Trip home, work here, etc.

So here’s the promised blog with pictures. The last three months have been busy – involving lots of traveling and even quite a bit of work (thus the lack of blogging). Anyway, here’s what’s been going on…

In late June, we made it back to the States for my brother Chad’s wedding. It was a great time to go home (for the wedding plus 4th of July). The weather was great and we got to spend lots of time with family and friends. Here are some highlights of the trip:

Chad and his wife Sarah

With my brothers Chad & Josh

Luke & I on his parent´s farm

We had lots of great time with our nieces! Anica above and Aila and Lila below

The Gingerichs (and Huddles!)

Upon returning to Honduras, I immediately got back to work on a new manual that the PC Honduras Health project has been working on for 2 years. I joined the team this year and have been in charge of editing and revising the manual. The course is called “Yo Merezco…” which means “I deserve…”.

The cover of the manual

It’s a class designed for young girls, ages 10-15, and deals with topics like self-esteem, good decision making, what to look for in a spouse, domestic violence, reproductive health, sex ed and HIV prevention. The focus throughout is on sexual abstinence (delaying the first sexual encounter). PC Honduras received money from President Bush’s PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) to design and implement this course. So we worked on finished up the manual to get it published in time for the national workshop that we had (July 23-26). We invited about 20 PCVs and their Honduran counterparts. We spent Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday talking about the manual, how it’s to be used, and teaching several of the chapters in small groups so that people could get a feel for it.

The tables set up for the workshop

Doing an activity with the participants

Me teaching the chapter on anatomy to the participants

On Friday, the participants (who had been split into groups) went to a school where they were to teach a chapter of the manual to a group of girls (like a practicum). Unfortunately, there was a teacher’s strike that day (and the day before as well) so there were very few girls there but we made do by calling parents and telling them to send their girls to school and by just having smaller groups than we originally planned. By Friday afternoon the workshop was over.

4 of us 5 leaders making phonecalls to parents

Doing a trust-fall activity with the girls during the practicum

Doing a peer pressure activity with my group

All in all, everything went well and we (the team of 5 of us in charge of the manual and the workshop) were just glad it was over! The next phase of the project is for PCVs around the country to implement the course in their communities. I am starting a class in a small town outside of Danlí that starts the first week of September. A young woman in the community who is very active and enjoys volunteers work (a rare concept for most Honduras) will be helping me with the course. Another phase of the project is to develop a similar course except for boys.

Soon after that was over, I came back to Danlí and started helping with the group from the Episcopalian church (same group I helped and blogged about recently). They drilled another well in a community near Danlí (same community where I will do the Yo Merezco course). While that was going on, I helped with health and hygiene classes for the members of the community (mostly women show up but this time we did have one gentlemen and several young men). We did 6 days of classes with the participants from 10 am – 4 pm (with an hour and a half lunch). The graduation ceremony was just this past Wednesday.

During class with the community

A group picture of the participants

Here’s a little update on the community we worked in last time and didn’t find water (read my blog from June 10 to get a better idea of how desperate this community is for clean water): Luckily the group (they call themselves the Water Ministry) recognized the need this community has for clean water and have made them a priority. After they finished up the well earlier this week in the community where we were doing the health and hygiene classes, they went back to San Lorenzo and started drilling again. They had problems getting permission from the land owner on the first go round to drill where they wanted to and ended up drilling in a less than desired spot only to not find water. This time, they were able to get permission to drill where they originally wanted to. I hope to hear some good news next week that they found water. Here’s a pic of a young woman from this community hauling water from a nasty lagoon which is where all the water for consumption and domestic use is gathered.

The months of August-October will be busy for us! Luke has recently been busy with several projects and starting soon, will have 11 communities that need surveys and designs done. We are lucky to start feeling like we have some meaningful work (it only took a little over a year of living in Danlí to find some!). The school year ends in November and after that (at least through January) things will slow down a little. Come February, we only have 2 months left of service. Time is starting to fly and I’m feeling like there’s a lot to be done before we’re finished here. As most of you know, our service thus far (18 months) has definitely had it’s ups and downs (generally more downs than ups) but we’re looking forward to our last 8 months and hoping we can leave Honduras feeling good about the work and service we were able to do.

We´re blogging again! Check out Luke´s recent blog below...

Randomness

Welp…. sorry for not blogging recently, to all those who have faithfully been checking the blog in hopes of something, I apologize. I have tried in earnest to get myself in to some sort of exciting, dangerous or hilarious situation, but to no avail. Life is normal (or it has developed the sense or normalcy) and normal seems hardly blog worthy. I can think of nothing to write about, but in place of writing I will make lists.

Things that have recently happened…

1.) I paid a guy 250 Lempiras to pull out and chop up our giant “zucchini” plant that managed to take over our entire yard and produce only 2 small tasteless gourds. It took him almost a day and a half.

