Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Three Weeks In

While my last post was painfully long, it actually only covered the first two weeks of my time here. I’ll try to edit better on this next one.

I suppose I will begin by writing about the problem with a roof that looks like stars. As one might predict, the ability to see sunlight through one’s ceiling says a lot about said ceiling’s integrity. Sadly, I have found that when it rains hard outside, it also rains everywhere inside. Not hard, but noticeably and indiscriminately. It’s kind of refreshing, but only if you’re trying to be really optimistic. For the less upbeat, it is a source of perturbance, and for my host family, it is a source of stress, especially with the discovery of a major leak above my bed and another above my bookshelf. My host mother and sister have gone to great lengths to protect my belongings. First my books were moved and now reside under a towel, and then my bed was shifted to the other side of the room. A few days later, they replaced the problem tiles. Thankfully, my room is now as dry as everywhere else in the house when it rains, a thought that is especially nice right now as the sky is full of thunder and wind.

Roof deficiencies aside, I’m extremely glad to be living where I am. Now that we’re not such strangers, I am really thankful to be living with a small, quiet family. I like my host sister a lot, and as my Spanish comprehension (if not speaking) ability improves, we’ve been able to have some less superficial talks. In other domestic news, my cooking contributions remain limited to burning the plantains every week or so. I have also discovered that washing laundry on a rock is extremely cathartic, which is a good thing because we keep going on field trips and I keep getting covered in dirt. There is also a new addition to the household. A few days ago, my family adopted an abandoned kitten. It’s orange and white and really young. To feed it, we put milk in a plastic baggie with a hole in one corner, and mostly it just goes everywhere except the kitten’s mouth.

Every day here is packed, and it’s hard to narrow down highlights. For the rest of this post, I think I’ll just write about unconnected events. Sorry for the absence of segues.

On our first Saturday in town, the chief of police had organized a Trainees versus Townspeople soccer game in the afternoon. I showed up to find that not only did the other team have full uniforms, but they had brought uniforms for us. They also stacked our team a bit with players from a neighboring town, which was merciful because surprisingly few of us had played before, and only one trainee had cleats, which were especially necessary because it had just rained and the field was covered in mud. With the help of our Honduran goalie and offensive line, we managed to win the first half, but then our goalie had to go, and we ended up losing the game.

A common project for volunteers is to make more efficient and healthier stoves, or fogones, with the women in their communities. The most common fogones here are up on tables covered in adobe. Then bricks are stacked and cemented with more adobe to form a little box with one open side to put wood into. On top of the box is a plancha, or cooking surface, which is generally comprised of 1.5 foot-ish diameter metal circle. Even in houses that have electric stoves, fogones are used frequently because firewood is less expensive than electricity, and because people prefer the taste of food cooked on them. Unfortunately, they are often very inefficient, which encourages more deforestation, and many designs allow the smoke to escape into the house where it causes respiratory diseases in women and children. A couple of volunteers visited to show us the ropes of stove construction, and we split up into groups to build stoves in three different houses here. First we made adobe from clay and horse manure. Then we packed it around some bricks and stones on top of a base. The design we were using included an oven, and then on the second level was the space for wood, and on top of that was the plancha. Unfortunately, the woman who lived in the house had some strong ideas about how the construction should go, and we aren’t sure that it ended up being as efficient as it could have been, but we haven’t received any reports of it caving in or anything, so I guess we’ll count it as a success.

Other general class activities have included field trips to an integrated, organic farm, a coffee farm, and a volunteer’s site, teaching a class of fourth graders about the water cycle, and working with some high school students to make a simple instrument for measuring the slope of hills and practicing some techniques used for soil conservation. While we built a small terrace together, one of the students flipped over a rock to find the first scorpion I’ve ever seen. The scorpions here aren’t deadly, but they still pack quite a punch and are detested by the Hondurans. The student quickly dispatched it with a stone. We also spent a morning working with local farmers. My farmer’s area was an uncommonly flat field way, way up a mountain. I managed to sweat off all my sunscreen by the time we arrived, and then we spent the morning harvesting red beans and hanging them on a fence to dry. At noon, we walked down a different, steeper path with views of the whole valley and beautiful stone outcrops.

