All good things must come to an end

We often hate to use clichés but, as it turns out, our time with the Peace Corps has been a good experience, and, moreover, it has come to end, so what better way of phrasing that than the tried and true. Ok, so you get the picture. Our two years with the Peace Corps have finally wrapped up and we´re enjoying some time in the States before heading to Nicaragua and Ecuador for one final hoorah before heading home in December to begin looking for work and then preparing for grad school (Emily). For those loyal few who´ve read a lot of what we´ve written over the past two years, thanks for your interest, and we hope this last entry will be an interesting way to end the saga.

Teaching

Dan teaching a class of eigth graders

We wrapped up our time with the Peace Corps by teaching a great deal of both English and civic education courses. With regard to English, each of us was occupied between 4 and 5 nights a week teaching English to many motivated teens and young adults who are in the process of completing their 7th, 8th, and 9th grade educations respectively. At the end of the school year, after all of the exams were graded, projects returned, etc. we were treated to a “gran despedida”, or “great farewell party”, by our students at each of the two schools where we taught English. We received nice gifts, ranging from wood carvings, to ornate key holders, to a nice collared dress shirt. Naturally, the food we received was also quite scrumptious and we did nothing short of stuff ourselves on shish kabobs, rice, beans, tortillas, and two types of cake (one of which Emily had painstakingly prepared the night before, the other of which our students prepared for us). We hope that our students improved their ability to speak and write English, and above all else to better comprehend both written and spoken English. Regardless of our students individual aspirations, we´ve learned over the past two years that having some grasp on English is very advantageous to obtaining many of the more professional and lucrative jobs in the country. We were very proud of our student´s progress and dedication and we wish them all the best!

Emily with her students at La Gran Despedida

Our second year of civic education via what is known as Project Citizen was a wonderful experience, and arguably one of our proudest achievements during our two years in Honduras. Do you want to know the best part? We became more and more expendable as time went on and as our counterpart – already a fantastic local civics teacher – developed more confidence with her ability to teach the program. So, for a quick explanation of what´s involved in Project Citizen, let us phrase it this way: Project Citizen is a program designed to teach students the philosophy behind community development while also providing them with multiple tools to enhance their individual and collective capacity to be local change agents. Hmm, there must be a less, how to put it, stuffy rhetoric to describe Project Citizen. More than anything, it´s intended to get kids involved in changing their community for the better by identifying problems via community surveys and then conducting legitimate research to help propose viable solutions to those problems. We were thrilled by the problems our students chose to address (excessive vehicle speed on a road adjacent to their school, problems with the functioning and location of localcanteens , the need for a bridge to span a creek that often becomes an impassable river for students and other residents during the rainy season, improving public lighting in the neighborhood, and improving a local soccer field), and, moreover, by their success in proposing creative and convincing solutions for dealing with those problems. Our counterpart teacher at the school plans to create a conference in our town to teach other area civics teachers the fundamentals of Project Citizen, so as to pay it forward. With these students we were again treated to a very nice despedida, but this time we only had to worry about cake. Phew!

Our students outlining the need for new traffic safety measures

Libraries

The many generous people who donated books to our book drive will be pleased to know that dozens of kindergarteners and school aged kids have already enjoyed many of the wonderful stories you´ve sent their way. Several kids have even developed favorites and have taken to asking their teacher or librarian to read them the story once again. In total, books were donated to four locations (one kindergarten, one elementary school, one small-scale community library, and one other traditional school covering from first through ninth grades). Three of those locations have already begun to use the books – two of them very extensively – and the fourth location has plans to make the books accessible to students in the very near future once they´ve constructed shelving to house them all. It has been truly inspiring to see the children excitedly opening the books and to hear stories from their teachers about how much enthusiasm they´ve shown towards reading. To the many of you who donated to our book drive, thanks once more for all of your generosity! It will undoubtedly pay dividends for the years and decades to come.

Saying goodbye

As you´ve seen woven into the few paragraphs written above, we said a lot of goodbyes as we prepared to leave Honduras. Certainly there were rough patches in our service, but such is life. At the end of the day we´re quite pleased to have volunteered with the Peace Corps, not so much for the positive impact we´ve made in the lives of others, but rather for the experience as a whole, which has been one of teaching and learning, speaking and listening, becoming better acquainted with our town and the country as a whole, and ultimately learning to be more empathetic with regard to the challenges many Hondurans face when trying to make a better life for themselves, their families, and their country as a whole. We hope to keep in touch with the friends who most inspired us to see what they achieve as time goes on. That´s it. İAdios Peace Corps and adios Honduras!

Enjoying our local outdoor market, from which we bought most of our produce

This year, for Semana Santa (Holy week) – which much more closely resembles Spring Break in Honduras than a religious holiday – we decided to travel to La Moskitia with six other Peace Corps volunteers. La Moskitia, also spelled Mosquitia, is the largest swath of rainforest north of the Amazon and home to three distinct indigenous groups as well as flora and fauna not found elsewhere in Honduras. Because La Moskitia is so remote, and once there the only form of travel is via boat, we used the NGO La Ruta Moskitia to plan our trip. La Ruta Moskitia plans the travel logistics, but the money all goes to the local communities through envelopes of lempiras that we carried along with us.

Thursday, 25 March 2010

We all arrived in La Ceiba from our different sites and received a briefing from La Ruta Moskitia about our trip starting early the following morning.

Friday, 26 March 2010

At 4:00 am our alarm went off so that we could get to the airport by 5:00. At 6:10, our little 16-seater plane took off from the La Ceiba airport for our 50 minute flight to Brus Laguna. The small plane did not have a pressurized cabin and when we took off, the pilots had windows open in the cockpit. We landed on a dirt runway in Brus Laguna and were met by the coordinator of la Ruta Moskitia to take us to breakfast. Breakfast consisted of beans, cheese, a fried egg, flour tortillas, hot dogs pretending to be sausage, and coffee. Corn tortillas are commonly eaten throughout most of Honduras, but along the Caribbean coast, flour tortillas reign.

We took a quick tour of Brus Laguna, the last town of any size we were to see in La Moskitia, before heading upriver. From this point onward, all our travel was in pipantes (dugout canoes), some of which were motorized, others of which were powered by paddle and pole. Our trip upriver took about an hour and a half and along the way, we saw water buffalo (an introduced species that has thrived since its introduction), a small turtle, and Jabiru, a giant prehistoric-looking bird that stands over four feet tall.

We arrived at the Yamari Savanna Cabanas, which were wooden cabins on 6 foot tall stilts with thatched roofs. The cabins were surrounded by grassland, which is not what one typically imagines when thinking of La Moskitia, and there was neither a road nor visible signs of other people (we were told that a community lies just a few kilometers from where we stayed). A quick bathroom break presented another surprise; we discovered that frogs live along the rim of the toilet and are washed into the bowl by the rush of water every time someone flushed, only to scramble back up the slippery porcelain into their nook.

After a quick swim, we had a lunch of fish in coconut milk, rice, and salad. We went on a short hike in the afternoon and saw a scarlet tanager and a tarantula in its hole. After dinner, we got back into the pipante to look for caiman and crocodiles. Drifting downstream in our boat, we shone our headlamps about until spotting the glowing eyes of a crocodile. We saw three crocodiles between 3 and 5 feet long and the guide caught a baby croc for us to hold. After our nighttime adventure, we were ready for our first good night’s sleep in days and were rocked to sleep by the cabin as it swayed gently in the wind.

The Scarlet TanagerBaby crocodile

Saturday, 27 March 2010

Breakfast consisted of warm milk and corn flakes (a preference many Hondurans still maintain from the days of pasteurizing milk by bringing it to a boil), pan de coco (bread made using coconut oil), honey, and eggs. Unfortunately, I (Emily) was feeling a bit under the weather, with what we later decided was a 24 hour bug, so I only stomached a couple of bites of bread, which I shortly thereafter threw up off the balcony of our cabin.

We had a four and a half hour trip to the community of Rais Ta. These long boat trips were beautiful but tiring due to the hours of sun exposure. We were constantly passing sunscreen up and down the boat. For lunch, we had rice, meat with gravy, whole beans, and boiled mature plantains. I stuck with the rice as my stomach was still not up to most foods. While I took a nap, everyone else went on a community tour and learned about the risky deep-water diving for lobster that provides an income for many in the community. After dinner, we attended a cultural night of traditional Miskito dances. The despedida (or farewell) dance was one in which we made a tunnel of arms and each couple repeatedly took their turn passing under the arms and becoming the end of the tunnel until we’d traced a perimeter around all of our cabins and returned to the bonfire for a final goodbye.

The sopilote (vulture) danceSunday, 28 March 2010

While I was feeling significantly better and finally up to eating, Nathan was getting sick. We decided that what was going around was probably viral, and since Nathan and I had sat next to each other on the boat the day before, we decided to “quarantine” us for the day. He and I sat in the back of the boat with Ana and Daniel as a buffer to keep the rest of the crew from getting sick. It seems to have worked because the bug stopped with Nathan.

We had a three hour boat trip up the Río Plátano (Plantain River) until our stop for a lunch of rice, chicken, mashed potatoes, pan de coco, and coconut water. Then we traveled for another three hours before reaching the community of Las Marias. Along the way, we saw an otter, a crocodile and a guacamaya/macaw (the national bird of Honduras). Our cabin in Las Marias was more rustic than the places we had stayed before and privacy was a bit harder to come by. Our room, for example, didn’t have any curtains, so we hung towels and sheets over the windows.

Lunch time!

Monday, 29 March 2010

We arose early for our daytrip to the petroglyphs. Two of us sat in each pipante, which were propelled upstream by two people with long poles in the front and one person using a paddle as a rudder in the back. The two in front, working together with the same rhythm, drove their poles down to the rocky bottom of the river and pushed the boat upriver. Miskito children learn from a very young age how to guide a pipante, and had we tried, we surely would have capsized the boat!

We hiked with our guide, Ezekiel, through primary rain forest and saw many medicinal plants as well as stunning vistas. After the hike and a quick lunch, the pipantes took us the rest of the way to the petroglyps. The age of the petroglyps is unknown (estimates range from 1000 to 3000 years old), but regardless of the ambiguity about their age they’ve been declared a world heritage site. Many believe the carving to be two crocodile heads facing in opposite directions. After a lovely swim next to the petroglyps, we headed back downriver. We were all ready for a shower after a long day of swimming, hiking and sweating in the sun. The shower at Las Marias was also not very private. It was a large roof-less porch constructed of wooden boards with a curtain for a door (which often blew open). We used a bucket to pour water over our bodies and the water simply flowed through the gaps in the floorboards and onto the ground 6 feet below. Although the shower was less private than what we’re used to, there were beautiful views of the river and jungle from inside.

Tuesday, 30 March 2010

Today we started our three-day hike up Pico Dama. After a short hike to the pipantes, we traveled upriver for a couple of hours. Along the way, we saw tucans, 4 macaws, and our guides stopped to harvest some yucca, which is the monstrous root structure of an unsuspecting small tree. Then we had a hard two and a half hour trip up to the cabin. We hiked through primary rainforest and Eva, our guide, taught us how to drink water out of a vine. The cabin where we stayed was also on stilts, and Eva made a fire underneath to cook dinner. Because of this arrangement, by the end of the trip, all of our clothing smelled of campfire smoke. After a dinner of yucca, spaghetti, beans, rice, and coffee, we all headed for bed early. With no light other than our headlamps and the fire, plus being tired from our arduous hike, we went to bed shortly after the sun set at 6:30.

Wednesday, 31 March 2010

At 5:45 we got up to summit Pico Dama, so we would have a greater chance of seeing wildlife in the early morning. The latrine was out of order, so for our morning bathroom break, we dug a hole with the machete. After a breakfast of fried tortillas and oatmeal, we started our hike. We came across a group of about 6 toucans, which, in the round, made a considerable amount of noise with their beaks. Later, Eva pointed out to us a tapir footprint in the mud.

Our hike included climbing up massive tree roots through an incredibly lush jungle. There was moss everywhere and moisture dripping from the leaves. We reached two beautiful viewing points from which we could see the community of Las Marias far downriver.

After lunch and a nap, Kevin came with news that he had seen monkeys just five minutes from camp, so we all rushed off to see the monkeys. Although we had been careful throughout our trip in the jungle to wear long pants and shoes, in our excitement about the monkeys many of us were wearing shorts and sandals. We did come across the spider monkey who was swinging through the trees. However, shortly thereafter, six of us walked past the barba amarilla (or fer-de-lance), the most poisonous snake in this region of the Americas, without noticing it. Eva told us that a bite from a barba amarilla can kill someone within 20 minutes if they do not receive medicinal plants and proper medical attention. We were very fortunate that the snake didn’t bite any of us and attribute our luck to having been quite boisterous as we walked through the woods (a surprised snake is much more likely to strike – out of fear – than one that can anticipate your presence; for that reason, when in snake country, it's often recommended to hike with a sturdy walking stick and plant it firmly on the ground while walking so as to send warning vibrations to any snakes in the area).

Thursday, 1 April 2010

It was raining hard for our nearly two hour hike down from the cabin, so we slipped and slid through the mud, most of us falling at least once. Along the way, Eva pointed out several medicinal plants for everything from bed wetting to menstrual pains to birth control. We saw a white-faced monkey as well, so of the three types of monkeys found in La Moskitia, we saw white-faced and spider monkeys and heard howler monkeys. The unique hike up Pico Dama was the highlight of the trip.

Pico Dama

For the pipante ride downstream, our guides used paddles instead of the poles. Once back in Las Marias, it was time for a shower and tick check. Shannon and I tied for the most ticks with nine each.

Friday, 2 April 2010

After a breakfast of oatmeal and fry bread, it was time for our four and a half hour trip back downriver to the community of Belén, which is along the Caribbean coast. Once there, we had a lunch of soup with coconut broth, plantains and yucca, as well as some fish.

