The Wahoo Journals

Thanks for reading

2008-12-15T19:06:00.004-06:00

Welp, as I am sure some of you have already heard. We’re not in Honduras anymore. We have returned stateside for good (well at least for the foreseeable future). We enjoyed our time in Honduras and we were a little sad to leave, but glad to be home in our own culture with the weather we are accustomed to. I feel like I should have something profound to share with all of you, or some sort of wisdom to impart after our time in Honduras, but I don’t. And I can’t think of anything I have broken or destroyed recently to talk about or any terrible illnesses to describe. The only thing that seems appropriate is to thank all of those people that have been thinking about us, praying for us, listening to our stories, supporting us in our adventures and reading our blog.

So.

Family, friends, brothers, sisters, kinfolk, neighbors, amigos, associates, acquaintances, colleagues, contemporaries, backers, benefactors, contributors, patrons, advocates, sponsors, supporters, accomplices, collaborators, cronies, countrymen, comrades, compatriots, companions, compañeros, confidants, cohorts, allies, sympathizers, well-wishers, and brothers in arms…… Thank you.

We are home. WAHOO!

Papaya anyone?

2008-11-19T23:20:00.004-06:00

So over a year ago when we moved into our house that we now rent, we planted several papaya trees. And about 14 months later, here they are, well over 10 feet tall and producing a riduculous amount of 5-10 pound fruits. I don't know how many of you have tried fresh papaya but it's well...stinky. Luckily I figured out that blending it with milk, ice, ripe bananas, and a little sugar makes it tolerable. I know lots of people like it (all the Hondurans I know do) but the texture combined with the smell makes it a difficult fruit to swallow, even though it apprently is really good for you. We planted the trees simply because someone told us they grow fast and they do. There is more than 25 papayas growing on this one:

Another tree with less papayas:

One of the first ones to ripen, cut in half:

Projects

2008-10-20T10:01:00.006-06:00

I think I blogged about the PEPFAR grant I got awhile ago (PEPFAR = President´s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). The first part of the project has been working with a group of 14 girls in their early teens from two neighboring communities about an hour from Danli. I take a bus that leaves Danli at 11:20 and arrives around 12:20. It´s dirt roads most of the way and since it´s been raining so much lately, it´s pretty slow going (and bumpy!). We started classes in September and have been meeting once a week for 2 hours. The manual we´re using is the manual I helped write and edit. The class has really been enjoyable for me and for the girls. We´ve talked so far about good communication, self-esteem, abstinence, and anatomy. There are still about 8 chapters left to cover. The goal is to finish the class by mid-December. Here are some pics of the girls:

Working on drawing a self portrait for a self-esteem activity

One of the girls doing an activity

We did ¨trust falls¨one afternoon

They really got into it and started passing the girls down the line

The second part of the project is training 24 9th graders at the middle school in the same community in HIV prevention. The goal is to train them so they can train the younger grades. Last week we did 4 hours of training and then on Friday we divided them up into 4 groups and they each received their training manual. They had to go through the manual and decide who was going to do what activity and then fill out an ¨Action Plan¨. When they finished with that, they got the necessary materials to be able to complete the HIV training themsleves (bascially the same one we had given them). They were very excited to get their materials and got to work right away. Tomorrow they have an exam that they have to pass with 90% or above to be able to participate in the training of the 8th, 7th, 6th, and 5th graders next week. Hopefully they do well!

Working on doing a transmision activity

Busy cutting & coloring

Weekly market trip (minus the cat)

2008-10-07T13:30:00.003-06:00

After I went to the market last week, I decided to take a picture of what I bought. Tito, our cat, decided to get in the picture as well. There are three grapefruits in the back - citrus fruit is in season now and very delicious. Luke loves popcorn so when I remember, I'll pick up a couple bags (front right) when I go to the market. Corn harvest began in August and continues...in the back left you see small corns called "jilotes" here. In the US, we usually only see them canned. We really like them in soups and stirfry. I can't remember exactly how much I paid for everything but below the pic is a pretty accurate estimate (remember L19 = $1):

Grapefruit = L3 each

Jilote = L15

Red onion = L 15

2 lbs tomato = L 14

Head broccoli = L12

Carrots = L10

Popcorn = L10 per bag

Flour tortillas = L 10

Cucumber = L 3

Zucchini/squash = L5

La Niña de la Independencia

2008-09-16T16:26:00.001-06:00

Oh the places you will go….. or more accurately end up!

So today was “El Día de la Independencia” here, or independence day. There wasn’t a lot going on except for a large parade in Danli. We could have spent the day inside our house avoiding the heat (a popular alternative with me on some days), but Annie was asked to come to a celebration in a small town nearby where she gives classes. And I was expected to come along which I didn’t mind because I have not spent a lot of time in this particular community and it was a chance to see where she disappears to weekly.

I have stopped asking a lot of questions about where I am going or what I am getting into lately. It´s not that I don’t want to know beforehand, but that the things I get into are equally ridiculous whether I have prepared myself for them or not. I naively assumed this was just any old independence celebration….kids playing loud drums, drunk people, small explosives, and maybe some guys on horses…these are things I don’t mind and sometimes enjoy, excepting drunk guys who have been recently deported from the states….so much cross-eyed anger!!

It was not to be. We had been invited to celebrate the independence of Honduras at a jardin de niños (a pre-kinder educational center) in order to help celebrate the crowning of the village of Linaca’s 3 year old princess of independence. Seriously?! Being a 6’4” gringo in Central America makes a guy stand out enough without attending the crowning of child princesses. If you think preschool chairs are small at home just imagine how small the chair I sat in today was. At one point Annie looked at me and said “don’t cross your legs like that, you look funny” to which I had no reply except to change my position behind my “desk” to an equally awkward and ridiculous pose, to which Annie replied “oh.”

It gets better...we weren’t just guests, we were the honored guests. We were to sit (sit is the wrong word, crouch is more accurate) at the “mesa principal” (the head table). Not only did I look and feel ridiculous but I had to do it from the most prominent spot in the small concrete school building. At this point I noticed that I was the only male in the room who wasn’t breastfeeding - this was not a celebration attended by males over the age of 2.

Now I was officially stuck for the duration. Sitting at the mesa principal the only thing I could hope for was a quick ceremony, not a likely thing I have found. Soon something occurred to me...we were going to have to give “palabras” (words). At every event in Honduras with a “mesa principal” from the crowning of child princesses to the signing of important legislation everyone at the “mesa principal” has to give their speech. And these are not short speeches; they are customarily to go on and on about whatever it is that the people at the mesa principal want to talk about – usually a lot of flowery vocabulary, thanking so-and-so and doing lots of name/organization dropping. What was I to do? There are only 3 topics with which I have sufficiently developed Spanish vocabulary to talk at any length whatsoever. These topics are in order of competence:

1.) Water resources engineering
2.) How cold it gets in the States during the winter
3.) Toyota pickups, 1984 – 1992 models

I had no idea what to do, but Annie being the sympathetic wife that she is (sympathetic and also sensitive to being embarrassed by her gigantic sweaty husband who changes every conversation to one of three topics) saved the day and let her “palabras” go long and used the “we” form a lot and pointed to me as if to say “he isn’t smart enough to say anything, but we’re together…..you ladies understand…isn’t he ridiculous looking in that chair.”

But, anyhow ask me about it when we get home, and if you’re ever in the village of Linaca in southeast Honduras walk around and look in the houses to see if you can see a picture of me on someone’s wall pinning a sash and crowning a 3-year-old princess.

Conquering Celaque!

