Its good to be back

So it feels good to be back in Honduras.

After about a week in the states, I have to admit that while it was fun, I was feeling anxious to get back. I loved seeing friends, eating good food, but it really did not feel like home. For one thing, I was not independent - I was staying with friends and they were taking me out and paying for me. It is wonderful to have friends that want to take care of you, but for me I hated being so dependent. Right now Honduras is home, and I don't really have plans on going back until I finish my service.

I also wish to apologize to the friends I was not able to meet with - there just did not seem to be enough time for me to do everything. I wish I was there longer to meet with everyone and to get more accomplished, but it became very expensive. Essentially, that means everyone will have to come down here to visit and see me.

Since I've been back, we have had Halloween, a training session, and school is out now. Thanksgiving is coming around the corner as well as Christmas and New Years. I am looking forward to the beginning of next year where there will be no activities and I can just relax. Halloween was over a weekend, and I'll have to say that I was very impressed at the creativity of some volunteers. I took the easy way out and just put on Avatar face paint I picked up in the states. I looked more like urban warfare smurf than Avatar; more than several people asked me what the heck I was supposed to be, but kudos to the people (one or two) that actually guessed. Pictures are on Picassa.

The Olanchoers really outdid themselves. There were 4 guys that dressed up as the 4 Honduran beers and they won best contest. Sexiest costume went to the 6 female volunteers dressed up as Lady Gaga. Truly impressive. My personal favorite was a volunteer that dressed up as Mario Kart. With the bar raised so high, I have no idea what I will do for next year.

One of the activities from Halloween was outdoors, with beer, volleyball and ziplining. I think this was one of my favorite days so far in my service - peace corps guatemala came out as well, so we had a great time outdoors. Guess I'm getting older, but these outdoor activities are preferable to the drink and party events at night.

After Halloween 2 volunteers stayed one night at my place before we headed down to the capital for training. They lived far away and did not want to go home just to travel all the way back again, so we went down together. It was fun catching a ride from the mayor as he had a training event as well. Being back in Valle De Angeles (our first training site) brought back great memories, but it was COLD! The weather is definitely getting colder now, and I'm glad that I brought back a sleeping back and did not take back my winter jacket - with no heating and insulation, it gets very chilly in some places, especially at night.

Thanksgiving is coming up soon as well, so probably will visit a friend's site in Olancho to celebrate with other volunteers and several of us have tentatively planned to go to the islands after christmas and into new years to get scuba certified and to relax.

well, lunch is here, so until next post...

It has been a while since my last confession...

I'm heading back to New York on the 1st of October to the 11th for Dave and Tracy's wedding, so I am looking forward to meeting up with everyone, resupplying (taking back an empty suitcase!) and dropping off items that I found out I really don't need (blazer, dress shoes). Also looking forward to pigging out - one volunteer I talked to told me they gained 10 lbs on one visit. Good times!

Right now I am currently working with the school a lot more than my primary counterpart, but with school letting out in November, not sure how that will work out. I did talk to the mayor, so we may be trying to do a water purification project again that was shelved back about a month ago.

In the meantime I plan on doing research into coffee and to visit some schools while in NY to see how else I can contribute.

I uploaded new pictures on picassa so I figure that I can write a bit about those (I'm using the mayor's modem as I am fixing his laptop).

Dia De Lempira (Lempira Day)

Dia de Lempira is to celebrate Lempira, a national hero in Honduras. He was one of many to lead a revolt against the Spanish Conquistadors but was one of the most successful. He was so successful that the Spanish led him into a trap under the pretense of a treaty but then they assassinated him. For this day the school kids dress up in indigenous clothes to commemorate him. There was a big celebration at the school as well, with a beauty pageant (I think) and dancing, etc. My host mom asked me to take pictures of her son at kindergarten as she would be in school and would miss the festivities there, but unfortunately there were no celebrations there due to lack of funds. But it was fun nonetheless to see the kids in colorful costumes.

