Danlí it is

So as many of you already know, our site for the next two years is Danlí in the department of El Paraíso (southeast Honduras). We got here on Thursday afternoon after a 4 hour ride from Siguatepeque. Luke´s counterpart luckily brought his truck (although tiny) and his counterpart, my counterpart, us two, all our luggage, a bunch of plastic crates, and some dude (who rode in the back the entire way) fit into the truck. The four of us were crammed into the cab and talked, or should I say listened, to Luke´s counterpart talk about the entire history of Honduras, the educational system, US influence in Honduras, HIV/AIDS, global warming, and the association that he works for. He is a very interesting guy with a good reputation for working with potable water projects, just happens to be a talker.

Anyway, we arrived in Danlí and got settled into our hotel. The city is big at about 75,000 but doesn´t feel that big. It´s relatively safe and surrounded by hills on 3 sides. We took some pictures today and will blog them hopefully sometime this week.

Yesterday (Friday) Luke traveled to the town of El Paraíso which is 30 kilometers from Danlí because the offices of the water board association (who he´s working for) is there. He said everyone in the office seems to be really friendly but wishes he could understand Spanish better than he does. Luke says that as far as he can tell at this point the group JAM (Juntas de Agua Municipal) is the association he will be working for. They provide technical support to the small water boards that are formed in the rural areas of the department of El Paraíso that need systems to deliver potable water. Luke will be functioning as the engineer for these communities as they orginize and try to find sources of funding to build or rehabiltate systems.

I spent the day walking around the hospital with my counterpart, meeting about 25 people and trying to write down all their names and a little note about their appearance so I could remember them. Sounds like I´ll be working a lot with groups of young people of high school age and kids in 4th and 5th grade on HIV/AIDS prevention. My counterpart seems to feel that the school kids in the city of Danlí already know enough about HIV/AIDS due to the fact that there are several universities and lots of organizations that are always sending people to the schools to give charlas (presentations) so she wants to focus the prevention education on the rural areas around Danlí. There is also an HIV/AIDS support group that is looking for ideas so I may get involved with that. They currently have a small green house project where they grow plants and then sell them.

We´re headed back to Santa Lucia tomorrow for 5 more days to finish up training and swear in as volunteers then next Friday we´ll be in Danlí to stay!

Honduran cultural tidbits

It's been so hot here lately (supposed to get up to 110 degrees later this week) that for the past few weeks when I walk around town between 8 am and 5, I use my umbrella. Honduran women in La Paz do too so I don't look like the idiot gringa.

Did you know you could have a washing machine but no running water?

There are millions of geckos here and they make an extremely load clicking noise. For the first few weeks in my new house, I was convinced a bird was trapped between my ceiling and the roof but turns out I just have geckos crawling on my ceiling.

There are at least 7 types of mangos in Honduras and they're starting to get ripe now. They are delicious! It's really hard to eat a mango off the seed because it ends up stuck in your teeth. The best way to eat in (especially if it's a bigger one) is to slice it in half around the seed then make criss-cross cuts in that slice, turn it inside out, and the bite off each of the small squares. That probably makes no sense but believe me, it works much better than eating it off the seed.

I absolutely love fried plantains. They cook up really sweet and are a common food for dinner.

Hondurans have a ton of phrases that have "God" in them. The one I hear all the time is "Si Dios quiere" which literally means "If God wants/wills". They say it all the time! For example, my family ran out of water in the tank a few days ago (we still have water in the pila to take bucket showers with) and I asked my host mom when the water was coming and she said "lunes si Dios quiere" which means "on Monday if Good wants/wills".

Three goals of Peace Corps

Luke & I have wanted to blog the three goals of PC for awhile but keep forgetting so I'm finally getting to it.

1. To help the people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women.
2. To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans.

Since 1961, more than 178,000 Americans have served in the Peace Corps in 138 countries.

And more pics...

For whatever reason, I haven´t really felt like blogging lately. Maybe it´s because I am getting a bit tired of training and don´t really have anything new to add but I felt like I should put something up so our family and friends continue to check the blog. We find out our site on Monday afternoon which will be very exciting. I am sure the day will go by extremely slow until they tell us.

So anyway, here are some more pics from Luke and I´s first cockfight experience. This took place about 3 weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon in La Paz. It was quite the spectacle and I was happy that we could only stay for a bit as Luke had to catch the bus back to his training site. I left out the bloody pics and the guy in the ring who puts the rooster´s head into his mouth to clean his air passages (if you can imagine a guy with rooster blood all around his mouth, you can imagine the picture). At the fight (under a thatched roof) were pretty much only men and it smelled of beer, cigarettes, sweat (it was really hot), and blood. Not exactly the most pleasant place to be on a Sunday afternoon but nonetheless an interesting cultural experience. Something I didn´t know they do is sew blades onto the rooster´s legs which helps them take down their opponent because they naturally fight with their legs anyway.

This pic is of the scale used to weigh the roosters.

Two roosters mid-fight.