We then went to learn how to fish in the ocean. We were given some fishing line wrapped around a coke bottle or a bit of wood with a hook on the end. We used red worms and then stood waist deep in the surf to try to catch a fish. Due to stormy weather, the surf was larger than normal, so our guides didn’t have much faith that we’d catch anything. The waves reminded me of Cannon Beach, which was surprising for the Caribbean. In over an hour of fishing, only Ana caught a fish, and although small, it was a stunning white. For dinner, we ate refried beans, fried egg, cheese, tajadas (fried green plantains), and Ana’s fish.

Saturday, 3 April 2010

Our last day was dedicated to traveling by land out of La Moskitia. At 3:30 a.m., we got in the boat for a nearly two hour ride. None of the communities where we had stayed had electricity, but as we moved closer to civilization, we saw more and more lights on the docks in the early-morning darkness.

We arrived in Batalla, where there were pickup trucks waiting to take passengers to Tocoa. Because there is still no road for a while, buses cannot run this route, so pickups are the mass-transit option. There were 14 of us crammed into the bed of the truck, which made for a less-than-luxurious ride. We drove along the beach, often in the water, for nearly two hours before hitting the dirt road upon which we traveled for another two and a half hours. By the time we were done, we were covered in dust, which stuck to our sunscreen and made us truly filthy.

The "road" to Tocoa

Once in Tocoa, we still needed to get to La Ceiba, where we were spending the night. We got a jalón (hitchhike ride) in the back of a pickup going to La Ceiba, which although free and faster than the bus, meant another couple hours of wind, sun, and dust. By the time we got to our hotel (a quaint little place named Casa Roselyn that’s located outside of town and owned by a young Honduran-Swiss couple), we were ready to relax and not be traveling for a little while. Swimming in the pool, which is filled with mountain runoff, felt amazing after all those hours in a pickup.

Sunday, 4 April 2010

We caught the 6:15 bus out of La Ceiba (for which we had bought tickets 10 days in advance in anticipation of the heavy traffic of thousands of people traveling home from Semana Santa) and were back in Siguatepeque by 11 a.m. Thus ended our adventure in La Moskitia.

Urban Design and English

Well, although brief, we would like to share a bit about some of our most recent work efforts. Four nights a week we continue with our efforts as English teachers as part of a program designed to offer the equivalency of middle school classes to people who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to continue their education. It's satisfying to know that we’re supporting a population that would otherwise be marginalized from the education system. It's also a challenging, albeit satisfying environment in which to work as we have students ranging from their early teens to early-mid adulthood within the same classroom.

Interior view of the building complex from an aerial view

The other project we’ve recently had a chance to work on was one of urban design. A neighborhood in which we’ve done a fair bit of work off and on for the past year contacted me (Dan) to help with a preliminary design for a community building complex that they hope to begin raising funds for in the next few years. The building complex, which will likely encompass a computer center/library, small health center, community meeting hall, and technical high school, is an ambitious but worthy challenge for this neighborhood, which has a reputation for taking on large challenges and completing them with a strong sense of collaboration. Through a series of three brief, albeit productive meetings spanning only a month’s time, I was able to present the neighborhood with a few initial designs that they can use to inform the conversations and planning sessions they’ll undertake upon hiring someone to complete for them a final design preceding construction.

We’ll keep you updated as we along with several community members complete the long anticipated inauguration of a local school library in the next few weeks. We also hope to continue with our work as English teachers and will also soon be starting another year of Project Citizen (civic education) classes with a wonderful local high school teacher with whom we worked last year. Until next time, best wishes!

Side view of the far right side of the complex. This is where the technical high school is proposed to be built

Luz, Lucero, and a decidedly positive busyness

Many of you will have already heard us speak about Luz, our kitten, who is quickly becoming a cat – if not in size then at least in attitude. We’ve already had her for nearly nine months and she’ll soon be completing her first year as of some time in April. Admittedly, this blog is not intended for telling stories about our cat (although, of course, we are fond of her) but rather to our overall experience as Peace Corps volunteers in Honduras. However, in the nature of sharing with you a bit about our lives here, let us share with you an anecdote about none other than Luz.

In most parts of the United States it’s commonplace to have a pet spayed as a young animal. Because we hope to bring Luz back to the States with us, and also as a general measure toward her long-term health, we decided to have her spayed here in Honduras while she’s still young. We’re fortunate enough to have a competent veterinary here in our town that does the surgery for 3,500 Lempira, which translates to about $175 USD. That’s not a tremendously high price to pay, but considering that our daily wages apiece are 170 Lempira (following that same 20 to 1 approximate conversion, that’s about $8 USD) it does take a bit of deliberate saving to afford such an operation. Largely because of that relatively high price, it is not at all common to spay or neuter an animal here – it’s a custom mostly reserved to the wealthier strata of society who see their animals principally as pets (i.e. nice animals to be nurtured) as opposed to mice chasers in the case of cats, human chasers as is the case for dogs, etc. It’s a done deal, though. For about two-thirds of one of our monthly salaries, Luz was spayed and is now well on her way to being a happy, healthy, kitten-less kitty.

A nice cat´s eye view

In the context of spending money on our cat, and in the broader context of comparing our lifestyles as volunteers with those of our Honduran peers, a few important details surface. One of our old neighbors (we’ve since moved to a slightly nicer, albeit still humble home) earned about 5,000 Lempira ($250 USD) monthly as a mason, which was slightly supplemented by his wife who worked as a cleaning woman. That 5,000 Lempira wasn’t too poor a salary in comparison with many others in the area, and on that salary not only he and his wife, but also their two children were dependent for all necessities.

As mentioned explicitly in a previous blog, and interspersed subtly throughout many others, as Peace Corps volunteers we live a simple life and strive to live as close to local norms as possible. Just to share a few examples, we travel by foot nearly any time we’re traveling within a 5 mile radius of our home, do a large portion of our shopping at the standard open air market in town, dress in humble clothing, and typically eat at home. Most of this we do with great pleasure (for those of you who know us, you already know how much we appreciate exercise, a humble presentation of ourselves, and eating simply), but for those things that we do with great relish along with those which we do grudgingly, our primary focus is that we maintain a sustainable standard of living according to local norms.

It is, however, only fair that we acknowledge the great differences in vulnerability and privilege between the humble lives we lead and those of our Honduran peers. When we get sick, are injured, etc. we’re entitled to the best medical care available (including, if necessary, being sent to specialists in Panama or Washington D.C.). To look at a broader trajectory of our lives, when we’ve completed our 27-month commitment with the Peace Corps, most of us have promising professional opportunities to explore, a more secure society to return to (for instance, remember that coups about 9 months ago?), and in general a more privileged lifestyle according to most indicators social scientists might employ to make such a determination. All of this is to say, try as we might to be humble and to walk in the shoes of the average Honduran, we are still foreign volunteers and do ultimately live a more privileged lifestyle, as does our cat as compared to her cat peers.

On to Lucero. In the past several months we’ve befriended a local horse, who we fondly named Claudia. At least once a week, we feed her carrots purchased from our local market, pet her a bit, and brush the flies away from her eyes. Claudia is a brown and white painted horse and is certainly one of the highlights of our walk into town. By speaking with a young boy who tends her along with about a dozen cattle, we’ve recently learned that she’s about 4 years old. When asking the boy about her age, we also had the surprise of learning that she has a name, and that it’s different than what we’d named her. Have we ever mentioned that here, as foreign volunteers, we sometimes find ourselves being thrust back into our childhood, if not toddler years? What we mean to say is that there are experiences one has as a volunteer abroad that force her to try to interpret her surroundings and come to conclusions without all of the relevant information that would otherwise be available in her home environment. So, yes, we assumed that Claudia didn’t have a name (she’s a horse, after all, and let’s remember that animals are typically first and foremost animals here) and provided her with a name that we thought was fitting, if not a bit presumptuous for a horse.

Enjoying a mid-afternoon snack

Well, as it turns out, her real name, Lucero, is quite fitting for her. She’s a beautiful horse, is quite affectionate, and her name means brilliant star. We now call her Lucero Claudia. That makes her name seem a bit more authentic, anyhow. In the Spanish tradition, many people have two first names and it’s customary that everyone have two last names, the first of which represents the father’s side of the family and the second of which represents the mother’s. If in the spirit of providing a simple illustration you’ll take a leap with us for a moment and consider that Lucero were a person, and take another even greater leap and consider that she were our child (we provide this example with the all important caveat that we are NOT at all yet interested in having children, nor a horse for that matter), her name would be Lucero Claudia Keller Casey.

Lucero has always been a bit healthier looking than most of her peers. She has a large pasture in which to graze and is obviously well groomed by her owner. She always seemed a bit too healthy, though, and as a result we’d often said (largely in jest) that perhaps she was pregnant. However, not having known her for more than 6 months, and not knowing how long the gestation period is for horses (we’re now pretty sure it's about 9 months) we really had no idea whether her large girth was normal or a sign of pregnancy. The birth of her filly five days ago, however, was the ultimate proof (unfortunately, we were not there for the birth). We’re not yet sure what to name her, but we’re certainly accepting suggestions. It's probably true that she already has a name, but that won’t deter us – she’ll just have one more. As a final side note, in case you like horses and want a few more details on the birth (we certainly hope you can at least tolerate horses, otherwise this must be an insufferable story for you), the filly has been running, if not sprinting, since day one, probably weighs near 80-100 lbs. and, per the local custom, has a red ribbon tied round her neck (yes, she’s everything that we think of when using the word “adorable”).

Also enjoying a mid-afternoon snack

As for the busyness, well, we’ve been pretty busy of late. Since the start of the school year about a month ago, we’ve been teaching English with a night school program, have made solid plans with a local school to open a library and have a young student or two trained to function as part-time librarian (thanks once more to those of you who so generously donated books for this project!), have begun to make plans for co-teaching a civics class with a local teacher, and have contributed to a preliminary plan for a series of community facilities to be built in a local neighborhood.

We imagine that our next blog will be filled with more details on these various projects as they come to fruition. In the meantime, thank you, as always, for taking an interest in our goings on. Don’t hesitate to email us (eckeller1@gmail.com, danielkeller1@gmail.com) or post comments to the blog if you have any questions, curiosities, name suggestions for the filly, etc. Otherwise, take care and here’s to wishing you all the best from Honduras!

The Rainy Day Good News

As I'm fond of hearing John Lennon say around this time of year, another year is over and a new one just begun. Aside from being a fan of the man’s music, I like the song because it reminds me to begin the new year with a sense of optimism. This time around it is particularly nice to hear those words – new year. While I am going to talk politics for a brief moment, don’t worry, this isn’t destined to be another exposé on the political goings on of Honduras. Suffice it to say that last year was a pretty miserable year for almost all of Honduras (a perfect storm of political and economic upheaval that went a long way toward paralyzing the country) and the prospect of starting over again, albeit largely in a symbolic sense, is encouraging.

Better yet, there are also practical gains to be made in the near future. First of all, a new president will take office by the end of January, helping reestablish many economic and diplomatic ties that were severed between Honduras and other nations in the wake of the June 28th coup. The year 2010 will also bring Honduras its first birth in the World Cup since 1982. For a country this soccer crazed, qualifying for the World Cup is always a big deal, but this year’s Cup promises to be an event of national importance with few parallels in the nation’s history given the timing; soccer is the common man’s politics, leaving no room for empty public posturing, back room reciprocity, reneging on promises or any of the other man-inflicted plagues Honduras knows with such painful intimacy. Nope, in soccer you just go out and play, and if you’re corrupt, foolish or lazy and happen to be on Honduras’ national team, tens of thousands of your peers will let you know of their disapproval, immediately. So there you have it – 2010 will be a better year for Honduras, and hopefully one in which the common man’s politics will rule the roost. It'd be about time.

Today, however, is not a good day for soccer as it has already rained quite a bit. Not the deluge, life silencing by relentlessly pounding the tin roof sort of storm we often get here, but rather a drawn out, yet gentle storm. Yesterday was much the same. In fact, we decided it prudent to pull out our botas de goma (gum boots, anyone?) to head to the local outdoor market where we purchased fruits and vegetables for the week ahead. Prior to yesterday the last time we’d donned our gum boots, or for that matter had any reason to, was about a year ago at the close of the last rainy season. This year’s rainy season has not been particularly rainy. In fact, being an el niño year, the rain fall has been so sparse that during the past few months national and local leaders alike have begun to worry about an impending and potentially devastating drought.

The last prediction I read in one of Honduras’ national papers was that as of March a drought could be gripping large swaths of the country and that as of, well, now (January), some of the more marginalized neighborhoods in the capital city of Tegucigalpa could have such limited access to water so as to make them uninhabitable, which is a grim omen considering how little water they often get by with. It's always healthy to take the news here with a grain of salt (sensationalistic headlines that are refuted days, if not hours later, are not uncommon) but I do think there’s great cause for concern. One journalist recently compared the drought’s potential impact with that of Hurricane Mitch, claiming this drought could be the greatest natural hazard to affect the country since ´98 when Mitch ravaged all of Honduras and set some areas back on the order of decades. Other than being judicious with our personal water consumption (the norm in most households), there’s not much more to do on this front other than to do what humans have done for eons when they need rain – crane our necks to the sky and hope that clouds appear and that those clouds carry rain. There’s been some talk about the UN chipping in with aid (and let’s hope it's fruitful), but in less they’re proposing the start of a revolutionary cloud seeding program, I'll mostly just keep my neck craned and hope that the coming days bring more rainy day good news.