Trujillo

On the north coast of Honduras is Trujillo, which was where we had the Third Chapter meeting. Generally the Third Chapter is for volunteers over 40 years old, but due to member shortages the 30+ crowd was invited as well (even though I turn 30 end of September, I was invited). I took the opportunity to visit a part of Honduras that I probably won't see again as it takes about 12 hours to get there by bus from my site, but it was fun nonetheless. I got to meet some volunteers that I probably would not have been able to as their sites are far away from mine, and it was a good time to relax and get out of the house. We stayed at Casa de Kiwi, a hotel owned by a New Zealander and employed by lots of transients from the States and the U.K. It was fun to hang out at and speak English, knock a few back and relax. But by being located on the Caribbean side, it was more like a large salt water lake than an ocean but I enjoyed it still. Slightly envious of the volunteers placed there, but I do enjoy the climate at my site a lot more.

Not pictured but an event that I enjoyed is Noche de Fumadores. Every town has a patron saint and every year they have a feria (celebration) for that saint. The end of August was the feria for Santa Rosa, the big city near my site (where I go grocery shopping and transfer bus if I ever need to go anywhere). Being a cigar exporter, the one night celebrated the cigars and was sponsored by other alcohol companies so it was a night of free cigars and booze. Lots of peace corps volunteers showed up and it was a great time to hang out with everyone again. I think I smoked about 5 cigars that night and took home about as many (not including the gift cigars that I received and bought off other volunteers that were not taking their's). I also toured a cigar plant earlier that day which was fun and informative.

Shortly after we had the business reconnect (3 months after we are placed in site we meet as projects to discuss work related issues) so we met up again. Coming up on year end it seems that there will be lots of get togethers - next is Halloween with a big party at Copan Ruins, followed by Thanksgiving and then Christmas. Thanksgiving and Halloween are probably the two biggest as lots of people head back for Christmas. But I'll be sticking around here, and hopefully I can organize a trip up to the islands to get scuba certified! Honduras is the cheapest to get certified anywhere in the world, with packages including certification and lodging. Hope that all this doesn't seem like Peace Corps is one big party because there is a lot of work in between....

Technology in developing worlds

Technology is a double edged sword in developing countries. My site for example is a rural site up in the mountains and it, along with hundreds of other sites in Honduras, would not be connected to the outside world if it were not for technology. There is no infrastructure in these rural sites it would be difficult to persuade the phone companies to build the infrastructure for a telecommunications system miles away from the closest big city for only a couple hundred people that live there. It wouldn make fiscal sense. Multiply that by the hundreds of little villages around Honduras and you could see it would be a big drain on resources for the phone companies just to lay the wire. However, with cell phones, all they need to do is put up one tower and all of a sudden thousands of people can get cheap cell phones and pay as you go plans. In Honduras just about everyone pays per minute (about 5 cents a minute or per message) and incoming calls and messages are free. So now even in my small site I can make and receive calls.
Satellite T.V enables people in my site to get the latest soap operas and music channels. One person will get a dish and will split the signal for a charge. It comes to cost about $5 per month. With cell phones and satellite T.V, anyone that visits my site would find it hard to believe that they were in a 3rd world country.
But despite these luxuries, the majority of the people here have never used a computer. There is no internet here unless you get a wireless modem, but only about 4 or 5 people in town have computers in their house (the educated ones). The rest of the people will most likely live and die by the coffee fields, with T.V as their only comforting refuge. As this world had entered the digital age, the people in developing worlds are falling more and more behind. Yes it brings them luxuries but it also makes it almost impossible to catch up. They need to know how to learn to use computers to get a job in a well paying company but how will they get such computers or education? There only option to earn a living is to continue what their parents did and work on the coffee fields and thus the cycle starts all over again. This doesn even account for the effects of said technology on the people. Cell phone thefts are probably the most common theft here in Honduras. Many people die from refusing to give up their cell phones as well. And the effects of T.V? The people here see the wealth on T.V and desperately want to live those lives. However, they don want to put the work into getting it. As T.V glamorizes everything (no one wants to see a T.V show of the daily grind of the average working guy), they don see all the hard work that goes into making an honest living. This is compounded with the fact that many Hondurans live off of remittances they have family members who are in the states working (most illegally) and they send money back to Honduras. Considering that the average Honduran in a rural site such as mine only makes $70 a month, when a family member mails back $4,000 for a year work it is easy to decide to not work at all.
So this is essentially one aspect of the situation in Honduras right now. Still to be discussed are the rampant drug gangs and drugs, corrupt police and government, the education system that is going down the drain, and the companies from the developed countries that are here to take advantage of the situation.
On that note I did get a blackberry. I got it because I have no internet at my site and didn want to have to bring my computer to the bit city just to check email the blackberry has wi-fi so it would be all I need to take. It came with a month of free internet and blackberry services so I am connected at the moment but once it is up I will be back in the dark.