2008-09-03T21:08:00.008-06:00

A recent 2-night trip to climb the highest point in Honduras at a little under 9,500 feet reminded why I love backpacking. The mountain, called Celaque (meaning "box of water" in the local Lencan language), is in a very dense, lush cloud forest just outside the city of Gracias in western Honduras. The mountain gets around 2,000-4000 mm of annual precipitation so we prepared accordingly with plenty of ziplocks to store dry clothes and water-proof tarps. Neither Luke nor I had gone camping/backpacking since living in Colorado so we really enjoyed it. The only thing missing was our dog Moose!!

Setting off with our friends Sara & Javi, with Celaque in the background covered in clouds

One of the many stream/river crossings

This is on our first leg of the hike (4 1/2 hours to first camp)

Our tents set up on first night (check out the awesome A-frame design with the tarp - nice work Luke & Javi!). It rained on and off the 1st night and all through the 2nd night but luckily we all managed to stay fairly dry.

This pic gives you an idea of the dense forest...trees covered with moss, vines, and ferns in the misty clouds. This pic was taken from our the second camp, about 2 hours from camp 1 and an hour and a half from the summit.

We made it! This is in the afternoon of day 2, it's a steep climb to the top from camp 2. It was chilly up there!

Looking out over the mountains and communities below from the top of Celaque.

A nice view from the top

Campo-style living

2008-08-26T20:34:00.005-06:00

So lately I've had a good share of "campo" and "aldea" time. "Campo" means anything not in a city and "aldea" is any small community. You'll find thousands of these tiny aldeas - some as few as a dozen families - scattered around the countryside and mountains of Honduras.

Last week I spent two days in a row in a community about a half hour from Danli. I am starting a class there with young girls that focuses on good decision-making skills with regards to life planning (avoid teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and STI prevention, thinking about what to look for in a mate, etc.). (You can read more about the course called "Yo Merezco" in my Aug 8 blog). Anyway, last week over the course of two days the young Honduran woman who's helping me with the class and I visited 16 different houses to drop off formal invitations for the girls we chose to be in the class (determined by their teachers to be "at risk"). It was really fun to show up at people's houses with no warning or phonecall ahead of time and see how Hondurans treat unexpected guests. Because this community is in a valley, there is a lot going on agriculturally...lots of corn (see pic below), beans, tomatoes, and green peppers as well as lots of cows. Therefore everyone has a fence surrounding their house. I followed Nohemy's lead and walked right into the fenced area. As we approach the house, we would wait for someone to "saludarnos" - greet us - and for them to say "pasen adelante" - "come on in." They would then, without fail, produce two plastic chairs for us to sit on. Everyone has an outdoor porch and each time this is where we would sit to discuss the class that we plan to start and ask the mother's permission for their daughter's participation. We would stay about 5-10 minutes, thank them and then take off for the next house. Many times we were offered food to eat. During the course of the two days, I was offered and ate the following things at various houses:

- Tamales (like Mexican tamales but without any filling or sauce)

- LOTS of sugary coffee

- A hard boiled egg with tortillas

- Boiled jilote (the field corn before it is mature - tiny cobs that they boil with a few of the inner husks left on -

you eat the whole thing)

- Rosquillas (corn and cheese biscuit type things)

- Horchata (a drink made from ground rice)

- Boiled pastaste (a vegetable sort of like a potato)

- Chicken and rice

- Red beans

- Sweet bread

- Coca-Cola

As you can see, I definitely did not starve during my visits! Because the teachers chose the girls and we visited girls from two different schools, the houses really were scattered all over the valley so we did lots of walking. I enjoyed it very much and realize how living in a big city in Honduras really is very different than living in the "campo."

This pic was taken not on my last trip but the trip before to Linaca so the corn is much bigger now!

Yesterday and today I spent time in another small community (where the well is being drilled currently - they still haven't found water yet). I stayed overnight and gave a 4-hour workshop (2 hours yesterday and 2 today) on HIV/AIDS prevention to the women of the community with the help of my PCV sitemate, Ann Marie, who also came. It went very well and was very fun to stay overnight in the community. They don't have electricity and because it gets dark around 6:30, everyone is usually in bed by 8. We ate our beans, tortillas and fresh cuajada (a soft cheese - made that very day) by candlelight in the kitchen for dinner. They have to haul all their water from a creek or lagoon so there is no "shower" to speak of. Most people bathe (half-clothed) in the creek. I bathed after it got dark with a bucket of water under a tree near the house. I ate LOTS of corn products because right now is harvest time. I had tamales twice, elote (boiled field corn), and corn tortillas twice in less than 24 hours. We also had delicious fresh red beans from the recent harvest and chicken for lunch today that I saw running around in the morning! The woman (she's 28 too) I stayed with butchered it about 8:30 this morning and after plucking the feathers, put it in a pot on her "fogon" (brick/adobe stove that uses small sticks and pieces of wood to keep lit) to boil. She then later cut up the chicken into pieces and fried them in some oil in a saucepan. I think that was the freshest chicken I've ever eaten! The workshop went very well and we had a great time hanging out in the "campo".

Cost of living in Honduras

2008-08-18T14:52:00.003-06:00

I can’t remember if we’ve ever done a blog on the cost of living in Honduras (thanks to fellow PCV Mary for the idea!). According to PC, volunteers are given a wage that allows them to live near to the level of the majority of people in their community. So PCVs monthly “salaries” (not including rent) in Honduras vary from 4,200 lempiras ($221) to 6,100 lempiras ($321). This all depends on the size of your site and location (north coasters get more…they get to live on the beach and get paid more – arrg!). PC pays our rent separately. They have a “ball-park” figure for the cost of rent in each site and it is up to the volunteer to find a place to live within that amount. For example, here in Danlí, the maximum PC will pay for rent per month per person is 2,500 lempiras ($131.93). Luckily, if you’re married you get double for rent!

Here are some examples of prices in Danlí (18.95 lemprias = $1)

Water bill: $3.69 per month
Bus ride to Tegucigalpa (capital, 1 ½ hours from Danlí): $3.38
Bus ride from Tegucigalpa to north coast beaches (about 7 hours from Tegus): $10.77
Baleada (flour tortilla with beans, cheese, eggs, sometimes avocado): $0.37 - 0.79
1 lb of red beans: $0.79
1 lb of rice: $0.58
Corn tortillas: 10 for $.18
Eggs: $0.11 per egg
1 liter of milk: $1.21
1 large plastic container of purified water (5 gallons): $1.58
1 lb. roma-sized tomatoes: $0.53
1 whole medium-sized frozen chicken: $3.96
1 lb lean hamburger: $1.27
1 lb hard “Honduran” cheese: $1.32
1 lb of chicken breast (with bone): $1.42
A meal at a typical “comedor” here in Danlí: $1.85
(Typical breakfast and dinner meal: meat (usually beef), beans, fried sweet plantains,
scrambled eggs, avocado, tortillas. Typical lunch meal: meat, rice, cabbage salad, cooked vegetables, tortillas) A glass of fresh juice: $0.42
Oranges: $0.11 per orange
Mango (during season): $0.16 per mango
Pineapple: $0.79-$1.32 per pineapple
Avocado (during season): $0.26 for a large one (twice the size of a Hass)
A small bag (from lady on street) of sliced green mango, ciruela, mamones,
nance, or other fruits in season: $0.26
A small cup of coffee: $.32
A “latte” from the Honduran chain “Espresso Americano”: $1.16 (beat that Starbucks!)
A 3 lb bag of “Gati” (cat food): $1.16
A ½ liter bag of water: $0.12
½ liter of Coke: $0.58
Local beer: $0.69 per bottle
Postage for a letter to the US: $1.32
Call home (to the States): $0.11 per minute
1 hour of internet use: $0.53

If we stay in Danlí for a month without leaving, we can definitely get through the month easily on our $263.85 allowance (that doesn’t include rent). If we leave to visit friends, go to Tegus for errands, etc. we can barely scrap by. With gas prices so high, bus and taxi prices are high! Just in the last few months we’ve seen our bus fare to Tegus go up by nearly 18.5% an. taxis in town now charge 25% more.