I wish we could in good faith say it was strange to have received advice from our 9-year-old neighbor about how to deal with our 8-month-old cat that’s going into heat, but, alas, that’s not the world we live in. Here, acquiring knowledge about the procreation habits of animals accompanies, if not precedes learning the ABCs, not by design but rather by circumstance. We know of no one in our immediate neighborhood that has their pets spade or neutered. Why? It's expensive, for one. The nearest vet who can do the job is a 2 and a half hour bus trip away, plus taxi fare, all stacked atop costs of the operation itself. Additionally, most domestic animals here have two shifts to fulfill: during the waking hours they’re expected to be friendly to their owners, playmates to children and otherwise stoic fixtures of the streetscape, grudgingly moving for and subsequently staring down all passersby (which I would argue is perhaps the most important of their roles), while at night, cats pursue and eat all varieties of critter (ours eats cockroaches, others eat mice, you get the point) and dogs are employed as guardians. I feel these animals' supreme functionality contributes to their being viewed not so much as pets to be cared for but as animals to, well, be animals.

Enough sidestepping the issue, though; we, as the caretakers, or parents if you will, of Luz, an 8-month-old tabby, are facing the tough news that she is capable of having kittens, heralded to us not only by the confidently delivered lectures of a young girl but also by the nearly incessant screeching of a fluffy white male cat. As could be inferred by what I stated earlier, this situation wouldn’t present much of a problem to most anyone who lives near us. If Luz were under the stead of our neighbors she would likely become pregnant, give birth, and become another in the slew of unruly animals in our neighborhood who periodically disturb the peace with their wild, lascivious behavior. On one side of our home we are bordered by a humble yellow church, whose lot is occupied a few days a month by several dogs from the neighborhood that are, you guessed it, engaging in illicit acts. Incidentally, this very morning I was privy to such a scene when I stepped outside to collect water from our pila, barely awake and still cleaning from my eyes the remnants of my sleep. We have a different vision for our cat, though. Right, wrong, or somewhere in the gray, she will be getting spade as soon as possible. That, however, will be another day’s tale.

Aside from looking after our cat, there are a few other ways in which we occupy our time these days. To proceed in chronological order, on September 21st the exiled president made a surprise return to Honduras, from which time he has successfully sought refuge within the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. Since his return, he and the interim/de facto government have taken part in an intense series of negotiations aimed at returning some semblance of normalcy and direction to the country’s political future. To date, there have been advances in the negotiations, but nothing that presents a definitive solution to the problem. Owing to the continued political uncertainty, coupled with the fact that Honduras is supposed to be hosting it's national elections at the end of November, the interim/de facto government declared that the school year (already terribly truncated by the political instability and concerns about the spread of the H1N1 flu virus) would end in mid October rather than late November to ensure that the voting stations – most, if not all of which, are schools – would be secure to host the vote. We were lucky to have previously planned to end our two existing projects by mid October. Several of our friends, however, were in the midst of school related projects at the time of the declaration and have needed to postpone or cancel their projects. It's fair to say that no one in the country has been unscathed by the coup, and volunteers are no exception. So, on to what we’re hoping to do in the near future. Since the school year has been prematurely terminated, and many of the kids who live near us are in want of productive ways to use their time, we’re hoping to start a reading club along with a library project so as to create an interest in leisure reading amongst children who have had very limited exposure to books, particularly outside of school.

All of that said, for the next month our attention will be increasingly focused on how the country prepares itself for its upcoming national elections. I think we, like most everyone, are hoping that somehow in the course of the next month Honduras will successfully prepare for and host its elections, ultimately resulting in a clearer path by which it can begin to heal itself as the new president assumes power in January.

To those devoted enthusiasts of our humble prose, please accept our sincerest regrets for the tardiness of our entry. To assuage your umbrage, we offer, in recompense, a duo of inscriptions. Um, I mean, sorry it took us so long, dudes. Here are two blogs to make up for it.

Since we last wrote, we have traveled to the States and back, finished our Project Citizen class, spent time with friends on the island of Amapala, survived our mid-term medical examinations, celebrated Daniel’s golden birthday (25 on the 25th), and disguised ourselves for Halloween. Our trip to the States was a delightful whirlwind of all the things we had missed during our first 15 months away: friends, family, the Indiana Dunes, microbrews, Cannon Beach, football, salmon, clean running water 24-7, grandparents, Little John, a democratic government, Powell’s Books, and home. We had a wonderful time and only wish it could have lasted a little longer. Here are some pictures from our trip.

Emily at Cannon Beach

Mimi, Grampur, and Daniel enjoying an exquisite meal and excellent conversation

Daniel and Little John (21 years old)

Cheryl, Daniel, and Ken in Michigan City

When we arrived back in Honduras, completing our Project Citizen class was our number one priority. Along with our wonderful counterpart, la Profesora Maria Teresa, we held numerous additional classes to make sure that the students were ready for their October 15th presentation. The night of October 14th, the Honduran fútbol team played against El Salvador to qualify for the World Cup. After a harrowing victory on behalf of Honduras, the whole country watched with bated breath for the outcome of the U.S. vs. Costa Rica game. If the U.S. won or tied, Honduras would qualify. With a spectacular goal with only seconds left in the game, the U.S. tied with Costa Rica and the country of Honduras erupted with celebration. As we were cheering their victory qualification, the de facto president announced a national holiday for the following day. Our joy turned to disappointment as we realized that the 9:00am presentation had probably just been cancelled. The following morning, we rose with little hope that anyone would be at the school when we arrived for the presentation. To our surprise and delight, even though classes had been cancelled, all the students, as well as many of the distinguished guests, had come for the presentation. After coming Saturdays, holidays, and many more classes than originally planned, it was only fitting that the students would still honor their commitment to the project, despite the national holiday.

Our Project Citizen Class

Before our Mid-term Meds, a group of volunteers decided to take advantage of already being in Tegucigalpa and travel another 3 hours south to the island of Amapala. This little island on the Pacific coast has become our favorite vacation spot in Honduras, mostly because it has not been developed for tourism. The volcanic islands of El Salvador and Nicaragua also make a spectacular backdrop for sunset photos. We spent time with friends swimming, hiking, singing, and laughing.

PEACE!

P (Emily) E (Brenna) A (Ana) C (Nathan) E (Amanda) ! (Miguel)

Jessica Gausman cutting Emily’s hair for Locks of Love

Sunset

After Amapala, our mid-term meds went surprisingly well. We had fun spending more time with friends and were about as healthy as could be expected after nearly 16 months in Honduras.

We hope you enjoyed our quick synopsis of the past month and a half. As always, we hope this finds you well, in good health and happiness. Finally, we will leave you with a picture of us in our Halloween costumes.

Daniel as a bus ayudante (the guy who takes your money) and Emily as an elote (ear of corn)

In celebration of completing one year as Peace Corps volunteers, we decided to write a tribute using the award-winning song, Seasons of Love, from the hit musical RENT. Seasons of Love illustrates the ways to measure a year, so we came up with the ways to measure a year in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer. Here goes:

Seasons of Peace Corps

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,

Five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear.

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,

How do you measure a Peace Corps year?

In earthquakes, in kittens, in dogbites, in cups of coffee

In projects, in coups, in friendships, in strife

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes,

How do you measure a year in the life?

(chorus)

How about love?

How about love?

How about love?

Measure in love.

Seasons of love.

Seasons of love.

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes

Five hundred twenty five thousand bus trips to plan

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes

How do you measure the stress of another travel ban?

In books that she read

Or in hours they talked

In the classes he led

Or the miles that she walked

Its time now to sing out

though the story never ends

lets celebrate, remember a year

in the life of friends

(chorus)

And here were a few other ways to measure a year as a volunteer in Honduras that didn’t quite make the list.

How do you measure, measure a year?

…in clothing we’ve ruined

…in stool samples

…in cups of sugary coffee

…in sleepless nights

…in the veggies we’ve planted

…in the sugar cane that we’ve chewed

…in the lessons we’ve learned

…in laughter

…in friends that we’ve made

…in emails we’ve sent

…in Spanish vocab

…in new grammatical structures

…in stitches received

…in gum boots

…in lempiras spent

…in tropical depressions

…in letters received

…in cheap macrobrews

…in ant invasions

…in places we’ve visited

…in bananas we’ve eaten

…in the times we’ve played the bean game

…in the many uses of “echar”

…in machetes

…in jalones received

…in Peace Corps points

Time for your random bit of Spanish: "seguir adelante" generally means "to go on", "to continue forward" etc. and is used in the spirit of gathering oneself to continue with a difficult task. As we sit here in the office of the NGO with whom we sometimes work trying to update our laptop’s antivirus program with a 6.6 kB/sec connection, seguir adelante takes on an entirely new meaning. Trying to download a relatively small file is scheduled to take, oh, roughly the rest of our service with the Peace Corps. And think, we were hoping to get home before dark to prepare a nice meal (when you live near the equator, darkness always sets in at 6:00, which seems abysmally early in August)!

Aside from computer problems, the breadth and duration of which we won’t bore you with here, there have continued to be a number of challenges and problems throughout the country owing to the coup that happened about a month and a half ago. Seguir adelante. To varying degrees, most people are trying to continue with their normal lives. For our part, we feel like it’s not really possible for the country to return to normal right now in any real sense because, well, the president who is officially recognized by almost every political entity around the world that has shared an opinion on the subject has effectively been barred reentry to the country unless he’s willing to be arrested and put on trial upon breaching the border. Indeed, it´s quite a conundrum. Although we have our opinions on what’s going on in the country right now, what has happened, and what’s likely to happen, we recognize this is not the forum for such ideas. For the time being we’ll just say life seems to have a sense of suspended motion right now. However, one still has to go grocery shopping, wash the clothes, cut the grass, bathe (a greater chore than you may realize), and life’s not without it’s small pleasures, like reading “Donde está Spot” to our five year old neighbor for the umpteenth time or chasing our cat, Luz, who has grown by leaps and bounds and insists on trying to flee from our yard and stalk everything in sight. Seguir adelante.

Admittedly, volunteers amongst our Peace Corps group are handling this period of uncertainty in different ways. Some volunteers have internet access in their homes while others read by candlelight for lack of electricity in their communities. For many who don’t have good access to any form of news media (typically those without electricity), it’s probably fair to say that life is relatively normal. When one lives in the countryside, life’s not quite as subject to the ebbs and flows that accompany life "connected." We’re neither connected in the modern tech sense, nor are we in the countryside. As far as we can tell, most people in our neighborhood are trying to live their normal lives while also paying attention when one of those familiar radio jingles sounds in their homes, signaling the start of another news bulletin. We’re ready to get back to work, but we’re also guarded about the success we expect due to the undercurrent of political preoccupation that has stalled and altered our work in these last 6 weeks. Seguir adelante.

¿As for empathy? We’ve been in Honduras for well over a year and while we claim no expertise on any aspect of the culture, we have experienced enough life here, in normal and abnormal days alike, to have some sense for how the average Honduran views and approaches their life. Conservative Christian faith and prayer are foundational and indispensable for nearly all. We’ve entered innumerable hypothetical conversations on various topics with Honduran friends and neighbors, all of us throwing out suppositions and theories, to ultimately say “Solo Dios sabe/only God knows.” We say it to. When you live someplace with as many unpredictable and unsettling occurrences as Honduras – between late May and late June Honduras has experienced the largest earthquake in recorded Central American history and suffered the first definitive coup to hit the region in decades, not to mention the devastating tropical storm that ushered us in to our service 10 months ago – well, at the very least one begins to realize they are not the undisputed author of their own destiny. Al revés, to flip the idea on its head, when volunteers go home to the States, even in these troubling economic times, they return to a more stable country, one where relative safety and relative political and financial stability are not necessarily unreasonable expectations. Some may even fondly think of home as a Candy Land of sorts, chock full of good pizza, ice cream, modern movie theaters, a plethora of good restaurants, and all of those other perks many miss during their service.

In spite of the comforts awaiting volunteers at home, we again ask ¿can we be empathetic? In the midst of our stresses and frustrations, and yes, joys as well, as volunteers here in Honduras do we learn to empathize with the Honduran people, those with whom we live and work? Well, to an extent. But there’s a catch, and here it is: while we get to go home, of course, Hondurans are already home. As new volunteer groups come and go, Honduras will continue in a mood it’s quite familiar with, patient resilience. It’s not joy but has the hint of a smile (or is it a grin?) and instructs that one should be happy when possible and patient when not. For volunteers who finish their service tomorrow and those who’ve yet to arrive, that patient resilience is something to be understood, and perhaps even put into practice for a time, but rarely does it become a mandatory way of life. Patient resilience pulled things back together last fall in the midst of and after the devastating tropical depression. Patient resilience will be the centerpiece as the country reassesses and reassembles itself when the current political crisis comes to an end. Patient resilience, by the way, will have nothing to do with the politics and innumerable platitudes we hear leading up to the presidential elections, scheduled to take place in November (will they be boycotted in protest?) It listens, and waits, always observes, and knows that things will be “alright” in their own time. Seguir adelante.

To anyone who´s following the situation in Honduras right now and may be concerned for Emily and I, we want to say that we´re doing just fine. As all of our work activities are indefinitely on hold we find ourselves eating more, gardening more, reading more, chatting more, and like anyone who´s following the situation, waiting for more news. Our personal recommnedation for reliable news surrounding this event would thus far be the BBC at bbc.co.uk All the best, and once we know anything more definitive about what the outcome of this situation is we may present our own objective synposis here.

Temblores, y gatos, y milpas, oh my!

