English classes

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

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

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

Teaching at the internet cafe last week

Semana Santa in Danli

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

Thursday am procession:

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

Carrying a statue of Jesus on the cross


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

Duck farming in Danli

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

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

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

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

But that was before DC.

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

That was all before I bought 2 ducks.

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

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

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

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

A box of ducks.

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

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

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

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

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

A beautiful transparent butterfly!

Close-up of a purple orchid

Another orchid

Resting by the waterfall

Sara & Javi after a PB & J for lunch

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

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

Side notes to comments on last blog

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

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

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

Second in series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book review

So some of you may have been wondering about our list of books off to the right of the blog that keeps growing…and growing. With no tv (that’s not completely true as we do have a computer and PCVs love to share dvds and tv series), there is plenty of time to get lost in a good read. So here is a list of the books we’ve read thus far with a little “blurp” about them to help any potential book lovers find some new reads. We had a rating system with a ¨thumbs up¨ icon but when I copied and pasted the blog from a Word doc onto the blogger page, it turned the thumbs up into ¨C¨. So three ¨C¨s means you should read the book if you get your hands on it, two means it was a decent read and one means…well, you know, it was a little less exciting. Enjoy!

PS: If anyone has any books they’ve read that they think we might enjoy, please feel free to comment on this blog with your suggestions or send us an email!

Books read by Luke during time with Peace Corps (* = Annie read it too)

*The Color of Water by James McBride CCC (Good non-fiction read about a kid from a mixed-race family growing up in the 50s)

The Known World by Edward P. Jones C (Confusing, only read it because I was stuck in an aldea for 3 days, this is the one I had when I was stuck in the room with the rats!!!!)

Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World by Jack Weatherford CC (If you like native American history)

Waiting for the Snow: The Peace Corps papers of a charter volunteer by Thomas Searlon (a return PCV) CC (things were better “back in the day”)

*The Beet Fields by Gary Paulsen CC (Gary Paulsen books taught me to read)

Tracker by Gary Paulsen CC (see above)

*Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart edited by Medea Benjamin CCC (3 thumbs up if you’re looking for a good book that delves into Honduran culture, history, and economics. A bit outdated now but many things remain unchanged)

*The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini CC (you can just see the movie now)

Huck Finn by Mark Twain CC (classic, that is worth a read or re-read)

Peace not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter CC (explains a lot)

A Whale for the Killing by Farley Mowat CC (I like Mowat’s writing. People of the Deer, a book of his I read before PC, gets 3 thumbs up)

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond CCC (You should get 3 credit hours for reading this)

Ma and Pa Hart Join the Peace Corps by June Hart (RPCV) CC (a quick good read. Makes you want to go to Brazil)

Walking the Big Wild: From Yellowstone to the Yukon on the Grizzly Bear´s Trail by Karsten Heuer CC (Any one want to walk to Alaska?)

The Last Cowboys at the End of the World: History of the Gauchos of Patagonia by Nick Reding CC (Good non-fiction, can’t believe they used to send PCV’s to Chile, I feel I would have fit in better there)

The Red Badge of Courage and ¨The Veteran¨ by Stephen Crane CC (classic quick read about the civil war)

*Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins CCC (People should read this if you’ve ever wondered what US interests in foreign countries really are about)

*The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho CCC (quick read and is worth it (I read the English translation))

Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (a re-read) CCC (One of my favorites)

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown CCC (Very well put together history of the Plains Indians)

The Firecracker Boys by Dan O´Neill CC (I can’t believe they almost blew up Alaska!!! Seriously they were going to blow the whole thing up)

Caribbean by James A. Michener CC (Not my favorite Michener, but a good read)

Into Thin Air: A personal account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by John Krakauer CCC (Quick and very entertaining)

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson CC (If you like Bryson, he is a little tough on rural America at first though)

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing CCC (Wow! penguins can’t taste that good)

Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols CC (Makes a person want to move to New Mexico)

Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond CC (we’re screwed)


Books read by Annie during time with Peace Corps (* = Luke read it too)

