The seal is for marksmanship and the gorilla is for sand racing…

September 16
OK so now it is Sunday and I am back home in Victoria. Yesterday was Honduras’ Independence Day—several Central American countries mark the same day as their liberation from Spanish rule—so there were parades all over the country. Unfortunately I was not back in my town as the day began but in the capital, Tegucigalpa, returning from the tail end of the “re-connect” water volunteers had had during the week. Apparently my town was all partied out from their celebration two weeks ago—it was the anniversary of the foundation of Victoria—and so by the time our bus rolled in around noon there was nothing left of the parade and whatever festivities had happened during the morning. Apparently it was one heck of a parade but I missed out. At night there was a “fiesta” which amounts to basically a town dance. And since only young people generally go and everyone who graduates from high school here leaves to go to college in the bigger cities, it was like a high school dance. Rock the house.

September 20
This is the first week I have been in Victoria in September and it is nice to be back. I had a meeting with someone from the Spanish NGO set up for earlier in the week, suddenly re-scheduled for today and then abruptly canceled. Such is the work here so far. This week the weather has been Pacific Northwest-esque, very unusual for the normally Arizona-like Victoria. There have been clouds at nearly all times of the day and the rains have begun earlier in the afternoon than normal and at night they have been intense. The first two days of the week it rained very hard and my newly patched roof did not stand up so well, which was a disappointment. Actually, when the guys had finished at the end of the first week of September they told me they needed to come back to put a final layer of cement mix along the corners but that was delayed because I had to leave the following week for my meeting with the other water volunteers. So in their defense they acknowledged the work was not entirely complete and the rains this week have been the hardest and most prolonged in a long time. I guess the silver lining to the leaks is that now the water is trickling down the walls of multiple rooms instead of falling in drops in the middle of the rooms. Nevertheless I spent several hours over the course of Monday and Tuesday nights running back and forth between the bathroom and main rooms to mop up the rapidly forming puddles and then wring out the mop in the shower and then do it all over again. And the cool thing that generally comes along with heavy rains is power outages, so we had a few of those going on, too. Actually those were intermittent, power leaving and coming back four or five different times over a two hour period at night, but then it would come back for good so nothing to cry about. So yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon I went to see the boss-man of the roof fixing crew, told him I was back in town and was there any way he could come by this week and finish the roof? He said he would come the next day and God bless him he came today and finished everything by himself. I can see where he put the final mix over the edges and he seems pretty confident it will do the job. Given the rains that have come so far this week I wont have to wait long to find out if he’s right.

In work news yesterday I walked with a gentlemen from a nearby town to see problems in the water system his town has. The town had a system built six years or so ago, tubes put into the ground, water flowing through them, tank built, etc., but the water never made it all the way to the tank. So the tank has been sitting empty for six years and the water that arrives in the tubes is some sixty meters below the tank. The town would like to build a new tank where the water arrives to now, but first I wanted to walk the conduction line and see where there were problems in the tubes. The gentleman who accompanied me walked the six kilometers from his house to mine, then we hiked into the hills of my town to see where the tubes to his system begin, and then we followed the tubes all the way back to his town. The general route was familiar to me because I had seen the area in the hills near my house where the tubes to his system begin and I run along the road that leads to his town generally a couple times a week. But since we were following the tubes to find leaks and cracks we were cutting through peoples cornfields and backyards so I got to see the route from a new perspective; it was pretty cool. In the afternoon after we had finished everything he lent me one of his horses and we rode back to my town—good stuff.

Oh, before I forget, Happy birthday to mr. Bacon from a couple of days ago and a huge congrats on the news, dude! You’ve got new email in your inbox…

September 22
Saturday today and while I had hoped the sun would finally come out and dry things out it’s been more overcast than even earlier in the week. The rains that have come since my roof was fixed have not, gracias a Dios, found their way into my humble home. It appears the boss-man who fixed things on Thursday was right to be confident. No more moving the fridge or laptop from room to room, no more running around mopping furiously to try and stay ahead of the puddles along the walls. Yes! I have started a little compost heap in my backyard, though, and I am worried that the recent rains are ruining it. Should a compost be covered? Normally it’s so hot during the day it bakes away any residual moisture from the night rains, but not this week. The ironic thing is I normally love this overcast, cool and slightly wet weather when I’m back in the States. But here it means clothes can’t dry on the line and my compost turns to mud.

