Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Coffee Picking on the Mountain in December

Saludos desde San Luis Planes! Happy holidays; I can’t believe Christmas’s upon us already. There are only three blog points this time. I decided I’d include some bold highlights in each part, to make it a bit easier to get through. Read what interests you, as always.

1. Coffee season: the flavorful details
2. Vacation highlights: Bad roads, Mayan ruins and Caribbean islands
3. Holidays: feliz Navidad y próspero año nuevo

1. Coffee season is in full swing. My entire town is involved somehow. If you’ve ever been curious about the process, here’s all you need to know:

Coffee is ripening on the plants and it needs to be picked, or “cut,” as they put it in Spanish. Who is out on the farms picking?: everybody and their mother— literally and sadly, next to childbirth, coffee picking is about the only thing that gets women out of the house in my rural, conservative town. Kids are out of school from November to February mainly so they can help their parents in the harvest. The town is basically dead quiet during the day because everyone is somewhere up in the hills picking.

It is a basic concept: pick as many red berries as possible, which are also known as “cherries,” as I’ve heard some people refer to them. But it’s tedious work. The typical worker gets paid around 25-35 lempiras, about $1.25-1.75, per bucket which may represent as many as 30 or 40 plants worth of berries. Adults usually pick around 5-8 buckets in a full day’s work (thus earning around $6-7).

The farm owners, who hire the pickers, “de-pulp” the berries using a type of motorized press, squeezing off the fruity red outer-layer. The beans , inside the red berry part, have a yellow/tan “husk” covered in a sticky liquid called “miel’ (honey). Most farmers, after they de-pulp, wash the beans to clean off the miel. Then they have to decide who to sell their beans to. In my town, the options are one rich family that owns their own company, one “middle-man” who has the reputation for ripping people off price-wise, and then there is the cooperative I work with.

My coop weighs the coffee that comes in and pays the farmer according to the price that day on the commodities market in New York. But, since the official commodity is dried coffee, and the farmers are selling wet coffee, the coop has to take off a discount for the humidity level of the beans. Usually we subtract 45-55% for humidity, depending on how much the farmers have dried their coffee before they bring it in. [The humidity-measuring device is actually pretty cool]

Once we’ve bought the coffee from the farmers, it’s got to pass through two stages of drying so that it reaches 10-12% humidity. More, and the beans would be at risk of going sour and/or rotting and less, and the beans would shrivel up and lose their flavor. Step one is solar: we spread out the beans on our outdoor patio and hope for a lot of sunlight. When it’s really sunny, it usually takes half a day to solar-dry the beans. Step two involves large spinning dryers that were donated to the coop by the USDA and imported from Brazil. Each one holds something like 30-40 bags (150lbs each) and takes approximately 30 hours. We have two dryers.

Grain elevators then shoot the dried coffee into the next room of our plant where the coffee is de-husked, i.e. where the bean loses that second, yellow protective layer. The de-husked coffee bean has a sort of dark green tint and looks more like a lentil than the typical roasted coffee one commonly thinks of.

Finally, the de-husked coffee is sorted by weight, then runs down a conveyor belt in front of which two lines of workers (predominantly women) sit and pick out the bad pieces for hours and hours. The sorted and selected de-husked coffee is bagged and sealed and stored and then awaits a truck to take it to the port for its long journey to Canada, where all of our coffee is exported.

The company that buys our coffee is Van Houtte, one of the bigger coffee name brands in Canada, and they roast, grind, and market it there and in the New England states—if you’re up for aimless browsing of the web, check out their special Single-Origin line and look for the San Luis Planes, Honduras brand. That’s us. Last year we exported 5500 “quintales,” which are 100 pound bags. That’s a lot of pounds of coffee to be moved, especially when you realize that the five factory workers move it all manually throughout every stage of the process. This year we expect to sell 1000 “quintales” more than last.

2. Vacation highlights: My mother and aunt and a friend of theirs came down to visit me for a week at the beginning of the month. And I’m pretty sure that our trip turned out to be most memorable for them.

Travelling in a 3rd world country isn’t necessarily an easy or smooth feat, to say the least. We had decided that renting a car would be the most comfortable… our goal was to avoid using the infamous bus system of Honduras, which is made up generally of 20-30 year old hand-me-down school buses from the US, which are mostly overcrowded with people and bags and sometimes animals, that run normally on inconvenient schedules. Sure there are a handful of “luxury” bus lines, but we opted for a little more freedom and comfort.

So, thank you Budget Rentals. We rented a shiny Toyota with “4 wheel drive” and headed for my site, where, sadly, it had been raining solidly for the past week. My town isn’t what you’d call “easy to get to” and the roads aren’t “in good condition” and the rain doesn’t “help things” and the tires on this shiny new rental car weren’t “appropriate.” Needless to say, we spun out on hill after hill until we just couldn’t go up any more. It was quite a dramatic attempt and, after everybody’s blood pressure began to increase relative to the incline of the road (ie steeply), we decided to scratch my town from the itinerary and turned around and left for Copan, the Mayan ruins.

The Mayan ruins were very interesting and possibly my favorite part of the trip. We hired a guide who was of Mayan descent and learned a lot about their history and culture. Copan was a city of about 20,000 that was in its peak as a cultural center from about 400-800AD. We got to see several stepped-pyramid temples and altars. There were also countless statues of kings and gods, a huge staircase of hieroglyphics, and a ball court. I asked our Mayan guide what he thought would happen in 2012 and he told us the whole end-of-the-world thing was all just a big misunderstanding. I’m relieved.

We spent the remainder of our trip on Roatan, one of the Bay Islands of Honduras. The boat ride out was quite choppy and one of the four of us, to remain unnamed, announced “uh oh” just before she got most vocally seasick into a handy pukebag. Our days on the island were spent swimming, eating and drinking beach drinks. It was rough. One morning, Aunt Julie and I went fishing just beyond the coral reef. Again, we’ll leave it nameless, but one of the two of us caught two and the other caught less than that.

Lesson learned: all in all is that interesting and memorable vacations can be had in Honduras, so anybody reading this, feel free to come down and visit, assuming I know you.

3. Happy holidays:

I’ll be spending Christmas and New Year’s in my site, with my host family and probably with various other families too. It’s nice to be back after having been travelling and I look forward to seeing how the holidays will be celebrated here. My guess is that celebrations will most likely involve bomb-sized, earth-shaking, glass-shattering firecrackers (see my October post for more ranting on firecrackers).

I send my best to friends and family back home.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving.
Went to Olancho, the biggest department (or 2nd, not sure) in Honduras that is nicknamed the Wild Wild East because it is a lot like Texas is in the States: everything is bigger there, there is an old timey outlaw feeling with the dust and the cowboy hats and boots and all the horses. Also, people there speak with an accent and lots carry guns. Yeehaw.
There were 8 of us PCVs who went out and we did the American thing and ate turkey, threw the football, played games and had fun. The trip out takes a long time and four of us coming from the West had to take the 4:30 AM bus from Santa Barbara and travelled all day, arriving in time for dinner. Our first bus of the day was stopped at a road check by police and Stephen, fellow male volunteer, and I had to get off the bus with the rest of the men on board and were patted down. Sherria, female volunteer, declared innocent by the police, got it on camera- Ill have to post pictures later. They didnt seem to find us too guilty looking, so 20 minutes later we were back on the road. What a way to wake up.
All in all, it was a nice trip and I dont regret not being in the States all that much, if Im being honest. Best wishes to friends and family and happy start to the holiday season. BTW, hope you are enjoying the cold weather up there in the higher latitudes: here, it got into the 90s today travelling home.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Cold in Honduras? Actually, yes.

