What I’ve been doing
So I’ve been in my site for about two months now, and you’re all probably asking yourselves what I’ve been up to. Peace Corps policy is for volunteers to spend the first three months getting to know people before jumping into major commitments, but my site is unique in that another volunteer had already started a latrine project in the village, so I have something concrete to work on. As a community, we decided that the next step for the project is a needs assessment of the houses involved. This has come as a happy assignment for me because it gives me something to talk about when I visit strangers’ houses and comes as an alternative to just sitting there for several minutes after introducing myself and asking who they are and then wishing I had more to say. After a month, I have completed 71 of the 75 surveys, and I have high hopes of finishing things up this week. The next step will be to present the information to the town council and then try to find funding sources. Other, generally less productive activities include going to many meetings of various groups. On the upside, I attended a vinegar making workshop, so now I can kind of do that.
Happy Birthday to Me. And Dagoberto.
A former volunteer once said that Peace Corps is kind of like your worst day of middle school every day. Generally, I don’t find that to be the case, but on my birthday, I found myself frequently thinking back to that most awkward of rites of passage: the middle school dance, and comparing it to the dance I found myself at. Before you get the wrong idea and think that the town threw me a party, I should explain that my birthday happens to coincide with the birthday of the young son (Dagoberto) of one of the wealthiest landowners in my village. I was invited to celebrate with the rest of the town up at their mountaintop coffee plantation. It was my first Honduran birthday party, and you probably haven’t been to many either, so I’ll try to share the experience as best I can. First, to set the scene, imagine a three year-old’s birthday party. There is a piñata, games are played, party favors are handed out, and cake is distributed while a song is sung. There are various hints that this party is in Honduras. The majority of the guests are wearing cowboy hats and boots, and many men including the guy dangling the piñata are also packing handguns in holsters tucked into their Wranglers. A Mariachi band accompanies the swarming children. Then as night falls, the children suddenly find that the party is no longer theirs, and the band is replaced by speakers blasting Ranchero music and Punta. They go inside to chew on party favor candy and blow party favor whistles, and the driveway becomes a dance floor.
Apparently, my inability to dance had been the talk of the town during the weeks leading up to the big event. Unfortunately for me, it was considered more of a challenge than a deterrent. Many people grinningly told me that I was going to learn to dance, and I was told a few days before my birthday that the host of the party had even called a dance with me in advance. Therefore, I felt a lot of pressure to participate despite my terror of dancing and lack of coordination. As the dance began, I found myself sitting on a bench beside my host sister wondering how long this thing was going to last, and observing that in striking contrast to my fellow middle school students, everyone at this party knew how to move. Men began walking over to my host sister and asking her to dance. She would tactfully turn them down, and then they would ask me. I decided it was better not to dance with the guys that she wouldn’t dance with, so I would mutter that I couldn’t dance, and they would offer to teach me, and then I would say no, and that’s how we spent at least an hour. Some guys grew bolder and started to ask me before asking my host sister, but since they used lines like “Dance with me, Gringita” or blew smoke in my face, I turned them down too. Finally, a female host-distant relative insisted that I let her teach me, and I gave in. To my instant regret, I let her lead me to an open space that happened to be in front of 10 or so staring young men, and there begin her lesson, which consisted of her moving fluidly and looking great and me kind of bending my knees awkwardly a few times and then covering my face with my hands and returning to the bench. She tried a new tactic then, and set me up with a quiet, middle-aged partner who led me toward the middle of the floor and patiently danced with me through three painful songs before admitting defeat and letting me sit down. I danced for about thirty seconds with the man who had claimed a dance in advance, but he too gave up, and then I decided it was time to retreat to the kitchen where I drank some Coke for a while and then guiltily headed back to the dance floor. As I descended the porch stairs, the brother of a friend met me and quickly took my hand and led me into the crowd. It was there that I learned he was somewhat past tipsy and interested in dancing very closely, which I was not interested in. I also learned that as the two of us were probably the tallest couple there, we drew even more attention than I had been drawing on my own, which increased my embarrassment and made my movements even less graceful. We danced to two long songs, and then, for the first time ever, I was relieved to hear the Punta dance beat begin, because it meant I could escape the floor. Unfortunately, when I explained the plan to my dance partner, he decided to accompany me, and so, taking my hand awkwardly, he led me over to the benches, where I was treated to a long monologue about my beauty. Eventually, my host sister-in-law walked over and told me that my host mother needed to see me in the kitchen, so I extricated myself and followed her a short distance before she whispered that it had been a lie, and I thanked her for saving me. She encouraged me to continue dancing, but by this time, between the social mortification and the fact that all I’d had to drink for five hours was Coke, I was feeling rather ill, and thus spent the next two hours sitting in a dark room full of children and wishing I could leave.
Things that Go Bump in the Night
So this evening, I was in my room trying to decide if I should work on my blog or work on crosswords, and then I realized that there was a rather large cockroach on my bedside table. This was the first roach that I’ve seen in my room, and as my sense of security crashed, I was seized by a vengeful feeling and picked up my candle to smash the intruder. Unfortunately, the candle was beside the roach, and I kind of tipped it off as to the fact that it had been noticed, so it ran under the table and now I can’t get it. Then I looked around for other insects and immediately found a 6-inch long centipede-ish killer worm thing trying to hide in the corner between the wooden slats that form my ceiling and the cement that forms the wall. I clearly don’t know much about these creatures, but I do know that they can be poisonous, and I didn’t want to kill it, I just wanted it to not be in my room, so I emptied a plastic bag and tried to flick it in with a pencil. It resisted and stung my pencil several times very menacingly, and then I managed to flick it onto but not into the bag, which I was holding, and then I panicked and dropped the bag and the killer murderer disappeared onto or into or under my bed which I am now sitting on. I shook out all my sheets and pulled the bed away from the wall and shined my flashlight around and kicked my bedside table a few times, but I haven’t found anything. Hopefully my new roommates won’t emerge and crawl all over me/kill me while I’m asleep. Wish me luck.
P.S. I’m pretty sure nothing deadly has been crawling on me, but about a week after writing the above, I entered my room to find a scorpion scuttling across my wall. Various volunteers had been talking about how difficult scorpions are to kill, so I decided to catch it with a handkerchief and release it outside. I was successful in capturing it, but apparently, I was a little bit more forceful than I realized, and somehow managed to smash it as well. I threw it outside for good measure, and now every morning, I knock my shoes on the floor before putting my feet in them, just in case the scorpion had friends who are on the prowl for new hiding places.
The Road (Rated R)
I thought I’d inform those of you who have ever traveled with me or heard stories of me traveling that the wait is over: I have finally soiled the Honduran countryside (and my shoes) with my motion sick vomit. As someone who distinguished herself when she came to Honduras in college by throwing up in every vehicle she rode in (4), the fact that I’ve been in a Central American country for nearly four months without puking out the window of a moving car or at least demanding that the driver pull over to let me barf on the side of the road is something of a record. Here’s hoping I didn’t turn the proverbial corner today, and that I will regain my equilibrium before I go on any more long dusty drives. In the event that this is not the case, thanks again to all who collected barf bags to add to my stash. I carry them with me always.
The Proverbial Corner is Turned
So I wrote that previous bit, and then two days later, developed a stomach virus? that left me vomiting on the countryside and shoes once again. Unfortunate. I was visiting a neighboring village, and after the incident, I trudged the hour-long hike back as the sun set and I thought dark thoughts. When I got home, I went straight to bed where I stayed until the next afternoon. I’m pretty much over it now, which is wonderful, and I’m not sure why I’m sharing the news except that I know it will embarrass my mother. Take that, Mom.
The Day of Action of Thanks
Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone! Sorry I couldn’t be there, Family. I’m happy to say that I had a great time even though I wasn’t camping by a river in the States. One of the volunteers who lives in San Marcos hosted a get together for fifteen volunteers from various parts of Honduras. We had an expansive menu that included baked brie with cranberries, romaine lettuce salad with bleu cheese, candied walnuts, pears, and balsamic vinaigrette, mashed potatoes, “sweet potatoes”, turkey, and pumpkin pie, and I wish I could convey what a miracle the meal was after months of none of those foods.
Another Note About My Address
I’m happy to say that despite the fact that my address consists of a fake name, my “job” title, and a town I don’t live in, I have been receiving mail. THANK YOU! So far I’ve received 7 of the 8 things that I know I’ve been sent. By my reckoning, it takes about three weeks for mail to get to me. However, if it’s been a while and you haven’t received word of my undying gratitude, maybe send me an email and let me know that the package is in the mail so I know to check for it (although the post officers are very on top of things and track down the San Marcos volunteers whenever anything arrives for anyone in the Peace Corps). Also, practice makes perfect, so don’t let that missing 8th package keep you from sending yours. If you’ve got your box all ready and just can’t decide what to put in it, may I suggest dark chocolate, natural peanut butter (just peanuts and salt if possible), dried unsweetened mango slices from Trader Joe’s (I know that’s really specific), Snickers bars, and maybe some basil seeds. If you’re reading this and thinking, “Yeah right, a box? What has Cara ever sent me?,” consider sending me a letter. If you want, you can also stuff the envelope or box with pictures, newspaper clippings, and surprises. Whatever you want. These are just ideas. I know that this list is pretty heavy on food items, and one reason is that I have a small room with no shelves and therefore am a bit tight on space. Perhaps you can save your more substantive items for my return to the US. Finally, please note that I’ve made a minor change to the address I had posted in the sidebar. The old one works, but this one might work even better. Let’s find out.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Unfortunate Beliefs Concerning Hot Water and Coca Cola...
I know you’re all a bit baffled by the rapidity with which this long blog post has followed the last long blog post, and all I can say is that I spend a lot of time wandering around thinking, because that’s what you do without electricity. One of my apparent hobbies is coming up with catchy titles for things that generally don’t end up fitting into my more chronological posts. However, I’ve had a bit of down time today, so here you are:
Unfortunate Beliefs Concerning Hot Water and Coca Cola
There are various beliefs about hot water here, but they all seem to lead to the conclusion that it is bad for the health and should not be used. For this reason, I have been experiencing some rather chilly bucket baths every morning in my outdoor cement bathhouse. One theory on why hot water is unhealthy is that when you use it, your pores open and the worms and bacteria that is in the water can get into your system more easily. This theory was told to me by another volunteer who heard it from some host siblings who had lived in the US, where, the volunteer argued, they used hot water every day. They agreed, but then explained that the water here is different. Here in my site, where the same water used for bathing is also frequently used for drinking, the somewhat less inventive explanation, that hot water shocks your system too much, prevails. What this means in practical terms is that on my first day with this host family, I asked if I could heat some water for my bath, and my host mom found an old pan outside, dusted it off and filled it with water, and then, once it had started to steam, poured it into a larger bucket. All that seemed promising, however, she went on to scoop several pan-fulls of cold water into the bucket, so that by the time she left me to my bath, the addition of the hot water had been nearly negated. As the temperature of the mornings here has continued to fall, the water temperature has failed to rise, which leaves me shivering and thinking up culturally insensitive blog posts. On a positive note, my host mom has recently started letting me pour in my own cold water. Generally, I react by pouring very little, so that my baths are uncomfortably hot just out of rebellion. Take that. I can also console myself with the fact that I have it a lot better than the two year-old, who spends her bath time standing by the pila crying and sputtering as entirely cold water is poured on her head.
On the subject of Coca Cola, I wanted to share a few conversations I’ve had. Once, during a lunch in San Marcos, the woman beside me began espousing the health benefits of Coke. It is good for the stomach, the kidneys, babies, and cures depression, just like in the commercials. Then a couple days later, I was hanging out in my village in a friend’s house, and her two year-old was running around like crazy, and she said maybe it was because of the Coke, and I said, yes, that’s probably true, and she said, oh, so it’s true what they say about Coke making kids go crazy. I said yes.