The most lamentable difference between Honduras and the Dominican Republic is the absence of fresh fruit and vegetables. My meals here generally consist of some combination of tortillas, beans, cheese, eggs, extremely tough meat or fried bologna, and the occasional burnt plantain. Sometimes I’ll get a slice of avocado or tomato, but fresh produce has by and large disappeared from my diet. One happy supplement has come in the form of chocobananas (frozen bananas dipped in chocolate and impaled on popsicle sticks). A woman sells them from her house, which is between my house and the training center. They cost 1 Lempira, or about 5 cents, and I’m up to about two a day.

Another local food is the tamalito. They are basically like tamales, but they aren’t stuffed with anything, and they’re kind of sweet because people add sugar to the mixture of milk, oil, tomato sauce, and corn. Then the batter is spooned into corn husks, folded, and placed in a vat of boiling water to cook until solid. Last weekend, I got to “help” assemble a batch at a neighbor’s house. I’ve been invited back this Sunday, when we will try to add some beans to the middles. When they’re made with a filling and without the sugar, they’re called something different. An interesting difference between stuffed tamalitos and tamales I’ve had in the US is that the chicken ones here still contain the bone, something that came as quite a surprise the first time I stuck my fork into one.

Last weekend was full of adventures. In addition to assembling tamalitos, I went spelunking and swam in a pool under a 30 foot waterfall. All of this came about because the family of another trainee offered to take her to some caves. Then she invited some more trainees, and her family invited some more family, and by the time we finally left, there were six trainees and nineteen Hondurans. Only one person had been to the caves before, and we didn’t really know what to expect. After a ten minute bus ride, we stopped on the side of the paved street and commenced walking down an eroded dirt road. I was expecting a short hike, because the trainee who had invited me had said that her family drives the ten minute walk to church, and she couldn’t imagine them hiking anywhere. However, the road took us first down a hill and then across a river, where a machete-wielding guide met us and led us up a couple more hills until the trail disappeared and he began hacking a path through the undergrowth. After two hours, we arrived at a copse of stones and the small mouth of the cave. Only about half of the group members had light sources. On my way out the door, my host sister had wisely suggested that I bring my headlamp, so I was set, but for those who didn’t have wise host sisters, some of the boys lit sticks and sap and carried them underground. The warm light contrasted anachronistically with the LED displays of cell phones, and the smoke smelled like myrrh. One by one, we crawled and slid through the cave mouth. I was one of the last to enter, and the whole thing was kind of a test for me, because as some of you may recall, I have become claustrophobic in my old age, and haven’t entered an enclosed space since I had a panic attack in the Pyramids. The cave started with a series of successively larger chambers. The first two had to be belly crawled through, and then there was a third that I could crouch through, and finally, once I ducked through a narrow passageway, the cave opened up into a cylindrical room that all twenty-five of us could fit in. The ceiling and floor were populated with stalactites and stalagmites, and over on the edges of the cave, they had fused together to create pillars. Once we had all reached this space, we continued walking in a single-file line over fallen stones and bat guano until, about half an hour and one precarious climb later, we reached a dead end. The torches had been put out because of the smoke, and we walked back with blue shadows and bats flying by our heads. Once we were out of the cave, we walked back to the river we had crossed earlier, and from there, we took a different route that led us to the waterfall. We arrived by a steep trail that ended at a pool edged by moss, stones, and various tropical plants. We went swimming in the cool water, ate packed lunches, and walked back to the paved road all wet.

Well, it seems that I failed to edit better. If anything, this post is longer than the last one. Oops. One final note--some of you may have noticed that I have posted my mailing address. I don’t know where my site will be or how long mail usually takes to get to Honduras, but whatever you send to the posted address should make it to me eventually, so write your little hearts out, or just send chocolate. As ever, comments on this blog are also deeply appreciated. I would also like to send a shout out to Mrs. Torrence’s third and fourth grade class. I heard you guys have been keeping tabs on me, so “Hola,” and I’ll try to cut down on the run-on sentences! If your class has any questions, feel free to ask away. The internet situation here is a bit sketchy, but I’ll try my best to answer in a timely manner.

