December 11, 2007

Blog

Hey all, Feliz Navidad.
I haven’t blogged in awhile and I think that is directly related to the amount of exciting things going on. Its been a little slow lately, but that is ok I think things are going to speed up with the new year and maybe life will be a little more exciting then.

I also haven’t blogged anything work related lately so this is a little work update before the holidays, hopefully all of the office-bound readers will check before heading home.

Anyhow, like I said things have been a little slow. My counterpart organization just finished up a round of water projects that I had very little to do with since I got to Honduras pretty late in the project but they are starting a new round of projects in new communities in January (hopefully January, but I’m afraid that means February). If things go well, I can manage to be an integral part of those projects.

Last week in an attempt to prepare for the new projects I gave a surveying class to the 3 technicians from the JAM (my counterpart agency). All of the new water projects will be gravity-fed systems with a conduction line and tank followed by a distribution network. Someone is going to need to survey all of these in order to properly design flow rates and such, so I decided to try and train the technicians so that I wouldn’t have to do all of the surveys. I like surveying and I wouldn’t mind doing them all myself, but that would also be a little risky since I am a PC volunteer and can get sent home for such ridiculous things as riding a motorcycle or not taking a god-awful amount of malaria medication. If I can train someone else to do it then there is less of a problem for the organization when I get a medivac for getting hit by a car (very probable in Danlí) or contract bird flu (I bought 2 ducks last time I went to the campo). So I wrote up a little manual and had a 3-day training in surveying with a theodolite. I invited two other PCV wat/san volunteers to help. The classes were about 7 hours long with class time and field work each day. My Spanish hits a really big wall at hour 3 so having the extra help was really a good thing. The class went surprisingly well and I will follow up with more field training after the New Year. I will most likely go with each technician on their first survey and make sure everything is going well. After I can see that they are capable of doing an accurate survey, I will make up some diplomas so that in the future they could potentially find work surveying for other organizations. If this works I will feel pretty good about it. Check out the pics below:

Preparing the night before in casa

In the field, notice the world war II era theodolite in front

Two of the technicians

November 27, 2007

THANKSGIVING!

Ahh, one of few truly American holidays. We celebrated it with “gusto” in Honduras last Friday and continued celebrating throughout the weekend. Luke and I offered to host the Paradise (the state we live in is called Paradise) Thanksgiving at our house on Friday. Almost everyone from our department/state made it and a friend of Luke and I’s from a town south of Tegus. We had 9 people total for the main meal on Friday and everyone brought something to share. We had: a 20 lb turkey, mashed potatoes and real gravy from the pan drippings, green bean casserole (I actually had to deep fry onions for the French’s onions), stuffed squash, candied yams, salad (with greens from our garden!), homemade rolls (thanks for the recipe grandma Bauer – they were a hit!), creamed corn, chili con queso soup with fried tortillas (apparently a Texas tradition), cranberry sauce, homemade pumpkin and apple pie (thanks grandma for the crust recipe) and vanilla ice cream. We were definitely in the “turkey coma” starting Friday afternoon until the leftovers finally got eaten Saturday evening! Saturday morning people came back over for my famous homemade Monkey bread and hung out for lunch. A few Paraiso volunteers that had gone to another Tgiving celebration were passing back through Danlí on their way home and stopped by for a beer but ended up staying overnight Saturday and helping us finish up leftovers. People kept stopping in and out, which made it feel like a real Thanksgiving. The last of the guests left yesterday (Sunday) afternoon.

Mass chaos in the kitchen while we got all the food ready!

The pretty pies!

Yummy!
Sitting down to eat
Breaking out the leftovers and board games
Luke overdid it! (see bottom of pic where he´s laying down)
Saturday am: Everyone came back for breakfast
Sat. night: Tara and & I break out the leftovers once again!
Stuffing ourselves for the last time Sat. night

November 12, 2007

In memory...

Moose (Moosey)
December 20, 2004 - November 7, 2007
You were loved by many! We´ll miss you!







October 26, 2007

5 am wake-up calls by hail marys?????

Ok, it happened again and now it’s happened enough that it’s blog worthy. Truthfully, the first time it happened it was blog worthy because it was odd that it happened once…now that it’s happened around 10 times, it’s just plain outrageous!

Here in Danlí (in our neighborhood) there are several things that could wake you up before you’re ready to get up:

1. Fighting dogs
2. Loud roosters
3. Honking taxis
4. A neighbor playing really bad 80s music
5. Cohetes (loud “boom” firecrackers)
6. Someone driving a truck around with a speaker or two in the bed doing some sort of advertisement (this has happened both really early in the morning at 4:30 am and really late at night around midnight)

Fortunately, of the six things listed above, Luke and I are now able to sleep through numbers 1-5 quite consistently. However, about three weeks ago we had to add a number 7 to the list. Before I explain to you what number 7 is, I have to explain something about churches here in Honduras and more specifically, in Danlí.

