Building Trails in the Cloud Forest

For those of you out there who are keeping score at home, my last blog post was about how schools were closed for more than a month because of a teachers’ strike. So, I basically spent the entire post explaining (okay, call it complaining) why I haven’t been able to do part of the work I wanted to in my town because of things that were way out of my hands. (And hopefully those roaring political storms have calmed for a bit and I can soon restart work at the school). But I found it unfair that I didn’t talk at all about the work that I have been doing in the past couple months: so here it is, four brief overviews of solid projects that have been happening around here:
1. Database system at the coffee co-operative

2. Total trail system make-over in the cloud forest

3. Construction finished on community center

4. New project: improve health center

1. Database system at coffee co-operative

In February I teamed up with a fellow business volunteer, Carrie Purdue, UVA grad and good friend, to design a new database system for my coffee co-operative (see picture of us on a hike in a national park outside of Teguz). The administration was looking for a way to digitalize their receipts, to get up-to-date inventory reports, and to be able to track the production and credit trends of coffee farmers who sell to the co-operative over time. So Carrie shared some of her extensive Excel know-how and we sat down and put together a new program that, I’d like to think, is very simple and intuitive to use but that will hopefully be a helpful tool for decision-making.

Up to this point, we’ve been finishing up this coffee harvest using both the old, inflexible and stale database, and the new one, as they’ve been getting used to the new processes. The dream is that this new system will make it easier to manage the co-op in general, using information and technology to be more successful.

2. Total trail system make-over in the cloud forest

Alicia, the PCV who’s working with me on developing ecotourism, got one of her former co-workers in the Seattle park service to come down to Honduras for a month to help us work on our trails. His name is Jack and he’s got years of expertise designing and maintaining trails in the Seattle area.

We held a trail building workshop for fellow PCVs and for their counterparts, as well as members of our communities, a couple weekends ago. About 25 people showed up, which for us, felt like a great turnout. In the training, Jack talked about the three main components of trail building: the grade (or slope/inclination) of paths, water drainage, and the “tread” (or path). Many of the current trails in my town are used by workers and by pack animals getting to and from coffee farms and are basically straight up the sides of hills. That’s not ideal for tourists, however, because it’s a lot more tiring to walk, and when it rains, the paths basically become muddy creeks.

So during the weekend-long training and since then, we’ve been building “switchbacks,” which are zig-zag paths that wind up the side of hills to avoid the steep straight-up paths, and “water bars,” which are rudimentary drain canals perpendicular to the trails. We also have been working on taking out roots and widening the path wherever possible. In the picture here, one team is working on installing a rock-step bridge across the river (which only has water in it during the rainy season). It has been frustrating work sometimes, logistically speaking, but it’s a lot of fun being out in the woods. We saw a coral snake and have heard quetzals and howler monkeys. I think the trails will end up great and hopefully will be a boon for our marketing efforts.

3. Community Center

One of the first things that I did in my site last summer was meet with the Patronato, the local town council, every week. It was a good way to meet the leaders in my town and to see what sort of initiatives were big. Well, instead of big development initiatives like business training or children’s nutrition programs etc, they had prioritized the construction of a community center. The idea was to have a place to hold town meetings, weddings, wakes, political events and, of course, dances. This is the perfect example of balancing the community’s desires with our own ideas and plans as volunteers: although I didn’t think it was priority number one, they asked me to help out, so I said yes. We made a work plan, vetted a foreman and wrote the budget to be presented to the municipality.

Anyway, the good news is that construction was finished in February and they held the inauguration dance for Valentine’s Day. I admit that there was a certain sense of accomplishment upon seeing it finished, though a new building doesn't necessarily mean "development." I will post pictures one of these days. Also, I think helping community members on this project gave me a leg up in terms of their trusting me in the future. Now with my foot in the door, hopefully, it will be easier to work on new project (see number 4 below).

4. Health Center

To finish up, I’ve been meeting with a group of people in my town who wanted to "do a project." Alicia is building a library in her town, using one of the PC grants available to volunteers, so people in my town wanted "something" too. So we met for a couple hours a week for a month and a half in order to analyze the needs/problems of the community and then brainstorm possible solutions. What ranked as the highest need for the community according to my committee was working on the Health Center. Although it wasn't my first choice of projects, the cool thing about service in the PC is that we can respond directly to the desires of our communities. Thus, we are going to be looking at physical expansions, new equipment and getting a doctor. Although this doesn’t specifically have to do with my business project, it may be a good side project.