Nothing exceptional has happened as the week has wound down. I just recently started reading “The Kite Runner” and so far I dig it bigtime.

Happy birthday, Hoonan!

September 24
Today I was supposed to leave for another village about a three hour hike from my town to begin another topo study. It didn’t happen. The intense wet weather we received in the region last week (today it was scorching hot again, not a cloud in the sky) apparently ruined what passes as a road that leads into that village. I was all packed up and ready to go and had three gentlemen tell me that it was not going to happen, probably not for months (when the rainy season ends), because the road is so bad, and that if I tried to make it solo I would surely die along the way. The road to this village is pretty rough in the best of times and is not navigable by car or bike but only on foot or horse. But the men giving me advice this morning described how I would lose the path in a sea of mud and slop along the way and find no one to help me and how even horses fall over trying to negotiate the path when it is this bad. Wow, I thought, and pictured the Dead Marshes that Frodo had Gollum lead him and Sam through on their way to Mordor! Was it the Dead Marshes? Cant remember for sure and I apologize to all the Tolkein fans but I don’t have any of those books out here.

So my plans for the week were scrapped entirely. But no worries, there is plenty of work to be done right here in my own town. It seems another companion of ridiculously heavy rains, the kind we received much of last week, is that the water system goes down here in Victoria. Yes, at the moment (Monday evening) we are approaching hour seventy two with no water coming to people’s homes. After my travel plans fell through I decided that the smart thing to do since I am a water volunteer would be to hike up to where the problems were and see if I couldn’t help out. At the very least I would learn something about Victoria’s water system. I hiked in the general direction of things, wasted about an hour not having any clue where I was going, at some point found myself on a hillside with a nearly 80 degree elevation angle to it (and there was corn everywhere—how’d they do that?!), and then fortunately stumbled across two gentlemen on their way to do the same thing I was going to do. They showed me the way and before long I saw three men repairing the tubes to Victoria’s water system. The problem, it seems, is that there are sections of tubes that run alongside, and even at points in the middle of, a not-so-small river that rushes toward the town. When heavy rains hit whole sections of tubes are washed away and the “capture box” where the system begins is filled completely with sand and rocks. Today, then, was spent watching how these guys added tubes to the missing sections and cut and sized them according to the system’s needs and then cleaning out the rocks and sand that had filled the capture box. I did very little personally aside from jumping in to help shovel out loads of sand but I did talk a little with the guy in charge of making the repairs and that was good. I was up there with the guys most of the day and when some of us came back repairs had been completed to one of the two sets of tubes running to the tank. But, unfortunately, it was not enough to help bring water to everyone’s homes because there is still nothing coming from my tap.

September 26
Whew! Water came back last night! Hallelujah! Every once in a long while there had been a very murky trickle dropping hesitantly from the outdoor tap I have and I collected and saved that like it was liquid gold. I was starting to get very non-picky about the color or content of what the tap sparingly released and what I used it for. But no more—now we can cook and wash and flush to our hearts content! Showers for all! Clearly this had a bigger impact on the gringo—the rest of the town was doing fine, I am sure—but I’ll be damned if this wasn’t my first briefly extended period sans agua. Perspective is needed, of course, because the communities I am visiting and attempting to help have no water system at all and often go to a nearby (or not so nearby) stream or well than can dry up considerably when the rainy season ends. Yes, I’ll take my perspective…just give me some water, too.

Reif, you have an email to read…oh, and happy birthday buddy!

She’s not that Mexican, mom, she’s my Mexican…and she’s Columbian or something.

Ok, a tip of the hat to my sister as I begin a new feature to El Amor Prohibido…the rolling update!

August 31
Just got back from the village I visited earlier in the month, this time to finish the topo study. Another excellent visit, this time spent going from the tank to every house. Overall it took four days to complete, even longer than the conduction line. I really should write some more about it because I loved being up there and doing it but it was the same thing as the last time, just alongside the roads of the town. I stayed with the same family and they were great and I love doing the work and left on Thursday afternoon feeling like I had been very productive. I haven’t done anything yet, just to be clear, but the grunt work portion of the system design is now complete.

