Se pone uno a chupar los dedos

07.23.08
Today was another busy day where I felt mostly on my feet, my aching feet. Not that I’m complaining. When the rain gives me enough time to walk from one point to another without falling, believe me, I am grateful. I imagine that the roads as well are grateful for a chance to give the people a good couple of hours to shovel dirt where a tree used to be, but now is nothing but a hole, well, a landslide is more like it….
That is what I passed by today on my way to give a workshop on Project Citizen in one of the schools across the underwater bridge (see pic) and up the mudslide mountain. I saw a man, who looked about 50 maybe 60 yrs old, along with his wife and their two small children—all shoveling dirt from the hillside to try and temporarily fill in this huge gap in the dirt road that was storm-by-storm degrading into the farm valley below. That was the fifth or sixth spot along the road that looked like that. Others had one or two entire trees uprooted and laying in the way. Or the occasional huge chunks of red rock that had dislodged from the hillside blocking the way. Today a few of the trees’ trunks were being made into firewood for the fogones.
And the Workshop with the teachers? Well, after the one male teacher of the group basically cut me off in mid sentence to ask me if we could end the capacitacíon early and not continue until Monday, even though it was them who solicited the project, and agreed to the capacitatíon…I was feeling a bit, um, dejected. Had to again remind myself, everyone else is just trying to do their normal job without too much extra effort, without volunteering for too much. Like most people in any place in the world, they would actually like to make their lives easier, not harder. Silly me…
So…my dejection and I walked back home the long way; down the mountainside through another neighborhood where the abuelita of my host family lives, alone in her little house with a beautiful avocado-and-lemon-tree-filled backyard. I think she is such a beautiful woman, with her wrinkle-free almond-sheen cheeks, brilliant green eyes and thick lasso of black hair down to her butt. She of course invited me in and we spoke of the poor conditions of the roads, the storms, the rains malice, and how a woman gets used to living alone. (Since we are both in the same waterlogged boat.) She had a basket of the lemons and avocados from her trees sitting in the kitchen and began to fill a plastic rice sack with the ripe ones for me to take home. It dawned on me, even before today, that you just give people what you have because the earth has given it to you, and you can’t possibly consume it all, and thus it will go to waste, so it is with a fully generous and open heart that you give to your family and friends. This is how people do not go hunger. With the earth and human love naturally intertwined and…yes, generosity. Unquestionable. Its moving.
Another thing, the women here always seem to miraculously have something cooking on the fogón, a big soup, a big pot of beans, a heap of tortillas, a kettle of coffee, warm milk and rice with cinnamon…this too, is to share, to bestow upon not only your family, but your next unexpected guest who is surely far from home, or doesn’t really know when their next meal will be that day. The soup was made for these unexpected yet perfectly expected guests. There really is no such thing as extra, all and nothing is extra. And those who can’t afford to give to the visitors? If all things follow the good nature of the system, they are receiving a visitor who has too many mangos in their trees.

And to think, all my food used to come from the supermarket…and it was Organic! Ha…


India Bonita
07.22.08
This past Sunday was the national holiday el Día de Lempira (Lempira, who the money here is named after, was an Heroic Indian Warrior who fought against the conquistadors, but eventually bit it to the Spanish bullet). The day was filled with preparations for el concurso de la India Bonita. (Competition for the prettiest Indian.) I had been helping out the maestros of the community of Llano, and thus became really attached to our dress winning! Alas, we did not… I was obviously biased, but thought for sure we would win…for the details…but when I saw all the other robes, I realized we ALL thought the same thing…and it was really great to see how much effort everyone put into the event and the dresses and the pride that is involved in all of it. We used a shit load of glue to stick the all-natural materials (beans, corn, feathers, pine needles, flowers, seeds, hair…) onto the fabric. If it had been a contest for the heaviest robe, we would’ve won, hands down. The poor niña who was our India bonita could barely walk in it! Anyway, see the pics for all the hard work we put into that thing!


Five seconds of Juramentacíon and Julio’s wisdom.
07.16.08
Waiting for pasta to cook. I just came back from a visit with Flor and Julio. Sometimes I think Julio really gets it, more than anyone else here. It’s odd because he is one of the few people who will say things that make me really uncomfortable, but that are true just the same. I think we all need that person to put us on the edge every once in awhile. You need different kinds of people who mix with you in different ways to keep you churning around. Anyway, Julio and I talked a lot about immigration to the United States. About what it is to work hard; To be satisfied with your life; To know what makes you happy; The power of your own thoughts. The way you can be positive and survive it all. And patience. This is key. He says that some nights at church he gives speeches about staying in Honduras and making life better here, rather than running away to the United States to work like a slave in dangerous conditions, without any rights, without doctors, or a sense of security. Living with fear. I wish there were more Honduran people who thought like him. Who gave inspiring speeches that touched such themes.