Recently in the news around the world, including here in Honduras, there has been talk of the rising cost of food. In Honduras the “canasta básica” (basic basket of food) has gone up considerably since last year. One local paper reported a 34% increase since 2007. The media continuously alludes to what could be a steep increase in the cases of malnutrition here in Honduras in the next few years if prices continue to climb.

(Anything else you want to know the cost of? Leave a comment & ask!)

Trip home, work here, etc.

2008-08-08T11:18:00.009-06:00

So here’s the promised blog with pictures. The last three months have been busy – involving lots of traveling and even quite a bit of work (thus the lack of blogging). Anyway, here’s what’s been going on…

In late June, we made it back to the States for my brother Chad’s wedding. It was a great time to go home (for the wedding plus 4th of July). The weather was great and we got to spend lots of time with family and friends. Here are some highlights of the trip:

Chad and his wife Sarah

With my brothers Chad & Josh

Luke & I on his parent´s farm

We had lots of great time with our nieces! Anica above and Aila and Lila below

The Gingerichs (and Huddles!)

Upon returning to Honduras, I immediately got back to work on a new manual that the PC Honduras Health project has been working on for 2 years. I joined the team this year and have been in charge of editing and revising the manual. The course is called “Yo Merezco…” which means “I deserve…”.

The cover of the manual

It’s a class designed for young girls, ages 10-15, and deals with topics like self-esteem, good decision making, what to look for in a spouse, domestic violence, reproductive health, sex ed and HIV prevention. The focus throughout is on sexual abstinence (delaying the first sexual encounter). PC Honduras received money from President Bush’s PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) to design and implement this course. So we worked on finished up the manual to get it published in time for the national workshop that we had (July 23-26). We invited about 20 PCVs and their Honduran counterparts. We spent Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday talking about the manual, how it’s to be used, and teaching several of the chapters in small groups so that people could get a feel for it.

The tables set up for the workshop

Doing an activity with the participants

Me teaching the chapter on anatomy to the participants

On Friday, the participants (who had been split into groups) went to a school where they were to teach a chapter of the manual to a group of girls (like a practicum). Unfortunately, there was a teacher’s strike that day (and the day before as well) so there were very few girls there but we made do by calling parents and telling them to send their girls to school and by just having smaller groups than we originally planned. By Friday afternoon the workshop was over.

4 of us 5 leaders making phonecalls to parents

Doing a trust-fall activity with the girls during the practicum

Doing a peer pressure activity with my group

All in all, everything went well and we (the team of 5 of us in charge of the manual and the workshop) were just glad it was over! The next phase of the project is for PCVs around the country to implement the course in their communities. I am starting a class in a small town outside of Danlí that starts the first week of September. A young woman in the community who is very active and enjoys volunteers work (a rare concept for most Honduras) will be helping me with the course. Another phase of the project is to develop a similar course except for boys.

Soon after that was over, I came back to Danlí and started helping with the group from the Episcopalian church (same group I helped and blogged about recently). They drilled another well in a community near Danlí (same community where I will do the Yo Merezco course). While that was going on, I helped with health and hygiene classes for the members of the community (mostly women show up but this time we did have one gentlemen and several young men). We did 6 days of classes with the participants from 10 am – 4 pm (with an hour and a half lunch). The graduation ceremony was just this past Wednesday.

During class with the community

A group picture of the participants

Here’s a little update on the community we worked in last time and didn’t find water (read my blog from June 10 to get a better idea of how desperate this community is for clean water): Luckily the group (they call themselves the Water Ministry) recognized the need this community has for clean water and have made them a priority. After they finished up the well earlier this week in the community where we were doing the health and hygiene classes, they went back to San Lorenzo and started drilling again. They had problems getting permission from the land owner on the first go round to drill where they wanted to and ended up drilling in a less than desired spot only to not find water. This time, they were able to get permission to drill where they originally wanted to. I hope to hear some good news next week that they found water. Here’s a pic of a young woman from this community hauling water from a nasty lagoon which is where all the water for consumption and domestic use is gathered.

The months of August-October will be busy for us! Luke has recently been busy with several projects and starting soon, will have 11 communities that need surveys and designs done. We are lucky to start feeling like we have some meaningful work (it only took a little over a year of living in Danlí to find some!). The school year ends in November and after that (at least through January) things will slow down a little. Come February, we only have 2 months left of service. Time is starting to fly and I’m feeling like there’s a lot to be done before we’re finished here. As most of you know, our service thus far (18 months) has definitely had it’s ups and downs (generally more downs than ups) but we’re looking forward to our last 8 months and hoping we can leave Honduras feeling good about the work and service we were able to do.

We´re blogging again! Check out Luke´s recent blog below...

Randomness

2008-08-07T15:15:00.000-06:00

Welp…. sorry for not blogging recently, to all those who have faithfully been checking the blog in hopes of something, I apologize. I have tried in earnest to get myself in to some sort of exciting, dangerous or hilarious situation, but to no avail. Life is normal (or it has developed the sense or normalcy) and normal seems hardly blog worthy. I can think of nothing to write about, but in place of writing I will make lists.

Things that have recently happened…

1.) I paid a guy 250 Lempiras to pull out and chop up our giant “zucchini” plant that managed to take over our entire yard and produce only 2 small tasteless gourds. It took him almost a day and a half.

2.) Our “canícula” recently ended, canícula is the word for the month long period during the wet season when it doesn’t rain. Good riddance canícula.

3.) Annie and I did a topographic survey last Monday for a community called “El Ojo de Agua” or “The Eye of Water”. They have a well and need me to tell them how to get the water to the houses.

4.) We found (more accurately rescued) another turtle, this one is painted red with a white stripe down his back. We found him on the road outside of the liberal party headquarters in town (red and white are their colors). He/she and Umberto are currently chasing each other around in our compound either mating or fighting, or both.

5.) Band practice has started again! So we will be serenaded until the Sept. 15th Independence Day celebration with daily 4-hour marching band practices by all of the nearby high schools.

6.) The neighbor kid got a saxophone (help us!).

7.) Avocados are now in season……Hallelujah!!

8.) Food is getting more expensive. This has taken a toll on most everyone we know since the majority of people’s income here is spent on food.

9.) Our oven (stove part still works) broke…this is a disaster!! Annie lost her main source of entertainment and I lost my only source of baked goods.

10.) Hondu 9 is leaving for home; this makes our Hondu 10 group the next in line to take off.

11.) The papaya tree we planted 12 months ago is giving fruit (papaya tastes awful by the way).

Things I did yesterday, in no particular order:

Read

Worked on the distribution system design for “The Eye of Water”

Went for a walk because it was the first nice cool day in a long, long time

Priced large plastic barrels at the large plastic barrel store. No really, it is actually called “Large Plastic Barrels Corner Kick” (translated from Spanish)

Talked on the phone to 2 people about potential projects next week

Purchased 50 Lempiras of prepaid cell phone minutes

Called a missionary to find out where on earth the church is that I agreed to meet some people at tomorrow

Made two grilled cheese sandwiches

Fed our cat

Watched the turtles fight

Went for a run

Got whiffs of our terrible smelling compost pile while working on the computer

Made sketch of small methane digester to put compost in

Played Spider Solitaire on computer

Wrote cover letter to send to a company in the States

Washed dishes

Annie´s got a blog with pictures that she´ll post soon so stay tuned...

