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.

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.