I have begun a new project with a non-profit organization called APUFRAM.  We are working to make an ecological park near my town.  Please go visit the new website at ecoparkapufram.wordpress.com.  I am aware that it is in Spanish, but we are planning on publishing versions of everything in English as well.  The website should be updated frequently.

Por la multitud de quejas, aqui hay mas fotos.  De nada, papa.  

Another photo from Cuaca, Tocoa, Colon where I was making a map of a forest for APUFRAM, a Catholic organization that helps very poor children receive a good education.  

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]This is how to thresh rice.  Sorry it is long.  I wish I could speed it up 2x.

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]The combine beginning to harvest the rice in the fields of Nestor today. I rode along for awhile.

This is me harvesting. Notice my fertilizer pants (made from fertilizer bags).

The 105 bags of rice clippings waiting to be processed and weighed are now occupying a room in my house.

We harvested 105 square meters of rice Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday. My friend and fellow volunteer, Parker Filer, came from La Union, Copan, to help me, but in order to get the job done before the owner of the rice harvested on Monday, I had to hire a friend from town to help (also pictured).

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]Some sights and sounds from the carnival in my barrio about a month a half ago.

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]A video of the decorated garage for Lavina’s party

Selected photos from Lavina’s two birthday parties, one in Quebrada Honda in the mountains and one in Flores

As I was biking to my girlfriend’s house at 9:30 p.m. last night, I was thinking that a short recount of the day might make a decent post on my ever-reluctant newsfeed.  I believe I can confidently say that no one else from back home had a day similar to mine.  Of course, the fact that I even thought this shows how out of contact I am with what it means to live in the suburbs of Philly; no one ever has a day similar to mine.  Nonetheless, here is a short tale.                 For about a week, I had been waiting for a work partner to begin to irrigate his rice field.  For my Michigan Tech research, I have to do a series of soil moisture tests on five rice fields.  Later, I will harvest 35 m2 by hand to correlate soil moisture to yields.  The problem has been that this year has been exceptionally rainy; by late June, the Valley of Comayagua where I live had already received more rain than in all of the previous year.  This obviously has caused many changes to my schedule of measurements based on irrigations.  It finally stopped raining about a week ago and Néstor, one of the rice farmers with whom I work, began the process of irrigating the three fields of his that I am using.  The unforeseen complication turned out to be that, because of months of rain, the on-field irrigation canals were overgrown with vegetation and he could not irrigate quickly.  Friday, after two days of work, only one of the fields had been completed irrigated.  I usually perform the tests on all three fields at once but, based on my study proposal, the completion of one field meant that I had to start work Saturday on that one field and wait for him to finish the other two.  I woke up at 6:30 a.m. thinking that I would have about 40 minutes of work, after which I would clean up a few things in another field and head off to my girlfriend’s house to help them decorate for the birthday party of her niece.  I woke up to find, however, that it had rained all night and Néstor was not going to irrigate again for a long time.  I had to change my schedule and I went to the rice fields in order to test all three. During the previous round of tests, the rice reached about midway up my leg and my rubber boots kept me comfortably dry.  During this round of tests, as the sun shined brightly over me, I emptied out my boots, full of water, more than five times.  At times the rain soaked rice reached my chest and the water trickled down saturating my entire body.  I left the fields with my new jeans tattered at the knees.  I understand that the difficulty level of my research does not compare to sleeping night after night in the forests of Isle Royal Island in Lake Superior while researching wolves and moose, but I left the fields both soaked and parched with a new view of my work.   From there, I went home to a cold shower with muddy water filtered by an old sock tied to the faucet.  Before heading off to my girlfriend’s place, I saw that Arsenal had beat Bolton 4-1 and watched Man U squander a 3-1 lead over Everton in extra-time.  Where was the Chicharito?  These results cheered me. From about 11:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., I was at Celia’s helping out at the party.  There’s not much to say here except that, as many of you would expect, the two year-old birthday girl, Lavina, dressed herself as Tinkerbell, attempted to hit a piñata, and cried because of a clown.  At 7:30 p.m., I had to quickly get home (where I now have internet and cable – never feel sorry for me here) to my fantasy football draft.  As I was leaving, the Hernandez’ (Celia’s family) asked me if they could borrow an air mattress for visiting family friends.  So I rushed home in the rain, delivered the mattress, and returned home soaking wet for the second time that day.  After live draft, I got a call from Celia saying that one of the visiting family friends wanted to go to party in the community center.  So I changed quickly and we headed to the party at 10:00 p.m., where we danced meringue, bachata, oldies, and various other tunes until 1:00 in the morning.  It was still raining and I got home at 1:30 a.m. soaking wet yet again.  So that was my day yesterday.  I hope that this pacified those of you who had mentioned that I needed to write something again.  It’s now time for me to sit down in my hammock and read Los Ríos Profundos, by José María Arguedas.  It would have been better if I could continue streaming a Blues radio station and drank a coffee meanwhile, but the power just went off during a burst of rain and I lost my internet connection midway through Sippie Wallace’s “Midwest Blues.”  I guess I won’t be able to follow the Eagles’ or post this any time soon.  I can add that a car just past blasting a message for all Floreños that the rice farmers are to go to my office at one o’clock for an emergency meeting.  It could mean that the government once again has reneged on the agreed price for rice this year.  I have no idea what it could mean for me and my work.  

I thought I would post a few creations and collections of photos from over the years