I think Luke mentioned in another blog that Hondurans are evangelical, Mormon, or catholic. Churches here seem to have the attitude that louder is better and almost all church services (evangelical anyway) employ the use of speakers, microphones, and a synthesizer (you can imagine how this sounds). For some reason, the catholic church here in town must have felt that they were getting “out-sung” by their fellow evangelicals and decided to purchase a few speakers and start parading around at 5 am singing, praying and doing “hail-Mary’s” with a loudspeaker. This is also usually accompanied with or prefaced by ringing church bells. We have told recent visitors about number 7 when they stay here and they laugh and think it’s funny but the next morning once they’ve been woken up by it are angry and amazed that this actually takes place.

It’s 5:30 am right now on a Friday morning and I was, once again, woken up by a hail-Mary this morning. Luke opened the portón one time to get a look at what exactly was going on and described it as something you’d see in a parade…a guy driving a truck super slow with a speaker followed by a guy with a microphone and then a bunch of people following the truck singing along. You’d think they’d hit different areas of Danlí to assure that everyone hears their good news but unfortunately they pass back and forth on our street at least 4 times a week now anywhere between 4:45 and 5:45 am. I’m looking forward to our upcoming trip to get out of Danlí for a week! :)

October 22, 2007

Aguacates!

We´ve found avocados of every size and shape here (who knew that the Mexican avocado wasn´t the only kind??). Below is a pic of me at the dinner table with toasted flour tortillas and avocado (I also love to eat them plain with salt). The really tiny avocado only had about two spoonfuls in each half and the big one was too big to eat at once.




I´m also including a pic of Luke sucking ¨chupando¨an orange. The oranges here (surprise!) are actually yellowish green and absolutely delicious. They have a thick shell so I buy them from a lady who uses this metal thing to peel the rind. You then cut the orange in half and suck out the pulp and juice. (Take note of the hanging shelves in the background that Luke built for our books!)

October 15, 2007

Smells like pumpkin spice...

Hello from Honduras! Fall is in full swing at home…rustling leaves, afternoon football games, Starbucks Pumpkin Spice lattés (ok that’s sort of a joke but I do miss the occasional lateé)…it’s funny how what Luke and I talk about often has to do with what we’d be doing at home during a particular season of the year. Luckily here the weather has been very “fall-like” (for Honduras). Since last Sunday, there has been a low front hovering over southern Honduras bringing us cool and rainy days (lower 70s) and even cooler nights. Luke and I both love it. After seeing the hot sun every day during dry season and then usually for part of the day during the rainy season (late June-December) it’s nice to have a string of cool days where the sun doesn’t even peak through! We sat outside the other night and had to put on sweaters!

Our good friends Dory and Jarod sent us a package a few weeks ago that contained several delicious beers from the New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins (where we were living before moving to Honduras). And since we have been reminiscing about fall weather we thought we’d blog about what sipping those beers reminded us of….

- Car camping along the Poudre river
- Sitting outside our garage on summer weekend nights with the dog and grilling
- Hanging with Sally and Jason in Denver (Luke’s sister & brother-in-law)
- CSU Rams football games (we usually lost but oh well!)
- The New Belgium brewery tour (ok, we only when on the actual “tour” once but frequented the place after work and when visitors came for the free samples)
- Hanging out with our friends Dory and Jarod
- Going out to eat downtown Fort Collins
- Picnicking up on the Horsetooth Reservoir
- $1 New Belgium drafts on Tuesday nights or during Colorado Avalanche hockey games at a divey (but very delicious) Italian restaurant on Prospect
- Friday nights at home just Luke and I and Moose listening to music and cooking something tasty

We definitely miss Fort Collins and our friends and family (and of course, our dog Moose). The homesickness (thank goodness) isn’t a constant feeling …more of sometimes surprisingly powerful wave that comes on a bad day, after looking at a picture, hearing from family or being reminded of something from home.

(See below for another blog I posted today on our work update)

Work & Leisure

Several of you got the following paragraphs in an email (these are updated) but for those who didn’t, here is an update on what we’ve been up to work-wise.

Luke is currently working on putting together a class on how to survey for the “técnicos” at his counterpart organization. Técnicos are basically guys with construction experience but no real education. The técnicos at his counterpart organization are in charge of overseeing the water systems that the communities put in (construction supervision), hygiene, health, watershed management, and environmental education, preliminary surveys, etc. However, their surveying skills could use some improvement. He feels that this would definitely be sustainable and something he will enjoy doing.