Some Things That Have Been Eating At Me
Ticks and paranoia. So far, I’ve found five of the devils eating me, even though I wear long pants and check for them obsessively. They come in various colors and forms, as I realized when I noticed that those two new freckles had legs. Some are big and brown, one was blonde, and two have been tiny. Now every time I have an itch, which is all the time because I’m also very popular with the mosquitoes, I think it’s a tick, and even when I don’t find one, I just assume it’s because I couldn’t see it. Unfortunately for me, tick season here lasts about six months, and due to unseasonable dryness, it started about two weeks early.
How I Almost Died but then Didn’t
Speaking of paranoia and bites, here’s a story: There are these insects called assassin bugs, and they were mentioned once in training, where we learned that if they bite you, they sometimes infect you with a bacteria that grows in your body for up to 30 years, at which point, you die suddenly of heart failure. Another volunteer did a little research, and learned that they generally bite your face, and then poop in or near the bite, and the poop is what carries the disease. So that’s pretty nasty. Those of you who know me well might recall that I have a penchant for contracting or sustaining strange infirmities (brown recluse bite, quasi-lyme disease), and I also have a penchant for believing that I have infirmities that in fact, I do not (hypochondriac). However, when I learned the dirty truth about the assassin bug and Chagas, as the disease is known, I wasn’t terribly worried about being bitten. That is until I saw a giant assassin bug-looking insect on the curtain in my room. I tried to kill it, but somehow was really slow and completely missed. Then I thought about it for a while and decided that it was way too big to actually be one, and I moved on with my life. Or at least, I moved on for a while, until I stayed at a volunteer’s house and discovered a sticker on the door with a life-sized picture of a giant assassin bug. When I returned to my house the next day, I found myself a bit preoccupied with the proximity of possible death. I took down my curtain and poked around in the shadows, but failed to find anything, and so I gave up and decided I was being paranoid. I became even more paranoid the next day, however, when I found what appeared to be the first assassin bug’s somewhat punier sibling, again hanging out on my curtain. I had been instructed that rather than killing it, I should catch it and take it to the nearest health center for analysis, so I gracefully scooped it into a bag with the insect catching skills I developed during field based training. Then I went to take my frigid bath, and as I shampooed my hair, I decided that there might be a new insect bite on my scalp, and even though the scalp isn’t the face, it’s pretty close, right? And then I shivered and thought about insect poop and dying, and shortly after my shower, I perused all the Peace Corps medical information I have, and found not a mention, so I called the volunteer with the sticker and demanded to their voicemail that they search the internet and tell me if there was anything I could do to save myself, or if I was just doomed in thirty years or so. Then I went back to my room and remembered my Moon guidebook, and flipped to the back, where I found a paragraph about Chagas, and learned that only about 2% of the people bitten by assassin bugs actually develop the disease and they also develop a fever within a week or so of being bitten. So then I felt foolish and relieved, and when the volunteers from San Marcos came to visit, they told me that you have a month or more to prevent future death, and also, that the insect I had captured was not, in fact, an assassin bug, but was instead a tree beetle. So I let it go.
The Moon Tonight
My host mom called her grandkids out of the house to look at the moon tonight, and as I generally tend to be the only one constantly startled by the brightness of the night sky, I went out too, understanding that something unusual was going on. It was almost six and the moon was just rising. It was huge and full and golden. I climbed the hill to see it better. As I ate dinner, it reached the clouds that had been above it. It was so bright that it lit them up with pink and purple just like a sunrise. I didn’t know that could happen. Later on, I climbed the hill again, and even though the clouds were thick, they were veined with white from the moon behind them, and the sky was so bright that I could read my watch at 8:00 without using a flashlight.
Unfortunate Beliefs Concerning Hot Water and Coca Cola
There are various beliefs about hot water here, but they all seem to lead to the conclusion that it is bad for the health and should not be used. For this reason, I have been experiencing some rather chilly bucket baths every morning in my outdoor cement bathhouse. One theory on why hot water is unhealthy is that when you use it, your pores open and the worms and bacteria that is in the water can get into your system more easily. This theory was told to me by another volunteer who heard it from some host siblings who had lived in the US, where, the volunteer argued, they used hot water every day. They agreed, but then explained that the water here is different. Here in my site, where the same water used for bathing is also frequently used for drinking, the somewhat less inventive explanation, that hot water shocks your system too much, prevails. What this means in practical terms is that on my first day with this host family, I asked if I could heat some water for my bath, and my host mom found an old pan outside, dusted it off and filled it with water, and then, once it had started to steam, poured it into a larger bucket. All that seemed promising, however, she went on to scoop several pan-fulls of cold water into the bucket, so that by the time she left me to my bath, the addition of the hot water had been nearly negated. As the temperature of the mornings here has continued to fall, the water temperature has failed to rise, which leaves me shivering and thinking up culturally insensitive blog posts. On a positive note, my host mom has recently started letting me pour in my own cold water. Generally, I react by pouring very little, so that my baths are uncomfortably hot just out of rebellion. Take that. I can also console myself with the fact that I have it a lot better than the two year-old, who spends her bath time standing by the pila crying and sputtering as entirely cold water is poured on her head.
On the subject of Coca Cola, I wanted to share a few conversations I’ve had. Once, during a lunch in San Marcos, the woman beside me began espousing the health benefits of Coke. It is good for the stomach, the kidneys, babies, and cures depression, just like in the commercials. Then a couple days later, I was hanging out in my village in a friend’s house, and her two year-old was running around like crazy, and she said maybe it was because of the Coke, and I said, yes, that’s probably true, and she said, oh, so it’s true what they say about Coke making kids go crazy. I said yes.
Some Things That Have Been Eating At Me
Ticks and paranoia. So far, I’ve found five of the devils eating me, even though I wear long pants and check for them obsessively. They come in various colors and forms, as I realized when I noticed that those two new freckles had legs. Some are big and brown, one was blonde, and two have been tiny. Now every time I have an itch, which is all the time because I’m also very popular with the mosquitoes, I think it’s a tick, and even when I don’t find one, I just assume it’s because I couldn’t see it. Unfortunately for me, tick season here lasts about six months, and due to unseasonable dryness, it started about two weeks early.
How I Almost Died but then Didn’t
Speaking of paranoia and bites, here’s a story: There are these insects called assassin bugs, and they were mentioned once in training, where we learned that if they bite you, they sometimes infect you with a bacteria that grows in your body for up to 30 years, at which point, you die suddenly of heart failure. Another volunteer did a little research, and learned that they generally bite your face, and then poop in or near the bite, and the poop is what carries the disease. So that’s pretty nasty. Those of you who know me well might recall that I have a penchant for contracting or sustaining strange infirmities (brown recluse bite, quasi-lyme disease), and I also have a penchant for believing that I have infirmities that in fact, I do not (hypochondriac). However, when I learned the dirty truth about the assassin bug and Chagas, as the disease is known, I wasn’t terribly worried about being bitten. That is until I saw a giant assassin bug-looking insect on the curtain in my room. I tried to kill it, but somehow was really slow and completely missed. Then I thought about it for a while and decided that it was way too big to actually be one, and I moved on with my life. Or at least, I moved on for a while, until I stayed at a volunteer’s house and discovered a sticker on the door with a life-sized picture of a giant assassin bug. When I returned to my house the next day, I found myself a bit preoccupied with the proximity of possible death. I took down my curtain and poked around in the shadows, but failed to find anything, and so I gave up and decided I was being paranoid. I became even more paranoid the next day, however, when I found what appeared to be the first assassin bug’s somewhat punier sibling, again hanging out on my curtain. I had been instructed that rather than killing it, I should catch it and take it to the nearest health center for analysis, so I gracefully scooped it into a bag with the insect catching skills I developed during field based training. Then I went to take my frigid bath, and as I shampooed my hair, I decided that there might be a new insect bite on my scalp, and even though the scalp isn’t the face, it’s pretty close, right? And then I shivered and thought about insect poop and dying, and shortly after my shower, I perused all the Peace Corps medical information I have, and found not a mention, so I called the volunteer with the sticker and demanded to their voicemail that they search the internet and tell me if there was anything I could do to save myself, or if I was just doomed in thirty years or so. Then I went back to my room and remembered my Moon guidebook, and flipped to the back, where I found a paragraph about Chagas, and learned that only about 2% of the people bitten by assassin bugs actually develop the disease and they also develop a fever within a week or so of being bitten. So then I felt foolish and relieved, and when the volunteers from San Marcos came to visit, they told me that you have a month or more to prevent future death, and also, that the insect I had captured was not, in fact, an assassin bug, but was instead a tree beetle. So I let it go.
The Moon Tonight
My host mom called her grandkids out of the house to look at the moon tonight, and as I generally tend to be the only one constantly startled by the brightness of the night sky, I went out too, understanding that something unusual was going on. It was almost six and the moon was just rising. It was huge and full and golden. I climbed the hill to see it better. As I ate dinner, it reached the clouds that had been above it. It was so bright that it lit them up with pink and purple just like a sunrise. I didn’t know that could happen. Later on, I climbed the hill again, and even though the clouds were thick, they were veined with white from the moon behind them, and the sky was so bright that I could read my watch at 8:00 without using a flashlight.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Walking and Riding and Going to the Beach
I walked to Los Planes yesterday. I was supposed to leave at 8:30, but my counterpart predictably came two hours late, and we didn’t set out until 10:45. Her daughter walked with us, with her black umbrella for the sun. Mine is blue and broken, but I walked with it anyway. My youngest host sister came too, riding a horse with no name and a bad back. We started out on foot paths that eventually led to the road. My counterpart’s daughter flutters around her words so that they sound more like bird than Spanish, and for a long time, I felt like I couldn’t understand anyone. The sun was out, but I was the only one sweating. I had spent the morning drinking water in preparation, and I had a liter with me, but it wouldn’t be enough. Around every corner, we could see new views. La Botija was to our left and mostly hidden, but down on the planes through the dust and haze, we could see Choluteca and the other protected area of Guanacaure. I was glad I didn’t live there. We walked in the shadow of Pantaleon, a steep sided mesa that has always seemed very far when I’ve looked at it from my house. My counterpart planned a picnic on the top, and I thought about how I never wanted to walk this way again. I had no energy. The road swerved downhill steeply at a knee-grinding grade with loose rocks and gravel that I slid on several times. I think I will be remembered as the volunteer who almost fell down a lot. It is a defining feature. We turned onto a deep footpath that led even more dramatically down the side of the mountain. I was surprised when the horse followed us. The path had a width of maybe 8 inches and a depth of a couple feet, and I thought about why horses have such long legs. At around 1:00, we arrived at an integrated farm that I wasn’t expecting. A chasm ran by the house, and my counterpart told me that it was created by a landslide from Hurricane Mitch. The house was beautiful. Years ago, a son carved flowers and a house into the wooden windows and door, which are painted green. The woman who lived there wore an orange blouse that complemented the green, and the light that came in from high windows filled the room. She served homemade rosquillas, which are small, hard doughnut-like crackers that taste a little bit like Cheeze-its. They came on saucers with organic coffee from the farm, and were especially delicious because all I’d eaten so far that day was a bowl of cornflakes. While we snacked, I talked with the farmers, and afterwards, the husband took me on a tour. Where the landslide was, he has planted a variety of fast growing leguminous trees, the leaves and bark of which can be used as pesticides, fertilizer, and chicken feed. Once we were through the woods, we reached a section of coffee shaded by fruit trees and a yucca field with stone terraces to conserve the soil. Next came an organic corn field intercropped with beans and seemingly growing out of pure gravel. This field was terraced too, in a time consuming and painstaking manner that we had kind of learned about in training. We had also learned how hard they are to build, and how most people aren’t willing to do the work. It was extremely impressive. We followed a path down into a wooded lot full of spiny cedros. These trees are popular for furniture and construction. They are frequently harvested illegally, and are becoming rare in Honduras. 1,000 trees were planted 30 years ago as part of a reforestation project. Most of the trees have survived, and the air in the forest was cool and dark. It was hard to return to the sunny uphill path, but we soon ducked into another shaded coffee section and then arrived back at the house.
