...Lord knows they´re squinters!

September 21, 2008
Yes, the rolling update is back and yes, I am only just beginning this entry now, two months after I posted my last one. We’re not going to dwell on that, are we? Ok, I am back in Victoria and many things have changed. This will be a quick entry because I am going to bed soon so I can get up and run for the first time in over two months—but I had to start sometime so why not now? See? I haven’t written an update in two months, I haven’t run in two months…I abandoned other things, not just the blog! Like I said, I am back in Victoria and am typing this section on a brand new computer…ok, its not brand new but its new to me. Mine finally broke down (it was nice enough to give me a lot of notice) and a friend (Mr. Joseph William Cutrone) did the amazingly generous act of finding a workable used one and then flew it down to me here. So, new computer. Also, this is my first full day here in my site since my last bit of vacation ended, and third full day in the month of September. Finally (just for now), I am the only peace corps volunteer here in Victoria. The inevitable has happened, and actually it happened three weeks ago. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending) I have not had to come to grips with Gen’s departure yet because ever since she left I have been entertaining friends or going to PC mandated trainings. But no more.

I just want to throw out this bit of Victoria knowledge for you guys, too, even at the risk of sounding like I am whining. The loaf of wheat bread I just bought at the grocery store in San Pedro Sula is nearly gone after, you got it, one full day here in Victoria. Why? No power from 6:30 this morning until 4pm meant that lunch was tuna fish sandwiches (followed by pb&j for dessert). And rains starting at 5pm meant that water in every faucet came out looking like chocolate milk an hour later and so dinner was grilled cheese sandwiches (followed by pb&j for dessert). After a couple of weeks outside of this sleepy little town I was not expecting this kind of welcome, but what are you gonna do?

September 22
Yes, its Monday and I DID run today for the first time in two months! That’s the good news—the bad is that work kind of took a backseat to stupid little errands that occasionally dominate my mornings such as getting vegetables and/or tortillas, a new water jug, cleaning supplies for clothes and the house, etc. I have one design I should finish and turn in this week and another that is nearly done but has altitude issues. After three weeks of being mostly out of Victoria and away from work I have an intense desire to not get on another chicken bus for several months and to bury myself in work. That last one is probably a symptom of Gen leaving, too, but the truth is I have no time to be bummed about it because later this week her replacement arrives. A new pc volunteer here in Victoria to continue with the work Gen started—I don’t envy her a bit! But that will be exciting and I vow to do more for the newbie than Gen (“The Ice Queen”) did for me when I first arrived. Haha, kind of a joke…kind of not!

Bueno, so where did the last two months go, you ask? I don’t know exactly but they did go quickly. The last entry was in early July and two weeks later it was bottling day for our beer-making experiment. Here are some pics:



This consists only of boiling some sugar water (me), adding it to an empty 6 gallon bucket (me again), siphoning the bucket of wort that was fermenting in my closet for two weeks into the new bucket (Gen, finally), then slowly filling bottles (me) and capping them (Gen). Much quicker than the beer making day and with a much better payoff—individual bottles of a nearly beer-like substance! The bottles then went back into the closet to ferment for another two weeks…

In the meantime there were only two noteworthy events for the rest of the month. The first was that Gen and I met up with some of her friends and hiked the highest peak in Honduras, Celaque, at a whopping 2849 meters above sea level. This is not nearly the hike that La Picucha is though it definitely has challenging parts to it. Everything was made much easier by the fact that one of Gen’s friends is dating a Canadian volunteer who has a car—it’s a tough road from Gracias, the town at the mountain’s base, to get to base camp. Luckily we did not have to sweat that. It rained most of our time hiking but there were some unbelievably beautiful sites along the way, including a cloud forest for the last two or so hours to the top.

Then the last week of July I joined up with a new wat/san volunteer who lives in a town 2.5 hours from Victoria, the only other wat/san’er in the department of Yoro. She brought her theodolite and we did a brutal study of the conduction line of an aldea in the mountains. The study was brutal for a couple of reasons—first was that the water source for the village in question is in the bosque on the other side of a completely different aldea. So with a normal study you have a rough first day or two because you are slowly working your way out of the forest and making it towards the town. Not with this one. Because our goal was not the village closest but another one entirely we actually had to cut the long away through everything to get to the best point from which to leave the area. For each of the first three days we had successively longer hikes from the houses where we were staying to the points where we had finished the previous day—it is counter-intuitive, of course, and was brutal.