Luke has also started teaching math several hours a week to 3rd-6th graders at the school for street kids (the one I blogged about). The school year ends in a month and they’re only on page 15 of their math books (in other words, they’re WAY far behind). This can be attributed to the kids having some learning difficulties but mainly because the teachers don’t do much to push the kids or “teach” them in my opinion. Even though the school year ends and the teachers stop coming, these kids still show up at the school everyday Nov-February (months of vacation) so he’s hoping he can work with them through those months and catch them up for next year.
Starting in January or February, Luke’s counterpart organization will be starting new water system projects in 7-10 communities that are very isolated (like the one in my blog about the trip to the campo). We’re planning to commit 3-5 days every month staying overnight in these communities. Luke would work with the guys in the community and oversee the construction of the water system (also do surveying and the water system designing) and I would work with the nurse from the local health center (if there is one) or with community volunteers on health education. We’re looking forward to this. Luke’s counterpart organization gives us money to cover the transportation, lodging and food for us while we’re working in these communities so we don’t have to worry about that.

I’m currently finishing up working with the 210 5th graders (6 classes) that I started working with in June. We finished up all the sex ed charlas last week (they went way better than expected) and started HIV/AIDS prevention this week. I gave them a preliminary test just to get an idea of what 5th graders in Honduras know about HIV/AIDS and it was really surprising…many still think it can be transferred through mosquitoes and saliva, some think there is a cure, that you can’t get it after having sex just one, etc. I’m going to give them the same test again after 3 hours of charlas. Before the school year ends, I need to make my decisions about who I’m going to ask (5 from each class) to be in my youth groups that I’m going to form starting next school year (in April). The focus of the youth groups will be leadership and community service.

I recently applied for and received a small community grant to work with the People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) support group here in Danlí. There are about 30 people who come regularly to meet once a month. We’re going to do two sessions, covering topics like reproductive health in PLWHA, sexual health, dealing with stress and depression, and adherence to medication. One of the workshops is this month and another one is in November.

Other than work, Luke and I spend a lot of time reading, cooking, and watching movies on our computer (thank goodness for DVD rippers!). Our garden didn’t work out so well the first time (lack of good soil) so we’ve been busy lately organizing the re-plant (getting fertilizer, weeding, etc.). Of all the flowers I planted, only 3 zinnias came up but they sure are pretty! It’s been cool lately so we’re going to try and plant lettuce and spinach. We ate a lot of leafy greens in the States and here the only lettuce you can find is iceberg and occasionally some weird tasting spinach at the market. We have a trip planned to the west at the beginning of November to visit some friends of ours (a married couple) in Santa Rosa de Copan. For Thanksgiving (it makes me sad to think about spending this holiday here in Honduras) the volunteers in our state are getting together for meal. It’s hard to believe that when we get back from the States in January we’ll be just a month shy of having been in Honduras for a whole year. I wouldn’t say the time is going fast necessarily, but it definitely is moving along.

October 4, 2007

Side note to last blog

An addition to my latest blog (see below)…I realized that I should explain better what “community” in the mountains of Honduras means. Normally, when we think of a small town or a community we think of a cluster of houses more or less close to each other. Here a “community” (aldea) usually consists of houses scattered along a road or trail. Rarely are two houses right next to each other. In the community we visited last week, there are about 40 houses included in the community but if you drive along the dirt road that hugs the mountainside, you might actually only see 10 of those houses. Most are either up or down from the road, hidden among the trees or coffee plants (about 8 feet when they’re mature). This definitely makes doing house-to-house visits more difficult and more of a workout!

September 28, 2007

Trip to the campo

This week Luke and I headed out to an aldea to work and came back with lots to write about. Luke’s assigned counterpart organization (JAM – Juntas de Agua Municipal) picked us up on Tuesday morning at 6:30 to drive us the 2 ½ hours to an aldea called El Recuerdo de la Esperanza. It was a long drive on dirt roads but luckily we were in a double-cabin Toyota pick-up so we weren’t too uncomfortable (and luckily I had remembered to take my motion sickness medicine before leaving). We went to the community with several objectives. The first was to take a look at the water tank the community has been building and check their progress of burying water pipes to get water to each house. This water project (funded by COSUDE – The Swiss Cooperation Orginization through the JAM) was supposed to be finished no later than September 30 but the community still has not completed everything (COSUDE provides all the funding for the project; the community provides all the labor, the JAM provides the technical assistance). We went to “check-up” on them and encourage them to get the project finished. The second objective of the visit was to do house-to-house visits with a community volunteer, going over basic hygiene and health issues. Part of the water project involved installing latrines for every house so I was also to go over maintenance of the latrine and make sure everyone in the family, kids included, are using it. This community is very poor and very isolated. To give you an idea of just how poor…before the water project began, only 2 of 41 houses had latrines (this means that people were just going to the bathroom somewhere outside, literally "didn´t have a pot to pis in"). Because the community is so isolated, their diet consists of mainly tortillas, beans, rice, and eggs and lacks fruits and veggies. Most of the kids are shoeless and were dirty from head to toe. A good number of them have the puffy bellies from parasites, malnutrition, or a combination of both. And, of course, there is no electricity.