2.) Our “canícula” recently ended, canícula is the word for the month long period during the wet season when it doesn’t rain. Good riddance canícula.

3.) Annie and I did a topographic survey last Monday for a community called “El Ojo de Agua” or “The Eye of Water”. They have a well and need me to tell them how to get the water to the houses.

4.) We found (more accurately rescued) another turtle, this one is painted red with a white stripe down his back. We found him on the road outside of the liberal party headquarters in town (red and white are their colors). He/she and Umberto are currently chasing each other around in our compound either mating or fighting, or both.

5.) Band practice has started again! So we will be serenaded until the Sept. 15th Independence Day celebration with daily 4-hour marching band practices by all of the nearby high schools.

6.) The neighbor kid got a saxophone (help us!).

7.) Avocados are now in season……Hallelujah!!

8.) Food is getting more expensive. This has taken a toll on most everyone we know since the majority of people’s income here is spent on food.

9.) Our oven (stove part still works) broke…this is a disaster!! Annie lost her main source of entertainment and I lost my only source of baked goods.

10.) Hondu 9 is leaving for home; this makes our Hondu 10 group the next in line to take off.

11.) The papaya tree we planted 12 months ago is giving fruit (papaya tastes awful by the way).



Things I did yesterday, in no particular order:

Read

Worked on the distribution system design for “The Eye of Water”

Went for a walk because it was the first nice cool day in a long, long time

Priced large plastic barrels at the large plastic barrel store. No really, it is actually called “Large Plastic Barrels Corner Kick” (translated from Spanish)

Talked on the phone to 2 people about potential projects next week

Purchased 50 Lempiras of prepaid cell phone minutes

Called a missionary to find out where on earth the church is that I agreed to meet some people at tomorrow

Made two grilled cheese sandwiches

Fed our cat

Watched the turtles fight

Went for a run

Got whiffs of our terrible smelling compost pile while working on the computer

Made sketch of small methane digester to put compost in

Played Spider Solitaire on computer

Wrote cover letter to send to a company in the States

Washed dishes

Annie´s got a blog with pictures that she´ll post soon so stay tuned...

Blogging is hard

Hello everyone and those who diligently check our blog waiting to see something...anything...new. I´ve got an update in progress with pictures and everything so just hang in there a few more days. We appreciate everyone who continues to keep in touch with us and with what we´re doing here in Honduras! We promise to be better bloggers!

Josh was here!!

As some of you know, Josh, my little brother (well, not so “little” anymore, he just finished his first year at Iowa State on the civil engineering tract) visited Luke and I in Honduras for a week and a half in May. We had a WONDERFUL time with him!

We spent the first few days after Josh’s arrival in Danlí where we went on a hike and bike ride, walked around the city and hung out at our house.

A view of Danli from the mountain we climbed

Luke chatting with our friend Rene's brother

We wanted to do something “work-like” while Josh was here so a few days after Josh got here we caught a bus to Tegus where we met up with another volunteer from our department and caught a bus to Guaimaca (northeast of Tegus about and hour and a half). From there we caught a jalón (a ride) to the small town in the mountains called San Marcos. Getting the “jalón” was an interesting experience! For whatever reason that day, the Danlí bus station was super crowded and we couldn’t get on a bus right away like we normally do. That caused us to miss the 11 o’clock bus in Tegus that we needed to be on to catch the one and only per day 1 o’clock bus in Guaimaca to San Marcos. We waited on a dusty road on the edge of town heading to San Marcos for around 4 hours before a truck headed that direction with room in the paila (truck bed) picked us up. There ended up being 7 adults in the back of the truck (including us 4 gringos), 4 children, a large sack of corn, a tire, several boxes, and our surveying equipment. It was an hour and a half ride on a dirt road through pine forests until we arrived in San Marcos. By then our limbs were asleep and we were thirsty and dusty but happy to have made it. In San Marcos, there is a Protected Areas Management volunteer (pretty much the only PCVs that live without electricity in small rural towns). It was fun for Josh (and for us) to spend a few nights there without electricity.

The next day we did a survey with some of the townsfolk. They have a stream that runs through town and even during dry season there is plenty of water so they want to do a small hydroelectric project and use the water to bring electricity to the school and possibly to the town. The survey needed done to see if this would even be possible and to estimate costs. I had never surveyed with Luke before so it was fun to see how that works and since Josh did lots of surveying last summer, I think he also enjoyed it. We stayed in San Marcos two nights and had fun. In the evenings we cooked with the volunteer’s little gas stove and sat in the hammock on the porch. After the long day of surveying, we went to a little swimming hole near the volunteer’s house and cooled off.