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie CC

Sea Glass by Anita Shreve CC (a good fiction read)

Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown C (too much hype)

A Bend in the Road by Nicholas Sparks CC (a sad but good fiction read)

Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two years in the heart of an African village by Sarah Erdman (a return PCV) CC

The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank CC (good fiction read)

Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho CC (good fiction read about a rural Brazilian girl who ends up in Europe and ends up working as a prostitute. Coelho writes really well)

*White Man´s Grave by Richard Dooling CC (a fictional PCV get’s “lost” in Africa’s bush and his best friend goes looking for him)

The No. 1 Ladies´ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith CC

Cipotes by Ramon Amaya Amador CCC (a great book by a Honduran author (in Spanish))

The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III C

*Eat, Pray, Love: One woman´s search for everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert CCC (the author writes about life after her divorce and how she went searching
for answers to what life is about and who she is)

Irresistible Revolution: Living as an ordinary radical by Shane Claiborne CCC (the author stirs up questions about the direction of today’s church and world and discusses how to live out an authentic Christian faith).

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris CCC (the author writes about growing up. The book is a compilation of funny stories of childhood. He is a regular contributor to Public Radio International’s “This American Life”.)

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant CCC (a “historical” fiction about Jacob and his family from the book of Genesis, written in first person by Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob)

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards CC (a decent fiction read)

Where have all the minimos gone??

Since we returned from the States, it has been difficult to find mínimos here in Danlí. (Mínimos are bananas that grow wild in the mountains here. See pic below of ones that aren´t ripe yet. They are sweeter and smaller than the imported bananas we get in the States). Anyway, this was very disconcerting because generally mínimos are one of the few fruits that can be found year round in abundance at the market and pulperías (small family-run stores you’ll find on every block). So last week I asked a Honduran that I’d worked with several times on Agua Pura (Pure Water) projects why there are no mínimos. The explanation I got was interesting and I believe worth sharing with you all.

At the beginning of December, coffee picking season started. The harvest lasts through February, sometimes into March. Everyone in a coffee-picking community is expected to help pick and many people from outside the community go to help pick and make a few lempiras. So the explanation I got was that the coffee pickers are being fed/eating all the mínimos in the mountains and there are none left to be delivered to Danlí. I’m also assuming that the guy who usually drives down the mountain with a truck full of mínimos to sell at the market in Danlí is either picking coffee or managing his coffee pickers. Anyway, I got the explanation I needed (for awhile I was worried that perhaps there was a mínimo shortage or that some disease had plagued the mínimo trees) and will have to settle on eating the export bananas I find at the grocery store until March.

Sustainable development work?

Luke and I have been thinking a lot lately about “development work” and “sustainability.” Living and working here in Honduras as a PCV makes it nearly impossible not to ponder the meaning of these terms and how they translate into the work that we as volunteers as well as government and non-government organizations do here in Honduras and other “developing” countries.

For starters, what exactly is “development”? According to materials given to us as new PCVs, development in its broadest sense is any process that promotes the dignity of a people and their capacity to improve their own lives. Ok, so what exactly constitutes the “improving” of one’s life? One could say that for example, access to health care and a giant flat screen tv are both “improvements” to one’s life. Of course, we scoff at that idea because we all know that while a big screen tv may “improve” your tv-watching capability, it’s not actually going to make you a happier person (really?! yes, really). However, having access to pre- and postnatal care will actually improve not only your health but your life and the way you think about it. Besides health care, there are many other obstacles to improving ones life such as climate, geography, economics, politics, and social conditions.

So that’s “development” now what is “sustainability”? “Sustainable” development is defined as work that a community is able to continue on its own without outside support. People learn to build on their own strengths to take charge of their lives, and to address their expressed needs. A development project should be culturally sustainable (does the concept fit within and build on local beliefs and traditions), politically sustainable (when the NGO or PCV leaves, will the project continue within the socio-political context?), economically sustainable (will there be sufficient local resources or the capacity to generate them when the supportive outsiders leave?), managerially sustainable (will there be local management capacity to carry on the work when the supportive outsiders leave?), and environmentally sustainable (as the project grows, will the environment be able to sustain the use of resources?).