Yesterday I was extremely nervous about the Juramentacíon del comité de turismo. I am always a bit out of the loop about how the stuff will go down. But in the end, it wasn’t Napo (our mayor) who did the Juramentacion, it was Jose Alberto Salzar, my landlord! Who is also an official regidor for the la comision. (It’s like a board of directors who works with the mayor to make decisions about projects and funding for the municipio and report back to the national government) Entonces, we were only missing three people from the group, but the majority of those voted onto the comité were there; the ones who held the most important roles—my core group of guys. I took a foto to commemorate the event.
The juramentacíon ceremony involved everyone touching the Honduran flag and taking an oath to work towards the project…and that was it! 5 seconds of touching a flag after I had spent all morning and that week fretting over the affair. But that 5 seconds was enough to prove their dedication, and in a way, their faith and support of me and the project. Yes, we are now official

VACA... all i ever wanted!

Israel, amazing:












Paris, oh la la...











check out the rest of the pics @ Flickr, just click on the mini pics to the upper right |-->

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!)

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...

Tourists come to Cabanas!

The first two tourist groups have come and gone from Cabañas—and the consensus is: Que bueno!
It has really been a great time playing tour guide and sharing my litle pueblito with others! The Rural Tourism Excursion consists of a jalon ride up the mountain to the tranquilo farming community of San Manuel.

Here at the casa of Antonio Cruz we all enjoy a merienda (snack) of Tikukos (Tamale-like dish) with a tomato sauce and refresco of tamarindo. We then mount horses and ride down the mountain path to an opening where the men have made a path to the waterfalls. Here the road gets a bit rough, but the guys from the community all are there to help the tourists not to fall on their butts too much! (All parto f the fun…but we are planning to fix the path up for a less strenious hike)

We stop at three different waterfalls, the last one being a perfect place to rest and enjoy the coffee brought in thermo and homemade bread. Here we all hang out and relax in the beautiful surroundings. Then we hike along the river until we come to the clearing again and remount our horses. We ride back up to the town and do a pass of the community befote stopping to tour the finca (farm)- After that we head back to the casa of Antonio for an Almuerzo (lunch) of plato tipico, that is the best I have ever eaten! I love chimol! AFter lunch we just hang out and talk, learn a bit about the typical honduran farmer life and then eventually pile back into the truck for the trip down the mountain to casco urbano. Below are some of the pics…but look on flicker where i downloaded almost all…
I´m loving my town, life, everything right now…

Water Falling Down>>>

02.22.08
here, when I lock myself out of the house, the only way back in is through the roof.


02.23.08
Yesterday I went to see the Cascadas en San Manuel. It was Moncho, Alicia, Adalid, and I along with two men from the community: a machete-man named Hector, and a burly mountain-man named Antonio Cruz. It seems the mountain is chalk full of Cruz brothers…I’ve met at least 6. It was a pretty intense hike b/c Hector had to re-hack the trail from scratch by using his machete, chopping down branches, vines, and whole tree trunks. I almost fell down the mountain several times due to loose soil and steep sides, though Moncho always managed to pull me back up again. We discovered there were actually three different cascadas: two up top of the mountain and then one further down where the two streams become one and thus produce a much more impressive water flow for the final fall. We ate lunch beneath one of the upper falls. Antonio showed up after we had already arrived, carrying all the lunches and a bottle of soda. The men of the mountain aren’t joking around. Give’em a machete and they can make the whole natural world let them through, with one hand on the knife and one on the coffee bag full of homemade food. That was a nice part, just sitting under the fall and eating tortillas and rice with my grubby fingers. We were starving from the hike and the weather was chilly/misty/rain, so the hot food was that much more enjoyable.

The way back we took a slightly more developed path that Antonio knew of, and Alicia collected medical plants along the way. Pushing through the plants and freshly broken branches; leaping from one slippery rock to the next; the bruises and dents I acquired along the way; the dirt in my nails; the bugs in my hair—it all reminded me of being a little kid in the meager patch of woods behind our house in Pittsburgh. There with my best friend we passed days, weeks, summers constructing a shack, running from make-believe villains, being the good force, sharing a secret world. It all comes back to me. And then here I am, in a real forest, still believing myself part of some good force.
Once we cleared the forest, the group burnt a small pile of our trash right then and there, and I moved away to avoid the all too common smell of burning plastics. Luego we made it back to Don Antonio Cruz’s house to enjoy coffee with fresh cow milk. I was already feeling sick at this point, so I barely touched my café.
Once we said our goodbyes, our group walked down the road to the coffee processing operation of one Señor Ramos, who was also an owner of one of the lands that we want the municipalidad to buy for the project. We sat there admiring his coffee crop, just picked and cleaned, damp and fragrant in the cement trough. After about an hour’s wait, we all piled into his truck for the slow descent back to casco urbano, arriving just as the sun slipped away.



