Yesterday Rachel, a nearby volunteer, and I were in Corquin (one of the towns next to mine), giving recycling talks at the school. Then we went to the post office and were talking to the husband and wife who run it, who are a really nice, young couple. And the husband told us about a special education school for children with Down´s Syndrome and other disabilities, that´s in Corquin. This was really exciting to hear! It was an issue I had been thinking about for a while, wondering if I could get involved with special education, and I had no idea this school was there.
I´m not sure if it´s true, but he told us this is one of only two special ed school in the country, and to think it´s right here! The normal schools do not have special ed programs. So we are having a meeting tommorrow morning to see what kind of support we can give the school, in the form of funding, book donations, programming, things like that. Right now it´s being run mostly with money from the families. Also, another nearby volunteer in youth development actually worked as a special ed teacher in the US, so she´s going to come tommorrow to talk to the teachers and see what they are doing and what support she can give. I´m really happy we found out about this. I think we could get some funding, expand the school and publicize it so that more students can attend. I´ll let you all know how the meeting goes.
In recycling news, things are going well. I have given about 20 talks about recycling, talking to hundreds of students, in 4 schools and 2 high schools. Last Saturday I went with the high school students to pick up bottles in the streets. People were congratulating them on their trash collection. It´s a really good group, I like hanging out with them. On Thursday we are having a meeting here in my town to form an environmental committee.
On Saturday I held a training session for 5 patronatos in my town. Patronatos are kind of like town councils or neighborhood committees. There is one in each little neighborhood of the town. We talked about democracy, citizen participation, transparency, avoiding corruption, and how to prioritize community needs. It went very well, about 14 people came. There was lots of conversation and discussion, and people had some really good things to say about community participation in the government. Honduras has one of the highest corruption rates in the world, so citizen action is really important. The group decided to have a meeting with the mayor today, since they aren´t really happy about the way projects proposals have been handled lately.
Next week we have a Peace Corps workshop in Tegucigalpa for Project Citizen, a project to do in the schools. We are supposed to bring a teacher or community member but I can´t find anyone who is able and willing to leave for a week, so I might have to go alone. It´s a good project, I´ll explain it more later.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
rain
The weather has been really rainy for the past week, which is kind of unmotivating. I also haven’t been able to do laundry. Things are going pretty well, otherwise. My recycling plans have changed a little. We are going to sell at a different location than I was originally planning on, but it makes more sense this way. The high school students I’m working with have a huge pile of sacks filled with recyclebles which they are going to transport on Monday. We need to do some calculations, but the amount they will recieve from the sale should cover gas for transportation. In my town, the high school isn’t doing this project, so there is no group organizing things. So, rethinking things, and the selling situation, I decided we should really form a neighborhood committee to manage logistics, like storage and transportation and the funds. I talked to the mayor and the director of UMA, the environmental office, and they supported the idea and set a date to have a meeting to form an environmental committee.
My house is looking even better. A few volunteers in the area just finished thier service and left so I inheirited a fridge, a toaster oven, a blender, some chairs, and some shelves. I now actually have a kitchen. Every couple of days I’ll try cooking something. I’m trying to improve my cooking skills. Otherwise I eat easily prepared things or I eat next door. My neighbor feeds me often, they are really nice, they say I’m like family to them. I got so lucky with my house and my neighbors. I’m really happy with my house, it’s really important to have my own nice space to go to at the end of the day. The new group of volunteers will be getting to site in a couple weeks. The town next to me is getting a business volunteer. Hopefully he or she will be fun. And interested in recycling. I have a hammock now, which I spend way too much time in. It's just so comfortable. It's hung on my front porch, but I live on a really quiet street so hardly anyone passes by. Well, that's about all I feel like writing for now. My hammock is waiting for me.
My house is looking even better. A few volunteers in the area just finished thier service and left so I inheirited a fridge, a toaster oven, a blender, some chairs, and some shelves. I now actually have a kitchen. Every couple of days I’ll try cooking something. I’m trying to improve my cooking skills. Otherwise I eat easily prepared things or I eat next door. My neighbor feeds me often, they are really nice, they say I’m like family to them. I got so lucky with my house and my neighbors. I’m really happy with my house, it’s really important to have my own nice space to go to at the end of the day. The new group of volunteers will be getting to site in a couple weeks. The town next to me is getting a business volunteer. Hopefully he or she will be fun. And interested in recycling. I have a hammock now, which I spend way too much time in. It's just so comfortable. It's hung on my front porch, but I live on a really quiet street so hardly anyone passes by. Well, that's about all I feel like writing for now. My hammock is waiting for me.
Monday, April 7, 2008
I just realized how long it's been since I posted. Ooops. This will be kind of short because I'm in the library writing it and I don't have much time. Last Monday we planted lots of tree seeds in the school in the aldea, in the mountains. It was fun, all the kids were helping and a bunch of parents came to help. We cleaned up the weeds, prepared the dirt, filled seed bags, and prepared a seed bed, prepared the seeds, and planted them. It took all morning. I want to do another tree nursery in some of the other schools in the mountains.