Some pictures of the fields where I am doing my rice study

It is a rainy day and I thought I would write something short.  How many times can I say that I have nothing to say?  Would you like to know that I read this morning about the Phillies losing to the Braves?  Or that I planted six “pito” seeds this morning?  Or that I visited a well at a gas station earlier this afternoon in response to a call for my “GPS services?”  Or maybe that I have been watching Dexter recently?  Or reading Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman?  Or that I think this series of questions actually makes me appear busier than I am?      Anyway, life progresses here in the Comayagua Valley.  My brother recently left after two weeks of traipsing around Guatemala and half a month of sitting around in Flores.  We survived and have begun the planning for the great 2012 adventure to cross Asia by way of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Lake Baikal, Mongolia, and Beijing.  I look forward to the railroad’s daily variety that a dusty town in Honduras simply cannot provide.  But who expects it to?  These next few months will determine the long-term personal success of my time in Honduras.  By the end of November, I should know if my research has been completed.  The time has to come to make my legacy here: the exciting interaction of land-slope on soil humidity and, therefore, rice yields.  Putting aside overstatement, I am excited to truly begin a project with a defined and achievable goal.  I forgive myself for the project relying nearly completely on myself.  On one level, it does require that my two counterparts communicate regularly with me, but aside from a few phone calls and a bit of honesty, I require nothing from anyone else.  If I stay focused and organized, I should be ready for next year with a good set of information aimed at helping rice farmers begin to conserve water while increasing production.  It sounds too optimistic to be possible.  Aside from this study, I will be working in a few other areas.  As I have now entered my second year since leaving the USA, it is time for a new set of trainees in my project.  Thus, I will be travelling for a few days to my old training site in a few weeks in order to help on a training exercise.  It nice of them to invite me, although I suspect my proximity (1 hour) to the training site has more to do with the invite than anything else.  I will also be slowly trying to get a hold of seeds from as many species of trees as possible in order to plant them around the office property.  The goal here is to have examples of timber, forage, and fertilizer trees that I can use to discuss management options with land owners, cattle farmers, and the normal producers.  I will continue my attempts to bring Brosimum alicastrum to the valley in order to improve the nutrition of the livestock and, someday, make a business out of it.  And now you know.   

Playa Grande, Amapala, Isla La Tigra, Honduras looking out on the Gulf of Fonseca

                We were swimming in the Gulf of Fonseca at Playa Grande, Amapala.  Across the gulf past one or two unmanned and floating rowboats, we could see two volcanoes in El Salvador.  El Salvador reached around the Gulf and tried to touch Nicaragua, which acted likewise but failed to complete the embrace.  Honduras maintained its small outlet to the Pacific despite geographical and political connivances attempting the contrary.                  So we were swimming in the Honduran waters of the Gulf of Fonseca with the legal right to pass into the open waters of the Pacific.  The eight of us were enjoying the warmer than necessary and likely polluted waters off the coast of Isla La Tigra, which many think is an extinct volcano, the only one of which within the borders of Honduras, when we noticed that there was someone seated at the table where we had left our bags and gear.                  “Is that guy drinking from your water bottle?” asked one swimmer to another.                 “No.  He must have brought it himself.  Why would he be drinking from mine?” he replied.                  The Honduran boy of about 15 years of age took another swig of water and looked around sheepishly.  He seemed pretty clearly occupied with checking to see if someone had seen his crime.  When nothing seemed to be happening, he put the water bottle back in the backpack, at which point the swimmers realized what was happening.                  “Well, should I go stop him?” asked the owner of the backpack.                 “Yes, I think so,” the rest of the swimmers replied as the boy used a shirt from the backpack to wipe his face.                 The boy began to act like he was ready to open the backpack and see what else he could find.  I was worried too because I had left my wallet and phone in the backpack concerned.                  As the owner of the backpack left with another swimmer, the Honduran youth took notice of the two gringos leaving the water towards him.  He quickly stood up and went back to his friends about fifteen feet away.                  The Honduran youth came back to the table a minute later.  “Sorry, I thought it was my backpack,” he told the two gringos.  “I have the same water bottle and backpack here.”  He had curly hair cut like A.C. Slater, wore a torn shirt, and sported a euro-Speedo.  He was covered in dark mud-colored volcanic Amapala sand.                  “You have the same backpack and the same water bottle here, at Playa Grande,” said the owner of the backpack.                 “And t-shirt?” asked gringo number 2.                 “Yes, I mean, yes,” said the Honduran youth, maintaining a clear strategy to avoid eye-contact.                  “Where is it?” asked gringo number 2.                 The Honduran grunted and went back to his friends.  After a few moments, he got up again and returned to the gringos.                    “No, it really is that I have that same water bottle,” he said.                 “Ok, where is it?” said gringo number two.                  “It’s just that I thought it was mine and wanted some water,” said the Honduran youth.                 The owner of the backpack looked at him and said, “Well, I would have given you water if you had asked me.”                 The youth was stunned and his head fell back half an inch before he recovered his composure and asked with hands cupped humbly in front of him, “You will give me some water?”                 “Not now, kid.  I already gave it to you,” said the owner of the backpack.                  The youth left and went back to his friends.  In another minute, he went to the edge of the cabaña and found his dark blue jeans.  Without washing the mud-sand off his hairy legs, he put the pants on and walked away down Playa Grande towards caves full of dog doo.   

A view of the Valley of Comayagua from Mt. Montecillos.  I know it is a dark photo; I was returning from near the top of the mountain after taking some GPS measurements for a friend that wants to build a signal tower for his TV station.  