Blogging is hard

2008-08-05T17:48:00.002-06:00

Hello everyone and those who diligently check our blog waiting to see something...anything...new. I´ve got an update in progress with pictures and everything so just hang in there a few more days. We appreciate everyone who continues to keep in touch with us and with what we´re doing here in Honduras! We promise to be better bloggers!

Josh was here!!

2008-06-17T16:11:00.007-06:00

As some of you know, Josh, my little brother (well, not so “little” anymore, he just finished his first year at Iowa State on the civil engineering tract) visited Luke and I in Honduras for a week and a half in May. We had a WONDERFUL time with him!

We spent the first few days after Josh’s arrival in Danlí where we went on a hike and bike ride, walked around the city and hung out at our house.

A view of Danli from the mountain we climbed

Luke chatting with our friend Rene's brother

We wanted to do something “work-like” while Josh was here so a few days after Josh got here we caught a bus to Tegus where we met up with another volunteer from our department and caught a bus to Guaimaca (northeast of Tegus about and hour and a half). From there we caught a jalón (a ride) to the small town in the mountains called San Marcos. Getting the “jalón” was an interesting experience! For whatever reason that day, the Danlí bus station was super crowded and we couldn’t get on a bus right away like we normally do. That caused us to miss the 11 o’clock bus in Tegus that we needed to be on to catch the one and only per day 1 o’clock bus in Guaimaca to San Marcos. We waited on a dusty road on the edge of town heading to San Marcos for around 4 hours before a truck headed that direction with room in the paila (truck bed) picked us up. There ended up being 7 adults in the back of the truck (including us 4 gringos), 4 children, a large sack of corn, a tire, several boxes, and our surveying equipment. It was an hour and a half ride on a dirt road through pine forests until we arrived in San Marcos. By then our limbs were asleep and we were thirsty and dusty but happy to have made it. In San Marcos, there is a Protected Areas Management volunteer (pretty much the only PCVs that live without electricity in small rural towns). It was fun for Josh (and for us) to spend a few nights there without electricity.

The next day we did a survey with some of the townsfolk. They have a stream that runs through town and even during dry season there is plenty of water so they want to do a small hydroelectric project and use the water to bring electricity to the school and possibly to the town. The survey needed done to see if this would even be possible and to estimate costs. I had never surveyed with Luke before so it was fun to see how that works and since Josh did lots of surveying last summer, I think he also enjoyed it. We stayed in San Marcos two nights and had fun. In the evenings we cooked with the volunteer’s little gas stove and sat in the hammock on the porch. After the long day of surveying, we went to a little swimming hole near the volunteer’s house and cooled off.

From San Marcos, we headed back to Danlí for just long enough to do a little laundry and repack. We were hoping to get back to Danlí around 1 pm but we’re in Honduras so things never go as planned. There was a national strike going on that day and all major entrances/exists into Tegus were going to be blocked at least until noon. So instead of catching a bus in Guaimaca at 9, we had to wait until about 12:30 before one was available. It was a long day of waiting for and being on public transportation.

The next morning, I gave my sex ed class at the school for street kids and Josh came with.

After that, we had lunch and got on a bus (again) to go to Comayagua, a city between Tegus and San Pedro Sula in the north. We stayed that night with our married PC friends and left early the next morning for Tela, a beach town on the north coast. That afternoon, the boys immediately went down to the beach to swim while I walked around town. The next day we got up early and got a ride to a small town on the beach about 1/2 hour west of Tela (all one way sand roads to get there). It´s the last little Garífuna village on a sandy road before a lagoon.

Baleadas - fresh flour tortillas filled with beans, grated dry cheese, avocado slices and a cream that tastes a little like sour cream. Baleadas are traditionally eaten for breakfast or dinner.

(A little background on the Garífuna…the Garífuna are what the Spanish called “Black Caribs.” For the first two centuries following Columbus, the island of San Vicente was inhabited by an indigenous group from the coast of South America. During this time, black slaves who were either shipwrecked or who had escaped from plantations on nearby islands also came to inhabit the island. These two cultures intermixed and developed a new language. In 1797, the Garífuna were kicked off of San Vicente by the British who had taken control of the island fourteen years earlier. They were moved to the Honduran island of Roatán in the Caribbean and eventually moved on to the mainland and started building their villages as far north as Belize and as far east and south as the Nicaraguan Mosquito Coast.)

Most Garífuna live in traditional huts with dried palm branches for a roof. We hung out on the beach in this small Garífuna village (that has miles of deserted undeveloped sandy beaches in both directions) and arranged to eat lunch at a Garífuna woman´s house. She served us fried fish (you get the whole fish on your plate, typical Honduran style), tajadas (fried plantains - not the sweet kind but the kind that taste like french fries), rice mixed with beans, and cabbage salad. It was yummy. We ended up getting a ride back into Tela with this guy in his truck.

We spent the next day on the beach in front of the nice resort we stayed at when my mom and grandparents were visiting. We rented beach chairs and a little tent for shade and spent the whole day swimming in the ocean, reading, and eating coconut that a young Garífuna boy sold us.

The next day we arranged a tour with one of the guide companies to go kayaking in Wildlife reserve along the coast called Punta Izopo. We spent several hours kayaking in the river and exploring the swamp and mangrove trees. We saw some interesting birds and got a good arm workout. The guide then took us to Triunfo de la Cruz, a little Garífuna village just east of Tela. We stopped and ate the typical Garífuna meal at a restaurant right on the beach and spent several hours swimming in the ocean and relaxing in hammocks. That afternoon we took a bus to San Pedro Sula (about an hour and a half from Tela) so that Josh could get up early and catch his 7:45 am flight the next day. Josh left saying he wanted to come back again and visit and we hope he will!

Brigades, mission trips, and the like

2008-06-10T15:03:00.007-06:00

Prior to last week, I did not have a favorable view of “mission” trips – be it medical brigades or otherwise (often I include Peace Corps in this view). I have seen large groups of gringos come to Honduras for a week or so in groups of 20-35 to do all sorts of things. (“Gringos,” just in case anyone is confused about that, is the general term Mexicans and Central American’s (I think South American’s too??) give to people from the North America.) Anyway, many of the brigades are medical and do little more than hand out Tylenol and vitamins. Sometimes these basic medical brigades will find a case that needs special referral – someone with diabetes or a hernia the size of a football (this happened to the doc I was translating for last September) – and that is when these type of brigades seem to provide a service the Hondurans are lacking in – complete coverage and adequate referrals. Of course, whether or not the patient will get the special paper to get referred and paid for depends on if the brigade has bothered to team up with a Honduran doctor to provide these referrals. The cases that need referred, however, are few and far between the handing out of vitamins and Tylenol.

There are other brigades that come to do work – such as a build a school or church. When my family was visiting, we ran into a gringo brigade that was building a school. Let me say first that the funding to build schools and infrastructure of any kind is needed here (I wish the government was doing it’s part and taking care of it’s own business, but it’s not). However, there is always someone capable on the ground to manage that funding and if that is not possible, two people coming from the States can do that. I get frustrated when I see 30 gringos who paid at least $500 each for their plane ticket and are paying at least $20-50 per night per person for hotel, and who knows how much for meals that come to build a school. There are so many Honduran men that are out of work and that could be paid minimum wage ($5 per day) to build a school with several people (instead of 30) overseeing it. The dollars would stretch so much further…enough to buy books and materials for the children possibly even enough to buy a few computers.

