...there was talk of boiling me into a biscuit at one point

November 6
It was a little over a week ago that I returned from my five day excursion to the north of the municipality, cold and wet and sick. That next week was largely spent recovering and staying in and it did the trick because I feel much better now. I slept or took naps like it was my job, took a steady dose of medicine Gen had given me, washed my clothes, cleaned up the house a bit, and organized my work stuff but that was largely it for productivity for the week. Gen recently asked me to help out coaching her baseball team of 8 to 12 yr olds so that has been on the agenda as well. I love it because at the moment it is the first honest to goodness work I am actually doing in the town of Victoria. I ran practice on my own on Thursday and Friday because Gen was out of town and that was an experience. “Bad News Bears” is the term that comes to mind—my hopes for a well-oiled baseball machine did not survive the first drill I planned for them. In my defense it was my first practice solo with them, but I failed to grasp just how unimportant they view fielding, or how small some of them are, so I did not anticipate how frightening that throw from the shortstop position to first base would be. Collecting the ground ball I threw towards them was difficult for many and then throwing accurately to the first baseman was just not in the cards. Most of the throws were moon-shots that traveled nearly as far vertically as they did horizontally, very few of which landed within several feet of first. I scrapped the next few drills I had planned because they had an increased degree of difficulty, not something that would have been helpful to anyone. We scrimmaged next, and there were some bright spots, but it is probably enough to say that every time I turned to ask the defense how many outs we had or where the next throw was going the outfielders were lying down or throwing their gloves up in the air and catching them. Hey, we’re not the Red Sox, but we’re working at it…

In other news that endless cloud-cover, nonstop rainy weather that I had in my travels while in the north of the municipality has settled over Victoria itself recently. On Friday afternoon I was talking to a friend who works at the mayor’s office and was planning on visiting a bee farm (????) the next day. He invited me to go along to see it but told me we’d only go if there was sunshine because when it’s cloudy the bees are much more “bravas” or brave/aggressive and we’d get stung. There was sunshine as we had that conversation and since then the sun has not made an appearance. We’re going on four days now of constant drizzling or outright rain and not a speck of blue skies or sunshine. It is actually cold here now—Gen was wearing a scarf yesterday, I am wearing long sleeve shirts and a sweatshirt when I go out, I no longer run the fan at night when I go to bed but now need to go out and find a blanket! It is a climate of mourning, one that seems appropriate due to BC’s first loss of the season. FSU. FSU. C’mon!

November 8
Still no sunshine, still an off-and-on drizzle that makes every path and road here a muddy mess. Some buses can not get to their destinations because of the mud and the hills. It’s still cold but I am healthy again, gracias a Dios, and have not really accomplished a whole lot this week. One of the two communities that I need to return to in order to correct problems with the conduction line gave me the red light for work this week. I had planned on working up there this week but on Monday spoke with a member of the community who had helped carry a pregnant woman from that village down the three hour trek in a hammock. Because of that and other reasons that community will be largely absent this week and unable to do any work on the water system. We re-scheduled for over the weekend because I need to be on the North Coast for a PC meeting in the middle of the next week. So nothing this week but Sunday we’re on through Tuesday when I need to come back.


November 12
Well, the Sunday deal did not happen—it is Monday now and I should be in a village making adjustments to a conduction line. But no. No one showed so I am still here in Victoria, rotting in my current streak of unproductiveness. In two days I leave for that PC meeting and until then I have more Newsweeks to read, I guess. Can’t fix problems in village number one because it requires a piece of equipment I do not currently have and need a wat/san engineer buddy to bring. He’s ocupado at the moment, you know, working near his own site. Understandable. Frustrating, but understandable. Village number two with problems requires only that someone come down and make the journey with me, since it is over three hours and I have only done it once and would likely get lost along the way and end up eating roots and poisonous berries. This is not the first time that my bag has been packed and ready to go and nothing happened. Argh.

The part about the current moment in my life that forces me to smile and enjoy God’s sense of humor is that my week and a half of zero progress has aligned itself perfectly (and coincidentally?) with one of the busiest extended periods in Gen’s schedule. Devotees will remember that my sitemate is named Gen, and while she is as professional as PC volunteers get and generally always has something going on, is not always leading a week-long (and all day Saturday) leadership conference deal for youth in the town and immediately following it up the next day (Sunday) by taking several people from neighboring villages into Tegucigalpa for free cataracts surgery. And this all-hands PC meeting that everyone in the north MUST attend later in the week? Oh, she will not be in attendance because on those dates she is running a training program for midwives in the area. Uh huh. Sounds about right to me. Youth leadership. Cataracts surgery. Midwives training. All in a two week span. What does my similar two week span entail? Several Newsweeks read. Several meals cooked. I washed my sheets. Oh, and I’ll go to this PC meeting. And that’s about it. Excellent. I know that comparing yourself to others is never a great idea and that once I get over this temporary hump that I have a ton of work to get done before Christmas. But at the moment it is as if I am stuck in Groundhog Day and that everyone else is going at warp speed. Dont cry for me, America, I´ll be OK.