It’s been an interesting period since we last posted around two months ago. Principally, we’ve been busy trying to start new projects and continuing with old projects. Regarding old projects first, Emily is still working at the comedor infantil helping prepare meals for young children in addition to her bi-weekly responsibilities as an English tutor. I am currently in a lull with the projects I’ve begun with my primary counterpart, which has allowed me to search for secondary projects of interest to me. Principally, along with Emily and neighborhood leaders, I am helping direct a family garden initiative in the neighborhood. Together we continue to volunteer an hour a week at the local kindergarten (reading stories, creating activities, etc.) in addition to the time we spend coaching a baseball team alongside one of our fellow Peace Corps volunteers in town. Concerning new projects, within the next two weeks we’ll begin working with a local high school teacher to implement a once-a-week class with her students focused on citizen responsibility and action. The class will be structured around an existing program called Project Citizen and we look forward to starting as, of course, there’s always a need for the development of competent and passionate public servants and citizens. If this list leads you to believe we’re quite busy, well, that wouldn’t be quite accurate. Like most volunteers we still have a great bit of downtime in which we read, occasionally watch a DVD, garden, or entertain ourselves with one of any number of silly harebrained schemes we create to have fun (remember the pila boat).

Well, I suppose we’ve left you in the dark long enough about the meaning of that jarbled title we’ve chosen for this blog. Temblor = earthquake, gato = cat, and milpa = cornfield. Within the past two weeks we’ve received an 8-week-old kitten, experienced a 7.1 earthquake, and planted a 15 square foot cornfield in our back yard. In its own strange way, each experience has been both intimidating and joyful. Now, for the explanation.

Temblores. To go in chronological order, on May 28th at approximately 2:30 a.m., I woke to a sensation of violent shaking, which initially I thought emanated from our roof due to the commotion our metal roof was making. Although highly uncommon, it’s not unprecedented for a thief to attempt to enter a home through the roof, but I quickly remembered that’s only possible with tile roofs, whose tiles can be removed to create room for a thief to slip through. Then it hit me. ¡Earthquake! “Em, wake up, we’re having an earthquake” I said hurriedly, not sure yet whether to be afraid. We jumped out of bed to wait out the last ten seconds of what we estimate to have been a forty five second earthquake. Then, as quickly as it had all began, the earthquake silently slipped away into the night as if it were a carnival attraction being powered down, our dollar apiece now exhausted. What next; cotton candy, anyone? As is common in the wake of an earthquake, our power went out. For the next half hour we waited anxiously in the dark for an aftershock, for the power to come back on, something to break the post-trauma silence settling on the city. I believe our neighbors felt the same as we heard and witnessed a few of them waiting in front of their homes, asking one another quietly, “¿Está bien?” “Are you alright?” People giggled, perhaps for the same reasons we did: surprise, relief, and a hesitant sense of joy. As luck would have it, the power came back on and we shortly returned to bed where we’d pass the rest of the night sleeping fitfully, with clothing and our headlamps at the ready beside our bed.

All things told we enjoyed the experience more than anything, which, of course, owes purely to circumstance. Our home could have crumbled, our power could have been severed for substantially longer, and our local roads could have buckled amidst a host of other severe problems. Some weren’t as lucky as us. Although the damage was remarkably low for an earthquake of that magnitude, partially due to the fact that the epicenter was North of Honduras in the Caribbean rather than on land, some people’s homes were damaged, in total 6 people lost their lives, and long term damage was done to infrastructure elsewhere in the country. I think our memory of the quake will be one of mixed emotions, true dichotomies in fact – there was the sense of excitement at feeling the otherwise serene earth wake and shake off it’s dust, accompanied by the realization of having escaped a potentially life threatening situation completely unscathed.

Gatos. Well, in fact, only one gato. And further more, it’s a she and she’s a kitten, which makes her a “gatita.” About two weeks ago we received a phone call from a fellow Peace Corps volunteer who had heard that we might be willing to adopt a kitten. Subsequently, about a week ago, we adopted Luz, which means “light” in Spanish. She had been named Lucy by her former owners, and though we had thought long and hard about a name for her – ranging from Hernando (Dan was set on the name and was disinclined to change even though it was a female cat) to Cilantro and everything in between – we still had not come to a consensus on her name. When we walked into the room to meet her for the first time, I said “Hi, Luce,” as a shortened version of Lucy, but it sounded like the Spanish word “luz.” Dan and I looked at each other and realized that we had finally found a name.

Em and Luz enjoying en evening together in the hammock while reading Jane Austen´s Emma

Luz is a tabby and is very energetic, as most kittens are. We are really enjoying having her around the house, though she requires a lot of attention. She often tries to perch on our shoulders at mealtimes to put herself between our food and our mouths. If we are cleaning up the house, she likes to sit upon the shoulder of the person who is washing dishes or sweeping the floor. Often she mews while up there, looking very much like a supervisor critiquing the work of her subordinate. As we sit here writing this, we are also reminded of all of the loose threads on our clothing, loose shoelaces, unplugged cords, crumbs, clothing tossed casually on the backs of chairs, fallen leaves from our indoor plants, and un-stored plastic bags, amongst other things – in short, a majority of our home that previously seemed cozy, if a bit messy, that has now proven to be anything but “kitten proof”. Even though she can be a bit demanding, it’s all worth it when she’s peacefully asleep on our laps while we’re curled up in the hammock with a good book.

Milpa. Although we have been quite busy with different projects lately, we’ve been slowly preparing a 15x15 ft. plot of land in our backyard for planting corn. We received Sweet Corn seeds from Oregon, which we were finally able to plant last Sunday. Dan ingeniously made a fence of recycled plastic bread bags to keep the pollitos (chicks) out. As part of our project with family gardens, we wanted to experiment with different types of fencing because chicken wire is rather expensive. We planted over 200 seeds, so if all goes well we will probably be eating corn-on-the-cob, cornbread, corn soup, and anything else corn-related we could think of, as well as sharing with friends and neighbors.

So there you have it: Temblores, y gatos, y milpas, oh my! We have been quite busy the past couple of months and imagine that you have been as well. We hope that you are well and would love to hear what you are up to (and if you have any corn-related recipes, they would be greatly appreciated).

*As travel writers, albeit fledglings at best, we owe it to our audience to be as accurate as possible with our facts. In our last blog “Transcendence” we made a mistake. The Casa de Cultura (Cultural House) did not disappear in the blaze. However, the museum is indeed gone. Additionally, we mistakenly said that several items from the country´s "héroes" had dissappeared in the blaze. While it´s quite possible that the museum housed such items, what we intended to write was that the blaze consumed important documents from the lives of some of the country´s "próceres", the ideological warriors whom we know were enshrined in the museum.

The Cathedral in Comayagua where a bunch of Peace Corps volunteers stood around and looked lost.

The oldest clock in the Americas located in the tower of the Cathedral

Bags of colored sawdust in preparation for the big day For some of the bigger alfombras, the process started around 10pm on Holy Thursday and lasted until the carpets were destroyed by the procession on Good Friday. Here they´re laying a foundation of plain sawdust before starting the layers of colored sawdust.

Here´s an example of an alfombra up close. Each group had their own technique for making their sawdust smooth, but to do the designes, everyone used homemade stencils made of cardboard. Some families have been making alfombras for decades and make a different one each year.

One of the smaller alfombras about the cultural aspects of Comayagua

This is a good example of the scale of many of the larger alfombras

Although traditionally the alfombras are made of sawdust, some include rice, dried beans, grains, leaves, pine needles, and whatever else the designers think up

Here is the full scale example of the one using non-traditional materials

A great deal of planning has to go into the process since those making them have to start in the middle and work their way out.

After the procession

Comayagua, Honduras. The one time head of government in Honduras and the eternal seat of Honduran culture, Comayagua is, culturally speaking, the heart of the country during Semana Santa, Holy Week. Of course, across the North coast of the country exist a plethora of beaches and resorts, both of which are popular choices for many during Semana Santa. Yet, for some good ol’ fashioned cultural, ecumenical fun, Comayagua’s the choice.

The cathedral and numerous colonial era churches found there are starkly beautiful in their scorching desert ambience, surrounded in the distance by imposing mountains that have yet to be broached by the city limits, and within the city, by shade providing tropical trees. Witnessing the hordes of churchgoers during Semana Santa is a reminder that Honduras is most definitely not a secular nation. Whether Catholic or Evangelical, the vast majority of people are Christians, many of whom consider it a life long ritual to entirely set aside their ordinary lives in remembrance of Jesus during Semana Santa.

Along with thousands of Hondurans, foreign tourists, and expatriates we observed and took part in many of the rich traditions Comayagua is so well known for. From attending an evening church service in the cathedral to touring Comayagua’s colonial museum and house of culture, known for artifacts of not only local but also national and international interest, to viewing the world famous alfombras, or carpets, that are artfully and painstakingly created on the city’s streets, we saw a great deal and, to be humble and honest, left a great deal unseen as well. We felt as if we were discovering something new, and yet transcendent, as we visited the museum and house of culture and viewed the alfombras being built (a process that lasts some 12 hours). The irony of our trip was that what we experienced as new and transcendent (so much timeless culture expressed with such potency, beauty, and precision) was soon to disappear, forever.

Every year the procession of Christ carrying the cross travels through the heart of the colonial capital, tramples and quickly destroys the several dozen ornately decorated carpets, which are displayed on temporarily blocked off streets throughout downtown. We knew to expect the destruction of the carpets, which are made of multicolored sawdust and tediously arranged on the processional route because, after all, they are delicate and made to be unmade. What no one expected was the disappearance of the museum and house of culture, which went up in flames only a few days ago, less than a week after we stood there, marveling at wooden masks, colonial era priestly garb, priceless jewelry, and precious documents from the lives of Honduras’ heroes. As an interesting aside, the word “héroe” (hero) is only used with reference to those who have physically fought on behalf of the nation. There is another word, commonly used and clearly distinct from héroe, used for the nations ideological and intellectual warriors, “prócer”. No one yet knows what caused the blaze but it’s plausible that the 100 + temperatures that have hovered over Comayagua recently caused a gas tank explosion. There’s also talk of an electrical fire.

We may never know what started the blaze, and I’m not sure it much matters. What we do know is that all that is transcendent, that quality we so appreciate about the many intangible beauties wrapped up in culture, for instance, is never truly encapsulated in what we can touch, but rather must be remembered by and enshrined in our senses. As we watched Christ bearing his cross through the streets – albeit a highly fantastical plastic Christ – little did we know how well that great life, ended over 2,000 years ago now, would so potently remind us of the present.

Artifacts are but stubborn things (albeit, artfully and painstakingly created beautiful things of historic value) that have yet to hand over the reigns to eternity. In a sense we mourn with the city of Comayagua – it lost a great deal in that fire. We also recognize that if a plastic figurine can duly remind us of the life of Christ, lived and terminated in a time so long ago that human civilization had better philosophized about what heaven consisted of than it had understood the basic shape of the earth, whatever was great about what was burnt in Comayagua will not disappear, but rather must take a new form. We left the city on the eve of the creation of transcendence.

On Thursday, we had some special visitors to our house...approximately 60 kindergarteners! Dan and I have started going to the nearby kindergarten, which is about 2 ½ blocks away from our house, one day each week to teach a little something (eg. how to brush their teeth, wash their hands, etc.) We received a syllabus from the teachers there, so we can contribute to the themes they are already learning about. For the first class – which Dan couldn’t go to because of a Peace Corps training – I read Buenas Noches, Luna, the Spanish version of the beloved classic, Good Night, Moon, because the kids were learning about how to greet people.

The kiddos huddled around the garden

Our second class, we led a field trip to our house to show them our vegetable garden and compost pile. After leading the children up the street and into our yard, which felt eerily like being the Pied Piper, we had the children gather around our small chicken wire fence, which encloses the garden, to learn about growing produce. We identified the rows of fruits and veggies – cucumber, lettuce, tomato, spinach, artichoke (which they had never heard of, and which is not growing particularly well), carrot, and watermelon. We explained the purpose of the fence around the garden by pointing to the chicks that were tromping around our yard. We also discussed the growth of each plant and why we believed some were growing better than others (for example, the lettuce has thrived in this climate, but the watermelon does not receive enough sun).

Cucumber on the left and lettuce on the right (salad, anyone?)

Then we walked over to the compost pile, and when Dan asked the children what they saw, they responded “¡Basura!” or “Garbage!” The eggshells, fruit peelings, cow manure, and leaves did indeed look like a pile of garbage, but we tried to explain why those particular items were there. After talking for a while about “plant food,” Dan finished up the lesson by pointing out the skeletal shells of what had formerly been locusts, which appeared on some of our trees a week or so ago. The children were delighted by the delicate, translucent, insect forms, and we were soon surrounded by the outstretched hands of children – the girls were as excited as the boys – hoping to receive one of the precious gifts.

Think cliff hanger, only on a smaller scale and confined to the insect world

Of course, kindergarteners are still too young to be starting their own vegetable garden, but we wanted to show them that even within the city limits, healthy fruits and veggies can be grown, and maybe they will be inspired to have a garden of their own some day. As far as the compost pile goes, in a country where most people burn their trash – most places don’t have garbage pickup, and those that do have their garbage burned by the local government (Siguatepeque’s trash is burned outside of the city, overlooking a watershed) – any time we can provide people an alternative use for some of their trash, we seize the opportunity.

In honor of the Emerald Isle, we decided to invite some friends over for a traditional St. Paddy’s Day dinner. Once the invitations were out and we had a rough idea of how many would be coming, the next step was to try to track down the necessary ingredients. Dan, in his infinite wisdom, managed to chip a tooth – not to worry, it didn’t hurt – by chewing on sugar cane, warranting a trip to the dentist in Tegucigalpa. I decided to accompany him, and while Dan had his tooth worked on, I embarked on an epic search for corned beef and Irish whiskey. Much to my dismay, while there were infinite options of Scotch Whiskey and at least one Tennessee Whiskey, there was no Irish whiskey to be found. I did find Carolan’s Irish Cream – a product of Ireland, no less – which would serve for Irish coffee. My search for corned beef was equally disappointing as the only corned beef to be found was in a SPAM-shaped can and a product of Brazil (and also far more expensive than I was willing to spend on such a product)! We decided not to take our chances with the canned variety and to go with plan B: an Irish beef stew.

