Christmas

People have been asking my about Christmas here and how it´s celebrated. It´s not as big of a deal as it is in the US. Some houses have lights and trees, but not everyone. There´s not much gift giving, mostly just for the kids. People make tamales and stay up until midnight on Christmas Eve and shoot off fireworks. It didn´t feel like Christmas at all. There was no Christmas music, or decorations, or snow, or presents. I had a nice Christmas, but it was sad not being home. I miss you all and Merry Christmas!

13 dec

The past couple weeks have been pretty good. Although last week I had several meetings not work out. Last Wednesday, the 5^th, I had a community meeting to talk about a kindergarten and only two people showed up, so I said I would just start having classes and maybe more people would join later. So I had my first Kindergarten class last Friday. Last Thursday we had another meeting with the women who make bread, to form a community bank/ micro-enterprise, but not enough people came so we rescheduled it for the following Monday. The following Monday more people came and we were able to have the meeting. Last Saturday, I went to a meeting at the library in town that the director for the youth program was giving. It was really good. About 10 kids came and they seemed really excited about it. The director talked a lot about the importance of reading, which you don’t hear much of here. Nobody I know of reads just to read. The library will have drama groups, debates, and reading clubs.

I’ve had three days of kindergarten now and it’s fun. It’s more like preschool since the kids are 2-4. I have 3 or 4 kids and have class for 2 hours. We are learning colors, counting, coloring, and drawing. We played Candy Land one day. They are having a hard time remembering the colors, but they’ve definitely improved already. It’s really tiring though, I can’t imagine having a whole class of little kids and being with them all day every day. I have a whole new respect for teachers. Last class the older sister of one of the kids came with to help and she was really good with the kids, so I’m hoping her and another teenager nearby can continue the classes on their own. One day after class, I was walking around the aldea (village) and the streets were lined with chip bags, so I started picking them up. There is a project of making purses out of chip bags, which I didn´t learn how to do yet, but I figured I´d start collecting bags to do it. So I picked up a ton of bags, then went home and cut them and washed them. Some of them were pretty nasty, since they had been sitting on the road and were all dirty.

On Tuesday I went to help out a nearby volunteer who has a youth baseball team, with a practice. It was so much fun. These kids have never played baseball and since no one plays it here, it’s really a foreign sport to them, but they really play pretty well. Not that many kids are going to practice now, because they are out picking coffee, but they started out with a lot, and once school starts again, more will come again. So I’m hoping to help out a lot with that. It’s great to have the chance to play baseball. I’m happy I brought my mitt to Honduras.

My house is coming along. I can’t wait to move in.

19 dec Wed

Yesterday I walked to the village to give kindergarten class. I spent a couple hours on Monday cutting Christmas tree shapes out of cardboard so that the kids could decorate Christmas trees and then we will glue them to toilet paper roles so they stand up. I think it will be a fun project, but I don´t know when I´ll be able to do it, because the last two days haven´t worked out. Monday was a really foggy morning and the trees looked pretty in the mist. At one point, one of my host brothers was on the horse riding toward me, and he was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the hood up, and in the mist he looked like an elf from Lord of the Rings. So I walk all the way up there to the house where I do classes, when we don´t go to the school, and find out that the whole family is going to Santa Rosa. So I would be losing a third of my students, since I only have 3 students. So I said, ok, I guess I´ll come back tommorrow, and I turned around to walk all the way back to the house. I was ducking under one of the barb wire fences and I hit my head hard on the post. Then, as I was walking down one of the hills, I completely slipped, and skidded down the hill a little. I wasn´t hurt at all, but my pants got all muddy. So then I had to go home and hand wash my muddy pants in the cold, with freezing water. That I didn´t even mind so much. I´m lucky we have a washing machine and I seldom have to hand wash clothes. But what bothered me is that the family only has one pila, and they use it to wash clothes and to clean to just killed chickens. They currently have like 600 chickens, and pretty much everyday they are killing, plucking, cleaning, and packaging chicken. So when I wash clothes, I have to do it in the same place they wash dead chickens, and the ground is littered with chicken feathers, and it smells bad, and I wonder how clean my clothes are getting if they are getting covered in chicken germs. Anyway, it wasn´t a great day. In the afternoon we had two meetings with rural banks, and they were pretty boring and I was so cold.

