truck for the trip down the mountain to casco urbano. Below are some of the pics…but look on flicker where i downloaded almost all…

I´m loving my town, life, everything right now…

02.22.08

here, when I lock myself out of the house, the only way back in is through the roof.

02.23.08

Yesterday I went to see the Cascadas en San Manuel. It was Moncho, Alicia, Adalid, and I along with two men from the community: a machete-man named Hector, and a burly mountain-man named Antonio Cruz. It seems the mountain is chalk full of Cruz brothers…I’ve met at least 6. It was a pretty intense hike b/c Hector had to re-hack the trail from scratch by using his machete, chopping down branches, vines, and whole tree trunks. I almost fell down the mountain several times due to loose soil and steep sides, though Moncho always managed to pull me back up again. We discovered there were actually three different cascadas: two up top of the mountain and then one further down where the two streams become one and thus produce a much more impressive water flow for the final fall. We ate lunch beneath one of the upper falls. Antonio showed up after we had already arrived, carrying all the lunches and a bottle of soda. The men of the mountain aren’t joking around. Give’em a machete and they can make the whole natural world let them through, with one hand on the knife and one on the coffee bag full of homemade food. That was a nice part, just sitting under the fall and eating tortillas and rice with my grubby fingers. We were starving from the hike and the weather was chilly/misty/rain, so the hot food was that much more enjoyable.

The way back we took a slightly more developed path that Antonio knew of, and Alicia collected medical plants along the way. Pushing through the plants and freshly broken branches; leaping from one slippery rock to the next; the bruises and dents I acquired along the way; the dirt in my nails; the bugs in my hair—it all reminded me of being a little kid in the meager patch of woods behind our house in Pittsburgh. There with my best friend we passed days, weeks, summers constructing a shack, running from make-believe villains, being the good force, sharing a secret world. It all comes back to me. And then here I am, in a real forest, still believing myself part of some good force.

Once we cleared the forest, the group burnt a small pile of our trash right then and there, and I moved away to avoid the all too common smell of burning plastics. Luego we made it back to Don Antonio Cruz’s house to enjoy coffee with fresh cow milk. I was already feeling sick at this point, so I barely touched my café.

Once we said our goodbyes, our group walked down the road to the coffee processing operation of one Señor Ramos, who was also an owner of one of the lands that we want the municipalidad to buy for the project. We sat there admiring his coffee crop, just picked and cleaned, damp and fragrant in the cement trough. After about an hour’s wait, we all piled into his truck for the slow descent back to casco urbano, arriving just as the sun slipped away.

To the Dirty and back

And...Happy Birthday to me!

A little trip down to the south has turned into a medical stay until Tuesday. So now I’m 26. I know it’s normal, that time is just time and I’m just stuck in it. It’s just surreal to be growing older when I feel like I’m going back in time. All my friends from site called me—sang Feliz cumpleanos a ti! Then my parents called and sang in English, then Claire wrote me in French…so all the lingual bases were covered. My parents called while I was at Ruby Tuesdays…of all places to be, I would never have foreseen myself in Tegucigalpa, drinking a ruby red, in an American chain restaurant.

Anyway, it was awesome to see some of my fellow volunteers’ sites in the bottom, sweltering hot, half of the country. We all are living such a different experience. Down south the air is Hot! Unbearably hot and dry. There is one major, paved highway that we hitched along and it felt right out of some western flick, where the heat waves roll out in front of you and the sky takes up more than half of the horizon b/c the terrain just goes flat. The sun is so strong it creates this buzz in your ears, and you can do nothing but pour buckets of sweat.

At Nicole’s site I got to see what her business center was all about, and meet the women who work every day making there traditional Lencan pottery. Their work is beautiful. (see pics!) I’m excited to create their logo and help with the marketing of their craft.

Jordan’s site was charming. His house--big and open with a Cashew tree in the back. We picked the fruits and then built a fire to roast the nuts.

Gallo’s site was hot and dirty. But we showed up for the town’s naming of the feria queen and thus went to a town dance, where Gallo got to dance with the queen and I with her primo. The best part of being so damn hot is how wonderful a cold bucket shower can feel in an outdoor pila-shower.

Im finally back and site and I finally have a pila to call my own! My Honduran dream has come true...

01.20.08

It’s a balancing act: not getting your hopes up, yet living with hope. The house is near completion, and now it feels…permanent, like moving in there means this Honduran town will be my home, that half a yr is up and time will not slow, that the doors on the house will all be installed, will all shut, lock. Living alone brings new fears to mind. Yes, I will have more ‘control.’ I just think cleanliness! But I will also have to face the silence I have now forgotten to miss. What will silence feel like again? The tv is always so loud, layer upon layer of sound. Here nothing shuts things out, it is constant, esp. when it rains and you feel pounded without being touched.

01.22.08

Grey morning w.hot tea. Little Netio almost made me cry last night, he had come to tell me good night, and in his pocket, he was storing a little tube of toothpaste b/c I made him promise to brush his teeth every single day. He and his little brother are going off to work on a farm in Sta. Rita again this week, and so he bought it to keep his promise to me. If only all promises were so easily kept.

A rather old and tall missionary man/vet who was once a volunteer with his wife in the Dem Rep. came to Cabañas today looking for a house…I was like: Get in line buddy! But no, I gave him a little tour…told him about the slight joys and warm friendly town where I was working. But I didn’t really know what to say to him, he was a bit off on the whole eye contact/communication thing…best if he isn’t in the neighborhood…if you know what I mean…though perhaps it would be good for my town? The more foreigners the better? Scratch that, reverse it.

01.25.08

El día de la mujer hoy. The 25th of January is the national celebration in which we are to honor the day women first got the vote in Honduras. Sadly, It’s hard to say if it isn’t just a superficial celebration. What I really want to know, if people honestly just come for the free almuerzo? I hope less than half do…but its prob more like a little over half. My role today was per-usual during eventos: help at the registration table, write names, put on name tags, and then hand out the golden ticket (green almuerzo papel) I also help with the clean up and documenting (photos, and excel spreadsheet input)…such events are emotionally exhausting for me. Too many new faces and standing on my feet and mass feeding.

An x-voluntaria from Venezuela was here traveling with her husband and another couple. So far, all x-volunteers that approach me seem intimidated by something. What their service did or didn’t accomplish? That they no longer are living the volunteer life? Don’t get me wrong, they are all very nice people, just a bit off-kilter. That makes the 2nd x-PCV in my town in a week! Looks like tourism is picking up after all!

01.29.08

My best friend here goes to AA parties for fun on the weekend with her 30 yr old boyfriend.

She also picks her nose right in front of you, no pena. They all do.

Here, this is all good and normal. There is so much that floors me, or de-minds me. Questions, like: will I ever find the lip-point normal? Or will I ever think its o.k. to let a married man grope me in the office? Or will snot rockets onto the floor ever not gross me out…prob. not…but I’m truly amazed already with what you can get used to…

02.09.08

Well it’s D-day. Por fin. After 4 months of waiting and being mislead, I’m suppose to move into my spank’n brand new casa today! (Actually, tonight since they were still painting it this morning…) The wife of my landlord-to-be looked at me and said: “He’s a liar (speaking of her husband), they don’t lie in the states do they?” I wasn’t sure if she meant people in general or just men, either way, I told her: “uh, Yes! They do lie in the states.” Then I had to let my frustration go…because, we are all guilty of something.

Yesterday I got back from Reconnect (Where all of my fellow MuniD volunteers from group 11 and group 9 get together and share work experiences, ideas, collaborate, ect.) It was held in the very chilly mountain resort of Gloriales. While a beautiful place, there was not much to do at night but play cards and watch fellow volunteers perform. (you’d have to have been there to appreciate the kind of performances they were…)

What I got out of reconnect was some nice bonding time and more work!

I’m part of the Project Citizen Committee to redesign and modify the manual for PC Honduras. I’ll be doing the illustrations. This means I will be back in Teguc at the end of the month…just another 12 hr bus trip to look forward to. In truth, I like being en trajet. As long as I’m not feeling ill…which was the case yesterday, where I thought I was going to be sick for 12 hrs straight (or rather 12hrs very very curvy mountain roads).

Besides the new manual designs I am the representative for ENLACE, which is a group of PCVs that promote gender issues and equality. This entails another meetings on March 6th, the day before my bday! I can’t believe I will be turning 26! I’m going to stick with my Honduran-age-thing and say I’m turning 8 months old…

Besides these two commitments I agreed to help various people with Graphic Design projects, mostly logos, catalogues, websites…so I will now have less time to read, which is kind of sad…but being involved with other’s projects is a good way to invest time.

02.10.08

Today I was reminded again why I came here. I went on the “Cabañas rural tourism excursion” that the previous volunteer Nicolas had started to develop before he and his wife left. These experiences with the natural beauty of this country and the generosity of the aldea communities is beyond rewarding. Good’ole loco Pakistani drove us up the mountain in his gravity-defying blue stead of a pick-up truck. (I’m always impressed that we don’t die in that thing) We passed several of the small coffee-farm communities before dismounting at the house of Angelito Ramos of Peñas I. There we took the costumary café-pan break before setting out to hike to the cascada (waterfall) “Diamonte”. The path was steep and peligroso, and challenging. By the time we reached the creek that leads to the cascada, I was already half-drenched and Alicia had broken her shoe. From there, we crawled upon massive mossy rocks, tight-rope walked across slick fallen-trees, and clung to the roots upon the cliff to keep from toppling down to the valley below. The mountains out there are puro. There are no houses, no contamination. It’s just untouched and fresh.

Finally seeing this part of the project I will be working on really brought me out of my funk from post-reconnect. We’ve planned another excursion to a different, more impressive cascada in a week. The short-term plans involve having the municipalidad buy the land and declare it a touristic-zone. Then we can start actually developing the project, building more secure-paths and developing a picnic/ seating area.

When we reached the truck again, the tire was flat, so Paki had to get his spare and the guys got to work on that. Once all 4 tires were basically screwed back on we returned to Angelito’s house for a hot chicken soup with just-made tortillas and cafés. Being the wet and tired crew that we were, the warmth of the kitchen and the food was pretty close to perfect. We discussed the project after lunch and our hopes for the revenue such a project may bring to the people. Then we all piled back into the Paki-mobile and chugged, skidded and smoked down the mountain, collecting and dropping off people along the way.

I almost moved into my new house again today, but only managed to get it cleaned up, since there was no work done since yesterday, and the workmen had decided to use the steps as a garbage dump…

There’s always tomorrow!

02.11.08

The gate of the municipalidad was closed this morning. Sonia told me why: “Ellos mataron Alex.” (They killed Alex.) Patí was first to explain to me what exactly had happened, that in leaving a reunion someone rear-ended Alex’s car, él anduvo bolo (He was under the influence) and so was the other driver and so when Alex got out of the car, waving his gun, the other man shot him. It wasn’t the rounds of shots that I heard fired off last night that made my heart jump, it happened in Sta. Rita, at 4pm. I’ve now heard the story twice, each time, la culpa (blame) falls differently, but this 28yr old is still dead. Patí said pobrecito Alex, that he was like a son to Napo (our mayor), a crazy man, a true character, but with a good heart. Moncho (my host father) said that he was a violent man, looking for trouble, and in the end, it found him. Patí said everyone at the reunion had pistolas, most men in politics here do. I’ve seen bastante men here carry them all the time tucked into their pants. I’d never seen Alex without his. He was the one who drove me into site that first sunny morning to start my service here. He was my Honduran John Wayne. He was definitely a cowboy, and now he just was. I can’t even say I was particulary friends with Alex, I usually told him hello and then tried to avoid his embrace and cigarette breath. But for my friends, for Napo, and my red-eyed co-workers I do cry. I know their grief will last. I am invited to go to the wake and burial, but am afraid to go, and yet, don’t know how to say no. There are still too many things here that I don´t know how to say.