For some reason this study brought out the worst in our skin, as well. First off, both Emelina (the volunteer helping me out) and I have eczema and at the end of the week it was pretty well taking us over. It has been almost a non-issue for me here in Honduras, gracias a Dios, but after this study it was devouring my hands—MUCH, much worse than I’ve ever had it. Aliens were building little cities on my fingers is what it looked like, painful cities. Poor Emelina had it along her waist and all over her legs. So, there’s the eczema. Then there was other stuff. Along the way we encountered a fairly substantial thicket of thorns and had to get through it. I being the idiot gringo, grabbed the machete of an older gentleman and joined the rest, hacking away. Literally everything we were swinging at was covered in thorns but somehow I was the only one whose follow through carried his hands into said thicket…several times. There were probably a dozen little blood streaked mini-cuts on my hands and fingers after this little adventure. Much better than my compatriota, though, who somewhere along the way managed to get microscopic insects in her skin. A month later she could not join us for a going-away party for Gen because she was still getting rid of the buggers. Yikes.

By the way, I realize that I forgot to mention something. This new computer I am using (which is awesome, Joe) unfortunately does not have DVD capability. Which is fine except it means that my Arrested Development discs, the ones that just recently found their way back home to Victoria, are likely to sit and gather dust for my remaining eight or so months here. And that means no clever blog entry titles…

September 27
Saturday now and the week has been a good one. I made it back to give computer classes to my fifth and sixth graders, so that was excellent, and I have very nearly finished a design of another aldea. The other major thing I had to do this week was sort through the load of stuff Gen left for me. Some of it was ok (medical supplies), most of it was not (EVERY SINGLE spice she had in her kitchen, most of which I already had). A completely empty coffee creamer jug was among the contents, as well. Completely empty. Coffee creamer. I don’t drink coffee (she knows this), but even if I did it would have served little purpose because it was completely…empty. Thanks for that, carrot!

Back to the past two month review…we were done with July, no? August does not have a lot written all over it but it was a memorable month. That conduction line study that destroyed my skin (eczema, death by a thousand cuts) went into the first few days of the month. A few days later was the BIG day…beer tasting day!! Gen and I handled it very casually, very much without pomp and circumstance—after all, we weren’t sure it wasn’t going to taste like cardboard water. We lucked out, though, and it was remarkably good. It ended up being a medium-bodied brew that had a malty character surrounded by a nutty aroma—but that’s just how I would describe it! It was an English Brown Ale according to the beer kit and the taste of a dark beer on my lips was something special. Gen and I would be on occasionally divergent paths throughout her final three weeks but every time we were both in Victoria we enjoyed our ale and it really only lasted until the end of the month.

Next thing I did in August was two days after beer tasting night and it might seem like a minor thing. Pele and Tek needed their rabies shots so I walked them twenty minutes to the spot, each of them on leashes (they are not used to and do not like leashes). Both received their shots without much trouble, but the incident does highlight a marked difference between mother and son that you, the loyal readers of El Amor Prohibido, should have some passing knowledge of. Pele is Tek’s mom, as you already know, but what you may not know is that Pele is not Honduran. No, and I know this may come as a shock to some. Gen rescued her as a tiny, malnourished pup on a trip to Guatemala in December of 2006. There is no telling what she had endured to that point, of course, but to be sure it left some sort of imprint on her. But lets stick to what we know—Pele is what I would call an excellent guard dog. She barks at every unknown person that approaches Gen’s front gate, period. She also barks at every single dog that even walks down the street, but that’s neither here nor there.

Pele’s affection is not easily won over but once she knows who you are she lavishes all kinds of love on you. I love this part of her. Love for owner and close friends, acceptance for people who make occasional appearances, rage and terror for everyone else. When I am gone visiting an aldea and come back to Victoria, the first time I see Pele she is jumping and clawing at the gate, whining and shrieking with joy.