Aloe plant flowers, AKA alien growths.
Hello loved ones and friends and random people I dont know. I am posting a lot of words here to send out a broad update on my life as a volunteer in the Peace Corps. As Ive said here in this blog before, look at the list of contents first and then go on to read only what interests you- otherwise Id feel sort of guilty obliging you to scan the whole damn entry because you feel you have to. Youd get bored that way- or I would at least.

1. Cold in Honduras? Where am I?
2. My computer fixed: life has normalized again!
3. Firecrackers: who was the bastard who sold a truckoad of firecrackers to every kid in my town?
4. Business training (yes, Im actually doing some work too): to my coffee coop and personal finanze classes to families
5. Survey and Census results: any statisticians out there?
6. Ecotourism Committee and a chat on Global Warming: environment=good
7. My work in the school: (kids=good, when no firecrackers)
8. November, December plans: Panama and a visit from family

1. Cold in Honduras?
Who would have guessed? I certainly didnt expect to be cold in the tropics, but it's true. The last month it has been in the mid, and even low, 50s in my site. And it's grey and rainy. It's not going to snow, but having just gotten used to 8 months of 80 and 90 degree weather, the 50s have come as a big surprise. Plus, housing insullation isn't really a common thing here. But, it is actually a welcome change and it feels like fall back home. Give me cold over sweltering hot any time of the year, any latitude of the globe.

2. My computer is fixed
The Osteens step into action. Something broken? We know how to fix it. Something highly technical requiring many difficult steps to fix? Yeah, no problem. Father and son, handymen extraordinaire, save the day... okay, youre right, normally this statement would be highly sarcastic. This time, however, it's actually true. I must thank my father for sending me just what I needed to get my computer fixed and just in time. Best of all, for some amazing miracle or other, none of my memory was lost during the months my computer was experiencing the black screen of death. So, movies, pictures, and music have returned to my life, as well as word processing (hence the long blog entry this time around) and Excel and Powerpoint and Internet (on the sparse ocassions when I go somewhere that has WiFi) etc. And it feels good.

This is not the Peace Corps of the 60s. It is my humble opinion that people need computing abilities to be able to function productively in this century. Old people may disagree with me, but, you try living without a computer for a few months, all the while listening to various Honduran radio stations, and see how long you maintain your sanity. Okay, I didnt go insane without my computer, but I was close.

3. Firecrackers.
Some jerk came to my site and made a ton of money marketing firecrackers to every boy aged 5 to 15 in San Luis Planes. Yes, Im simply complaining right now, but these kids have gone crazy with blowing things up and my once peaceful site now perpetually sounds like a war zone. You'll just be sitting there, maybe with a spoonful of hot soup in your hand or maybe concentrating on translating a sentence for your writeup on the census you just finished, when BANG, BANG, BANG, there's a series of explosions just outside your house. Or maybe it's 6:30 in the morning. Or maybe it's 10:30 at night.

And, sure enough, when I asked one of the little buggerfaces why they were setting off so many firecrackers these days, he said it was because Christmas is getting closer. Obviously.

4. Business training (real work).
Yes, I am still chuggin along on my actual Peace Corps work too. My life's not all technological, climatic, firecracker drama. This past week, I finally imparted a full day's presentation to the members of my coffee coop to prepare them to revise their business plan. Not to brag too much about the experience, but I feel like it was a pretty big success. We shall see in November how our revision goes, but I have high hopes.

Also, Ive been working on a series of short classes to give to families in my town on all things personal finance. According to the results of the survey that I conducted, the average number of years studied amongst the people in my town is 4.3. This means that almost nobody knows what a budget is or how (or why) to save. And, for a town that is struggling with perpetual poverty, in a place whose economy (income) depends principally on a seasonal crop, I think that some basic financial know-how could be of some real use. Sure, I'm trying to make these sessions basic and practical, so that people will actually be able to get something out of them. The goal is to start in November and Ive got the support of the local Patronato, the town council, to help me get people convinced to show up.

5. Survey and Census results.
Ive now officially completed a survey and a census of San Luis Planes. In case you're interested, here are a few of the results of the survey. There are 1325 people living in my site and 309 separate families and 349 houses. Of the 309 families, 35 have 5 or more acres of farmland (apx 11%) meaning that they are the rich people in town.

There is pretty interesting data on ages, that is good news, I think (sorry about the crappy version of the chart):

Younger people study more and have less children. But there is still a lot of work to do, obviously.

100% of the population uses wood burning stoves which, at the base of a protected cloud forest, can be an environmental risk. Not to mention that some of these stoves aren't ventillated externally and thus all the smoke stays in the house causing a wide range of respiratory problems, especially for children. And the average number of children per family is 4.4. Some families, though, have as many as 11 children and some household have as many as 12 people living there.
41% of people burn their trash and another 41% simply throw it somewhere. 6% of families still don't have a latrine in their house and have to use "campo libre" (the open field... they go outside). In 51% of the households in San Luis Planes, the mother does not work outside of the house. 49% of the population has to travel outside of the town to buy food. Also, 49% has to travel outside of the town to buy medicine. 94% of the population depends on the buses. So that means that if something happens to the buses or to the roads, half of the population would have a hard time getting food and medicine.

6. Ecotourism Committee.
Notice the epiphyte growth, looking up inside the cloud forest.
The two other PC volunteers who live in my area, both volunteers working with the Protected Areas Management project (ie the environmental volunteers), formed a committee that promotes ecotourism in our three towns. By the time I arrived to site, it was already up and running and thus, I got to hop on board just after the hardest part had been tackled.
One of the offshoot pools by the trail in the park.
Ecotourism, of course, means that the people here have an opportunity to make money while protecting the national park. Win win. The committee is working on environmental education right now, giving a series of chats to each community on topics like local natural resources, environmentally-friendly waste management, and bird migration. Im working on the next session with a couple other members and we'll be talking about global warming and how it is likely to affect Central America and a few things that people here can do to help mitigate the problem. Of course, global warming has to be a myth made up by those crazed leftwing scientists because it's cold in Honduras right now. Heh.
In the future, the committee will be training guides and finding families that are willing to sell food and rent rooms to tourists. We'll also be working on marketing and transportation. The dream is to one day convert the committee into an NGO that strives to protect the forest while promoting ecotourism. Our community members seem, for the most part, energized and committed.

So come down and visit the cloud forest, see some tucans.

7. Work in the school.

The school year here will end in less than a month and doesn't start up again until the end of February. Almost all of the kids here help their families harvest coffee starting in November. So after the teachers' strike that lasted almost a month, I wasn't left with a whole lot of time to get things accomplished in the school this school year. Lots of my work there will start next school year.

My journalism group is down to two (perhaps three) weeks before we are done. They've done a good job so far and have been enthusiastic about getting to use the computers to type up their articles. Teaching them how to revise their articles has been the most challenging. Many of them didn't even know what "revise" meant. But, we've been working hard and I think we'll be proud of our final product. They'll be up for sale once they're printed. So while you're coming down to visit the cloud forest to help out our ecotourism committee, you can buy a local paper too.