Ok, Peace Out.

Three Weeks In

While my last post was painfully long, it actually only covered the first two weeks of my time here. I’ll try to edit better on this next one.

I suppose I will begin by writing about the problem with a roof that looks like stars. As one might predict, the ability to see sunlight through one’s ceiling says a lot about said ceiling’s integrity. Sadly, I have found that when it rains hard outside, it also rains everywhere inside. Not hard, but noticeably and indiscriminately. It’s kind of refreshing, but only if you’re trying to be really optimistic. For the less upbeat, it is a source of perturbance, and for my host family, it is a source of stress, especially with the discovery of a major leak above my bed and another above my bookshelf. My host mother and sister have gone to great lengths to protect my belongings. First my books were moved and now reside under a towel, and then my bed was shifted to the other side of the room. A few days later, they replaced the problem tiles. Thankfully, my room is now as dry as everywhere else in the house when it rains, a thought that is especially nice right now as the sky is full of thunder and wind.

Roof deficiencies aside, I’m extremely glad to be living where I am. Now that we’re not such strangers, I am really thankful to be living with a small, quiet family. I like my host sister a lot, and as my Spanish comprehension (if not speaking) ability improves, we’ve been able to have some less superficial talks. In other domestic news, my cooking contributions remain limited to burning the plantains every week or so. I have also discovered that washing laundry on a rock is extremely cathartic, which is a good thing because we keep going on field trips and I keep getting covered in dirt. There is also a new addition to the household. A few days ago, my family adopted an abandoned kitten. It’s orange and white and really young. To feed it, we put milk in a plastic baggie with a hole in one corner, and mostly it just goes everywhere except the kitten’s mouth.

Every day here is packed, and it’s hard to narrow down highlights. For the rest of this post, I think I’ll just write about unconnected events. Sorry for the absence of segues.

On our first Saturday in town, the chief of police had organized a Trainees versus Townspeople soccer game in the afternoon. I showed up to find that not only did the other team have full uniforms, but they had brought uniforms for us. They also stacked our team a bit with players from a neighboring town, which was merciful because surprisingly few of us had played before, and only one trainee had cleats, which were especially necessary because it had just rained and the field was covered in mud. With the help of our Honduran goalie and offensive line, we managed to win the first half, but then our goalie had to go, and we ended up losing the game.

A common project for volunteers is to make more efficient and healthier stoves, or fogones, with the women in their communities. The most common fogones here are up on tables covered in adobe. Then bricks are stacked and cemented with more adobe to form a little box with one open side to put wood into. On top of the box is a plancha, or cooking surface, which is generally comprised of 1.5 foot-ish diameter metal circle. Even in houses that have electric stoves, fogones are used frequently because firewood is less expensive than electricity, and because people prefer the taste of food cooked on them. Unfortunately, they are often very inefficient, which encourages more deforestation, and many designs allow the smoke to escape into the house where it causes respiratory diseases in women and children. A couple of volunteers visited to show us the ropes of stove construction, and we split up into groups to build stoves in three different houses here. First we made adobe from clay and horse manure. Then we packed it around some bricks and stones on top of a base. The design we were using included an oven, and then on the second level was the space for wood, and on top of that was the plancha. Unfortunately, the woman who lived in the house had some strong ideas about how the construction should go, and we aren’t sure that it ended up being as efficient as it could have been, but we haven’t received any reports of it caving in or anything, so I guess we’ll count it as a success.

Other general class activities have included field trips to an integrated, organic farm, a coffee farm, and a volunteer’s site, teaching a class of fourth graders about the water cycle, and working with some high school students to make a simple instrument for measuring the slope of hills and practicing some techniques used for soil conservation. While we built a small terrace together, one of the students flipped over a rock to find the first scorpion I’ve ever seen. The scorpions here aren’t deadly, but they still pack quite a punch and are detested by the Hondurans. The student quickly dispatched it with a stone. We also spent a morning working with local farmers. My farmer’s area was an uncommonly flat field way, way up a mountain. I managed to sweat off all my sunscreen by the time we arrived, and then we spent the morning harvesting red beans and hanging them on a fence to dry. At noon, we walked down a different, steeper path with views of the whole valley and beautiful stone outcrops.