These trips usually consist of people who don’t speak Spanish, who have zero cultural knowledge and who tend to freak out about eating anything that isn’t packaged (I’m generalizing here but that’s usually the majority). It becomes difficult as a Peace Corps Volunteer translating for these brigades to not only translate the language but to also translate the cultural tid bits and serve as general guides. My friend who is a health PCV in the west, wrote an interesting blog about her experience in dealing with these brigades. You can read it at: http://allisonodonnell.blogspot.com/2008/04/wheelchairs-from-washington.html

I apologize for offending anyone here. I don’t mean to criticize your personal experience on a mission/brigade/volunteer trip and what that meant to you. Essentially Luke and I are on a 27-month “volunteer” trip of sorts and believe me, I have enough to criticize Peace Corps about. I do understand that mission/brigade/volunteer trips can be very beneficial to a person – especially a young person – to see life outside the US, to see poverty, etc.

Last was the first time I worked with a group from the States that I felt really good about and felt like their work here is needed and Honduras is better off because of them. A group of Texans from different Episcopalian churches have been coming to the state of El Paraiso in Honduras every three months for 5 years now. The church owns a well drilling rig that a Honduran guy is in charge of and uses when the team isn’t in Honduras. Every three months, they drill a well in a community that is desperately in need of water. For example, the community we worked in last week is not far from Danlí but has no electricity and is hauling all their water (in buckets the women and children carry on their heads) from a nasty lagoon below the community. The water is pretty contaminated and not everyone is chlorinating or boiling their water before drinking it. Lots of people have skin problems from just bathing in the contaminated water. The community has a tiny one room school from kindergarten through the sixth grade with one teacher for FORTY-TWO kids.

They have one American guy that works as their logistical coordinator and comes to Honduras often to “get the kinks out” before the team arrives. The Episcopalian church also has several middle-aged women volunteers living in Danlí to help coordinate and do follow-up.

So when a group comes down (usually about 10-15 people, the guys generally work on drilling the well with some men from that community and a health educator from the States comes and does 6 days (10 am to 4 pm) of hygiene and health training for the women of the community. She has been coming down pretty much every 3 months for the last three years. She doesn’t speak much Spanish but that doesn’t stop her from trying to communicate. After the first few communities in which she gave the health and hygiene classes (and someone translated), she realized that it would be beneficial to train several women in each community to be volunteer health promoters. So she started by asking a few women after the training in a community if they were interested in becoming volunteer health promoters in their communities. Those women would then get special recognition at the graduation ceremony. They take an oath to volunteer in their community to assure that everyone continues to practice good hygiene and they get a book with lots of good teaching pictures and materials. Now two of these Honduran volunteer health promoters (who are from one of the first communities that the health educator from the States started doing the trainings in) go to every community where they drill and run most of the training session with the women in the community themselves. I helped translate between the two Honduran women leaders and the health educator and then between the health educator and the women of the community when she would do some of the training. It was a very rewarding week to see what some time and commitment can accomplish. The two Honduran women are very outgoing and wonderful educators and the health educator from the States has a lot to do with that.

Unfortunately, in like 6 days of work (including various breakdowns of the machine), they drilled to about 44 meters and didn’t find water which was so sad because this community was very united and really really need water. The team was scheduled to leave on Saturday and apparently they will meet when they get back to the States and decide whether to drill again in this community in a different spot. A Honduran guy is in charge of the drill rig that the Episcopalian church owns and they do allow him to drill when they’re not here so we’re hoping they’ll ok it and let him drill again in this community.

Where the team spent a week drilling (and fixing broken parts)
The town church where we held our meetings with the women

A group shot of the women holding up their hygiene puppets (see pic below as well) and jugs that they used to design a hand-washing device (useful because it doesn´t use much water)

A puppet one of the women made to teach hygiene to their children

One of the seasoned health promoters (in middle) doing a skit to teach about nutrition
The women laughing, enjoying the skit

Kids from the community hanging out after a long day watching us pack up
On the last day there was a graduation and the women did a few skits on what they learned. In the pic below the mosquitos (dressed in black on the left) keep attacking the woman sleeping (on ground on the right) because she hasn´t cleaned up the standing water around her home

Regalar

2008-06-06T15:42:00.004-06:00

An interesting phenomenon exists here in Honduras and that is the act of “gifting”. “Regalar” means literally “to gift or to give a gift” and is used widely…you can “gift” anything from food to children. Yes, even children. I will explain that in a bit. The trick with using the verb “to gift” is that it should be used in the command form. For example, “Regáleme comida” would be “gift me some food”. One of the best “regálame”s I’ve ever heard is when some girl during a medical brigade asked me to gift her my shirt (the one I was wearing!). “Regálame”s get thrown around a lot when the gringos come to do medical or water brigades. I am, for this reason, against just randomly handing things out to people. The kids start pushing and shoving, the adults get antsy and meanwhile all you can hear is kids screaming “Gift me that! Gift me this!”.

“Regálame”s can be used in much more common, less obnoxious ways. For example, at the beginning of my service I learned from my Honduran counterpart that when you are working in a community or passing through a community and you know someone there, you can always, at a moment’s notice, ask them to gift you rice and beans or coffee and some sweet bread. This is not rude or weird but actually a compliment because it means you enjoy eating their food. Also, if you are working in a community it is unusual to leave the community empty handed. “Regalos” that are common are: bananas, plantains (see pic below of bananas (mínimos) and plantains that we got gifted a week ago. They should start ripening soon!) coffee, any other fruits or veggies that are in season, frijoles (beans), and eggs. I even saw one of the Hondurans that was working in the community with us last week take home a chicken in a box that someone ¨regalar¨ed.

This week we were working in a community about half an hour from Danlí on a dirt road where the Episcopalian church is drilling a well. Part of the agreement that was made with the community was to feed the Hondurans that were working on the well (the Americans brought their lunches made by the cafeteria at the hotel they’re staying at). Luke, of course, prefers the Honduran rice and beans to a white bread bologna sandwich that the rest of the gringos were eating and asked the women to “regálale” lunch. They did and were more than happy to feed a gringo the food they cooked! The next day they brought him lunch again. Well, the word apparently got around the community that my husband likes the Honduran food and one of the woman leaders in the community (not the same one that had been cooking for the guys) apologized to me for not asking me over to her house for lunch with the other Honduran women that were working because she just assumed I didn’t eat Honduran food like the other gringos.

Now...the gifting of children…the family that owns the pulpería on the corner of our street has a “regalo” in the form of a young boy. When they were introducing us to their family members, they said the names of their children and then pointed to Daniel and said, “He was a gift”. This is nothing strange or out of the ordinary. I heard children called “gifts” many times now. It is common for aunts & uncles and grandparents to raise their relative’s children here…be it for economic or health reasons. I suppose there are worse things to be called than a “gift”!

I know...it´s time to blog but what about?

2008-05-26T14:31:00.003-06:00

Ok readers...now´s your time to let us know what you want to hear about (we are having the ¨I´ve been in Honduras over a year and it´s starting to feel way too normal to blog about¨ blues). Be it culture, PC related questions, Honduras in general, our daily life, how we get around the country, where we buy things, etc. I don´t know what you all want to hear about so comment on this blog your ideas and we´ll get some new blogs out soon!