This coming week, a Health volunteer from a town nearby will be coming in to help the two other volunteers here and me give an HIV/AIDS awareness chat to the 6th-9th graders of the school in my site. We all had practice giving such sessions during training, so it should be a piece of pastel. They are really well written sessions and I think the kids end up getting a lot out of them. We'll even be doing banana-condom demonstrations.

I think that after mulling it over for a long time, Ive decided to start giving English classes to the adults of the community at large. I tried starting English classes for the teachers of my school here, but it never worked out, they never showed up. So I was hesitant to try again with a new audience. And some PC volunteers are against the idea all together, claiming that teaching English only extends American imperialism or that we're only training people here to become illegal immigrants in the US. But personally, Im of the opinion that learning a language is good for the brain and, like it or not, learning English opens the doors for success here in Honduras. So there. I may also be starting English classes directly to the school kids next school year-- but we shall have to see about that because Im not really trying to become a school teacher (too many headaches for me).

Finally, now that our principal here finally consented to installing the 15 computers that were delivered last year, I have a shiny new computer lab to work with. I'll be starting computer classes to the teachers beginning next school year that they'll be passing on to the kids. Internet is the next step.

8. November and December Plans.

Im headed to Panama City, Panama the first week in November. Then at the end of the month, Im planning to visit friends in the Department of Olancho (which, as Hondurans love to brag, is bigger than the entire country of El Salvador) for Thanksgiving. Im excitidely expecting visitors for a week in early December. Then, some of my PC friends and I have been talking about renting an island in the Carribean for Christmas. Apparently it's quite an affordable thing to do these days. Rent and entire island. Who knew?

So that's all from me my Internet readers. Hope your eyes didn't fall out from having to read so much. I send my best from here.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

A few pictures...

Hi Internet.
Here are three pictures:

1. Inside a cave in my town.














2. A big bug. Am pretty sure it was an alien.













3. Boats at dusk on the Caribbean.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Community Integration


Hola. I knew that people back home have been anxiously checking my blog day and night for the past several weeks to see when some word would come from me, to see if that kid is still alive down there in that country. Was it Nicaragua? So yes, Im now finally writing a new post to say that I am still alive and still in Honduras.

1. Community Integration
2. No longer the new guy
3. "Reconnect" workshop: in which I learned how that pure coffee is not soluable in cold water
4. Life in a house in the campo, on my own

1. Community Integration. I dont think that I have a whole lot to mention for whats been going on for the past month or so. Community integration, the five dollar term that has become a cliche in the PC, means that slowly but surely, Im getting to know more and more people more closely. And so that in and of itself has been a task that Ive been working on. People in my site now know that Im not a) a Spaniard b) named Kevin (the last PCV in site back in the early 2000s) c) a tourist or d) a greedy gringo capitalist there to spy on them for the CIA while at the same time ruining their culture with McDonalds and Starbucks. So thats a small success for me.

2. No longer the new guy. Also, the newest training group, H17, was just sworn in yesterday and are off to their new sites today. That means that Im no longer a freshman in the country. Im getting old now. Respect.

3. Reconnect. We just had "Reconnect," a Business project workshop for five days. I got to meet the rest of the business volunteers from the previous training group, H14, and we shared our projects and planned to work together, building sinergies and sharing best practices, more buzz words from the life of a bz volunteer. The meeting sort of felt like training all over again (sessions on commercialization of coffee and renewable energy... good stuff indeed, though quite a change in pace for me now), but it was worthwhile, I felt. We are clearly the best of the 6 projects in PC Honduras, just so you know.

4. Living in a house in the "campo." I am still fighting ants. They are all over the place all the time and most of them bite. There are also spiders and cockroaches and dirty walls that, slowly but surely, Im washing by hand and by broom. Yes, washing the walls by broom. I do enjoy living on my own and having my own place, but it is a little bit of work. My neighborhood kids are always fascinated by what the local gringo is up to and often spend time on my front porch asking questions and learning English phrases. My host mother and I have also planted 3 garden beds in my back yard. Soon I will be eating nothing but radishes, carrots and cilantro.

Things are chugging along down here. Siempre con la lucha.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

First Months in Site


I feel like it is time for an update, but dont really have anything huge to report.
1. I moved into my own house in the end. In my backyard I have: an orange tree, several coffee plants (obviously), an avacado bush, sugarcane, banana trees, and a cinnamon tree. Ill be busy for the next few months doing small repairs and upgrades on the house. Itll be good for me.
2. One of our PC directors came and visited me last week. He said that things seem to be in order. Thats good news.
3. Two cousins surprised me and sort of showed up at my doorstep. We visited for a while and went on a short trip around Honduras. It was a nice break from my work, but I think it sort of messed up my perspective on life in Honduras. Going back to my site after being in semi-vacation mode will be strange.

Otherwise, Im staying healthy and happy and still am living the life.

Monday, July 12, 2010

ESPAÑA WINS!

Hi from Santa Bárbara.

1. Spain:World Champions.
2. The Honduran Diet.
3. Death of a Laptop.
4. Independent Housing.
5. Business Trip.

1. Spain: World Champions. I think that one of the signs of my gradual adapting to Honduran culture is my new appreciation for futbol. Ive watched close to every World Cup game with my host family on their High Def flatscreen. Thats right, they have an expensive TV. After Honduras and USA, I was rooting for Spain, so I was very happy to see them winning. It was an exhausting game with seemingly unbreakable defenses on both sides, especially the Netherlands. Right now is San Fermines in Pamplona, so I cant begin to imagine the celebration going on there.

2. The Honduran Diet. I have lost 20 pounds in the five months Ive been in Honduras. A fellow volunteer told me it was probably because Im drinking less beer here. Heh. In truth, it is most likely that Im eating very healthy and getting a lot of exercise. I also am not drinking as much beer.

3. Death of a laptop. My laptop is officially on the fritz. It caught a Honduran virus and gives me a lovely black screen every time I try booting it. No music or movies for me now; I guess it is the real deal Peace Corps from now on, if I cant fix it.

4. Independent Housing. (Considering I get official approval,) I will be moving into my own house in the coming days. Ive lived the mandatory two months with my host family and found a nice house, good location, friendly landlord, and that meets all the requirements. It will be pretty bare for a while, but that is ok. Itll be kinda like living in the dorms all over. Good news is that rent is 660 lempiras a month, which comes out to be about $32.

5. Business Trip. Went to El Paraiso, a city on the Nicaraguan border, with my coop to fill out paperwork and receive the necessary info about funding from Canada. If we are approved, we will be getting a little more than US$300,000 for environmental improvements for everything to do with coffee in our area (from farm upgrades to a new electrical system in our plant). It was a nice trip too; we got to visit the same border where Mel Zelaya, deposed president, infamously tried to cross into Honduras during the coup. I touched the same sign he did. One of these days I will be able to upload all the pictures I want to.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

My Journalism Group

Hola mis compas (literally that means hi, my compatriots). The good news is that Im still living the life here. I am feeling more and more comfortable and at home in my site and have been staying pretty busy too, both of which are muy bien. Here's what I got going on:

1. Journalism group
2. Community survey
3. Coffee coop

1. Journalism group

18 kids and 1 gringo. This week I started a journalism group with eighteen fourth to sixth graders at the local school. A guy about my age is helping lead the class with me. I am using the guide of former PCVs mixed with some of my own ideas to structure the group. We will be meeting once a week for the next 16 weeks! By the end of our time together, the kids will have learned about journalism in general, about newspapers in specific, computers, interviewing techniques, how to use a camera, grammar and spelling, forming opinions, editing and layout etc. etc. And, the final physical product will be their own newspaper about stuff going on in the community. Our first meeting was a lot of fun, thanks to some standard "dinámicas" (or interactive icebreakers/games) that were inserted into the agenda-- it seems that the kids are interested in what we will be doing-- it also seems that theyre highly interested in the new gringo in town-- I read on their excited faces, "what are gringos like??!!" I will be a good experience for me...