The rosquillas were good but not terribly filling, so when we were served lunch at about 2:00, I was thankful for about one minute before I realized that the two five-inch strips of reddish hairy thing were not fruit as I had been hoping, but were instead I guess pig skin, although all it consisted of was a thick, soggy layer of fat and bristles. They also came with a bowl of espaghetti, which is a distant and unpopular relative of spaghetti. In Honduras, the sauce is usually ketchup from a bag, mixed with MSG and either mayonnaise or mantequilla (a Honduran cross between sour cream and butter). Although not soggy pig skin, it’s still gross. I forced down the majority of the espaghetti, each bite followed by a rapid bite of tortilla to clear the palate, and after slicing one of the strips into pill-sized cubes of hairy fat with my spoon, I managed to swallow about a quarter of the total before running out of tortilla and telling my counterpart that I was really sorry, I just can’t eat so much when it’s so sunny out. She cleared my plate and I felt ungrateful.
After lunch, the wife took us through the orchard of mangoes and bananas. She pointed out strong smelling leaves and spices, and we found cilantro, ginger, and pimiento, which can be boiled to make tea. A little girl who lived in the house walked with us and fell in love with me. I gave her things to smell and once, when I took a step, I felt her fingers catch in my hair because she had climbed a rock to reach it.
At around four, we left the house, loaded down with probably twenty pounds of bananas, two large squash, a cactus fruit, and a purse full of pimiento leaves. We climbed the steep, torturous trail up to the road, and then continued climbing as the sun went down. We arrived home before it was too completely dark, and after eating the cactus fruit and dinner and drinking two glasses of tea, I went to bed.
My computer died before I finished writing all that, and now it’s been over a week. After that day, I had a day to recover, and then resentfully walked to another village in the same direction but further, although the hike was marginally less terrible. Once I arrived, I was handed a heavy cold tamale and a cup full of Pepsi, and told by the annoying guy who kept talking to me that I was “very sweaty,” to which I responded “yes, that’s clear” and possibly rolled my eyes. I learned upon arrival that the “community meeting” we were attending was actually a Catholic church service. This time we didn’t leave until after the sun had set. We walked back by the light of my counterpart’s cell phone, the stars, and lightening from a far away storm that didn’t reach us until I was at home in bed.
This happened on a Friday, and over the weekend, my host sister-in-law who is a teacher, invited me to a parent-teacher conference on the upcoming Monday. The only catch was that it was an hour-long horse-ride away, and we would be walking because, although I had been asked on a nearly daily basis if I could ride, I had yet to convince anyone that I actually could. I agreed to go, and then finally on Sunday night, I asked the whole family if I could please just ride to school. After much mumbled discussion and being asked twice more if I could really ride, they agreed. In the morning, my host brothers rounded up a horse and a mule, and once they were saddled, we set off. I had the mule, for reasons that I’ll explain later, and I had the interesting experience of remembering long forgotten riding techniques as I bounced down the road. We arrived in the schoolyard and tied the animals underneath some shade trees where they were soon joined by the horses of other attendees. Then the meeting began. It was in one of the two classrooms, and my attention came and went over the two hours that it lasted. I was introduced early on, and then the PTA introduced themselves to me. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the repercussions of the government’s decision to close schools a month early with no warning and a mandate to grade students on their punctuality, commitment to learning, and behavior, as there was no longer time for exams. At the end of the meeting, there was a round of applause for the two teachers. Then we applauded the members of the PTA, and finally, someone called out, “and for the Northamerican!” and I was applauded as well. It was uncomfortable.
Once the meeting broke up, we milled around for a while, and I thought about how I was hungry. I quickly learned my lesson, because it turned out that somehow, someone knew I was coming and had prepared a lunch for me. Unfortunately, the lunch consisted of heaps of rice, espaghetti, and five thick tortillas. This espaghetti was markedly greasier than the previous torturous farm lunch, and both it and the rice tasted somehow more like lighter fluid than anything else I can think of. With the knowledge of my recent pig skin failure fresh in my mind, however, I determined to eat all of it, even though it involved some gagging and much disgustedness. I found that the best method for forcing it down was by exhaling as I rapidly chewed and again followed each bite with a bite of tortilla. Thankfully, there is an interesting tradition in this region of Honduras, wherein the guest is generally seated alone in a separate room from the rest of the family, to eat unaccompanied. For this reason, I eat all my meals in the dining room while my family eats in the kitchen. In a school setting, I ate in one classroom while all the parents and teachers ate in the other one. I finished the whole plate and felt a tiny bit of satisfaction but mostly just sick. Then I hopped on my mule and rode back home. We trotted a lot more on the way back. At one point, the mule farted a lot, and my host sister-in-law said that it was because I weighed so much, but then she told me that it was true, I can ride. She apologized for giving me the mule, because they are less comfortable to ride, it’s just that horses are more nervous and run faster, and the family wanted to be sure I knew what I was doing. So hopefully that means that in the future, I get the horse.
The following day, I went to San Marcos to visit the organic coffee cooperative that sells to Allegro coffee. Oh, if anyone lives near a Whole Foods and reads this, they should go buy Allegro coffee from San Marcos because it’s really good, and the fact that the coffee is organic means that the source of the longest river in Central America has that many fewer chemicals in it. One of the coffee farmers drove me, and I rode with my nearest neighbor who I really like hanging out with. She is on the board of directors and took me on a very short tour of the Cooperative’s headquarters. Wonderfully, the tour included coffee and an interesting explanation of the process of grading the coffee beans. In the afternoon, I ran errands and ate a lot of junk food, and then I and the other volunteers in the area got together and played a very unsatisfying game of Monopoly in Spanish. We were all spending the night in town because we had a regional meeting the next day, and transportation to San Marcos from the surrounding villages is rather inconvenient and unpredictable. In the morning, we headed out for the island town of Amapala, by way of various other larger and hotter southern cities. Amapala is located on Isla de la Tigre, which is off the Pacific coast. It requires a short boat ride, and by the time we arrived, the mix of heat, motion sickness, and junk food made me too sick feeling to do much except sit in the hotel room and play Tetris on my phone. Very sad, I know. I stumbled outside to eat dinner, which, though tasty, did not make me feel any better, and then took my second shower since coming to Honduras and went to bed. The next day was spent in the Honduran equivalent of a conference room/banquet hall. A main focus of the get together was for the new volunteers to have a chance to meet and network with the other volunteers in the region. We also talked about security and health and ate ceviche and paella. It was nice. On the second morning, we headed home. However, the three of us who live in villages around San Marcos got back after the proper buses left, and spent the night in San Marcos again. We cooked dinner together and watched Arrested Development DVDs and played a drawing game.
After so many nights out of my site, I was a little bit worried that I would be restless upon my return. However, it turns out that I’m really happy to be back. The stars here are bright, and last night, even though the moon was only half full, my shadow was crisp against the ground as I stood on the hill behind the house to get phone reception. I think that I’ll soon be working on a survey for community members who are involved in a latrine project, which is great because it’s necessary and useful, and still gives me a good chance to get to know the community better. I also did a community mapping activity with about 35 people, mostly because it’s kind of Peace Corps homework, but it went better than I had anticipated, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The only bummer is that the moth population in my room has increased exponentially and I’m not sure, but I think they might be eating my clothes.
And to those of you who stuck it out and read all the way to the end of this post, way to go! I imagine you feel a bit like I did after I finished the giant plate of lighter fluid-soaked starch. Sorry, and thanks all the same.
Cara
The rosquillas were good but not terribly filling, so when we were served lunch at about 2:00, I was thankful for about one minute before I realized that the two five-inch strips of reddish hairy thing were not fruit as I had been hoping, but were instead I guess pig skin, although all it consisted of was a thick, soggy layer of fat and bristles. They also came with a bowl of espaghetti, which is a distant and unpopular relative of spaghetti. In Honduras, the sauce is usually ketchup from a bag, mixed with MSG and either mayonnaise or mantequilla (a Honduran cross between sour cream and butter). Although not soggy pig skin, it’s still gross. I forced down the majority of the espaghetti, each bite followed by a rapid bite of tortilla to clear the palate, and after slicing one of the strips into pill-sized cubes of hairy fat with my spoon, I managed to swallow about a quarter of the total before running out of tortilla and telling my counterpart that I was really sorry, I just can’t eat so much when it’s so sunny out. She cleared my plate and I felt ungrateful.
After lunch, the wife took us through the orchard of mangoes and bananas. She pointed out strong smelling leaves and spices, and we found cilantro, ginger, and pimiento, which can be boiled to make tea. A little girl who lived in the house walked with us and fell in love with me. I gave her things to smell and once, when I took a step, I felt her fingers catch in my hair because she had climbed a rock to reach it.
At around four, we left the house, loaded down with probably twenty pounds of bananas, two large squash, a cactus fruit, and a purse full of pimiento leaves. We climbed the steep, torturous trail up to the road, and then continued climbing as the sun went down. We arrived home before it was too completely dark, and after eating the cactus fruit and dinner and drinking two glasses of tea, I went to bed.
My computer died before I finished writing all that, and now it’s been over a week. After that day, I had a day to recover, and then resentfully walked to another village in the same direction but further, although the hike was marginally less terrible. Once I arrived, I was handed a heavy cold tamale and a cup full of Pepsi, and told by the annoying guy who kept talking to me that I was “very sweaty,” to which I responded “yes, that’s clear” and possibly rolled my eyes. I learned upon arrival that the “community meeting” we were attending was actually a Catholic church service. This time we didn’t leave until after the sun had set. We walked back by the light of my counterpart’s cell phone, the stars, and lightening from a far away storm that didn’t reach us until I was at home in bed.
This happened on a Friday, and over the weekend, my host sister-in-law who is a teacher, invited me to a parent-teacher conference on the upcoming Monday. The only catch was that it was an hour-long horse-ride away, and we would be walking because, although I had been asked on a nearly daily basis if I could ride, I had yet to convince anyone that I actually could. I agreed to go, and then finally on Sunday night, I asked the whole family if I could please just ride to school. After much mumbled discussion and being asked twice more if I could really ride, they agreed. In the morning, my host brothers rounded up a horse and a mule, and once they were saddled, we set off. I had the mule, for reasons that I’ll explain later, and I had the interesting experience of remembering long forgotten riding techniques as I bounced down the road. We arrived in the schoolyard and tied the animals underneath some shade trees where they were soon joined by the horses of other attendees. Then the meeting began. It was in one of the two classrooms, and my attention came and went over the two hours that it lasted. I was introduced early on, and then the PTA introduced themselves to me. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the repercussions of the government’s decision to close schools a month early with no warning and a mandate to grade students on their punctuality, commitment to learning, and behavior, as there was no longer time for exams. At the end of the meeting, there was a round of applause for the two teachers. Then we applauded the members of the PTA, and finally, someone called out, “and for the Northamerican!” and I was applauded as well. It was uncomfortable.