Today I was going to go give classes so we could make Christmas trees, but it was really foggy and they told me it was better not to go.

Lately, I´ve been spending a lot of time visiting my hostgrandparents. They are really tiny and old. They live in the house next to us. My host grandma has a hard time hearing me or understanding me, so our conversations are kind of funny, because I´ll say something and she´ll reply with something completely different. She likes to feed me, and she makes really good tortillas. And my hostgrandpa is really interesting. So I really like visiting them.

On Saturday, they are coming over, with my host grandma´s two sisters, and I´m going to show them how to make Christmas cookies. We´re going to make the peanut butter cookies with the Hershey Kiss in the middle, sugar cookies with M&Ms, oatmeal raisin cookies, and lemon bars. I´m really excited. I need to buy cookie trays, measuring cups and measuring spoons because no one has any of that.

I started to make a purse out of the chip bags I collected. You cut strips out of the bags, and then kind of criss cross them together into strands, and then sew the strands together. I´ll have to take a picture. So I made all the strands, and now I need to find a big needle to sew them together. I´ve been really bored lately. Nothing is going on. Last week was really warm and sunny but all of this week has been cold and rainy. My couterpart host dad´s been out of the house all day working on coffee and chicken stuff, so we haven´t been going anywhere or working on anything. I have the kindergarten classes, but I can´t even always go if the weather´s too bad. I can´t wait until school starts again, and I can´t wait to live in town.

Moving out

After a lot of thought, I´ve decided to move out of my homestay. When I first got here, I thought maybe I would stay here, but now I´d really rather live in my own house, and in town, for many reasons. I´ve been living with host families for nearly five months, and I miss the privacy and independence of living on my own. It´s true I have my own little house here, but it´s still connected to the family´s house, and I don´t have a kitchen. I miss deciding and preparing what I want to eat, and eating when I want to. It´s hard being on someone else´s schedule and eating what someone else feels like cooking. Also, I can hear everything from my room and they can hear everything I do. For example, one night, I had a cold, and I was up all during the night blowing my nose, and the next morning, they were all asking me how I felt, since they could here me up all night with a stuffy nose. I would like a little more privacy than that. And my room shares a wall with the house bathroom, so I can hear everytime someone uses the bathroom. I just would rather have my own independent house. Two years is a long time.

More importantly, I feel really isolated where we are, and really dependent on my host parents all the time. There are only 3 other houses here! How am I supposed to integrate into the community and work with the community if I´m not living in the community? It makes things really difficult and it´s really hard to get around. I´m also with my host family all the time, since they are also my counterparts. They are great counterparts, I couldn´t imagine better counterparts, but I´m here for the whole community, and I feel limited in what I can do with my current living situation. And I feel like it´s not a great idea to live with your counterpart. There´s a lack of a divide between home and work, and you become too dependent on that person. So I really need to move out of the house, and have my own house and more independence.

Also, I think I´ll be happier in town. This whole past year, while I was waiting for my Peace Corps assignment, when I found out it was Honduras, when I was in training, I always pictured myself living in a small town. I like where I´m living- everyday I can´t believe how beautiful it is- but I think I could be more effective as a volunteer in town. I´ll be able to walk around all over. I can work with all the schools, and the mayor´s office. There are three towns all right next to each other, so I can work with all three munincipalities. My project is Munincipal Development, which is working with the local government and community based organizations. We learned all about how the government functions in training, but I haven´t done much with the government because I haven´t been in town that much. Of course, I want to continue working alot in the aldeas, in the mountains. I really like the people and there are some great projects I want to work on here. But I think I can be more useful in town.