The most lamentable difference between Honduras and the Dominican Republic is the absence of fresh fruit and vegetables. My meals here generally consist of some combination of tortillas, beans, cheese, eggs, extremely tough meat or fried bologna, and the occasional burnt plantain. Sometimes I’ll get a slice of avocado or tomato, but fresh produce has by and large disappeared from my diet. One happy supplement has come in the form of chocobananas (frozen bananas dipped in chocolate and impaled on popsicle sticks). A woman sells them from her house, which is between my house and the training center. They cost 1 Lempira, or about 5 cents, and I’m up to about two a day.

Another local food is the tamalito. They are basically like tamales, but they aren’t stuffed with anything, and they’re kind of sweet because people add sugar to the mixture of milk, oil, tomato sauce, and corn. Then the batter is spooned into corn husks, folded, and placed in a vat of boiling water to cook until solid. Last weekend, I got to “help” assemble a batch at a neighbor’s house. I’ve been invited back this Sunday, when we will try to add some beans to the middles. When they’re made with a filling and without the sugar, they’re called something different. An interesting difference between stuffed tamalitos and tamales I’ve had in the US is that the chicken ones here still contain the bone, something that came as quite a surprise the first time I stuck my fork into one.

Last weekend was full of adventures. In addition to assembling tamalitos, I went spelunking and swam in a pool under a 30 foot waterfall. All of this came about because the family of another trainee offered to take her to some caves. Then she invited some more trainees, and her family invited some more family, and by the time we finally left, there were six trainees and nineteen Hondurans. Only one person had been to the caves before, and we didn’t really know what to expect. After a ten minute bus ride, we stopped on the side of the paved street and commenced walking down an eroded dirt road. I was expecting a short hike, because the trainee who had invited me had said that her family drives the ten minute walk to church, and she couldn’t imagine them hiking anywhere. However, the road took us first down a hill and then across a river, where a machete-wielding guide met us and led us up a couple more hills until the trail disappeared and he began hacking a path through the undergrowth. After two hours, we arrived at a copse of stones and the small mouth of the cave. Only about half of the group members had light sources. On my way out the door, my host sister had wisely suggested that I bring my headlamp, so I was set, but for those who didn’t have wise host sisters, some of the boys lit sticks and sap and carried them underground. The warm light contrasted anachronistically with the LED displays of cell phones, and the smoke smelled like myrrh. One by one, we crawled and slid through the cave mouth. I was one of the last to enter, and the whole thing was kind of a test for me, because as some of you may recall, I have become claustrophobic in my old age, and haven’t entered an enclosed space since I had a panic attack in the Pyramids. The cave started with a series of successively larger chambers. The first two had to be belly crawled through, and then there was a third that I could crouch through, and finally, once I ducked through a narrow passageway, the cave opened up into a cylindrical room that all twenty-five of us could fit in. The ceiling and floor were populated with stalactites and stalagmites, and over on the edges of the cave, they had fused together to create pillars. Once we had all reached this space, we continued walking in a single-file line over fallen stones and bat guano until, about half an hour and one precarious climb later, we reached a dead end. The torches had been put out because of the smoke, and we walked back with blue shadows and bats flying by our heads. Once we were out of the cave, we walked back to the river we had crossed earlier, and from there, we took a different route that led us to the waterfall. We arrived by a steep trail that ended at a pool edged by moss, stones, and various tropical plants. We went swimming in the cool water, ate packed lunches, and walked back to the paved road all wet.

Well, it seems that I failed to edit better. If anything, this post is longer than the last one. Oops. One final note--some of you may have noticed that I have posted my mailing address. I don’t know where my site will be or how long mail usually takes to get to Honduras, but whatever you send to the posted address should make it to me eventually, so write your little hearts out, or just send chocolate. As ever, comments on this blog are also deeply appreciated. I would also like to send a shout out to Mrs. Torrence’s third and fourth grade class. I heard you guys have been keeping tabs on me, so “Hola,” and I’ll try to cut down on the run-on sentences! If your class has any questions, feel free to ask away. The internet situation here is a bit sketchy, but I’ll try my best to answer in a timely manner.