We got to El Recuerdo at about 9 am on Tuesday morning after a bumpy ride and after crossing several rivers (without bridges) and many streams. We set off to hike up the mountain to visit the site of the water source and where the tank and filter are being built. The water source for the community (once the tank and system are finished) comes from several natural springs in the mountainside. The community sits in a valley with mountains on both sides. The one side of the valley is covered with vegetation and trees (the side with the water source). The other side of the community has been cleared and the farmers burn what remains in order to plant corn and beans. The side that has been slashed and burned has ZERO water sources and looks dry and dusty. (Wonder why??)

Standing on vegetated side, looking at the slashed-and-burned side.

After visiting the water tank site and filter to see how the job is coming along, we had lunch and then headed to the house where Luke and I would be staying the night. The house we stayed at was relatively nice compared to most houses in the community. There were three rooms – a kitchen and 2 bedrooms (each with 3 beds in them). Near the house that was perched on a hillside were the latrine and shower (see pic below).

The front side to this outdoor shower was open. It looked down the hill that was covered in coffee plants. No running water so we used a bucket of water and a paila (paila is a plastic container/bowl that is used here to shower, to wash dishes, hands, etc.). It was a cold, breezy shower!

Luke worked until 5 pm with some guys from the community, laying water pipe in front of the house we were staying at.

Luke working with the guys from the community

We ate dinner at 6 pm (avocado, rice, beans, and tortillas). Soon after, everyone in the house went to bed! Even though is was only 7 pm Luke and I decided to follow their lead and go to bed. It got dark around 6 pm and since there’s no electricity, by 7 pm it feels more like 10. We got out of bed the next morning around 5:15 and had the feeling that we’d missed breakfast. I asked the señora of the house (Doña Olga) what time she had gotten up at and she said 3:45! I suppose if you go to bed at 7, 3:45 doesn’t seem so early??? We had breakfast (eggs, beans, tortillas) then Luke set off for the tank to help out and I stayed around until Doña Olga (one of the community volunteers) was ready to go house to house with me. We were able to visit 13 houses in a little over 3 hours. Doña Olga did the introductions and then from there let me do the talking. At this time of day, the only people home are the wives and children. At each house I did the following things: looked over the latrine to make sure it was clean and asked to make sure everyone was using it, asked them how they were purifying their water (either by boiling it, using chlorine, or setting the water in the sun), asked about the family’s health, and if there were kids around, I gave a mini-charla on hand-washing and had all the kids wash their hands with me. I think I washed my hands with around 30 kids in all!

Clean hands! This pic was taken after I showed the kids how to wash their hands and explained to them when they should wash them.

Several things I noticed:
1) No one is purifying their water. The water system, once working, will bring treated water (with chlorine) to every house. However, currently their water is coming from a hose stuck in the mountain and they are not treating the water at all before consuming it.
2) A lot of kids were dirty and shoeless, running around outside with bare feet, stepping in chicken, pig, and/or dog poop then tracking it inside.
3) Almost every household has chickens and they are free to roam wherever and inevitably end up inside the house (see pic below of chickens roaming the front of the house where we stayed at).
4) Many women do NOT have chimneys on their wood stoves in the kitchen. In several of the houses I had to stand outside the kitchen to talk to the women because my eyes immediately started burning and I couldn´t help but cough because of all the smoke. The women are used to breathing that in on a daily basis and don’t realize it’s a health risk, especially for babies and young children. (See pic below of an example of VERY nice kitchen in a newer house in the community).
5) The kids are not in school! Apparently several months ago the teacher’s contract ran out (why the government would sign a contract that ends 4 months before the school year is over makes no sense to me!). According to many, the teacher was great and even organized a women’s group in the community. You can’t blame her for not wanting to stay if the government wasn’t going to pay her. It was sad to see all these young kids at home when I was doing the visits that should’ve been in school.

Chickens! They are very annoying and constantly try to get in the house. I took this pic right after the grandmother tossed some corn kernels on the ground for them. If this is what they call “free-range” chickens than I want mine from the cage! :)

A nice kitchen! Notice that this stove has a chimney.

Someone came to get us on Wednesday afternoon and we made it back to Danlí by about 6:30 pm. It was a good trip and we hope to get back to the community soon to help them finish up their water project and do some health-related education. Unfortunately, Luke and I both woke in the middle of the night the night we got back with some digestive issues. I suppose this is to be expected even though we were chlorinating our water. Luckily the problems didn’t last but more than a day.

Luke and I both enjoy visiting and staying over in the campo. Living in Danlí it’s easy to forget just how isolated and poor some of the communities in Honduras are. Plus, the people are very friendly and every time we go we always end up with stories to tell!