To the Dirty and back
And...Happy Birthday to me!
A little trip down to the south has turned into a medical stay until Tuesday. So now I’m 26. I know it’s normal, that time is just time and I’m just stuck in it. It’s just surreal to be growing older when I feel like I’m going back in time. All my friends from site called me—sang Feliz cumpleanos a ti! Then my parents called and sang in English, then Claire wrote me in French…so all the lingual bases were covered. My parents called while I was at Ruby Tuesdays…of all places to be, I would never have foreseen myself in Tegucigalpa, drinking a ruby red, in an American chain restaurant.


Anyway, it was awesome to see some of my fellow volunteers’ sites in the bottom, sweltering hot, half of the country. We all are living such a different experience. Down south the air is Hot! Unbearably hot and dry. There is one major, paved highway that we hitched along and it felt right out of some western flick, where the heat waves roll out in front of you and the sky takes up more than half of the horizon b/c the terrain just goes flat. The sun is so strong it creates this buzz in your ears, and you can do nothing but pour buckets of sweat.
At Nicole’s site I got to see what her business center was all about, and meet the women who work every day making there traditional Lencan pottery. Their work is beautiful. (see pics!) I’m excited to create their logo and help with the marketing of their craft.



Jordan’s site was charming. His house--big and open with a Cashew tree in the back. We picked the fruits and then built a fire to roast the nuts.
Gallo’s site was hot and dirty. But we showed up for the town’s naming of the feria queen and thus went to a town dance, where Gallo got to dance with the queen and I with her primo. The best part of being so damn hot is how wonderful a cold bucket shower can feel in an outdoor pila-shower.


Im finally back and site and I finally have a pila to call my own! My Honduran dream has come true...

Honduran Verano: only 2 seasons in the wor.d

01.20.08
It’s a balancing act: not getting your hopes up, yet living with hope. The house is near completion, and now it feels…permanent, like moving in there means this Honduran town will be my home, that half a yr is up and time will not slow, that the doors on the house will all be installed, will all shut, lock. Living alone brings new fears to mind. Yes, I will have more ‘control.’ I just think cleanliness! But I will also have to face the silence I have now forgotten to miss. What will silence feel like again? The tv is always so loud, layer upon layer of sound. Here nothing shuts things out, it is constant, esp. when it rains and you feel pounded without being touched.



01.22.08
Grey morning w.hot tea. Little Netio almost made me cry last night, he had come to tell me good night, and in his pocket, he was storing a little tube of toothpaste b/c I made him promise to brush his teeth every single day. He and his little brother are going off to work on a farm in Sta. Rita again this week, and so he bought it to keep his promise to me. If only all promises were so easily kept.



A rather old and tall missionary man/vet who was once a volunteer with his wife in the Dem Rep. came to Cabañas today looking for a house…I was like: Get in line buddy! But no, I gave him a little tour…told him about the slight joys and warm friendly town where I was working. But I didn’t really know what to say to him, he was a bit off on the whole eye contact/communication thing…best if he isn’t in the neighborhood…if you know what I mean…though perhaps it would be good for my town? The more foreigners the better? Scratch that, reverse it.


01.25.08
El día de la mujer hoy. The 25th of January is the national celebration in which we are to honor the day women first got the vote in Honduras. Sadly, It’s hard to say if it isn’t just a superficial celebration. What I really want to know, if people honestly just come for the free almuerzo? I hope less than half do…but its prob more like a little over half. My role today was per-usual during eventos: help at the registration table, write names, put on name tags, and then hand out the golden ticket (green almuerzo papel) I also help with the clean up and documenting (photos, and excel spreadsheet input)…such events are emotionally exhausting for me. Too many new faces and standing on my feet and mass feeding.

An x-voluntaria from Venezuela was here traveling with her husband and another couple. So far, all x-volunteers that approach me seem intimidated by something. What their service did or didn’t accomplish? That they no longer are living the volunteer life? Don’t get me wrong, they are all very nice people, just a bit off-kilter. That makes the 2nd x-PCV in my town in a week! Looks like tourism is picking up after all!


01.29.08
My best friend here goes to AA parties for fun on the weekend with her 30 yr old boyfriend.
She also picks her nose right in front of you, no pena. They all do.
Here, this is all good and normal. There is so much that floors me, or de-minds me. Questions, like: will I ever find the lip-point normal? Or will I ever think its o.k. to let a married man grope me in the office? Or will snot rockets onto the floor ever not gross me out…prob. not…but I’m truly amazed already with what you can get used to…


02.09.08
Well it’s D-day. Por fin. After 4 months of waiting and being mislead, I’m suppose to move into my spank’n brand new casa today! (Actually, tonight since they were still painting it this morning…) The wife of my landlord-to-be looked at me and said: “He’s a liar (speaking of her husband), they don’t lie in the states do they?” I wasn’t sure if she meant people in general or just men, either way, I told her: “uh, Yes! They do lie in the states.” Then I had to let my frustration go…because, we are all guilty of something.