I must admit that I am highly concerned with sustainability. I.e. we could spend a lot of time and money on fixing the building and getting new equipment, but if the management of the Health Center doesn't improve, it may all be wasted, having little positive impact on the community. For me, the ideal would be to work on fixing the root causes of poor health: lack of education and lack of income generating activities for families. Will continue updating on this…

Ecotourism Project: guides, food and lodging

I´m writing this at 10:30 the night before I go to Santa Barbara and it reminds me of writing papers at the last minute in college. There is no Internet in my town, so I have to write all my emails and blog stuff at home then carry them on a USB to SB because I never have enough time at the Internet café to sit an type them there. Alas, here are a few things I’ve been working on recently in my town:

1. More financial analysis stuff at the coop
2. School has started up again for kids here (and thus for me too)
3. Ecotourism committee

1. Financial analysis at the coop.
On the heels of the meeting I had with the Board of Directors of my coffee cooperative, I’ve been working on ways to help them implement some of the changes I recommended. For example, I think I’ve convinced them to stop the free lunches at meetings. There’s still doing sweetbread and coffee though, heh—we’re all addicts to coffee around here. Also, I’ve been helping Lucas, the administrator, work out a break-even analysis followed up by a projected cash flow, to see how we can actually achieve an expansion in our production. We’ve also been discussing doing some local promotion to coffee farmers who aren’t members of the coop, to match our cash flow projections with ‘coffee-flow’ projections, if you will. As it stands, we aren’t buying as much coffee as we could or as much as we want to. Also, I will finally be giving personal finance trainings to the members of my coop starting in March, with the objective of reducing the amount of cash advances and loans they’re taking out each year. Finally, a team of five Canadians came down and visited the coop from Van Houtte, our buyer. They wanted to meet the members, see the farms, see the factory, and talk business. It turns out that they’ve got their eyes set on buying much, much more. It was fun meeting them and putting faces to the myths of our “Buyers up in the North.” As it turns out, in a twist of irony, Van Houtte was bought out by the American coffee giant, Green Mountain in Vermont back in December… and in case you didn’t know, Montaña Verde, the name of my coop, means ‘Green Mountain.’

2. School begins: thus my work there too
I’ve talked to the principal of the school and it looks like I’ve gotten myself roped into doing after school extracurricular groups with kids. Last year I did a journalism group with 4-6th graders. I’ll be repeating it this year, but with a different bunch of kids. I think we may work on putting together a photo-documentation pamphlet of the community and of the cloud forest to use for the community’s ecotourism project. But I’ll also have a Business club with the 7-9th graders where we will learn business fundamentals, visit various businesses, and, hopefully, they will come with an idea and start their own school business. Also, I will have a Nature Club—I haven’t decided its focus yet, but there’s a lot of material to work with here. Plus, Alicia, the volunteer just down the road from me, is a biologist, so I’m sure she’ll help with ideas if I need them. On top of three clubs, which will keep me busy in the afternoons during the week, I’ll be giving classes to the teachers in English and computation—it’s really just going over exercises they can use directly in their own classrooms to help facilitate their teaching. We shall see if they decide to show up this year. Finally, we had talked about planning monthly school-wide events like painting a world map, poetry or essay competitions, art or science fairs, rocket competitions etc. Working with youth is definitely one of the major goals of my project in the Peace Corps, and I feel that it’s always a worthwhile activity to do in my community, when I’m not at the cooperative.

3. Ecotourism committee makes progress
The ecotourism committee that I help Alicia organize is just now starting up trainings for guides. Our idea is to have a bunch of guides ready to attend tourists, once our marketing efforts have begun seeing results. Guides are crucial not because of their knowledge of trails and local plants and animals, but because they’ll know things to offer to the tourist to do—they’ll be the direct salesmen, pitching horseback riding or cave exploring or visiting a coffee farm. So we will be giving our guides a 10 session course and this next topic I’m in charge of: customer service. How exciting. We’re also working with families to offer food and room and board. The next step is working out pricing and packages and promotional deals and finally more comprehensive marketing. The ultimate dream is to form an NGO out of the committee and hire employees to coordinate things like guides, services, and marketing. But we’ve still got a ways to go.