September 24, 2007

Portón

Hey everyone! Wow…. sorry about the lack of blogs, we are still in Honduras (amazingly enough). We have been in and out of Danlí lately and not had a lot going on work wise (this is driving me crazy). It is Monday morning at 7:30 while I am writing this. I have to go to find some guys to ask them a question about a design I am working on for a water system today and then go to a meeting at the mayor’s office. I am not exactly sure what the meeting is about but I got invited so I am going, and taking Annie with me so that I have a chance of understanding everything that goes on. My Spanish is getting slowly better and I can now understand all of the major themes in most conversations but I occasionally miss important details or fail to explain myself very well so when I can, I take Annie with me and then after the meeting we have to have a debriefing to make sure I got all the information.

So for lack of anything better to blog about Annie suggested I blog something about life here in Honduras. We live in a pretty big city so we were only allowed to live in certain neighborhoods in town. These neighborhoods in Danlí are very typical of most Central American neighborhoods in that they are surrounded by a wall or a iron fence topped with razor wire, barbed wire, broken glass bottles, or an electric fence. We have an electric fence on top of a concrete block wall. The electric fence is actually kind of annoying, it uses electricity for one and it makes our house stand out too much…like I should hang a sign outside that says “DO NOT FEED THE GRINGOS”. Our house is odd in that we are the only family living behind our wall. Most places have at least two families (always siblings or parents + an assortment of other random relatives) living behind the wall. We also have a big green “portón” or door that opens to the outside. The portón is big enough to pull a car through and is the only entrance to our little compound.

Our big green portón



The portón has caused some funny scenarios. First, it is the only way into our compound (a huge design flaw). When we were first looking to rent this house we committed to rent it even though we hadn’t seen behind the wall yet because at that point you couldn’t get inside the portón. Some one had run into the portón with their car and it was mangled to a point that it wouldn’t open, so no one had entered our little compound for over a year, there was no way in and the electric fence was still on. Side note - no one had actually ever lived in this house before, it was built 2 years ago with “remesas” which is the name for checks sent down from the States and the lady never came back to Honduras. This is quite common…a lot of communities have large American-looking houses with no one living in them or that are unfinished. People send money from the states to build a big house and then they either get deported and the remesas run out or they get citizenship and never come back to the house they had built. Back to the portón stories…people have to knock on the big green door or ring the doorbell if they want to find us which means we don’t have to let them in. We can instead just yell over the top (¡¿Quién?! = “Who is it?!”) to see who it is first. For example, when the Jehovah’s witnesses come you can just pretend that you don’t speak Spanish. Just yesterday the Mormons came over (they send ladies here) and I opened the door and I could tell they wanted to come in but I just didn’t open the door far enough and they were stymied (I was nice though, the Mormon church is right next door so I didn’t want to be rude and pretend to not know Spanish, best not to piss off the neighbors, plus it was a good opportunity to practice a little Spanish). An early morning portón visit (we woke up at 7 am on a Saturday morning to the doorbell) was the nice pulpería owner from down the street. (A pulpería is a little store run out of your house that sells mainly junk food, some basic staples, soda and beer). Anyway, she wanted our 5 empty beer bottles back because the bottle guy was coming to pick up empties later that morning. Nothing like being woken up on an early Saturday morning and having to look around for empty beer bottles while the neighborhood pulpería owner waits outside your portón. Another early morning portón story…a few Sundays ago I was away and some guys stopped by really early in the morning (6:30) looking for me. They were going on a hike in a protected area that Annie and I had hiked with them several months ago and wondered if I wanted to go with them again. Annie answered to portón in her pjs and found a truckload of middle-aged guys looking for me.

We desperately need one of those peepholes!

September 5, 2007

Youth camp

A few notes before I get into the blog...hurricane Felix dumped some light rain on us starting last night around 10 pm and ending sometime early this morning. No flooding, no wind. Sounds like it lost power when it got into mainland. We didn´t even lose power! Also, be sure to check out Luke´s blog below on the corn festival. I added a few more pics to it today as well.


I am finally going to blog about the youth camp for young leaders that I participated in a month ago….

The health PCV about 20 minutes south of Danlí got a grant to work with at-risk youth so we spent a weekend with around 32 youth between the ages of 15-20ish at the beginning of August. This health PCV works with a youth organization in her community that had already identified young leaders and many of them have been to talleres (like a capacitation/training) on HIV/AIDS, Sex Ed, etc. We trained (and re-trained) the young leaders on HIV/AIDS prevention, gang involvement, drugs, and abuse over the weekend and did lots of camp-like activities like a bonfire, scavenger hunt, team-building activities, etc. They rented a building that is used for these types of things about an hour from Danli near Nicaraguan border. We all slept at the building on colchones (4 PCVs, 3 other youth leaders, and the 32 youth) and got about 4 hours of quiet sleep. Here are a few pics from the camp:


Four of us PCVs helping out



The week following the camp the youth leaders willwork with the kids at a school for street kids here in Danlí (the “at-risk” youth) on these topics. A youth PC volunteer works at this school on a daily basis. The leaders were divided up into four groups, each assigned with a different topic to work with the kids on. I was assigned to help lead the HIV/AIDS project. My group came to Danlí the Wednesday after the camp and we worked with the kids from this school for several hours on HIV/AIDS prevention. I helped the young leaders design the presentation and activities but just sat back while they led it. We gave the presentation to the 10-15 year-olds at the street school. They had never received a formal HIV/AIDS charla before so it was interesting to see what beliefs they had about HIV/AIDS (one thought, for example, that there was a cure). I felt, and so did the leaders, that the kids learned a lot. And the leaders had a great time doing it! Some of them mentioned wanting to come back and volunteer at the school.