Once the meeting broke up, we milled around for a while, and I thought about how I was hungry. I quickly learned my lesson, because it turned out that somehow, someone knew I was coming and had prepared a lunch for me. Unfortunately, the lunch consisted of heaps of rice, espaghetti, and five thick tortillas. This espaghetti was markedly greasier than the previous torturous farm lunch, and both it and the rice tasted somehow more like lighter fluid than anything else I can think of. With the knowledge of my recent pig skin failure fresh in my mind, however, I determined to eat all of it, even though it involved some gagging and much disgustedness. I found that the best method for forcing it down was by exhaling as I rapidly chewed and again followed each bite with a bite of tortilla. Thankfully, there is an interesting tradition in this region of Honduras, wherein the guest is generally seated alone in a separate room from the rest of the family, to eat unaccompanied. For this reason, I eat all my meals in the dining room while my family eats in the kitchen. In a school setting, I ate in one classroom while all the parents and teachers ate in the other one. I finished the whole plate and felt a tiny bit of satisfaction but mostly just sick. Then I hopped on my mule and rode back home. We trotted a lot more on the way back. At one point, the mule farted a lot, and my host sister-in-law said that it was because I weighed so much, but then she told me that it was true, I can ride. She apologized for giving me the mule, because they are less comfortable to ride, it’s just that horses are more nervous and run faster, and the family wanted to be sure I knew what I was doing. So hopefully that means that in the future, I get the horse.
The following day, I went to San Marcos to visit the organic coffee cooperative that sells to Allegro coffee. Oh, if anyone lives near a Whole Foods and reads this, they should go buy Allegro coffee from San Marcos because it’s really good, and the fact that the coffee is organic means that the source of the longest river in Central America has that many fewer chemicals in it. One of the coffee farmers drove me, and I rode with my nearest neighbor who I really like hanging out with. She is on the board of directors and took me on a very short tour of the Cooperative’s headquarters. Wonderfully, the tour included coffee and an interesting explanation of the process of grading the coffee beans. In the afternoon, I ran errands and ate a lot of junk food, and then I and the other volunteers in the area got together and played a very unsatisfying game of Monopoly in Spanish. We were all spending the night in town because we had a regional meeting the next day, and transportation to San Marcos from the surrounding villages is rather inconvenient and unpredictable. In the morning, we headed out for the island town of Amapala, by way of various other larger and hotter southern cities. Amapala is located on Isla de la Tigre, which is off the Pacific coast. It requires a short boat ride, and by the time we arrived, the mix of heat, motion sickness, and junk food made me too sick feeling to do much except sit in the hotel room and play Tetris on my phone. Very sad, I know. I stumbled outside to eat dinner, which, though tasty, did not make me feel any better, and then took my second shower since coming to Honduras and went to bed. The next day was spent in the Honduran equivalent of a conference room/banquet hall. A main focus of the get together was for the new volunteers to have a chance to meet and network with the other volunteers in the region. We also talked about security and health and ate ceviche and paella. It was nice. On the second morning, we headed home. However, the three of us who live in villages around San Marcos got back after the proper buses left, and spent the night in San Marcos again. We cooked dinner together and watched Arrested Development DVDs and played a drawing game.
After so many nights out of my site, I was a little bit worried that I would be restless upon my return. However, it turns out that I’m really happy to be back. The stars here are bright, and last night, even though the moon was only half full, my shadow was crisp against the ground as I stood on the hill behind the house to get phone reception. I think that I’ll soon be working on a survey for community members who are involved in a latrine project, which is great because it’s necessary and useful, and still gives me a good chance to get to know the community better. I also did a community mapping activity with about 35 people, mostly because it’s kind of Peace Corps homework, but it went better than I had anticipated, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The only bummer is that the moth population in my room has increased exponentially and I’m not sure, but I think they might be eating my clothes.
And to those of you who stuck it out and read all the way to the end of this post, way to go! I imagine you feel a bit like I did after I finished the giant plate of lighter fluid-soaked starch. Sorry, and thanks all the same.
Cara
Thursday, October 8, 2009
A Quick Note About My Address:
I have one! It's over in the sidebar. I know it doesn't look real, but apparently it works. It takes letters take longer to arrive than packages, and packages take about two weeks, so send me those. Also, my birthday's kind of coming up. And I really like chocolate and peanut butter.
I Made it to My Site...Unbelievable.
Well, Readers, it appears that my training group beat all the odds and swore in as volunteers last week before heading to our respective homes for the next two years. The day of swearing in, I met my counterpart, an energetic and outspoken woman who somewhat intimidated me with her expectations of who I would be and what we would do together. In the afternoon, after hours of orientation information and speeches, we were bused to the American Embassy were we had a ceremony and cake. Afterwards, we went to Valle de Angeles to celebrate at a pupusa restaurant. Pupusas are kind of like quesadillas, except that the tortillas are much thicker and connected on all sides. To make them, you form something like a bird’s nest out of ground corn, and then in the middle, you put cheese, beans, meat, or whatever you want, I guess...it’s your pupusa. Once it’s filled, you smooth over the top with the corn meal and cook/fry it. Anyway, we ate those, and at the late hour of 9, we headed to our houses for a final night of packing and goodbyes, and if lucky, sleep.
I finished packing at 10:30 or so, which was fortunate because my neighborhood was the first bus stop, which meant that I had to get up at 3:30 or so, hug my host mom goodbye, and drag my ridiculous amount of luggage out into the road. The bus was late, so we didn’t load up until 4:30, but enough with these petty details. Eventually, we picked up everyone and trundled off to Tegucigalpa to meet with our counterparts and follow them home. After a few hours of waiting in a bus station, my counterpart and I headed off for my site. About five hours of mild motion sickness later, we arrived at the intersection of the main road and the dirt road that leads to my village. We waited another hour or so for a ride to bring us the rest of the way. While we mostly sat on stones by the side of the road, I was briefly evacuated while a herd of cattle, guided by a group of cowboys complete with hats, boots, and pistols rode past us. Eventually, my counterpart’s friend arrived with a truck, and we finished the journey to my new house at about 4 pm.
My family here consists of host parents, two sisters, one sister-in-law, two brothers, a 2 year-old granddaughter, and 3 year-old grandson. The house is comfortable, and I live in a brand new little room in the back with a view of a pasture in a valley. It’s a dairy farm, which is awesome cause I likes my milk and cheese. Also, I kind of have solar power. I have a light in my room, but unfortunately, I’m unable to charge any of my gadgets. So I’m still figuring that out, and in the meantime I’ve used 41% of my computer battery typing this post and downloading photos. Good one. Anyway, I have spent the majority of my time in the house being really awkward and eating, but I did have a good conversation with my family last night, so maybe we’re on the road to less awkwardness. My host mom has gotten over her conviction that I don’t speak Spanish or like Honduran food, so that’s progress. For the first couple of months in our communities, Volunteers are supposed to just get to know the community, do some information gathering, familiarize ourselves with local organizations, and not dive into projects. I’ve visited some neighbors, which has been nice because I feel like I’m doing something, but weird because we’ve mostly just sat on porches, consumed sugar, and not had a lot to say. My counterpart is less intimidating these days. She’s really motivated and I think she’ll be great to work with.
The village is beautiful. There is a ridge behind my house that you can climb to reach a view across the mountains and valleys of La Botija and into Nicaragua. The actual village is very spread out and doesn’t really have a center, so I have yet to get a full understanding of its boundaries. Houses are connected more often by foot paths than by the dirt road that winds through the town on its way to other places. This makes for scenic walks and difficult navigation. Yesterday, I climbed up to a place called Miravalle, or basically an overlook. On a sunny day, it’s apparently possible to see Nicaragua, the Pacific Ocean, and El Salvador, but unfortunately, a cloud was blowing in and the view filled with mist. We visited a friend who lives on another dairy farm at the top of the mountain and drank organic coffee and ate fresh oranges, bananas and fruit from a guanajiquil tree.
While I waited for the bus the other day, my host mother found a bunch of small holes in the ground. She said they were from an animal that comes out and bites the cattle, and I asked if it was like a rat, and she said yes. I decided the holes were probably made by a mole or similar class of rodent, but then my host brother put some pine needles down the hole and twirled them around. He got excited and said you could see its legs, so I crouched down and looked, and then a tarantula the size of my hand lunged out. Also, I’m pretty sure that the spiders in my room in Field-Based Training weren’t tarantulas, even though my family said they were. This one was browner and fatter, and more tarantula-like. We continued to wait for the bus, and my host relatives discovered several more holes and teased out three or four more before the bus arrived.
Yesterday, I climbed to the overlook behind my house again because the sky was clearer. I could see a whole new volcano behind the mountains I had seen before. I stayed for a long time taking photos and being pushed around by the wind, and as I walked home, the sun set behind me.
I finished packing at 10:30 or so, which was fortunate because my neighborhood was the first bus stop, which meant that I had to get up at 3:30 or so, hug my host mom goodbye, and drag my ridiculous amount of luggage out into the road. The bus was late, so we didn’t load up until 4:30, but enough with these petty details. Eventually, we picked up everyone and trundled off to Tegucigalpa to meet with our counterparts and follow them home. After a few hours of waiting in a bus station, my counterpart and I headed off for my site. About five hours of mild motion sickness later, we arrived at the intersection of the main road and the dirt road that leads to my village. We waited another hour or so for a ride to bring us the rest of the way. While we mostly sat on stones by the side of the road, I was briefly evacuated while a herd of cattle, guided by a group of cowboys complete with hats, boots, and pistols rode past us. Eventually, my counterpart’s friend arrived with a truck, and we finished the journey to my new house at about 4 pm.
My family here consists of host parents, two sisters, one sister-in-law, two brothers, a 2 year-old granddaughter, and 3 year-old grandson. The house is comfortable, and I live in a brand new little room in the back with a view of a pasture in a valley. It’s a dairy farm, which is awesome cause I likes my milk and cheese. Also, I kind of have solar power. I have a light in my room, but unfortunately, I’m unable to charge any of my gadgets. So I’m still figuring that out, and in the meantime I’ve used 41% of my computer battery typing this post and downloading photos. Good one. Anyway, I have spent the majority of my time in the house being really awkward and eating, but I did have a good conversation with my family last night, so maybe we’re on the road to less awkwardness. My host mom has gotten over her conviction that I don’t speak Spanish or like Honduran food, so that’s progress. For the first couple of months in our communities, Volunteers are supposed to just get to know the community, do some information gathering, familiarize ourselves with local organizations, and not dive into projects. I’ve visited some neighbors, which has been nice because I feel like I’m doing something, but weird because we’ve mostly just sat on porches, consumed sugar, and not had a lot to say. My counterpart is less intimidating these days. She’s really motivated and I think she’ll be great to work with.
The village is beautiful. There is a ridge behind my house that you can climb to reach a view across the mountains and valleys of La Botija and into Nicaragua. The actual village is very spread out and doesn’t really have a center, so I have yet to get a full understanding of its boundaries. Houses are connected more often by foot paths than by the dirt road that winds through the town on its way to other places. This makes for scenic walks and difficult navigation. Yesterday, I climbed up to a place called Miravalle, or basically an overlook. On a sunny day, it’s apparently possible to see Nicaragua, the Pacific Ocean, and El Salvador, but unfortunately, a cloud was blowing in and the view filled with mist. We visited a friend who lives on another dairy farm at the top of the mountain and drank organic coffee and ate fresh oranges, bananas and fruit from a guanajiquil tree.
While I waited for the bus the other day, my host mother found a bunch of small holes in the ground. She said they were from an animal that comes out and bites the cattle, and I asked if it was like a rat, and she said yes. I decided the holes were probably made by a mole or similar class of rodent, but then my host brother put some pine needles down the hole and twirled them around. He got excited and said you could see its legs, so I crouched down and looked, and then a tarantula the size of my hand lunged out. Also, I’m pretty sure that the spiders in my room in Field-Based Training weren’t tarantulas, even though my family said they were. This one was browner and fatter, and more tarantula-like. We continued to wait for the bus, and my host relatives discovered several more holes and teased out three or four more before the bus arrived.