Garden planting

We´ve been posting lots of pictures lately which seems to help people get a better idea of the work we´re doing and get a mental picture of what it looks like here. Thanks to everyone who continues to read our blog and comment, we appreciate it! Knowing that people are keeping up with us will make it much easier when we come home because we won´t have to explain, starting from square zero, what we´ve been doing for the last two years! So thanks again. Be sure to scroll down and look at the last couple entries which included pictures as well.

On the same day that my health group built the stove, we planted a garden for a family among coffee plants and banana trees on the side of the mountain. It was such a beautiful spot! In the picture below we´ve already tilled the land (by hand) and are planting the seeds. I´m the dork with the sun hat on in the background.

The garden has been planted. We put sticks around the outside and the family said they would put up the wire fence to keep critters out.
After we finished the garden, the family invited us for coffee (from fresh coffee beans from their farm) and bananas. Below you see a bunch of bananas that were sitting by their house. They pick the bunches off the trees, hang them, and in about 8 days they will be ripe.

my FBT site

hello everyone. I am going to attempt to post some pictures from my FBT site as Annie seems to be posting a lot of pictures and I am getting behind. I am currently in La Paz visiting Annie and I ran to the internet to check email while she works on a paper she is writing.

here goes with picture posting, i have tried this a few times from my site and the internet just can't handle pictures.

above is a picture of the iglesia, built in 1809.

This is the street I live on. The green garage door behind the lamp post on the left hand side of the street is my home.

The left door is the shitter and the right door is the shower. There is a toilet that you flush with a bucket. In the shower is a 35 gallon drum that I take my showers out of. Really a pretty comfortable and clean set up.

This picture may be hard to see. It is the "stream" that runs behind the house. The pvc pipe coming out of the wall is our sewer pipe. Not a very good set up, all of the raw sewage from the city finds its way to this waterway, our sewage just gets there really quickly, and the stream meanders its way through town for all to see and smell. here is a picture of the back yard. Its pretty nice and the yard is raised above the sewage which is a much nicer set up than many people in town. The building on the left is where the family butchers hogs and also makes nacatamales to sell.

So there is a little insight in to where I have been staying. In a week and half Annie and I will have a new site for the next 2 years.

How to build a mud/brick stove

Last Wednesday we built a stove for a family in a mountain town about an hour from La Paz. The stoves we learned how to build are much more efficient in that they use less wood and burn much cleaner (smoke does not fill the house). You make a mixture of dirt and water for the mud and really all the other materials you need are clay bricks, 4 pieces of about 12-in rebar, the metal stove top, and the chimney.

Here I am getting started by putting a layer of mud on the cement table where the stove will be built.
We've added the first layer of bricks around the outside and are now starting to cover them with mud. Second layer of bricks is done. You can see the small hole in front (we used a big tin can cut in half) to put the small pieces of firewood in the stove.

The finised stove. The mud needs time to harden and once is has, the family will paint it white. The stove can be used immediately. (Soon after this picture was taken, the woman who lives in the house cleaned the area to the right of the stove.)

Random thoughts

If you've read Luke's blog from yesterday below, you might think I got bit by a giant, mean dog. Truth is I was feeding a starving little puppy that weighed about 2 pounds and it got really excited and bit my finger. Don't worry, I've learned my lesson! Another lesson I learned over the past weekend is that the sun here is bien fuerte. Luke and I spent the day at the pool on Saturday at a nice hotel in Teguc. I waited for 10 minutes before putting sunscreen on my chest and legs hoping to get a little sun on them because that was the first time I had been in a swimsuit besides the day at the beach. Well, either the sunscreen didn't work well or the sun really is that strong because I am really burnt and regretting it. I guess I've been making some poor decisions lately! :)


There are several things I've been wanting to blog about recently but none of which deserves a single blog entry so I'm just going to blog about them all in this one.


I figured some of you might wonder how much daily things cost here. Right now $1 equals about 19 Honduran lempiras. A 20 oz. Diet Coke costs 11 lempiras (55 cents), a cup of coffee costs aobut 4 lemps (20 cents), one pound of Honduran coffee in the supermarket costs 28 lempiras ($2), and a 1/2 liter bag of drinking water (they sell drinking water in plastic bottles too but they're more expensive) costs 2 or 3 lemps (10 or 15 cents). Fruit is really cheap too. For example, last weekend when Luke visited I bought fruit at the market in La Paz (see picture from one of the previous entries). A pineapple, 3 cantaloupes, 4 bananas, and a bag of 7 mangos cost me 35 lemps ($1.85). A good snack here is a baleada which is just a big flour tortilla with beans, scrambled eggs, cheese and fresh avocado slices (if you want) folded in half and warmed up on the stove for a bit. A baleada costs between 5 lemps (just beans and cheese) to 8 lemps (26-42 cents). Beer is expensive here (relatively, I suppose). A single bottle of beer in a supermarket or liquor store costs about 18 lemps (95 cents). Depending on the town and the establishment, you can get a beer for 10 lemps (53 cents). There is what is known as the "gringo tax" where a bar/restaurant owner will charge more for the beer if a gringo (American) is buying it. Restaurants, especially in smaller towns, rarely have an actual menu for you to look at (you just ask what they have at that time). If they do have a menu, it's usually a list of what they can make and not of the prices so the gringo tax is easy to implement. Rum, unlike beer, is pretty cheap. A big bottle of Nicaraguan rum, Flor de Caña, costs about $5.