Ok, Peace Out.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

A Short Non-Post

Hey all,
I have another painfully long post waiting to be shared, but this computer isn't cooperating. Just a word about some blog changes: I have a mailing address now! Also, I know my slideshow is too small to really see. I'm working on it. Other than my computer issues, I'm doing very well. I hope all of you are!

Friday, August 14, 2009

¡Hey--I made it to Honduras!

Well, since it’s been a few weeks and you haven’t heard from me, you can probably guess that against all odds, I finally made it to Honduras! The past three weeks have been packed, and I feel like I’ve been here much longer. Thus far, I have lived with two host families in two towns, climbed a mountain, gotten amoebas (or something), gotten rid of my amoebas, been rained on a lot, and progressed very little in Spanish, despite the best efforts of my teachers and tutor.

Our flight here was interesting because probably half my group of about fifteen trainees still couldn’t believe we were going to make it to our destination. I was feeling pretty optimistic until right above Tegucigalpa. The airport is supposedly the second most difficult in the world to land in, and planes have been known to clip buses on the road that runs right above the runway, so I was prepared for a rough landing. However, as we descended, we flew into a rainstorm with crazy turbulence that pushed the plane all over the place, which might have been ok if we hadn’t been navigating around mountains at the same time. Thankfully, I made it to the ground without dying or throwing up. As we taxied to the terminal, our plane rolled past a street filled with graffiti about golpistas, or people involved with the coup. I started to wonder what I’d gotten into. In the customs line, we talked with some Swiss volunteers. I was very awkward with them, and they gave me a bar of chocolate. Just what one would expect from an encounter between me and Swiss people. Then by the baggage claim, we were met by the Honduran Peace Corps staff who guided us out to the parking lot for a pizza and apple lunch. Through a miscommunication, we all thought we would be spending three or four nights in a hotel before leaving for field based training in three separate villages. In the parking lot, we learned that we were actually going to stay with host families for five days in a small town an hour or so away from Tegucigalpa. Then we bundled into vans and set off for our new training center.

When we arrived, I was struck by the scent of pine trees, and the breeze, and the air that for the first time in a month wasn’t thick with humidity. The training center is in the mountains, in a little bubble of coolness that felt absolutely heavenly compared to Miami and Santo Domingo. We became acquainted with the staff and played some games in Spanish, and then we met our host families and loaded into a yellow school bus that took us to our neighborhoods. My host mom’s name was Suyapa and she and her six year-old daughter Melanie had come to pick me up. As we walked to their house, Melanie dubbed me “the most beautiful gringa in the whole world,” and held my hand as I felt overwhelmed at the difference between host families and the hotel room I had been prepared for. When we got to the house, I met a whirlwind of people, and then Melanie and her sister Madelem, ages six and four, ushered me to the houses of two neighbors. I met more people and collected more kids, and then the kids and I went exploring in some trails behind the settlement. They sang in my ears and showed me a good place for making echoes and a creek that supposedly had little fish in it. We played there for a while, until I said I was really worn out and they started to lead me back. On the way, we were intercepted by a pack of angry mothers, and all the kids got in trouble for abducting me and leading me somewhere that apparently was dangerous, although I never learned why. Anyway, I made it home and met the third child in the family, an 18 month-old boy named Javier. Then I ate a delicious dinner of beans, plantains, tortillas, and a sour creamish staple of the Honduran diet called “mantequilla.” I went to bed with the window open and slept like a rock.

The next couple days at the training center were similar to the first. A new group of trainees arrived each day, and we attended orientation and safety sessions. Because we came in somewhat random groups, we weren’t able to divide up into language classes by skill level. Instead, we just played a lot of icebreaker games in Spanish. In Honduras, they’re called “dynamicas” and apparently they’re very popular, however, they can get kind of torturous when played back to back for days, so I was extremely happy when the whole group arrived and we were able to split into more permanent, skill-based language classes. Unfortunately, just when things were starting to look up, I woke up in the night vomiting and spent the next couple days not eating and feeling awful. The good news is that the medical staff hooked me up with a large stash of Cipro and I started feeling better pretty quickly. I missed a trip to a market in Tegucigalpa, but the excursion followed 4-6 hours of safety orientation that spent a lot of time highlighting the dangers of the city, so I wasn’t terribly torn up about it. Instead, I had more time to spend with my host family, who were all great.