Saturday was the youth baseball regional tournament. A bunch of volunteers have youth baseball teams, and a few times I went to help out a volunteer near me with his team. These kids just started practicing in October or November, knowing nothing about baseball, and they've improved so much. The tournament had 3 teams, and they played on a soccer field, so there was no back stop or infield, or outfield fence. It was fun watching, and the team I had been helping won! Those kids were so excited. It was a good day.
Sunday I had to help my counterpart give a training session to representatives from 4 different rural banks. There were about 30 people. The training was about accounting and managing all the books they have. This other guy, who is actually an accounting teacher, is part of my counterpart's NGO, but he ended up not coming, so we were kind of unprepared. But it actually went really well. I ended up explaining most of it, and we did lots of example problems for finding balances and calculating interest rates. Some people were really confused at first, but by the end I think they all got it. The weather has been really warm and sunny, so that's nice.
That's about all for now.
Saturday was the youth baseball regional tournament. A bunch of volunteers have youth baseball teams, and a few times I went to help out a volunteer near me with his team. These kids just started practicing in October or November, knowing nothing about baseball, and they've improved so much. The tournament had 3 teams, and they played on a soccer field, so there was no back stop or infield, or outfield fence. It was fun watching, and the team I had been helping won! Those kids were so excited. It was a good day.
Sunday I had to help my counterpart give a training session to representatives from 4 different rural banks. There were about 30 people. The training was about accounting and managing all the books they have. This other guy, who is actually an accounting teacher, is part of my counterpart's NGO, but he ended up not coming, so we were kind of unprepared. But it actually went really well. I ended up explaining most of it, and we did lots of example problems for finding balances and calculating interest rates. Some people were really confused at first, but by the end I think they all got it. The weather has been really warm and sunny, so that's nice.
That's about all for now.
Friday, March 28, 2008
semana santa
I haven´t written in a while because last week was Semana Santa (Holy Week) so everything was closed all week. A lot of people take advantage of Semana Santa to travel and go to the beach, which makes it not a very good week to travel because the buses are really full and everywhere you go it´s really crowded. I stayed in my site and spent time with my neighbors and I spent a couple days with my host family. We sat outside in the cabañas, in hammocks, near the fish ponds, and my host mom made roasted chicken and grilled fish and beans and tortillas and salad. It was nice until it started pouring and it got really cold. We had 2 and a half cold rainy days and then it got really warm and sunny again. I also painted my bedroom a purple-blue color, which is really pretty. Easter wasn´t that excited. I thought there would be processions and things, and I guess there were in some towns, like Santa Rosa, but nothing much happened here. When I lived in Costa Rica, there was a long procession through town for Easter, and the kids and adults were all dressed up in pretty costumes and they had drums and it was really pretty. There’s no Easter Bunny in Honduras, no painting eggs or chocolate bunnies or jelly beans. I had a nice Easter, it was a beautiful day and I ate tilapia with my host family, but it didn’t feel like Easter.
The kids at the school in town have already collected a lot of plastic bottles to recycle. I went to the school this week and talked to all the afternoon classes about recycling. I don’t know if I’ve explained this before, but the medium to large size schools have two shifts of classes- in the morning grades 1-3 and in the afternoon grades 4-6. The smaller schools, which only have like 2 teachers, just have class all day. Some of those small schools only have one teacher for up to 50 or 60 students. So I’m going back a different day to speak to the morning classes. Also, in all the schools the students have uniforms, white button-up collared shirts, and navy blue slacks or skirts. The education style is different than in the US. Here, there is more focus on repetition and copying things down, and less focus on critical thinking or creativity. If, for example, the teacher shows an example drawing of a picture of a house and asks all the students to draw a house, they will copy the example. There’s a lack of thinking outside of the box. Most of the teachers have only high school degrees and many of them, especially the grade school teachers, are very young, just out of high school.
Right before Semana Santa, I went to the high school in Cucuyagua, one of the towns right next to mine, and I met a teacher who was very supportive of my recycling project. He is working with a group of about 50 students who are graduating this year but who need to do a project to graduate, so recycling is going to be their project. I met with a small group of them and we formed a plan with a timeline. This Saturday I’m going to give them a charla (a talk) about recycling and then they are going to give the charla to the other classes. In addition to the recycling, they are going to use organic waste to make a compost pit to make fertilizer. I’m really excited about this group. They seem like very hard working students. It makes up for the high school in my town. The director/principal said he doesn’t want to do the recycling project because there isn’t room in the school to store the recyclebles and he doesn’t want the students bringing in more garbage because there’s already too much garbage in the school. I was pretty mad and frustrated when I heard that. Maybe he has a point, but he’s not looking out for the future or the good of the community. So I told the Cucuyagua high school they have to do this project well to show up the high school here.