2. Community Survey

I am doing a community survey about the health, environmental, and economic conditions affecting people in my town. Ive been going with one member of the Patronato (the local town council) once or twice a week to the different neighborhoods of San Luis, going door to door introducing myself and my project, then asking them my 25 knock-out questions. Doing a survey had always been in the back of my mind, but the PCV who lives up the road from me, Karen, suggested that I actually do it- so I am. It's helpful because I'm getting out into the community and getting to know new people, but it will also, hopefully, give me some direction about the needs of my town-- maybe to give me an idea or two about projects I can start working on.

3. Coffee Coop

We are trying to finish up the bookkeeping for the past operating cycle and it is a bit of a headache. Maybe soon we will know if we made a profit or not, heh. We canceled our general assembly meeting yesterday because of Honduras' last World Cup game, heh. I guess it makes sense.

I just realized that Im saying "we" instead of "they." Heh. I guess that's a good sign, right?


Everything else is dandy here really. Last week I went hiking into the cloud forest for the first time. It was a killer hike (for me at least, not at all for the Protected Areas Management volunteers whose job it is to be expert woodspeople), but we made it. The forest is really something else-- huge, ancient trees etc. We got to see two tucans. I'll post pictures of the trip one of these days. I am living in one of the best sites in Honduras, hands down.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

New Mailing Address

Hola a todos. Im doing great and am living the life. Im still getting to know people in my community and am building up confianza. I am working on a big training session with all the members of the coop on basic business practices and am about to start up English classes as well as a journalism group for local schoolkids. We shall see...

Anyway, just for your information, all you people out there on the Internet, Ive got a new mailing address. Im also putting it on the side bar of my blog. They recommend drawing a cross on boxes if you send them, and maybe even putting a Dios le bendiga on the side, to try to prevent people from opening them and taking stuff out. Im not sure how long mail will take to get to me now, but probably at least two weeks, if not longer. I dont need anything from the States as of now, but feel free to surprise me. (wink)

C. Alex Osteen, PCV
Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz
Apartado Postal 22
Santa Bárbara, Santa Bárbara
Honduras

Saturday, May 29, 2010

My site!






Greetings from San Luis Planes, Santa Bárbara! Well, I made it to site. Everything is so new and exciting here that it’s going to be hard to sum up all that’s been going on in the past two weeks. I love the community and my family and my work. I think that that’ll be a good order to try and describe things:

1. Community
2. Family/community members
3. Work/ “counterpart”

1. Community. You wouldn’t believe how scenic San Luis Planes is (“San Luis,” for short—though not to be confused with the larger city of San Luis, also in the department of Santa Bárbara). We’re above 2000 meters here, though it’s probably closer to 2300 or 2400—which comes out to be more than 6000 ft above sea level. This little coffee town of about 1500 people is surrounded by the tips of mountains that are covered with a thick forest. Clouds roll through these hills everyday bringing in beautiful views, cool weather, and RAIN. It’s been raining about every afternoon and/or night so far. It feels like Peter Jackson could have filmed some movie here, it’s such a dramatic view. I don’t have any pictures that do it credit yet, but once I take a good one, I’ll post it. The one that I am posting is the view from my back yard.



I’m kind of isolated where I am, which is great (and something I had sort of hoped for). It’s the real deal Peace Corps. I’m about an hour and a half away from the city of Santa Bárbara, the capital of the department, and the place that I’ll be going to do banking, buying groceries and other necessities (and getting Internet and cell phone service—that’s right, I don’t have cell phone service in my site). Peña Blanca, another bigger place with stuff to do and buy, is about an hour away.

I’m also about an hour and a half from Lake Yojoa, Honduras’ largest lake. On the ride up to my site, Alex Rosales, my counterpart (see number 3) and I stopped at the lake and ate fresh tilapia on the veranda of a restaurant right on the lake.

The national park here has one of the best/most pristine cloud forests in the country and we get a lot of ecotourists because of it. My two PC neighbors are in the project called Protected Areas Management, and they’re working with a local committee dedicated to developing this. I joined them last week.

2. Family/ Community Members. The day before I got into town, my future host family decided that they couldn’t host me because the madre got sick. So, when I got to town, it was a surprise meeting a new family, that I didn’t have the facts on. But, I’m actually with the brother and his family. They have a six year old son named Erick who’s in the second grade, and a sixteen year old daughter Kelyn, who lives with an aunt and uncle in Santa Bárbara where she goes to high school. (The local school only goes to 9th grade). They’re friendly and patient. The dad (along with his brother) is a community leader and is well respected in the town. He owns around 10 “manzanas” of farmland up in the hills (manzanas, I think, are approximately equivalent to hectares) where he grows coffee.

I’m still in the community analysis phase of service, where I’m meeting everyone and gaining “confianza,” or building up trust and friendship. I’m going to be going around doing a survey this week, actually. It’s really amazing how nice people are, and happy they are to meet a gringo. Most of the people I meet think that I’m from Spain because of my strange accent. I hear lots of stories about other PC volunteers who have been here in the past (two married couples, most recently) and a few Spaniards who set up the carpentry shop in town. I know my way around town already, considering there are two roads.

Almost everybody here depends on coffee production in some way or another. Either they own land where coffee is grown, or they pick coffee for the landowners, or they work for the coffee coop where I’m working. The quality of coffee is very high and I think I’m in heaven. (But asking for it without sugar confuses people.)

3. Work/ “Counterpart”. So when our training directors went around the country doing “site development,” they looked for people and organizations in our future communities that we’d be able to work with. These people they match us with are called “counterparts” in PC lingo. Some volunteers work with their counterparts for all two years while others use their counterparts as a launching point to meet the community then start work on other things.

I have two counterparts. My main counterpart I’ve already mentioned. His name is Alex Rosales and he’s the manager of the coffee coop called Montaña Verde. He’s very motivated and really wants the best for its future. He is also an expert coffee “catador” and knows all the technical stuff about what goes into making the best cup of coffee imaginable.

Montaña Verde (see picture), as a company, was founded just in 2006 with the help of an international NGO called CARE. Officially, it’s a coop of coops, that coordinates the efforts and production of 5 separate companies from five different communities in the zone to process and then export coffee. It has 56 members and buys additionally from more than 200 independent producers. All the coffee it buys and processes (11 “lotes,” or 4,125 “quintales,” or 412,500 lbs) is exported to Canada and sold there by a distributor under the brand name of Van Houte. I’ll be helping the company revise its business plan, implement a digital inventory control system, updating its accounting system, helping to broaden its marketing and diversify its financing, among other things. In the process, I’m learning all about coffee and its production. I couldn’t be more excited.