A little info on the school….
The school got started about 5 years ago when the director went around town looking for the places where the street kids hang out. “Street kids” is sort of misleading because most of them do have somewhere to sleep at night, even if it is in a one room shack with tarps for walls. When they’re not in school, they spend their time hanging out on the street and beg. Many of the kids have been sexually abused and/or raped by other family members or older street kids. The PC youth volunteer in Danlí has been volunteering at this school for almost two years now (her COS (Close of Service) is in December). The project has definitely had its share of problems. A major one being that because the government doesn’t fund the school, they have to depend on the local government and donations. The local government only gives the schools 10,000 L per month ($529) and that is supposed to pay the salary of 3 people, buy supplies, and maintain the school. Definitely not enough. The other major problem besides money is that the teachers who get assigned to the school (only 2 teachers for abouat 30 kids between the ages of 5 and 15) often decide to quit soon after starting or just don’t show up a lot. I’ve complained and blogged about the educational system before so I won’ t do it again here but just to reiterate, there really is no system of accountability or monitoring so if a teacher decides not to come to work a few days a week or decides to put a movie on during school hours so she can use that time to plan, no one is there to fire them or even take some money from their paycheck for the days they’ve missed. These kids need stability and teachers who care which is a rare thing here. They have had a few good teachers move through but that is definitely not the norm. A few pics from our day at the school:



August 31, 2007

Hey Folks

Lots of good comments on the last blog, I will be sure to blog every time I have a near death experience or destroy something. Sorry for the long delay in posting another blog. I will try and post some pictures in this blog as well if the computer will cooperate today. Not much new going on here. Last week was the national corn festival here in Danlí (Festinama 2007 it was called). It is sort of like the state fair of Honduras with lots of vendors selling all sorts of things made mostly from corn. Corn is a big deal here, they grow mostly white corn which is similar to the dent corn we have at home but lighter in color with a very similar looking plant an ear size. Most everyone in the campo here grows at least some corn, mostly on a subsistence basis, meaning they grow enough to eat throughout the year or more often enough to sell at a low price at harvest and then buy back enough to eat during the year at a higher price (storage is a problem). Most corn in the diet is eaten in the form of corn tortillas made by hand every morning. Corn grows quite well here and is a thing of pride among the Hondurans. I need to look it up to make certain, but I am pretty sure that Honduras can’t grow enough corn to feed itself and has to import in order to feed the population. That is a pretty telling statistic I think since the majority of the population subsists on corn, rice and beans.

Anyhow the corn festival was pretty fun some other volunteers came into town to enjoy the food and beer and we walked around town enjoying the festival. Below are some pics from Saturday the main day of the festival.


Annie enjoying some corn products - elote is the grilled field corn you see below and montuca (sp?) is what she´s eating in the pic above. It´s a tamale like thing filled with pork or chicken, bits of potato, and a few other veggies like peas then wrapped in corn husks and boiled. They´re much drier than the Mexican tamales we´re used to.

Food stands set up around a plaza...it got a bit smoking with all the fires. In the big pots they´re boiling the Honduran tamales (just cooked corn mass) and montucas.


It´s a GYR

Feels like the county fair!

Streets of Danli before Festinama 2007 kicked off its carnival

The following pics are from the parade Sunday morning, the final day of the week-long festival. The first pick is a float with the ¨corn queen¨.




Right now Annie is in La Esperanza at a HIV-AIDS conference and I am at home. I went with a PAM (Protected Areas Management) volunteer to his site earlier this week to meet with his community about helping them with the initial survey they need to do to bring electricity to the community. Hopefully we will be able to do the preliminary study of the community for free (it costs about $1500-3000 to hire someone to do it, way out of reach of this community) or at least for minimal costs in transportation and some equipment. After the initial study is done the community can then look for someone to pay to put the electricity lines in (Church group from the states, NGO, or some other donor). And maybe in 4 or 5 years have T.V. and refrigeration.

OK until later

Que le vaya bien

Luke

August 14, 2007

Nah hombre.

