A long march comes to its end...

Now it is Sunday and we have only a few days left here in Sabanagrande doing our field based training. The last two weeks have been fairly eventful down here and of course the sobering news of tragedy in Virginia reached us. People in our group heard the news by around noon on the 17th because we have a Virginia Tech alum who had been reached by her mother, I think, and other volunteers had been on the internet in the morning and passed it to everyone. It covered the front page of the papers here for three days but I needed to spend some time in the internet café reading American papers to fully understand the events. What an awful ordeal, all of our hearts go out to everyone affected, wherever you are.

In trivial news by comparison, we have nearly finished up work here in our current training site. The major work in the last ten days was two presentations to locals, the first a 4 hour HIV/AIDS lecture we gave to schoolchildren two Fridays ago, and the most recent a 2 hour presentation of the ins and outs of setting up and running a local water board to members of surrounding communities. The last was more daunting because it was on a subject we are just now learning about and was given to members of current water boards or people representing villages or towns looking to set one up. We are not sure we didn’t sound like a bunch of Borats in front of them, but it was a good experience.

Better news still is, as I have mentioned a few times already, we are leaving here in a few days. Tomorrow is the day of our site announcement, the day everyone has either been dreading or looking forward to for at least a month or two by now. It is easy to get caught up in the excitement and start sweating the details of your future location, but the truth is we do not have a huge say in the matter and even if we did, what exactly can we contribute? I do not know the country well at all, have only visited or briefly stayed in three towns, so it’s probably better that someone else is making the decision for me. I wanted rural and isolated when this began, before I knew anything, and I will stick with that—seems more like a true PC experience than living in a big town. But like I said, what do I know?

In somewhat sobering news from down here we have lost a member of our group of 51, someone from one of the other programs. All the information we have in our little site is second and third hand so I do not know anything for sure except that someone was sent home by the powers that be. Since we arrived in country over two months ago this is the first person to leave for whatever reason, so it’s a little sad because we all know each other more or less. It’s no good and hopefully the last time it happens.

For fun we have done a couple cool things on the weekends. Last weekend a small group of us went on a three hour hike to a small watering hole in a not-so-nearby town. We packed lunches, lots of water, and left around 9am. We got there at noon, ate lunch and then went swimming (pictures to come) in a great, secluded little section of a river, and at 4pm we started the trek back. When we finally arrived home it was nearly 7pm and my legs felt like I had just run a marathon—limping, awful pain everywhere, but somewhat delirious and euphoric! Then yesterday a group of us went halfway down that same road and then turned off and followed a trail to a small pond and waterfall which was at the base of a massive hill. It was great because the pond was insanely deep and you could climb up the rocks and jump off twenty feet or so. I have to say that at the moment we all decided to try and climb the rocks I felt a new appreciation for what my sister and brother-in-law do all the time—rock climbing is hard! And if we fell we were landing in a pool of water; the thought of doing it off the side of some mountain made my stomach a little queasy.

So that is all the news from Sabanagrande, all that’s fit to print. The upcoming week has us learning our sites tomorrow in a big announcement deal which I hope ends up happily for everyone, then Tuesday we have our goodbye party for the families, and Wednesday we leave. All the groups reunite in a city somewhere north of here, stay together for an afternoon and evening, and then we all go off to our new sites for two or three days to drop off our bags, meet everyone we can, and walk around. Then we all come back to Santa Lucia, our first home here in Honduras, for a week of wrapping up training. Swearing in happens in Tegucigalpa and then we’re done with training and embark on the journey. More to come…
Joe

Continued...

Sorry about the interruption, it could not be helped but I do not like to keep you all waiting. So here is the situation: Semana Santa is done and we are back to work here in Sabanagrande. There are only two weeks left of FBT here and then we return to Santa Lucia to reunite with the large group of 51 aspirantes. We will swear in as volunteers, if all goes well, and then we are off to our individual sites and the two year countdown begins. Two weeks from now, just before we leave Sabanagrande, we find out where each of us will be for the next two years during a big “site announcement” party. It is a nerve-wracking deal, to be sure, but since none of us really has any control or a great knowledge of the different regions of the country, there is no point in sweating it for too long.

To be honest, there is not a lot of time left here for training and while I am excited to be done and to reunite with the large group, I am not quite sure I am ready to be set free out in the country. We have had some solid training and good experience with doing surveys and using different equipment but the thought of being the only volunteer in some town or village and being responsible for bringing water to them is a bit overwhelming. Cold feet, you say, suck it up and get to work. Right. And I am sure once I am out there I will feel more comfortable with what I can do, but at the moment it seems daunting.