After being thwarted by the grocery stores of Teguc, we returned to Siguatepeque to prepare for the dinner. Since our guests were traveling from far and wide, some of them came in on Friday for the festivities on Saturday. We dined at the best restaurant Siguat has to offer: Pizzeria Venezia, which is owned by an Italian family and is a true sight for sore eyes for volunteers from smaller sites. Saturday morning, the Siguatepeque baseball team had a game, so Dan fulfilled his coaching duties, Erik, a visiting friend from the South, umpped, and the rest of our guests were able to watch the glory and splendor that is little-league baseball, Honduran style (Siguatepeque won both games, by the way).

The menu for the evening was as follows:

Appetizers:

Green M&Ms (peanut and regular)

Lime and Chili Almonds

Key Lime Bars

Guacamole and Chips (going with the green theme)

Dinner:

Colcannon (traditional mashed potatoes with cabbage)

Irish Soda Bread

Irish Beef Stew

Dessert:

Irish Bread Pudding

Irish Coffee

Table decorations and appetizers, thanks to Mary Casey

Everyone enjoying the food wherever there was room (Right to left: Emily, Mark, Nathan, Daniel, Erik, Lauren, Not pictured: Jessica, Ana, David)

Emily eating in the hammock

We had a fun evening of good food, great company, and plenty of toasting the Irish. Our guests even tolerated a couple of my Irish jokes. It was a fun cultural exchange of a different sort (normally we are learning about Honduran culture and foods) in which I got to explain that the big X on the soda bread comes from the tradition of blessing the bread and everyone discovered how wonderfully potatoes and cabbage go together in Colcannon. David, one of our site mates, even came in a kilt, so what more could we ask for?! We hope you had a wonderful St. Paddy’s Day, wherever you were and that you drank a Guinness for us (we were stuck with one of the Honduran macro-brews). Thanks for all the emails and letters; please keep them coming. And as said in Ireland, Erin Go Braugh!

P.S. We have long been thinking that what our pila needed most was a boat, but it was not until the arrival of the little Irish flags that my mom sent that Dan started making the worthy craft. With some duck lips from the Kellers at the stern, the Irish flag at the helm, and a halved bottle of shampoo as the hull, a more fearsome ship there never was! So here is a picture of the first launch of the most dreaded ship on the high seas, La Pata Irlandesa or The Irish Duck.

The Thrill of White Water

If you were expecting a post about rafting, or for that matter, anything related to water sports, apologies. Shortly after our last post we headed out for a week to construct latrines with a group of volunteers from the United States, most of whom hailed from a church group in the Seattle area. They were definitely a fun group to be with for the week we spent together, and we hope that we were both fun and functional for them, as work partners and in our primary role as translators. For any of you who are map-readers, find the town of Minas de Oro (Gold Mines) in the middle of Honduras, and then head northwest. Contingent upon how detailed a map you’re using, you may or may not see the small community of Agua Blanca. Agua Blanca means White Water in English, but in this case refers to the one time color of the community´s water as opposed to rafts, adrenaline sports, etc. For those of you who aren’t map-readers, find the country of Honduras, located in the middle of Central America, and focus on an arbitrary point in the middle of the country – that should do the trick.

Agua Blanca, a small, picturesque community in the central highlands of the country was our home for a week, during which our group collaborated with community members to construct 36 latrines for the homes that most needed them. For a majority of us this was to be our first foray into latrine construction, and suffice it to say that the week began slowly as our group and the local volunteers and beneficiaries of the project took time to successfully begin their collaboration. In large part due to the language barrier it was difficult for the two groups to quickly and spontaneously communicate with each other, despite Emily and my best efforts as translators. Regardless, the two groups made headway together bit by bit, using a combination of translation, newly acquired Spanish and English vocab, and good old fashioned gestures – after all, it’s not too tough to mimic the motion of hammering – and by the end of our second day of work, even the most fit and strongest of the group were showing a few signs of fatigue. As I expect most who read this can understand, it’s tough to maneuver shovels full of sand and cement, swing hammers, saw rebar and wood, and all beneath a sun than can definitively, albeit temporarily, change one’s complexion in a matter of only a couple hours.

When mixing cement, make a volcano, fill it

with water, cave in the sides, repeat

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the process of constructing a latrine, we’ll give you a brief description. The families that were to receive latrines were required to have their holes dug before we arrived. The holes needed to be at least 8 feet deep and were roughly 3 feet in diameter, all of which were dug by hand, some of which in particularly rocky terrain. The first step for us was to tapar, or cover, the hole with cement. In order to do so, we placed boards over the hole, placed formwork around the boards, and filled the formwork with rocks and rebar. Two small holes were left in the formwork. The first hole was intended to allow a tube to be connected between the outhouse and the collection hole. Another smaller hole was left in one of the centermost boards to leave space for the tube that we would vertically insert into the hole to serve as an air vent for the collection hole, helping to vent the methane and thereby prevent any accidental bomb construction. Then the cement was mixed by hand – an intricate process needing both finesse and brute strength – and poured into the formwork, covering the rebar and stones.

Formwork, equipped with rebar, and soon, stones

The following day, the outhouses were put up. While some volunteers were tapando the holes, others were putting together the metal siding of the outhouses. Once finished, the outhouses were transported to individual homes, where we were in charge of getting them set up. The most difficult part of this process was attempting to get the outhouses level, a challenge that was complicated by the fact that many of the outhouses themselves were not level (which can be attributed to some minor damages they suffered during the transportation process, as opposed to poor construction). Once an outhouse was finally level, concrete was poured into wooden formwork, identical to that described in the previous paragraph, that surrounded the outhouse, thereby creating a foundation for it. Finally, a third and much smaller form was placed on the newly poured foundation of the outhouse, filled with rocks and rebar, equipped with a "throne" and subsequently filled with cement. Finally, a large PVC tube was connected between the toilet bowl and the hole that was previously left in the concrete slab which sits atop the collection hole. These latrines are gravity fed, and therefore, after use, one can simply pour water into the bowl itself and the toilet will “flush” downhill to the hole.

The final product, in all of its splendor

In addition to constructing latrines, an interesting and challenging process that arguably was as much fun as it was work, the time we spent in Agua Blanca was culturally quite memorable. For Emily and I, as volunteers who regularly split our time between urban and rural environments, many of our experiences in Agua Blanca were new, but not surprisingly new as was the case for many volunteers from our group. For instance, seeing some of the depraved living conditions that are so common throughout Honduras no longer elicits a strong response from us, even though we’re here as committed and empathetic volunteers; “Asi es, es la vida,” as one learns to say.

Although we’re accustomed to seeing certain forms of depravity and hardship, even we were taken off guard by a few circumstances, such as the following. A large cow was somehow separated from its herd and, with caballero and a pack of street dogs in toe, it wove its way through the streets, visibly confused and frightened. Needless to say, the group of 15 or so dogs wasn’t some sort of excessively large super herding crew; rather, it was a pack of rather vicious street dogs that was quickly learning to follow it’s ancestral instincts (The Call of the Wild, anyone). Although the dogs didn’t kill the cow, nor, in truth, did they really come close, they did manage to severely lacerate the cow’s ears, and had the caballero not been there to scare the dogs away, the cow may have succumb to an Animal Planet worthy hunt.

The lengthy scene that followed, on the order of a couple hours, consisted in the caballeros, three in total by now, employing various means of abusing and frightening the cow so as to wake it from its nearly catatonic fear induced state owing to the dog attack. As strange as it may sound, we deliberately chose not to intervene and suggest a more humanitarian approach to moving the cow – simply said, it was not our place. You will be happy to know, however, that the caballeros eventually found their own less violent solution to the problem by bringing down the entire herd to where they’d tied up the cow and then leading the herd back to the corral, giving the frightened cow that precious sensation of strength in numbers.

In the same breath as highlighting one of the all too common incidents of animal cruelty we’ve seen in Honduras, if we claim to be discussing Honduran culture with regard to our time in Agua Blanca, we must also acknowledge how well we were fed, housed and otherwise received by the community. The group was always greeted kindly by community members, from the youngest schoolchildren to the elders. On a few seperate occassions we were also treated to beautiful impromptu musical performances by singing children and guitar and accordion playing adults. The backdrop to all of the other wonderful forms of hospitality was our food. Every day, three times a day, we sat perched in our standard fare plastic chairs, in dirty clothing, overlooking a breathtaking view and eating like the queens and kings of latrines that we were. We were happy in one another’s company, sharing a new experience and living in the parallel worlds of giving and receiving, worlds that to Emily and I seem distinct yet irrevocably connected in our everyday lives as volunteers.

La Buena Vista - The Beautiful View

Now that we’ve been in Honduras more than seven months, there are some things that had once seemed strange to us and are now part of the daily routine. For example:

Washing Machine

Lawn Mower

Hot Water Heater

Our “washing machine” is called a pila and it holds gallons and gallons of water that are used for more than just washing clothing. We are fortunate enough to have water every day, but we only have it for a few hours each day. Therefore, when we don’t have running water, we use our pila water to wash dishes, flush our toilet, water our plants, bathe, clean the floors, and anything else one might use water for. For those who have never flushed their toilet with anything other than that convenient lever, you can do it by pouring about a liter of water all at once straight down the hole. Due to some sort of miracle of physics, you can flush the toilet that way.

Our “lawn mower” is one of us – in this case, Dan – with a machete. Cutting grass and weeds with a machete is much more labor intensive than using the old-fashioned push-mower that I grew up using. You have to bend your knees to get as close to the ground as possible so that your machete hits the grass at the right angle. It takes numerous swipes from different directions, because some of the grass will lay flat when hit by the machete (kind of like shaving when you’re days overdo).

Our “hot water heater” is, indeed, a large pot on a one-burner stove. Whenever one of us would like to take a warm bucket bath, we heat pila water for 15-20 minutes, pour it into a metal tub we have in our shower and then add cold water until the water reaches the right temperature. Then we use a little paila (plastic bowl like the one sitting on the pila in the picture) to pour warm water on ourselves before soaping up. It’s a much longer process than simply turning a tap and hopping into the shower, but it produces similar results.

Recycling has also taken on a new meaning for us since there are no lovely green bins to put soup cans and pop bottles into to be picked up on Thursday mornings. An example of this is that our watering can is a recycled 3 liter pop bottle with holes cut in the top (as the saying goes: Necessity is the mother of invention). To water our plants, we simply fill it ¾ of the way up, put the cap on, and turn it upside down. We are also saving up soup cans to bake banana bread in (which should work, according to the Oregonian Food Day article my mom sent) so that we can share with our neighbors who are always giving us fruit, tamales, and tortillas to try.

¡Bamanos Pues!

By a quirk of the Spanish language we’re able to bring you the aforementioned word play. For the non-Spanish speakers in the audience, the phrase “¡Vamanos pues!” usually translates to something like “Let’s go, then!” Alright, so here’s the quirk; B and V are very often indistinguishable in spoken Spanish, and depending on where you find yourself, they are often used interchangeably in written Spanish as well. So, please join us for an enthusiastic “¡Bamanos pues!” Why? Well, of course, for our new president. Not to digress too extensively from the purpose of this blog, which is a nearly unyielding focus on all things “us”, but we must say that as the ambassadors of sorts we are as PC volunteers, it is so very refreshing to have a president who both appreciates the art of diplomacy and promises to practice it, consistently and skillfully. The promise of Obama as a skilled statesman, albeit almost entirely untested as yet, has spread to the far reaches. Anecdotally, Obama is mentioned in the political conversations we hear here as often as Honduran and other Latin American politicians. Also, due to our relative similarity of stature and skin tone, one of my co-workers has fondly taken to calling me Obama and jokingly quizzing me about policies as one would the president. All word play, anecdotes and jest aside, we are decidedly happy to have this man in the office of president.

Alright, back to Honduras. We’re doing quite well, between settling into our new home and looking forward to new work opportunities. Regarding our home, as previously written, we’re completely moved in, new paint and all. Our remaining focus is on tearing apart a defunct earthen oven that was left in our back yard (it was approximately one cubic meter), continuing to grow our compost pile, and planting our garden.

Gardening has been entertaining in unexpected ways. It would seem that our back yard was previously employed as a makeshift dump. In addition to the half dozen hours we’ve devoted to picking up bits and pieces of trash, the process of preparing our 10 ft. X 10 ft. garden plot has been an amateur archaeologist’s dream. We’ve already uncovered in the ballpark of 20 fragments from a shattered plate, shards of glass, batteries (corroded beyond the influence of Coca-Cola), warped fragments of rusted metal, spent bottles of nail polish, and old clay roof tiles, amongst other items. Keeping with the theme of amateur archaeology, these “precious finds” have certainly kept us amused, and may for a while yet if we decide to reemploy the plate fragments as our newest puzzle set; we’ll see. Although the majority of our fun has come from digging, while preparing the topsoil of our garden Emily has also been nipped by one our neighbor’s chicks (yep, small, fuzzy, yellow, and equipped with a beak), who was visiting to feast on the earthworms we uncovered. Perhaps most surprising of all, today Emily mistook a young tarantula for a clump of dirt. Fortunately it began moving before she could move it!

With regard to work, after over three months of supporting Aldea Global in many capacities Emily will begin volunteering with another organization that works to support orphaned children. Another Peace Corps volunteer worked with this organization in the past and had a very meaningful experience there. Thus far we understand that Emily will likely be supporting the children in at least a few capacities, from teaching and hosting other educational initiatives for they and their adoptive families to helping collect information about how well the organization and its affiliates are supporting the children to ensure they’re given the best care possible. Emily has long had an interest in supporting orphaned children and her work with this new organization promises to be fulfilling and challenging.