In the past two days, I have received two requests to update my “Reluctant Newsfeed,” a name that has proved itself apt.  Per these requests, I have decided to write a bit about the past few weeks despite my suspicion that it will be incredibility boring due to my tendency to include tedious details.     It has been a time of false productivity.  On the one hand, I completed two reports: one for Peace Corps and one for MTU.  Thus, I wrote more or less forty or fifty pages of reports from March 1st to March 15th.  The Peace Corps report, which limited itself to the basic details on integration, general experiences, work projects, and the number of Hondurans effected by my work, did not occupy much time.  The report for MTU, on the other hand, cost me about 20-25 hours to complete and forced me to think in depth about my projects, their relative success or failure, work plans for the next quarter, and potential thesis projects.  In effect, the process of writing woke me up to my various failings and gave me direction for the next few months.  I had focused on the Payments for Environmental Services project (PES) for the first few months.  This yielded one (very) in-depth report on Los Valles, La Villa de San Antonio, Comayagua and formulated the next socio-economic survey for Las Botijas.  It developed the template for performing the surveys in the upper watershed.  It was not a total loss.  It was, however, a failure on my part because I allowed the municipality and my office to send me to the mountains to work alone.  On one level, I had been working with someone from the mountains, but I was not successfully creating a trusting working relationship between the two interested parties (the inhabitants of the upper and lower watersheds).  Eventually, I told my counterpart and the municipality that I would not return the upper watershed alone.  I handed them my completed report and left it at occasionally reminding them of the deal while I did some research on PES projects: how to ascribe value to various environmental goods, how to manage a PES project, and what resources the Honduran government offered to facilitate the process.  This happened in mid-February.  Since then, I have focused on a tree nursery for my office.  We want to produce 20,000 seedlings annually.  The first batch of trees would include mahogany, Spanish-cedar, laurel, and leucaena.  The target market would be producers in the irrigation district with available (under- or un-utilized) land, with time to wait, that want to diversify production, and are at least mildly experimental.  As I write this sentence, I remember how specific this market is and how difficult it will be.  Nonetheless, I wrote a plan for the office and we have solicited the municipality to buy the first year’s seeds and bags in which the plants would grow.  The total price came to about $200.  It has been about a month since we first made the request.  Tomorrow, Wednesday the 23rd, we are hoping to have the final meeting to approve the project.  The problem, however, is that by all technical standards the nursery should have begun at the beginning of March because the rains begin in May or June.  The seedlings need at least three months before they can be planted in their eventual sites.  I comfort myself by thinking that this project is not designed to be a wholly rain-fed system.  We live in a dry/very-dry area with about 800 mm of precipitation every year.  This means that the eventual producers will necessarily irrigate the sites with about 500-800 mm of water each year.  This comes to about $25-40/year for water in the dry season.  It should not be a burden for farmers with the land necessary to plant in the first place.  Thus, the delay, while an unnecessary nuisance, is not a deal breaker in my eyes.  Nonetheless, I cannot help but think that my occasional laziness or acceptance of project delays has potentially cost the office a good project.  I will know more tomorrow.  It is further complicated by an upcoming trip to Olancho in the east of Honduras.  I will travel on Thursday with a Trees for the Future representative to visit another volunteer that has masica trees (Brosimum alicastrum) in his site.  I believe we will be collecting seeds and doing a workshop on air layering, which is a process by which one creates clones of a parent plant by injuring a branch, covering it in plastic with wet moss and a rooting hormone, and waiting a growing season for the roots to develop before removing the branch and planting it on its own.  It is a great opportunity to bring an incredibly useful tree to the valley where I live.  Unfortunately, without actually having the nursery going in the office, the Trees for the Future representative is unlikely to give me the seeds, which are difficult to find and only last for 15 days.  It’s a real shame because masica could dramatically improve the nutrition of cattle in the valley.  It could also be planted in plantations with irrigation to produce forage for sale.  It is a tree that I have wanted to work with since before I came to Honduras (see www.equilibriumfund.org for quick information).  Another key point about the project is that I am not completely confident in the process by which the producers would eventually get permission to harvest.  I have been studying the most recent Forest Law for Honduras (2007) and now know that the list of rights for owners of plantations only applies to plantations of 15 or more hectares.  No one is going to plant 15 hectares with trees from our office.  Thus, I have no idea what the set of rules are for people with 1-5 hectares of plantation.  This makes it harder to sell the seedlings.  The failure to sell the seedlings, obviously, would have many negative consequences.  First, we would not be able to make the necessary money to do the project again the next year without the help of the municipality.  Second, and more importantly, the nursery could be seen as an unworkable project (a pipe-dream) that should not be tried again.  Third, it could put a stop to our other project idea: a model farm at the office that would be used to teach farmers in the district about drip-irrigation, organic fertilizers from trees produced in the nursery, and forage options for cattle.  Finally, one can add to all of these complicated problems the prospect of losing my counterpart and head of our office in the next month.  He is barely paid, has a plantain plantation, and is beginning to improve his cattle herd.  Without better compensation, medical insurance, and more respect from various people, it will not be worth putting up with the headaches of running an irrigation district where being honest can bring serious problems.  It should be easy to see that work is complicated.  I did not include everything, but I hope that the readers understand a bit more about what I do here.  I hope this was not boring.  

The Dam El Coyolar which produces the irrigation water for our district

On the 7th of February, I was working in Las Botijas, a community in the upper watershed. As there are only three buses each week and it is about two and a half hours from my home in Flores, I usually have to stay at least two nights in the community between coming and going. On this day, however, after my early morning meeting with the forestry cooperative, I decided to return home early if I could find a ride. There are not many cars in Las Botijas, but because I was beginning to wait around 10:15 a.m., there was a good chance I could find a ride. I decided to wait not on the corner, where I could potentially be waiting for hours with nothing to do, but rather in the nearby corner store where I could have a coffee. After about an hour there, a man named Miguel came up to me and we began to speak about various things related to his life. He told me that he was in Las Botijas because he rented land from his aunt in order to grown chili peppers. He also told me that his car was coming soon and that he could give me a lift down the mountain. We spoke about many topics, including his time in the Honduran military and work with chili peppers, carpentry, and fixing cars. Miguel also claimed that he had played on various reserve teams in Honduran first league soccer. After about forty minutes talking to him, he began to say that he could probably take me all the way to my community, even though I told him I did not need that and that it would be dumb to spend all that money when I could take a bus easily for a fraction of the price. He insisted, however, that it was the least he could do to show that I had a friend and that the Honduran people where nice people. I had no intention of letting him do this, but when he asked that I pay him for the trouble with a soda, I decided that it was fair enough. I went to buy the soda and he came along with me to tell me which kind he wanted. When I lifted the cooler lid, he pointed to the beer, indicating that he would rather have one of those. He then reneged and said that maybe a small bottle of liquor would be a better deal for me because it was much cheaper. I made sure that he was not the person that would be driving and gave in because the price was less than a normal fare on the bus or with another car. After buying it for him, however, he left and I did not see him after. I returned to the front room of the corner store and asked the owner if the man truly had car. He told me that the man was not the owner of anything. Miguel was not an owner of a car or a renter of land or a former army sergeant or a former soccer player. I had been had. The women at the corner store told me that they had been laughing as Miguel had been talking to me because he was a known liar in the town. I smile and asked them why they had not bothered to save me from the embarrassment of falling for his lies; I can’t go around accusing every talkative hombre of being a liar. I am fairly sure they just wanted to see where it would go and, when they saw that I was going to buy something, they figured I had lots of money and that I could afford to buy something from them. I felt pretty well shamed and, after laughing and telling the story to a few people, I left for the corner to wait. A ride arrived after about another hour and I slowly made my way home on the back of a sand truck while talking to Mario, a former Carnival Cruise Line employee, about his former life on the boats, confidence issues between cultures, and the problem of the constantly falling value of the lempira.

