Just shy of a year in country, amazing.

Proyecto Ciudadano
In the start of May, I and my muy muy amiga/colleague, Elma, traveled to Tegucigalpa to join my fellow Muni-D volunteers and counterparts for a workshop on Proyecto Ciudadano (Project Citizen- A civic education program developed by the US Center for Civic Education for schools in Central and Latin America to teach kids how to recognize problems in their communities and how to come up with their own public policies to solve these community-based problems.)

Our Project Director has been leading the effort to create a new+improved Honduran-stylized Manual for Project Citizen. I have been asked to do the illustrations for this manual. So far we have had several meetings to collaborate with two NGOs of Honduras (FOPRIDEH, OFALAN) and USAID. Now we are waiting for those collaborating with us to step up and do some of the rewriting, so that we can finalize the content and then work on the new format. It’s been a bit drawn out process-wise, but I’m used to that by now…

Elma and I are actually not planning on using the program in the schools (as of yet) because I could not get any of the teachers to give me four days of their time. To be fair, it’s not like they could get substitutes and Teguc seems insanely (un-godly) far away for everyone in my town…entonces…the plan? Via the Comision Ciudadano de la Transperancia (CCT = citizen transparency council) we are going to do the workshop with the newly elected Controlores Sociales. These community members were recently elected to monitor the projects being implemented in their communities using the ERP funds (Government Funds specifically destined for projects to relieve extreme poverty in the country) These Monitors will be asking questions such as: Are the projects being executed by the community members? Are the materials being delivered and used for their intended purpose? Is there any type of corruption going on during this process? Ect…

It’s all about getting rid of the sticky fingers and deep pockets of the government (at least on the local-level.) Basically Elma and I, along with the CCT and the NGO CASM are going to use Project Citizen to teach these Monitors how to identify problems in the community that are the fault of bad or non-existent public policy. We are thus empowering these Controlores with the knowledge of how to draft a proposal for a new public policy and how to present such to the appropriate local authority. The end goal? Having people in these rural communities aware of their own capacity to implement change in their lives; imparting the importance of their rights and responsibilities; and recognizing the problem, the solution, and the appropriate steps to achieve positive reform. Be it improving two houses that needed new roofs, or petitioning for a whole new water system to be installed—these problems have very obtainable/reasonably simple solutions and with a few strong leaders in the community armed with the right information, improvement is obtainable. We hope.

Escondido
Moncho and I went to visit yet another community the second week of May with a potential tourist attraction. A waterfall positioned very close to the cascada of Naranjales where we went in April. Here we found a birds nest hidden behind the churro of water. Appropriately, “Escondido” is the name of this particularly charming waterfall. From the waterfall we hiked back towards the community of Naranjales, past a really interesting farming project funded by the NGO of PRODERT. This purely organic farm is built with ERP and NGO funding and then the grains and animals are on loan by PRODERT. The project is done with the intention of the farm owners eventually being able to pay them back and make a profit to live off of. Here the family invited us in for lunch. (We enjoyed fried fish, which they ran to catch out of their fish farms (Pisceras) and all the just-picked ingredients, which made up an impressively huge almuerzo.)The first winter storm was threatening to start and so we ran through the coffee fields and up the mountain to a friend of the family’s house, making it to the porch just as the hail started to fall.
I have to say storms here just feel different. One has the impression that the roof is always about to collapse. (Sadly, in many situations, that is exactly what happens when the wood is rotted or the aluminum too old or poorly installed.) I have never been so inspired and moved by storms. But here, the lights always go out and thus, the forces of nature have the undivided attention of all of your senses.

El día de la Madre
The second Domingo in May is el celebracíon del día de la Madre here in Honduras as well as back home. Mother’s day is HUGE here. It reminds me of Christmas! (obv. without the tree) I went the day before the celebration to visit my friends up at the farm on la Cumbre San Lucas. (“cumbre” is a mountaintop)
Here I sat back in awe as the women of three generations prepared an insane amount of food. I watched them stir a giant bucket of dough to make homemade bread in their traditional clay-earth oven. The one man that was part of the meal preparation was chopping away at an entire pig body just killed that morning. A cousin was stirring a smoking pot over an open fire filled with pure pig fat to make chicharrónes (pork rinds). The grandmother was sorting through a pile of banana tree leaves, tearing them into rectangular-shaped pieces to wrap the tamales in later. Another sister was stirring a huge vat of ground cornmeal, milk, butter, salt, and seasoning to make the tamale batter. Another girl was mixing a pot of deep red tamale meat sauce on the stove. The mother of my friends was preparing café with one hand and flipping tortillas with the other while supervising the pig cutting efforts—all with an expert’s eye. My close friend Eva Lidia was making the cheese, which involves using a cheesecloth to separate-out the white curdled part of the milk from the transparent-yellow liquid that remains after the cuajada (cheese curdle) is separated out. She then put the mound of curdle on the grinding stone and kneaded away, making three separate, soft, round balls of cheese. So much work went into preparing for this meal. Queens of the kitchen, la casa—is how the women in Honduras are called—and it is undoubtedly true. They are some of the most exceptional caregivers I have ever seen…vive la madre!

Invierno
This past week the signs of winter’s approach suddenly appeared:
The rain of winged-ants, black and red beetles, huge toads, and gecko poop. I feel like I’m in Egypt! I spotted a chiquito baby gecko behind my toothbrush this morning, named him Oliver. It makes it extremely hard to fall asleep with the swarming of the bugs…I read somewhere that this is their final attempt to mate before the winter storms come (estacion de las lluvias). We already had a bunch of storms last week, and thus the end to consistent luz and agua is upon us…with the rains comes fickle times. A positive note is my little garden has finally begun to really blossom! I had been dowsing the plants with water at least once a day in the summer months, and now…Mother Nature is doing the work for me!

Y Tambíen…I just started giving English classes in one of the neighborhoods up the hill on Mondays and Wednesday before the group I already have. Its mostly boys so, so far its been interesting…At least their catcalls will be grammatically correct if I have anything to do with it! And I love making wanna-be cowboys sing their ABCs!
Saturday its up the mountain again to take some measurements for a new water system that the just-arrived volunteer in Copan is going to help me with! Yeah collaboration!

Then next week I’m going to a reunion in Sta. Rosa to meet all the volunteers in my area and to seek out potentially more collaboration. ( And to beg Peace Corps for a bike…)
Besides that it’s Earth day next Sat. and so the logo I did will be on the t-shirts and banners for that and we will have a kids’ posters contest. Should be good times. The kids have been practicing their drawing skills at mi casa and I’ve been feeding them all the candy that people give me (terrible!! I know! But I also tell them to brush their teeth!)