So far this year has consisted of two states of emotion: 1.) Laughing 2.) Laughing or else I’d cry.

I think being in a foreign country is just like that. Learning to see the humor is step one, and allowing yourself to be the constant butt of the joke is step two. I have a little story:

Here there is a traditional food that is the near-twin of the Tamale. It has black and green beans inside a sweet cornmeal, is steamed in husks, and called a “Tikuko.” The Mayan-Chortis used to make these and they are made currently on special days of the year.

A few weeks ago I was shopping with two of my amigas, Elma y Patí from Cabañas, and they asked me if I was hungry. I said: “No. No, I was stuffed from all the “Tikaka” I ate that day.” They started to laugh and then asked me what I thought of the “Tikaka?” I said: “Ellos fueron muyyyy rico”…this made them laugh hysterically. (I figured I had fumbled in my pronunciation.) Then Elma informed me: “Raquel it’s TiKUKO, not TIKAKA! Tikaka is slang for PUSSY!”

I had just told my friends that I was stuffed from eating delicious vaginas that day!

We like to tell this joke often in the municipalidad where I work…

Work is another laugh/ laugh or cry story. This month, like the past three, is flying by. The Plan Estrategico Desarrollo Municipal (PEDM) is finally starting to finalize itself… The Asambleas Comunitarias are all done, minus one (casco urbano). And all the information is now in my nice and neat spreadsheets and stored in the municipalidad’s computer. I even used formulas in Excel to get some fancy statistical data out of all that info! Esther Kay would be proud…I’m using the photography and the stats to put together a presentation with my coworker Elma for the big Cabildo Abierto (Town meeting). All the big wigs will be there so we can show off all our and our community leaders’ hard work!

Here’s a list to give you an idea of the kinds of projects the communities in my municipio need:

1. Electricity

2. Running water/ Clean water system

3. Housing/ Improved Housing: roofs, walls, flooring. (Currently houses are sun-dried-dirt only)

4. Latrines

5. Pilas (Sinks)

6. Bathrooms

7. Improved Roads/New Roads (Currently most communities are accessible by foot/horse only. Sometimes they are not accessible at all during the rainy season )

8. A Kinder Garden/School House

9. Seeds to plant basic crops

10. Improved Wood-Burning Stoves

11. Soccer Field/Playing Field

The above-mentioned are some of the most demanded projects, which the majority of the 40 communities of Cabañas listed in their top 5. (They were to prioritize a list of 30 most necessary projects) Obviously the ERP funds are not going to be sufficient enough to realize every project the communities are in need of, but if the representatives of the community will come to the Cabildo Abierto, they can make sure a few of their pleas are answered.

Besides working with the Unidad Tecnica in realizing this democratic process, and hopefully increasing transparency, I have initiated a few side projects/groups. One is an adult English/Spanish intercambio group. The other is a womens’ exercise group.

I think it’s too soon to tell how effective or sustainable these will be. The turnout has varied from one meeting to the next. Yet, just putting myself in charge of these micro-efforts has definitely increased my community interaction and confidence—thus whether they sink or fly, I will have succeeded in moving one step closer to being seen by the folks of cabañas as someone invested in their community, who wants to bring new/intended-to-be-positive opportunities into their lives.

I don’t know, I think I’ve reached a good place when I can show my Honduran co-workers pics of “drag queen brunch” in Adams Morgan, Washington, D.C. and field the homophobic questions that follow, no?

About the days/times when I want to cry…

When only 8 women out of 57 women invited show up at a meeting intended to be the start of planning for El Día de la Mujer, on January 25th. I think one of the problems is this passivity to such meetings/events. I’m not sure all the women understand what a day to celebrate them is really for? They are too busy with their chores and their normal lives to take time to plan a day where they are suppose to feel “special.” Its true, such days may seem superficial…but the point, I think, is them taking that time out of their other chores to recognize their own worth and value as more important. Perhaps I am naïve to think that matters just as much as getting dinner ready one night, but I hope that is not the case.

When the men in the office seem completely out-of-line with some of my younger, pretty coworkers…and worse, when my younger pretty coworkers really like such married mens’ attention.

When women I think I am friends with, gaining confianza with, lie to me about coming to a meeting I am holding. They will look me straight in the eye and swear they are coming, in the end…no one comes. It just isn’t that big of a deal. And I guess it’s not. Only to me.

When members of the community I have never spoken to and don’t know my name are asking me to write them a letter of invitation to get a visa to come to the US…

When they promise me a house by January, even when I tell them its ok to tell me when it will really be ready. I guess its nice they don’t want to disappoint me, it’s not lying, it’s pleasing. I walk past my unfinished house everyday, the water isn’t boiling yet… I’m still without a chez moi.

When I asked for a pound of pasas (raisins) and my friend brings me a pound of papas (potatoes)…

***

I have to remind myself, not everything is a potential project to my neighbors and friends. They are not necessarily looking to change their lives. I am the one who is trying to bring something new to them, maybe even make them change something (for me). When I think about it like that, I don’t know what I should expect from the community here. With Peace Corps, you kind of have to assign yourself a job to do, and most the time, your just guessing what that should or shouldn’t be. It’s a lot of trial and error.

***

Yesterday, I was starring at the concrete floor of the widow’s house and I thought: no one here will ever miss the comfort of carpet, or how substantial an insulated house can feel. I would never have accepted to go with Sonia, Elma and Patí had I known they were taking me to a wake.

I entered that room with the dead body and was shocked and afraid. I could feel the death. You can truly feel the presence of someone who is no longer the master of his own cavern of kinetic energy, but has let it go into the universe. It felt as if the energy continued to slowly leak out of him—perhaps this is what people call a soul, perhaps a soul is pure kinetic energy that will go on forever?

All I could do was sit and look down. Such places are too personal for me, they belong alone to family and friends of those who have passed. All I could do was relate it to my own life, to see the red eyes, washed out cheeks, and think: grandma

***

In so many respects I feel like a hunter-gatherer. I feel closer to the earth and the natural process of everything. (poop included) Here, when I’m up in the mountains, I hear every part of the world in motion, every micro bug step. The huge hover-craft style bugs are just suspended in midair by the force of their wings’ movement, and those movements surpass subconsciously--they are not thinking: up down, up down, up down…they just are, flying.

I am no longer afraid of where I am or who I might become. Who I have already become in these short 6 months that feel like years and years. Yet, instead of transporting me to the land of the older and wiser, I feel like I’ve become younger—is that possible?

I guess in Honduran years, I am only 6 months old…

My first Honduran chrsitmas has come and gone. The 24th was the slaughtering of the cerdos, which is a noise I will never forget. The five final cries of a dying hog are not the most soothing of wake-up calls, though waking up to death can’t be expected to sound nice. Alas, that was only 1 of 5 pigs that would die in the family’s backyard that morning. The chickens were up next. I had not realized that I was living with the town butchers. But apparently my family has held this important job every Christmas since Juanito can remember. The animal’s corpse was hanging, swaying, and the blood and such draining, dropping into the sunny dust of the back yard—I only saw it for a split second, but that was enough to turn me off of meat forever, not that I was turned onto it in the first place. Our family also seasoned and roasted all the heads and legs and sides of hog for the neighbors who came one by one to pick up the cena. Besides the plethora of meat, there was more corn than normal to make the tamales and mantukas. All of this is part of the traditional Christmas meal. Today I imagined making a tamale with only broccoli and cauliflower inside with some cheese, now that would be a tasty tamale…All of the day before Christmas is spent cooking and watching futbol, so that is pretty much similar to in the states. Then around 8:30 we began to play Amigos Secretos, which involves you buying a present for your secret person who you selected by chance out of a pile of paper slips with so and so’s name on it. I selected Juanito, and little Benjamin had me. The way they played was you had to sit in a chair and be blind folded and then your secret amigo would stand before you and you had to tocale (touch them) until you guessed who it might be. This part was particularly embarrassing for me because Juanito had to basically feel me up to get his soccer ball…which, he was very happy with. Little Benjamin gave me a set of earrings, a matching hair clip, and a teeny tiny mirror. Very cute. After amigos secretos the night was pretty tranquilo. We ate some food, watched some t.v., heard some firecrackers, ok, a exuberant amount of firecrackers, and then at midnight, went to bed.

Chrsitmas day was much different than the night before. First all the family went to visit the abuela de Alicia in Bario Lempira (the one I run through to get to the aldea of Llano) and she was so sweet and cute, and I just love old people here! Their youthful bright eyes contrasting with their much lived-in skin. I had also been thinking greatly in my own grandmother and our past Christmases spent in her house. Our visit consisted of enjoying grandma’s tamales and café, admiring her nacimiento she constructed with the dancing Santa, and relaxing on the patio. Her casa reminded me of la Cumbre San Lucas. Actually, a lot of the casas I visited Christmas day were unique and beautiful in their own little ways. After Gandma’s house I went to platicar (chat) con the Chinchilla’s and while I was there chatting away with the Misses, along came the pareja (couple) that drove me to the office holiday party, (how very different this yrs than last’s). So we went from Julio’s to her house to have pastel tres leche-yeah cake! Then we drove to bario el Marazán to find Elma and her sis, Evan. From there, we went to la Pati’s in barrio el Tigre, but she was in San Pedro, so we visited with the family and ate more tamales with tang! From there we went to Elma and Evan’s tia’s (aunt’s) house, up the hill and down we went before she could try and feed us more tamales! Though while I was there Evan pointed out a young boy who had un pierna equipo y lebano lepro, which are the two deformities that can be operated on in an upcoming medical brigade I’m trying to help with. I’m trying to contact all families in my Municipio who have infants with these deformities…so it was by chance I met this young boy and now we can sign him up for the free operation in Teguc.

After we left Tia’s house we went to the nativity scene in the parque because it is tradition to steal the baby jesus on the 25th. Thus four chicas sat and schemed to steal the baby jesus as the park guard (Don Chepe) sat near by. We finally succeeded in doing so with the help of the town police officer who distracted Don Chepe… Elma took him from his mossy bed, I ran him a couple feet further and stashed him behind the wall in the parque, then Elma grabbed him and together we walked him to her amiga’s house. I returned to the scene of the crime, so not to arouse suspicion that it was I, and then Elma returned, but not after Don Chepe already pinned all four of us as potential baby Jesus robbers.

Later we took the baby to Myki’s house (daughter-in-law of the mayor), where she hid him in the room I once occupied. After the baby was stashed, we went to la casa de la Elma for cena, and as always, I love cena at her house. There’s always café, beans, tomato, and tortilla. For me, it’s perfecto. The family watched Shrek 2 en español, and I told Elma and Evan stories of skipping school, hacer falta de escuela. Yep, the cut-party story that my dad always told to my aunts at Christmas time…each family has its own traditions after all.

12.26.07

Today we cut café on Don Quijote’s (that may not be his name…) farm in La Cumbre San Lucas. I had planned to go today even before Eva Lidia and baby Katie showed up at the house. I had printed out the photo collage that I had made them for la Navidad and had wanted to deliver it, besides just wanting to go up there since it had been two weekends without a visit, two weekends is half a month, and I’ve now been here in Cabañas for just about 3 in total! Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, next New Yrs.

I, Carmen, Netio, y Adalíd all hiked up together since Eva was going to go up anda en caballo with baby Katie. The day was beautiful, perfect really without a cloud in the sky—it sure doesn’t feel like winter here. Even at night, or in the early mornings, it feels more like camp-chilly until the sun takes hold. Adalíd was supposed to be cutting café in the la Cumbre San Juan today, but did not go, which I’m glad he stayed behind. I told him, as my father always told me, “you have your entire life to work.” I’m actually quoting my father, which is a scary thing.

Once we arrived at the house we were served almuerzo of beans, tortilla, queso, chilis y café. Then we were led to the finca where everyone in the family was already busy in the day’s work.