Tek is quite the opposite. He is equal opportunity with his affection and has plenty for whoever walks through his (my) front gate. His reaction to my return from a trip of several days is one that I wouldn’t quite call indifference so much as muted joy—he remains in the position I found him in when I approached the gate. His eyes are fixed on me but his tail is only barely moving. I open the gate and step onto the front porch and there is still little tail movement. I turn and close the gate, then turn and head for the front door and only then does he jump up and begin the violent shaking of his butt and tail simultaneously. It’s a reaction that says, “I know who you are and, frankly, I’m not super impressed. I do love that you give me food and rub my belly, though!” People who have not seen him before are often scared of Tek because he is getting bigger, but I have zero fears that he would ever harm anyone—he loves everyone. As such, not a great guard dog.

What this comes down to, of course, is that Tek is extremely comfortable with and trusting of people and his mother trusts almost no one. This was never more apparent than when I took them both to get the rabies shot. Pele, nearing the age of two, has had this done before, and between her and her son should be the seasoned pro. No dog likes getting shots, I think is safe to say, but all dogs do not react the same. Tek was sitting upright, I held his mouth closed at the doc’s request, and he gave Tek the shot. It was over in about two or three seconds and Tek didn’t flinch, budge, whine, nothing—he sat stoic and calm. It was kind of amazing. We tried the same technique with Pele but as the doc approached she bolted. In the end we had to surround her with three or four men as I held her while the shot was administered. The whole time her head was swinging back and forth, eyes wild with fear. Pele was not the worst dog I saw at this makeshift rabies shot clinic, but she was nothing like her offspring!

Moving on, we’re now into the second half of August. I had a topo study to do of a small village and Gen wanted to see what all this wat/san nonsense was about and asked if she could come along. “Of course,” I said, wondering how our occasional shouting match would go over in an aldea of 120 people. That’s a joke, we rarely resort to shouting—its mostly passive aggressive stuff, really. Anyway, we were gone for 5 or 6 days and it ended up being one of my more memorable topo studies. There are only 19 houses but the majority are all packed in closely. That, in addition it being one of the more remote villages I have worked in, made the arrival of not one but two gringos an irresistible show that none of the children were going to miss. Seriously, within twenty minutes of our arrival after the first day of work, I had probably seventeen males between the ages of 5 and 22 surrounding me—Gen was similarly swarmed by the girls. The rest of the week preceded as such, both Gen and I directing our respective clans in an all-out gender battle. I had a few girls who were amused by my antics but its pretty clear Gen was the far superior at gaining defectors. A very fun week to say the least and another cool aspect was that Gen, along solely to see how I do a topo study and learn the ropes herself at first, brought her own expertise to the aldea. By the end of the week she had identified two children who had slight defects with their mouths, taken pictures of them and spoken to their parents. These are defects which can be fixed for free by a medical brigade from Cuba, I think, and from working with the doctors earlier in her service, Gen knows when and where the next instance of the clinic will be. It goes without saying that I had not even noticed the defects in question (in my defense, they are small and have to do with the INSIDE of the mouth), forget about the fact that I had no knowledge of the medical brigade or the services they offer. Had it been left to me these children would not have had a chance! But that was the incredible aspect to the week—we were two volunteers from completely different programs and each of us brought unique skills to the town and helped out in distinct ways. And used the aldea’s children to torment one another instead of doing it ourselves.

To round out August (and that will be the end of this entry), the final week I was in Victoria. There was nothing spectacular about this week but it was the final one for Gen in Victoria, so it was definitely sad. We had a going away party for her one night that luckily managed to be a surprise right up until the moment she arrived. It turned out pretty nicely and there were a lot of people from the town there, so it was all good. I taught classes that week as well and visited a completely new town that just had repairs done to its system, but all in all it was mellow. Gen left Victoria for good on the first of September and later that morning I left for what would be essentially three solid weeks. Those three weeks will be captured in an amateurish way in the blog entry that follows…

I miss you guys.

September 28
Just for the official record—power went out four separate times in the last seven days and currently there is no running water. I love Victoria, but this has been a rough week!

Now, in honor of her successful completion of Peace Corps service and departure from Honduras, I leave you with a Genevieve tribute. Enjoy…

PS--Ok, there is internet in Victoria now (just in time for Gen´s departure!) but at 10min a pop to load a photo, I´ll do the pictures once I am somewhere else.