For a long time, I waited to renew our correspondence until I had visited a nearby archeological site, thinking that I would write a short story or maybe a fake historical piece about the area.  At the very least, I thought I would have some interesting material to include in my letter to you.  My friends who were going to be my guides, however, have yet to come through and take me on the two-hour hike through the hills behind Flores to the mystified mountain community of Tenampua, where ancient Lencan peoples are said to have lived.  I have been told that they built a pueblo of some two-hundred houses and a central playing field in the hills above the valley where they farmed.  Utilizing the mesa over-looking the valley as a place to protect them from nearby tribes, they were able to live and thrive for a time before disappearing. I do not as of yet know the reason for their disappearance, but I choose to think of tragedy befalling the house of the chief, such as when their long-waited-for son, born mute and violent, killed himself by self-burial.  The town, I suppose, would have taken this as a sign that the land itself would soon swallow them all if they did not escape.  They left their safe-haven and fled west to Ocotepeque, where they intermarried with the tribes there and all knowledge of Tenampua faded to myth. This is possible, but no more so than that there is a museum in Comayagua that has the real story documented.  I fear the truth is something along the lines of a slow-fade in agricultural productivity or the degrading of social-customs through contact with neighboring hunter-gatherers.  Maybe the birth-rate dropped below 2.1, the feared “level of no return.”  I hope, rather, that the chief’s mute and violent heir destroyed the town through a random act of lunacy. I have not, however, travelled to Tenampua, so I need another reason to write to you.  I have recently been urged by my family to add facts to my letters.  It is natural that they would want to hear more about what I am doing, despite the fact that I speak to them every week on the phone and tell them about my work through that mode.  I can and probably should, however, update a bit of what it is I do here in Flores.  If you do not want to read about facts and future plans, please skip the next four paragraphs.  I hope they are not overly boring. My main project at this moment in the district office of irrigation in Flores, Comayagua, is gathering socio-economic information about various communities in the upper watershed in order that the office and the municipality can later plan a system of payments for environmental services (PSA).  The motivation for the project is that the lower watershed (the valley) obtains its water from El Coyolar, a dam built in the mountains.  Thus, the communities in the upper watershed have the ability to adversely affect the quality and quantity of water available to the populous valley.  They can do this through poor agricultural practices such as poor use, storage, or use of chemicals, improper management of soil erosion, or through the lack of treatment or containment of sewage.  Forest fires can cause many of the same problems through increased erosion.  Thus, it is in the interest of the people in the valley to facilitate better agricultural practices, better access to latrines and clean water, and protection against forest fires.  A common method to do this is to implement PSA.  The lower watershed pays the people in the upper watershed to do specific things such as fight forest fires or properly dispose of chemicals, thus both bettering the quality of water and also the lives of the mountain communities.  Payments can be in the form of cash or in the form of projects, such as building latrines or paying for the installation of electrical wires. In order to begin PSA, the planners need information about the current socio-economic situation.  This is what I am working to provide.  It is still in the beginning stages, but I have begun to travel 3-5 days at a time to the communities in order to interview the inhabitants.  At the moment, I stay with a family in a central community and walk to the others, but I have the goal to find families in the other communities so that I can be more efficient in each one.  In order to finish everything with the socio-economic interviews, I will need at least eight trips.  Assuming that I go every 2-3 weeks, it means that I need between 3-4 months to finish the project.  I want to do more than just the surveys, however, and plan to do a few analyses of the forests and agricultural lands to assess their quality and potential to help improve the livelihoods of the inhabitants.  Because of this additional goal, I do not plan to finish the first stage of the project until May. Beginning in March, I hope to intensify my involvement with the rice farmers.  I have become quite interested in the economics and challenges of rice farming in the valley.  I would like to work with the farmers to manage water more efficiently on the fields.  Simple faults at this present time include the absence of berms (small retention walls to keep the water in the field) and fields with too much slope.  In order to work against these problems, I need to work to understand the economics affecting the practices and the role that tenancy plays.  Regarding the former, farmers choose to do or not do certain actions based on the belief that they will or will not profit.  I need to create a model that can help a farmer decide if leveling the fields and building berms will help him.  Regarding the latter, I need to interview owners and renters of land to understand the current land use contracts and find out if a new system could help encourage renters to make land improvements.  The current system allows for an owner to end a contract and demand the use of his land when he wants it.  This keeps a farmer from improving the land for fear of losing the right of use.  Finally, I want to try a sample plot of native and imported seeds under managed conditions to see if the farmers should look into asking for access to other varieties. I do not know if I can do any or all of these things.  Almost assuredly, this is too much for me to do, but these are my current goals.  I also want to casually try planting masica (Brosimum alicastrum), a wonder tree, in the area to see if it can be used in the area as a forage alternative for dairy farmers.  It can be safely said that I have plenty to do for the next year before I begin adding my graduate research to the activities. I hope that this blurt about my doings satisfies most readers and avoids completely boring the others. We return to speculation and vague updates in future entries.

Lunch near Cantaranas with the brother-in-law of a former president of Honduras after helping prepare his plantain plantation for the installation of a new irrigation system.

More of the tour of Corojo Farm marketed under Camacho name.  This is the first step in the drying process.

A personal tour Corojo Tabaco Farm in the Jamastran Valle with the head farm manager and head of tabaco processing.  The corojo seed was smuggled out of Cuba after the beginning of the embargo.