At the moment that is all I have for you. The countdown to site announcement has begun but until that day there is nothing of note. I love the comments so keep at them between filing motions or treating patients or writing judge’s decisions or making another few thousand or writing articles or designing dresses or studying or teaching or whatever you have on your plate at the moment, ok? Much love from Honduras.

April 8, Easter Sunday
It has been awhile since my last entry and I know you have all been waiting on the edge of your seats...of course. Before I move on I want to wish my dad a Happy Birthday and one as well to Daniel Ramon. Feliz cumpleaños, the two of you!

Ok so at the moment it is Easter Sunday and I just returned from a trip to the north coast with my host mother and her 3 yr old daughter. As mentioned in the previous entry, the PC has forbidden us from travel outside of our current sites unless our host families go with us. As it turns out, I was the only one of the water/sanitation crew who was fortunate enough to leave town…pride and shame, I feel. The trip was nice and let me use the description of it to educate those of you who do not know much about Central America. We went to stay with a cousin, I believe, of my host mother in San Pedro Sula, which is up north and about 30 minutes drive from a great beach town. Here’s the education: Honduras is the only Central American country which has multiple cities the size and strength of a country capital. Outside of Guatemala City or San Salvador, for example, you have only much smaller towns and villages. San Pedro Sula is the industrial center of Honduras and as a city is nearly as large as Tegucigalpa, the capital. In point of fact, there is a third city in Honduras, La Ceiba, which is on the north coast, which can more than hold a candle to Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, but let’s not get carried away.

So from Wednesday evening until Sunday morning we were in San Pedro Sula and on Friday spent the day on the beaches of Puerto Córtes. A very good Semana Santa which included a new dish called Sopa de Pescado Seco, a soup traditionally served during the holy week. All in all it was a great excursion from Sabanagrande and a pleasant few days away from all things PC. But what else have I left out?

The Sunday before my family and I (and another aspirante, Chris, who lives in the house of what is my host grandmother) went to the south coast for the day. That was a three hour bus ride each way in a yellow school bus full of evangelicals! I say that not as a bad thing, generally speaking, but we did listen to a CD of Christian music the entire time there and back—and the single disc we listened to consisted of only 7 or 8 songs. I know the words and the background arrangement to the entire collection of songs, my favorite being “En La Casa de Dios”. That beach was nice as well but at the moment I have to give my nod to Puerto Córtes and the north coast. More tranquilo in the south, perhaps, but there is a reason the masses flock north.

Moving on, what in the field of Peace Corps work and knowledge? A good question. First off, we constructed from scratch two latrines outside of a kindergarten that will be finished soon. That meant, among other things, digging two holes 2.5 meters deep, building a rock wall at the mouth of each hole, mixing sand, gravel, and cement mix and making a concrete cover for each hole, doing the same for the base of two latrines, then building the structures themselves out of wood and sheet rock, and finally digging a trench .5 meter deep and nearly ten meters in length. We also built an improved oven at the house of a local family. How is it an improvement, you ask? Another good question. The improvement is in the use of tiles built into the walls of the oven and the use of a certain mud, all to improve insulation. The final improvement is that the hole to put wood in is much smaller, so while one need burn less wood there is no loss in heat or cooking ability. Overall goal, of course, is reducing the amount of wood each family is using because one of the major issues in the country at the moment is deforestation. The idea behind both of these last two projects is to familiarize us with what types of side projects each of us may be involved in outside of our water and sanitation specific work. The latrine building is actually directly related with what we do but is an aside from the construction of water systems, which will be job number one.
Some of you have asked, “Well Joe, it is laudable (and very impressive) that you teach children ages 6 and 7, how to use a computer at the local grade school. It requires patience and mental fortitude and a knowledge of the intricacies of the Spanish language to such a degree that surely few could even attempt such work. But what, exactly, does it have to do with water and sanitation?” A question that gets to the heart of the matter and I am grateful for that. The short answer is nothing at all. The longer answer is that the PC language staff has determined that instead of sitting through Spanish class five days a week, some few, some of us lucky few, will have the opportunity to use our language skills out in the community. It is not really panning out all that excellently to this point, though, because on occasion the teachers just do not send us students. Well, ok, that happened once and then another time the school principal did not expect us until the next day so we could not teach that day, either. Either way I think we are moving on to a new project this upcoming week, so please just calm down with all the intense and leading questions. I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.