Yesterday, I climbed to the overlook behind my house again because the sky was clearer. I could see a whole new volcano behind the mountains I had seen before. I stayed for a long time taking photos and being pushed around by the wind, and as I walked home, the sun set behind me.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
A Touch of Staying
So, I’m not sure how many of you have heard the news, but somewhat predictably, the progression of my training group has again been stymied by the volatile Honduran political situation. Just days away from our swearing-in date and the following dispersal into our sites, the original president, Zelaya, snuck himself back into the country and has since been holed up in the Brazilian Embassy. This has caused a lot of problems, which range from protests and looting to 24-hour curfews (called toques de queda in Spanish, which literally means "a touch of staying"), and even a short but still 1984-ish cessation of telephone service.
I generally feel quite distanced from the reality of the situation. I find myself relating to the curfews more as snow days than as the major life-disrupting disturbances that they have been for many Hondurans. Various host parents were stuck in Tegucigalpa and forced to walk for hours until they were able to get picked up by relatives who broke the curfew to drive out and get them. There have also been runs on gas stations, grocery stores, and banks, but most of these have been in the larger cities. Where I am, about half an hour from the capital, things have been peaceful to the point of boredom, which, considering the alternative, is great, even though I still find myself whining about it.
We heard the first rumors of Zelaya’s return on Monday morning while we were in class. Then our lunch period was extended, and the trainees with internet spread the news that he was back, was in the Brazilian Embassy, and that his supporters were surrounding the building. Our next session was cancelled, because our guest speaker was supposed to be the Peace Corps Country Director, but as the Peace Corps Office and the Brazilian Embassy are in the same neighborhood, she was unable to extricate herself to meet with us. As the afternoon progressed, we learned of a curfew that would begin at 4 pm. Our session ended early, and we waited for the bus driver to arrive. While we settled into the bus seats, a friend asked me to try calling the United States because her phone was giving her a strange message. I tried, and was notified that the number did not exist. Other people tried their phones, and we found that service both outside and within the country had been suspended. The feeling of being so suddenly cut off was disorienting.
When we arrived in our neighborhood, we tried to watch the news, but all the stations here are very politically affiliated, and it was hard to get much information. At around 5:30, a video montage of Honduran scenery accompanied by jolly marimba music cut across the stations and announced the beginning of a news conference to be given by the interim president Micheletti. The conference was mostly incomprehensible to me, but I did learn that the toque de queda had been extended until 7 the next morning. After the marimba music returned to accompany the segue back into regular programming, I went to a friend’s house to get a better translation of the news and speculate about its implications for our future. Then we went to another house in the neighborhood where other trainees were sitting in a carport celebrating one guy’s birthday. After darkness fell, the power was cut off, and we pulled our chairs into the yard to look at the stars. Before I went to bed, I learned that the curfew had been extended from 7 am to 6 pm. I turned off my alarm clock.
Tuesday was the first of two days without classes. Most of the training staff lives in Tegucigalpa, so even though things are peaceful here, it would have been extremely difficult for them to have made it to the center. I spent the two days doing mild but dismayingly exhausting hikes with a friend, and filling the time with visits to other trainees, dominoes, and attempts at cooking. I made some misshapen but edible tortillas, and then, filled with confidence, helped fry the platanos at my house for dinner. Without even knowing that I was responsible, my six year-old host sister refused to eat them, complaining that they were too hard, and asking who had cooked them. My host grandmother tried to make excuses for me, saying that they just weren’t ripe enough to begin with, but she wasn’t kidding anyone.
On Thursday, we had a shortened day of training, the entirety of which was concentrated on learning the Honduran National Anthem. We left the center at three, and a group of us went directly to Valle de Angeles, a nearby town, to eat pupusas and be away from our houses.
For those of you who are wondering, our swearing-in date has again been postponed. The new date is set for next Wednesday, with the goal of heading out to our sites the following morning. Don’t tell Honduras, though, cause it will probably do something to throw another wrench in our plans.
Tomorrow, classes resume at the normal time, which means that I have to get up at 5. It also means that I have a language placement interview at 7:30, which I’m pretty sure is the worst time ever to have an interview, especially in a different language, so wish me luck, and I’m off to bed.
P.S. I wrote all that on Thursday night, and have a few updates. First of all, I had my interview, and it was a bad time, but I still managed to advance to the level of Intermediate High on the Foreign Service Institute or something scale. Congratulations. Things seem to be settling down a little, or, perhaps more accurately, stewing. We´ll see what the next week brings. We had a 6 pm to 6 am curfew last night, but it was probably because it´s a weekend.
I wish you all well!
Peace,
Cara
I generally feel quite distanced from the reality of the situation. I find myself relating to the curfews more as snow days than as the major life-disrupting disturbances that they have been for many Hondurans. Various host parents were stuck in Tegucigalpa and forced to walk for hours until they were able to get picked up by relatives who broke the curfew to drive out and get them. There have also been runs on gas stations, grocery stores, and banks, but most of these have been in the larger cities. Where I am, about half an hour from the capital, things have been peaceful to the point of boredom, which, considering the alternative, is great, even though I still find myself whining about it.
We heard the first rumors of Zelaya’s return on Monday morning while we were in class. Then our lunch period was extended, and the trainees with internet spread the news that he was back, was in the Brazilian Embassy, and that his supporters were surrounding the building. Our next session was cancelled, because our guest speaker was supposed to be the Peace Corps Country Director, but as the Peace Corps Office and the Brazilian Embassy are in the same neighborhood, she was unable to extricate herself to meet with us. As the afternoon progressed, we learned of a curfew that would begin at 4 pm. Our session ended early, and we waited for the bus driver to arrive. While we settled into the bus seats, a friend asked me to try calling the United States because her phone was giving her a strange message. I tried, and was notified that the number did not exist. Other people tried their phones, and we found that service both outside and within the country had been suspended. The feeling of being so suddenly cut off was disorienting.
When we arrived in our neighborhood, we tried to watch the news, but all the stations here are very politically affiliated, and it was hard to get much information. At around 5:30, a video montage of Honduran scenery accompanied by jolly marimba music cut across the stations and announced the beginning of a news conference to be given by the interim president Micheletti. The conference was mostly incomprehensible to me, but I did learn that the toque de queda had been extended until 7 the next morning. After the marimba music returned to accompany the segue back into regular programming, I went to a friend’s house to get a better translation of the news and speculate about its implications for our future. Then we went to another house in the neighborhood where other trainees were sitting in a carport celebrating one guy’s birthday. After darkness fell, the power was cut off, and we pulled our chairs into the yard to look at the stars. Before I went to bed, I learned that the curfew had been extended from 7 am to 6 pm. I turned off my alarm clock.
Tuesday was the first of two days without classes. Most of the training staff lives in Tegucigalpa, so even though things are peaceful here, it would have been extremely difficult for them to have made it to the center. I spent the two days doing mild but dismayingly exhausting hikes with a friend, and filling the time with visits to other trainees, dominoes, and attempts at cooking. I made some misshapen but edible tortillas, and then, filled with confidence, helped fry the platanos at my house for dinner. Without even knowing that I was responsible, my six year-old host sister refused to eat them, complaining that they were too hard, and asking who had cooked them. My host grandmother tried to make excuses for me, saying that they just weren’t ripe enough to begin with, but she wasn’t kidding anyone.
On Thursday, we had a shortened day of training, the entirety of which was concentrated on learning the Honduran National Anthem. We left the center at three, and a group of us went directly to Valle de Angeles, a nearby town, to eat pupusas and be away from our houses.
For those of you who are wondering, our swearing-in date has again been postponed. The new date is set for next Wednesday, with the goal of heading out to our sites the following morning. Don’t tell Honduras, though, cause it will probably do something to throw another wrench in our plans.
Tomorrow, classes resume at the normal time, which means that I have to get up at 5. It also means that I have a language placement interview at 7:30, which I’m pretty sure is the worst time ever to have an interview, especially in a different language, so wish me luck, and I’m off to bed.
P.S. I wrote all that on Thursday night, and have a few updates. First of all, I had my interview, and it was a bad time, but I still managed to advance to the level of Intermediate High on the Foreign Service Institute or something scale. Congratulations. Things seem to be settling down a little, or, perhaps more accurately, stewing. We´ll see what the next week brings. We had a 6 pm to 6 am curfew last night, but it was probably because it´s a weekend.
I wish you all well!
Peace,
Cara
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Site Announcement
Hi all,
Just wanted to drop a quick line about my site, where I will be moving next week. I learned more details on Thursday, and everything is official now. I´m going to be living in a tiny town near the Sierra de la Botija (Mountain of the Hidden Treasure...or something) Protected Area. It´s in the deep south right by the border with Nicaragua. It sounds like I´ll be pretty busy when I finally get settled in. My work areas include working with small scale farmers and a women´s group, promoting organic fertilizers and compost, some work with chickens and pigs, a latrine project, micro-watershed management which includes all kinds of things, and possibly working with a health center. All this is in the future though. First I have two months in my site where I´m supposed to run community diagnostics and get to know people.
I´m not going to have electricity, which doesn´t bode well for regular blog postings. If you don´t hear from me for a while, it´s not because I´ve forgotten you. It also doesn´t mean I don´t want to hear from you, even if you think things are really boring where you are. With twelve hours of darkness a day and without a lot of Spanish fluency, I´m sure to be quite acquainted with boredom. Write away, and when I do someday check my email, it will be like Christmas morning.
Cara
Just wanted to drop a quick line about my site, where I will be moving next week. I learned more details on Thursday, and everything is official now. I´m going to be living in a tiny town near the Sierra de la Botija (Mountain of the Hidden Treasure...or something) Protected Area. It´s in the deep south right by the border with Nicaragua. It sounds like I´ll be pretty busy when I finally get settled in. My work areas include working with small scale farmers and a women´s group, promoting organic fertilizers and compost, some work with chickens and pigs, a latrine project, micro-watershed management which includes all kinds of things, and possibly working with a health center. All this is in the future though. First I have two months in my site where I´m supposed to run community diagnostics and get to know people.
I´m not going to have electricity, which doesn´t bode well for regular blog postings. If you don´t hear from me for a while, it´s not because I´ve forgotten you. It also doesn´t mean I don´t want to hear from you, even if you think things are really boring where you are. With twelve hours of darkness a day and without a lot of Spanish fluency, I´m sure to be quite acquainted with boredom. Write away, and when I do someday check my email, it will be like Christmas morning.
Cara
Saturday, September 12, 2009
FBT Wrap-Up
Well, I can’t believe it, but we’re about to finish Field Based Training. Our swearing-in date isn’t for a while yet, but we’ll be spending the last two weeks in our first training site closer to the capital. I started this entry a couple weeks ago, but due to an unexpected illness, I wasn’t able to access the internet last week, so this update’s going to cover a lot of territory, inefficiently as always. I guess I’ll just dive right in:
A few weeks ago, we were learning how to make insect collections, and I received a plastic purse to catch a bug in. I spent a few minutes unsuccessfully swiping at flying ants, and then a friend and I took a walk behind the house we’ve been having classes in. We found a log and decided to flip it over, and there we discovered two toads and a tarantula! So of course we had to catch the spider because we were making an insect collection after all, and after much jumping and some shrieking and a little prodding with a stick, I pushed it into the purse and triumphantly carried it back to class. The next step was to euthanize it with nail polish remover, which seemed kind of mean, and then we realized that tarantulas are kind of too juicy to pin, and later on I learned that technically, they aren’t even insects, they’re arthropods, which are apparently different, so after much discussion, we returned it to its stump and ended up not killing anything.