Cutting café was fun, and hard and above all dirty! We strapped the buckets to our waists so to have hands free to pick the mature beans off the plants and drop them in the buckets. By the end, everything part of our bodies were covered in dirt and spider web and pollen, and bugs and just outdoor stuff. The hills where the plants were were extremely steep and slick with dried dirt and so we were falling and grasping onto the tree trunks to sturdy ourselves so not to fall, even though we did. All of Eva Lidia’s sisters were in the field, they all look identical: tall, lean, and classic beauties. Perfect for the look of the 1920 flapper girls or the 1960 hippie with their big brown flower-child eyes, and pin straight long dark hair. They all wore their baseball caps and long-sleeved shirts in the fields and were crouched down skillfully picking the crop, along with their dad and nephews. We brought refresco and white plastic cups to offer the group a bit of refreshment, though lukewarm it was by the time we got there. The kids and I only picked for about an hour or so before heading back home. It was enough for me to know and understand how much work it is. How hard it would be to do that all day long, in the rain, and esp. in the cold. Today we were lucky, it was beautiful, and I’m so glad I went up and got to do that. The intimate process of everything that one consumes in a day, it is important to know, I am starting to realize that. The animals, the coffee, the bread, the tortilla, the bean—everything here that we use as fuel has a natural process, we see it from grain-to- life –to- death –to- processing –to- food –to- la merde, literally. We see everything here. People are much less reserved about many things, esp. the natural and perhaps ugly or not “clean” part of life. I’m learning about that and it is hard for me to accept much of the dirt, but I am slowly learning how to see it and not want to run from it, but know I can coexist with it and it with me.

Happy Hanukkah to me! Better late then never, as the special jew-package from my loving sister did not arrive until the day after the last night of Hanukkah…so my celebration was a bit delayed, but celebrate I did. (I even crafted dreidels out of paper, which is actually the second time I had to do such, the first time was that one Hanukkah I spent in the Mid-Pyrenees of France…la sigh…) I shared the little candle-lit menorah show and chocolate coins with two different families I have grown close to here in Cabañas—paper dreidel was a big hit!

Ever since I reluctantly designed the town’s central parque nativity scene I’ve been spending a lot of time explaining Judaism to coworkers and families. (The fact that those of the Jewish faith do believe in God has been punto #1 I’ve tried to put straight.) I feel like I need to go back to Hebrew school to answer all of their specific questions about the Jews and Jesus. I guess that’s what google is for….

The nativity scene is a really big deal here, and I can now say with pride that I’ve painted, glittered, and put to bed a baby Jesus. The constructing of the nativity scene was actually fun, since everyone from the muni helped and it was like a big arts and crafts project, which I have a soft-spot for in my little jewish heart.

During the real Festival of Lights I was mostly in transit due to a date w/the HPV vaccine. The trip to Teguc and back went pretty smooth—aunque largo, it’s do-able, as long as you have the mind set to be spending the entire day en ruta, which isn’t hard to do with a good book or an ipod fully charged. I arrived in Teguc with a splitting headache and just in time to get my lovely HPV shot. Peace Corps put me up in hotel Guadelope II where a couple other PCVs were staying for their Last Night in country…their 2 yrs was up! We dined at Quiznos b/c the main blvd. of Teguc looks like a section of the US Highway with every fast food joint with-in a 2-mile stretch. These big US chains don’t pay taxes to the Hondu government as part of an incentive for them to bring their golden arches and double-stuffed crusts to the developing world—as if there weren’t already enough malnutrition problems without the bigmac.

I was back into my sweet little cabañas after 3.5 days of travel, it felt like I’d been gone so long, and I was all smiles to be back—I set straight to scrubbing clothes in the pila, oh the pila—what was I like when I didn’t even know you existed?

* * *

These past two weeks since Worlds AIDS Day I’ve continued my work with the Unidad Tecnica in executing the Asambleas Comunitarias. I’ve been transferring all the information from the meetings into excel documents to try and keep things organized and accessible for our future work. I’ve been typing every name of every inhabitant living in the aldeas, along with their number of identity and their role in the community—thus learning all the peculiar family names. Hondurans typically have two first names and two last names from both parents, that’s four names per-person. (For example: José Gilberto Valle Cruz. Or para una chica: Maria del Carmen Aguilar Pacheco.) Another list I’ve been creating consists of all the projects that the communities are requesting ERP funding for from the Municipalidad. The majority of pueblos want electricity, better water systems, usable roads, improved housing, bonos for single mothers and senior citizens, a kindergarden, a soccer field, pilas, better fogones (wood-burning stoves), and a machine to grind corn. If the proposals are drafted and the funds come through, these projects are all real possibilities. I will be eager to see if this ERP process will work or not. If the money will truly find its way to our tranquilo municipio…

Going up into the mountains and meeting the people who live without la luz everyday is one of those parts of my life here that change the way I see and think. Today we went up to two of the higher altitude comunidades: la Cumbre San Juan and Nueva Esperanza. I got to test out my ears’ progress in recognizing Honduran family names while I assisted in the lista de participantes…I recognized Aguilar, which is one I wouldn’t have known before, so that is progress, right?

The careterra was so feo up there from the rain and lodo that we had to ditch the truck and continue on horseback. (We tend to ditch the truck a lot when it’s raining) It was freezing—a wet misting cloud-surrounded day and for that, yo tengo el gripe en la garganta. The people who gathered in the meetings wore their frayed neon beach blankets and knit caps, and the large unlit cement building where the meeting took place felt like one dark, giant freezer.

I was thinking as I walked home from la Elma’s after showing her family my menorah and how to play dreidel, how easy it is to forget yourself here, and forget that riding horses in the frescita mountain ranges of Central America amidst the lush green coffee fields, is not a normal day, or would never have been a normal day back in the states. This kind of work doesn’t exist there…I don’t think. I like being constantly out of the office, not having a desk, no cubes. Yet I enjoy the times when I can sit and type away on my clean white Mac and create order out of the chaos, or rather invent a system, find the patterns, catch-on to the cycle, break it?

* * *

Today my host dad showed up to the casa with a big ol’porker in-tow…that means blood will be a-flowing in the pila the day before Christmas…Last week it was a cow. An entire cow was skinned and cut and sawed and stuffed into the fridge. You couldn’t open it without a chunk falling out….I had to evacuate the tomatoes! Good thing it’s a family of men who grilled it, boiled it, and roasted it up; thus, ate it up in a mere couple of days, else the lack of electricity would’ve been a slight problem…

Speaking of the bloody—I saw my first cock fight (first and last). The cock owners actually lick the bloody heads of their roosters in between rounds. They stick the entire bloody feathered-cabeza in their mouths to clean it off. It’s not pretty, and the blood and violence and such is just not worth whatever slight entertainment value might come from the animal abuse. Though I have to admit it reminded me of boxing, and then of gladiators and the human enthusiasm for fights till the death. Why is blood so bad? Yet, why is fighting applauded? There is something very self-destructive in it all. In each peck, cluck cluck.

* * *

Tonight on Canal Doce: Ernesto Grande’s evil twin Ernesto Bolo terrorizes the town of Cabañas!

It seems our local t.v. guy is an alcoholic. He was always a bit eccentric, verbose, loco—but now, he is a drunken menace, and the town is abuzz with Ernesto bashing. He showed up at our house nearly every night last week asking for my host sister’s hand in marriage, that is after he asked for some café and a tortilla toasted with queso. My host dad could barely get the guy to leave; the kids and I hid in our rooms. The next night, he asked for my hand in marriage, that was after he pleaded for comida y cafécito again. This time, we just didn’t open the door. A few people now have him on video being bolo-of-the-month on their cell phones. Everyone in town seems to have their own Ernesto-encounter to share. This is my first real taste of how powerful chisme (gossip) is in a small town. I predict much Enersto Bolo chisme this Christmas eve as the families gather to eat their chickens and hams and the niños set off firecrackers till dawn…Pop pop pop*

Here are some shots of a very successful DIA DE VIH/SIDA en COPAN!

Thanks to EVERYONE´S Support and Help!

11.21.07

Happy Thanksgiving to me.

This is the first thanksgiving I’ve ever spent alone. Technically, I’m not alone. There is a room full of people on the other side of the curtain, per usual. There is a fútbol game going on outside my window, even if it’s not of the American kind. But it certainly doesn’t make it feel any more like thanksgiving! I elected to not celebrate with new Cuerpo de Paz friends and a pseudo Turkey dinner—it was my choice to dine on oatmeal and raisins.

That said, today was full of things to be thankful for. For one, hot coffee in the morning and sunshine. Then, a trip up into the mountains of Cabañas to the community of Haciendo San Juan, complete with a horseback ride through the mountains, the farmlands, along side and across the rivers, and ending at a little school house built on top of a hill. This was the first asamblea comunitaria where I got to introduce myself and Obeniel (jefe de la munidad tecnica) mentioned my presencia and apoyo. The community had really prepared for our arrival. They even had the pine needles spread across the floor, which is the sign of a true officially important meeting in Honduras. They had also prepared almuerzo for us, a zopa de guillina, alas, my third this week. I didn’t think I can do another zopa de guillina if my life depended on it! But this one was doable. My bowl had a carrot and a potato in it, and the breast of the chicken, though I’ve learned that all meat here is tough. The community also gave us a huge sac of naranjas to bring back, because it is orange picking season. Living in Copán, Honduras is more naranja country than banana!

The meeting went smoothly, though the process of democracy is not yet caught on to the majority of the participantes. Everyone just raises his or her hand for every project idea, instead of electing what project they most want for their community. Be it la luz, a kinder, a road, land, or una cancha de fútbol. I think dispute is not common in Honduras. In the last meeting in Mirimar San Antonio, a very vocal man spoke his mind about what projects his community needed, but in this community, even the leader was a very soft-spoken man. I imagine without electricity and crowdedness, there isn’t much need to yell. The only loud voices came during prayer. At the opening and closing of the meeting we must evoke god’s name as it is in the agenda.

After going to pee in the cornfields (because building latrines is a project on the list for Haciendo San Juan), we said our goodbyes to the community. On the way back, the guys whipped the horses into a running trot, which definitely left me with a sore nalgas y rodias, but it was so worth it! Remarkably beautiful sourroundings, and to fly by on horseback, for me, was truly unforgettable. Something regular tourists would have paid for, and I, again, am just along for the free ride. Many thanks I have.

Once we were back to the truck, we had one last stop to make back in Pueblo Viejo, a cow that Ronní had bought needed to be brought back with us…and so he was…Kicking and screaming and sliding back and forth in the bed of the truck, along with Noé and Obeniel and las naranjas, which we joked would be juice before the ride was over.

Once back in Cabañas cascoo urbano, I ran to the casa to wash my soaking undies in the pila while it was still sunny and then Benjamin went on a run with me up towards la Cumber San Lucas. I truly do love my host brothers and sister, they are always cheering me up. As we were running away from the killer ants, little Benjamin told me I was the most beautiful creature on earth, the definition of all things beautiful, the essence of beauty…and how can you not love that when you’re sweaty and flicking ants off your ankles? Of course I told him the only thing I was the definition of was a retarded foreign girl in Honduras! But he is a persistent little guy and we laughingly debated my retarded beautifulness all the way down the mountain.

My real dad had called while I was gone, and Carmen had answered and spoke in English to him…well, she said hello and bye! She also brought me some pan to dunk in my post-shower café and this I enjoyed while the dubbed-over version of Home Alone was on t.v.

11.12.07

Gringa spits our Armadillo--Tonight on Canal Doce

It’s la estación de winter in Copan--rain and more rain and grey skies. Halloween has come and gone. Here the celebration is a bit different. The families go to the cemeteries to visit friends and family members who have died. In my host family, they have lost a child, and so they go to visit him. The children still go door-to-door the night before to ask for treats; however, it is not dulces, but rather traditional food made from maíz that they will receive. The spirit of the holiday is sober, subdued.