I’m also trying to work on things with the library. My town has a Reicken Library, which is a group of libraries spread throughout Honduras, funded by an American businessman who was a Peace Corps Volunteer, I think in Honduras, but I’m not sure. They are very nice libraries, small by US standards but very pretty and well designed. The Reicken Foundation has a very strict selection process and criteria for choosing communities to get libaries. The community has to form a committe to solicit the library. The community has to provide the land, labor, and afterward they have to take care of the maintanence of the library, and pay the librarian. The library in my town opened in October, right after I got to site. The library has a finance committe and a support committe, formed by community members, and they have to program all kinds of activities. A representative from Reicken visits every few weeks to see how the library is doing and they give capacitacions to the librarians and work with the committees. Each library has a few computers with free internet (which I love), but the committee has to come up with fund raising to support the free internet. I’d like to give classes on how to research on the internet. Reicken Libraries also have meeting rooms, complete with a projector, which are available to any group in the community by request. Kids use the library the most. I hardly ever see any adults in any of the Reicken Libraries, but the librarian is trying to change that. So I’m really lucky my town has one of these libraries. It’s a really nice place and a great opportunity for the community, especially with its programming.
The kids at the school in town have already collected a lot of plastic bottles to recycle. I went to the school this week and talked to all the afternoon classes about recycling. I don’t know if I’ve explained this before, but the medium to large size schools have two shifts of classes- in the morning grades 1-3 and in the afternoon grades 4-6. The smaller schools, which only have like 2 teachers, just have class all day. Some of those small schools only have one teacher for up to 50 or 60 students. So I’m going back a different day to speak to the morning classes. Also, in all the schools the students have uniforms, white button-up collared shirts, and navy blue slacks or skirts. The education style is different than in the US. Here, there is more focus on repetition and copying things down, and less focus on critical thinking or creativity. If, for example, the teacher shows an example drawing of a picture of a house and asks all the students to draw a house, they will copy the example. There’s a lack of thinking outside of the box. Most of the teachers have only high school degrees and many of them, especially the grade school teachers, are very young, just out of high school.
Right before Semana Santa, I went to the high school in Cucuyagua, one of the towns right next to mine, and I met a teacher who was very supportive of my recycling project. He is working with a group of about 50 students who are graduating this year but who need to do a project to graduate, so recycling is going to be their project. I met with a small group of them and we formed a plan with a timeline. This Saturday I’m going to give them a charla (a talk) about recycling and then they are going to give the charla to the other classes. In addition to the recycling, they are going to use organic waste to make a compost pit to make fertilizer. I’m really excited about this group. They seem like very hard working students. It makes up for the high school in my town. The director/principal said he doesn’t want to do the recycling project because there isn’t room in the school to store the recyclebles and he doesn’t want the students bringing in more garbage because there’s already too much garbage in the school. I was pretty mad and frustrated when I heard that. Maybe he has a point, but he’s not looking out for the future or the good of the community. So I told the Cucuyagua high school they have to do this project well to show up the high school here.
I’m also trying to work on things with the library. My town has a Reicken Library, which is a group of libraries spread throughout Honduras, funded by an American businessman who was a Peace Corps Volunteer, I think in Honduras, but I’m not sure. They are very nice libraries, small by US standards but very pretty and well designed. The Reicken Foundation has a very strict selection process and criteria for choosing communities to get libaries. The community has to form a committe to solicit the library. The community has to provide the land, labor, and afterward they have to take care of the maintanence of the library, and pay the librarian. The library in my town opened in October, right after I got to site. The library has a finance committe and a support committe, formed by community members, and they have to program all kinds of activities. A representative from Reicken visits every few weeks to see how the library is doing and they give capacitacions to the librarians and work with the committees. Each library has a few computers with free internet (which I love), but the committee has to come up with fund raising to support the free internet. I’d like to give classes on how to research on the internet. Reicken Libraries also have meeting rooms, complete with a projector, which are available to any group in the community by request. Kids use the library the most. I hardly ever see any adults in any of the Reicken Libraries, but the librarian is trying to change that. So I’m really lucky my town has one of these libraries. It’s a really nice place and a great opportunity for the community, especially with its programming.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Books I´ve Read
I´m posting a list of books I have read. I havent been reading that much since I moved into my new house, but in Oct-Dec I was reading so much. Some of the books I brought with me, a few were sent to me, and most I borrowed from other volunteers.
Books I have read since coming to Honduras, in order of being read, with country of the setting in parantheses:
Pillars of the Earth (12th century England)
*True Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (all over the world)
Snow (Turkey)
*The Piano Tuner (Burma)
Mosquito Coast (Honduras)
News From Paraguay (Paraguay)
*The Bookseller of Kabul (Afghanistan)
An Open Heart (Dalai Lama philosophy/theology)
The Other Boleyn Girl (16th century England)
The Little Prince
*A Thousand Splendid Suns (Afghanistan)
Prep (United States)
American Gods (United States)
Memoirs of a Geisha (Japan)
The Boleyn Inheiratance (16th century England)
Dreaming in Cuban (Cuba)
Honor Lost (Jordan)
Zorro –in Spanish (early 1800s California and Spain)
The Reader (Germany)
* These books I would highly reccomend to anyone, and which were especially useful to me from a Peace Corps context. There are a few other books on the list which I really enjoyed but I would only reccomend to certain people, so ask me if you're looking for a good book. I´ve also read a lot of magazines, mostly Newsweek, The Economist, and National Geographic in Spanish.