I am currently beginning work alongside a fellow PC volunteer who’s an architect as well as my counterpart and a civil engineer to design and plan for the construction of a biological research station to be built this spring. My role, owing to my background in urban planning rather than construction know how or design savvy, is helping ensure the location and design of the research station (which will be located in a national park here in Honduras) are consistent with the park’s development goals. I am also still working to get started on a project to map and delineate several of the park’s watersheds. Along with a few other volunteers in the area, and likely with Emily’s editing skills coming in handy very shortly, I am also helping to compile an informative brochure to educate local community members about the need to and advantage of preserving the park.

We would be remiss not to mention our part time job of helping coach a little league team. Whether we’re instructing on the basics of executing a bunt or teaching how to properly field a fly ball, it’s safe to say that we’re having fun, getting a decent amount of exercise, and, let’s hope, serving as positive role models.

As a parting thought, we’ll leave you with a short poem, intended both to redeem myself (Dan) after my last endeavor and more importantly, to give a taste for some of the simple things we appreciate about our experience thus far. All the best and please stay in touch!

I am a young experience in the happening and an eager memory in the making

I am the rooster’s crowing through day and night, I am the midnight dogfight whose bark foretells its bite

I am a full night sky with very small stars, whose brilliance teach that Earth is only one very small world; one very big very small world that can’t impress the universe and that can’t help but fascinate her stewards

I am the clever paradox of a pure, clean, dirty, dusty road

I am the wandering calf, colt, and chirping chick, constant reminders of and constantly reminded of the perennial necessity to venture forth and in so doing learn the meaning of exploration

I, too, am the please go away bludgeoning torrential rain and the please come again subtle morning mist

I am the constant sense of sensitivity in our tin roof, creaking under sun energy, crackling in the rain

I am a young experience in the happening and an eager memory in the making in one very big very small world, and I am t h a n k f u l for the complexities I’m learning to see in such a simple life

Since we last wrote, we have been preparing our house and have celebrated Christmas and New Years. When we moved into the house, all it had inside was a pile of duffel bags, a bed, and a bad interior paint job. Since that time, we have painted, gotten a table and chairs, hung a hammock inside, and started to make the house look like a home. The process of buying household necessities has been a long one – with many to-do lists and whole days devoted just to running errands – and has left us reminiscing fondly about one-stop-shopping at Target.

Dan painting on the lop-sided ladder

For Christmas, we headed to La Esperanza to celebrate with friends. Miguel, who traveled 7 hours from his site in the south, met us in Siguat and, after eating a lunch of baleadas (flour tortillas with refried beans and sour cream, which go for as little as 25 US cents apiece), we hopped on a bus for the hour-long trip to La Esperanza. Once there, we enjoyed relaxing at Mark and Lauren’s house on Christmas Eve. Miguel brought his guitar and my (Emily’s) grandmother sent a book of Christmas carols that she had found in a thrift shop, so we gathered around and sang together. On Christmas day, we did a bit of walking around the city, cooked dinner, and at different times someone would slip out to talk to family back home.

The Nativity scene in La Esperanza

(who knew there were cheetahs and giraffes in Bethlehem)

Christmas dinner consisted of a turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and sweet potato pie. Whenever cooking in Honduras, creativity is a must. My original plan was to make the sweet potato pie before we left Siguat and take it with us, already made. When I was reading the recipe, however, and the pie crust instructions stated “place dough in refrigerator for 30 minutes,” the plans changed, as we do not currently have a fridge. Fortunately, Mark and Lauren were kind enough to lend us theirs. The next step was to “place the dough between two sheets of Saran wrap and roll it out.” Since we didn’t have any Saran wrap, I put it inside a plastic grocery bag, which worked just fine. When we peeled the sweet potatoes, all of which looked the same on the outside, only one of the four was orange and the other three were tan. They all tasted the same, but the pie wasn’t nearly as pretty as usual. But, as the Irish Night Before Christmas ends, “´Tis ne´r a Christmas when everything’s right, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.”

After returning home for a few days, we headed up to the North Coast to celebrate the New Year with 10 other H13ers (11 of us are from Municipal Development and Lauren is a Youth Development volunteer who has Muni-D envy). We spent New Year’s Eve swimming in the Caribbean and eating fresh fish and tajadas (fried green plantains with salt that are the French fries of Honduras). When we rang in the New Year, the ball had already dropped in New York, so Dan held up a balloon and slowly lowered it as we counted down to midnight.

On New Year’s Day, we hiked in Parque Nacional Pico Bonito. We hiked for about an hour and a half to a waterfall, where we went swimming and ate PB&Js before heading back. The water was cold and refreshing and deep enough that we could jump off a 10 foot rock. Natán, who had formerly been a gymnast and diver, flipped off the rock, but the rest of us were satisfied with simply jumping. The vegetation was lush, verdant, and tropical, so while admiring the beauty of it all, it was hard to convince ourselves that it was the first of January. It certainly felt like a good way to start off the New Year, though.

Emilia saltando (Emily jumping)

A natural knot

Our final day of vacation was spent swimming and walking on the beach. For lunch, we decided to splurge and go to a beach-side restaurant to take advantage of more fresh seafood. We shared Camarones al Ajillo (Garlic Shrimp) and Sopa de Caracol (Conch Soup). Both were excellent, but the conch soup, made with fresh coconut milk, was superb! The camarones came with arroz y frijoles (rice and beans) and tajadas. The conch soup also came with tajadas and rice that we mixed into the soup. With a cold beer, good company, and a view of the ocean, it was a perfect meal.

Dan, Emily, Natán, Ana, and our awesome food

After a bit of R & R, it´s time to get back to work! We will continue to work with Aldea Global and are also preparing to work with other NGOs and schools. We´ll keep you posted as that unfolds.

Whether you were buried in snow, worrying about getting sunburned or somewhere in between, we hope you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thanks for the letters, emails and packages. We always love hearing from you!

Dan watching the sunset from our livingroom

Since we last posted, the two major events in our lives have been getting ready to move and digestive issues (warning: if hearing about digestive issues makes you queasy, please skip to the section below the tribute). After nearly five months without having major stomach problems – a near miracle for new Peace Corps volunteers – Dan had it coming out of both ends so we headed to the Hospital Evangelico (our second visit; my dog bite being the first). When his stool sample was analyzed, his diagnosis was a virus and bacteria. A week of antibiotics and rehydration salts – more about those later – and he was back to normal.

About a week after his recovery, we both had the runs again. Since this is a fairly normal occurrence in our Peace Corps experience, I wasn’t too concerned for myself, but was worried that perhaps Dan needed more antibiotics, so back to the hospital we went (trip number three). This time, Dan’s diagnosis was parasites, or as they are sometimes called in the campo, animalitos (the direct translation is “little animals”). Three or four days later, with a low fever and continuing digestive issues, I decided that perhaps I, too, had animalitos. When we went to the Hospital Evangelico for our fourth visit in a little over two months in Siguat, my diagnosis was also parasites. We learned two important things from this experience: Peace Corps volunteers have wonderful medical care, and that the old saying is true: the couple that shares parasites together stays together.

After drinking rehydration salts, called Sorassel, on and off for numerous weeks, our appreciation of them is great. Dan, the poet laureate of all problems digestive, has written a tribute in their honor, which we hope you will enjoy.

A long overdue tribute to Sorassel – Sales de Rehidratacion Oral

Diarrhea, vomit, diarrhea again, days and nights alongside old friend John,

Parasites, viruses, bacteria too have made guest appearances at the toilathon,

12 select ingredients, sensuous and simple, rehydrate our parched souls,

7.1 grams of granulated solution replace our mournful losses to toilet bowls,

Glucosa Anhidra, dear friend that it is, constitutes much of this magic elixir,

Neither Pepsi nor Coke nor exotic fruits could dare hope to trump this mixer,

We must also make mention of another olive carrying dove, sodium, as well

Which delicately delivers peace to our stomachs after antibiotics have raised hell,

Pour, mix, and drink it up until the scorching sun bakes the bottom of the cup

And as the cup’s core is seared all the more, to the last precious drop we’ll sup,

Sorassel, sweet and salty, deliverer of countless brilliant and microscopic pearls

Diligently instructs how to dissolve and create that precious gift for he who hurls,

Sorassel, dear sweet, and salty, Sorassel, to the world we owe your story to tell

Now that our systems are back to normal, all of our energy can be fixed on getting our house ready. After living with host families for over five months, and house searching for two, we finally found the perfect house. It is a little green house with a front porch that will be perfect for chatting with neighbors and a backyard that will allow us to plant sugarcane, corn, papaya, bananas, a little vegetable garden, and anything else we could hope for. There are already two mango trees there (to those who are interested in visiting: mango season is roughly March-May), which we hope will be bearing an abundance of fruit in the springtime. Fortunately, our next-door-neighbor has a tree that produces so many mangos she can’t give them away, so even if our trees are still too young to bear fruit, we will be able to work out a deal with her.

Our house from the backyard

We are currently cleaning the house in preparation for painting before we finally move in. The neighborhood we are in does not have water 24-7, so we have water in half-days (for example, we’ll have water in the morning on Monday, in the afternoon on Tuesday, in the morning on Wednesday, etc.), so we are learning to plan around this schedule. The pila (a big concrete basin with a washboard next to it) will provide water for us in the times that the water is turned off, but currently needs to be cleaned so it does not become a dengue-breeding house. We will spend the next couple of days cleaning and painting in preparation for moving in this weekend.

Anyway, we hope you are all enjoying the Christmas season and that your hearts are filled with all the joys the season has to bring. Peace on earth and good will toward all!

Well, where do we begin? It has certainly been a busy month since we last posted. In fact, we’ve been away from the office so much so that our old friend the keyboard currently feels a bit like a stranger. For the second and third weeks of November we traveled with a medical brigade from the States that was brought in to treat people affected by the storm; our role was to translate between English speaking doctors and nurses and Spanish speaking patients (that having been said, one of the doctors is more fluent than we are, another speaks enough to get by, and the others picked up a bit as time went on). We certainly saw a number of people who were affected by the storm, including people whose homes were flooded or destroyed and others whose crops were damaged, if not destroyed. As for the medical relevance of all this, many people we saw were dealing with colds, the flu, lack of access to clean water – and subsequently dehydration and water-borne illnesses – and different types of skin fungus, which may been caused or exacerbated by the moist conditions.

Dan translating

Although it may sound like sensationalism to include these next few observations, truly the purpose is to describe what daily life is like in many of the communities we’ve visited. One little girl we visited was sneezing up worms, which, fortunately, is easily treated. In another town, after we had already finished a full days work a young man in his twenties came to the home where we were staying, escorted by his elderly father; his hands were a mere mess of blood. The young man, who is right handed, had been cutting through something, which he held in his right hand, when the knife suddenly broke through the object he’d been cutting and immediately sliced deep into his ring, middle, and index fingers. It seems that the tendons in his middle and ring fingers were completely severed, for which he’ll need reparative surgery to fix. Fortunately one of the doctors in our group, an emergency room physician, was able to stitch up the man’s hand with the help of the other members of the team, at least stemming the blood and giving the young man an opportunity to seek further medical attention in the coming weeks and months. We also saw a number of patients with psychological problems, some of which stemmed from the flooding, others of which were perhaps exacerbated by the flooding, or were in fact unrelated to it. We spoke with people who suffered from depression and loneliness, at least one person who seemed to suffer from mental illness but had never received counseling, yet more people who had been victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse, and for many people the subtext to all of their hardships was that they had been displaced by the flooding, or at the least that their dwellings and livelihoods had been compromised by the storm.

Emily to the right translating along with the Docs in "El Centro Social Municipal"

Many of the communities we visited were difficult to reach, leaving us bouncing around in the back of the truck with all the medical supplies during a rainstorm, but some of the villages were nearly impossible to reach, and had we not been there, they would not have received medical assistance. The main bridge of one community was washed out so we had to walk across a cable bridge, which the community had dubbed “la hamaca” or “the hammock” because of the way it swayed when people walked on it. This bridge was constructed with five heavy metal cables: two as railings to hold on to and three on the bottom. Community members had placed wooden boards across the three cables to walk upon, but in many places there were two or three boards in a row missing and the only option was to walk across the cable. Fortunately no one in the group was afraid of heights! Another community was inaccessible except by boat or walking waist-deep in water, so we, and all the medical supplies, were transported by boat. Life in the Peace Corps is typically a humbling experience but these past few weeks of working in a supportive capacity to this medical brigade and the people they’ve been treating has punctuated that sense of humility.

Traveling with two nurses and the medical supplies

While Emily worked with the medical brigade for the entirety of two weeks, I was only there for a week and a half. For the latter half of the first week I helped translate for a British engineer who was flown in to help install two temporary water plants in communities whose water systems had been damaged during the storm. For anyone who has a knack for assembling and disassembling machines, and certainly for any engineers who read this I can say that it was interesting to be part of the process of installing these temporary water plants which are accompanied by 10,000 liter inflatable tanks. These water plants consist of three parts: a primitive crank start diesel powered pump which pulls water from a nearby source (a creek for instance), a filter which utilizes a series of probably 30 plastic tubes, approximately 1 cm x 40 cm, which, with the help of a fine powder constitute the first of a two part treatment process, and a third machine that dispenses chlorine in small quantities before the water finally arrives at the inflatable tank. These filters were last used in relief efforts for the Christmas tsunami of 2005. If I’m not mistaken, the filters were brought out of a warehouse somewhere in southeast Asia, put on an American Airlines jet and a week later were delivered to Honduras. Aside from marveling at the efficacy of this quick installation water treatment plant (it takes approximately 3 hours to install the system and educate someone on how to operate and maintain it), I’ve also learned a bit about the potential conflicts in marching into a community and introducing new technology without adequate preparation beforehand. While in one community we found people who were familiar enough with plumbing and water systems to quickly learn how to operate the system we were installing, in another community the people we were teaching how to operate the system didn’t have enough prior experience to feel comfortable operating the system without extensively repeating the lesson, which created a palpable sense of tension at times. Everyone involved was there of their own volition, to help, nothing more. Good intentions aside, I do wonder how might the installation have gone more smoothly – aren’t there always new lessons to learn?