Speaking of arthropods, I went back to the cave with another group of trainees and a few host siblings including my host sister. I was almost in charge of finding the way, but we ended up finding the guide we had the time before, which was a good thing, because in the last two weeks, all the fields around the path had been burned and I would have been lost. The hike took a lot less time because the group was smaller and didn’t contain any four year-olds. As I slithered through the entrance, I realized that my headlamp batteries were dying and I could only see about two feet in front of me. Very unfortunate. Anyway, I was one of the first people in the cave, and as I waited for everyone to squeeze through the first few chambers, one of the Honduran girls screamed beside me that there was a snake. I looked at it with my dying light and at first I thought it was just a bat, but then it unwound a bit and did indeed become a long brown snake with a boa-like head. The biologist in our group made it into the chamber and deemed it not poisonous, although this didn’t really reassure any of the Hondurans. Then one of the guides came with a machete and we had to convince him not to kill it, which took some doing. We continued into the cave, walking more slowly this time and finding, along with the snake and hundreds of bats, some large crab-like arthropods, which were neither spiders, nor insects, just in case you wanted to know. We also learned that if you tap on stalactites, they resonate like bells. After spending about an hour in the caves, we were presented with two options for reaching the waterfall: easy or fun. We opted for the fun route, which lived up to the hype and entailed walking and climbing up the fern and moss covered stones and streambed below the falls until we reached the pool.
A few days before the cave and waterfall expedition, the whole PAM group went on a camping trip to a small village named Rio Negro, which is only about 40 minutes from our training site, but way up a mountain. We visited a Volunteer who is expanding the eco-tourism industry there. The first thing that I and five other trainees did was teach a class on biological classification to some tour guides in training. I was responsible for talking about the Plant Kingdom, which apparently is what it’s called, and which I stayed up quite late reading about the night before, because as it turns out, I know very little about biological classification, and even less about tropical cloud forest ecology. Luckily, I augmented my scanty knowledge with some colorful illustrations of epiphytes, and no one asked any questions. Then I shared my almost-insect pinning skills with everyone and called it a day. During the presentation, other trainees pitched our tents in the yard of one of the more experienced guides. Just when I went to bed, some other PAMers came by our tent and talked us into going on a night hike to look for jaguarondi, which they said were like jaguars, but smaller. After some confusion, I left my headlamp in the tent because the guide said something about how they weren’t allowed, but that turned out to be false. I wasn’t the only one who had been confused, however, so we staggered ourselves between those with lights and tried to keep up. The jaguarondi search also turned out to be a misunderstanding. What we actually did was walk a ways into the forest, and then leave someone, and walk a little further and leave someone else, until we were all spread out alone in the dark along the trail. This was fine. We got to see lightening bugs, but after half an hour, the charm wore very thin. Finally, the group returned and we picked up more people on the way back. The highlight of the hike came when someone in front of me took one step off the trail and fell wordlessly into a ravine so deep he had to jump up so we could reach his hands to pull him out. Thankfully he wasn’t hurt, which was especially fortunate because we started laughing about immediately after it happened. The hike continued until everyone was collected and we all went to bed. In the morning, we hiked with the new tour guides up into the Protected Area. Unfortunately, in the 1980s, the Honduran government instructed the people to cut down the forests in order to produce better coffee. There are now a handful of 400 year-old trees left, but the majority of the hike was through younger trees. Nevertheless, the walk was green and beautiful. The grand finale was a giant waterfall which provides the water for four towns further down the river. Its spray filled the air, and we played at its base for a long time.
The day after returning from Rio Negro was deemed “Cultural Day” on our schedules. Each Spanish class had to prepare a presentation about something cultural to give in front of what we thought would be our assembled host families, but what also turned out to be the students and teachers of the local elementary school. The four of us in my Spanish class toyed around with talking about Ultimate Frisbee or juggling, but while we were in Rio Negro, my three fellow classmates decided that our cultural contribution would be line dancing. The dance we were to perform was called “Slappin’ Leather” and involved a lot of counting and also a lot of coordinated movement, neither of which are my fortes. After demonstrating these deficiencies over and over, my classmates decided that if I couldn’t get it together, I could just explain the concept of line dancing and sit down. However, when I got back to my house that night, my host sister and I practiced for probably two hours until we could do the whole thing without messing up. In the morning, we had a quick rehearsal, and I shocked everyone with my immense improvement. Then the show got underway with a surprise performance by the fourth grade class. They filed onto the outdoor stage wearing matching white colonial dresses and suits decorated with green and red ribbons. The girls had wreaths of flowers in their hair, and the boys wore straw hats. Then some music started and they wove in perfect patterns like dolls. They performed three different dances, and the last one was the Punta, a traditional dance from the north coast of Honduras, which has a complicated rhythm and to the uncultured eye generally consists of shaking your butt a lot. I had the great fortune of being invited to dance by one of the boys, and since I could see no way of getting out of it, I followed him on stage and then just kind of stood there and asked a couple times for him to tell me what to do, without answer. So that was pretty mortifying. I did try a couple half-hearted hip twists, but I wasn’t fooling anyone, and when the dance ended, I went and sat with my host family in the back of the audience. A class of trainees demonstrated four-square, with limited success. I don’t see it catching on. Then another class showed some powerpoints on barn hexes and the temperate climate, but the outdoor lighting unfortunately wasn’t conducive to projection. When my class went, and I mostly kept it together, and after demonstrating the steps, we convinced maybe 40 onlookers to come onstage and participate. Together we danced to the entirety of the “Boot-Scoot Boogie,” and afterwards various Hondurans expressed an interest in learning more. Score 1 for line dancing. The morning was full of other presentations, and for lunch, each trainee and their host family was supposed to prepare a typical dish. My host mom, knowledgeable as she was about my cooking abilities, elected to cook our tamales (which, by the way do exist and are different from both tamalitos and the tamalitos + meat, or “mantuca,” that I wrote about in my last post) on the day that I was away in Rio Negro. Score 1 for edible food.
Other class/community activities of the last couple weeks have included returning to the fourth grade class where I am now a superstar and teaching a marginal class about forest appreciation, going to Tegucigalpa for a morning to officially receive Honduran residency, participating in a 4-hour HIV/AIDS prevention workshop with a class of high schoolers, and watching the disappointing Honduras vs. Mexico soccer game while eating a sickening combination of fried plantain chips with fresh salsa, mantuca, popcorn, and a strawberry birthday cake. I also spent the weekend, Monday, and part of Tuesday sequestered in my room with a probably viral infection-induced fever, headache, and dizziness that have yet to fully quit my system.
On the insect front, I just stepped on a giant cockroach that jumped out at me from my suitcase. While sitting here at my desk, I have also squished a spider, several speedy mites, a big red biting ant, and I batted away a giant black flying beetle. My recent aggression toward the insect realm comes on the heels of three bites on my hands that incited allergic reactions, a hidden spider in my shoe that I first thought was gravel but later found squished across my sock, a big hairy tarantula (or maybe banana spider) that my host mom swept off my wall a few nights ago, and a biting ant infestation last night during a prolonged electricity outage.
And speaking of electricity outages, today I received some concrete hints about the site where I will be living for two years. It’s kind of the last place I expected, and I’m having some trouble getting my head around it, but from what I and other trainees have pieced together, it sounds like I’m headed to the southernmost department of the country. Supposedly the climate is similar to that of Tegucigalpa, but all anyone ever says about the south is that it’s really hot…like desert-ishly hot, so I’ll believe it when I feel it. I will be the first volunteer in my town of 500 people sans electricity, and it sounds like I will be involved in sustainable agriculture, micro-watershed management, environmental education, building latrines, and doing some sort of work with a women’s group. So those are a lot of directions.
Anyway, it’s late and I’m tired, so best wishes to all!
Cara
A few weeks ago, we were learning how to make insect collections, and I received a plastic purse to catch a bug in. I spent a few minutes unsuccessfully swiping at flying ants, and then a friend and I took a walk behind the house we’ve been having classes in. We found a log and decided to flip it over, and there we discovered two toads and a tarantula! So of course we had to catch the spider because we were making an insect collection after all, and after much jumping and some shrieking and a little prodding with a stick, I pushed it into the purse and triumphantly carried it back to class. The next step was to euthanize it with nail polish remover, which seemed kind of mean, and then we realized that tarantulas are kind of too juicy to pin, and later on I learned that technically, they aren’t even insects, they’re arthropods, which are apparently different, so after much discussion, we returned it to its stump and ended up not killing anything.
Speaking of arthropods, I went back to the cave with another group of trainees and a few host siblings including my host sister. I was almost in charge of finding the way, but we ended up finding the guide we had the time before, which was a good thing, because in the last two weeks, all the fields around the path had been burned and I would have been lost. The hike took a lot less time because the group was smaller and didn’t contain any four year-olds. As I slithered through the entrance, I realized that my headlamp batteries were dying and I could only see about two feet in front of me. Very unfortunate. Anyway, I was one of the first people in the cave, and as I waited for everyone to squeeze through the first few chambers, one of the Honduran girls screamed beside me that there was a snake. I looked at it with my dying light and at first I thought it was just a bat, but then it unwound a bit and did indeed become a long brown snake with a boa-like head. The biologist in our group made it into the chamber and deemed it not poisonous, although this didn’t really reassure any of the Hondurans. Then one of the guides came with a machete and we had to convince him not to kill it, which took some doing. We continued into the cave, walking more slowly this time and finding, along with the snake and hundreds of bats, some large crab-like arthropods, which were neither spiders, nor insects, just in case you wanted to know. We also learned that if you tap on stalactites, they resonate like bells. After spending about an hour in the caves, we were presented with two options for reaching the waterfall: easy or fun. We opted for the fun route, which lived up to the hype and entailed walking and climbing up the fern and moss covered stones and streambed below the falls until we reached the pool.
A few days before the cave and waterfall expedition, the whole PAM group went on a camping trip to a small village named Rio Negro, which is only about 40 minutes from our training site, but way up a mountain. We visited a Volunteer who is expanding the eco-tourism industry there. The first thing that I and five other trainees did was teach a class on biological classification to some tour guides in training. I was responsible for talking about the Plant Kingdom, which apparently is what it’s called, and which I stayed up quite late reading about the night before, because as it turns out, I know very little about biological classification, and even less about tropical cloud forest ecology. Luckily, I augmented my scanty knowledge with some colorful illustrations of epiphytes, and no one asked any questions. Then I shared my almost-insect pinning skills with everyone and called it a day. During the presentation, other trainees pitched our tents in the yard of one of the more experienced guides. Just when I went to bed, some other PAMers came by our tent and talked us into going on a night hike to look for jaguarondi, which they said were like jaguars, but smaller. After some confusion, I left my headlamp in the tent because the guide said something about how they weren’t allowed, but that turned out to be false. I wasn’t the only one who had been confused, however, so we staggered ourselves between those with lights and tried to keep up. The jaguarondi search also turned out to be a misunderstanding. What we actually did was walk a ways into the forest, and then leave someone, and walk a little further and leave someone else, until we were all spread out alone in the dark along the trail. This was fine. We got to see lightening bugs, but after half an hour, the charm wore very thin. Finally, the group returned and we picked up more people on the way back. The highlight of the hike came when someone in front of me took one step off the trail and fell wordlessly into a ravine so deep he had to jump up so we could reach his hands to pull him out. Thankfully he wasn’t hurt, which was especially fortunate because we started laughing about immediately after it happened. The hike continued until everyone was collected and we all went to bed. In the morning, we hiked with the new tour guides up into the Protected Area. Unfortunately, in the 1980s, the Honduran government instructed the people to cut down the forests in order to produce better coffee. There are now a handful of 400 year-old trees left, but the majority of the hike was through younger trees. Nevertheless, the walk was green and beautiful. The grand finale was a giant waterfall which provides the water for four towns further down the river. Its spray filled the air, and we played at its base for a long time.