My new house, the first floor en barrio de La Curva, Flores, Comayagua

I saw a girl of eleven delivering plastic chairs today to the office in a ’94 Isuzu manual pickup truck and thought it was a good opening for a post about children.  I will apologize here if anyone thinks that my surprise sexist, but I will openly say that I have been regularly seen and reacted similarly to seeing 11-year-old male drivers as well.  The legal age of driving here is eighteen, much like most of the continental USA, but the near-absolute absence of law enforcement brings the number down to about ten for talented rural youths.  They probably all stay off the highway until at least sixteen, but the point is made.  This girl of eleven was no fluke; she can drive a manual pickup with more skill than about 95% of Americans (I believe that is three standard deviations and significant). The truth is that children learn many life-skills earlier in Honduras than they do in much of the developed world.  I am not saying this is a good thing, but the absence of working legislation means that some people that are able to do something with skill (i.e. drive) do so freely.  The obvious downside of this is that there are people that should not be operating machinery and, while I have not heard of this contributing to any accidents, I suppose it must. One can argue, however, that necessity drives this trend of early skill acquisition more than the absence of the leviathan.  For one thing, adult males are hard to come by for jobs.  This is due to various causes, such as those of simple abandonment and working in the USA.  Flores sends many of its men to Houston, New Jersey, Orlando, and North Carolina (I can here mix states and cities in much the same way that Hondurans struggle to understand that Philly is my city and not my state).  With fathers and brothers absent, therefore, children (boys and girls) learn to drive cars and tractors, manage crops and cattle, work in the family store, and hunt early in life. For all of this self-sufficiency, however, it is difficult to find this same mentality towards education.  It can be found, but it also almost always tied to necessity or ambition, both of which are tied to the acquisition of money.  My counterpart, Carlos, is an example of this.  His father did not value education in the least and pulled him out of school at the age of eleven to work on the farm.  Carlos thought that education was the ticket to real wealth and success for Honduras and, consequently, went to night school while working during the day.  He eventually went to university and is now an agronomist.  This is an example of seeing education in the pragmatic sense.  It is valuable. Pure love of knowledge, however, rarely shows its face; I have not found it.  I do not know if it goes back to the old hierarchy of needs, but it seems that many Hondurans are in the process of satisfying physical needs and foregoing activities tied to aesthetic creation (notable exceptions include a wood and hide worker I met in a friend’s community on top of the Montaña de Comayagua and the backyard gardens of most residents).  But as for the other creative arts, who is going to read and write books for pleasure and teach their kids to do so when the family needs to eat, when a car accident could easily wipe out a year’s pay? Also, how does the habit of creation begin without examples?  On one level, Hondurans have examples: the novelist, Ramón Amaya Amador, the poet, Roberto Sosa, and the painter, Velazquez.  I have a list of some six important Honduran authors, but I am yet to find anyone that knows anyone other than these three figures.  This can be narrowed down further by asking them if they have read one of these authors.  The answer is nearly always the same: no.  Everyone knows that Amador wrote Prision Verde (Green Prison), a novel about the banana farms and exploitation of the poor in the north coast.  They say that it is historical and that Amador is the best Honduran author, but no one has read it.  On at least one level, I can understand why no one has read it: it is not that good.  I have read half of it and it is little more than a piece of propaganda for the revolution of the proletariat in Honduras.  I keep reading it because it teaches me Honduran Spanish, has a few interesting parts, and because it is technically important to the literature of Honduras, but I think I will be moving on to Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Columbia for future authors. Somewhere in the mess between independence and the present, Honduras lost itself.  It supplied the leaders in the independence of the five states of Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras.  It was the bright star in the middle of the first flag (the one still employed by Honduras).  Now, however, it has a corruption rating only better than Nicaragua in Central America and is second in poverty to Haiti in the Western Hemisphere.  As one leader of ours said, “Honduras fell apart.” And so the children drive cars.  They go to the milpas of corn and frijoles to harvest food for the family.  While the mother is cooking dinner and caring for the littlest children, the twelve-year-old children drive the oxen back to the house for the night, and the fathers are in Houston, doing God knows what between phone calls and bank deposits.

Farm of Don Martín with the Mountains behind Flores, Comayagua, Honduras

Chendo, Darcin, and Josue (front to back) A Job Finished (Chendo, Edis) The point of this entry is to simply say that things are going well here in Barrio de La Curva, Flores, Comayagua, Honduras.  My first week of work here was a busy one, crowded out with efforts to learn Spanish, learn the irrigation system, read about forest management and watershed management, and understand the community.  I consider every action here a part of my work here because every interaction between myself and the community is an effort to build a healthy friendship and working relationship; every choice I make affects the way that I am perceived here.  At times, thinking and acting in this way is tiring, but in general it does not force me to do things that I would not normally want to do or hinder me from doing things that I would want to do. For example, one extra activity this week has been helping (loosely used) Chendo and his three sons with their work with the cattle in the mornings.  We leave Flores around 5:30 a.m. and head out to Lamani to where he, Carlos (my counterpart), and Chendo’s brother, Roney, have about 80 cattle, 40 of which are currently being milked.  I have gone two times with them so far.  The first time, I merely sat on the rock wall surrounding the area where the cattle were being milked.  I watched how they would let out a calf from a neighboring compound in order that it finds its mother in the groups of cows.  After letting the calf suckle for a few seconds, allowing the tubes to get started, the tie the back legs of the cow to keep it from kicking and the calf to the front legs of the cow in order that the cow feels like it is giving its milk to the calf.  Once the milking is done, the calf is allowed to empty the milk tank.  They proceed with this process until allow of the cows have been milked.  This was the first time, but the second time I began to be more useful, or at least to try to do things.  I did not milk any cow (although I have done that here in Honduras in training), but I began to get a feel of how to move the cattle around.  I felt more comfortable walking amongst the cattle in a small area.  I helped let the calves out of their area.  More importantly, after the milking, it was time for the cows to receive their monthly bath with pesticide (for the ticks).  With this, they let me help lassoing the cows and calves.  The system works like this: one person lassos a cow or calf and holds it still with the lasso around the neck or horns while another person comes and gives it a bath with a sprayer filled with a water/pesticide mixture.  We did this to all 80 cows, 35 calves, and 3 bulls.  I was not a good lassoer.  I will be working on this.  It felt wonderful when I successfully lassoed a calf or a cow (I tried once to get a bull, but failed), but I usually was not able to hit my target.  I have vowed to practice. This is one example of my work here that should not be considered work.   It is not part of my job in the office, but it helps me to get to know neighbors, who will then introduce me to other people, hopefully with a good report.  Moreover, it is something that I would never turn down the opportunity to try.  Activities like riding horses, playing soccer, milking cows, and working in the rice fields and not really work for me at this time.  I am sure that, if my whole life was taken up in these activities, they would resemble something more akin to work, but at this time, they are experiences.   I look forward each day to what “job offers” may come my way. One job offer that I am particularly looking forward to is helping a neighbor kill and butcher a bull next Sunday at 3:00 in the morning.  They do this regularly and run the show from kill to sale.  This is a useful skill that I want to learn.  I remember one time last winter when a friend’s father visited us in Michigan.  The snow was falling outside as usual.  I was sitting in my friend’s kitchen eating freshly fried fish and talking with those people gathered there for the evening.  The father mentioned that he and his family never buy meat at the supermarket.  Instead, they buy one hog each year and butcher it themselves because they are able to save a lot of money this way (they also trade meat to get chicken and beef, I think).  When I heard that you could actually do this, I wanted to learn how to do this myself as well.  Luckily for me, then, I have this opportunity here to learn how to manage a bull kill.  This sounds ridiculous to you all, I think.