Tito el gatito

2008-05-08T16:01:00.003-06:00

Our cat - Tito

The buzz on seasonal, local eating

2008-04-28T11:42:00.004-06:00

I remember hearing my grandma or grandpa tell me about how at Christmas time they would get an orange in their stocking and how big a deal this was given the lack of fruit (other than canned) during the Midwest winters. Oranges, like many other seasonal fruits and vegetables, used to be just that, seasonal. So what has happened? Why is it that nowadays it doesn’t matter if it is winter or summer, one can always find a ripe tomato or a melon at a grocery store? We are fortunate (or maybe unfortunate??) to live in a free market economy where an abundant food supply at low cost is consistently made available to us. We Americans love variety – especially when it comes to food – but maybe it is time for a shift back to the “oranges in the stocking” era.

(Side note – This blog was inspired by a book I just read by Michael Pollan, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A natural history of four meals”). In Pollan’s book, he tells a story about a farmer who sells his eggs (from chickens that are free range and eat grubs left behind from cow pies found in the grass from cows that are pastured) to local restaurants. Eggs will vary from season to season if a chicken is not fed solely on chicken feed and does not live in a cooped up container. Some seasons produce better yolks and others better whites. When the farmer first began selling eggs to chefs, he found himself apologizing to one of the restaurant owners for their pallid hue in the winter months. The chef told him not to worry because during cooking school in Switzerland he’d been taught recipes that specifically called for April eggs, August eggs, and December eggs. Until I read this book, I had no idea that eggs from a chicken could vary from season to season. (Or, better stated, that eggs from a chicken should vary from season to season).

Our global food market allows us to eat whatever we want year round. And I’m not just talking about fruits and vegetables. According to Pollan, pastured animals can be harvested only after they’ve had several months on rapidly growing grass. Feeding animals corn in CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) has accustomed us to a year-round supply of fresh meats. People used to eat most of their beef and pork in late fall or winter, when the animals were fat and eat chicken in the summer. Nowadays, we can eat corn fattened beef year round.

Ok, so what does it matter? What/who does it really hurt if I buy asparagus in the winter and can find ripe tomatoes year-round? First, buying locally and eating seasonally provides a sense of security that comes from knowing that your community, or country, can feed itself. Other reasons to eat locally include preserving the beauty of agricultural landscape (come on, how “pretty” are those giant CAFOs??); the satisfaction of buying food from a farmer you know rather than the supermarket; the fact that local food doesn’t have to travel miles and miles to arrive to your plate; and because by buying locally and eating seasonally, you decide not to participate in the industrial food chain powered by fossil fuel. (One fifth of America’s petroleum consumption goes to producing and transporting our food.) By eating locally, you also make a decision to not take part in America’s big food industry – the advertising, the lobbyists, the profits made from “supersizing” our meals, etc. Plus if you start eating locally, you will make a conscience change to eat better (you won’t find any processed food or frozen meals at your local farmer’s market)!

Eating locally, as Pollan points out, doesn’t necessarily mean it will be organic or even sustainable because there’s nothing to stop a local farmer from using chemicals or abusing animals except the good word (accountability) of his customers. I would think, however, that being accountable to your community members is a much better deterrent for being honest on your growing practices than not having a clue in whose mouth the food you grow and produce will end up.

Ok, so I may sound a little “preachy” and I apologize for that. I’ve got a long way to go until I can follow my own advice but this is the direction I am moving in. Living in Honduras has forced Luke and I to eat seasonally more so than we did when we were living in the States. Last year, I started making a list of what fruits and vegetables were in season when and this year it has been fun to anxiously wait each season. Having less available also makes our meal choices easier. Many volunteers have expressed fright at returning to the States after a two-year term with the PC and being utterly overwhelmed by the options that a US supermarket has to offer.

One of our goals upon returning to the States is to make a better effort at eating locally and seasonally. Among these goals is to grow and produce as much of our own food as possible. It doesn’t get any more “local” than that! Gardening in and of itself is so rewarding and it reduces your waste by turning your throw-away scraps into compost. I used to help my mom can and freeze vegetables and fruit during the summer months when fresh produce is plentiful and this is something I’m hoping to start when I get back. See below for pics of our garden in here in Honduras.

Our front yard garden as of Sunday, April 27

Our variety of lettuces and leafy greens that we planted during rainy season (October - January)

FOR MORE INFO:

Interesting websites I’ve found from magazine articles and books:
http://www.eatwild.com/
www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets
http://www.localharvest.org/

For an interesting article on our carbon footprint and what we can do see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html?ex=1209528000&en=62fa7bceddf15978&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Scenes from Honduras

2008-04-19T17:00:00.006-06:00

Hello everyone! Not a whole lot of updates in the way of work or life but I wanted to get a blog up anyhow so I decided to post some good pics from Honduras that we’ve accumulated thus far. I tried not to repeat any others that we have already blogged!

Lake Yojoa in west/central part of Honduras, surrounded by two national parks

Pineapple field

waterfall near lake Yojoa

woman in Copan Ruinas balancing goods on her head

Macaw birds

Tegucigalpa, from the roof of the hotel PC puts us up in for medical reasons

A milkman in Santa Rosa de Copan

Street in Danli

Lots of different fruits!

Sunset in Danli

Sunset in Santa Lucia

Hydrangea in the Santa Lucia park

church in Comayagua

Drying a fresh harvest of coffee beans

Foot bridge to an aldea near Danli

Cows resting near a home

Countryside near Danli

The Honduran license plate that says ¨take care of the forests¨

orange tree (yes, they´re green but very orange inside!)

First a turtle, then some ducks, now a kitten

2008-04-15T18:30:00.004-06:00

Some people have already heard that we had to give the ducks away. It was sort of sad to see them go but they wouldn´t stop eating my garden and escaping the PCS. We gave them to our friend who owns property in the mountains just outside Danli. He took Gladys and Melvin to his dad´s house up there and according to him, they´re happily wandering around up there.

So now we have a...kitten. On Sunday afternoon I was washing clothes at the pila when I heard very loud meowing. I went to the porton and opened it and sitting literally right outside our porton was a tiny little kitten who was extremely frightened. I yelled for Luke to come outside and we quickly made the decision to let it in our ¨compound¨ because it was over a 100 degrees outside and the poor thing was all by itself and can´t be more than 4-5 weeks old. Luke asked around on our street to see, just in case, if anyone had lost a kitten and no one had. The story Don Juan (the neighbor who sits outside his house all day and evening selling chips and candy) told us was that a ¨loca¨ (crazy woman) was walking down our street, throwing a kitten in the air. Not sure if I completely believe that or not but in any case, the kitten needed rescuing. Don Juan proceeded to tell Luke how lucky the kitten was to have been meowing outside our house!

After Luke gave me a quick lecture about how I couldn´t get too attached to the kitten because he didn´t want to bring a cat back to the States when we finish our PC service, he constructed a little house for it out of an old box from a package my mom had sent last year and put in off the ground a little bit and under a plastic chair so it can´t get wet when it rains.

The kitten is not allowed inside (we both agreed on that) and is doing well. I am taking it to the vet tomorrow to see what, if any, shots it needs and of course, de-wormer. I haven´t taken a picture yet but will be sure to do that soon and post it.

Any ideas for names for the kitten? We´ve toyed with: Shakina Francis (the name of a beauty salon near our house - what a name!), Francis, and Herbert. We´re not feeling very creative so any suggestions are welcome!

English classes

2008-04-07T12:03:00.001-06:00

A few months ago, I started an English class two nights a week for an hour here in Danli. This is something that I was reluctant to do at the beginning of my service. Yes, it’s true, I do have a Masters in English but because teaching English was my job before I came to Honduras, I decided that I wanted to learn different skills while here. I also hesitated to teach English for other reasons. One of them has to do with the misconception of language learning that I find to be very common here. For whatever reason, many Hondurans believe that learning English is 1) much easier than learning Spanish and 2) only takes a few months to learn if you have a good teacher. Language learning as a life-time endeavor is not something commonly believed and I felt that starting an English class would only result in dashing dreams of becoming fluent after a few months (if only!!). Another hesitation has to do with the goal many people have behind learning English. Many people who want to learn English do so because they want to go to the US to work. So I decided that I would only teach English to Hondurans who appeared that they would use whatever they learned to improve their skill sets for their jobs or studies here in Honduras.