On my first Sunday in country, I dragged one of my overstuffed bags to the bus stop with the rest of the trainees in my neighborhood and got on the bus for my field based training site, which is a village near Comoyagua, the former colonial capital of Honduras. The trip was longer than expected, lasting around four hours. Once we reached the town the bus stopped in two places. Two other trainees and I got off at the first stop only to learn pretty quickly that we had been put on the wrong list and were supposed to get off at the second stop. We then had to drag and wheel our luggage for half an hour or so in front of many watching families to finally reach our new host homes. When we arrived, I was covered in dust and sweat and extremely frazzled, and because the trip took longer than planned, I had about five minutes to meet my host mom, drop off my bag, and rush back down the road to meet in the salon tecnico where we would be having training. The meeting lasted maybe 3 minutes, and afterwards, as we walked back to our host families, I felt pretty frustrated. Once I got back to my house, even sweatier and dustier than before, I ate dinner and took awkwardness to a new level with my timid host mom and mysterious host great-uncle. My family information sheet said that I also had a 17 year-old host sister, but she wasn’t home, and after hanging my mosquito net and freaking out about the whole day, I went to bed around 7:30. It was dark enough to see glints of street lights through the terra cotta shingles that make up the roof. Without my contacts, the lights looked like those glow in the dark stars that you put on your ceiling when you’re a kid.

After a rough night of cawing roosters, I rose at 5 something to calls of “Profesora” and knocks on my door. I got up and met my host sister. Then I continued redefining awkwardness through breakfast and walked back to the salon tecnico to start training. We reviewed the schedule of events and formed groups for a few projects. At 11:30, I returned to my house for lunch. Lunch was quiet, but afterwards, I spoke with my host sister for a while and started to feel more comfortable. The afternoon was uneventful, but the evening with my family was less stressful, much to my relief.

Since this first day, things have improved a lot. I really like my family and they feel more comfortable with me. I should mention that there is a dog also, named Mariposa. We’re buddies, even though she’s kind of gross. This is the first time my family has hosted anyone, and I think they didn’t know what to do with me at first. I’m still awkward, but they’ve gotten used to it, and I have gotten used to lurking around not being useful and burning things when I try to cook. I did successfully press a batch of tortillas a few days ago, and I made myself tea on Sunday without giving myself amoebas. I have also learned how to wash laundry in a pila. Pilas consist of cement tanks that hold water and an adjoining washboard that is also made of cement. This village has running water in the mornings, so the pilas are filled, and then you transfer the water into the washboard/whatever you want to wash with a plastic tub called a paila. I have now mastered the art of scrubbing my clothes so slowly that watching neighbor children laugh at me and tell me I need to do it faster. Personally, I’m just thrilled to finally have some clean clothes.

Which kind of leads me to the story about climbing the mountain, because I got really dirty. We had been learning about micro-watersheds, and the goal of the training session was to learn about the original water source for the village. First we drove up to a farm (so I guess we didn’t climb the whole thing), and met the landowner/tour guide. We set off from his house under sunny skies, but about five minutes into our hike, it started to absolutely pour. Our training director asked our guide how far the source was, and he said it wasn’t far, so we kept walking. By some abnormal preparedness, I had managed to bring a poncho, which I slung over my backpack full of cameras and wallets and cell phones collected from the less water-resistant. We ended up hiking for about an hour while the rain continued to shower down and the trail down into the valley turned into an extended waterfall. We arrived at our destination, which had in the meantime become a thundering river, and spent a few minutes commenting on how we were in a prime area for flash floods and taking pictures with a waterproof camera. Then we headed out of the valley and up a steep trail that looped us back to the farm. It stopped raining on the hike back, but by that time, everyone was completely soaked through. Nevertheless, everyone had a great time. We were all happy to get out of the classroom and move around.