It’s been cold and rainy for close to a week now. And before that, it was hot and dry and dusty. It can’t make up its mind. I suppose I really can’t complain though, being in the Tropics through winter and all.

Business Recommendations for my Cooperative

Hello Internet readers. I apologize in advance for the potential (ok, definite) dryness of this entry; it contains mainly technical, number-related blabber. Read at your own discretion, as always. Or just read the bold sentences.

This past Friday I invited my cooperative’s Board of Directors to my house for a meeting. The objective was to go over the financial analysis report that I wrote so that 1) they could see how to do a financial analysis for the future and 2) they could actually use the information right now to make certain policy changes. I also had a list of a few recommendations of my own to offer, based on the analysis. I can say that as a PC Business Advisor, meetings like this feel good.

Since the Board is made up exclusively of coop members, on average they have very few years of education and little experience managing/overseeing businesses. Though to their credit, they have received some related training in the past from various NGOs and they naturally have years of agricultural, hands-on know-how.

Given this situation, I obviously didn’t want to give a meeting that was too technical or complicated that they’d have trouble understanding, because what would be the point? So I decided to also invite my main work partner in the coop, Lucas, to give me a hand with my explanations (see pic). Though also a member himself, Lucas is educated and worked for years as an accountant at a bank in San Pedro Sula, the industrial capital of the country. Currently he’s the coop’s General Administrator and Accountant, a sort of jack of all trades in terms of the coop’s money transactions (not to be confused with the General Manager, who I’ll mention later). Thus, he’s the right guy to help me out with this kind of meeting because he understands both perspectives. Plus, he’s a great guy and a good friend of mine and of all the members.

Our meeting obviously got started a solid two and a half hours late and lasted three hours instead of the planned two. I am a PCV however, and after months of practice I’ve become used to this sort of cultural delay; so, overall I think the meeting was a success and is a step forward for the coop. Here are some notes about the things we talked about. I’d be happy to hear what all you business folks out there have to say:

1. Expand sales:
The company has reported losses for the past two years. Anybody even faintly familiar with how businesses work could tell you that it is thus necessary to expand sales and cut costs in order to turn the losses around (the main solution being to expand sales). The coop is very lucky because our buyer, one of the largest coffee companies in Canada, wants to buy everything that we can produce. Great! What’s the problem then? See number two…

2. Reduce financial restrictions and costs:
The reason we haven’t been able to radically take advantage of this special, amazing deal with our buyer is that we don’t have the sufficient working capital. In fact, we’re taking out loans from a Honduran bank every year just to be in operation. They charge upward of 18% interest and have a limit of only L3 million (about $150,000), which buys only about two truck container’s worth of coffee (and last year we exported 13 containers). This year, since coffee prices are at a 15 year high, we can buy even less coffee with our fixed loan. What’s more is that people are timid to sell their coffee to us as opposed to our competitors because we can’t offer them as many cash advances and loans since we don’t have the cash on hand.
Thus, naturally, priority number one for the coop is to seek out institutions that offer lower interest rates and higher limits in the short-term and prioritize auto-capitalization for the long-term. The idea is that with more sales come greater profits. The Manager needs to be searching for these institutions and filling out the paperwork while the Board of Directors needs to designate a majority of year-end’s profits to a capitalization fund.

3. Personal finance training for members:
In a related vein, I recommended that the Board of Directors initiate a program to teach the coop members basic personal finance strategies. For example, let’s learn how to write a budget, how to begin to save, how to find the discipline not to spend all your cash right away etc etc. As it stands now, almost every member is taking out cash advances and/or loans from the coop every year before the coffee harvest just to be in operation, losing a grand portion of their profits to interest payments (see a theme developing here?). So the idea of personal finance classes is to 1) reduce the liquidity burden of the coop in the short-term and 2) help the coop members make more money in the long-term. We could even offer special incentives to the members who are willing and able to wait for their payments, like a low-interest bonus.
If we can get our members to wait before they get paid for their coffee until after we sell it to Canada (and receive that precious cash transfer), then we could in the end buy more coffee. Thus, the Board of Directors needs to get the rest of the members on board with the program then set the dates and I’ll be there ready to jump into action with beautifully planned charlas.