I have moved.  I am in my two-year home in Flores, Comayagua, Honduras. I came here on Saturday, October 1 with my counterpart, the manager of the District Office of Irrigation.  I have met my family here: a woman of about seventy, and her daughter of about forty.  Another daughter lives next-door with her family and the youngest son of about five lives with us.  Being of the Pentecostal variety, they are different than any family I have been with before this in Latin America: serious, quiet, opposed to dancing, etc.  I guess, in some ways, they are not too different than some people I have met in the West Chester area.  They are kind, humble, generous, and incredibly religious: they go to church at least one time every day.  So, this is much different than the other families to whom I have grown accustomed. Flores has more people than I expected, probably totaling at about five to six thousand.  Nearly all of them work in agriculture, whether as owners of land or as workers on those lands.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I would be working with the most important dam in Honduras for irrigation.  This dam allows the dry plain of Comayagua to produce a substantial amount of rice.  While rice is the most important crop in the area, Flores is also known as an area for oriental export vegetables (cucumber, egg-plant, chives, onions, etc.), mangos, lemons, cattle, and horses.  Truthfully, the area produces everything imaginable except for, ironically, bananas (Honduras was the original banana republic).  Bananas only grow on the north coast where there is more rain and humidity.  In regards to scenery, I have some of the best that I have seen.  I can forgive my bosses for putting me next to the Pan American Highway (I do not feel like I joined Peace Corps to go rural) because I live in the valley between two gorgeous mountain ranges, Montecillos and Montaña de Comayagua/Corrolitos.  So, I live in an area exactly as I had hoped.  I guess that I could have hoped to not go to one of the hottest parts of Honduras, but not all desires meld together.  At least we have a football pitch with year-round irrigation and, thus, year round lush grass. It looks like my counterpart wants me to concentrate my efforts on the upper watershed.  I guess this is because he is worried about the future ability of El Coyolar (the dam) to provide water for all the producers.  It follows then that he would want to help the communities in the mountains to conserve water and to help protect the quality of that said water.  This probably consists in soil conservation work in the farms, promoting the building of latrines, working to provide strategies to harvest water for home consumption, managing tree nurseries, and, hopefully, working to promote community forest management organizations.  In order to do these things, I will be connected to the NGO AGENDA FORESTAL and to my municipality of La Villa San Antonio.  The vice-president of our board of directors at the District Office of Irrigation is also the president of the NGO.  The head of UMA (environmental office) in the municipality is a forester and was the president of our office for a long time.  Both of these organizations want to use me to help implement their projects in the upper watershed.  Among other obvious benefits of this (experience, practice, stories, etc.), it also means that I will be able to travel a good deal for my job. I will also spend a good deal of time working in the valley getting to know the producers and helping to solve problems of transparency in water management.  As with any organization in Honduras, the office has trouble acquiring necessary funds.  It is logical then that they want to work hard to limit the amount of water lost through fraud when the farmers claim to be irrigating two hectares but are really irrigating six or ten.  In order to do this, the manager wants to measure each producer’s land with a GPS and use the computer to calculate how much water each farmer should be irrigating.  I would like to help with this because it would help me to get to know the farmers and provide a good means to help educate my coworkers in a useful skill.  We lack at this moment, however, a working GPS and an ArcGIS or equivalent program for management of GPS data (I know that for many readers, this information is quite boring, but I am mentioning some of these things so that anyone with experience with these things will maybe send me an email with ideas). Finally, the other line of opportunity for work that I see at this moment is at CEDA/DICTA (Department of Agricultural Education/Department of Agricultural and Livestock).  This facility, which was built and developed by the Japanese during the 80s and early 90s before handing it over to Honduras, is only about 25 minutes from my town, near the city of Comayagua.  They have four labs there: soils, concrete, hydrology, and plant physiology.  They have many of the machines, chemicals, etc. that I have seen in the labs at Michigan Tech, but do not know how to use many of them.  I will then help to translate manuals and also help to demonstrate their use.  They have classes every week with high school and college age students.  They will give me a calendar of events and I can choose with which events I want to help.  I see this as a good way to get to know more people, to practice Spanish, to learn about the labs and how they work here in Honduras, to relearn certain things, to open up opportunities for work, and to set up connections for when I eventually need to use the labs for my own research.  Combined with my proximity to the labs at ESNACIFOR (the national school of forestry), I feel quite lucky for these resources. Nonetheless, I see difficulties to include difficulties to integrate into such a large place.  I never expected to have to face this challenge.  The situation here is complicated; they have many organizations working in the town and have about six barrios with various socioeconomic levels.  It will take some time to understand what exactly I should do here.  I will never know everyone here; I will not know their opinions, their needs, or their desires.  This is something that I need to think about in the coming months.

A View of Tegucigalpa from the Mountain above Los Planes

Why is that that some people desire for one place in which to remain and others cannot stop hopping from one local to another?  I have one friend much like myself here.  He finds himself antsy when in one place for any long period of time, but he feels a strong desire to overcome this and find a place in which he can remain.  He sees his time here as an opportunity to live in one village for two full years without leaving for any significant amount of time.  He hopes that his life on the top of the mountain with 300 Hondurans will teach him to stay still, to delight in monotony, and to develop an understanding of place.  I understand this perspective.  I have not truly moved away from my home in West Chester for any great period of time, but I also have lacked any consistency of place.  Every three to five months, for the past five years, I have moved back and forth from home to school in Grove City, back to home, back to Grove City, to Alaska, to Grove City, to Europe, to home, to Grove City, to Michigan, and now to Honduras.  When looked at this way, it is like a bird slowly flying in larger and larger circles away from home.  It is like Noah’s dove that first returned to the Ark with nothing, then a branch from farther away, and eventually failed to return at all. There is no need to delve too deep into all of this, but I do think that it is interesting, this great desire for movement, but the constant feeling of lack because of it.  If I wanted to copy the old speech about national identities, I could make the case that part of the American identity is that of expansion and the accompanying desire for exploration.  Since the beginning of the USA, its people have search out locations, settled them, and sent their kids onward to new lands.  We constantly search out cities and states to which we can move, whether for adventure, love, or work.  We think very little of moving away for these things.  After all, we have cell phones, internet, and airplanes.  We do not have the habit of habitation and we do not have the technological or economic necessity to remain.  Our minds/souls, therefore, are not encouraged think about the childhood home as future home.  Once we have reached adulthood, then, we move away, search out homes, and often feel the lack of community because not only do we move around, but our neighbors also do so. It is possible that this can be understood better with a sense of contrast.  I read an essay last winter by Josef Brodsky in a café in Calumet, Michigan.  It was entitled something like, “An Essay on St. Petersburg.”  In it, he spoke about the Russian soul and its lack of the explorative quality.  He attributed this to fact that Russia is essentially landlocked; it does not have an ocean over which the people dreamed of foreign lands.  St. Petersburg has this quality, but it is a new creation for Russia, the product of Peter the Great.  He ordered its construction and forced its creation in a place that should not have housed a city, much like Sutpen’s tremendous struggle to build Sutpen’s Hundred out of the Mississippi mud.  It is no wonder, then, says Brodsky, that St. Petersburg fostered the flowing of Russian literature; it was a place where the imagination could experiment, as exemplified by the variety of architecture to be found there in the styles of various periods and countries, the product of an empty canvass.  Out of the city’s creation, two things occurred: Russia became a creative power and confused itself.  The people were rewarded by new possibilities, but were damaged by the splitting of its old self-identity and patterns of thought.  Maybe there is something, therefore, to our American history and the habits that it has engendered.  Generations of movements without overly noticeable consequences but many obvious rewards, both physical and mental, has encouraged many people to forfeit given places for hard-won new ones.  The desire for new experiences, to see everything, to know every local, is something that is paid for by the forfeiture of place and stability.  My friend and I, among many other examples, are not, however, different or unexplainable; we are a part of a faction of Americans that has always existed.  Whether this quality has been misguided, ethical, or ill-used is another article.  