The lady who owns the internet café that Luke and I frequent asked me before Christmas if I would be willing to teach English to the two girls that work there. I told her I’d think about it then decided I would. I had remembered several nurses at the hospital where my counterpart works mentioning if I ever started an English class to let them know. So I called them up and then through word of mouth, we ended up with a class of about 14. A Cuban volunteer doctor is part of the class, as well as a friend of Luke and I’s, a young boy who is now in private school and feels behind in his English class since he went to public elementary school, two nieces of the internet café owner, a few friends of the nurses from the hospital that are in the class, and a few others.

All in all it’s been a good experience. I do the planning for the classes but Luke comes and helps out. Hondurans are used to route-type memorization in learning situations so we try and make the classes dynamic and fun by using games, dialogs, roll-playing, etc. The students seem to have a good time. We started the class in mid-February and as of yet, don’t know when the class will end. That’ll either be when Luke and I get tired of teaching or when the class number starts dwindling but for now, we’re enjoying it.

Teaching at the internet cafe last week

Semana Santa in Danli

2008-03-24T10:57:00.004-06:00

We have successfully made it through our second Semana Santa (Holy week) here in Honduras! Semana Santa is a week-long holiday celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus. Pretty much every business, both private and government, closes down for the week. Some typical Honduran activities for the week include: traveling to visit family, going to the beach, river, or pool to go swimming, going on a picnic, and participating in the religious processions It’s sort of the official start of summer so any sort of water-related activity is in order. All the stores in Danli a week before Semana Santa started selling blow up pools, inner tubes, balls, etc. Luke and I had planned to do a hiking trip but decided instead to spend the week relaxing and hanging out in Danlí. We spent the week gardening, bike riding, watching movies, going on walks, and cooking. (Not that much different from a normal week I suppose!). On Thursday and Friday there were processions by the Catholic church and since our house is so close to the city center, we could watch them from our front door (see pics below).

Thursday am procession:

Kids in the window are Andrea & Daniel. They live on our street.

Carrying a statue of Jesus on the cross

Friday am activities: preparing an ¨alfombra¨(carpet) made of sawdust for the procession later that night.
Processions Friday evening that went right by our house:

Duck farming in Danli

2008-03-15T10:40:00.001-06:00

Hey everyone, here is an article I recently wrote for our Peace Corps Honduras volunteer newsletter…

For those of you that caught my last article (in the newsletter) about gardening in Danlí this one is not nearly as good or funny. At no point have I almost died while duck farming, so feel free to skip ahead to the COS surveys. But I have made sure that my Tami Flu is close by. If anyone in this country is going to get bird flu I assume it would be the gringos living in close quarters with 2 ducks.

Along with our garden, the ducks are our attempt at molding the “Peace Corps Experience” to more of what we thought it would be. Everyone remembers what they thought they were getting into before we rendezvoused in Washington DC. The way we tried to explain what we were going to be doing to friends and family. Going off to live a simpler life with people who still value things like agriculture and cultural traditions. I remember explaining to relatives that we would most likely be living in a rural community with no running water. I was after all joining the Peace Corps under the program of Water and Sanitation and Peace Corps only sends volunteers to communities that ask for help.

We could see it all so clear, helping the people understand the need for clean water, organizing and motivating and the whole nine yards. Culminating at around 18 months in site, finally designing the simple hydraulics on paper that would bring the clean water! Meanwhile throughout the whole process we would be enjoying our time sharing a life’s worth of knowledge. I could draw on my years of dairy farming experience to improve nutrition and introduce economic opportunity, Annie could help start gardens and introduce new recipes in cooking classes. At one point when we were younger Annie’s family had 20,000 laying hens and my family was raising 5,000 turkeys so certainly a small chicken coop project would have found its way into our schedule. I had already envisioned myself raising thanksgiving turkeys to distribute to the community as a cultural exchange...... all of this spaced comfortably throughout hammock time in our adobe house.

But that was before DC.

That was before “safety and security” trainings, before cell phones and saldo, before NGOs and SANAA and “development work”. That was before sites of 75,000 people and a 2-hour daily commute (worse than most big cities in the States mind you), before regional hospitals, and houses with 9 foot walls and razor wire. That was all before.

That was all before I bought 2 ducks.

The ducks have what I call a Pato Confinement System (PCS) in our back yard. This is mostly scraps of stuff that was in our yard when we moved in and starting cleaning the place up. The ducks are named Gladys and Melvin after our host parents in Santa Lucia. They constantly escape the PCS and eat our garden, even after 224 lempiras of chicken wire we can’t keep them from getting into the compost pile or eating our snap peas down to the ground. Melvin has one leg tied to a post inside the PCS to keep him from escaping and both their wings are clipped, but no matter. They still escape.
Their eating the garden makes Annie crazy. The garden is more hers then mine. I help out and do most the tilling of the soil, but she dictates what vegetables and flowers get planted and where. I offer to make the ducks go away but she won’t let me. They wake me up in the mornings well before I feel like getting out of bed (more accurately getting off the colchon). Melvin used to escape and then Gladys couldn’t find him so she would chirp and chirp and chirp. It’s worse than a rooster. Nowadays Melvin is tied up by one leg so he can’t get out but he taught Gladys to escape, and she escapes in silence. Now Annie wakes me up and tells me MY ducks are eating HER flowers. So I have to get up and chase Gladys back into the PCS. We put up with them for some reason.

Gladys and Melvin came to Danlí from Mata de Plátano. Mata de Plátano is the site of one of El Paraíso’s resident PAM volunteers. I went there to help survey a spot for a new basketball court. Mata de Plátano is one of maybe 2 or 3 Peace Corps sites in Honduras without electricity. It is more of what I had imagined pre-DC. Gladys and Melvin were just fuzzy little creatures, living with the pulpería lady, eating pataste and shitting on the floor. For some reason she asked me if I wanted a pair of ducks. I initially said no. How would I get them home? Would we eat them? Where would I put them? Who would feed them when we were gone? Later that day I went back to the pulpería and told the lady I’d take the ducks. ‘What the hell’ I figured; it would be nice to have some livestock.

I put Gladys and Melvin in a box that afternoon and the next day I caught the one and only bus out of Mata de Plátano at 6 a.m. As with most days and projects, things hadn’t gone that well on this trip. People didn’t show up to help us work. The municipality was late with the materials they had promised. I was headed back to a big city that wasn’t friendly and work I didn’t really feel like doing.

But then about 6:10 something happened. Someone on the bus spoke to me…. Some campesino dude with his rubber boots and machete asked me, “What’s in the box?” And I understood him. I knew exactly what he said. Here I was, so damn far out in the middle of nowhere, and I could understand what this old man was saying to me. He wanted to know what I had in this box. So of course I smiled big and told him I had a box of ducks.

A box of ducks.

And at that moment the bus driver cranked the reggaeton music so loud you could no longer hear anything anyone said inside the old school bus. The sun was shining through the pine trees as the bus bounced and jolted and stopped and backed up and steamed and lurched and roared and skidded down the mountain. We passed a house with a whole family outside standing under a big sign on the porch that read “Vivir en Paz”, and I smiled. After an hour and a half the reggaeton was still blaring and the bus stopped to put more water in the radiator and all the men got off the bus to take a piss off the side of the mountain. I got back on the bus and set my box of ducks on my lap again and everything was good.