So I told my host dad two weeks ago that I decided to move out, even though I really like living with them, but that I´m used to living alone, and that´s just how we are, all volunteers have thier own houses. I was really nervous about telling him. I had been worrying about it for weeks, since I know he wants me to stay living with them, and they built me that whole little house, and I feel guilty about leaving after all they´ve done for me. But then I thought, if I was able to tell my own family that I was leaving for two years to live in another country, then I should be able to tell this family I met two months ago that I´m leaving their house to a house 40 minutes away. That gave me some resolve to tell him. He was disapointed, since they were expecting my to stay with them, but he said it was ok, he understood. He said it would be hard to find housing in town, though, which made me worried it would be months before I found an available house.

So last Saturday, Dec. 1, was World AIDS Day, and there was an educational fair in the town next to my town. The volunteer who lives there was helping to run it, so I went to help out. I was talking to one of the nurses who lives in San Pedro, my town, and I said I wanted to move there and did she know of any houses available. This was the first person I asked about housing, and she said yes, her sister had a house that no one was living in. They were renting it out to students but now it´s empty. It was so lucky that the first person I asked about houses had a house available! So later that day I went to see it. It´s a few blocks from the park and mayor´s office. It´s a nice house, and it´s in a quiet, pretty area of town. The house has two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a main room. It doesn´t have a pila (which is like a large sink that also stores lots of water, I keep meaning to take a picture of one to post) but they said they could build me one. The house doesn´t have tiled floors, just concrete, but that´s ok. It has a nice front porch. So tommorrow I´m going back to talk to the woman about improvements that need to be made and rent, and to sign a contract. I´m hoping to move in in January if everything´s ready. I think I´m going to buy a new camera next week, since mine won´t turn on anymore, and then I´ll take some pictures of the house.

Now that I´ve decided to move out, and that I´ve told my host family, I feel much better and more positive. I have something to look forward to, and I´ll be doing what I wanted to do from the begining. I did give it a shot here, and I´m going to live here through December, and maybe part of January, but to be happy here for two years, I want my own house and I don´t want to be so isolated. So I´m really looking forward to the oppurtunities I´ll have in town and the independence I´ll have with my own house!

pictures from the biodigestor

me with a 1 day old baby calf.

inserting the bag that holds the biogas into its ditch

my host brother crawling through the bags in order to put one bag inside the other,

to double bag them

rolling out the plastic

my blue bedroom

I haven´t been writing much lately because my computer is broken. I´m hoping to get it fixed, but I just don´t know if it will be possible. Anyway, things are going well. The weather has been pretty nice the last few weeks. It hasn´t been raining too much, and it´s been in the 70s during the day.

I decided recently that I like life here, in Honduras as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and that I could be really happy here for the next 2 years. There are many moments when I really miss people or places in the US, but I think the time will pass really quickly.

This month me and my counterpart organization helped form two rural community banks. They already had members but we explained the functions, the rules, and had them elect the officers. It was pretty interesting. We have to go back to give them training in accounting, transparency, savings, credit, and things like that. Yesterday we went to the town meeting at the mayor´s office, and the two banks were made official and given funding to begin. There was a great photo op of the mayor shaking hands with the bank president and handing him a thick stack of bills. Unfortuneately, my camera hardly turns on anymore, so I wasn´t able to get a picture.

Sunday was the 6^th grade graduation at the school I was giving charlas at. School ended a few weeks ago, but they just had the graduation. There were only 4 students graduating from 6^th grade, my host brother, and 3 girls. It was a nice ceremony with cake. I told the parents that I would like to give Kindergarten classes to the little kids in December and January. So I´m having a meeting tommorrow with all the parents in the community who are interested. I want to have class 1 or 2 days a week for a couple hours each day, and have someone from the community, maybe my host sister, helping me. And then in Februrary, she can continue giving classes in someone´s house, and can find another helper. That is, if the community wants to continue with it. I like working with kids, but I don´t want to be teaching kindergarten for the next two years, which isn´t even sustainable. But I think if I start it off, have someone helping, and show it can be done, people will like it and want to support it. That way they can have sort of a kindergarten without needing a building or teacher. It´s better than the kids sitting at home all day, anyway.