The day after returning from Rio Negro was deemed “Cultural Day” on our schedules. Each Spanish class had to prepare a presentation about something cultural to give in front of what we thought would be our assembled host families, but what also turned out to be the students and teachers of the local elementary school. The four of us in my Spanish class toyed around with talking about Ultimate Frisbee or juggling, but while we were in Rio Negro, my three fellow classmates decided that our cultural contribution would be line dancing. The dance we were to perform was called “Slappin’ Leather” and involved a lot of counting and also a lot of coordinated movement, neither of which are my fortes. After demonstrating these deficiencies over and over, my classmates decided that if I couldn’t get it together, I could just explain the concept of line dancing and sit down. However, when I got back to my house that night, my host sister and I practiced for probably two hours until we could do the whole thing without messing up. In the morning, we had a quick rehearsal, and I shocked everyone with my immense improvement. Then the show got underway with a surprise performance by the fourth grade class. They filed onto the outdoor stage wearing matching white colonial dresses and suits decorated with green and red ribbons. The girls had wreaths of flowers in their hair, and the boys wore straw hats. Then some music started and they wove in perfect patterns like dolls. They performed three different dances, and the last one was the Punta, a traditional dance from the north coast of Honduras, which has a complicated rhythm and to the uncultured eye generally consists of shaking your butt a lot. I had the great fortune of being invited to dance by one of the boys, and since I could see no way of getting out of it, I followed him on stage and then just kind of stood there and asked a couple times for him to tell me what to do, without answer. So that was pretty mortifying. I did try a couple half-hearted hip twists, but I wasn’t fooling anyone, and when the dance ended, I went and sat with my host family in the back of the audience. A class of trainees demonstrated four-square, with limited success. I don’t see it catching on. Then another class showed some powerpoints on barn hexes and the temperate climate, but the outdoor lighting unfortunately wasn’t conducive to projection. When my class went, and I mostly kept it together, and after demonstrating the steps, we convinced maybe 40 onlookers to come onstage and participate. Together we danced to the entirety of the “Boot-Scoot Boogie,” and afterwards various Hondurans expressed an interest in learning more. Score 1 for line dancing. The morning was full of other presentations, and for lunch, each trainee and their host family was supposed to prepare a typical dish. My host mom, knowledgeable as she was about my cooking abilities, elected to cook our tamales (which, by the way do exist and are different from both tamalitos and the tamalitos + meat, or “mantuca,” that I wrote about in my last post) on the day that I was away in Rio Negro. Score 1 for edible food.
Other class/community activities of the last couple weeks have included returning to the fourth grade class where I am now a superstar and teaching a marginal class about forest appreciation, going to Tegucigalpa for a morning to officially receive Honduran residency, participating in a 4-hour HIV/AIDS prevention workshop with a class of high schoolers, and watching the disappointing Honduras vs. Mexico soccer game while eating a sickening combination of fried plantain chips with fresh salsa, mantuca, popcorn, and a strawberry birthday cake. I also spent the weekend, Monday, and part of Tuesday sequestered in my room with a probably viral infection-induced fever, headache, and dizziness that have yet to fully quit my system.
On the insect front, I just stepped on a giant cockroach that jumped out at me from my suitcase. While sitting here at my desk, I have also squished a spider, several speedy mites, a big red biting ant, and I batted away a giant black flying beetle. My recent aggression toward the insect realm comes on the heels of three bites on my hands that incited allergic reactions, a hidden spider in my shoe that I first thought was gravel but later found squished across my sock, a big hairy tarantula (or maybe banana spider) that my host mom swept off my wall a few nights ago, and a biting ant infestation last night during a prolonged electricity outage.
And speaking of electricity outages, today I received some concrete hints about the site where I will be living for two years. It’s kind of the last place I expected, and I’m having some trouble getting my head around it, but from what I and other trainees have pieced together, it sounds like I’m headed to the southernmost department of the country. Supposedly the climate is similar to that of Tegucigalpa, but all anyone ever says about the south is that it’s really hot…like desert-ishly hot, so I’ll believe it when I feel it. I will be the first volunteer in my town of 500 people sans electricity, and it sounds like I will be involved in sustainable agriculture, micro-watershed management, environmental education, building latrines, and doing some sort of work with a women’s group. So those are a lot of directions.
Anyway, it’s late and I’m tired, so best wishes to all!
Cara
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Eating Thai Food, Taking Taxis, and Not Going to Honduras...until tomorrow, or What I am Doing in Miami
Well I guess I should start where I left off in my last post. We made it onto the plane, and after getting all the way to the runway, then turning back to remove a sick passenger and enduring the subsequent delay of finding his luggage in the belly of the plane and then refueling, we took off and made it to Miami. Then the 50 of us collected our 100 bulging bags and stationed ourselves by the car rental desks to wait two or three hours for a Peace Corps representative to fly down from Washington and meet us. American Airlines was putting us up in a Holiday Inn because, as it turns out, the whole situation was entirely their fault. The real reason behind the delay was that they had overscheduled the flight crew, and by law they need a certain amount of time off between flights, and that is the only reason we haven't been in Honduras since Wednesday.
Anyway, after much manipulating of luggage to get it to fit into the two shuttle buses that picked us up, we arrived at the hotel and settled into our rooms. A short time later, we all met in the lobby to go over the details of our next day's travel plans. Joshua from Washington had just finished explaining the itinerary when his phone rang. Everyone's paranoia focused on him, and the room filled with a tense silence that lasted for the duration of his call. When he hung up, he announced that there was a change of plans, and we would not be going to Honduras on Thursday morning, but would instead spend the night at the Holiday Inn and then change hotels and stay in Miami until early next week. This news was met with laughter, frustration, and chattering, and the meeting soon ended. When we thought we had only a night in Miami, a lot of tentative plans were made for dinner. After the meeting, I went with a group of trainees to a delicious Thai restaurant and ate too much.
The next morning, we again packed up our bags and loaded a charter bus to the point that there weren't enough seats, because our bags had filled the luggage area and heaped over several rows of seats. Our new hotel was nicer than the Holiday Inn, which heightened the surreality of going from three weeks of bucket baths to Miami and then getting stuck there.
Over the last few days, we've done some training, a lot of eating, and various amounts of sight seeing. I've discovered that I don't hate Miami as much as I thought I did. I also apparently acclimated a bit while in the DR, because I spent one day not covered in sweat. My former housemate said she had never seen me look so matte. The next day, however, we did a service project cleaning up a greenway, and I resumed my old sweating ways. Thankfully, a couple hours into the work, it started pouring, and I had a better excuse for looking like I just got out of the shower.
Anyway, I should get to bed. Hopefully, the next time you hear from me, I'll be in Honduras. Third time's the charm.
Anyway, after much manipulating of luggage to get it to fit into the two shuttle buses that picked us up, we arrived at the hotel and settled into our rooms. A short time later, we all met in the lobby to go over the details of our next day's travel plans. Joshua from Washington had just finished explaining the itinerary when his phone rang. Everyone's paranoia focused on him, and the room filled with a tense silence that lasted for the duration of his call. When he hung up, he announced that there was a change of plans, and we would not be going to Honduras on Thursday morning, but would instead spend the night at the Holiday Inn and then change hotels and stay in Miami until early next week. This news was met with laughter, frustration, and chattering, and the meeting soon ended. When we thought we had only a night in Miami, a lot of tentative plans were made for dinner. After the meeting, I went with a group of trainees to a delicious Thai restaurant and ate too much.
The next morning, we again packed up our bags and loaded a charter bus to the point that there weren't enough seats, because our bags had filled the luggage area and heaped over several rows of seats. Our new hotel was nicer than the Holiday Inn, which heightened the surreality of going from three weeks of bucket baths to Miami and then getting stuck there.
Over the last few days, we've done some training, a lot of eating, and various amounts of sight seeing. I've discovered that I don't hate Miami as much as I thought I did. I also apparently acclimated a bit while in the DR, because I spent one day not covered in sweat. My former housemate said she had never seen me look so matte. The next day, however, we did a service project cleaning up a greenway, and I resumed my old sweating ways. Thankfully, a couple hours into the work, it started pouring, and I had a better excuse for looking like I just got out of the shower.
Anyway, I should get to bed. Hopefully, the next time you hear from me, I'll be in Honduras. Third time's the charm.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Join the Peace Corps, See Miami!
Hi friends and family,
I'm in the airport in Santo Domingo drinking a papaya smoothie and using the free internet. I've had a lot of time to settle in, because we got here at around 4 in the morning only to learn that our flight had been delayed, which meant that we would miss our connecting flight to Tegucigalpa, and as there is only one flight per day, we would be spending yet another night in Miami. A lot to process before 5, but we managed and made it to the gate and have sprawled all over the place.
The group is feeling a little paranoid at this point. Hopefully, American Airlines won't suspend service again, like it did this weekend, and we'll actually make it to Honduras. In the meantime, there are tentative plans for a sushi dinner.
I think everyone is pretty ready to leave the Dominican Republic. Yesterday morning, we said goodbye to our host families. My host dona cooked us a goodbye dinner the night before of moro--rice and kidney beans, ham, tomato and cucumber salad, and mangu--kind of like mashed potatoes, but with mashed green plantains instead. For dessert, we had homemade frozen mango juice.
Ok, well, the flight is boarding now. Hopefully, my next post will be from Honduras. Cross your fingers!
I'm in the airport in Santo Domingo drinking a papaya smoothie and using the free internet. I've had a lot of time to settle in, because we got here at around 4 in the morning only to learn that our flight had been delayed, which meant that we would miss our connecting flight to Tegucigalpa, and as there is only one flight per day, we would be spending yet another night in Miami. A lot to process before 5, but we managed and made it to the gate and have sprawled all over the place.
The group is feeling a little paranoid at this point. Hopefully, American Airlines won't suspend service again, like it did this weekend, and we'll actually make it to Honduras. In the meantime, there are tentative plans for a sushi dinner.
I think everyone is pretty ready to leave the Dominican Republic. Yesterday morning, we said goodbye to our host families. My host dona cooked us a goodbye dinner the night before of moro--rice and kidney beans, ham, tomato and cucumber salad, and mangu--kind of like mashed potatoes, but with mashed green plantains instead. For dessert, we had homemade frozen mango juice.
Ok, well, the flight is boarding now. Hopefully, my next post will be from Honduras. Cross your fingers!
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Capitana Cari
I’ve been spending a lot of time hissing at kids. Or one kid. There is a pack of boys on my street, and they all have individual things they do. One salutes me whenever I pass him. His name is Willis, and he calls me “Capitana.” Today, he hid around a corner and then jumped out when I walked by. He poked a twig at me and shouted “give me everything.” And then he shook my hand and saluted me. Another boy named Christopher acts like a motorcycle. I like to make raptor noises at him, and then he makes handlebars and vrooms down the sidewalk. Fernando likes to walk past my balcony and hiss at me, and then I hiss back, and he hisses, and we keep doing this until he’s out of earshot or I give up and just wave at him. The only problem is that hissing at people is a kind of common way for people to communicate. More specifically, men hiss at women as they walk by to get their attention. There is an internet café across the street from my house, and there’s often a group of young men standing there. Last night, I kept hearing hissing, so I’d hiss back, and then I realized that Fernando was not the hisser, and I felt real awkward. There is also a pack of girls who live around the corner. They have crazy names like Eulissa and Nikauli, and they like to whisper in my ears. I played tag with them on Saturday, and now every time I walk by, they wave and I mispronounce their names. I feel very popular.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The First Few Days
I arrived in Santo Domingo last Thursday afternoon in a group of 8 trainees. Normally all training groups travel together, but because our plans were so last minute, it took four groups and two days to get us all out of Miami. We were met as soon as we got off the plane by the Peace Corps Country Director and the Dominican Training Officer, and they whisked us through customs and the mayhem of the airport’s exit. We dragged our bags to a parking lot where a current volunteer met us with a turismo bus. While the driver loaded our suitcases, he commented to me, “Wow, you can really sweat.” And he was right. I’ve been a hot, sweaty mess ever since I arrived. I go to bed sweaty, and I wake up sweaty. In fact, I’m sweaty now. Anyway, we rode in the bus through typical developing world traffic, and thankfully, I only almost puked once before we arrived at a Catholic guest house where we spent the first night because it was too late to get us settled in with our host families. We joined a group of 30 or so trainees and ate delicious pineapple for a while before getting some health information, eating dinner, and going to bed.