I’ve just read a book about trying to live forever, about death, and the passage of time (quick) and the passage of love (precious). Here, life is even shorter, and death, less taboo. Though for some, it is still untouchable—the empty house up at the farm in la Cumbre San Lucas where I often go on the weekends. Eva Lidia’s older brother died of cancer a few years back and they haven’t touched his house since. It’s overgrown and eerie; the view from the front stoop is breathtaking.

I’ve visited the family farm in la Cumbre San Lucas four times in total…always after scrubbing the clothes. It is just so calming in the mountains. It’s my escape. I know my grandmother Alberta would’ve loved it for their garden. The food there is also very good! Well, the beans are just beans…but the homegrown coffee, freshly ground and sweetened with sugarcane honey is amazing, accompanied with the homemade pan! Plus the fresh orange juice! Delicioso! More times than not I’ve traveled with my littlest host bother Adalíd, he is precious and strikingly serious for a thirteen yr old. I think these kids would go absolutely crazy in the city. They adore their trees, and fruits and water sources so much…they would not survive it concrete city, packaged food, paved playground-style.

Other news: the local TV guy, Ernesto Grande, from Canal Doce has put me down as his top priority. I’ve already given him an apprehensive interview, which was a lame 2-minute thing where he asked me about the weather! But now, every meeting for the PEDM he is there! He just lurks around the Municipalidad where I work, bugging people for interviews, saying “WOW, Super, WOW!” I can’t look down for a second because when I look up, he will be standing in front of me with a camera in my face! Many folks from town have now seen me on t.v….including my host family…oh the pena!

I wonder why he doesn’t take his camera to the derrumba that is currently making travel to and fro a mess! (See pics) Last week I was coming back from a market trip in Sta. Rita when the truck (which had replaced the normal busitos due to their lack of four-wheel drive) could not travel past the mudslide. All the passengers had to get out and walk. I was carrying a big book bag full of my fruits and produce, my hands were full, and the flip-flops I was wearing got so stuck in the guck that I lost them in the mud with each step; thus I took them off and trudged forward barefoot, mud oozing in between my toes. The folks working on the road all stopped and starred. Once I passed the worst of the mud, I was directed by some spectators to wash my feet and shoes in a little (probably contaminated) stream of water on the side of the road. I used the fuente de agua and slipped back into my shoes. I and the other bus-less passengers then commenced the walk to Cabañas—a good 1hr trek. Luckily, after only 10 minutes on the road a local Señora Patricia gave us all a jálon into town!

This past week we had the 2nd meeting for the Cabildo Infantil program that I’m part of. I presented the ant logo and chick mascota and everyone gave their appraisals and suggestions (Including Ernesto Grande from Canal Doce!). The best part of the meeting though was that I met a woman from a Christian NGO in Copán, who is working with micro-empresas of the area. I told her my interest in her work, along with my background and potential to help. She seemed equally enthusiastic about my help, and so we exchanged info and I hope to hear from her soon!

This weekend their was yet another moment for Canal Doce: My host dad shot an armadillo! That’s right, Manchito brought home an armadillo and skinned it for lunch! (see pics) I tried just a bit of it and had to spit it out…yep, I did it in front of everyone too! I couldn’t help it. The reflexes were too strong. But I think it’s a good sign, I means that I was comfortable enough to let them know that actually Really didn’t like something! It also had great comical value….Gringa spits out armadillo! That’s funny. Almost as funny as fake wrestling, which is my families favorite program on TV…

La Cumbre San Lucas:

10.17.07_PEDM_plan estrategia del Municipio

Yesterday was the meeting to discuss the PEDM with local representatives from the aldeas of Cabañas. The reunion was held in the church. Elma and I were there early, to arrange the chairs, set up, place some flowers. The other young lady, Dalila, from la comision de la transparencia was also there early to help setup. She’s very sweet as well. Has a nice face. She works all alone in la comision, and so I told her I would stop by and see if there was anything at all I might be able to help her with. The meeting was very long, and I’m not sure just how productive it was either…it seems the representatives from the patronatos are not much for words, or group work, or digesting new information and processing it in a critical way, which was basically what the facilitators were asking them to do. But the open discussion part fell unexpected upon the part of the patronatos. The meeting itself was part of a process to create a PEDM that was democratic, that included the voice and or opinion of the people, but this meeting seemed empty of all things passionate and opinionated. For some…perhaps I am wrong, er I hope I am, but I can’t be sure. It just seemed to be so superficial, or non-result-producing.

More than half of the men left after lunch. The few women that were there came with their children, and they all stayed till the end. It was hard to know if they came only for the food. (Which seems to be a common crime here among campesinos who go to reunions.) They are not motivated, and in all honesty we have to ask, why should they be? Its not as if there has been great results in their life times, there is a simple life and hard work, slow paced work, because why work faster when it will always be there, and the results are no different whether you do things slowly or with vigor.

During the reunion, I was a quote-un-quote faciladora, but I really felt in no position to instruct the campesinos about anything, esp. about their aldeas and their casarias in their communities. I know much less then they do about their own surrounding. The problem was, I knew much better how to follow instructions and fill out questioners, in other words, how to be a student. Therefore, between the two of our skill sets, there was a chasm that prevented total comprehension or progress.

10. 19.07_CUTS to remember

Today was a good Honduran day. It started off with hot water and sunshine. (It had been a long 3 days without either) Then a bus ride to Sta Rita where we got a jálon to Jaral, where there was a reunion de capacitation in the centro commercial, which is muy muy bonita. The coffee and cakes, almuerzo, and helado where all good, but most of all, the lecture was great! This was due to the passion and intelligence of the speaker, a man from la comisión de la transparencia in Sta. Rosa. He spoke to us about auditing of the ERP funds, in other words, the battle against corruption! It’s true that this is just beginning, the idea of transparencia, the idea of truly effective and honest democracy, and it’s great to be a part of it, despite seeing the long long dry, er rather washed away road ahead!

After the reunion, Elma and I joined Patí for our joint haircuts! I’ve never gotten such a quick cut! The poqueña muchacha just sprayed, combed, and snipped, snipped, without a second thought. I thought about a US haircut for a woman that can cost as much as $200, which would come to about 3,600 Limperas—an amount that would leave me homeless and starved. The lady didn’t do a totally terrible job…I wouldn’t say it was a good job either…but it certainly was corte! Patí got her hair chopped after me, and I have to say, the same quick scissor action took place, and patí didn’t seemed too phased about it…though I can’t say I liked the results of her haircut either… but then again, I did say 3,600 limperas for a gringa cut...

10.24.07__uncomfortable places without luz

I had my first religious experience in Honduras. It was inevitable and honestly, necessary. In a country where the religious influence is deafening (literally if you are speaking of the Evangelical branch) it was foolish of me to try to avoid it no matter what my own religious belief’s are or aren’t. That said, I’m not looking to embrace it at every oportunidad, but I am trying my hardest to not be judgmental. This is hard to do. Mostly, I just bite my tongue (if I could articulate my thoughts in spanish that is…and my thoughts in english I must bite as well.)

I was invited over to mi compañera de trabajo Elma’s house for la cena de tamales. That day we held the 2nd taller (workshop) of the PEDM with the patronatos and various representatives of the community. I have to say that I felt this taller was much more successful than the previous, in that the people seemed to understand a bit better what was going on, even if the majority did not pay much attention to the overall proceso, or rather the entire front end of the presentation that Suyapa from Visión Mundial gave for the second time to almost the same crowd. Even though the number of campesinos this time around had doubled and we all suspected for reasons of food and not for reasons of community investment. After almuerzo, we broke into 4 groups and did a practice worksheet of what the community representatives will have to do in las asembleas comunitarias in the weeks that come. I’m excited because I get to go out into each of the communities and assist in this process! Each group needed to fill out a form including dates and names, and then the groups had to prioritize the needs of the community, and come up with types of projects that their communities might execute to fix the problems. A few observations: besides lack of a decent level of literacy among the group, there was the confusion over certain aspects of critical thinking. Such as: the difference between a problem, a necessity, and a type of project that might offer a solution to the prior-mentioned problems of the communities. There was high comprehension of what problems existed or rather, what the community was missing, what was broken, what was beyond repair…(such as the road outta town)but not such a high level of comprehension for how to resolve such problems. This idea of critical thinking brings me back to my religious experience…sin luz…

At la casa de Elma, after our light cena of tamales y café eaten in oscuridad broken only by the flame of a candle solita and the low glow of the fogon’s fire, people began to filter in for the night’s festivities. Elma informed me that a church group was coming, but I did not really know what that meant, only that there would be cake de tres leche, the only kind of postre I’ve eaten in Honduras, humido y very sweet. When I entered the salon adjacent to la cocina, the band had arrived—two guitars, one base, a violin, and a tambourine. The instruments were larger then some of the players who played them. The song began, upbeat and high pitched and all the gatherers in the room began to clap and sing along to a song of jesus that I surely had never heard before. After a few songs, people began to pray, but I must describe this prayer because I have never experienced anything like it. Near the end of the song, a few strums vibrating every couple of seconds, the candlelight’s flickering, the rain still falling, the people bending to their knees, the night’s cold slowly creeping in, the voices began to rise. They rose in prayers, prayers like cries, cries out to a Señor who was being thanked, being begged for relief, for help, for understanding, for an end to the pain that was dictating the desperate pitch to their cries. After 5 minutes they did not subside, nor after ten, for more than twenty minutes every voice in the room was relentlessly rising and falling, following invisible lines that supposedly rose to open ears in the heavens. The night continued in a rhythmic and repetition fashion of song, prayer, and reflection. The reflection, or rather biblical interpretation is what struck me. After reading a section from the bible the leader of the session would ask someone to interpret that passage he’d read, or perhaps a single palabre from within the passage. What was the significance?—he’d ask. I was shocked to hear peoples’ voices, which I’ve never heard speak before, volunteer boldly their thoughts. These interpretations were insightful, heartfelt, and intelligent. They could read this one book, they could think about it critically, they could speak their minds about it. This one obra was the class they had studied for during their entire lives. I was especially pleased to hear the voices of the women, rich in opinion. Their voices came out clear and loud and without an ounce of pena. I was relieved in one moment, then shaken and frightened the next. When their prayers would start to come out more violent and intense and chaotic all I could do was clench my eyes, my face facing the ground, and tunnel myself into a safe place and hope it would be over soon. When the very final session of prayer came I could not help but feel pain and sorrow and the awe of a subdued freight. I itched to leave once we were all upon our feet again. Part of me felt like a traitor, or intruder upon their personal releases; however, I was glad to have had the opportunity to understand a slight shred better what they needed to live. All the social restrictions of their sexes and their economic classes were shed in this evening, and their own self-expression came from both a dark place in their hearts, and a bright place in their hopes. I’m not sure when I will opt to partake in another such evening, but I will never forget the ceremony I was part of. What is a normal, everyday kind of ritual for my fellow community members of Cabañas, was for me, a somewhat cultish ceremony from an ancient time passed. I left Elma’s house half frozen, the luz still had not returned, and thus I made my way home by the power of the moon.

10.07.07_Sunday de lluvias

I was just thinking, if I were in the states, a rainy Sunday as such would probably be spent in bed, fishing around on the internet, reading some Economist, and drinking a mug of coffee before taking a long walk to downtown.

In France, I would’ve gone to Claire’s flat, talked and listened to music as she rolled cigarettes and put the electric kettle on to boil so we could drink cup after cup of instant coffee, or perhaps vanilla tea and dissect our romantic dramas.

Here in Honduras, I cannot sleep in past 6:10—it’s the roosters. So I get up. I wash some clothes in the pila; pour some leftover coffee from the family thermo; eat my cornflakes with water; head out with Carmen to get the corn kernels ground into mortar; help make the tortillas for almuerzo; and follow the nimble cowboy boots of my 15yr old host brother Nestor to the aldea de Llano, where Juan senor has family that will serve us café con leche with a side of galletes.

I’ve officially completed my first week in site.