I´d really like to do a garbage project. In the aldeas, in the mountains, everyone burns thier garbage. I´m not sure what to do about that, because it would be really hard to start a functioning garbage dump out here. Everyone is so spread apart. But it´s something I´m going to look into. In town, where there is garbage collection, I want to start a program to encourage throwing away garbage, not dropping it in the street, and building garbage cans in the town parks. I really want to do a big program to educate people about reusing and recycling. There isn´t any kind of recycling program, but a volunteer near me is working in starting one, so I want to see what I can do. It would make me so happy to get a good garbage and recycling program going.

This Saturday, I´m going to a meeting at the new Reicken Library in town. They are funded by a man in the US, but the community has to provide the land, labor, and maintenance. Each library gets computers and some books to start out, and it´s up to the community to get more books. They are really nice libraries, with free internet, good books, a community meeting room, and lots of programs, for all the members of the community. These libraries are being built all over the country. Our library was finished about 2 months ago. I want to help coordinate reading groups, writing groups, drama groups, and an environmental club through the library. I´m really excited about it beacause I love libraries, and books. And this library has free internet!

I have lots of other ideas for projects. Hopefully they will work.

Nov 12

this is an entry i typed weeks ago but never had a chance to post, so i`m posting it now.

12 november

I haven’t written in a while because I have had much positive to say, but now I have some interesting things to write about.
Last week the kittens were born, and there are 2 males and 1 female. They are so cute and tiny. I’ve never seen kittens right after they were born, they’re like mice. The boys are white with orangish-brown spots and the girl is grey and black striped. I’m going to name mine Mateo Miguel Fernando. They have to stay with their mother for a while still; they haven’t even opened their eyes yet.

More work-related, we finally had the biodigestor latrine workshop this weekend. A volunteer who has built a lot of them traveled here on Saturday to teach us how to do it, and another volunteer who lives near me came to see it. It was nice having them here and showing them where I live. The project is basically a large tunnel of thick plastic lining, of several meters length, to hold the waste, and the gases go up a pvc pipe to the stove. The waste goes into one end of the tunnel, the gas goes up through a tube in the top, and runs to the cook stove. The bacteria dies in the plastic lining, and the remaining waste liquid that comes out can be used to fertilize a garden or a fish pond. It’s pretty simple. To start the gases working, you have to pour in five buckets of a mixture of manure and water every day. It should start producing gas after a month, and produces about 6 hours of gas a day to cook from. The plastic we had was smaller than what they normally use, so ours will only produce about 3 hours a day of gas. It’s a free source of fuel for cooking, and saves a good deal of fire wood.

The next step is to get people interested in the project, write a proposal, and submit for funding. Peace Corps provides funds up to $6,000 to volunteers to do small projects like this, so I’m probably going to apply to that fund. It can take up to 6 months or more to get funding, so this is really something for next year.

The volunteer who came to do the workshop is a really interesting guy. He has already been here over two years, because he extended for a few months, and when he finishes his service at the end of the year, he will stay in Honduras to work with an NGO here. He got married to a Honduran in June, I think she is his counterpart’s daughter. When he got to Honduras, he didn’t know any Spanish, just a few words, and now he speaks like a Honduran. He even tells stories like a Honduran. He has tons of stories, I learned a lot.

Also, he got his Master’s in forest science, and he knows the name of every plant, tree, and fruit in English and Spanish. It’s really amazing. We walked all around the farm and he and my counterpart talked about plants. I’ve never heard so much about plants in my life. I could probably take a semester class in botany and not learn as much as I did from him in two days. The quantity of fruit varieties in just the area behind the house is overwhelming. There are little fruits that look just like tangerines, but they are lemons, and taste just as sour as any yellow lemon. And there are lemons and oranges that are bigger than grapefruits. And there is a huge tree of passion fruit, which grow really big. And a fruit that tastes like a squash, but it grows from a tree, and they hang down almost on vines. And most of the fruit falls to the ground and rots. That just begins the strange fruits growing here. On the property here, there are probably like 10 varieties of oranges growing. No bananas, because it’s not hot enough, but there are platanos (plantains), some of which can be eaten raw, and some which are harder and have to be cooked. There are 50 varieties of platanos in the country.