Books I have read since coming to Honduras, in order of being read, with country of the setting in parantheses:
Pillars of the Earth (12th century England)
*True Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (all over the world)
Snow (Turkey)
*The Piano Tuner (Burma)
Mosquito Coast (Honduras)
News From Paraguay (Paraguay)
*The Bookseller of Kabul (Afghanistan)
An Open Heart (Dalai Lama philosophy/theology)
The Other Boleyn Girl (16th century England)
The Little Prince
*A Thousand Splendid Suns (Afghanistan)
Prep (United States)
American Gods (United States)
Memoirs of a Geisha (Japan)
The Boleyn Inheiratance (16th century England)
Dreaming in Cuban (Cuba)
Honor Lost (Jordan)
Zorro –in Spanish (early 1800s California and Spain)
The Reader (Germany)
* These books I would highly reccomend to anyone, and which were especially useful to me from a Peace Corps context. There are a few other books on the list which I really enjoyed but I would only reccomend to certain people, so ask me if you're looking for a good book. I´ve also read a lot of magazines, mostly Newsweek, The Economist, and National Geographic in Spanish.
Monday, March 3, 2008
The recycling project is moving along. Last week I visited the school in the town next to me and talked to every afternoon class, which is 7, so about 250 kids. I also went to the aldea, where the school is I was visiting last school year, and I gave them the recycling talk, about 35 kids. It all went well and the kids are excited to start recycling. The director is getting cans this week so we can begin. So I´ve been pretty busy going to all the schools trying to organize things. On Friday I had the meeting with one of the patronatos (neighborhood committees) that got canceled last Sunday because no one showed up. Well, they didn´t show up again, just one guy. On the other hand, last Monday I had a meeting with a different patronato, which is mostly women, and everyone showed up, and on time, and we had a good, productive meeting. So it just depends. I´ve been trying to post pictures, but the internet is just so slow. Soon hopefully.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
tiedye, tarantulas, and recycling
On Thursday I was doing laundry (hand washing in the pila) and I accidentally got chlorine, which I was using to soak my socks, splattered on my blue tank top. I only have a few tank tops and I want to wear them everyday because it´s been hot, and then I ruined my favorite blue one, getting chlorine on it. So then I decided to turn it into a tiedye shirt, and I poured spots of chlorine all over the shirt. It turned out decent; I´m going to wear it alot. I´m becoming more of a hippy every day. Haha. Just kidding. Kind of. I do use a lot of Raid. That´s not very hippyish. I had an ant problem. There were tons of really tiny ants coming into my house, through the ceiling. There would be lines of tiny ants from the ceiling down to the floor. I don´t know what they were doing, because they weren´t getting into my food. They were really driving me crazy, so I bought Raid and that really works well. Also, when I got back from being gone for the Peace Corps meeting, there was a large tarantula in my house. It really scared me, it´s the biggest spider I´ve ever seen outside of like a zoo. So I caught it and put it outside. It was just too big to kill.
When I was living in the mountains, I found in my room at different times: a mouse, a toad, a slug, and lots of ants. Since I have been living in town, things I have found in my house: geckos (all the time, they live in my window frames), little frogs (they are in my shower sometimes at night, I think they crawl up the drain), a tarantula, cockroaches, and lots of ants. And lots of other types of little bugs, moths, mosquitos. But now I have Raid to protect me.
The last couple weeks have been really busy. I´ve been making myself busy, and it makes me so much happier than having nothing to do. It´s so much easier living in town. There´s always work to do if you look for it and get yourself involved.
The most exciting thing that I´m doing now is a recycling program. Garbage is such a problem here. Very few towns have garbage dumps. My town doesn´t have garbage pick up so people burn their garbage or throw it in a pile somewhere. There´s always lots of garbage in the streets. And there´s really no recycling. In some of the bigger cities there are people who buy metal cans or plastic bottles to resell, but not really around here. But now that is changing. A nearby volunteer has been working to start a small business that buys plastics, metals, glass, and paper, to resell in El Salvador and other places. They have been researching and organizing for months and just this past week they started to buy recyclebles.
So I am starting recycling collection in the kindergartens, schools, and high schools in my town and a couple of the neighboring towns. The idea is that the kids will bring the recycleble materials to school and every two weeks or every month we will sell it all to the company. To start off and motivate the students, we might do a contest to see which grade can collect the most, and they will win some kind of prize or party. This is going to be a really big project. I´m going to visit each classroom to explain why we are recycling, and the specifics of how, like that we have to seperate different materials, crush cans, take the tops of the plastic bottles, things like that. I think it´s important to go to each classroom to get the students excited and to make sure everyone knows the process, however, these are fairly large schools. I´ll be talking to a few thousand students in total. Once we get going in the schools, I´d like to start collecting in restaurants and stores. So far, I´ve been talking to the mayors, school directors, and some teachers. I think I will start visiting classrooms next week.
There are lots of details to work out. I need to make sure each school/classroom has a system to collect and seperate the recyclebles; get scales so we can weigh it all, since each school will need to keep track of what it´s collecting and how much money it should get, and a transportation method. I´m more excited about this than anything else I´ve been doing. We can get garbage off the streets, reuse recycleble materials, and the schools can make a little money off it. I´m so nervous something isn´t going to work.