Time drags on here in Los Planes, outside of Tegucigalpa, that quiet city turned city of confused conflict.  No one knows the eventual outcome here, whether Zelaya will be reinstated, whether Micheletti will hold out, or whether some foreign organizing power will intervene and cause some unseen resolution.  In reality, moreover, the particular resolution itself matters little to me; I only care that there is resolution; I want to move on to Las Flores, where I can live, work, and remain.  I do not want to linger here pretending to study and feigning interest in lectures about the same old topics.  We are here, nonetheless, and will stay here at least until Thursday, October 1st.  I will not discuss the political situation here for a variety of reasons.  First, I already said that resolution itself is the end necessary.  Second, I do not have all the facts.  Third, people have many opinions based in self-interest.  Fourth, Peace Corps could send me home if I said something with too much force or said something that could be misconstrued.  And finally, I cannot change a jot with my words here. I wish I could write more about happenings here, but there is little to tell.  I am sitting here listening to “If the Brakeman Turns my Way,” by Bright Eyes, in a house among the pines and in the shadow of Honduran mountains.  The sun has set and the light rain of the afternoon has only recently stopped falling.  I saw the dried streams two days ago on a hike up the mountain; they are still the same.  I would say that the people could use the rain here, but the pilas are full and the residents of Los Planes are not farmers.  They work in Tegus and collect remittances from relatives in the US.  We are in a state of limbo here: things are happening but if feels as if one is watching many people fight with feathers for months at a time.  If only something real would happen; if only one of our many desires became needs and that one of these needs was then fulfilled. 

I have seen two very different Latin American nations and have noticed at least one similarity: the people have no qualms living with large wasp nests only a few feet away from their faces. Two out of the three houses I have lived in have had large wasp nests built on the ceilings of their porches. In addition to this, we also have a few wasp nests growing daily on the ceiling of the porch at our training center. The twenty of us have class underneath four hundred wasps. When one of us is stung, no one seems to notice. My family in the Dominican Republic casually accepted my going away gift: a bottle of wasp killer. I doubt they have used it. I do not know if Latinos know something that I do not know on this subject, that maybe the wasps are protecting us from something much worse, but I am astounded that the people do not seem to notice or care. I guess I am still getting used to things. It is strange to think that I have been here in Honduras for over one month and have been away from West Chester for over two months. What this really means is that training is closer to its end. We have only one week left here in La Cuesta before we move back to Zarabanda and our first families in order to finish training. So, technical training and language training are going to end in the near future. I am fine with the technical training ending, if only because it is a lot of surface level stuff, much of which I learned last year at Michigan Tech. Language training, on the other hand, could probably go on for at least another month and be incredibly helpful. I am feeling fairly comfortable with Spanish; I am confident that I could go to my site, communicate, live, and even begin working, but I know that I am missing a lot of what is really going on here. The subtleties, and the things not so subtle, probably pass me by without my knowing it. Nonetheless, I know that in the near future, I will be alone in some corner of Honduras, possibly without electricity, totally reliant on my knowledge of Spanish. I still often think about what it would have been like if I were in Eastern Europe. Aside from differences in temperature, vegetation, language, and other factors, I imagine that the rhythm itself would be much different. This would be due, in large part, to differences in religion. From what I can tell, Latin Catholicism is much different than Eastern European Orthodoxy. Here in Honduras, all is bright, with only a hint of sorrow, and in many moments, silent. There, in the cathedrals of the east, all is dark, mysterious, sorrowful, and full of haunting music. History, as well, separates the two regions. The people here in Honduras have relatively little, I guess, in comparison to many parts of a country like Ukraine, but the people in my town here still often have cars, television, cell phones, and running water, among other things. Honduras has not had an easy history: it was part of the kingdom of the North American, William Walker, during the time of the Civil War in the USA; it has had many military coups during its history; it was a banana republic; it has had its wars with El Salvador; it has been affected by similar ideologies as the cold, dark, and depressed East. On this level, Honduras has its similarities with Ukraine and my other desired nations. It strongly resists what it sees as Socialism, trying with great effort to forge its own path, but nonetheless cannot wholly wrest itself from the tendencies of its neighbors. Who knows if it should, but this feeling of separateness definitely affects attitudes and political dispositions. On more superficial levels, also, I can see similarities between what I know of Honduras and what I imagine of Ukraine. Among other things, the similarities are apparent in music and alcohol. When I went to a wedding two weeks ago, I found out that the music of Honduras is not so much different from the folk music of Eastern Europe. I do not know if this is a result of similar influences converging on both the east and west of Europe throughout its history. Spain has historical elements similar to Eastern Europe that France, England, and others simply do not have. I am thinking here of Muslim and Jewish influences. These strong cultures have affected every culture with which they have come into contact. I think that similar undertones of these cultures can be heard in the rhythms and progressions in the music of both the far east of Europe and the far west, Spain. Clearly, Latin American folk music takes its own path from the common starting point, but to me it was comforting and exciting to think of getting into contact with some of this musicians and learning their music. And maybe someone will mail me a book on the history of folk music in Europe and its connections to Muslim and Jewish culture (a joke, of course). And then we have alcohol, that substance capable of merriment, but oh so dangerous and capable also of turning sane men and women into Jekylls; not only into Mr. Jekyll, but also capable of keeping him in this state for years, maybe twenty. I met one such fellow last night. Actually, this was just our formal introduction. He had shouted drunken questions to me at various points during the day and during my time here. This questions range from, “Hey, buddy, hey, hey, you got some money, hey?” to “Wait, friend, what time is it you have?” to “Heyyy, come back here. Why not?” It is important to know that these questions are not translated; he knows English; he apparently knows about five other languages as well. I had heard of this man of many tongues from a few people, but I never knew until last night that the man who asked me nonsensical questions at 9:30 in the morning was also the learned man of La Cuesta. Last night, however, I was sitting in the back of a pickup truck parked in front of our house here. I was talking with Tito, Dani, Suyapa, and Miguel, some of my brothers and cousins here, waiting for the rain to arrive. A man came up to us, very drunk, and naturally began talking to me because I am American. He wanted me to meet his friend RUDY. “He knows English, man, and Portuguese, French, and Spanish, man.” “That’s great, friend,” I said to him. So he went to retrieve RUDY and returned with his trophy about twenty minutes later. RUDY stumbled over to me, jabbering about nothing, and eating a frozen lemon-ice Popsicle. “Man, I have respect for all peoples, because they have respect for me, man. This you need to understand, man. I respect all peoples. Dude, mother, I was in the States for twenty-three years. Look here, I was there for a long time. My family is all there. I was in (here he listed many states). Man, I was in France…and Africa. I know many languages, and I respect you, but man, when we talk, we have the same language because we both have the same language. This we can respect. I know a lot of languages, and you can talk to me. I mean, I have a 40 (alcohol) just like, right there, I have a 40.” Here he dropped his Popsicle and proceeded to apologize for a while. He continued speaking for some time, and it was not fun. I found out that he had been in prison for at least a year in the States before being deported. The strangest thing about this man is that he was the pride of his drunken friends and, also, a point of discussion for the others of the town because of his knowledge. He has accomplished, I think, very little in his life besides learning English and convincing a lot of people that he knows other languages (I do know believe that he knows French; I asked him to translate something from French to Spanish for me and he changed the subject). It is a shame that people seem to hold him in some level of esteem when he is a terrible example of what Hondurans are. Many Hondurans work in America for the benefit of their families. While some stay there, sadly, and leave their families forever, ninety-nine percent come back here to their families with money in order to return to their farms and businesses more comfortably. RUDY is an example that hardship, in all parts of the world, Eastern Europe and the USA included, often turns people to the brew. This is sad, but it does reinforce that Honduras has many of the same issues, played out at a different rhythm and with different emphases, as my beloved eastern lands. It really is hard to compare the two, however, because I cannot imagine another place that welcomes wasps into the home. If I don’t understand this, how can I analyze the rest?