After only a handful of emotional burnouts, and some classic awkward moments “outside of my comfort zone” as Peace Corps likes to call it, I seem to be doing ok…I even survived my very first bee sting! …25 yrs and counting and the bastards finally got me in Honduras…on the sole.

Working in the Municipalidad of Cabañas has gone pretty smoothly. They don’t need much help with the ERP propuestas (proposals) that I was told I would be working on. The Unidad Tecnica pair went to the training sesh last year for it, and they are doing it at the normal Honduran pace. I am interested in learning, so I have helped some on the current proposals and suggested a potential reformatting of the ERP form to make them more user-friendly. (I’m so American)

Besides helping type and teaching short-cut keys, I have been assigned to design the Municipio’s logo, which everyone has taken a great interest in, and so I’ve been more than happy to come up with some concepts in correlation with their ideas. (Will post finished logo on blog.)

Besides work in the Muni, I have spoken with the teachers at the Colegio to line up an English class for the seniors, one day of the week after school.

Friday I volunteered to assist the committee that is currently organizing a cabildo infantil, which is a cabildo abierto para los niños, or rather, a youth empowerment/civic education workshop. They are in need of a logo and mascot.

Other projects I’m currently researching for the site are:

1. The rural tourism project that a previous volunteer worked on, and still has great potential if I can collaborate with Vía Vía hotel in Copán Ruinas.

2. Local products potential for sale, which will involve contacting the women’s groups in the Aldeas that make their own crafts.

3. The implementation of signage for all the local businesses and streets, and a littering awareness campaign/ or rather a beautification of all the neighborhoods—this I will need to speak to a fellow volunteer about who has done a similar project in the area.

I’ve also received the materials for Proyecto Ciudadano (Project Citizen) from Alejandrina (the Muni-D Project Manager) and so I will be starting on new illustrations for the booklet to speak more towards Honduran culture.

There are other projects that Sarah (my site mate) is working on that I will also be contributing to, such as the start-up of a Women’s Health NGO called Vída a la Vída, which needs a brochure, logo, and website created asap.

As far as work is concerned, I am more than busy. For that, I am really thankful.

There was an evento politica on Friday, which was really fun. The girls of the office and I worked our butts off. Elma, Roxan, Patty, and a few other ladies whose names escape me, helped with the set up. The parque really looked great. (see pics) The little stage is a nice touch, and they are fully equipped. I already felt pride for this community. Most of the ladies are still in school, working on their bachalereta, which is a two-year kind of diploma that takes place between colegio and Universidad. It’s nice to have a group of girls here to look out for me and keep me in the loop. They are all really sweet and were constantly taking care of me during the evento.

After the madness of the evento and committee meeting for el cabildo infantil I met up with Sarah and little Nestor to go running. Nestor and I ran all the way to a neighboring Aldea la Cumbre de San Lucas, that’s about an hour away. It was ALL up hill and we barely made it, but Nestor kept on telling me how cerca we were, and I believed him! When we finally did llegamos, it was already starting to turn dark, so on the way back ALL down hill I fell into two huge mud holes and got my new kicks pretty feo-ed up. Nestor was soo proud of us, he was bragging to his brother and dad when we got back! I took my cold shower without a single grimace that night.

10.06.07_Sabado to go

Woke up early as usual and I and little Nestor were the only ones to stir. I had cereal/oatmeal mix with milk and coffee, washed a few clothes, and headed to the parque to catch the busito to Copán. Sarah was running late and so we missed the busito, but luckily the ex-mayor who she is friends with was going that way and so we got a jálon to Sta Rita, where we then took the busito to Copán.

The pueblo of Copán itself is just so preciosa euro/hondu mix—more euro stilo than Honduran. We walked around, went to the banco, made a few food purchases, and then went to a few cafes to check out the views, before finally settling on one where the espresso machine was actually functioning and so I treated myself to a cappuccino and sweet cheese bread. It was just perfect. Not as authentic as the café in El Paraíso, but still my senses were very much satisfied. We then visited a few gift shops and variety stores before heading to the cheap internet café, 10limps an hour! We ran into Ben, the San/Wat volunteer there, and also another Jika volunteer so we went to a little place for lunch where Kelly, the wife of Ben, joined us for almuerzo-Baleadas the size of your head! I got an iced coffee that reminded me so much of Café Flower in Toulouse and a big plato de frutas, that reminded me of Sta Lucia…like I said, euro/hondu mix! We talked mostly about work, project ideas, development, Peace Corps, what we did before, what we will do after. The time passed quickly.

When we finally returned to Cabañas later that afternoon I was glad to be back in Honduras Honduras in my pueblito de Cabañas where the dirt street in front of my house was continual fútbol alley, and the men still trotted by on their tired mares, their machetes and white brimmed hats an unofficial uniform for the campo. That night I took my place next to Carmen, molding corn mortar into flat round disks.

09.29.07

Bueno, somehow I ended up here.

I don’t remember exactly what inspired my application, or what I possibly thought I was going to be doing nearly 6 months later; but where I am, what I am living, certainly never crossed my mind. This is for several obvious reasons. I had no clue what life was like here, in Central America, in Honduras, in the departemento de Copan, in the pueblito of Cabañas, in la casa de la familia Alvarado Robles.

The PCV swearing in ceremony at the embassy was as all ceremonies must be: a few inspiring words, a few recognitions, and an oath of allegiance. The pool party as the Ambassador’s house, which followed, was as equally anti-climatic. I wore flower panties and a tee in lieu of a real bathing suit, which I had failed to bring back from the site visit. Perhaps the celebrations would’ve been more inspiring if I wasn’t so anxious and exhausted thinking about the future. The highlight was the grapefruit trees at the ambassador’s house, the first ones I’ve tasted since landing!

Traveling to and fro has taken up my days and energy as of lately. In total I have spent 4.5 days just getting to site and back. Bumping oneself back and forth between old and new, foreign and American—it’s amazing I managed to condense everything back into that same suitcase and backpack, only to explode all that stuff again in another room I will eventually call home. Now that I’m here in my site again, for good, I wonder how long it will take me to want to stay…

I said goodbye to my host family in Sta Lucia early Friday morning and took the bus to Tegucigalpa where I eventually took a Hedman Alas bus again for the most direct route to my site. The trip was terrible. The bus on the way from San Pedro to Copan Ruínes broke down twice, and so I and two other male passengers were stuck in the dark, hoping the driver would come back and the bus would somehow reach our final destination. Eventually we did arrive in Copan Ruínes just past the stroke of midnight and beyond the point of exhaustion. A man with a van was waiting for the three triste passengers to transport us to the hotel san josé, where I paid 200 limperas, my last limps, to sleep in a humid dim room with a sad fan puffing away in the corner. I would’ve cried, but I didn’t have the energy, instead I laid down upon that foreign bed without another thought of where I was, or rather, where I wasn’t. Mayor Napo’s call awoke me at 6am.

Napo sent his driver (who reminds me of a Honduran James Dean, pistol and cig hanging out, one from the mouth, the other from the pant’s back. We rode into town, music blasting, dirt flying and a strong western sun starting to blaze. I thought just how bizarre I looked here, with all my unnecessary stuff, with my pale skin, with my dumb gringa grin.

Cabañas is a sweet little town. Simple and pretty. The typical central parque is built around the oldest ceiba tree in town with a catholic church standing in the far left corner facing that tree. This particular layout is a tradition that apparently comes from the Spanish conquistadors. It is one of the more agreeable repercussions of their stay. The town’s contents are few: a river passing by, a few pulperias, the municipalidad, a handful of comedors, a billar (pool hall), a centro de computacion (internet café) and a new farmacia and clinica next to my family’s house.

The family here is beautiful. The Alvarado Robles have four children, the oldest son is 18, their only daughter is 17 who is my new sister, and the other two boys are twelve and 14. My new room actually has a place to hang up clothes, a table to do my work, and a nice and firm bed!

I felt immediately taken care of, and as independent as I once was, I realized how I had started to accept my dependence on the Honduran people, in particular, the families I have become a part of.

My new sister and brothers showed me around town as I sketched my locator map. We stopped to buy delicious Honduran-style popsicles that I could eat a million of. We sat in the parque, just licking away at our melting ice, milk, and vanilla flavored coldness and I felt pretty lucky.

Last night the family watched as I drew my map on the computer, and then they sat and watched me as I unpacked each article from my enormous suitcase, one piece at a time, I tried to put my life into some order. It feels cozy, this room, this family, and even though I do want my privacy at times, I’d rather they crowd me than ignore me in that awkward way people do. Families here I never hear fighting. I was thinking about that after I got off the phone with my querida family of El Paraiso, never do they even raise their voices. It’s a preciosa thing.

This morning we walked to see the campo and pick up the last of my stuff from Mayor Napo’s house. After lunch we walked to an aldea and ventured along side a brook until we came upon the waterfalls and water pools where people swim. The youngest boys dashed up the rocks as fluidly as the water itself, while I, Carmen and Alicia tried to keep up. The father was busy hacking away at branches with his machete to clear the path up ahead. The water was freezing, but the rush felt amazing on my muddy and roughed-up feet. Once I was in up to my pecho, there was no turning back. We returned home in our mojado (wet) clothes and then Carmen and I went for a run to another Aldea across el puente where they bring the coffee beans to be ground by the one guy who owns the machinery to do it. We ran there and back and then joined the boys in a game of fútbol, which I definitely suck at, but it’s fun trying. They kids are amazing! Born to play, is true in Honduras. We continued to play as the rain started it’s daily routine and eventually me and Carmen excused ourselves and ran into the casa to start preparing the tortillas. She taught me how to grind the corn meal into a finer dough, which we then took globs of, rounded them, and then patted into perfect soft circles, which we threw upon the wood burning stove to cook.

09.18.07

This is it, I’m off to Cabañas, COPAN, to work on projects in tourism, the redesign of Project Citizen materials, and a program called Educatodos, among other things...

The department of Copan is located in the western part of the country, right next to the Guatemalan border. The climate is warm, but not hot, rather fresco (as they say here.)

The best part is that I’m right next to the famous Mayan ruins so it will be beautiful and colonial-esque villages, with the same charming cobblestone streets that are here in Sta Lucia.

I also have a site mate named Sarah, who is currently serving as a health volunteer. (This way I can keep up on the Med School lingo for when I talk to all you soon-to-be doctors back home whom I love!) I met my counterpart today, the mayor of the town, and he and the tech team will be driving me and my enormous suitcases to Cabañas tomorrow. It will be so nice to stay put in one place after this last move! I will never over pack again!

All the new excitement aside, I will miss my training site of El Paraíso a great deal. My family there I truly fell in love with and I was crying like a baby as our bus pulled away and little Angel and Susanita were waving their goodbyes. They called me once I arrived back in the frio Sta. Lucia, and already their voices sounded so far away. Once in Copan, I will be 2 days travel from them. I’m one of the furthest from Tegucigalpa, 9 hours by bus to my site! ¡Pumachica!

Angel called me again tonight begging me to come back to la casa and play with him. Miriam got on the phone and I just got a soft pain in the gut, knowing I wont be talking to her after la cena anymore.

I'm anxious to meet a whole New family tomorrow, and I'm thinking, i just can't be this lucky a Third time!

Here are some websites on Copan:

http://www.copanhonduras.org/

http://www.planetware.com/copan-ruinas-tourism-vacations-hon-cop-cr.htm

09.15.07

The week has been one of the busiest thus far. It’s all coming to a close—the FBT, the Mundi-D Group, the families, El Paraiso, la Yunta, el Parque, Café D’polo, casa de cultura, charlas, cernos, cenas, aspirante-ism. It has been an excellent time, leaving El Paraiso will not be tear-less. Part of me just isn’t ready to walk away from this phase, yet I’m too anxious and excited not to. People in our group I will miss. But there are no good byes now, after all, we still have 2 years of discovering Honduras ahead.