Unfortunately, friends, thats all the time I have for the moment but expect more soon.
Joe

Sabanagrande...

So last Sunday the water/sanitation group made the trip south to Sabanagrande. It is a town slightly bigger than Santa Lucia but somehow there seems to be less going on. No worries, we’re not here to make friends, we’re here to get down to business. Right. The idea is each program (Wat/San, Business, and Health) all split up for the next five weeks to get intensive technical training…we here in the Peace Corps call it Field Based Training (FBT). For Health I think that means giving charlas about how HIV is bad news, for Business it’s where can we set up a new Starbucks. I’m kidding, I dig people in both groups and I am sure at some point they will be able to do something productive…though perhaps nothing like bringing potable water to a community in need!

We have a new policy this year with Peace Corps, apparently, and it involves serious movement restrictions for our entire class. Because of the transgressions of individuals in previous groups we have been forbidden to leave our little site for the next five weeks unless the families we are staying with take us somewhere with them. This poses a bit of a problem because, as I mentioned before, there seems to be less to do here than in Santa Lucia. So all of us are sweating the coming thirty five + days but of course we are all good government employees and will do our best to abide by the new rules of the man.

I am one of the lucky ones, though, because at the moment my family has plans to get the heck out of dodge for Semana Santa. With that to look forward to I may be able to get through two weekends of no activity—that’s what I’m telling myself anyway. Speaking of my new family, it is a young woman and her three year old daughter and they are fantastic. My mother’s mother is also hosting an aspirante and has done so for decades and before that her mother hosted aspirantes forever…and also has one of her own right now, too. The living is a bit more rustic than my previous digs in Santa Lucia but I actually kind of like it. My room is a corner of the living room with plyboard walls six feet high separating me from the rest of the room…my ceiling is the living room ceiling, my light is the living room light. There are mosquitoes everywhere because my madre runs her own pulperia out of the house and always has the doors open, but I do have a mosquito net to sleep in—my own little fortress of solitude.

For the first couple of days showering consisted of getting a bucket of water from the pila in the back yard and dumping bowls of water on myself in between lathering up. Now there is water in the tank so I can stand under a showerhead and take a cold shower like everyone else. But I think this process repeats itself at the end of every week. Brushing my teeth was the same deal, going to the pila in the back and dipping a cup of water into it to rinse out my mouth and brush, but now I can use a little sink in the back. There is not a mirror to be found in the entire house, either, so to shave I use the little plastic coated mirror that came in my travel toiletry bag. But all of this—my 6 by 8ft room with no shelves, the occasional bucket shower and backyard toothbrush sessions, no mirror anywhere—amounts to stuff I am not used to but not really anything too rough. Anyone could do this and I think it is actually good to live like this, at least for a time. But that’s kind of what I think about the Peace Corps in general—it is a great experience that anyone can do and everyone would benefit from. I’m still green and naïve, I know.

I should also point out that there is a mother and her three year old daughter who rents a room from my host madre and lives here during the week. So at night, that’s right, there are two 3 yr old girls running around, screaming and squealing and giggling and shouting and crying and fighting. It was a bit to take at first but I am slowly adjusting to the pitch of the volume during the evenings in my new home. And lastly, my madre is cooking three meals a day all week for a church group here in town. In addition to making thirty meals three times a day which some young dudes come and take to the church, there are also church bigwigs coming over and making themselves at home during meal times, which is also very cool. This means that around 7:30 pm every night there are two 3 yr old girls running around shrieking, my madre working herself into a frenzy in the kitchen, and three or so older evangelical church dudes sitting in the living room, eating and laughing and inviting me to hear the word of God. It’s a good time.

Actually, like I mentioned, the girls don’t bother me much anymore. But the longer I am here (and I realize it’s been less than six weeks at this point) the more I come to loathe organized religion. Ok, that’s a bit harsh. My view of Catholicism hasn’t changed because I have not come into contact with it much on a day to day basis here. I have always been a pick and choose Catholic anyway, and while my previous madre in Santa Lucia was very Catholic and went to church often, she never forced it down anyone’s throat—myself included. But between the evangelicals and the mormons down here you can not go a day without being lectured or witness someone being lectured to about the salvation of their soul and what they need to do to achieve it, etc etc. They are like ants in the towns that I have visited and lived in here in Honduras—a little army of Bible carrying youths trying to convert an already fairly religious region of the world into a different type of Christianity. Cool.