Ahh! With all these things to think about and absolutely zero funding (expect for the occasional grant) life as a PCV is sometimes overwhelmingly frustrating.

Wouldn’t be easier just to “drop in” to build a few houses, maybe even a church or a school and then head back to our own lives??? Um, the answer to that is YES, it would be easier. That’s called charity and it has its place but it also has limits when it comes to behavior change and long term social and economic improvement. (I’ve seen too much equipment and too many projects that were the “drop in” type and once the “supportive outsiders” left, their projects were stagnated and began to gather dust immediately because they were nowhere near sustainable to begin with).

So, without necessarily giving people “things,” we (PCVs as well as other organizations) have to work within a human capacity building framework – where the focus is on the development of people and their skills. We have to avoid paternalism (giving to people or doing it for them) and motivate the people to improve their own lives. The first part of this process is figuring out what the actual needs are of any group of people or individuals. We may think, for example, that a community needs improved stoves because we (as the development worker) can’t enter a house without the smoke burning our eyes. However, this particular community may not perceive this as need and might put clean water, a school, or a health center higher on their needs analysis. Throughout all of this, it is helpful to look at development as a process, not a project. While the process may contain many “projects” real change is SLOW to come. Patience and perseverance are key qualities as well as being able to deal with not seeing any real concrete results of your work.

Another question that often comes up in the big scheme of things is why is Honduras the way it is? Why are there so many development workers and volunteers here? What would happen if every development organization, church group, and volunteer decided to pull out of Honduras? Would the government, who has been able to depend for years on outside aid and support to bring their people clean water and other basic necessities, finally realize that they have responsibilities to their country? Would they also realize that perhaps foreign organizations don’t know what’s best for Honduras? Possibly. Or would culprits such as lack of jobs, hunger and poor nutrition, emigration (1 in 7 Hondurans is currently living in the US), poor education, poor health care, lack of potable water, corruption, violence, years of exploitation by foreign countries, lack of capital, and an inept government continue to be barriers that prevent change?*

Well we definitely don’t have the answers to the questions I’ve raised here but we sure do spend lots of time thinking about them. This purpose of this blog is not to criticize Honduras or Hondurans, simply to let our readers join in on the conversations that we as PCVs have. My idea is to have another part to this blog about foreign influence and the beginning of outside organizations in Honduras (to help us understand why Honduras is the way it is today). There may be a third part on resource distribution and globalization. Stay tuned…

*Thanks Javi & Sara for brainstorming that list in one of your blogs.

A new year

It’s been awhile since we blogged (I realize that phrase has opened quite of few of our latest blogs) so I apologize to people who check the blog often and are disappointed to see nothing new!
We went to the US for vacation over Christmas and New Years and had a wonderful time. It was great to see family, friends, and eat lots of good food! Luke and I both thought that after being out of the country for nearly a year, it would be strange to return. We anticipated some “reverse” culture shock but were happy to find out that it wasn’t too shocking. We did notice lots of things (some good, some bad) that before were easily overlooked such as: hot water from all faucets (bathroom, kitchen, bathtub, shower, washing machine, dishwasher), water fountains in public places, road signs and drivers obeying them, grocery stores full of choices, BIG houses and cars, no catcalls (yeah!) and on and on.

Things we enjoyed most while home: spending time with family and friends and meeting a new niece, inhaling deep breaths of cold winter air, sledding (at one point we had four people and a dog on a not very big toboggan), food, drink, football games on TV, hot showers, a bed to sleep in (yes, we’re still sleeping on mattresses on the floor), snow, driving a car, good dairy products, hunting, laying in front of the fireplace (on carpet!)… I’m sure there is much more to that list but those things stuck out to us.

Work has been slow since we got back because both our counterparts on our vacation until February. We’ve had a few other things to organize and take care of work-wise to give us something to do every few days but mostly we’ve been catching up on reading, gardening, and hanging out.

Anyway, hope all our readers spent a nice holiday season with family and/or friends. Happy 2008!