Monday was día cultural with the families en casa de Susan. Each aspirante prepared a traditional Honduran dish for la cena. In contrast to the Honduran food, our group prepared various American cultural-type activities. One group did pin the tail on the donkey; my group did the hokey-pokey; and another group did a charla on their home states. There were also family members that presented different Honduran cultural aspects, such as a traditional dance group, a poetry reading, a few skits, and instruction on how to dance la punta—a dance that originated amongst the Garifunas on the North Coast.

Tuesday we left early for los llanos for our tourism fieldtrip. During the trip we visited a finca, rode horses (some of us rode mules), we cut down sugarcane with machetes to make sugarcane juice, we learned about cows and coffee, we made fishing poles, dug for worms, and did some fishing (I caught my first fish!), did some hiking, shucked some corn, planted some plants, and eventually we got a fire to light to roast marshmallows. The trip was fun, minus sleeping on mats, all in one large room that was once a restaurant. It was freezing and the shower in the morning even colder.

I imagine that was once all Peace Corps training was about—how to be adult girl and boy scouts.

Thursday my group started construction on our bulletin board project in el parque. The current volunteer in El Paraiso designed it, and my group along with Jorge, Junior, and a few people from the community helped us put it in place. We still have the cork to glue, which we’ll finish Sunday.

Friday marked the start to the celebrations for Honduran’s Día de Indepencia. All the students in the lower grades marched in their parade through the town yesterday, and today it will be the colegio students marching in costume while performing their dances and music.

My group did our final presentations for SDP, sharing our ups and downs in integrating into the community and attempting to execute all the projects we were trying to accomplish during the past month. There were a lot of ups and downs and expectations unmet, yet overall everyone seemed to walk away from it with a positive attitude, a lesson learned, and a better understanding of a phrase that Jorge so often says: “It Happens.” (Meaning “Shit Happens.” ie: corruption, unfulfilled promises, human error.)

09.12.07__bolsas, breakfast, country home.

So far septiembre so good...

We have less than one week left of Field Based Training. Less than one week until we find out where we will be spending 2 years of our lives. Cannot even imagine. At my third Tech interview today they informed me that I will be helping to illustrate the new Project Citizen Booklets for Peace Corps Honduras, which is a great project to start out with. Also, the Alcalde in my site is eager to develop tourism in the pueblo. There are also schools and other small business in my future site to work with and for. Lastly, I will not have to worry about loneliness because there is another volunteer currently serving there, which means it can’t be all that small! Just a couple of days and I’ll know for sure!

Two Saturdays ago, a group of us girls went with Brianna Bailey’s Empleada to learn how to make bolsas. The bolsa training center (aka some tia’s casa) was apparently in colonia #24 about a 30-minute walk del centro along the main carreterra heading towards Donlí. The weather that weekend was great, and so the walk was very enjoyable fieldtrip-style. Alas, the whole objective of the walk was not quit realized. The woman who was the purse maker was not there when we arrived, and so we waited and played with the freshly born kittens and rabbits until the woman arrived from church. She eventually did arrive on the scene, and showed us her blosas to a less than enthusiastic crowd. Alas, there were no materials there to actually make the purses, and so another date was set for the lessons and we went on our sweaty, merry, mosquito-bite ridden way. Nothing really lost, nothing exceptionally gained, it was really kind of nice to just walk.

That Sunday was great. My host family took me to a nearby aldea where Miriam used to teach, and so everyone there called her la Profe. The people of the aldea were really sweet and generous. We enjoyed talking, snacking on tamales with cheese and hot, sweet coffees as the kids played and little susanita charmed everyone in her cute little vistido w/floras. In the second house we visited the family owned two HUGE cernos (pigs) and their two offspring, which were the biggest pigs I have ever seen that upclose. I mean, the slaughter of those things would feed the entire aldea for a month! After we said our goodbyes and loaded up on the customary departing gifts of fruits and vegetables and plants, we took off just as the daily rain began. We stopped along the way first to offer a jálon to a fellow church member of Wiliam’s who was along the road with her kids. Then we stopped in an outside colonia right near el centro where Miriam and Wiliam bought a house that is still under construction even though it was supposed to be completed a year ago.

Wiliam said this was an example of corruption.

The dealer taking their money without delivering any final product as promised. I can’t believe there is no penalty for that kind of robbery. People seem so patient, so very forgiving. Para mi, with the way I have been raised, if I buy something, or pay for something, that something better be produced or else there would be legal action. Here there just is no such school of thought, take action…and do what?? The results just aren’t that immediate. It’s another case of “break the cycle.” Again, where does one even begin? Regardless, the house so far looks nice and airy with some great views of the surrounding mountainside. They are such a sweet couple, such a preciosa familia, I can imagine them perfectly in their completed country home. One day.

09.05.07__Felix

Huracán Felix is filling up the buckets outside my room.

The downpour will flood many parts of the country. El Paraiso will not be one of them. But there will be no classes hoy. Flooding is possible everywhere and in particular in Tegucigalpa where the drainage system is badly in need of improvement. As for my personal flood factor, the rippling roof of my dormitorio has algunos hoyos, which allow a constant dripping right above my bed…slowly and surely it will be saturated by morning.

All my fellow aspirantes were excited for the potential evacuation, but no, only a level one, and so we remained in El Paraiso, this is all. Only change, no afternoon classes. We went to the little café “la Finca” at el parque that I truly love. The motif is peasant farm girl, lots of wicker and faux moss and clay trinkets. The best part is the big thermos of dark, strong coffee that they give you. The homemade pan is 2 limps and it is sweet yet salty with hints of nutmeg and all spice, it’s strange and good and they serve it in a little basket along side the thermo. These are the places I will miss!

09.08.07__Poetic cigarros y vino de café

Jueves nosotros fuimos al Tabacalero en Paraíso para ver el operacion. It was really interesting visually. The idea of human labor as piece-meal, as people functioning as a machine in a way, as if they were just on earth to be an arm or an eye, a couple finger movements and nothing more, nothing less, oddly enough it has practical aspects. We are all just performing memorized tasks to complete a final product. It’s eerie how this week I and another aspirante Julie (who currently has Dengue) gave Business Fundamental Charlas and in one of the activities we discuss the benefits of assembly line production and one person having just one task and that’s it. I never really considered that kind of work beneficial to anyone, yet in our lecture we illustrate it’s benefits along with the benefits of having individual products based solely on one person’s invention and labor. I wonder what the mental health consequences are.

The workers in the factory did not seem sad, or look worn down. A few had vacant stares, the same kind of stare that I have had at my past office jobs, none too different. Reality is, a few of the positions in the cigar making process demand workers to stand all day, or strain their eyes, a few of them I’m sure can never get the color of tobacco leaves to leave their fingers, their skin. A few of them have cut their own skin with the blades. This is not bad work, it is not fulfilling in the soft generalized definition of what fulfilling work is. But who can say what is or isn’t_ I did not stay with the group. I just wanted to capture it all on film. The symmetry, the lighting, the repetition—all of these mathematical elements are so appealing to the human eye. I wonder if we weren’t meant to be drones? Lemmings?

The workers receive at least minimum wage and higher, vacation time, they have a health clinic in the factory to treat those who are ill, it all seems to be ok-dokay on the surface, but we did not get to interview or speak with the workers…they were all Working...So there you have it. One worker said I looked like his daughter in the states. He had clear blue eyes, so we took a photo, psuedo dad and gringa hija.

After the tabacalero, we went to an ejemplo of a micro-empresa. A woman with a short cut and nice smile, excitedly explained to us all about the various products of café beans and the wine she produces in her home. The benefits of coffee wine were pretty humorous—relieves stress and headaches, good for the blood pressure, and an energy booster! But you don’t have to sell me on anything that’s a coffee derivative. Caffeine is surely a friend of mine. We were treated to a wine tasting w/the dark liquor-like substance, add a scoop of helado and it’s pretty rico. The woman also had a café pastel that was extremely rich and equally rico.

This week was also the end of SDP, which means the end of work in the community of El Paraiso. As I said, Julie and I were to give the Business Fundamentals charla to two of the 6th grade classes on Thursday and Friday. (The classes were canceled on Wednesday because of the huracán. Julie was a trooper and did the charlas with me anyway, even with her Dengue. It was a lot of work between the two classes, but the kids seemed to enjoy themselves and learned a few pointers on how to save money and how to think out an idea to make money. It’s hard to measure what students take away from a lesson. It’s always easier when the students are actually your own and you know their personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. Here we are shooting in the dark. But that is what we are here in FBT to do, practice being volunteers. Next week, we will actually swear in and aspirante school will be out.

08.26.07__Señor Tigre v. Dengue Fever

It’s nice to hear señor tigre once again, growling from his favorite hiding place beneath my bed. Little Angel is finally back to his old self after contracting Dengue fever last week. Glenda said he got it from swimming in the river. Miriam said there is bastante Dengue in el Paraiso. There is high alert in the country. We had a scare on Wednesday, when he could not use his legs. I don’t think they hurt him, it was more like paralysis, and when he tried to walk, they just buckled from underneath him and he fell. Every time he got up, he fell. Just the night previously he seemed to be recovering fast, but then this…Miriam and Wiliam took him to the clinic across the street, and then to Donlí were they were able to run some tests. It seems it was just a result of the Dengue running through his little veins and not a more serious cancer that the doctors has suspected. Thanks to all, señor tigre is back on the prowl.

The past week and a half has been very busy and emotionally charged:

08.16.07__Alauca, Jacaleapa, El Paraiso.

Thursay was the first day of SDP, self defined project. We are broken into three groups, two of which travel 20 minutes out of El Paraiso a few days of the week to work in the municipalities of Alauca and Jacaleapa. This means, no more sitting and listening to lecture after lecture…even though I know it was all necessary. But still, I am so ready to be in my site and get to work! Not that I want to say goodbye to any of these people, fellow aspirantes and families alike. Everyone here I have grown to really appreciate for all they are. I had a nice heart to heart with my host mom today, with little Susan passing between our laps—She is quickly becoming a real ally that I hope to keep for a longtime. She was joking around w/her friend about having a mountain of meat in the fridge and a gringa who only wants vegetables! Yep, that’s me, bien compliqué. Or, “tough” as my father puts it. I guess dads are sometimes right.

Wiliam, my host dad and I also spoke about life in the US. He thinks it is too centered around money and the business of increasing it, possessions and such. Perhaps it is, at some point…but not everywhere. It can’t be.

08.17.07__Legal Resident Jam Session

Friday was good day, good night.

There’s a big old blister on my thumb begging to be popped. A group of us went to the small Café d’apolo by the parque. There’s live music on weekend nights, which is really just the talented owner, se llama Carlos, and his friends playing guitar + flute. Carlos, I just happened to have met at La Casa de la Cultura the day prior b/c I found his guitar in the music room and took it upon myself to try it out. Well, he heard me singing Ben’s waiting on an angel, and liked my voice...So he lent me his guitar again to play at the café. It was nice and therapeutic, just playing and singing, not that I am any good, but I like to do it anyway! The owner even joined in w/his flute while I was playing Leaving on a Jet Plane, my first jam session in Honduras—very special.

Earlier that day we made the trip to Teguc to get our official residency cards for the country and so I am officially here! Two years, here I come…

It was really nice to get to see other people from the other two groups! It’s odd, but we wont get to see each other all in one place again until we swear in for the 2 yr service. Crazy.

After the paper work was done we got to walk around the mall for an hour and a half. I got mint chocolate chip ice cream and double minutes for my cell phone. The mall was eerie, a bit over stimulating and unnecessary. The idea of shopping was tempting, but without any money to dispense and nowhere to wear potentially cute purchases, the fun of it is not so …eh fun. I also ran into my first host dad, Don Wil and he scolded me for not calling! The time just goes so fast!

I also got a letter from Trish and a very special package from Jo! Packages are way more fun than shopping malls!