update 2

I have been in my new house for a month now but I still am not fully furnished. I need to buy a table and bookshelves as all my stuff is on the floor. I have spent personal money as well much to my chagrin. I have also been traveling a lot as well. August proves to be busy as well - the peace corps olympics as well as a noche de fumadores (smokers night). It is a night celebrating cigars as santa rosa, the largrest city near my site, is known for their cigars. Unfortunately for me that means a lot more money to spend. A lucky thing is that by being in such a small site I don't spend much money as there is nothing to do. But right now moving in has drained my resources. But you can't put a price on experience, right?
But I will have to admit that my peace corps experience is nothing like I imagined. People living here are not living in huts or anything. They have cable tv and everyone has a cellphone. But the cell plan that everyone has is pay as you go. It is free to receive calls and texts and it only costs to call and send. Their ar plans but those are limited to the well off. They still rely on firewood to cook and the water is not drinkable without purification. But that in itself does not make that much of a hardship - their are people in the states that live in the mountains like that. More on this next time...

quick update

ok so im finally living by myself!! sweet freedom. it is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house, but one bedroom is occupied with some belongings of the owner who is in america at the moment. i will be living there for the next year, and we will see what happens after that. i will do a proper update soon, as i plan on getting a wireless modem. it is slow at my site, about 53k, but in the bigger sites it is a lot faster. it costs about 15 dollars a month, but i think it is worth it because of all the usefull info on the web. oh, and i will be going back to new york for a wedding in october, so i hope to see everyone then. this is the only planned trip back to the states i forsee during my peacecorps service, so i hope to make it worthwhile!

Sometimes you don’t realize how important something is…until it is gone

Sorry if this post takes a serious tone, but I have to get something off my chest. I’ve only been in the Peace Corps for about four months now, but you start to realize all the things you have taken for granted in your life. To put things into perspective, I get $50 a month to pay for housing, which is about the norm for employed people in my site. I’ve paid more to eat out in New York. My monthly living allowance? About $215 to pay for everything else such as food, water, transportation, cell phone, internet, clothes, etc. That is less than a weekend out back home. The Honduran government, in an effort to reduce the usage of electricity, provides free electricity to all houses as long as they are under certain monthly usage (in terms of kilowatts). If they go over, then it can be expensive so it is an incentive to conserve electricity use. Food is either cooked on a wood burning stove or an electric powered stove, but the majority of the people use wood burning – even those who have an electric stove. The wood is acquired from the trees around them even though it is a protected area as the government is trying to reforest the area. The water that we receive is from the rivers, so after a heavy rainstorm you can expect to receive brown water (from all the earth the rain water picks up as it flows down). This is the water that you have to wash your dishes, your clothes, and even your body. Water doesn’t come every day so you have a pila (a cement tub) to save up water. Toilets have to be flushed by pouring water down them manually – if you splash the water, be prepared to have it get on you. The Honduran sewage system – if you can call it that as there is no centralized sewage in small areas like mine) – cannot handle toilet paper so you have to place it in trashcans next to the toilet. There is no trash collecting service so you have to burn all your trash – even the toilet paper from your bathroom. It is common for people to litter and throw their trash outside on the streets while walking, riding a car or even a bus. Why would you want to carry it home where you would have to burn it? There is no recycling either.