My second counterpart is the principal of the local school, where I’ll be teaching computer skills (once they get the computers set up, heh), as well as English and maybe some environmental stuff too. I am also planning on starting a journalism group with some of the kids, as well as perhaps a chess club.

As far as other work, I’m also coordinating with the ecotourism project. I am also helping with the “Patronato,” the local town council or alderman’s board, to write a work plan and help prioritize their efforts. Who knows what else I’ll be getting into in the next two years? I’m a “community resource,” according to the Peace Corps, and I want to pitch in wherever I can. Once I get to know people more, I’ll be able to understand their needs better.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Site Assignments

Happy Mothers´Day to all the moms out there.

So this past week was our last week in Ojojona doing Field Based Training. We are all back in Zarabanda for one week left in training as a whole, then we´re all off to our sites in different parts of the country. Most of us are heading for the West, since there seems to be the most need there. This past Wednesday was "site assignment day," in which they told us where we are going to be spending the next two years of our lives. Our training director taped masking tape down on the floor of our meeting room in the shape of a big Honduran map and placed placcards where all the sites were, then made us wait as he called our names for where we were going.

I lucked out and got everything that I wanted in a site. And, in my opinion, I got the coolest place in the whole group! I will be in San Luis Planes, Santa Barbara, a town of about 1400 people an hour and a half from the department capital (Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara). I wanted a small site because it would be safer, friendlier, and easier to get "integrated," this mystical term that people throw around all the time. I will be working with a coffee cooperative there, helping with bookkeeping and best practices. I was pushing for a coffee coop all during training, and cant wait to start. Ill also be helping out in the local school giving English and computer classes to students and teachers, hoping for "sustainability." What´s more, is that there is a lot of room for developing tourism there. The cool part about my site is that Im very close to Lake Yojoa, the largest lake in the country. Plus, Im in the mountains that pertain to a national park where famous cloud forests are found. Lots of hiking in my future.

Cant wait to start. Much love from Honduras. See you on the flip side.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Still in Training

Hello. I’ve got a short and sweet blog entry this week! (For me, that is.)

1. Adaptation
2. Visiting Local Businesses
3. Bonfire, Cave Paintings

1. Adapting to Honduran culture. I just wanted to talk about ways that I think I am adapting slowly but surely to the Honduran lifestyle. Sure I’m still wet under the ears considering all the time I’ve got left here, but lots of things that were weird to me nine weeks ago are just part of my daily routine nowadays.

First is the food. I am completely used to and content with eating beans, rice, plantains, eggs and tortillas on a daily basis. They fill you up and I like the way they all taste together—at first it was weird mixing the sweetness of the plantains with everything else, but now it just feels normal.

Second, I’m learning how to live with and around kids. Sure, not every Honduran family has lots of kids, but many do; kids seem to be everywhere (something like nearly 50% of Honduras’ population is younger than 30!) Being an only child, I don’t really have too much experience living with young kids. But I think that my younger host siblings and I are getting along great and it’s actually been fun. We play lots of games (soccer, basketball, badminton, card games, who can make the weirdest face etc). I also get to help out with homework and English sometimes. If they start making trouble, I let the parents handle it. Win win. Also, the 17 year old host brother has become one of my best friends here in Ojojona and has been a big help with getting accustomed to the culture.

I don’t think twice about taking a cold bucket shower or flushing the toilet using a bucket. It’s inconvenient getting running water every four days, but it’s not the end of the world.

Finally, for the most part, I’m used to the weather. I still get hot, but I just don’t notice it as much. Besides, it makes my cold showers feel all the better.

2. Business Visits. As far as what I’ve been doing, we’ve been visiting lots of local businesses including a potter way up in the hills overlooking Ojojona, artisan shops in the main plaza, a tilapia farm 45 minutes into the woods on a very bumpy road, and a local cheese producer. The last made me a little nauseous, but the farm was really cool. I like how they’re making it a point to show us all aspects of typical Honduran businesses.

3. Bonfire and Cave Painting Adventure. Last weekend one of my follow volunteers had a bonfire in his back yard and we played guitar and had a good time. It’s nice to relax with on the weekend with fellow trainees. They will be a great support in the future both in terms of technical help and motivation.
Also, this past Sunday, eleven of us went on a real Honduran adventure, hiking into the woods in search of caves with wall paintings/carvings. We got a little lost because of bad directions, but it was a blast. It reminded me of Indiana Jones. We finally found the caves with the help of a local kid who lived around there. The paintings were neat, but sadly people had graffiti-ed the rest of the caves (see pic if it loads—which it probably won’t, based on my track record here). The whole thing took about five hours all together. De todos modos, it was awesome to get out into nature.

Tomorrow we’ve got our last technical interviews with our training directors in which we’re going to discuss possible sites/work.

Okay, those are this week’s thoughts. Hope everyone’s doing well in America.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Honduran Manners: Contradictions?

Buenos días de Ojojona, Honduras! We’re beginning to approach the end of training already and it’s hard to believe. They’ll tell us our site placements sometime during the first week in May; I think we’re all getting a little anxious to know. Overall, things are still going great here. Here’s the summary of this week’s blog post:

1. Business trip to the playa!
2. Singing in Honduras
3. How manners and politeness are different here
4. Explosive diarrhea… not really, but casi

1. Beach. This past week we business trainees went on a field trip to the beach on the Pacific! Pretty cool trip. We visited various small Honduran businesses geared towards tourism and then wrote up business plans about them. The weather was hot and humid, but we got to camp on a beautiful beach (see pic if it loads). There was some beach volleyball involved as well as a bonfire, guitar playing and singing and cards. It was a great break from our classroom training and a time for some real “team-building.” The next day we visited the town of Amapala, located on Tiger Island about 20 minutes south in boat ride off the mainland. Another super hot day, but the town was muy tranquilo. To top it off, we ate at a seafood restaurant that was literally right on the beach. We had ceviche, “curiles” (black clams, normally eaten raw, that live in the freshwater mangrove swamps along the Southern coast) with lemon and lime and pico de gallo, and a great paella. Delicious—even the curiles. Plus, better yet, I didn’t get sick! All in all, it was an awesome trip.
Our training director hinted that one of the 18 of us might get placed there for the two years. I think it would be cool to live on a Pacific island for my service, even if it were in sweltering heat and humidity. I’d get used to it, right?

2. Singing. Just a quick observation on singing here in Honduras (okay, it’s a stereotype, I’ll admit). Nobody sings in tune here. The hymns at church remind me of holidays with family in Iowa (not to mention any names), people singing along with the radio is painful to listen to, and even the Honduran bands that are played on the radio are often live versions that are horribly off key. And boy do they blast music everywhere. Somebody else in my group was talking about the same thing and they compared the radio here to a drunken karaoke night. That’s kinda harsh, but funny. I’m sure there are some people here in this country who have a hint of musical ability in terms of tone; I just haven’t found them yet. I mean good for Hondurans for just singin’ their little hearts out, without caring or knowing they’re making me squirm a little.