That’s kind of a downer subject to leave with, so I’ll go ahead and do just that! No, I forgot to mention that me and two other guys are spending the majority of the week teaching first and second graders the ins and outs of computers in the local elementary school. So we have that going for us. At the moment it is trying to help them discover a nice median between being afraid to touch the mouse at all and having a Vulcan death-grip on it. More to come on this subject…

Before I sign off this entry I want to thank all of you who sent out birthday love, either in email or blog comment form…it was much appreciated. I may or may not choose to remember all of your birthdays in the coming weeks and months—don’t I have a two year pass on that? And for future reference, in the event that any of you put together any sort of care package, the only thing I can really use some more of that I do not have access to is Extra gum (polar ice, preferably, but any flavor will do) and/or Orbit (sweet mint). This is not life or death, though, so do take your time and put some thought into these care packages—I know you’ll make them with love!

Things to look forward to: this time next week I will be going south to the beaches Honduras shares with Nicaragua and El Salvador with my family and later that week to the beaches in the north for Semana Santa!! Take care everyone and keep me updated on life in the States.

Joe

Joe, Montezuma...

So that big Saturday celebration marking {all at once} our one month in Honduras, St. Patty's Day, our last night together as a big training group, etc etc, has hit a snag...for me anyway. A couple of nights ago I was hit hard with what the doctors have called a "bacterial infection". Call it what you want, docs, I maintain it was a bit of Montezuma's revenge. It was rough {I'll leave the details to your imagination} and the effects have been far-reaching...forget no opening night March Madness watching, no non-soup meals for the past couple of days. Better now thanks to the previously mentioned docs and their drugs and I plan on watching BC play tonight here in the one bar with a television. Congrats to my buddy Sarat who is currently in Peru but just found out he placed at his first choice for residency at Miami! And to Mike Meier, who is either not reading this blog or just refraining from making silly comments {yes, they've been nothing but "silly" to this point, friends}, who is celebrating a birthday today...27 is it?! Anyway, I think thats it for the moment. Oh, mailing address does not change, so all those of you (and there are a number of you) who were holding off on mailing those letters/care packages, go ahead and put them in the mail--I will receive them at my new site! Ok, I hope all is well in the States and wherever you guys are, more from me a little later.
Joe

Three weeks...

Sunday day and I just returned last night from a three day visit to another volunteer’s place in the northwest, Santa Barbara. It is a department that borders Guatemala and I was in the city of the same name visiting a volunteer in his fourth year here. He just married a Honduran woman who he had known for nearly the entire time he had been in the city and in June they are moving back to the States. All aspirantes visited volunteers out in the country this weekend as a means to get outside of our sleepy little town, see how the buses work, and see a volunteer in his element. My experience was a great one because all day Friday we were doing Water & Sanitation stuff, the kind of thing I have been learning about for the past three weeks. This consisted of hiking through forests with a town local leading the way with a machete to cut through thicker vegetation so we could find a water source.

There were no trails and I did a lot of slipping and falling, nearly losing my shoes in mud a couple of times, but the whole time I kept thinking that this time last year I was sitting behind a desk pushing papers on my ship, occasionally walking around trying to find someone that had already left for the day. There was some down time as well, which may or may not have included a karaoke bar, but mostly it was just fantastic to see a different part of the country and get my hands dirty. Here’s a couple of shots of us at a site in a town where construction on a water-capturing box has begun, scenic and otherwise…

Lastly a shot of the town of Santa Barbara from the patio of my volunteer's place...

What else can I write at the moment? Our group is fifty one people total, I think, and while there are a lot of people who are just out of college, there are also a fair number between the ages of 24 and 30, too. In Water & Sanitation there are 16 of us, 12 guys and 4 girls, half engineers and half anything but—history, language, art majors and others. So at the moment we are all back in Santa Lucia and will be here for only one more week. Next Sunday we all leave for training in our distinct programs: Wat/San, Business and Health at three different places for 4 weeks of technical training. That is going to be a lot of hands-on activity as well and I am excited to learn everything I can about setting up and designing water systems. It will be cool to get closer with our programs and not have all fifty one of us around all the time but I think we’ll definitely miss being together as a group, too. What does all this mean? That this upcoming Saturday, aside from being St. Patty’s Day, will also be our one month mark in Honduras, and our last night together as a big group…good times.