The water system

As far as major sporting events go in Honduras, the November 19th fútbol game against Mexico was as good as it gets. The game was to decide which teams would pass on to the next round of qualifying games for the 2010 World Cup and if Honduras lost, they would be eliminated. We, the doctors from the brigade, and another translator, went to a “sports pub” to watch the game projected onto a large wall. After a tense and cold (another cold front passed over Honduras last week and had us wearing fleeces and hats again) first half, the game was still 0-0. In the second half, Honduras scored a goal through a corner kick that went off the foot of one of the Mexican defenders. Honduras went on to win the game 1-0 and honking cars could be heard late into the night celebrating the country’s victory. We’re looking forward to the next round, which will start in February, and give us another occasion to wear our selección shirts.

Dave, John, Digger, Cathy (all Medical Teams International volunteers), Daniel, Daniel and Emily (the translators)

Since ending our stint as traveling translators we’ve been back to one of our most practiced pastimes, home shopping. Despite our best efforts, the most promising homes we’ve seen thus far haven’t worked out, for a variety of reasons. As we imagine we’re preaching to the choir here, we’ll keep this relatively short; when home shopping, it seems the whole trick to the game is to get back on the proverbial pony and just keep going, even when you’re sick of being shown that repugnant pink house time and again. It would make sense to mention that there’s no “official” process by which people search for homes here in Siguatepeque. The objective is to wander the streets in neighborhoods which you like, asking anyone who seems potentially knowledgeable about the housing market whether they know of anyone who is renting a home (interestingly, the only group excluded from our canvassing effort is the 5 years and under crowd). Our favorite strategy is to speak with the owners of corner stores, known as pulperias, and launch into our routine, “Disculpe (Señor, Señora, Don, Doña), andamos buscando una casita con dos cuartos, una cocina, un baño, y poco terreno. ¿Sabe si alguien está alquilando una casa en este barrio?” Finding a home with two rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a little bit of land has proven to be a challenge, no doubt. However, as Queen’s Freddy Mercury so famously belted all those years ago, the show must go on. Wish as luck, if you will.

A few days ago, we celebrated Thanksgiving with a couple of friends in the department of Santa Barbara. Jessica and Brenna had already started on dinner when we got there on Thursday around noon, so we ate lunch with them and got back to cooking. When it was all said and done, dinner consisted of a baked chicken, green beans, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and wheat rolls (all from scratch). We also enjoyed a bit of wine during the cooking process and with dinner. We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and were blessed with friends, family and a great meal. ¡Hasta la proxima vez! Thanksgiving dinner...yum!Jessica, Brenna, and Dan eating on the deck

As you´re already aware if you´ve read our last blog or followed more obscure bits of international news, we´ve had a lot of rain here recently, so much so that many regions of the country are experiencing a disaster. Countless communities are still flooded, and as a cold front is moving through much of the country, many people who were staying with relatives or in shelters and struggling to find food may also now find themselves trying to fight off the cold. We´ve certainly been trying to help out through the large scale relief effort our counterpart organization is undertaking. At the same time, the word disaster signifies that the scale of the problem is beyond any immediate sweeping solution, short of the storm ceasing and the sun returning from its nearly month-long hiatus. Perhaps what´s most worrisome is that we have another month of eligibility left in the hurricane season and well-respected people who have lived here for quite a while are whispering about similarities between some of the damage already caused by this storm and that which was caused by the exceptionally devastating Hurricane Mitch almost exactly 10 years ago. That having been said, fortunately the country learned many lessons from Mitch and the loss of life is substantially lower this time around, not to mention this storm, which is not a hurricane, has been less devastating due to its slow, albeit steady progression. There´s not much left to say aside from the fact that we, along with hundreds if not thousands of others will keep chipping away at the stone, hoping that the rain will subside.

If you didn´t catch the meaning of this blog´s title, it´s “We have ants in our pants!” So what about those ants, anyhow, and how might they relate to the storm we’ve been experiencing? As any amateur biologist – by this I mean relatively observant human – already knows, when the weather´s miserable, most creatures like to find the safest shelter around. By the dozens, ants have decided that our room is a likely shelter. I don´t want to misquote Benjamin Franklin, but as I´m writing this I have no way to check; as I believe Franklin once mused, “Guests are like fish, they stink after two days”. That sentiment is magnified when the guests arrive by the dozens, unannounced, and stay for weeks on end. The worst part of it all is that, tenemos hormigas en nuestros pantalones! No, we´re not looking for a cliché to say that we have cabin fever; nearly every morning we find that we have dozens of ants in our pants, although occasionally they´re tucked into a shirt instead. I guess it´s sensible that they too want a warm sheltered environment to hunker down, although, in its own special way the garbage can is also a warm sheltered environment, with all of its Kleenex and wrapper insulation – one has to wonder why they aren´t there, with the free crumbs and all. Regardless, our morning routine now has an additional step: 1.) hit the snooze once or twice, 2.) wash face, brush teeth, shave, etc. 3.) shake half-inch ants out of pants, 4.) breakfast and begin our walking commute. We hope you noted the size of these ants. When they fall from our pants to the floor they actually make an audible thud and then scurry away to find another garment to hide in. At first we were fighting them, sweeping them out with a broom, but they just keep coming back, so we have resigned ourselves to their presence until the storm is over.

Speaking of cold and rainy weather, what would you guess the temperature is here if we told you that we´re walking around with flannels, fleeces, and winter hats on? 18 degrees C = approximately 64 degrees F, which for us amounts to a cold streak. If it weren´t for a lifetime of schooling and logical thought to influence us, we just might be looking up at the sky, waiting for the snow to begin falling. It´s safe to say we`ve acclimated to the warmer climate here. And if you´re curious, yes, the showers are as cold as ever =)

Thinking about snow is enough to make us break our 3-cups-a-day rule. Because we´re in a coffee growing area, it is a sign of hospitality to offer a cup of coffee to guests and it would be quite impolite to refuse. Subsequently, we are often drinking 3 or more cups of coffee each day, regardless of the fact that we didn´t even drink coffee in the States. Fortunately, the coffee here is excellent, though I think we´ll be returning to the States with a caffeine addiction we didn´t have before.

On Sunday, we ventured out (all bundled up, of course) to the cemetery and experienced Siguatepeque`s way of honoring the dead on “Día de los Muertos”. While in Mexico, “Día de los Muertos” is a day when families go to the cemetery to picnic with their deceased relatives (eating the food that their family member most liked, and drinking on their behalf if they were a drinker in life), here in Siguat the celebration resembles Memorial Day in the States. Many families come to clean and lay beautiful tropical-flower-bouquets on the graves.

Take care, and stay in touch.

Due to not having internet access for the past few days, all our devoted fans (our parents) will receive two blog posts in one day. If you have a passion for watching international weather news, you may know that the quantity of rain Honduras has received in the past week has caused massive flooding in many parts of the country. Fortunately for us, Siguatepeque has not been subject to this flooding. However, since we work for Aldea Global, we have been able to help in some of the relief work to communities that are suffering from flooding.

Yesterday, when we got to work, we attended a planning meeting right away because Aldea Global had received a request for help. As we made a list of all the things we could provide this community, Dan (with his background in Natural Hazard Mitigation) suggested that water would be of the utmost importance for this community. We next started brainstorming about where we could get filtered water for free. We remembered that CEASO, an integrated farm we visited during training, has a large tank of filtered water (runoff from their roof that passes through a carbon filter into a 2,800 gallon tank) that we would be welcome to use. So, Aldea Global rounded up every empty receptacle that could be used to carry water and off we went to CEASO. Because the truck was needed for something else, Dan and I got dropped off with all the empty bottles (each ranging from 2.5-5 gallon capacity). As it started raining again, we came up with a system to fill and transport the bottles to where they could be loaded back into a truck. When it was all said and done, we contributed over 100 gallons of water through collaboration with this other organization.

While we were filling up water bottles, other members of the Aldea Global team were buying more water, gathering up medical supplies, and generally getting everything organized for us to head out. We then traveled to a large warehouse where blankets, canned turkey, anti-bacterial soap, and all sorts of other emergency supplies are housed. Everyone formed a human chain as we passed boxes into a large truck for delivery. Once we were all completely drenched with sweat, and the truck was full, we headed to the small aldea (village) that had requested our help. At first when we got there, the situation did not appear as bad as we had expected, but once the trucks were all parked, we got out and walked around the corner. Fortunately, we were wearing our rubber boots, because we were soon standing in over a foot of water and by the water-marks on the houses, we could see that the water had been waist-high.

We handed out water to the families in this small community while other members of Aldea Global unloaded other supplies from the large truck. When the day was over, our arms and backs were a bit tired from our day of carrying water jugs, boxes, and bags filled with blankets. However, we were glad to contribute in our small way to those affected by the storm.

Our reactions were mixed when we learned early last week that we were in the midst of a tropical depression. At first we just resigned ourselves to being drenched for an indeterminate amount of time from the persistent rains. Then, during one of the many afternoons we spent holed up inside Emily suggested that “tropical depression” need not only be a weather phenomenon that limited our mobility. Why, it could be the name of our very own tasty tropical beverage – meet the tropical depression! We`ll let you know how it tastes when it debuts. For now, we´re just stuck inside dreaming of tropical depressions, the tasty variety that is.

In all fairness, “stuck inside” isn´t an entirely fair characterization of what we´re up to these days. We`re still traveling and attending meetings with our counterparts, albeit on a limited basis due to the many floods plaguing the country. Emily is currently engaged in a few health initiatives ranging from HIV/AIDS support to self esteem development, and I´m principally a laborer, helping transport a few thousand trees a few times a week to support a reforestation initiative in our park. There´s nothing like carrying plants and pushing a wheelbarrow for hours on end to remind me I´m in good, but not great shape. Ultimately, as is the experience of most volunteers early in their service, we´re busiest getting acquainted with our community, the language, and what we may be doing in the future rather than actually “working” much in any traditional sense, although I think we´re contributing a bit. Let that be the context for this anecdote. A successful day may look something like this: a fellow volunteer who is helping form a cooperative of female hammock makers sent us an email with an enticing offer to have a hammock made in the colors of our alma mater (go Ducks!) for an affordable price, and in time for the holidays at that. Finding a hammock is, in and of itself, enough to polish the day.

We´re still living with our host family and enjoying their company. Game nights are especially fun as we get to watch the Honduras national team (La Selección) play against other teams for a spot in the world cup. Our mom is a consummate good hostess and makes sure we have soda and popcorn for each game – tasty! As is the case with many sporting events the world over, it´s encouraging to watch the entire country unite behind the national team, in spite of the many conflicts that may be barriers to communication on other days. More than a few times we´ve heard that wearing the jersey of La Selección on game day is virtually a free pass to travel anywhere in the country without incident, including areas that are traditionally dangerous even for Hondurans. Of course we´d not be interested to test this theory, but the unifying element of fútbol here in Honduras cannot be easily overstated.

As a fun way to wrap this up we´ll share a few recent experiences that have already become normal to us, but that would have been anything but when we first arrived to Honduras a few months ago. Two weeks ago we were sitting in some makeshift bleachers at the local cancha de fútbol when a horse entered the field from an adjacent dirt road, crossed the field at full gallop (we clearly heard the pounding of its hooves from 100 meters away), jumped a ditch, and continued down a road on the other side of the field, still at full gallop. Oh well, we thought, these things happen. Just the other morning when we were on our way to work in our botas de goma (knee high gum/rain boots), sombreros, and raincoats – our normal garb these days – Emily interrupted me in mid story to point out a potential perro bravo that was suspiciously eying all passersby. ¿What did we do, you ask? Well, of course we walked through the foot deep puddles in the ditch on the other side of the road to evade a sticky situation. If it comes down to it I´ve discovered I myself have a pretty intimidating bark, and we´re both capable of tossing a few rocks, although we`re definitely honing our sixth sense for problematic dogs to avoid having to exercise our own animal instincts. Last but not least, we´ve discovered that cold showers are downright intimidating when the weather´s rainy and chilly, but one must bathe. While we grow braver with each shower, I think we´ll always have a soft spot for hot water heaters and that precious commodity they produce! If you have hot water, enjoy a nice shower for us, would ya =)

As always, we hope you´re doing well. Please drop us a line when you get the chance.

-Em and Dan

Well, we’re doing well as we near the end of our first week in Siguatepeque, which will be our home away from home for these next two years. Considering we´ve only been here for a week, we´ve already had a number of new experiences, ranging from the challening to the exciting. ¡Welcome to our life as Peace Corps Volunteers in this little nook of Honduras!

First things first. We are indeed volunteers! After wearing the name of aspirante (trainee or aspirant) for nearly three months, last Friday we attended our swearing in ceremony at the U.S. Embassy and then enjoyed an afternoon of swimming and exploring the grounds at the ambassador´s residence, although as circumstance would have it he was in the States at the time. The ambassador´s grounds have a number of toronja (grapefruit) trees, so we relished the opportunity to gorge ourselves on that sweet vitamin C.