3. Manners. Another generalization about Honduras that has struck me as noteworthy over the weeks: how manners and politeness are different here and, perhaps, a bit contradictory. On the one hand, Honduran people are super conservative and polite to the maximum in terms of how they use their language—they treat almost everybody with “Usted,” the formal “you.” It’s sort of like calling everybody sir or madam in English. They certainly don’t do that in Spain; and we certainly don’t do it in America (though I think Southerners are the closest thing to it). What’s more is that they say “mande” instead of “what” or “yes?” when somebody calls their name. Literally translated, they say, “give me orders” or “take charge.” Even another example is that they say “con permiso” all the time—when they walk in front of somebody, when they get up from the table and when they want somebody’s attention. It basically means, “with your permission, I will pass or get up from the table.” It’s like they’re all still living under Spanish colonial rule, begging permission from the Peninsulares that are in charge. It’s nice, but a bit extreme in my opinion.
Yet, on the other hand, lots of things that are big no-no’s in America are acceptable here in terms of manners and politeness. These very polite Hondurans who treat everybody formally, have no problem spitting on the floor in their house, right on the tiles. I mean, what’s wrong with that, right? They’re just going to mop the floor in a few days anyway. Another thing is that they throw trash everywhere except in trash cans: out the bus window, on the same floor they just spat on, on the street as they’re walking. There is no second thought about littering. I guess the public sanitation services aren’t quite on par with America’s, but still… Finally, when you go to the local corner pulpería (market) to buy something, it’s customary for the attendant to greet you with, “what do you want?” I haven’t gotten a courteous “hello” or “good afternoon” yet. Nice customer service.

4. Sickness. So I haven’t had explosive diarrhea yet, but I’ve gotten sick to my stomach here two times now and it’s not fun. But, I’m not sharing this to gross you out or for sympathy, but rather journalistic accuracy: just to admit that yes, my gringo stomach has a lot to get used to. It’s part of the adjustment of the Peace Corps I guess. I think everybody in my group has gotten sick to the stomach at least once in the past couple months here. The first time I got sick was definitely my fault: I ate a “minuta” from a street vendor in the central park here in Ojojona on a really hot day. Bad move. Minutas are basically fruit icies with shaved ice (most likely made from unpurified water which we’re not supposed to drink/consume, no matter what physical state), covered in three types of fruits (strawberries, pineapple, and tamarind which probably were not washed or very fresh) and topped off with a healthy pour of condensed milk (that had probably been sitting out in the sun all day). It tasted damn good, but boy did I regret it that night and over the next couple days. The next time I got sick was the next week and was most likely due to fish soup which tasted okay, but was questionable. Ugh.
Finally, one last sickness, I got a pretty mean sinus cold that hit just yesterday. No stomach symptoms yet. All the kids in my house are sneezing lots these days, probably caused by the change in weather over the past week (it’s been rainy and cold), and nobody knows how to cover their mouth. So snot is flying all over the place all the time (literally sometimes). Plus, they’re kids who like to go to school and share their sickness with other kids. And I’m a gringo with an immune system not used to these tropical bugs.
Actually, I wanted to say that the Peace Corps Medical Officers (PCMO’s) have been really great and are just a phone call away. They deliver medicine right away and tell you how to get better. But they threaten to take a stool sample if you don’t get better in a few days. Some people in the group have apparently had parasites already, so I feel pretty lucky. If you’re lucky, I’ll be filling you in on all of my illnesses over the months to come.

Sorry about all the parentheses; my teachers have always told me that I use too many of them, but that’s just how I roll. Okay, enough typing for now. Take care.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Holy Week and Sawdust Carpets

Happy Holy Week and Easter to all. I’m entering my sixth week of training (half way through) and things are still going strong. I think that I’ve decided I like summarizing my paragraphs in a sort of table of contents at the start of my blog entries, so I’m doing it again. Read what interests you but don’t feel obligated to read it all, obviously. I’ve written a whole lot this week:

1. holy week vacation: visiting extended familia in Tegucigalpa and Valle de Angeles
2. alfombras de aserrín take two (sawdust carpets)
3. rain during the dry season!, subsequent power outages (apparently all too common)
4. NCAA basketball tourney (Duke Puke)
5. cultural day in the PC training center (singing, dancing, pickup lines and dodgeball)
6. training: ask and ye shall receive… hands-on activities

1. Holy Week. Holy Week is a pretty big deal for most people here in Honduras—since people are either very religious or, if not, they’re at least appreciative of the entire week off of school or work. Many people use the time off to go to the beach or to visit family. The Peace Corps gave us Thursday and Friday off, so I got to relax a little bit myself but it also gave me the chance to get a couple really cool peaks into Honduran culture that I feel kind of special for having been able to experience. The fam took me on a two trips in their car (a big luxury!) to visit extended family.
On Thursday we went to one of the poorest neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa where Jose’s (my host dad) elderly aunt and uncle live with their children and grandchildren. They had two rooms in their house that were separated by a hanging sheet—nonetheless, not to sound intentionally cliché, they were probably the nicest people I’ve met in Honduras yet and went out of their way (and probably their budget too) to make me and my host family feel welcome there. They said that the running water only comes to their house once a month and that they’ve got to ration it or else they’ll be in big trouble; I can’t even imagine. Even though all of the houses around them were as small and humble as theirs, the neighborhood was actually kind of bonito (“beautiful,” a term Hondurans use a lot) because of all the trees everywhere. I was surprised to see so many.
On Saturday we went back to Valle de Angeles (where I lived for three weeks for the first part of training) to visit more extended family living there. Valle is a real tourist destination and it was packed since it was perhaps one of the busiest vacation days in the whole year. But I actually enjoy the town a lot—it’s colonial and historic with a nice downtown park and lots of artistry places—the climate there is very agreeable as well.

2. Sawdust Carpets. Last blog post I lamented the fact that I missed the traditional sawdust carpets. Well, good news. All the PC trainees were invited to Don Ricardo’s house (he’s one of the super rich fellows in town who apparently always invites PC people to his complex) on Black Friday to help make our own sawdust carpets. He had bought two pickup truck loads of sawdust of just about every color. The twelve or so of us who showed up were down on our knees playing around with sawdust for about six hours making religious designs. (see picture-- if it decides to upload) It was fun for about the first hour or so, but got tedious pretty quick. We also met some other Americans from the US embassy. The sort of sad part was that only three hours we finished it, it started to rain, which brings me to my third point.

3. Rain! It rained here for two days in a row this week! It was the first time it had rained in four months according to my host family. For a country that is experiencing a pretty severe drought, that’s a big deal. I liked it because it really cooled things off around here. It also settled some of the dust that’s been pretty rampant these days. The bad part is that when it rains, the power often goes out. So, we had about 5 hours of electricity over the span of about two and a half days. I think that’s bad for the food in our fridge.
4. Basketball. I luckily got to watch the two final four games on Saturday and hope to be able to watch the championship game. It’s too bad that I’ve missed the entire tournament, my favorite sports event of the year by far, but I feel privileged to have been able to watch these last games. Duke Puke.

5. Cultural Day. Last Wednesday the PC trainees put on a Cultural Day in our training centers and invited all of our host families. Each of our Spanish class groups gave a presentation about something related to American culture and a few Honduran groups did the same with their culture. It was actually a lot of fun. Since one of the other guys in my class knows how to play the guitar, I borrowed my family’s guitar and we played (and sang!) a hit bluegrass song called “Wagon Wheel” by the band Old Crow Medicine Show, which talks about a guy’s trip “heading down south to the land of the pines” looking to start a new life. Of course he’s talking about going to North Carolina, but we thought it could work for us going down to Honduras since there are pines here too. It went over well, I think (after we explained the lyrics and what bluegrass was to the families). Other groups taught the Electric Slide, American pickup lines, how to make ice cream floats and Dodgeball. Fun stuff.

