WANTONLY

April Cascadas:

Life is a simple equation that we tend to complicate with trivial things…the stuff we call our stuff. Then there´s the emotional system between people, what we call support. How that works, I´m just not sure, I don´t think it can be explained in words, but is an interchange of gestures and conversations, a wantonly-kind of give and take that in the end, boils down to all the different kinds of love we can experience.

04.21.08
Today is my first full day back @ site after a 4 day trip to Teguc and back. Its always a little rough the first couple of days back in site, the readjustment back to campo-life…but I think its just a bit of loneliness barking at my heels.
I made the Rounds, visited the small collection of families and friends i´ve accumulated in the town…I know I should try to expand the circle, but it seems overwhelming to add more to the mix, I wish too though…
Emails killed me today: kate, snish, snar, dad, laura, brendan, george…missing people just suxª!

Since this Tuesday, things have gotten hectic! Deadlines and projects I care about/feel truly invested in have started to take up all my time. My bathroom falling apart and me breaking yet Another glass on the ceramic floor amidst the flood was just a bonus! (I´m not a good candidate for cermaic flooring...)

The tourism project is all-a-buzz and I´m a bit stressed to do this right. We have a meeting coming up this next Tuesday with two NGOS, Mancomunidad and Proyecto Norte to present all our potential tourist sites within the Municipio. That means I have been planning and running around trying to take pictures of everything (great time for my camera to be busted!) and not leave a soul nor community out of the loop. There are people from 3 communities claiming the same waterfall and trying to be the diplomat has been a delicate task. We´ve discovered some illegal wooding in one of the mountain ranges here that is protected, and thus reported that to our mayor. There was talk of a corrupt employee, but it seems to have been an ugly chisme rumor…pues there´s been some drama as of lately…


04.24.08
Well yesterday I smelled like burnt popcorn and goats. My first stab at making popcorn from scratch, not so hot…half burnt and the stuff left was more kernel than pop…
Earlier that day I went to explore and take pictures of the Mayan-Chorti Goat farm project and the stream and little waterfalls behind that for potentail tourism project.
Today I went to document the cuevonas (caves) we have up in the mountains. I learned an important thing about myself, I do not like caves very much…or perhaps its just the bats and their poop that made me want to get the hell out of there! Moncho and my host brother Adalid had no fear of the bats, and climbed right under their upside down heads to explore the caverns even further. I hovered as close to the ladder as possible, which was my only means of escape as the bats sweep past my face…eeeek!

04.25.08
Ella no contesto. La Carmen se fue. My little host sister packed a suitcase, wrote a note, and left when no one was at home. My host family is torn apart. The thing that is terribly hard for me to understand is the acceptance of these young girls being ¨robbed¨ (as they say here) or running off, and the families not taking action, not pursuing them, or dragging them back to la casa, as would be the case (In my normality as it was) in the States. (Then again, my mom just told me about a polygamy colony the authorities broke up in the States and all the underage girls they found there being sexually assaulted…and thus the backwards thinking can be found in every part of the world)

I know here its all a question of context, perspective, circumstance and overall culture…but its just so hard for me to accept that this beautiful, talented and intelligent 17 yr old girl would throw away all her chances at a career for some older guy she hardly knows (and that the family would not stop her)…perhaps its how we think when we are young and romantic…I know i´m not a stranger to the idea of running away…but it´s just that as someone who loves this girl and wants to protect her from the worst of the world, all I want to do is bring her back home! Her mother feels the same way, and thus is taking the appropriate actions. She is an exception to the rule, as well as her father, so I have hope that I will see her again…soon.

04.28.08
This Sunday we visited the community of Narajales (Oranges), to document the cascada they have near by. This waterfall was the most impressive I´ve seen so far…not because of its height, but for the beautiful natural swimming pool that had formed below. I borrowed a pair of shorts and dove in the muy helado (v cold) water to swim to the waterfall and climb up it in order to catch the best shots of the site.

The family of Oscar Ulloa came with us, along with other children from the community. We all had a great afternoon swimming and playing by the waterfall. The house of Oscar is also in a perfect spot to receive tourists for the terrific views! It´s truly a calm and picturesque place and I would love to share this with those who will come visit and do the tour! I just can´t believe all the stuff there is here, hidden away in the mountains, only known to a few farmers and curious kids.
In Naranjales I also got a marriage proposal from a shirt-less, campo-smelling viejito (old dude) who told me he had chickens, beans and corn and that we should get hitched…I told him it was a very tempting offer, and that I needed to take his picture so that I may send it to my father to ask his permiso (permission)…and I will definitely include that you have Chickens! The line : Tengo Guillinas (I have chickens) must be a classic here!


04.29.08
Well, like so many times in Honduras, we went to the reunion, only to find it canceled.. . so who knows when we will get to present the Tourism Presentation we all worked so hard to put together at such last minute! At least now I will have a chance to visit Mirasolito where they too claimed to have a waterfall worth mentioning. It took us all morning to get to the site where the reunion was suppose to be held, we had to take two different buses and then jalon out to the parque, and once we got there, we got to turn around and do the regresso…my coworker was more than enojada...