Volunteer at last!!

I haven’t been able to update in a while because my site has no internet! I live in a small town of about 2,000 people. The roads are all made of dirt, there are pigs and chicken running around, and there is no market to buy food (closest things are pulperias). The closest big city is a two hour bus ride away in Santa Rosa where they have more stuff. But the only bus leaves my site at 7am and leaves Santa Rosa at 3pm, so not too flexible. I will be working with the town government as well as the school. The school is tiny – 1st to 9th grade, and each grade is only one classroom. I definitely find the benefit of replacing a volunteer – the people here accept me more readily so integration should not be too hard. They go out of their way to make me comfortable and are more trusting of me. My host family was recommended by the outgoing volunteer and they are nice – the dad is only 3 years older than me and they have two kids – one 9 and one 3 ½. The mom is a teacher and the dad owns a coffee farm. This whole town exists because of coffee – about 20% of the families here own coffee farms and the rest work as manual laborers. I need to figure out how I can improve what goes on here – the owners of the coffee farms work from October to May, which is coffee season, and then they just chill until it starts again. It may sound nice but it creates a mentality of doing nothing for about four months. The manual laborers as well – they prefer to work three days a week and then they don’t do anything for the other four days. I think one of the first things I need to do is to help change the mentality. I see what makes Americans different; perhaps what makes them so successful - it’s the mentality of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and that you can be whatever you want to be. For me it seems that here people are kind of resigned to their fate. I think that trying to change that mentality is going to be my first step. Also, for a small town, there isn’t a sense of community. I feel that everyone kind of does their own thing, which is a real shame. Another project I’m thinking of are events to bring everyone together on a semi-regular basis; for example, bingo night or movie night, or even a party or dance. Since my town is a dry town (no alcohol sold – sad, yes), they shouldn’t get too rowdy. Plus, everyone has a gun.
My second group to work with is the school. Interesting thing about school here – it starts at 8am and ends at 1pm. I don’t recall school being so short for me, but I could be wrong. I really hope to improve the educational system here – not for all of Honduras, but for my town at least. They have a computer center but no one knows how to really use computers. When I met with the teachers, I asked what they hoped I would help with – they said English, computers, physical education, health, and sports. I said that I didn’t have a problem with this, but that I would need the teachers to commit to spend extra hours to learn and to teach the students as well. When I said this and asked who would be willing to spend time, no one raised their hands. The director then suggested I start with physical education first. This kind of raised the issue of the sustainability of our work. If I do all the work now, who would continue when I leave? That is another issue I have to tackle – doing the work for them for two years and then leaving will not solve any of their issues. But I’m glad I’m thinking about this now instead of a year and a half from now.
In other news, I’ve been to Santa Rosa (the big city) 3 times in two weeks. I was kind of tired of it for a while. Fun story – the second time I went to Santa Rosa with the people at my municipality, we were driving back around 7pm. The road to our town is up a long windy dirt road. It was dark and about 20 minutes outside of town we saw a car blocking the road, and people with flashlights in the hill above and below. We were told before of stories how bandits would block the road to stop cars and would rob them at gunpoint. The municipal worker waited for 5 minutes to see what was happening and then started to drive in reverse at high speed. He said it was not worth the risk – we had ladies in the car, and they tried to call the one policeman in the town. It turned out that he had left that afternoon which didn’t help with the mood. We did a J turn and then hightailed it back to Santa Rosa to sleep in a hotel. I called the Peace Corps to tell them of the situation as well (policy). I was told we made the right decision – better safe than sorry.
The next morning we drove back up to our town once again, and who do we see? The same car from the previous night. It turns out that they were deer hunters, and we traded a few laughs. They said they were signaling with the light to drive past them, but who in their right mind would take that gamble? Good times all in all.
Today (6/4) I went with the kids from the school to a field, where they ran around playing games and soccer. One person actually had a football (American), so I taught them to play football. Needless to say it was really fun, but I forgot to take sunblock. My face hurts.
I posted picture from the last week at Peace Corps training along with our swearing in (now we are formal
Peace Corps volunteers, not peace corps trainees). I’ll post pictures of my new site next time.