On Friday after breakfast, we loaded up again and headed to Pantoja, a barrio about 30 minutes away. We went straight to Entrena, the training center here, and sat through more orientation, ate lunch, and were divided into temporary language groups. I spent the next four hours trying so hard to understand Spanish that at the end of class, I had a splitting headache and a rather disheartened feeling about my Spanish skills. But I didn’t have much time to reflect on that, because we immediately went to meet our host families. Because accommodations were arranged on such short notice, a few of the trainees, including me, ended up sharing homes. My housemate is Lexi, or Alejandra, and our host is Dona Maura. I should note that it is mango season right now, and Entrena is covered with mango trees. We were given permission to collect as many as we wanted. The recommended method is by throwing fallen green mangoes at the ripe ones, and earlier in the day, I had managed to knock down a huge but not quite ready one. When we met Dona Maura, she was very impressed with it, and showed it around to several other hosts who agreed that it was awesome. Then we set off with a couple other students and hosts on our way to Los Alcarrizos, the barrio where I’m living. On the way to our houses, we had our first experience with public transportation. The main forms are guaguas, or medium sized buses, and carros publicos, which are universally smashed up cars that are expected to “seat” seven people. While we waited for a suitable vehicle, Dona Maura decisively renamed me “Cari,” and then we crammed into a carro publico and rode to the entrance of the barrio. The car stopped at busy roundabout where we got out and continued on foot. We walked for what seemed like a very long time until the street got quieter and less chaotic. Finally, we arrived at our house which was shockingly nice. We were prepared for dysfunctional toilets and to need mosquito nets, and instead, we found clean tile floors, spacious bedrooms with air conditioning and window screens, and an inverter, which keeps most of the electricity going even when the power is out. We also have a nice, covered balcony where we spend a lot of time. Also different than expected is that our host lives alone. She has two children, but they live in the US. So where we were prepared to be mobbed by family and neighbors when we arrived, we instead only met one friend, the Spanish sister-in-law of our Dona’s son-in-law who is here on vacation. We ate a tasty dinner of mangu—mashed green plantains, chicken, and cucumbers and tomatoes in vinegar, which is pretty typical cuisine here. We’ve had it several times since. Dona Maura also served us fresh mango juice, and we made a big deal about how much we liked it, so now we drink it every day. After dinner, we settled into our rooms and I took my first bucket bath. I’m not very good at it. We’ll just leave it at that.
On Saturday morning, we walked with another trainee named Jacob and his dona, Fior, most of the way to the training center, and then crammed into another car for the final leg of the trip. I was pretty devastatingly sweaty when we arrived and continued sweating in a socially uncomfortable manner all day long. We only were at Entrena for a half-day health orientation, and then we walked back to the barrio in the 2:00 heat. Not long after we got back, a marauding group of trainees from our neighborhood showed up on the street. They were trying to find all the trainees in the area, and we joined their pack. It turns out that there are 12 of us around. We found everyone and asked a host mother for a suggestion on where to go hang out. She told us about a car wash that is pretty popular, and not having anything better to do, we went in search of it. After a juice stop at a grocery store, we found what we thought was the car wash. It was in the general area the woman had told us and had a little shop on the corner where a couple people bought beer. Then we all stood in the sidewalk and drank our juice and beer and watched people wash cars until we decided that we were definitely at the wrong place and continued down the sidewalk. Eventually, we found the correct car wash, which had a covered seating area with really loud music and dancing. We sat there for a while and bought flowers for our donas, and then we headed to our respective homes. Dinner was very good. My bucket bath was slightly better.
On Sunday, we spent the morning in the sitting under a shade tree at our Dona’s sister Australia’s house. Maura has fifteen siblings and is one of the younger ones, so Australia is in her late 60s or early 70s where Maura is probably in her late 50s. We watched a lot of anole lizards chase each other around and tried to practice our Spanish a bit. In the afternoon, we went back to the car wash as a group to celebrate the birthday of one of the girls. Some people danced, and we generally had a nice time getting to know each other more. Unfortunately, it started to pour about an hour after we got there, and we kind of got stuck there waiting for the rain to stop. We weren’t supposed to be out late, and because of the rain, it got dark early, so we eventually just gave up on waiting and ended up running home and getting soaked. The rain felt nice though because it made the air a little less humid, and the freshness lasted into Monday morning.
I should note that on Sunday, we had our first experience with Dominican cheese. We had breakfast sandwiches with thick slices of the plastic tasting fluorescent stuff, and I powered through it, but Lexi could only finish half, so we spent a lot of time trying to make it look like she had eaten more. Anyway, on Monday, and every day this week, the cheese has returned. We’re now very adept at discreetly peeling it off, wrapping it in napkins, and smuggling it out to dispose of on the way to school.
When we arrived at school on Monday, we went over some more general information, and then had a public transportation “lesson,” which consisted of us riding a guagua to our barrio and then getting into a carro public and taking off. Unfortunately, there were eight of us in my group, and only 6 could fit in the car, so the instructor and another trainee were in a different car. The instructor had told our driver where to take us, but it became evident that he didn’t know where he was going. At first, we thought he was just taking a different route, but after a bit, one of the Spanish speakers in our group started to question him and he admitted that he didn’t know what he was doing. The goal of the exercise was never explained to us, so we just had him drop us off on our street and then started walking back toward the school. We ran into our instructor and the other trainee a little later and all was well, but it didn’t really leave me brimming with confidence in my transportational skills. When we got back to the school, we were split up into our permanent language classes according to an interview we had on Friday. I’m in intermediate low, which I think is quite fair. I need to improve one level more to meet the language requirement for being an official volunteer.
On Friday after breakfast, we loaded up again and headed to Pantoja, a barrio about 30 minutes away. We went straight to Entrena, the training center here, and sat through more orientation, ate lunch, and were divided into temporary language groups. I spent the next four hours trying so hard to understand Spanish that at the end of class, I had a splitting headache and a rather disheartened feeling about my Spanish skills. But I didn’t have much time to reflect on that, because we immediately went to meet our host families. Because accommodations were arranged on such short notice, a few of the trainees, including me, ended up sharing homes. My housemate is Lexi, or Alejandra, and our host is Dona Maura. I should note that it is mango season right now, and Entrena is covered with mango trees. We were given permission to collect as many as we wanted. The recommended method is by throwing fallen green mangoes at the ripe ones, and earlier in the day, I had managed to knock down a huge but not quite ready one. When we met Dona Maura, she was very impressed with it, and showed it around to several other hosts who agreed that it was awesome. Then we set off with a couple other students and hosts on our way to Los Alcarrizos, the barrio where I’m living. On the way to our houses, we had our first experience with public transportation. The main forms are guaguas, or medium sized buses, and carros publicos, which are universally smashed up cars that are expected to “seat” seven people. While we waited for a suitable vehicle, Dona Maura decisively renamed me “Cari,” and then we crammed into a carro publico and rode to the entrance of the barrio. The car stopped at busy roundabout where we got out and continued on foot. We walked for what seemed like a very long time until the street got quieter and less chaotic. Finally, we arrived at our house which was shockingly nice. We were prepared for dysfunctional toilets and to need mosquito nets, and instead, we found clean tile floors, spacious bedrooms with air conditioning and window screens, and an inverter, which keeps most of the electricity going even when the power is out. We also have a nice, covered balcony where we spend a lot of time. Also different than expected is that our host lives alone. She has two children, but they live in the US. So where we were prepared to be mobbed by family and neighbors when we arrived, we instead only met one friend, the Spanish sister-in-law of our Dona’s son-in-law who is here on vacation. We ate a tasty dinner of mangu—mashed green plantains, chicken, and cucumbers and tomatoes in vinegar, which is pretty typical cuisine here. We’ve had it several times since. Dona Maura also served us fresh mango juice, and we made a big deal about how much we liked it, so now we drink it every day. After dinner, we settled into our rooms and I took my first bucket bath. I’m not very good at it. We’ll just leave it at that.
On Saturday morning, we walked with another trainee named Jacob and his dona, Fior, most of the way to the training center, and then crammed into another car for the final leg of the trip. I was pretty devastatingly sweaty when we arrived and continued sweating in a socially uncomfortable manner all day long. We only were at Entrena for a half-day health orientation, and then we walked back to the barrio in the 2:00 heat. Not long after we got back, a marauding group of trainees from our neighborhood showed up on the street. They were trying to find all the trainees in the area, and we joined their pack. It turns out that there are 12 of us around. We found everyone and asked a host mother for a suggestion on where to go hang out. She told us about a car wash that is pretty popular, and not having anything better to do, we went in search of it. After a juice stop at a grocery store, we found what we thought was the car wash. It was in the general area the woman had told us and had a little shop on the corner where a couple people bought beer. Then we all stood in the sidewalk and drank our juice and beer and watched people wash cars until we decided that we were definitely at the wrong place and continued down the sidewalk. Eventually, we found the correct car wash, which had a covered seating area with really loud music and dancing. We sat there for a while and bought flowers for our donas, and then we headed to our respective homes. Dinner was very good. My bucket bath was slightly better.
On Sunday, we spent the morning in the sitting under a shade tree at our Dona’s sister Australia’s house. Maura has fifteen siblings and is one of the younger ones, so Australia is in her late 60s or early 70s where Maura is probably in her late 50s. We watched a lot of anole lizards chase each other around and tried to practice our Spanish a bit. In the afternoon, we went back to the car wash as a group to celebrate the birthday of one of the girls. Some people danced, and we generally had a nice time getting to know each other more. Unfortunately, it started to pour about an hour after we got there, and we kind of got stuck there waiting for the rain to stop. We weren’t supposed to be out late, and because of the rain, it got dark early, so we eventually just gave up on waiting and ended up running home and getting soaked. The rain felt nice though because it made the air a little less humid, and the freshness lasted into Monday morning.
I should note that on Sunday, we had our first experience with Dominican cheese. We had breakfast sandwiches with thick slices of the plastic tasting fluorescent stuff, and I powered through it, but Lexi could only finish half, so we spent a lot of time trying to make it look like she had eaten more. Anyway, on Monday, and every day this week, the cheese has returned. We’re now very adept at discreetly peeling it off, wrapping it in napkins, and smuggling it out to dispose of on the way to school.
When we arrived at school on Monday, we went over some more general information, and then had a public transportation “lesson,” which consisted of us riding a guagua to our barrio and then getting into a carro public and taking off. Unfortunately, there were eight of us in my group, and only 6 could fit in the car, so the instructor and another trainee were in a different car. The instructor had told our driver where to take us, but it became evident that he didn’t know where he was going. At first, we thought he was just taking a different route, but after a bit, one of the Spanish speakers in our group started to question him and he admitted that he didn’t know what he was doing. The goal of the exercise was never explained to us, so we just had him drop us off on our street and then started walking back toward the school. We ran into our instructor and the other trainee a little later and all was well, but it didn’t really leave me brimming with confidence in my transportational skills. When we got back to the school, we were split up into our permanent language classes according to an interview we had on Friday. I’m in intermediate low, which I think is quite fair. I need to improve one level more to meet the language requirement for being an official volunteer.
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