Also, on Saturday I bought a cell phone in Tegucigalpa because it is apparently the way to go to communicate with other volunteers and also our program managers. So I will send out an email here in a little to see if I can figure out how it works. But it appears as though I can text anyone in the US for about 5 cents—how much it will cost for you to respond I have no idea. But you had better pay it, whatever the cost. It is going to be an 8 digit number and the country code for Honduras is 504, just so you know. On a similar subject, I am not in dire need of anything at the moment, but in the case that you do send a care package or five, write “books” on the list of contents. Volunteers tell stories of receiving things like GPS units and other expensive items as long as the inventory list only says books whereas anything else is a likely candidate for pilfering. Also, the address I gave in an earlier entry does in fact work, so have no fears. If we learn that it will change while we are out of our training center over the next few weeks I will update as necessary.

Nothing else at the moment, just another week of classes about to begin, so I will leave you with some promised pictures…

Pictures of the “pila” where the hand washing of all clothes is done, followed by my clothes hanging on the line to dry…it was a good day.

The view towards Tegucigalpa from the front porch where I am living now...

A wild week...

Our first full weekend in Santa Lucia…got up late on Saturday, ate some breakfast and Dona Marta (my Hondureña madre) taught me how to wash my clothes by hand. Excelente! The rest of the day was very relaxed as my legs are not used to the hills or the soccer games that I have been dragging them through…they needed rest. That night all of the mothers who are hosting PC aspirantes (remember, we’re not volunteers until we swear in May 3^rd) hosted a party for us, which was very nice. Much food and afterward much dancing. As it turns out my mother was the only one who had any desire to dance, so we were tearing up the floor for a bit. The other aspirantes laughed and the local women thought it was a bit scandalous, I guess, that my mother was dancing with a gringo…but what can you do. It should also be pointed out that my “mother” here is also a mother of five boys of her own and several grandchildren.

Sunday was a trip to church and then going to the local campo to watch a soccer game—Santa Lucia vs. Tegucigalpa. Our little town won, 3-0, so that was very cool if not surprising. After attending a game a group of us got together to watch more games on TV, both here in Honduras and some La Liga action from Espana. Dinner with the family that night was excellent and then afterward Dona Marta, her son and grandson and I watched the Oscars. Of course I didn’t stay up to watch it all, but I was pleased to see The Departed take some big awards. Somewhat odd that I am here in Honduras and I’m writing about the Oscars? Just be happy I am not writing in Spanish, people, because with as much as I need to practice, the thought did cross my mind. As far as world events are concerned, I am definitely clueless at the moment…ignorance is bliss, no?

It is much later in the week now and I am updating on the same entry. To continue with a recent subject, I have noted that American pop culture has found me here in Santa Lucia (the youngest in the house was watching Malcolm in the Middle two nights ago) which is unfortunate. But as our instructors keep telling us, this town is nearly resort-status so these luxuries will not be with us for our entire stay. In other news, went with a small group of fellow aspirantes to the capital, Tegucigalpa, on Wednesday. As aspirantes we are forbidden to go on our own (this was a Spanish class project) and the city has nearly reached the that-which-must-not-be-named level what with the dangers we gringos face if we go unescorted. Beware the buses! Beware two people on motorcycles! On and on it goes. But I have to give it to the PC, they sent some of us in anyway and it was a good experience. Did not see a whole lot as we were only there for a few hours, but it’s always cool to see the capital of a foreign country.

At one of the markets there I did buy my very own pair of tacos, or soccer shoes, because I have been tearing up the local fields here. Ok, so I don’t want to look the part of a soccer player because as soon as I get the ball and am expected to do anything with it all hopes are dashed, but I had been handing a beating to my hiking shoes so I needed to make the change. By the way, the brand with three stripes? Adidas? No, they’re Flamigos…just in case you wondered.

The hills are still kicking the crap out of me. How is it that at nearly two weeks here every…single…hill feels like the first one I have ever climbed. This town may kill my love of running because as it stands now, I want to cry every time I step outside to run because I am anticipating the pain to follow. At some point soon I will figure out pictures on this thing and then you can see for yourselves. At the end of next week I am gone for two days (all of us are) to go visit a current volunteer in the field and get a taste of what its like. Tomorrow I am going to a wedding with my host mother. No, there will be no dancing tomorrow. More soon.

Joe

PS-It is of note that I have indeed figured out pictures on this thing. See an earlier entry for a lovely one of my family in NM before I left. This also means you will be seeing the wonderful views and painful hills that are Santa Lucia soon and very soon.

PPS-It is also of note that the brief ´mispelling´that I had at the beginning of the previous entry was done because of my attempts to make this gringo-friendly. Honduran friends translates into amigos hondureños, hence the e instead of the a at the end of the word. It is because I suffer to make this easier reading for my friends that I am mocked and ridiculed.