Here are some pictures from our swearing-in:

Michael (a Youth Development volunteer) and usThe Muni-D girls with our new Peace Corps shirts

Municipal Development: Top row: Mark, Natan, Ryan, Dan, Kristin, Jessica D., Chad

Middle row: Erik, Alejandrina (the boss), Emily, Brenna, Jorge (our training director)

Bottom row: Emilie, Jessica G., Casey, Ana, Ellie With our new Peace Corps shirts

Upon our arrival to Siguatepeque Saturday afternoon, we entered the gate of our host family´s home (per Peace Corps policy, we´ll be living with a host family for our first two months at site to acostumbrarnos – acclimate ourselves – to this new location), which seemed a sensible thing to do since we were in fact at our new residence and were tired after a few hours of continuous travel. I wasn´t able to enter the gate as quickly as Emily because the bags I was carrying were stuck together. As a result, she entered first and bore the wrath of our host family´s perra brava (vicious female dog) when she broke her chain and gave Emily a nasty bite in the calf. I don´t think we´ll soon forget that first half hour of being at our host family´s house, which included the dog biting Emily and soon being restrained by our host mom (first minute), digging out our Peace Corps issued medkit to grab bandages and stem the bleeding (first five minutes), calling the Peace Corps doctors for instructions (first ten minutes), scrubbing the wound in the shower to disinfect it (minutes ten to twenty five), and catching a cab to the hospital (at the half hour mark). Being the stalwart and strong gal she is, after arriving at the hospital she bore with good humor a second scrub of the wound, several injections directly into the wound, and two stitches. For my part, I gave her a hand massage as they delivered her injections and put the stitches in. Needless to say, it was the least I could do.

Although my harrowing tale is not nearly as harrowing as hers, my weekend didn´t pass without incident either. Here in the altiplano, which signifies high plain, (we´re at about 3,000 feet) thunderstorms arrive quickly and are quite fierce, not unlike what many of you are accustomed to in the States. Well, as I made my way home from buying groceries for the first time, I found myself huddled under the eaves of a pulpería (hole in the wall convenience store, of which there are many in just about every community) as the street was transformed into a river (sound familiar from a previous blog entry?) and as ambulances and police trucks raced by periodically, undoubtedly tending to mishaps caused by the storm. As I tried to count the gaps between thunder and lightning to judge when it was safe to dash home, it was no small challenge to distinguish between flashes of lightning and flashes from the passing emergency vehicles. Although soaked to the bone, I made it home without incident, just in time to begin our first work week with my now somewhat-hobbled wife.

The week´s highlights were many, despite a rough start. First and foremost, our host family is very kind. Our host mother, who is very good natured, had the perra brava sent to another home and served us our meals in our room for almost two solid days so that Emily could keep her leg elevated. Our host siblings are also very nice, and we have a chihuahua named Terry (the origin is terrible) who we already like a great deal. Regarding our work, in addition to reading manuals (me) and attending meetings (Emily), we´ve already traveled to some of the aldeas (small communities) where we´ll be working, all of which have their own personality and rather rustic beauty. Meeting the people of the communities is of course the greatest joy. Each time we see the wizened grins of the elderly and the timid but brilliant smiles of the kids as they peak over window ledges and through door frames, we´re impressed by the kindness and humility of our new neighbors.

One trip that will be particularly memorable was a trip we completed yesterday, under the guidance of my counterpart. We visited a community that exists deep in the national park our organization oversees where we met with a family to discuss the sustainable and responsible development of resources in the very fragile and precious section of the park where they live (because they lived there long before the territory was declared as a park, they´re entitled to stay and to some degree make use of the land). Although Emily and I are more or less along for the ride at this early stage in our service, we learned a great deal and have fond memories of meeting the family and being guests on their land. The trip to their home was, in itself, a memorable experience as we had to first summit a series of deeply riveted and rocky mountain roads in our 4x4 pickup (as volunteers we´re prohibited from driving except for in very rare circumstances, so my counterpart does the driving) before parking at the base of a mountain and starting what would become a 3 hour round trip hike. During the trip we saw a few exotic butterflies the size of my hand, one of which was cobalt blue. We also ate bananas we found in the jungle, and drank from mountain streams (yes, the very same streams we´re trying to protect). The forests in the park are naturally stratified very distinctly according to elevation, so at one point we found ourselves, in the span of 2 minutes, transitioning from highland pine forest to bonafide jungle.

Here´s a picture of Lago Yajoa, which is near Siguat, that we were able to take while on one of our "business trips."

Last but not least, we may have found a home after a good bit of questioning pulpería owners and tracking down the homes, often with the help of a willing neighbor. Details will be forthcoming if we actually get the house (we will start renting the 1st of December, si dios quiere). In the meantime, wish us luck! I think that´s about it for now. We´ll look forward to giving our next update as the month of October moves along. We hope you´re doing well, and please keep the emails coming!

Well, we finally got our site assignment and we will be living in Siguatepeque (See-watt-e-peck-ay), which is pretty much in the middle of the country. We´re working with Proyecto Aldea Global (Project Global Village), which is involved in Food Security, Health, Domesitic Violence, Protected Areas, Education and a number of other things. Dan will be doing a lot of work in Parque Nacional Cerro Azul Meambar, and I am still figuring out which part of the organization I would most like to help with.

We are currently exploring our new community and organization because we are on a 4-day site visit. We will return to our training site for 2 weeks of additional training before we swear in on the 26th (finally becoming official volunteers) and then head out to our site permanently on the 27th to start our two years of service. We will live with a host family for our first 2 months in Siguatepeque and then can find our own place.

Here´s a little info about Siguat:

It´s heading into the mountains, at a little over 3,000 feet, so the temperature is cooler here than in other parts of the country (low to mid-80s during the day). We are near Lago Yajoa and Parque Nacional Cerro Azul Meambar, so should have lots of great outdoor recreation nearby (and if anyone wants to come visit, it would be a cool place to stay). Siguat itself is relatively large (roughly 50,000 people) with many of the amenities of a larger site (eg. internet), but the barrios (neigborhoods) feel like much smaller communities, with dirt roads, roosters crowing, and cows and horses grazing.

Last Saturday, our Municipal Development training group had a joint birthday party for Ana and me (Emily) at Kristin´s host parent´s house. We danced, ate cake, and had a wonderful time. The last couple hours of the party, it started to rain really hard, but we just figured it would pass. After a while, Dan and I decided we shouldn´t wait any longer because we were going hiking the next day in Parque Nacional la Tigra, so we chose to brave the rain.

We headed out, getting absolutely drenched in the process, but we only had a few blocks to get to our host parent´s house. Suddenly, we came to what had formerly been a cobblestone street and was now a river. I decided to ford the ¨river¨ and stepped in, only to find that the water was at least a foot deep. I took another step, and as I lifted up my right foot, I stepped out of my chancleta (flip-flop). As soon as the chancleta popped up, it started shooting down this quickly-moving river. I started to chase it, almost knee deep in water and with only one chancleta on, but it hit a gutter and floated even faster than before and "se fue" (was gone). So all I could do was say, ¨Adios chancleta. Que le vaya bien (Goodbye, flip-flop. That your journey goes well).¨ Here are a few pictures of this eventful night...

Here is a picture of the ¨raging river:¨

Here I am, soaking wet, with the remaining chancleta:

...and Dan and I with the chancleta

Though I mourned the loss of my chancleta, I received lots of ¨Peace Corps Points¨for my story. ¨Peace Corps Points¨are given when something very Peace-Corps-like happens. For example, our friend, Ana, received a lot of ¨Peace Corps Points¨when she was on a bus to her site visit and the woman sitting in front of her spat out the window and the spit flew through Ana´s open window and hit her square in the face. She received significanly more "Peace Corps Points" for this incident than I did for losing my chancleta. We will be sure to keep you posted when we earn more ¨Peace Corps Points¨ in the future.

The next day, we went for an amazing hike in Parque Nacional la Tigra (which is only a half-hour bus ride and a beautiful, but mostly uphill, hike from our current training site) with Kristin and Jessica D (we have 2 Jessica´s in Muni-D). We hiked for a number of hours and were able to see some spectacular waterfalls and gorgeous tropical plants. Here are some pictures from that hike.

Jessica standing next to a beautiful and enormous tree:

Heading into the jungle:

Also, here is a picture of our street at our Field Based Training site. Our host family´s house is on the right, though it´s hard to see. But the picture gives a good idea of what our lives look like right now.

We will be receiving our site assignment on Monday (finally), so most of our energy right now is going toward being patient. In a little less than 48 hours we will know where we will be living for the next two years. Thank you to all of you who have sent us updates. It is so wonderful to hear from you and to hear about your lives right now. Please keep the emails coming!Love,Dan and Em

Entrenamiento. That pretty much sums up our lives right now. We´re perpetually in training and will be for the next five weeks. For the most part everything´s going just fine. There will always be the adjustment of having to live according to a schedule that resembles that of a high schooler with long days in class and an early curfew, but we´re fortunate to have a nice host family, good friends, and an appealing little city in which to train. Our host family is composed of two parents and four children, two of whom are teens and two of whom are toddlers basically. We spend a lot of time just shooting the breeze with the youngest two, which is both fun and a good reminder that having kids is an enormous responsibility (needless to say, we´re not there yet).

For those of you who are reading our blog fairly regularly, our diet is still very similar to what we ate back in our previous community before transitioning to field based training. There´s a lot of rice, beans, tortillas, and sometimes we have chicken, cheese, salad or a bit of potatoes on the side. Generally speaking, we eat very well and as a result are in great health. The past two weeks we´ve each had colds, but we´re finally feeling a bit better now. Since it´s the rainy season here, we have pretty extreme tempature swings, which I would guess are between 70 and 95 degrees fahrenheit, contingent on whether it´s raining (the rainstorms are always downpours) or sunny. These temperature swings are, I believe, partly to blame for our colds. They also make life interesting from one day to the next, so there´s no complaining.

We´re currently starting our SDPs (self directed projects) which will take up a majority of our remaining time in FBT (field based training). Just a future warning, Peace Corps absolutely loves acronyms, so you`ll see them popping up in our blog from time to time. Emily and I will be running a few short workshops about food security, natural hazard mitigation, and HIV-AIDS with high school students in a neighboring town. In only three weeks or so we´ll get the news about where we´ll be living for the next two years and at the end of September we leave for our site, so we´re starting to anticipate the completion of training and the transition to our permanent location and roles here in Honduras. Please stay in touch, and as always email or post comments with anything you´d like for us to read.

¡Adios!

We wanted to add a few pics:

First night in Honduras

Dan washing clothing by hand

Just outside of town

I just thought I´d put a few little things in here about our daily life. Food usually consists of rice, beans, avocado, eggs, cheese and lots of tortillas. Our host family is also fond of ¨mantiquilla¨which roughly translates to butter, but in this case is a lot closer to sour cream, and they eat it a lot (though are kind enough to put it on the side for us so we can choose not to eat it). We also have coffee at least once a day and sometimes we have it with dinner as well. Hondurans like their coffee with lots of sugar and milk, but the coffee is good, so we´re not complaining.

We are currently visiting another volunteer and are experiencing a completely different climate from where we are training. In our training site, the rainy season is really felt, with almost daily torrential downpours. Everything stays pretty humid and damp, which is causing our clothing to mold, something we are learning to avoid through proper ventillation. Here, at our site visit (we´re shadowing another Municipal Development - Muni D - volunteer), the sun is intense enough to keep us inside in the early afternoon. We are enjoying seeing another part of the country and actually finding out what another volunteer is doing (she only has one month left, so has accomplished a ton in her two years). During our visit so far, we have attended a drag-race and followed our volunteer around the construction of the park she has helped plan, amongst other things. Until next time...que le vaya bien (that it goes well with you).

This is our first opportunity to use the internet other than to dash off a quick email to our parents to let them know we arrived safely. We took the bus to a neighboring town and are sitting in an internet cafe. We live with a host family in a rural mountain town and are enjoying learning about the culture of Honduras. Monday through Friday we have classes from 7:30-4:30 and Saturdays we have class only in the morning. Our classes focus on language (we usually have 4 hours of Spanish class each weekday), culture and job-specific training. There are three project groups training at the same time: Youth Development, Protected Areas Management (PAM), and Municipal Development (our training group).

We usually wake up around 5:30 (which sounds obscenely early, but we go to bed around 9:30 so it´s not that bad) and take turns showering. Our first few days we took bucket baths, but our family has since installed an electroducha (which is an electric showerhead that heats the water), so we now have hot showers, a luxury we are enjoying while it lasts. It is the rainy season now, so it is common to have torrential downpours for many hours of the day, but when the sun is out, it is fierce. We are learning the basics of life here, such as washing our clothing by hand and hopping onto a packed bus. As part of our formal education, we learn about different Honduran ethnic groups, and yesterday we were able to meet with representatives from 7 different groups from around the country. We spoke with them, sampled their food, and learned about the specific issues each group deals with.

We´re playing lots of soccer with the neighbor kids and we´re enjoying trying all sorts of new food. We hope all is well with all of you and look forward to hearing from you soon. We may not be able to respond in a timely manner, but we will try to get back to you as soon as possible.

Love,

Daniel and Emily

Hello everyone. We just wanted to post once more on the eve of our departure to share a bit of news, which is as follows: we'll only be posting sporadically, and certainly not very often over the next few months due to limited internet access during training. However, stay tuned and please continue to write emails - we'll be very pleased to receive them. Best wishes and we look forward to being in touch.

We just created our journal and thought it may be nice to write an initial post. Well, let's see, where do we start? Today we were bitten by all sorts of crazy spiders, monkeys, and other volunteers, including one another. We thought we were tough enough to handle the Peace Corps, but phew! Ok, so in fact it's 10:40 on Monday, June 2nd and tomorrow's a work day here in Portland, Oregon. The only news we have thus far is that we'll be attending our staging event somewhere in the States from July 7th to the 9th, before flying to Honduras. Thanks for your interest in our goings on, and stay tuned for the next update!

Em and Dan