I´ve also decided to start working with the patronatos, which are like neighborhood committees that meet each month to talk about what the neighborhood needs. My town has 5 barrios (small neighborhoods within the town) and each one is now forming a patronato, which is an initiative of the mayor. Some of them had inactive patronatos before, and some are forming new ones. So I heard they were being formed and went to the mayor´s office to say I could help to organize them and capacitate them, and the mayor gave me the names of the patronato presidents. Then I had to find the presidents to tell them I could meet with their group, so I walked around and asked where these people lived, found them, talked with them, and set dates for meetings.
As I talked to the patronato presidents, I realized I really didn´t know what I was doing. What did I want to talk to them about? How could I help them? I don´t know anything about patronatos and I have no experience with local government. But it doesn´t really matter. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, you don´t need to know much about things to start working on them. Peace Corps provides enough resources and materials that I can get all the information I need in whatever area I need it. And I really just need to know more than the people I´m capacitating, which usually isn´t that much, and then I learn as I go along. When I started with the community banks, I didn´t know anything, but now I have a much better understanding.
Anyway, I decided to do a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Oportunities), with the groups to begin to see how they are organized and where they lack. Then we´ll talk about the importance of citizen participation. It is very common for people to be apathetic and inactive in the community. So I went to the library and looked at some books about citizen rights, munincipal laws, and citizen participation. We´ll also talk about the function of a patronato and how they can write solicituds to the mayor´s office and things like that. From there, I´ll see what else they would like capacitaciones in. My first barrio meeting is Saturday evening, there´s another Sunday and another Monday, each in different barrios. It should be interesting. Before I left for Peace Corps, I thought a lot of my work would be with people to inform them of their rights as citizens and to increase participation, and now that´s what I´ll be doing, so that´s exciting.
So that´s mainly what I´ve been doing lately. I´m going to do other various projects and talks in the schools after I get the recycling started. Another exciting thing that is coming up is that the Energy Department is interested in the biodigestor project that my counterpart is thinking of doing and also in the improved stove project that my counterpart completed with the previous volunteer. So a few representatives from the Energy Dept., including the Vice-Minister of Energy, are coming here the first week of March to see the improved stoves and the biodigestor.
Also, I can make friendship bracelets now.
When I was living in the mountains, I found in my room at different times: a mouse, a toad, a slug, and lots of ants. Since I have been living in town, things I have found in my house: geckos (all the time, they live in my window frames), little frogs (they are in my shower sometimes at night, I think they crawl up the drain), a tarantula, cockroaches, and lots of ants. And lots of other types of little bugs, moths, mosquitos. But now I have Raid to protect me.
The last couple weeks have been really busy. I´ve been making myself busy, and it makes me so much happier than having nothing to do. It´s so much easier living in town. There´s always work to do if you look for it and get yourself involved.
The most exciting thing that I´m doing now is a recycling program. Garbage is such a problem here. Very few towns have garbage dumps. My town doesn´t have garbage pick up so people burn their garbage or throw it in a pile somewhere. There´s always lots of garbage in the streets. And there´s really no recycling. In some of the bigger cities there are people who buy metal cans or plastic bottles to resell, but not really around here. But now that is changing. A nearby volunteer has been working to start a small business that buys plastics, metals, glass, and paper, to resell in El Salvador and other places. They have been researching and organizing for months and just this past week they started to buy recyclebles.
So I am starting recycling collection in the kindergartens, schools, and high schools in my town and a couple of the neighboring towns. The idea is that the kids will bring the recycleble materials to school and every two weeks or every month we will sell it all to the company. To start off and motivate the students, we might do a contest to see which grade can collect the most, and they will win some kind of prize or party. This is going to be a really big project. I´m going to visit each classroom to explain why we are recycling, and the specifics of how, like that we have to seperate different materials, crush cans, take the tops of the plastic bottles, things like that. I think it´s important to go to each classroom to get the students excited and to make sure everyone knows the process, however, these are fairly large schools. I´ll be talking to a few thousand students in total. Once we get going in the schools, I´d like to start collecting in restaurants and stores. So far, I´ve been talking to the mayors, school directors, and some teachers. I think I will start visiting classrooms next week.
There are lots of details to work out. I need to make sure each school/classroom has a system to collect and seperate the recyclebles; get scales so we can weigh it all, since each school will need to keep track of what it´s collecting and how much money it should get, and a transportation method. I´m more excited about this than anything else I´ve been doing. We can get garbage off the streets, reuse recycleble materials, and the schools can make a little money off it. I´m so nervous something isn´t going to work.
I´ve also decided to start working with the patronatos, which are like neighborhood committees that meet each month to talk about what the neighborhood needs. My town has 5 barrios (small neighborhoods within the town) and each one is now forming a patronato, which is an initiative of the mayor. Some of them had inactive patronatos before, and some are forming new ones. So I heard they were being formed and went to the mayor´s office to say I could help to organize them and capacitate them, and the mayor gave me the names of the patronato presidents. Then I had to find the presidents to tell them I could meet with their group, so I walked around and asked where these people lived, found them, talked with them, and set dates for meetings.