6. Training. In my last post I think that I more or less lamented the fact that training here in Ojojona hadn’t really started getting interesting yet and that I wanted to do more hands-on stuff. Well, lucky me, the other volunteers who already speak Spanish and I will be giving 16 classes on various business topics to the local technical school over the course of the next several weeks, starting this week. Not to mention that in a couple weeks we’re all going to be doing a three or four day business simulation at the local high school, as well as a charla on HIV/AIDS. Also, finally, at the end of this week, the whole Business group is going to the beach in the south (on the Pacific) for a two day long field trip.

Okay. Wow. I’ve definitely overstayed my welcome in terms of length of this blog entry. I never wrote this much about my life when I was in Spain or in college or in high school, but for some reason being here in the Peace Corps I feel like it’s my duty to write down a lot of details—I’m guessing this will change over the months to come, but until then, you’ll be hearing about everything that’s happening. Pues, ya está. Hasta la próxima vez. Mucho amor desde Honduras.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Field Based Training

Hola familia, amigos y desconocidos. Hi all. Here’s a list of the summaries of my paragraphs:
1. New family
2. New community
3. The start of Field Based Training
4. Charla (educational chat) in a local technical school

1. So I’ve been in my new community Ojojona, for a week now. I’m with a host family that’s quite different from my first one: it’s bigger and more religious. My host dad, Jose, is an Evangelical pastor and the family reads the Bible and prays in the mornings and in the evenings. Church service is held on their front porch every Sunday. There are four kids- 17, 11, 6 and 4 and the young ones have a lot of energy and a lot of questions. The 17 year old, Gabriel, is very tranquilo (chill) and conversations with him provide some real peace of mind amidst the not-so-seldom noisy chaos. The madre, Alba, is a homemaker. They’re all very nice and caring, though I’m pretty sure that I agree with about a quarter of their religious ideals. Nonetheless, I suppose that I’ve always enjoyed listening to religious discourses and I think that living with this family is going to give me a great look inside a prevalent part of the Honduran culture (as many people here have been converted away from Catholicism over the past thirty years or so). Plus, listening to the different thoughts of different people, and sharing my own, is what the PC is all about.
A related event: After the six year old, Caleb, told me that he thought it was a bad thing to go far away from home, I told him that I didn’t think it was all that bad, since I am far from my home right now. He looked at me and shook his head and said that actually, I wasn’t far from home and family right now because I was home, that his house was my new home and that his family was my new family.

2. Ojojona is a quiet town of about 8000 people, an hour to the southwest of Tegucicalpa. It gets pretty hot during the days, but it cools down at night time; I feel lucky because the other training groups (Heath and Water/Sanitation) went to much hotter places. Since today was Palm Sunday, many of the Catholics in town got up at 4am to work on “sawdust carpets.” It’s a big tradition here that they lay drawings of religious icons made from colored sawdust on the road between the two churches. Then they march their santo in a procession from one church to another. I’m sure it would have been beautiful, but my family is very against it (and Holy Week as a whole), so they didn’t tell me about it until after it was too late, after the procession happened and after the carpets had been all stomped on and blown away. I still went to see the remnants and took a couple pictures.

3. Our hands-on training hasn’t quite lifted off the ground yet here after the first week of Field Based Training (with one exception, see pt 4). A month into training and we’re still going over a lot of basic stuff—sure it’s important stuff, but I think we’re all ready to put some of our knowledge into practice and get out into the field and start doing stuff. Nonetheless, we’ve got some exciting plans coming up. All along I’ve been shaking the rust off my Spanish and have learned lots of “Hondurenismos” (Honduran phrases)—I’m understanding the accent here more and more each day.

4. Finally, one of the most exciting/interesting parts of training here was the one afternoon that we finally got to leave our classroom and do something. We broke down into small groups and did a charla (educational chat) about SWOT analysis at the local technical school. It was a lot of fun and my group had a good time; I think the kids enjoyed it too.

My time here is up. I'm still having a great time. Hasta la proxima vez.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

"Volunteer Visit" Field Trip

Last weekend I went with another trainee on a “volunteer visit” to a town called Lamani about 3 hours away and stayed with a volunteer who’s about to finish up her service. Wow was it hot. I think it was in the upper 90s the three days we were there. Our volunteer, Jessica, showed us around her town and introduced us to the mayor, who she works with. She explained that all of her three original counterparts, the Hondurans that she was working with directly, eventually stopped working with her for one reason or another. She said that now she mostly just goes into the mayor’s office every day to help out with technical stuff there, but loves interacting with the people in her town nonetheless. I was impressed by how integrated she was in her community; everybody knew her name and stopped to chat as we passed. She was great about answering all the questions we had and gave us a clear insight into how real volunteer service is going to be. After visiting her town and experiencing a typical day in the life of a PCV in Honduras, we got to visit the city of Comayagua, the original capital of Honduras. We toured the cathedral there and saw a clock in its bell tower that they claimed was the oldest in all of the Americas (not sure if I believe it, but it looked cool and old).
Tomorrow we all leave for Field Based Training. I’ll be staying with a bigger family this time and my host dad to be is an Evangelical pastor—there are also four kids, the youngest being a 4 year old. It’ll be a good experience for me. I am going to miss my current host family though, because they’ve been great. That’s all for now. Adios.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Adjusting to Living in Honduras

Saludos again from Honduras! I’m still having a blast and learning a lot. The following are a few paragraphs highlighting some of the things that have been going on here. I´ve summarized the paragraphs-- read what interests you.

1. Technical training, rough schedule
2. Other training (safety, language etc)
3. Tegucigalpa safety
4. Jam packed public transportation
5. Hot weather, hiking, family members
6. Rooster coop outside my house, scorpions in my bathroom, doing laundry by hand, Latin soap operas
7. Volunteer visits coming up, conclusion

1. Training is in full swing now and we’re going in to the PC training center every day except for Sunday from 7:30 to 4:30 (on Saturdays we get to go home early at 12:30 though). So that means that I’m getting up at 6:00 every morning and going to bed by 9 or 9:30. Que loco. The schedule has definitely taken some getting used to, and I never thought I’d be saying this, but I’ve now become accustomed to waking up before the sun rises.

2. We have started our “technical” training now and I’m learning all about Honduran businesses as well as strategies for teaching adults and general development principles. They’re also going over general safety stuff (like dealing with unwanted attention, how to travel safely etc) and more medical stuff (what to do if you find fungus growing on parts of you etc). Also, finally, we have language class almost every day and I’m learning and relearning a lot, especially all the new Honduran words and phrases.