08.20.07__Honduran Time + Strikes

This Monday, my SDP group stationed in El Paraiso, made good progress—setting all our dates for the charlas we need to give at the schools and the Alcaldia. There were problems with scheduling b/c of the teacher strikes going on next week. It would seem that the teachers are upset over not receiving the money promised to them by the government during the previous campaign. There is mixed opinion over the teacher strike amongst my group as well as amongst the Hondurans. The teachers may not be paid a great deal, but their employment is seen as stable and with some benefits; thus, the people are not as sympathetic to their cause. Plus, it creates a setback in the education of the children. Then again, there is no excuse for the lying and corruption that is blatantly at work in this situation, and so I tend to side with the teachers position. Hoping that at least some of them are not as upset over the lack of monetary compensation, as the corruption at work in the governmental system. Empty promise-technique gets them every time.

08.22.07__Mountain of Tamales

Un día muy divertido! Las clases de espanol were in mi casa y we cooked tamalas de pelotes y guacamol ricisimo! (See Pics!)

Brian was our fearless culinary líder and I taught the group a traditional Honduran folk song that Miriam sang for me the night prior.

We all gathered in my kitchen to shuck the corn, peel away the first layer of husk and then cut off the remainder to guard for the eventual formulation of the tamales. We cleaned the naked ears of corn before sawing away all of the corn kernels into one large plastic basin. We then all piled into a PC vehicle to bring the corn grains to a place that grinds corn—there is only One in the entire city of el paraiso, and it ain’t pretty.

Well it’s just a very dark and noisy room where the grains are poured into one end of a machine and the mush comes out the other end. The two workers then scoop the mush back into the container for transport. Thus, we returned back to my house to continue the process. Next we added some salt and a bunch of butter to the corn goop, stirred, and poured into the folded-up shells made from the saved inner husks. Once a tamale was folded, we placed them one by one into a large pot of near-boiling water to steam. Eventually our pot was overflowing with the tamales and we placed the lid on top of the pile to leave it sit for an hour. My group then prepared guacamole, which was excellent. The group managed to demolish the entire pot of green spicy delicious chunkiness in less then 5 minutes. Then everyone enjoyed the mountain of tamales we had created. A bunch of people took them home to the families, but here at the house we still have a mini mountain of solidified corn mush chilling out in the fridge.

08.24.07__Tree Love

It’s pouring in Honduras—lightening—thunder—la tormenta verdad. Hope we don’t loose la luz.

The rain always sounds more intense upon my metal roof, braced for some collapse. Here there is no stability in these situations, as in other places in the world, everything can just be washed away with the blink of an eye. One day your roof is noisy, and the next, it is silent and gone. The idea of death and going with the flow of life is just the way people roll with the punches. It is laid back, yet smiling at the happenstance. I think of the wise eyes of our fearless leader Jorge and know that he knows. Whatever it is, he just knows...

Earlier today we all piled into the big white PC vehicles and headed to Alauca, where we had a date to plant trees w/some students from the colegio. Once we reached the town, which was about 30 minutes from el Paraiso, we gathered in a large schoolroom with wooden desks covered in simple pencil graffiti etchings. Students from the colegio joined us for a discussion about the importance of planting trees and what resources and functions trees provide for the ambiente. It was interesting, the differences in the two cultures, in how we all perceived these brown and green things that grow and get cut down, again and again. There are so many varieties of trees, it made me think of my mom and her endless knowledge of plants and tree types. She would make a great volunteer, if she could get a hot water shower ever day.

After the charla we got to the real dirty work of actually planting some trees. We had to clear off two sections of ground for the planting, breaking the soil up and leveling the area. The two plots were then roped off using branches shortened and sharpened with machetes. We then cleaned and broke up the fresh topsoil that Jorge had provided. Once that was dumped, we used a wheel barrel to make two large piles, while others filled bags with dirt and dropped the large, flat seeds within. In the midst of all the exchanging of dirt it began to pour, and we all enjoyed the strong downpour turning our dirty selves into muddy messes. There was a good four inches of dirt and twigs caked into all of our shoes, and dirt deeply embedded under our nails We finished the planting pretty quickly and so cleaned up a bit and took some group shots to commemorate our tree love. It was fun working with the Hondurans and most people really enjoyed the activity. We piled back into the vans and sped off again—a bit smellier, wetter and wiser than when we had arrived.

08.25.07__Corn Festival_Donlí

So today we embarked on a mission to be merry and eat corn—the infamous corn festival at Donlí. The town is a 20 minute bus ride from El Paraiso and is larger with real super markets and a decent amount of shopping. There is even a bank where you can use an America ATM card!

I headed towards the bus stop around 10:40am and I met up with the rest of the group across from the bumping gas station, which sells mixed drinks right outside the entrance. It seems the party starts and ends at the gas station in Honduras.

The bus to Donlí was packed! Good (sweaty) times. Once at the festival we met up with other PAM volunteers and chilled out in the “gardens” for the majority of the afternoon--plenty of smiles and quality group bonding...

The sun was brutal the entire day, and while we took shelter under our colorful umbrellas, I for one did not escape the burn! There was a Rodeo, Soccer matches, a Parade, tons and tons of food stands on every corner and crammed into the various plazas and parques where hot corn treats were steaming away atop the grills. And while there was not a lack of opportunity, I managed to leave the corn festival without eating a single ounce of corn! (But believe me, i get my share of the stuff on any given day!) Perhaps I missed out because of the downpour that came out of nowhere and forced us to haul ass to the gas station to catch our ride back as soggy burnt gringos...

08.27.07_Month DEEP

We are a month deep into FBT and I know the time will continue to fly. The group dynamic is pretty good, though tends to waver depending on peoples´ health issues. I for one am now trying to stay focused on why I am here, and try to keep positive and open to everyone. I miss people though. I really do.

08.31.07_una noche mas de augosto…

Today was an emotional day. High highs, low lows. Time and reality checks. Yesterday we started preparation for the VIH/SIDA charla. We divided up into teams of three/four and went over to the colegio this morning to present. The volunteers who came to instruct us on how to deliver the information about SIDA called it a: “charla in a box,” which is basically how it sounds—all the necessary pieces provided, instructions included, it’s just a matter of putting it together. My group consisted of Jennifer, Drew, Nicole and myself. I thought we did a pretty bang up job. The first part that I was in charge of was called: “lenguage poplular—palabres de la calle,” which is a dinamica that deals with the slang people use to refer to parts of the body, or other sexual terminology. The scientific terms for the body were written on several pieces of paper that were then taped to the wall where the students were to add their “palabres de la calle” for each one. I learned a few useful terms from that dinamica. The point, was to break the ice about the language that we would be required to use throughout the course. The next dinamica I had to lead is known as¨kati flauty, and it’s as dumb as it sounds. It’s basically a song and dance that requires people to get extremely too close while doing a few slightly provocative dance moves. The kids absolutely love this one! Finally, the last dinamica I led had to do with RESPECT. The guys formed a line on one side of the room, while the girls lined up facing the boys. We then had the guys say un frase de presion en voz alta en una manera agresiva, while the girls had to give the correct repuesta mastiza. This the guys were a little better at then the girls, but with little encouragement, the girls got into it as well.

Drew led the kiddies in the condón demonstration and he did a really great job w/a sweet potato that was the perfect vegetable replica of a phallic member complete with potato juevos. The girls learned a lot during this demonstration, and when it was all said and done, and every last saggy latex was chucked into the garbage, I think everyone had gotten something out of it. At the end of the two-hour course each student received a diploma stating they had successfully completed the course.

Afterwards we had a guest speaker come share her life story as a Honduran woman living with VIH/SIDA. Her words came fast and a veces overwhelming with emotion and painful memories. She did not look sick, she looked pretty with long think hair and a soft smile and face. She was the mother of four. Three boys with her first husband who was abusive and left them, and one little girl with the husband who had given her the disease. The later husband left her and took off to the United States where he has infected other women. The speaker spoke to us of her life before the disease and after she had been diagnosed. The worst part I think was her initial fears about the malady. She did not want to infect her children, nor family and so she was afraid to touch them, share food or drinks with them, exist in the same space as them. Her children found out at school that their mother was sick, and it killed her to have to finally tell them the truth when they came home from school with the worst question possible. Her mother also could not believe her daughter could of possibly contracted such a disease, thinking that only prostitutes, or drug users could contract VIH. It was the woman’s brother who helped start her real education about the disease, and how it is and is not transmitted. There is still much uncertainty and ignorance about these facts. This woman is a true hero for this country, speaking about her story even though there is great discrimination against people who are VIH positive. There is not much you can say besides thank you as she was heading back to Tegucigalpa. There is no pity, just a profound respect and a chilling reality check of how injustice and ignorance are always to blame and are such abstract culprits, that the only thing we can do is give these charlas in hopes that some of the children will be lucky enough to defend themselves with the imparted knowledge. low lows.

08.08.07

el Paraiso: FBT

There is a chicken and a 6 yr old boy named Angel outside my door. I have two freshly formed mosquito bites on either arm. The roosters kept me up all night. This is New Life, Parte II.

At 7:30am Dona Letvia dropped me and my gorda suitcase in front of the Laguna. Don Wil had called me earlier in the AM to say his goodbye. It was sad to say goodbye to those who had been so kind and generous to me. They were truly the perfect family for a solo gringa dropped in the middle of Honduras--so open minded, such huge hearts…It’s hard to say goodbye to that.

The group of 44 aspirantes gathered one by one in front of the Laguna. I fed the ducks some whole wheat bread, my last piece of the heavenly loaf from Samantha’s host mom. We took some group pictures. It didn’t feel like a good-bye. The Muni-D and Pam kids got into the same bus while the Youth Development group waited for their own. We drove off and waved to the waiting. The road trip was tranquilo, time for refection driving through the central mountain ranges. The sides of the highway are beautiful here—green mountains, the skinny dark pines and the soft pastel grasses crosshatched in the dull, low morning light.

Our school bus pulled up to bustling and colorful market plaza en El Paraiso around noon. From there I got my mammoth suitcase, broke from the group, and took off down the dusty road towards a sign reading el farmacia Guadalupe. I was to find a green house across from a clinic where la familia Sanchez lived. I wheeled my suite case up to the closest muchachos hanging out on the corner and they pointed me in the right direction. You think they would’ve just given me the number to the house, but here # addresses are a rarity.

Miriam Lorena Sanchez greeted me, seven month-old baby Susan in tow, and little 6 yr old Angel not far behind. The Empleada, Glenda, took the baby and bounced her softly in her lap as Miriam and Angel gave me the tour. The house is large and clean and stereotypical Honduran-style. My room is separate from the rest, as is the kitchen and el baño. In Honduras, the houses are usually situated around an open courtyard where the pila lives (the big concrete sink/tub-like water source). In the living room, there are the standard diplomas on the walls and the television constantly set to Latin soap operas.

After the tour, we all had lunch, which consisted of the plato tipico (rice, beans, tortillas) and jugo naturel (fruit juice). Angel and Susan are both adorable children and I love them already. Angel, I can tell, will be my best friend here. I’m very happy to have kids to play with and learn from. Plus, Angel really wants to learn English, and has already played his English music while showing me his notebooks de ingles. He is for sure a smarty.

The husband, Wiliam, came home for lunch as well. He is a maestro (teacher) at a tech colegio (tech school) for metalwork, woodwork, and electrician certification. Miriam is also in school to become a maestra. She attends school on Saturdays and Sundays. They are very religious people, as is the majority of the town/country. The two main faiths seem to be Catholic and Evangelical, there are no none believers. After Wiliam dashed off to a 4-day church retreat, Miriam and the kids showed me around the town. El Paraiso is much larger than Santa Lucia, much hotter, dustier, and the town itself is very flat. I sense the group will be pretty content with this set up. I know I am. Six weeks of Field Base Training (FBT)! I Can’t believe how long that seems right now—largo y lejo.