I had forgotten all about “safety and security”, NGOs, SANAA, and “development work”. All the bad was gone for that 3-hour bus ride down the mountain. It didn’t matter at that point that my time here won’t count towards professional engineering certification in the States. It didn’t matter that whatever it is that I do here is nothing like what I imagined or signed up for. What mattered was that I was crammed onto a school bus riding down the side of a mountain listening to incredibly loud reggaeton music looking out the window with a huge smile on my face holding a box of ducks…… This is what I signed up for.

So I still count down the months, I still get angry at NGOs and SANAA, but I am still here in Danlí enjoying my duck farming.

A little bit of nature and a lot of poison ivy!

2008-02-26T13:34:00.004-06:00

Last weekend Sara & Javi, married business volunteers in Comayagua, came to Danli for a visit. We arranged a quick trip to the protected area not far from Danli with Luke’s friend René on Saturday. It was a beautiful day to get out of the city and enjoy nature (plus there was a scheduled power outage from 8 am to 4). We got to learn a little about washing coffee beans, sat under some tall trees and watched howler monkeys including a little baby one, got some poison ivy (sorry Sara & Javi who really got it bad), picked limes from René’s orchid, and saw a small waterfall. We had been to René’s property before but it was fun this time to take other people and share it with them. Below are some pics from the day.

A beautiful transparent butterfly!

Close-up of a purple orchid

Another orchid

Resting by the waterfall

Sara & Javi after a PB & J for lunch

Rene, Luke, & Javi learning how to wash the coffee beans

Inside of old house on Rene´s property built sometime in the late 1800s by a Spanish family. House was inhabited during coffee season to wash, dry, and roast beans. Still in decent condition.

Side notes to comments on last blog

2008-02-22T12:39:00.002-06:00

I am happy to see we’ve gotten some good comments on the latest development blogs! I have a few other side notes to add after reading the comments.

If it is indeed true that aid cannot reach the hands of those who most need it and is only augmenting the corruption of the government to which it is given, why continue this less than efficient circle? Not only are we wasting donor and government dollars by handing them over to corrupt governments and agencies, we may also be contributing to what William Easterly calls the “aid curse” – where high aid revenues going to the national government benefit political insiders, often corrupt insiders, who will vigorously oppose democracy that would lead to more equal distribution of aid (“The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good” (2006)). Steve Knack of the World Bank has found that higher aid worsens bureaucratic quality and leads to violation of the law with more impunity and to more corruption. Hmmm...can aid really contribute to making government worse in the recipient country? It seems so ridiculous to even imagine because the nature of aid is to assist countries in need not make them worse off, right??

I do agree with the people who commented on the previous blog that whether aid reaches the hands of the poor has a lot to do (and maybe everything to do) with whether the government receiving the aid is corrupt or not. But I do believe that some of the fault does lie with the donors. Why perpetuate the cycle? Would it not be possible to bypass bureaucracy and take aid away from bad government to try to get it into the hands of the poor? Easterly makes a good point, “…if aid is apolitical on the receiving end, so it should be one the giving end. Can’t Western voters demand that their aid agencies direct their dollars to where they will reach the most poor, and not to ugly autocratic friends of the donors?” Many will argue that aid should go through even bad governments to promote their political development and democracy. But if aid’s true goal is to reach the poor, why not make this as easy as possible?

Second in series

2008-02-14T14:50:00.001-06:00

So as promised here is the second blog (follow-up to the one called “Sustainable Development”) on the history of foreign influence in Honduras. Some of you may already be familiar with this information while others may not. Either way, it can help us to understand better the situation that Honduras finds itself in today. To write this blog, I referenced several books including: “Inside Honduras: The essential guide to its politics, economy, society and environment” by Kent Norsworthy with Tom Barry (1994), “Honduras and Beyond: A Memory of Inequality” by T.Y. Okosun (2006) and “Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran woman speaks from the heart” translated and edited by Medea Benjamin (1987).

Here is a short account of US foreign policy in Honduras. In 1954, Honduras gave permission for its territory to be used as a training ground for the CIA-supported, rightwing military force that overthrew the reformist government in Guatemala. In that same year, Washington singed a bilateral assistance pact with the Honduran military that assured the close US-Honduran military cooperation of the 1980s. According to Norsworthy, “it was also during the Honduran banana strike of 1954 that US labor representatives associated with the State Department began infiltrating the Honduran labor movement and exerting a conservative, anticommunist influence that has long obstructed the advance of a unified, progressive popular movement in Honduras”.

In the 1980s, Honduras became the center for US policy in the region. Between 1980 and 1990, the number of NGOs operating in Honduras tripled. The majority of these organizations were US private and church organizations. According to Kent Norsworthy, the rapid rise in nongovernmental organizations was due largely because of the country’s strategic role in U.S. foreign policy in the 1980s. (If you are asking yourself, what was the U.S. up to during the 1980s in Central America, I recommend reading “The Death of Ben Linder” by Joan Kruckewitt or “Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran woman speaks from the heart” by Medea Benjamin).

What was this foreign policy? Well, in the 1980s, the Sandinistas were in power in Nicaragua and in El Salvador the growing strength of the National Liberation Front threatened to oust the US-backed Salvadoran government. Honduras quickly became the key for the United State’s geopolitical interests and both countries soon reached an agreement – in exchange for an increase in US military and economic aid, Honduras would join the US in its effort to topple the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. To give you an idea what kind of “effort” this was, the US spent well over a billion dollars in economic and military aid in Honduras between 1979 and 1989. According to Medea Benjamin, the influx of US dollars created a gold-rush atmosphere which aggravated the endemic corruption and infighting within the Honduras military. So while the military chiefs and politicians were getting rich off US aid, the majority of Hondurans were getting poorer. Although democratic elections were held in 1981 (from pressure by the US), the military maintained a firm grip on reins of power and rather than reducing the power of the military, allowed them to act with greater impunity because they were now covered by the facade of a civilian government. Payment on foreign aid debt gradually began to take up more and more of the government budget (read “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins (2004) to learn about how the US has, for over half a century (and still today??), loaned out money to countries in need with the goal of pushing them into a hole of debt so deep that they are forever indebted to the US, thereby making them “pay” their debt other ways, namely in whatever happens to be of US interest at the time). So anyways, in order to pay back their debt, Honduras reduced it’s already inadequate health budget from $130 million to $97 million between 1986 and 87. Unemployment shot up to 41 percent and there was an alarming rise in human rights abuses. Despite a five-fold increase in US economic assistance between 1981 and 1990, per capita income for the population actually declined. Kent Norsworthy sums up the effects of foreign policy in Honduras nicely:

“Democracy, development, and stability have been the oft-repeated US goals in Honduras. But after more than a decade of aid and intervention, these goals still seem distant. In fact, rather than moving Honduras forward, US policies and programs in Honduras appear to have sown the seeds of economic and political instability. This failure can be attributed in part to the contradictory and misdirected character of US economic and military assistance. But it also has to do with the fact that from the beginning Washington’s interest in Honduras has been mainly a product of US foreign-polity concerns in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala.”

While I am a little afraid to ask it, Honduras’ history does beget the question: Am I as a United States Peace Corps volunteer here in Honduras today to help fix years of misguided and misdirected aid that has resulted in a Honduras worse off today than before US influence?

Comments, criticisms, other sides to the story and perspectives are welcome!

PS: Please remember that what we post on our blog does not represent the opinions of any other organization or people, just us!