In other projects, we are supposed to give training to the rural micro banks, sometime this week, hopefully. Last week there was another meeting at the mayor’s office about the women’s bank but only 8 women showed up, and only 2 were the same from the week before. So I don’t know what’s going to happen with that. School is over, so I’m looking for some kind of youth group or something that I can work with and give charlas to. I also want to get some funding to get Christmas presents for really needy kids so we can have a Christmas party for them and hand out presents. That’s about all for now.

Sorry I haven´t updated in a long time. I´ve had really limited internet access, and then when I do get a chance to use the internet, it`s either extremely slow, or it doesn`t accept my USB memory stick, so I can`t update. I have a couple blogs written, and some pictures, but this computer won`t take my memory stick. Hopefully this weekend I can really update. But things are going alright. For a while I was feeling really discouraged and negative, but now I`m feeling more positive about things. I don`t have much work going on. In the next 2 weeks we are going to do some training sessions for some rural banks. I want to start giving kindergarten classes a couple times a week, so I`m trying to organize that. That`s all for now, I`ll try to post my previous entries soon.

My Week

On Monday I was going to go to the school to give a charla, but as I started to walk it started drizzling and then my host grandpa, a little old man, yelled up the hill at me to turn around, don´t go, you´ll get rained on. So I sighed and walked back down the hill. He gave me a ride in an ox cart, which was interesting. Oxen are kind of scary, they´re so big. Then I sat in their house for a few hours and drank coffee. It rained hard all day so it´s probably good I didn´t walk 40 minutes to the school in the rain. Monday afternoon I read magazines.

Tuesday morning it was raining really hard again. So I painted my bedroom a pretty blue color. It was the most exciting part of my week. It looks really nice. In the afternoon I went with my host family to deliver chicken and cheese to people and to visit some friends.

Wednesday morning we had a meeting at the mayor´s office with a group of woman who make and sell tortillas, bread, and cakes, to talk about forming a group of them. As a group, they could get loans and expand their enterprises. The mayor wants to start sort of a farmer´s market, which would be an outlet for these women to sell thier goods. Unfortuneately, only 5 of the 20 women invited came to the meeting. Of course, the mayor´s office only told them about it the day before, and the meeting was at 9am, which isn´t a good time for women, especially bakers, to leave the house. So we planned a second meeting for this coming Wednesday. Despite the lack of participants, the meeting still lasted 3 hours. Well , really 2 hours, the first hour was just waiting and talking, because people generally come an hour later for community type meetings, so the meetings start 1-2 hours after the set time. But it sounds like the women are interested in forming a group, so hopefully this Wednesday´s meeting will have some results. Wednesday afternoon I took a long walk in the mountains, because it was actually a sunny day, and it was so nice just being able to walk, and it´s a beautiful landscape.

On Thursday we went to Santa Rosa so I could go to the bank. Thursday evening we went to my host mom´s brother´s house for his birthday. Unfortuneately there was no cake. Last week i taught my host family how to make Rice Krispy Treats and they were really amazed at how easy they are to make, and they really liked them. It was one of my bigger successes so far, making Rice Krispy Treats. I would definately reccomend that to other volunteers.

Friday I finally made it to the school. I gave the little kids a talk on values and then we sang ´head, shoulders, knees, and toes´in English. They really liked that. And then Simon says, using the body parts we learned from the song. A few of the kids just didn´t get it though. It didn´t matter if I said Simon or not. Then I worked with the bigger kids, and we reviewed the English I taught them last week, then we sang ´head, shoulders, knees, and toes´ which they loved, we did it like 10 times, and we were going pretty fast by the end. We played Simon Says, and 3 of the kids I couldn´t fake out, so after a while, I called all 3 winners. It was a fun school day, but it was my last charla for the year because next week they have tests and then they are done. Next year I´m going to start charlas on the environment and also civic education.