I cannot open every letter with, “Things are busy, I am learning Spanish, things changed this week, or there are always things to do here.” In spite of the fact that things are always undeniably true, will it not become rather tedious reading (and writing) this week after week? I think so. In consideration of this, I will try to mix it up in the future; I am not sure how, but this is the plan. Every morning here is sunny and hot with a touch of humidity in the air. This morning was no different; it was a perfect morning for a mule ride to the cattle ranch. We had left the house at the early hour of 5:00 AM in order to travel to La Crucita, a small village up the mountain where a young girl is from that lives in our house in La Cuesta. I sat in the back of our pick-up truck on a sack of corn, as is the custom, with my brother Miguel, my cousin Tito, and Tito’s puppy. The road was bumpy, of course, and it travelled up and up for about an hour until we reached the town. La Crucita does not have electricity, but it is a comfortable town of coffee farmers and cattle ranchers. My family had come for a mix of reasons, including gathering firewood in the nearby coffee farm of my host-father, visiting relatives, and providing me, I guess, with an opportunity to ride a mule. Alonso, the father of Merari, the girl that lives with us in La Cuesta, borrowed a grey mare from a neighbor and I rode the reliable mule of the family, Muñeca. I was given no instructions aside from, “Get on.” So I did, and we set off down the road to the left of the house. We slowly passed by neighbors, eventually coming to a most beautifully set soccer field: surrounded by pine trees, through which one looks down the valley and across to other mountains which stretch out to the distance endlessly. The ride had only begun, and I was only beginning to understand that the mule knew the way; steering was superfluous. This was lucky for me too, because the trail soon became more and more treacherous, and I wondered if the mule was going to hate me later. Alonso, however, thought nothing of throwing his mule down those steps, and so I followed. We passed vistas that people would pay to see, but I was seeing them on a complimentary mule ride in the campo of Honduras, only at the base of the mountain of Comayagua. At points, we rode at the pinnacle of two steep slopes down the mountain; at these points, we rode more slowly and let the cool breeze gently roll by us. After about forty-five minutes, we came to the barbed-wire fence of Alonso’s hacienda de vacas (cattle ranch). We passed through and began meandering around the hills looking for his cattle. When we found them, we hitched up the horse and the mule and proceeded on foot into the midst of 28 cattle. Alonso took out a bag of salt and the cattle, like dogs, began running towards us in anticipation of the treat. Alonso took out handfuls and threw them on the ground; the cattle fought over each one until there were about fifteen piles and their appetites were satiated. After this, Alonso had to do the difficult job of giving the bull a bath in insecticide. He stood there with a rag slightly soaked in the stuff and reached out tentatively rubbing down the body of el toro with yellow-labeled (strong) killing juice. At one point, el toro became frustrated, took one large swing of his head, and knocked Alonso to the ground. He laughed a bit, gave me a nervous smile, and continued the job. When he finished, we took a small walk around the area, and returned to our animals. We returned to the campo de fútbol in order to watch the girl’s game in which Merari and Savanna, a PC volunteer, were playing. La Crucita won handily 4-1 after going down 0-1 early in the first half. Everyone knew La Crucita would win: they had home-field advantage, a large gringa, and, simply, more talent. At the half, I went back to the house with Francisco, my oldest brother here. He got on the horse and I went to prepare the mule to ride. When I had the mule partly ready, it turned slightly, and almost gave me a kick in the face. This affected me some, and I rode it home gently, saying many words of encouragement. After eating freshly made tamales at the house, Francisco told me that we were going back to the campo de fútbol and that I needed to get back on my mule. Again, I almost received a kick in the face. This experience taught me that I really should get a mule here. I need to mule, however, that knows me and that I have time with to form a good working relationship. Apparently, mules cost about 33% more than horses here because they are good workers and rarely fall, in comparison to horses, but also much better behaved than burros. Maybe it will not be the most practical thing to buy, or even incredibly necessary, but I figure that this is probably the only time in my life when it will be relatively reasonable to buy a mule. I will remember though, and this was a valuable lesson, that mule kicks are not just a myth that developed from cartoons.