Well I am now 26 and Annie and I have been married for 2 years… big weekend. It was supposed to be big weekend at least. We had planned on going to Tegus and working a little at the office (we can print for free in the PC office) and then spending the night in a hotel and maybe going to a movie or something. But in an attempt to contract every water-borne sickness Honduras has to offer I was sidelined with amoebas in my digestive system on Friday. That makes the count 3 digestive illnesses in the 3 months we’ve been in site. The amoebas weren’t nearly as bad as the last bacterial infection accept for a 45 minute period on Friday morning when I thought Annie was going to come home to find me passed out on the bathroom floor from the stomach cramps. I called the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer) and she told me to go to the pharmacy down the street and buy 6 expensive neon green pills which seemed to clean the problem up pretty quick, as well as make my pee glow in the dark. Quite impressive.

Anyhow so we stayed home for the weekend. It wasn’t so bad. On Saturday I felt quite a bit better so I went to the store and bought a shovel, some chicken wire, and 10 lbs. of fertilizer (12-24-12) for about 9 American dollars. I started the project of tilling up our yard in an attempt to plant a garden. It took quite a bit of work since when they built the house rather than clean up after constructing things, they just threw everything in the yard and then fenced it in with a cinder block wall. Mostly the job was digging up the old cinder blocks, bricks, electrical wire, ceiling tile, bathroom tile, rusty wires, boards, nails, pvc pipe, and a big slab of waste concrete, and sifting what soil remained through the chicken wire to get the rocks out. Saturday went well and I got about half of the section we are going to plant tilled up and Annie planted some herbs and a few flowers. Sunday afternoon we went back to work on the other half….and that’s when things started to go badly. Towards the end of the day it looked like it might rain so we started to hustle to at least get the whole section tilled up over the weekend so we could plant things later during the evenings as more of a leisure activity (there was definitely nothing “leisurely” about digging up the slab of waste concrete). Earlier in the day I had found the buried electrical line and been careful not to cut it while digging. I had not found the water line yet and assumed it must not run through this section of the yard. I had dug up numerous pieces of pvc and after being careful with them, none of them turned out to be anything but trash. I started to be in a hurry, it was getting dark and it looked like rain. So I sunk the shovel into the ground and hit another piece of pvc, I dug it up and realized that this one was connected for a ways under ground…it was our water line…maybe. There was no way of telling. Water only comes every 3 days, usually in the afternoon sometime for about 3 hours. I thought I will just run down to the ferretería (hardware store) and buy a section of ½ inch pipe….but then I realized it was Sunday and nothing in Danli is open on Sunday. And water was supposed to be coming anytime because it had come on Thursday so Sunday was three days later. We are almost completely out of water and it is supposed to come anytime now and I just potentially cut the water line in half. I just ignored the problem. I figured there was only about 10% chance that particular pvc pipe actually served any purpose.

So I went back to my rushed tilling of the yard before it rained. Not more than 3 shovels later I sink the shovel down hard trying to get a chunk of concrete out and BOOM! I had no idea what happened but the electric line connecting at our wall was on fire. Apparently in Honduras you don’t bury electric lines at a constant depth and 3 inches below the surface is totally OK. I should have certainly been more careful. The electric line I had found before and been so careful not to cut had been deeper and rather than running straight to the house at a nice depth for some reason it took a bend and wasn’t buried as deep, and I hit it with the shovel and cut the electricity.

Now I was concerned. I was trying to decide if what had just happened was really as dangerous as I think it might have been (the line was 110V and 60A, rubber soled shoes, dry shovel handle, Annie knows CPR….moderately dangerous). But now we don’t have electricity, and who knows how to find an electrician in Honduras, I sure don’t. It keeps getting worse…within 5 minutes of cutting the electricity, the water starts coming, spurting out of the ground about 6 feet high from where I cut what is now glaringly obvious was our water line. So now we don’t have electricity, and we aren’t going to have a pila full of water for the next 3 days. So now I’m thinking I’ve got to solve the water problem and then it starts raining, hard.

It was a disaster, and Annie wanted to kill me. In a matter of a few minutes I had managed to cut both our water and our electricity. The yard was filling with water and the pila wasn’t. Luckily I have seen in my travels what Hondurans calls a “union universal” which is a bike tire tube wrapped tightly connecting 2 pipes. So I took out my leatherman and took off my bike tire (PC gave me a bike, which is worth way more now that it is helping hold together our water line), took out the tube, cut it in half, and made a universal connection. So we at least got a pila full of turbid water.

We also now have electricity again. I still don’t know how to find an electrician in Honduras, but a neighbor who fixes refrigerators is just as good. He managed to fix it without ever turning the electricity off anywhere….amazing, and horridly dangerous.

So we now have a place to plant some flowers and veggies….Wahoo

Luke

August 12, 2007

HALF A YEAR!

Hurrah! We’ve been in Honduras a half a year! Has it gone quickly? Well…both Luke and I agree the weeks go quick but the months go really slow.

This blog centers around our home but it’s sort of random so I apologize if it’s difficult to follow!