As I talked to the patronato presidents, I realized I really didn´t know what I was doing. What did I want to talk to them about? How could I help them? I don´t know anything about patronatos and I have no experience with local government. But it doesn´t really matter. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, you don´t need to know much about things to start working on them. Peace Corps provides enough resources and materials that I can get all the information I need in whatever area I need it. And I really just need to know more than the people I´m capacitating, which usually isn´t that much, and then I learn as I go along. When I started with the community banks, I didn´t know anything, but now I have a much better understanding.
Anyway, I decided to do a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Oportunities), with the groups to begin to see how they are organized and where they lack. Then we´ll talk about the importance of citizen participation. It is very common for people to be apathetic and inactive in the community. So I went to the library and looked at some books about citizen rights, munincipal laws, and citizen participation. We´ll also talk about the function of a patronato and how they can write solicituds to the mayor´s office and things like that. From there, I´ll see what else they would like capacitaciones in. My first barrio meeting is Saturday evening, there´s another Sunday and another Monday, each in different barrios. It should be interesting. Before I left for Peace Corps, I thought a lot of my work would be with people to inform them of their rights as citizens and to increase participation, and now that´s what I´ll be doing, so that´s exciting.
So that´s mainly what I´ve been doing lately. I´m going to do other various projects and talks in the schools after I get the recycling started. Another exciting thing that is coming up is that the Energy Department is interested in the biodigestor project that my counterpart is thinking of doing and also in the improved stove project that my counterpart completed with the previous volunteer. So a few representatives from the Energy Dept., including the Vice-Minister of Energy, are coming here the first week of March to see the improved stoves and the biodigestor.
Also, I can make friendship bracelets now.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Reconnect
Last week I went to the capital, Tegucigalpa, for Reconnect, a Peace Corps meeting. They are annual meetings by project group. In my project, Munincipal Development, there are 29 volunteers; 14 from my training group and 15 who have been here for over a year and are leaving in September. The workshop was at a nice hotel up in the mountains. It was pretty and they fed us a lot.
The first day was just the 14 from my group and we each presented 20-30 minutes about our sites and our work. It was interesting hearing what everyone is doing. Some people are really busy and others have hardly anything going on. Some sites are much harder than others. Projects that people are doing include: starting neighborhood committees, training community banks, updating the munincipal action plan, starting youth groups, helping conduct censuses, building improved stoves, giving micro finance classes, marketing traditional pottery, giving computer classes, and giving English classes. The next two days we heard presentations from the volunteers who had been here longer, and also from different organizations in Honduras that we can work with. It got boring sitting through so many presentations all day, but it was really nice seeing everyone and hanging out together.
When we got back to the capital, we went to the mall, which was a strange experience. I felt like I was in a different world. There was so much stuff, and lots of US stores. I didn`t really buy anything, though. After the mall we went for sushi. There are two sushi restaurants in Tegucigalpa. It was really good. I got a California roll for $3 and it was good quality. There were like 30 types of sushi on the menu.
I got back to my site, and I was really happy to be back. On Sunday we had a town meeting. The mayor and everyone came to explain what projects they are going to do this year. At least 200 people were there, and they served everyone a cup of Coke and a package of cookies. It`s practically mandatory to give out a snack at any sort of meeting. Anyway, some people weren`t too happy with what the funds will be used for, but it didnt make a difference in the end. The munincipality is receiving about $100,000 from the funds for the Reduction of Poverty Strategy, (ERP in Spanish) which was started by the UN Millenium Challenge Goals. These funds only go to Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), which include Honduras. I learned about all of this in school, so it´s interesting to see it in action now. The funds go to each munincipality each year for development projects, and they are distributed locally so the community can decide what it needs, rather than the national government, or some foreign organization. However, there are still problems, because the funds can be politicized, misused, or stolen. So accountability and getting community involvement is really important.
School started today, so I´ll be busy this week going to the schools to give talks. It´s a great way to get to know people. That´s all for now.
The first day was just the 14 from my group and we each presented 20-30 minutes about our sites and our work. It was interesting hearing what everyone is doing. Some people are really busy and others have hardly anything going on. Some sites are much harder than others. Projects that people are doing include: starting neighborhood committees, training community banks, updating the munincipal action plan, starting youth groups, helping conduct censuses, building improved stoves, giving micro finance classes, marketing traditional pottery, giving computer classes, and giving English classes. The next two days we heard presentations from the volunteers who had been here longer, and also from different organizations in Honduras that we can work with. It got boring sitting through so many presentations all day, but it was really nice seeing everyone and hanging out together.
When we got back to the capital, we went to the mall, which was a strange experience. I felt like I was in a different world. There was so much stuff, and lots of US stores. I didn`t really buy anything, though. After the mall we went for sushi. There are two sushi restaurants in Tegucigalpa. It was really good. I got a California roll for $3 and it was good quality. There were like 30 types of sushi on the menu.