So that was my week. I also got in contact with the volunteer about the latrines and he is coming next Saturday to do the workshop.

Pics!

Coffee season is starting.

ripe coffee beans/grains are red

the little coffee procesor at the house

you pour the grains in the top and
the machine takes off the peel/pulp, leaving just the white bean

The white beans, depulped (without the peel)

The leftover pulp (peel)

This leftover pulp is a huge waste issue. It is very acidic, and can easily pollute the water, yet there is no good method for disposing of it, people just dump it wherever they can. And can you imagine the quantity leftover, since everyone is depulping large quantities of coffee for three months. We are hoping to work with the biodigestor latrine to use it to dispose of the pulp and use its gases to cook with.

I don´t know if I´ve talked about this latrine, it´s a project we´re starting next month, which uses the methane gases from human waste to cook with on a gas stove. So it´s avoiding deforestation, since no wood is needed to cook, and it´s a latrine.

Before electricity

1 month down! (23 to go)
Today marks one month in site. It went pretty fast. I did a lot, although not that much work. But no one expects you to do much your first couple months, it´s more of a time to settle in and get to know people and your surroundings. I´ve had a few days where I felt really homesick or I felt like this is just really hard, but overall, I´m happy and positive.
The past 4 days have been really cold, well in the lower 60s/upper 50s probably, but it feels colder because there is no installation or heat, so it´s chilly inside, too. It´s warmer in town, during the day, but up on my mountain, it´s really cold. I´ve been sleeping in sweat pants, long sleeves, and socks, with 3 blankets. I don´t have a comforter, just some fleece blankets, so I just pile them on. And it´s going to get colder. Still, I´m really happy I won´t have to deal with a real winter, with freezing wind, and ice, and snow. This will be the first year of my life without snow.

Tuesday the electricity went out around 4:30 pm. It’s pretty dark out by 5:30 or 6, so we had to light candles and sit in the dark. Apparently a large region of the West was without power and they said there have been times when the power went out in the entire country. The power outage led to a really interesting conversation with my host parents.

I learned that they just got electricity in the community about four years ago. So then I asked what they used to do at night, since now they watch TV at night, but they didn’t have that a few years ago, to which they responded that they would talk, de-grain corn, and go to bed early. They didn’t have fridges, and they didn’t have iceboxes, since there’s no way to get ice, but there were some people with gas-powered fridges. Mainly they just didn’t have things that needed to be kept cold. If they killed a chicken, they would eat the whole chicken that day. Beef and pork they would dry in the sun or else smoke it above the stove in the kitchen to preserve the meat. Since there were no phones, the towns used telegraphs to communicate between themselves, Morse Code style. Then they told me that people in the community only began to get cars recently, everyone used to only travel by horse or walking really far, and they used oxen to transport. There are still many horses in use for transportation, but most people in my community have cars. My host mom said she was in 6th grade the first time she ever saw a car. And she’s only 34.

The conversation got more surprising. They explained how they didn’t have plastic cups or glasses so they used cups made of mud, or gourds, and they wrapped things in leaves since they didn’t have containers. My mouth dropped open when my host dad said that when he was in elementary school they didn’t have pens or pencils so they had to use feathers to write and they had to make their own ink. And he’s only 42. And I didn’t believe him when he told me that they didn’t have matches, so they had to start fires by rubbing rocks together. But he was serious. People carried flint around to start fires. And they didn’t even have candles, they had to make candles out of beeswax. I was really taken aback. Life used to be like that in the US, with horses and making candles, and feather pens, but it was like 100 years ago, not like 20 years ago. It’s amazing how much things have changed in the community in the last few years, since now everyone seems to have a TV and a fridge, and lots of other things.