In my site they are undergoing a construction project so we have had no water for the longest time. The pila has run dry – I believe that water leaks out somewhere. We have had lots of rain, almost every night, but even when we collect it in small buckets and put it in the pila, the leak makes sure that the next morning we don’t have enough. With the little water we have, we have to wash dishes, flush the toilet, and when we have enough water, bath ourselves. We can’t even wash clothes right now. I hadn’t been able to take a shower/bathe for a while, so last night (I’m writing this on June 17), I finally had enough and decided to bathe myself. In the rain. I took a bar of soap, went to a corner in the backyard and tried to get wet (took about 5 minutes as it wasn’t raining as hard as I would have liked). I then lathered myself up and then waited in the rain for about another 5 minutes to try to get all the soap off. The corner of the roof had a steady stream of water from all the water that was running down it so I strategically placed myself under it to get maximum water. My source of light? The frequent lightning overhead. And I did this all while wearing my boxers so not to flash my host family.

But everything I’ve posted above? I knew that when I signed up for the Peace Corps that I would have to make sacrifices. I can’t expect to live in the same conditions as I was accustomed to in the U.S. I’m not really bothered too much by what I’ve written above. What I found that I really had taken for granted, the heart of this whole post is something I believe we all take for granted: the toilet seat. You see, when I first arrived into this house, to my chagrin I found that the toilet only had the right half of the toilet seat. Sure the toilet was disgusting as sometimes the water wouldn’t flush and there would be feces floating around in the toilet. That sometimes when I tried to flush it before I used it the water would splatter (as you would have to hold the bucket high up to get sufficient power to plough through whatever is clogging the pipe. But I found solace that at least whenever I had to do my business, I would only have to lean to the right and I would still be able to do my business. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked. But I was horrified yesterday morning when I heard a distinct clattering sound of hard plastic hitting the floor and my host mom cursing in disgust. When I looked into the bathroom, my worst fears were confirmed – my anchor, my only solace of hope and comfort in the bathroom, the right side of the toilet seat, had fallen off. I don’t believe they plan on buying a new toilet seat until after I leave because they want to remodel the hose then, so obviously it doesn’t make sense to buy a seat when they’ll just buy a new toilet soon anyway. But that means that for one month from now on I will have to squat to use the bathroom. I know that lots of girls squat in the United States (when using public bathrooms), and one guy as well (Dave), but I’ve always just lined the toilet seat with toilet paper to do my business in comfort. But yesterday was the first time I had to squat over a toilet (that isn’t a hole in the ground). I just can’t understand how anyone does that. Since I have arrived here, I have been pretty fast with the business. However, I was so unaccustomed to squatting that it took longer than usual, and my legs got really fatigued. I had to brace myself with one arm on the wall behind me for support. It was not a pleasant experience. When I was finally done, I got dressed and walked to the school, but my legs were so wobbly that I was walking like a drunk. At school, some of the kids wanted to play and I just couldn’t get my legs to comply. Needless to say, going forward for the next month, I will dread the mornings (like I did this one). So the next time you are doing your business comfortably at home, please think of me. As for me, when I finally find a house to move into, I think I will buy an extra toilet seat…just in case.

Welcome to San Augustin

So I have taken some new pictures of my new site and they are on the web. It is real quiet here, but real beautiful at the same time. Being up in the mountains is very cool and we don’t have much malaria or dengue problems here. But we do have the Chagas bug, which I encourage you to read up on. They predominately live in houses made of adobe (lots of those here), so I definitely don’t want be living in one of those. I’m at a lost in how I can help here as there isn’t really a lot of infrastructure here. When visiting another volunteer, I ran into an ex-volunteer (RPCV – returned peace corps volunteer) and she said that she was surprised that another Business Volunteer was placed in San Augustine as the other volunteer worked primarily with the municipality. She thought that they would place a Municipal Development volunteer here and I can see why – there doesn’t appear to be much business here that I can support. Business opportunities for where I am are not much as the majority live off their earnings from coffee and the women primarily stay at home to wash, cook, clean, and take care of the kids (everyone hand washes clothes of the entire family, and the kids get out of school at 1). It may, however, be a different story in the neighboring towns – they don’t earn as much as the people that I’m around. I may have to trek all the way to the other areas to see how I can help then in income generating ideas. But it will primarily revolve around farming, or raising livestock. Also, I hope to see how I can help the schools out there – there is only one teacher per town (I use that word very loosely – its more like a neighborhood that is far away), one class room, and the teacher teaches all from 1-6^th grade. After, the kids generally join their parents in the field to work. The kids in my town (or urban area) are a bit more fortunate – they get to go to school until the 9^th grade, and then they can take a bus to either Dulce Nombre (the closest neighboring town) or Santa Rosa (the biggest city in Copan) to continue their education.