08.09.07

My fellow aspirante Cynthia left. Jorge told us after the fact. I couldn’t believe it. Of all the women, why Cynthia? Selfishly I needed her here. I think we all did. She was so inspiring, so smart and beautiful. Such a great resource, and I earnestly wanted to work with her on future projects. I felt lonely—truly solo—and it was the family that saved me. Angel is my angel. He sat with me in my room and we looked at pictures, played in Photoshop, listened to music, and watched videos of my friends, oh my friends… Children are so open, so free, so vulnerable. It is true, everything starts with them—the solutions to the right kind of development. Thus, the loneliness passed.

That night, Miriam also gave me a fan, so hopefully the mosquitoes wont be so much of a problem in the future. Now, if only the dogs and roosters will shut the #$%@@ up so I can get some much needed rest. I’ve realized that in Honduras, there is either complete silence, or complete ruido (NOISE). When you need to sleep, it’s non-ceasing ruido: a combination of television, radio, roosters’ calls, dogfights, speeding carros, and chattering chismastic neighbors.

True sleep is also the start to everything.

I dreamt that I got to say goodbye.

08.10.07

The first real day of Field Based Training (FBT) was spent making a map. This was a pretty cool activity. We broke into groups by barrios (neighborhoods) and marked down what was what and where—important landmarks, places to eat, to shop, to get food, and places to be wary of. Nicole and I were in charge of mapping out the barrio el Centro, which was a pretty easy one to do since it only consisted of the main Parque where la Casa de Cultura resided. We ventured to and fro exploring our new home. There is a lot of stuff here: Supermercados, a discoteque, a million pulparies, dentistas, bike shops, billiard rooms, bars, comedores, colegios, escualas and farmacias. The point of making a map, besides familiarizing oneself with new surroundings, is to locate potential resources for future projects. This activity is one we are supposed to replicate once in our permanent sites.

08.11.07

Saturday night was a dinner for all the host families and volunteers. It was held at a local restaurant at the Plaza. The restaurant was muy bonita and once everyone was seated with their proper families, we all filed onto the stage, family by family, to present our new “moms/dads/sisters/brothers/cousins/ect…” Some of the more verbose of the host parents took the opportunity to lecture a bit about various topics—mostly Gods influences, Honduran’s future, coffee exports, and such. There was also the somewhat persistent mentioning of past volunteers marrying with nationals. Once we were all seated a troupe of dancers performed several traditional Honduran dances, which originated during the time of the conquistadors—thus the brilliant colored dresses and red handkerchiefs, reminiscent of travels in Spain. The group was young, vibrant, and dynamic. During the final moments of the last song, they pulled a few of us out of our seats to dance (with much less grace) on stage with the group. After dancing, the dinner was served—un plato tipico: beans, rice, meat, tortillas, chismol, queso, and fried platanos.

Sunday the president of the government council came to el Paraiso, and in his honor the local high school band performed a grande bienvenido in the streets of the Plaza. It seems that this man donated all of the instruments to the town in order for them to have the very band that was beating away in the afternoon sun. A few of us from Peace Corps attended the event, and were embarrassed and honored by the three different political figures who recognized our presence and work in the country. The councilman made his shout-out in English, thanking the “beautiful American girls for coming to his country.” It just so happens, that our group is nearly 100% female; thus, only “girls” were in attendance at the event. We took it for what it was. We took pictures with the politicos and enjoyed the bands rapid drumming as the dark clouds formed over all our heads, threatening to pour on the liberal parade.

Pour it did not, not until later that evening, and so the crowd dispersed steadily and slowly and we all returned to our casas for la cena. It’s a change to be part of a family, firstly that is not your own, and secondly that eats every meal together!For me the family has been a great source of comfort and refuge. Again, the children are just amazing for lifting ones spirits. Miriam even made me a bowl of fruit salade, my first real dosage of fruit, just like My mom used to make...it was nice, really nice.

Volunteer Site Visit: Marale, Francisco Morazan.

Voluntaria: Alicia, Hondu 9, Mundi-D.

Recounting y Reflections.

Marale, en la casa de Alicia: I’m sitting on the sofa, the Brissa fan going full blast, the door to Alicia’s large and open casa, open to the scenario of her bonito mountain pueblo life—the colors and faces, men and women, ninos and ninas that pass by her house with parasols, appear as if within the clearest picture of a television in any given living room set in the States. This is how my brain digests the visual info—as surreal, a rare unaltered beautiful, a someplace far, far away. Yet here I sit, and all I really have to do is lift myself from the sofa, walk across the doorframe, and step outside into the very same strong sun, dusty roads, azul-colored casas of the seemingly elusive picture.

This trip to Marale, I consider my first real Honduran adventure. I met Alicia in Santa Lucia at 6:30 am in front of the school for the blind where we caught the bus going to Teguc. From hospital San Felipe we hoped on another yellow school bus to the supermercado. I was in a little slice of American product paradise—purchasing a huge tub of raisins, an apple, a yogurt, 2 boxes of kashi cereal, and a Chilean win—pure bliss. After we were loaded down with our luxuries we took a taxi to the mercado where all the buses were, and to our dismay, the 9am bus to Marale was not there as it should’ve been. As it turned out, it left already. Thus we decided to take the bus to the next closest town where a health volunteer was stationed, and where we could seek her assistance/company to await for the next bus passing to Marale—since the Mercado was not the safest place to wait around for 3 hrs with bags of stuff. The bus ride was long, but Alicia and I filled up the time by sharing our pasts and her answering all my naïve, trainee-type questions.

Once we arrived in the town, we got out at a standard kind of ‘waiting place’ and the health volunteer who lived there came by to visit. While we were talking, Alicia found us a jalon with two women from her municipalidad returning home after a conference. Sometimes there is just no other way to reach your final destination once you are far from any major urban zone. The ride was the bumpiest-ass ride of my life. The road to Marale was winding and an Indian-red clay in color. It appeared as if it was freshly cut out of the ascending terra. More beautiful vistas and further and further into the mountains we went, until finally we could see the bright white catholic church of Marale and Alicia informed me, we were home.

Alicia’s house was huge and you could see the underside of the clay roof tiles, meaning there was no ceiling in order to keep the house cool in the hot Honduran sun. She had electricity and running water in the mornings and evening. She did bucket showers, cleaned her clothes in the pila, and had no internet access, but besides that, it seemed a pretty comfortable set up. And she was definitely content in her casa with few complaints at all. Yesterday, we walked through town and made house visits to all of Alicia’s friends, which after almost 1 year in site, she had a lot of! Everyone we passed she seemed to know something about.

The school were she teaches English classes on Saturdays was the first stop to pick up some charla paper for a health charla we were to give at the health center. After that we stopped by the woman who washes her clothes, who makes amazing bread, and who was currently taking care of a baby whose mother passed away during childbirth in a nearby aldea (town) She was very smiley and enjoyed my facial expression when Alicia explained to me how she had tried cow’s blood! Despues, we stopped by another home where the women were braiding hair and the three little girls and one little boy played with the three week-old puppies. They offered us refrescos of banana and naranja, which we accepted, and as Alicia informed me, was custom when any visitor came. Something must be offered and accepted, punto. Even if the people had nothing to give, they gave. We then stopped by the house where a blind man was building a cooking table for Alicia. In this house lived the most flaco hombre y perro del mundo. His ton and Alicia carried the finished table home to rest. Alicia’s friends Gabby and Marecel who are 8 and attending her English class where waiting for us when we got back with the mesa. We helped them with their homework and then took pictures of all of us in the park still under construction. When we were worn out by all the neighborhood kids, the woman who prepares the baleadas and tamales was dropping off Alicia’s order, and we hurried home to have cena. The tamales, pepino ensalada, and white wine made for the best meal I’ve had yet—the wine and conversation. After we were good and full we got out the charla paper and prepared a short lesson on how to treat burn. Once that was finished, we were exhausted and went straight to bed.

Today I took my first bucket shower, which was fine b/c Alicia heated up the agua for me, so really it was no big deal. Breakfast was cinnamon toast, oranges, pineapples, and coffee. Tan rico. After desayuno, we went to give our charla. Unfortunately, the nurses were all at a reunion the next municipio over, and so the office was closed. Que lastima. We thus preceded to the Municipal office where Alicia has designed a computer-based system to track tax records for the municipio and aldeas since there was no real system in place, and years of unpaid and unregulated taxes. If folks will pay their taxes, the municipal will eventually be able to have the citizens apply for property rights b/c currently in this municipio, as in the rest of Honduras, no one actually owns deeds to their land. No one feels the need to pay taxes on something they don’t even own! It’s an initiative recently reinforced by the current President to encourage folks to get titles for their land. After we left the municipal, we headed over to the library where Alicia had to inform the librarian that Riken (organization of a former Peace Corps volunteer that donates money for the creation of libraries in third world countries) was not building libraries in Marale’s zone currently. But, if they were persistent and kept working towards it, RIKEN may just come and build a library in Marale. We left the library and went to one of the aldeas across the river. There, a mother was keeping house and taking care of her 3 yr old hijo sick with a rare disease that no one knows the name of, nor the cure for. Entonces, Alicia has been helping this family get the medical exams he needs in order to analyze what the disease might be. The mother is part of 1 of the indigenous groups of the area, she has 4 sons and an older daughter. The family raises chickens and pigs. The young boy, David, is so soft and sick that he is moved about in a wheelbarrow by his older brother, and he cannot really speak. It was enough to make you want to never leave. Back at Alicia’s house, we ate our lunch slowly, cleaned the dishes in the pila, and just chilled out a bit, digesting the days thus far…

A few women from the municipal stopped by b/c Alicia had take photos and got them printed at Teguc. She does this occasionally b/c she is one of the only people with a digital camera in the village and so she just charges what the prints cost, and renders the service when she can. The women were very curious and full of big smiles. They asked me if I was married or if I had a novio or children. They were shocked when I told them none of the above, and then one of the woman guess that I was 17yrs old! Unbelievable! The day before another woman of the town guessed I was 20! It seems here if you do not have a husband or children you must be of this age bracket. After our visitors left, Alicia and I started watching a movie on her laptop, but we heard the children making noise outside the casa so we would go outside and play with them. Finally, we left the house to play, and the eager kids grabbed our arms and we took off down the road to the cemetery. The children took us to the tombs of their relatives most recently deceased. These were five of many. One was buried just last week, it was a woman who had contracted a rare skin disease and the people had tried to cure here by covering her raw and naked skin with leaves collected from the river. But this only made her condition worsen, and sadly she passed away not long after. The children talked openly about death, but they dare not touch the crosses, which marked the tombs. Once back in town and away from the overgrown, yet freshly serviced burial ground, we all were in a lighter mood and began to play games. We played red light/green light, we danced, ran about, played monster chase, and tornado, and wore ourselves out. The kids however would not let us slip away easily into Alicia’s house, and we had to literally pry their hands from our wrists before closing the door in order to commence cooking a vegetable curry and coconut milk soup for cena.

My last day at Alicia’s the leak of one of her outdoor faucets was finally fixed, and thus the neighbors shunning of the wasted water could be put to rest. There were men threatening to get her water turned off if the leak was not fixed. And though Alicia had told her landlord repeatedly, the leak had remained; thus, a nearby man told Alicia he would fix it if she would give him money for the part. This she did and in ten minutes he had the leaky problem good and tight. The rest of the community was making its way to church service with the visiting pastor from another town as we waited for my bus. It seems there is not one pastor in the town itself, and so one comes for Sunday service, but he does not know the community. Our friends were back to see me off, and so when the 8am bus finally showed up at 9am, I was ready for goodbyes. I was amazed at how much I was saying goodbye to. In one small mountain town with not one restaurant nor venue, other than a Sunday morning service, I felt like I had absorbed and now must close a novel. The people make their own entertainment, they sit and talk, visit and clean, smile and joke, chase and catch, nurture and feed one another and make it a point to know everything about everyone, for they are all there is, they are all they’ve got. And when there is nothing to give, they give themselves.