I got back to my site, and I was really happy to be back. On Sunday we had a town meeting. The mayor and everyone came to explain what projects they are going to do this year. At least 200 people were there, and they served everyone a cup of Coke and a package of cookies. It`s practically mandatory to give out a snack at any sort of meeting. Anyway, some people weren`t too happy with what the funds will be used for, but it didnt make a difference in the end. The munincipality is receiving about $100,000 from the funds for the Reduction of Poverty Strategy, (ERP in Spanish) which was started by the UN Millenium Challenge Goals. These funds only go to Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), which include Honduras. I learned about all of this in school, so it´s interesting to see it in action now. The funds go to each munincipality each year for development projects, and they are distributed locally so the community can decide what it needs, rather than the national government, or some foreign organization. However, there are still problems, because the funds can be politicized, misused, or stolen. So accountability and getting community involvement is really important.
School started today, so I´ll be busy this week going to the schools to give talks. It´s a great way to get to know people. That´s all for now.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Perrito
For the past week, I’ve been watching my friends’ golden retreiver puppy. It’s been an interesting experience having a dog here. I walk all around town with him and everyone comments how pretty he is. Dogs here are mainly mutts and basically all of them are dirty and aggressive. Most people have dogs, but the dogs aren’t allowed in the house and they often just walk around on the street and bark at people. There are lots of dogs, but you can’t pet them because they will bite you. So it’s unusual to see a pretty, well-fed, clean, friendly dog. And I usually keep him on a leash, which is also never seen here. When the puppy gets close to people, they are often afraid, because they think he will bite, so then I have to say he doesn’t bite, he’s not mean, you can touch him, and then they pet him and comment how pretty he is. It’s weird to see people afraid of such a cute little puppy. After a week of walking him around, most people recognize him and the kids get really excited to see him. Hopefully I’ll be able to watch him again soon, since he has lots of friends now in my town. Having a puppy is definitely a good community integration tool. He’s helped me meet a lot more people in town. People think he’s my puppy so I always have to say I’m just watching him this week. They all want to know how much he cost and where I bought him. So then I say I don’t know, he’s not mine. I definitely wouldn’t want an expensive, full breed dog here. People think I have money because I’m walking around a well fed, pretty dog, and I would be afraid of someone stealing him. I liked having him for the week, but I couldn’t have my own pet here, it’s too much work.
Yesterday, I took a walk with my neighbors, the two sisters, to buy tiles or shingles for their roof, since the roof is leaking. Tiles here are an adobe material and are big. They are called tejas We ordered the tejas and I asked the woman how they are made, and she said why don’t you walk over to where they are made so you can see. So we walked down the street to where they make the tejas and the woman gave us kind of a tour. They make a mud mixture, and wake up at 2am to mold the tejas, because they have to do it when there is no sun, so they don’t dry out before they are supposed to, or something like that. The place has light bulbs hanging outside so they can see what they are doing at 2am. Once it gets light out, the tiles are left to dry under the sun, and after they dry for a day or a few days, they are baked on top of a huge oven. It was pretty interesting. I felt like we were on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, taking a field trip to a community business. One tile costs 3 Lempiras, which is about 15 cents, which is a lot when you think about how many tiles one house needs. It’s really hard work to make them, though. The family invited me to come one morning, early, and I could try making some tejas. It sounds exciting.
Today I had a meeting that the environmental office (UMA) of a nearby town invited me to. They want to start a micro bank for the farmers involved in the town farmers market. The woman in charge of UMA didn`t tell me I`d have to do anything, but when I got there, she asked me to explain to everyone what a micro bank is, what it does, and to form it. I had nothing with me and wasn`t expecting to do it. So I just stood up and explained it all off the top of my head. Then they elected the president and all the other board members. It`s a good project. They want to better organize the farmers market. It was an all day affair, but very interesting. I think I`ll definately be working more with this town`s UMA, the woman in charge is very motivated. She`s not really in charge of anyone, she is the whole office. So she has a lot of work managing water sources, avoiding forest fires, etc. She told me she would find me a pretty sombrero so we can work in the field together.
Next week I have to go to the capital for Reconnect, a Peace Corps workshop. All the volunteers from my project, Munincipal Development, will be there, and our project managers, around 30 people. We have to present what we’ve been working on since we got to site and then we have to listen to presentations about different things. I’ll be gone all week and when I get back I need to meet with the school principals since the new school year begins Feb 14.
Yesterday, I took a walk with my neighbors, the two sisters, to buy tiles or shingles for their roof, since the roof is leaking. Tiles here are an adobe material and are big. They are called tejas We ordered the tejas and I asked the woman how they are made, and she said why don’t you walk over to where they are made so you can see. So we walked down the street to where they make the tejas and the woman gave us kind of a tour. They make a mud mixture, and wake up at 2am to mold the tejas, because they have to do it when there is no sun, so they don’t dry out before they are supposed to, or something like that. The place has light bulbs hanging outside so they can see what they are doing at 2am. Once it gets light out, the tiles are left to dry under the sun, and after they dry for a day or a few days, they are baked on top of a huge oven. It was pretty interesting. I felt like we were on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, taking a field trip to a community business. One tile costs 3 Lempiras, which is about 15 cents, which is a lot when you think about how many tiles one house needs. It’s really hard work to make them, though. The family invited me to come one morning, early, and I could try making some tejas. It sounds exciting.