My primary counterpart is the municipality of San Augustine, but right now I’m working a lot with the school as I’m still trying to find out how I can help in the muni. The school here has a computer room with 24 computers (16 set up as they don’t have enough tables at the moment). I’m organizing the room so it can accommodate more computers and tables (the 16 they had set up were on the perimeter of the room, with not enough outlets for all), setting up a restricted account for the students (lots of the computers there was no admin log in, so anyone would be able to install/uninstall anything they wanted), and installing Microsoft Office, a Spanish typing program, and Rosetta Stone (so they can practice English) on all of them. I hope to find other programs as well, or educational games, so that can help the students get accustomed to using computers. I also plan on teaching Word and Excel classes to the student and teachers as well. Other future plans are to set up a network (there is a server, router etc. and wireless adaptors on 16 of the computers), to teach volleyball (they have nets and balls), basketball (may need help from you guys in the states to get some new basket balls) as well as baseball. One thing that sucked is that after the other volunteer left, no one else continued his work with the baseball team. My plan to circumvent that is to form sports clubs like they have in schools in Asia. The older, more experienced students can teach the newer younger students (while the basics are covered in physical education). Hopefully this will be more of a sustainable model. But the other problem is that adult supervision will be needed. I have some willing people from the municipality, but I hope that other adults, especially the parents, will start taking more of an interest in the lives of the students.

Down the line include HIV/AIDS presentations, business simulation, health presentations, and I especially would like to start a gardening club as well. Considering that the majority of these kids are coming from families that work with growing coffee, they should know the science behind it. Also it would be healthy to diversify their diet and eat more vegetables. Not to sound ungrateful (having lived away from home for about 12 years that a home-cooked meal is always appreciated) but I really can’t stand to eat corn tortilla, beans and eggs any longer. I really want to start cooking for myself, and once I do I definitely want to start holding cooking classes for those who are interested. Other preoccupations right now is that I need to start looking for a house to live in – I’m allowed to move out on the 15^th of July and definitely look forward to that. The first thing I plan to buy aside from a bed is an electroducha – the heated showerhead. Cold showers do not make me happy. But that being said, I’ve never taken quicker showers in my life. I usually stand in front of the water and count to 10, almost hyperventilating from the anticipation, then I jump in and get wet in 10 seconds, turn the water off, lather up, then turn the water on and rinse off in 20 seconds. To be fair, the second time is not as bad. But the first 10 seconds while I pump myself up to jump into the frigid water? Not good times. Electroducha may even be the first thing I buy. Screw it, I can sleep on the floor – I’ll have a nice warm shower to wash myself off after.

But I think I may need help from anyone that is willing – I need to start looking for companies or organizations that my be willing to donate items to the school here in Honduras. Basketballs, books (in Spanish), equipment for their rarely used laboratory, perhaps even games as well. I’ll try to flesh out more ideas, but if anyone has a good contact for any of the above that would definitely be helpful. I also need to learn about the coffee industry, to find out how I can increase the incomes of the coffee producing people here. They don’t really grow their plants according to best practice – they just do what their parents, and their parents’ parents have been doing in the past. Anyone with info on that would be helpful as well – I’ll be looking on the internet once I visit someplace that has it as well.

To leave on an amusing note, I received a phone call one day from a random Honduran. He said that he was watching my son as we spoke and that if I didn’t want anything to happen to him, that I was to send him money. Now these phone scams are becoming more and more popular in Honduras – people call random numbers and try to scare them into sending money. Tracking those numbers down don’t help as people are mugged here very frequently for both their money and their cell phones. As such people get new numbers all the time. For me, I’m just surprised that the scammer didn’t try to tailor his scam to me, a non-Spanish speaker. I didn’t understand what he was trying to say, so I handed the phone to a municipal worker here, who then gave it to someone else laughing, and then eventually to the police officer that is stationed here which is when the scammer hung up. I’m sad that I didn’t get a chance to find out more about my son....