3. Of course the Peace Corps has told us all about various dangers present in Tegucigalpa, especially the crime there. They want us to be smart when we travel and ready for anything—ultimately, they want us to be safe. But considering that the capital city is so important to a small, sparsely populated country like Honduras, we’re destined to have to deal with the city various times throughout our service.
4. So, as part of our training, they sent us in small groups into the city on a sort of scavenger hunt, to test our language skills, to see if we could handle getting from parts of the city to others. Anyway, one morning, I got onto a bus with one other group member (from my group of three) and left for the city at 7am. Let me tell you that I have never seen, much less physically experienced, so many people get onto a bus before in my life. It just kept on stopping along the way to the city picking up more and more people. Finally, people were literally hanging onto the side of the bus. Add to that the curvy roads and the loud 80’s American pop music blasting on the PA and, by the time we got to the city, I was feeling kinda carsick, ready to get off. I can’t imagine having to deal with that every single day going to work, but for 10 lempiras ($.50), what can you really expect? At least it was an interesting experience, right? I have a feeling that’s going to be my theme or slogan for the next two years of my life. The rest of the city wasn’t bad at all—nobody got mugged or lost and we all bought vegetables for our families at the market, as per our assignment.

5. Up to now the weather here has been both really hot some days (in the 90s) and unexpectedly cold some nights (down to the 40s); I haven’t gotten too, too sunburned yet, but my freckles are out in full force. I’ve had the chance to do a little hiking around our neighborhood over the weekends with my host family. The views are really amazing as is the Honduran “flora and fauna” if you will. Last weekend, speaking of which, my host madre’s family came here for a visit from the city and we went out for a walk—it was a bit crazy getting used to so many Honduran family members talking at once all around me, but fun at the same time.
6. My 12 year old host brother, with the help of a cousin, just finished building a “gallinero” or a rooster coop outside our house with plans of raising roosters to sell. As a Business volunteer, I like his entrepreneurial spirit, but I’m not looking forward to the ca-cawing in the middle of the night right outside my bedroom. Sadly, however, the first night he actually brought the rooster and hens home, a stray dog clawed its way in and left only a few feathers on the ground. Ovidio was pretty upset. On the topic of nature, my madre found and killed an alacrán (scorpion) in the bathroom the other night, then later on I found four baby scorpions in our bathroom sink, which she proceeded to spray with Raid. Ugh. And speaking of ugh, all that’s on TV are telenovelas (soap operas—the dramatic latino kind). Also, I have learned how to do all my laundry by hand on a washboard outside.


7. At this point, I’m rambling on, so I’ll try to wrap it up here. I just purchased a cheap Honduran cell phone. Call me if you’d like, depending on how much it costs of course (email me for the number); I may be calling the States at some point because the plan on my end is pretty cheap. Finally, this weekend I’ll be travelling with another Business trainee to a small town called Lamaní in the department of Comayagua to visit a current Business volunteer there. Then, next week I’ll be heading off to the town of Ojojona, 1 hour east of Tegucigalpa, where we Business volunteers will have “field-based training” for the next 7 weeks. Wow, I wrote a lot here; I had hoped to keep my blog posts concise, but so much is going on right now that I couldn’t help myself.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Hola desde Honduras

Hola desde Zarabanda, Honduras! I’ve arrived safe and sound after a very easy and painless day of travelling. I am glad to have finally made it after so many months of sitting around, waiting during the application process; I guess it’s exciting to be experiencing the fruits of my patience. Things are very different here, obviously, and buckets of information are being thrown at us from all sides all the time. I say ‘us’ because I am in a training group of 55 people, including 3 married couples and two middle-aged people. We’ve got people from all over the states and from all different schools. Nobody else is from my school, Wake Forest, but there’s a Tarheel and a William and Maryite and a Cavalier etc. I was surprised at how big our group is. Everybody’s been very friendly and many have interesting travel backgrounds.
Our trainers are mostly Hondurans and have so far been going over all the basics of the main topics like language and safety and culture and medical etc., like who to contact if you get bitten by a dog or not to toss things when people ask you to pass them to them (because that’s a big cultural no-no). We’ve had our first round of vaccinations already and they’ve given us our mosquito nets, which I skillfully hung up in my room after standing on my 5 foot tall dresser and looping a couple shoelaces around one of the wooden rafters supporting the tin roof.
Which brings me to my next topic, my familia. There’s a PC family coordinator who went around the community of Zarabanda (and Valle de Angeles and its ‘aldeas,’ if you want to get technical here), which is about 45 min up the mountain from Tegucigalpa, to meet the families who were interested in hosting us gringos, and to check out the houses and rooms. Well, this coordinator certainly did a great job in my case because my family’s great. I’m the first PC gringo that they’ve had and so we’re all sort of trying it out together. My madre is Meesabel, she’s a hair stylist in her forties, and she’s a recent widow. She has two kids: a daughter, Flavia, who’s 18 and who goes to the national public university in Tegucigalpa studying banking and finance, and a son, Ovidio, who’s 12 and who just started the first year of secondary school. They’re very friendly and very accommodating and have had no problems so far with giving me all they’ve got in terms of speaking very fast in authentic Honduran Spanish; my language wits have been tested and I’m already learning lots of new words and phrases (and remembering lots of words that I had forgotten).
The house is certainly plain according to American standards, but is pretty nice for here, I think. No running water, about six light fixtures total, two bedrooms, one bathroom, and an open living room/kitchen/dining room. So I’ll call it rustic yet cozy. The shower the first morning was quite an experience because it was a ‘bucket shower’ with ‘non-heated’ water—in other words, it woke me up really quickly. My madre has since been so very kind as to heat up some water on the stove for me before I get up. The awesome part about the house is its location. Sure you have to walk up a pretty steep and perilous and long hill to get to it, but the view of the mountains of Zarabanda is amazing. I’m posting a picture of the view from the front stoop.
Well, okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’m enjoying things so far and am ready to get through all the basics in training and start learning some more relevant and profound topics.
Oh yes, and by the way, for all of you reading this who are still enjoying the cold and snow, I’m sorry to say that it’s been in the 80’s here every day.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Insurance or not?

One of the last things that I'm doing to prepare for my departure is deciding about insurance. Sure I've been mulling it over for a few months now, but the time to make a decision is upon me. The questions at hand are:
1. Should I sign up for the Peace Corps endorsed life insurance policy?
2. Should I get personal-property insurance for my laptop and camera?

If I had a lot of money, I'm sure it would be an easy decision to pay for both lines of insurance. But I'm a recent college grad and I don't have a lot of money to mess around with. So, at this point, I'm leaning towards declining both:

1. I don't plan on dying- but who does? Why not keep the $60 that it would cost to buy the policy?

2. My laptop is getting old now and I'm probably going to need to get a new one in a couple years any way. I'm also backing up all my data before I go, as well as bringing a few memory sticks with me. Point being that I won't be devastated if my laptop gets stolen or broken. I have a pretty cheap digital camera and I wouldn't be too heartbroken if something happens to it too. I'm not planning on taking anything else of any real worth.

Personal property insurance isn't necessarily cheap, especially compared to what the PC pays us. The insurance company that the PC recommends (Clements International) charges a premium of $50 for $1000 of coverage. At this point, I'm not sure how much I'd need to get covered, but it would probably be more than $1000.

It seems that not every PCV in Honduras gets their laptop and camera stolen. Will insurance give me true "peace of mind" or will I feel ripped off if I've paid $50+ month after month for coverage that I didn't end up needing? To be honest, I think that if I pay for the insurance, I'd almost hope that my laptop gets stolen just to have made it worthwhile.

**Correction: I was mistaken; the Clements policy charges its premium annually, not monthly, so that makes a huge difference. Thanks for the comments.