Fruits here are plentiful and cheap like I mentioned. I have tried many fruits that I never knew existed. Apparently pineapples here are extra sweet and because of this can't be exported because the sweet variety spoils too quickly. They're super good, that's for sure. Besides pineapple, you can find cantaloupe, watermelon, mango (at least 3 different varieties), oranges, grapes, strawberries (less common), regular bananas, small bananas called mínimos, papaya, and limes. Fruits you might have to google to figure out what they are are: guayaba, ciruela, nance, and tamarindo. It's hard to find pears and apples here and when you find them, they were imported from the US and not that great of quality.

Piropos....where do I start? They're so common I figured I have to blog about them. Piropos are basically cat-calls that women get here from men on the street and you get even more if you're a gringa. They are super annoying and can range from what would be considered a more polite piropo which is a kissing sound to them saying things to you like "i love you", "bye-bye", "my princess", "beautiful woman", etc. Many of these phrases can be said in English (thanks to American television) or in Spanish or in a combination of the two. The best reaction to the piropos is ignoring them but when someone is extra persistent or I've gotten 4+ in one single walk across town, I usually yell something at them. The men who give them are, for the most part, harmless and don't want to hurt you they just want to let you know that they think you are pretty. It totally grosses me out and I'll probably never get completely used to it but I can deal with it.

Social drinking is an interesting topic...In Honduras it doesn't really exist unless it's among the university educated and upper classes. The way Honduras see it, there are two types of people...bolos (drunks) and people who don't drink at all. Having a few beers with friends or after work is rare (unless it's among the well educated like I mentioned earlier). Women for the most part do not drink in public and never go to the cantinas or pool halls unless they're "working" there. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my family here in La Paz can enjoy social drinking. The day I arrived to La Paz, my host mom handed me a glass of wine to welcome me. A few days later, my host mom celebrated her 56th birthday and when I came home from lunch, there were a bunch of people there celebrating and drinking a beer so she handed me one. (She asked me if I wanted another one after the first one but I had to say no because I had to go back to class an hour later!). When I came home for dinner another group of people were there celebrating so I shared another beer with them.

Ok, I think that's all the random thoughts for now. Be sure to read Luke's blog from yesterday below mine.

Estamos en Teguc....happy Easter

Hello everyone. again apologies on the scarcity of blogs.... hope everyone enjoyed Holy Week. Annie and I have been in Teguc for the last 4 days. For those of you who havent' talked with our immediate families recently Annie was bitten by a dog on Tuesday and we have been staying in Teguc so she could get the required shots on Wednesday and saturday to prevent her from contracting Rabies. The bite was not bad at all, but it drew blood and therefore the options are monitor the dog for ten days or come to Teguc and get teh shots. Monitoring the dog didn't work because it was way up in the hills where she was bitten and the starving little thing was probably going to die within 10 days even if it didn't have rabies. So i came to Teguc on wednesday night to stay with her until Sunday when we can get rides back to our respective sites. It sounded like a fun trip except it is Semana Santa (Holy Week) here and nothing is open......really the only things open in the entire city are the american chain restaraunts like wendy's and pizza hut which aren't good in teh states and are no better in developing countries. Plus they put us up in a hotel with no windows. it was clean which was nice, but our room literally had no windows to the outside, it was a 10ft x 10ft concrete room with one flourescent light in the center of the room. luckily i liked my cellmate......... we did have an ok time though hanging out and we took a taxi downtown and saw the alfombras (on Good Friday people dowtown make giant murals out of colored sawdust in the streets, it is really pretty neat) and we went to one of the really expensive hotels yesterday to use their pool. I also got through an entire book i had wanted to read.

right now it is almost noon (mountain time, the whole country was supposed to turn the clocks ahead last week, but it got called off by the president at the last hour becasue they were worried the confusion would be too much.....certainly couldn't have been more confusing than calling off the time change 5 minutes before it takes place.... ) and we are in the Cuerpo de Paz office waiting for our rides back to training sites so we have some time to blog and check emails and such.

We swear in as volunteers in less than a month so that is something to look forward to and we get our site announcements in 3 weeks so we will know where exactly we are spending the next 2 years.

hasta luego,
luke

Weekend pics

Here are some pictures from this last weekend. Yesterday I blogged with pictures from training so be sure to scroll down to see those as well.

Luke & I cooling off from the hot sun with a ¨paleta¨ on Saturday afternoon. We´re eating the fresh frozen fruit ones. They also have them in chocolate and pineapple. They cost about 15 US cents.

Luke and I eating the ¨plato típico¨on Sat. night in La Paz. The plato típico includes: beans, cheese, eggs or meat (Luke has a pork skewer on his plate, I have eggs), a fried plátano (plantain), tortillas and chismol (pico de gallo salsa). Very tasty and only costs about $1.85 per plate! We´re drinking Canada Dry with Flor de Caña Rum (only $5 for a big bottle of rum).

A cool old door to someone´s house in La Paz

The market in La Paz