September 2
First off, I really can not believe it is already September. That happens to me when I am back in the States as well, so really having nothing to do with being in Honduras for the first summer of my life. But seriously, where have the last few months gone? College football has already begun (and with an opening weekend win for BC and major loss at home for Notre Dame, can it get any better?), pro football is not far behind, baseball is entering crunch time, tennis is in the year’s final grand slam…it’s a good time to be a sports fan. The truth is that at the moment I am enthralled with soccer and I take it in any shape or color I can get it (including the MLS!), but no matter where I am there is always the nostalgic tug of the sports I grew up watching and will always love. But I digress…

Yesterday, the first day of September, was the anniversary of the founding of Victoria, Yoro as a town 105 years earlier. As such there was a little festival throughout the day which began with fireworks at 4am (I was still asleep, have no doubt) and then a parade several hours later that included all the municipal workers and schoolchildren and teachers. My sitemate and I were out with cameras in tow, documenting the action, and it really was a festive atmosphere. After the parade several tents appeared in the main square area and people were selling all sorts of local dishes for several hours as a band from a neighboring town played. By about 1pm or so the excitement was fading and the sun had sapped what was left of everyone’s energy, but overall a good day and unique experience.

September 6
Today is Thursday and I just returned from several days of “seclusion” spent near the center of Honduras with about a dozen other volunteers that had been plucked from the north to wait out Hurricane Felix. We stayed in a modest hostel type compound and though there was very little to do for the three days we were there they did feed us three meals a day, so we had that going for us. As far as I know Felix did not do too much damage to Honduras—areas of the north and west had flooding but overall the country was fortunate not to have the casualties that Nicaragua sustained. In our little campsite area there was some rain but nothing unusual and very little wind at all. Overall the reunion with fellow volunteers was good for meeting new people, getting to read (a lot), and playing some Beirut (just a little). There really is not much to do here and unfortunately I have to come back to this exact spot next week for a “re-connect” meeting with all the wat/san volunteers. This week was supposed to be another topo study in a different village but that plan was chucked as soon as I got the call Monday morning to meet in a new city by the end of the day.

When I arrived back to my town I found three guys repairing the roof of my house. Good to have the work begin, absolutely, but it does mean the house is now full of broken tiles and other debris and mountains of dust. Once this is done it will be so nice to not have the fridge in the living room and not have to move my laptop from spot to spot when it starts raining. As soon as the guys left for the day I swept and cleaned just as much as necessary to do a little cooking and not breath in dust all night, and took out mr. laptop and sat down to a few choice episodes of arrested development. Aaahhhhh, it’s good to be home!

September 10
Monday morning now as I write and just found out last night by talking with another volunteer that I don’t need to leave today for the reunion with team water/sanitation. That deal starts tomorrow but not first thing in the morning so there’s no need for me to jump on a bus today—I’m hoping I can make it there by noon mañana. Great weekend just completed out here. First off, the roof is done and looks solid. Surprisingly there has not been an extended rain to test things yet but I am very hopeful. So in fact most of the weekend was spent cleaning things up after the roof guys left and re-organizing yada yada yada but now its all done and the casa looks good. Saturday night I was cooking myself some dinner when in stopped a couple of friends of mine from town to say hi and we all ended up eating what I had cooked together. This type of thing happens all the time to my sitemate, but since I had moved into the house this was the first time for me. Excellent stuff…can you say “town integration”? Then on Sunday night a friend of Gen’s who is a volunteer from a nearby town came by and we all piled into her kitchen to help her cook an amazing dinner. By help I mean we watched her kind of closely and occasionally got in her way, of course. Anyway, here was the meal: breaded chicken fried in sesame seeds, covered in a mandarin chile sauce with wild rice and steamed broccoli on the side. Really? Let’s be clear: this is on another level of meals from what I was cooking for myself in San Diego, so you can imagine what I’m whipping up in Honduras. Needless to say it tasted even better than it looked and it looked damn good. Then we all sat down to a special viewing of the original “Nightmare on Elm Street”. It is creepy, in case any of you had forgotten, and despite some bits of horrendous acting it holds up pretty well.

September 14
Just finished the four day reunion with water/sanitation kids. It was a good time but I am eager to get back to my site because tomorrow is the day Honduras celebrates its independence. Also, I haven't checked internet yet so I have no idea how things are going in the world of sports--ie, don't mock me for a Redskins score I dont know yet!

Talk to everyone soon. Much love, Joe