We got a package from home with my spices so now we can cook just about everything! We’re lucky to be in Danlí because you can find pretty much any ingredient or food item that you want (within reason). In Danlí you can’t find good cheeses (nothing gourmet and no mozzarella, feta, cheddar, colby, etc.); other dairy products like cottage cheese, sour cream, buttermilk; or whole grains: bread, rice, flour, etc. We’re planning a trip to Tegus to celebrate our anniversary and birthdays soon so we hope to pick up some of those coveted food items we can’t find here. We’re starting to feel like our house is a home…especially now that we have a couch to sit on in the living room. I took some updated pics of our house so send us an email if you want to see them!

Luke has been working feverishly in the yard lately trying to get it ready to plant a garden. My mom and grandma and Luke’s mom have sent us seeds so we’re excited to get our garden going! The soil in our front yard is pretty decent but Luke has to dig up the grass that is growing in it and then sift out the roots and rocks. We bought some fertilizer and have been using that in the rows where we plant. We have a compost pile that we started as soon as we moved in (a little over a month ago) but it’s not quite ready to use as fertilizer. Maybe for the next planting. Yesterday we got a few rows of things planted: flowers that grow to 4 ½ feet tall in front of the oh-so-pretty cinder block wall that surrounds our house, basil, chives, and radishes. We hope to plant more flowers, sweet corn, green beans and cucumbers today. Luke found a good manual in the PC office about when to plant things in Honduras which has been a help since the weather is a bit different here than what we’re used to in the States! It’s rainy season now and cooler than during dry season but still not quite cool enough to plant things like spinach. We’ll have to wait until Octoberish to do the cooler weather veggies. We’re going to try and plant a row of lettuce to see if it grows or if it still gets too hot during the day.

I’ve been trying to keep track of what fruits are in season when since we got here. Right now passion fruit is definitely in season. Our neighbors have a big tree that hangs over into our yard above our shed. For the past few weeks we’ll hear a loud bang when a fruit falls of the tree, hits the shed, the rolls off the roof. In the morning through afternoon, you can smell the sweet scent of maracuyá (passion fruit) in our yard. It’s a weird fruit…not something you can eat easily…but it makes an excellent juice. Other fruits right now that are in season are nance (a small yellow fruit that I think is disgusting), something called marmones (I believe) and a fruit that has a red spiny shell (sort of looks like a big strawberry) that you crack open and eat what’s inside (I have no idea what it’s called). Tamarindo (tamarind in English) has been in season for what seems like quite awhile. It grows in brown, fuzzy pod-like things and inside the pod are seeds with fruit surrounding them. This also makes an excellent juice – one of Luke and I’s favorite. Luckily there is a juice place only a few blocks from our house that sells fresh squeezed juice for only 8 Lempira – 40 American cents.

Remember the good old days when soda/pop was sold in glass bottles? Well here in Honduras you can still buy soda in glass bottles and the good thing about the bottles is that they are recycled unlike the plastic ones. Anyway Luke and I both love Coca-Cola Light (tastes very similar to Coke Zero in the States) so we decided to ask the owner of the pulpería (small family-owned store that sells beverages, junk-food, sometimes fruit and veggies, etc. that you’ll find on every street) if she could order us a case of Coca Light in bottles from the Coke guy next time he came. She did and we got our case of Coca Light in bottles. When we’re finished with the case, we just have to take the empty bottles back and get a new case. Each soda (about 12 oz) costs about 28 American cents.

August 7, 2007

Our new pet

Several weeks ago, we were walking home from the grocery store and Luke found a turtle in the middle of the road near our house. We could tell that at one point it had been someone’s pet because it’s shell had been painted. Luke got really excited and picked the turtle up, justifying that it was going to get run over if we didn’t take it home. Luke named him Umberto which is a Honduran name that we think is sort of funny so it seemed to suit the turtle. Umberto is about 8 inches in diameter and still scared of us a bit. He didn’t eat anything that we gave him for 2 weeks…we tried everything from cucumber and carrot peels to cabbage, rice & beans, etc. but Umberto wouldn’t eat any of it! On morning I was eating a mínimo (small banana) and decided I’d find Umberto and see if he liked bananas. I put him next to the bits of banana and he stuck his head out and ate right in front of me! Before he wouldn’t ever stick his head out if we were in sight but that morning he was so hungry he didn’t even care. So now all we feed him is about ½ a mínimo a day. I’m sure there has to be other things he’ll eat but we haven’t figured out what those are yet. Umberto gets up pretty early in the day and wonders the yard. I usually find him by the compost pile in the morning. He’s a pretty easy pet to have but doesn´t make a very good watch dog.
Umberto hanging out in the yard

August 1, 2007

More pics of hike

Organic coffee
Luke and I in front of waterfall we saw at the end of hike
Look closely - there is a monkey sitting on a tree branch in the top middle of the pic.