4. Expand our gross margin:
Gross margin is an accounting term that means the difference between Sales Revenues and Costs of Goods Sold. It is the company’s gross profit before you take out operating, financial, and “other” costs. In other words, it’s the average profit margin (markup) for all the goods/services the company sells. For our coop the gross margin is practically fixed at $10 per 100 pounds of coffee sold because of the yearly contract we sign with our Canadian buyer. The amazing thing about the gross margin is that even small percentage changes can drastically affect bottom-line profits. So, the coop should be looking for ways to both diversify its products/services and its buyers (because such sales hopefully carry lower costs and/or they earn higher differentials).
Last year, for example, we took a first step in this direction: we rented out our large, fancy machines and our exporting license to other coops and to big producers in the off season, earning a new source of revenue when our factory would otherwise have been idle. We also sold a mini-container of specially prepared coffee to a new buyer in Spain for a higher differential. Finally, members expanded production on three of the five passion fruit parcels the coop owns and began selling directly to the big buyer Horti Fruti, Wal Mart’s Central American produce subsidiary. Going into the future, the Board of Directors should be emphasizing these specialty sales as a way to expand the coop’s gross margins.

5. Limit Admin salaries, remunerations:
I took a bold stance on this one. In Latin business culture, generally speaking, there is relatively wide “power distance,” meaning that there’s a fairly rigid hierarchy in the workplace. Japan and Korea would be on the wide-distance extreme while the US is on the close-distance extreme. My coop tilts towards Japan in that the General Manager of the coop is sort of held on a respectful pedestal. He can (and does) order a factory worker to bring him coffee and almost all the coop members use the formal Usted with him. To top it all off, he comes from a wealthy family, so there’s all that social hierarchy stuff too, which comes into play with the humble coffee producers that make up the Board. All this being said, the Manager gets paid a high salary, drives a company car with all gasoline paid, and gets his entire cell phone bill paid. Not to mention, Honduras has radical workers’ benefit laws that tack on an additional 25% to his salary, just like that. Plus, the coop has sent him to Europe twice on “networking” trips.
So, although it is important to retain an educated and qualified General Manager with a vision towards the future and motivation to get the company there, the coop has had losses for two straight years. There’s got to be a balance. In my recommendation to the Board, I suggested that they negotiate some limits on his benefits, seeking a monthly maximum on what the coop will reimburse for gas and phone bills. I also mentioned a bonus system that will be paid out only if the company is profitable or if it meets certain benchmark increases in sales. And, all of this must be spelled out and signed in a contract, be it long-term or yearly. This will be the most difficult recommendation for the Board to follow because it will be culturally awkward for them to negotiate it; but it’s their job to do so, in my opinion.

6. Cut discretional costs:
Although the real difference between profits and losses will have to come mostly from expanding sales and reducing high financial costs, the English expression that says that “every penny counts” matters too. The coop spends a good deal of money that it probably shouldn’t on buying lunches for every member for every General Assembly meeting, which is 56 members at least once, sometimes twice a month. Plus, there’s a whole expense category for “Customer Service” that has steadily grown over the past three years, which is basically code for picking up the tab for visitors, mostly from outside agencies like IHCAFE and Care, organizations that should be paying for their own damn food in the first place. And the coop pays quite a bit of money on travel allowances for people running errands for the company, which basically means ‘here, eat lunch and dinner on the coop’s dime’ all while the Manager is riding around in the company car, living in Santa Barbara, where most errands are done.
I guess I get kind of worked up about these discretional expenses when I think about the losses the coop has racked up. Anyway, I recommended that the Board put an end to all this, despite the cultural consequences (it’s considered rude not to “invite” someone to food). But I stand firm in my North American hardness: the mission of this cooperative is not to give free food to members; it’s to pay fair prices to farmers and make profits that will be invested in community projects. Maybe, I suggested, the Board of Directors could offer to partially reinstall these expenses if the company achieves profitability, as a sort of incentive or bonus to those involved.

There you have it: six recommendations that will put the company on the road to “in the black.” I shall stop ranting … now.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.