So far septiembre so good

09.12.07__bolsas, breakfast, country home.

So far septiembre so good...
We have less than one week left of Field Based Training. Less than one week until we find out where we will be spending 2 years of our lives. Cannot even imagine. At my third Tech interview today they informed me that I will be helping to illustrate the new Project Citizen Booklets for Peace Corps Honduras, which is a great project to start out with. Also, the Alcalde in my site is eager to develop tourism in the pueblo. There are also schools and other small business in my future site to work with and for. Lastly, I will not have to worry about loneliness because there is another volunteer currently serving there, which means it can’t be all that small! Just a couple of days and I’ll know for sure!



Two Saturdays ago, a group of us girls went with Brianna Bailey’s Empleada to learn how to make bolsas. The bolsa training center (aka some tia’s casa) was apparently in colonia #24 about a 30-minute walk del centro along the main carreterra heading towards Donlí. The weather that weekend was great, and so the walk was very enjoyable fieldtrip-style. Alas, the whole objective of the walk was not quit realized. The woman who was the purse maker was not there when we arrived, and so we waited and played with the freshly born kittens and rabbits until the woman arrived from church. She eventually did arrive on the scene, and showed us her blosas to a less than enthusiastic crowd. Alas, there were no materials there to actually make the purses, and so another date was set for the lessons and we went on our sweaty, merry, mosquito-bite ridden way. Nothing really lost, nothing exceptionally gained, it was really kind of nice to just walk.



That Sunday was great. My host family took me to a nearby aldea where Miriam used to teach, and so everyone there called her la Profe. The people of the aldea were really sweet and generous. We enjoyed talking, snacking on tamales with cheese and hot, sweet coffees as the kids played and little susanita charmed everyone in her cute little vistido w/floras. In the second house we visited the family owned two HUGE cernos (pigs) and their two offspring, which were the biggest pigs I have ever seen that upclose. I mean, the slaughter of those things would feed the entire aldea for a month! After we said our goodbyes and loaded up on the customary departing gifts of fruits and vegetables and plants, we took off just as the daily rain began. We stopped along the way first to offer a jálon to a fellow church member of Wiliam’s who was along the road with her kids. Then we stopped in an outside colonia right near el centro where Miriam and Wiliam bought a house that is still under construction even though it was supposed to be completed a year ago.
Wiliam said this was an example of corruption.
The dealer taking their money without delivering any final product as promised. I can’t believe there is no penalty for that kind of robbery. People seem so patient, so very forgiving. Para mi, with the way I have been raised, if I buy something, or pay for something, that something better be produced or else there would be legal action. Here there just is no such school of thought, take action…and do what?? The results just aren’t that immediate. It’s another case of “break the cycle.” Again, where does one even begin? Regardless, the house so far looks nice and airy with some great views of the surrounding mountainside. They are such a sweet couple, such a preciosa familia, I can imagine them perfectly in their completed country home. One day.



09.05.07__Felix
Huracán Felix is filling up the buckets outside my room.
The downpour will flood many parts of the country. El Paraiso will not be one of them. But there will be no classes hoy. Flooding is possible everywhere and in particular in Tegucigalpa where the drainage system is badly in need of improvement. As for my personal flood factor, the rippling roof of my dormitorio has algunos hoyos, which allow a constant dripping right above my bed…slowly and surely it will be saturated by morning.

All my fellow aspirantes were excited for the potential evacuation, but no, only a level one, and so we remained in El Paraiso, this is all. Only change, no afternoon classes. We went to the little café “la Finca” at el parque that I truly love. The motif is peasant farm girl, lots of wicker and faux moss and clay trinkets. The best part is the big thermos of dark, strong coffee that they give you. The homemade pan is 2 limps and it is sweet yet salty with hints of nutmeg and all spice, it’s strange and good and they serve it in a little basket along side the thermo. These are the places I will miss!



09.08.07__Poetic cigarros y vino de café
Jueves nosotros fuimos al Tabacalero en Paraíso para ver el operacion. It was really interesting visually. The idea of human labor as piece-meal, as people functioning as a machine in a way, as if they were just on earth to be an arm or an eye, a couple finger movements and nothing more, nothing less, oddly enough it has practical aspects. We are all just performing memorized tasks to complete a final product. It’s eerie how this week I and another aspirante Julie (who currently has Dengue) gave Business Fundamental Charlas and in one of the activities we discuss the benefits of assembly line production and one person having just one task and that’s it. I never really considered that kind of work beneficial to anyone, yet in our lecture we illustrate it’s benefits along with the benefits of having individual products based solely on one person’s invention and labor. I wonder what the mental health consequences are.


The workers in the factory did not seem sad, or look worn down. A few had vacant stares, the same kind of stare that I have had at my past office jobs, none too different. Reality is, a few of the positions in the cigar making process demand workers to stand all day, or strain their eyes, a few of them I’m sure can never get the color of tobacco leaves to leave their fingers, their skin. A few of them have cut their own skin with the blades. This is not bad work, it is not fulfilling in the soft generalized definition of what fulfilling work is. But who can say what is or isn’t_ I did not stay with the group. I just wanted to capture it all on film. The symmetry, the lighting, the repetition—all of these mathematical elements are so appealing to the human eye. I wonder if we weren’t meant to be drones? Lemmings?
The workers receive at least minimum wage and higher, vacation time, they have a health clinic in the factory to treat those who are ill, it all seems to be ok-dokay on the surface, but we did not get to interview or speak with the workers…they were all Working...So there you have it. One worker said I looked like his daughter in the states. He had clear blue eyes, so we took a photo, psuedo dad and gringa hija.
After the tabacalero, we went to an ejemplo of a micro-empresa. A woman with a short cut and nice smile, excitedly explained to us all about the various products of café beans and the wine she produces in her home. The benefits of coffee wine were pretty humorous—relieves stress and headaches, good for the blood pressure, and an energy booster! But you don’t have to sell me on anything that’s a coffee derivative. Caffeine is surely a friend of mine. We were treated to a wine tasting w/the dark liquor-like substance, add a scoop of helado and it’s pretty rico. The woman also had a café pastel that was extremely rich and equally rico.




This week was also the end of SDP, which means the end of work in the community of El Paraiso. As I said, Julie and I were to give the Business Fundamentals charla to two of the 6th grade classes on Thursday and Friday. (The classes were canceled on Wednesday because of the huracán. Julie was a trooper and did the charlas with me anyway, even with her Dengue. It was a lot of work between the two classes, but the kids seemed to enjoy themselves and learned a few pointers on how to save money and how to think out an idea to make money. It’s hard to measure what students take away from a lesson. It’s always easier when the students are actually your own and you know their personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. Here we are shooting in the dark. But that is what we are here in FBT to do, practice being volunteers. Next week, we will actually swear in and aspirante school will be out.