Today I had a meeting that the environmental office (UMA) of a nearby town invited me to. They want to start a micro bank for the farmers involved in the town farmers market. The woman in charge of UMA didn`t tell me I`d have to do anything, but when I got there, she asked me to explain to everyone what a micro bank is, what it does, and to form it. I had nothing with me and wasn`t expecting to do it. So I just stood up and explained it all off the top of my head. Then they elected the president and all the other board members. It`s a good project. They want to better organize the farmers market. It was an all day affair, but very interesting. I think I`ll definately be working more with this town`s UMA, the woman in charge is very motivated. She`s not really in charge of anyone, she is the whole office. So she has a lot of work managing water sources, avoiding forest fires, etc. She told me she would find me a pretty sombrero so we can work in the field together.
Next week I have to go to the capital for Reconnect, a Peace Corps workshop. All the volunteers from my project, Munincipal Development, will be there, and our project managers, around 30 people. We have to present what we’ve been working on since we got to site and then we have to listen to presentations about different things. I’ll be gone all week and when I get back I need to meet with the school principals since the new school year begins Feb 14.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Medical Brigade
Last week I went to help translate for the medical brigade in Lempira, a neighboring department. The people in the brigade were really nice. There were 3 doctors, 2 nurses, 2 woman working in the farmacy, 2 women working with the kids, and 3 men doing construction projects. Most of them were from Arkansas and they had very strong accents. In addition to me, there were 6 other volunteers there to translate. So we had a really fun group and it was great spending time together and showing off our knowledge of Honduras to the people from Arkansas. Some of them had come many previous years, but for some it was their first time here.
We stayed at sort of a compound, a center for training groups and retreats. There were a bunch of buildings. We slept there and ate there and the patients came there to be seen. They fed us so much. We had breakfast, a snack, lunch, another snack, and dinner. And there was so much food and it was really good. I felt like I was on a cruise, with the amount I was eating.
The first day we had a little over 100 patients. There were less the next days, and in the afternoons, we didn`t really have anything to do. They were hoping for more people to come. The first two days I translated for the nurses, so I was just asking people what was wrong, for how long they had had the conditions, and asked them to step on the scale. It was pretty easy.
The 3rd day in the morning I translated for one of the doctors. That was very interesting. Our first patient was a pregnant woman, and we got to listen to the baby`s heartbeat! There was another woman with extremely high blood pressure. They would have rushed her to the hospital in the US, she was really on the verge of having a stroke. They couldn`t do much, though, just give her lots of medicine. There was an old woman who they thought probably had throat cancer, and told her to go to a specialist, but she probably won`t be able to. There was another woman who probably had schitsophrenia. It was an interesting week.
I also helped with the farmacy, explaining medicine dosages to people, and fitting people with eyeglasses. Mothers would come in with thier 3 children, and they would be getting all different medicines, and in many cases the mother would be illiterate. So then I would have to carefully explain which medicine was for what and when to take it. It made me nervous, because it would be hard for her to keep straight all the medicines.
In the mornings I went running with one of the other volunteers. It was a really pretty area. We would go on walks in the evenings. One afternoon me and one of the other volunteers went to help the old man fish in their tilapia ponds. That was fun. At the end of the week, the nurses prepared goodie bags for us, with vitamins, coloring books, and lots of other good stuff. They were a great group.
This week I am puppy sitting my friends` golden retriever puppy. He is so cute but a lot of work. I will post pictures soon.
We stayed at sort of a compound, a center for training groups and retreats. There were a bunch of buildings. We slept there and ate there and the patients came there to be seen. They fed us so much. We had breakfast, a snack, lunch, another snack, and dinner. And there was so much food and it was really good. I felt like I was on a cruise, with the amount I was eating.
The first day we had a little over 100 patients. There were less the next days, and in the afternoons, we didn`t really have anything to do. They were hoping for more people to come. The first two days I translated for the nurses, so I was just asking people what was wrong, for how long they had had the conditions, and asked them to step on the scale. It was pretty easy.
The 3rd day in the morning I translated for one of the doctors. That was very interesting. Our first patient was a pregnant woman, and we got to listen to the baby`s heartbeat! There was another woman with extremely high blood pressure. They would have rushed her to the hospital in the US, she was really on the verge of having a stroke. They couldn`t do much, though, just give her lots of medicine. There was an old woman who they thought probably had throat cancer, and told her to go to a specialist, but she probably won`t be able to. There was another woman who probably had schitsophrenia. It was an interesting week.
I also helped with the farmacy, explaining medicine dosages to people, and fitting people with eyeglasses. Mothers would come in with thier 3 children, and they would be getting all different medicines, and in many cases the mother would be illiterate. So then I would have to carefully explain which medicine was for what and when to take it. It made me nervous, because it would be hard for her to keep straight all the medicines.
In the mornings I went running with one of the other volunteers. It was a really pretty area. We would go on walks in the evenings. One afternoon me and one of the other volunteers went to help the old man fish in their tilapia ponds. That was fun. At the end of the week, the nurses prepared goodie bags for us, with vitamins, coloring books, and lots of other good stuff. They were a great group.
This week I am puppy sitting my friends` golden retriever puppy. He is so cute but a lot of work. I will post pictures soon.
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