Yesterday I got back from Reconnect (Where all of my fellow MuniD volunteers from group 11 and group 9 get together and share work experiences, ideas, collaborate, ect.) It was held in the very chilly mountain resort of Gloriales. While a beautiful place, there was not much to do at night but play cards and watch fellow volunteers perform. (you’d have to have been there to appreciate the kind of performances they were…)
What I got out of reconnect was some nice bonding time and more work!
I’m part of the Project Citizen Committee to redesign and modify the manual for PC Honduras. I’ll be doing the illustrations. This means I will be back in Teguc at the end of the month…just another 12 hr bus trip to look forward to. In truth, I like being en trajet. As long as I’m not feeling ill…which was the case yesterday, where I thought I was going to be sick for 12 hrs straight (or rather 12hrs very very curvy mountain roads).
Besides the new manual designs I am the representative for ENLACE, which is a group of PCVs that promote gender issues and equality. This entails another meetings on March 6th, the day before my bday! I can’t believe I will be turning 26! I’m going to stick with my Honduran-age-thing and say I’m turning 8 months old…
Besides these two commitments I agreed to help various people with Graphic Design projects, mostly logos, catalogues, websites…so I will now have less time to read, which is kind of sad…but being involved with other’s projects is a good way to invest time.


02.10.08
Today I was reminded again why I came here. I went on the “Cabañas rural tourism excursion” that the previous volunteer Nicolas had started to develop before he and his wife left. These experiences with the natural beauty of this country and the generosity of the aldea communities is beyond rewarding. Good’ole loco Pakistani drove us up the mountain in his gravity-defying blue stead of a pick-up truck. (I’m always impressed that we don’t die in that thing) We passed several of the small coffee-farm communities before dismounting at the house of Angelito Ramos of Peñas I. There we took the costumary café-pan break before setting out to hike to the cascada (waterfall) “Diamonte”. The path was steep and peligroso, and challenging. By the time we reached the creek that leads to the cascada, I was already half-drenched and Alicia had broken her shoe. From there, we crawled upon massive mossy rocks, tight-rope walked across slick fallen-trees, and clung to the roots upon the cliff to keep from toppling down to the valley below. The mountains out there are puro. There are no houses, no contamination. It’s just untouched and fresh.

Finally seeing this part of the project I will be working on really brought me out of my funk from post-reconnect. We’ve planned another excursion to a different, more impressive cascada in a week. The short-term plans involve having the municipalidad buy the land and declare it a touristic-zone. Then we can start actually developing the project, building more secure-paths and developing a picnic/ seating area.

When we reached the truck again, the tire was flat, so Paki had to get his spare and the guys got to work on that. Once all 4 tires were basically screwed back on we returned to Angelito’s house for a hot chicken soup with just-made tortillas and cafés. Being the wet and tired crew that we were, the warmth of the kitchen and the food was pretty close to perfect. We discussed the project after lunch and our hopes for the revenue such a project may bring to the people. Then we all piled back into the Paki-mobile and chugged, skidded and smoked down the mountain, collecting and dropping off people along the way.

I almost moved into my new house again today, but only managed to get it cleaned up, since there was no work done since yesterday, and the workmen had decided to use the steps as a garbage dump…
There’s always tomorrow!



02.11.08

The gate of the municipalidad was closed this morning. Sonia told me why: “Ellos mataron Alex.” (They killed Alex.) Patí was first to explain to me what exactly had happened, that in leaving a reunion someone rear-ended Alex’s car, él anduvo bolo (He was under the influence) and so was the other driver and so when Alex got out of the car, waving his gun, the other man shot him. It wasn’t the rounds of shots that I heard fired off last night that made my heart jump, it happened in Sta. Rita, at 4pm. I’ve now heard the story twice, each time, la culpa (blame) falls differently, but this 28yr old is still dead. Patí said pobrecito Alex, that he was like a son to Napo (our mayor), a crazy man, a true character, but with a good heart. Moncho (my host father) said that he was a violent man, looking for trouble, and in the end, it found him. Patí said everyone at the reunion had pistolas, most men in politics here do. I’ve seen bastante men here carry them all the time tucked into their pants. I’d never seen Alex without his. He was the one who drove me into site that first sunny morning to start my service here. He was my Honduran John Wayne. He was definitely a cowboy, and now he just was. I can’t even say I was particulary friends with Alex, I usually told him hello and then tried to avoid his embrace and cigarette breath. But for my friends, for Napo, and my red-eyed co-workers I do cry. I know their grief will last. I am invited to go to the wake and burial, but am afraid to go, and yet, don’t know how to say no. There are still too many things here that I don´t know how to say.