From San Marcos, we headed back to Danlí for just long enough to do a little laundry and repack. We were hoping to get back to Danlí around 1 pm but we’re in Honduras so things never go as planned. There was a national strike going on that day and all major entrances/exists into Tegus were going to be blocked at least until noon. So instead of catching a bus in Guaimaca at 9, we had to wait until about 12:30 before one was available. It was a long day of waiting for and being on public transportation.

The next morning, I gave my sex ed class at the school for street kids and Josh came with.

After that, we had lunch and got on a bus (again) to go to Comayagua, a city between Tegus and San Pedro Sula in the north. We stayed that night with our married PC friends and left early the next morning for Tela, a beach town on the north coast. That afternoon, the boys immediately went down to the beach to swim while I walked around town. The next day we got up early and got a ride to a small town on the beach about 1/2 hour west of Tela (all one way sand roads to get there). It´s the last little Garífuna village on a sandy road before a lagoon.

Baleadas - fresh flour tortillas filled with beans, grated dry cheese, avocado slices and a cream that tastes a little like sour cream. Baleadas are traditionally eaten for breakfast or dinner.

(A little background on the Garífuna…the Garífuna are what the Spanish called “Black Caribs.” For the first two centuries following Columbus, the island of San Vicente was inhabited by an indigenous group from the coast of South America. During this time, black slaves who were either shipwrecked or who had escaped from plantations on nearby islands also came to inhabit the island. These two cultures intermixed and developed a new language. In 1797, the Garífuna were kicked off of San Vicente by the British who had taken control of the island fourteen years earlier. They were moved to the Honduran island of Roatán in the Caribbean and eventually moved on to the mainland and started building their villages as far north as Belize and as far east and south as the Nicaraguan Mosquito Coast.)

Most Garífuna live in traditional huts with dried palm branches for a roof. We hung out on the beach in this small Garífuna village (that has miles of deserted undeveloped sandy beaches in both directions) and arranged to eat lunch at a Garífuna woman´s house. She served us fried fish (you get the whole fish on your plate, typical Honduran style), tajadas (fried plantains - not the sweet kind but the kind that taste like french fries), rice mixed with beans, and cabbage salad. It was yummy. We ended up getting a ride back into Tela with this guy in his truck.


We spent the next day on the beach in front of the nice resort we stayed at when my mom and grandparents were visiting. We rented beach chairs and a little tent for shade and spent the whole day swimming in the ocean, reading, and eating coconut that a young Garífuna boy sold us.

The next day we arranged a tour with one of the guide companies to go kayaking in Wildlife reserve along the coast called Punta Izopo. We spent several hours kayaking in the river and exploring the swamp and mangrove trees. We saw some interesting birds and got a good arm workout. The guide then took us to Triunfo de la Cruz, a little Garífuna village just east of Tela. We stopped and ate the typical Garífuna meal at a restaurant right on the beach and spent several hours swimming in the ocean and relaxing in hammocks. That afternoon we took a bus to San Pedro Sula (about an hour and a half from Tela) so that Josh could get up early and catch his 7:45 am flight the next day. Josh left saying he wanted to come back again and visit and we hope he will!

Brigades, mission trips, and the like

Prior to last week, I did not have a favorable view of “mission” trips – be it medical brigades or otherwise (often I include Peace Corps in this view). I have seen large groups of gringos come to Honduras for a week or so in groups of 20-35 to do all sorts of things. (“Gringos,” just in case anyone is confused about that, is the general term Mexicans and Central American’s (I think South American’s too??) give to people from the North America.) Anyway, many of the brigades are medical and do little more than hand out Tylenol and vitamins. Sometimes these basic medical brigades will find a case that needs special referral – someone with diabetes or a hernia the size of a football (this happened to the doc I was translating for last September) – and that is when these type of brigades seem to provide a service the Hondurans are lacking in – complete coverage and adequate referrals. Of course, whether or not the patient will get the special paper to get referred and paid for depends on if the brigade has bothered to team up with a Honduran doctor to provide these referrals. The cases that need referred, however, are few and far between the handing out of vitamins and Tylenol.

There are other brigades that come to do work – such as a build a school or church. When my family was visiting, we ran into a gringo brigade that was building a school. Let me say first that the funding to build schools and infrastructure of any kind is needed here (I wish the government was doing it’s part and taking care of it’s own business, but it’s not). However, there is always someone capable on the ground to manage that funding and if that is not possible, two people coming from the States can do that. I get frustrated when I see 30 gringos who paid at least $500 each for their plane ticket and are paying at least $20-50 per night per person for hotel, and who knows how much for meals that come to build a school. There are so many Honduran men that are out of work and that could be paid minimum wage ($5 per day) to build a school with several people (instead of 30) overseeing it. The dollars would stretch so much further…enough to buy books and materials for the children possibly even enough to buy a few computers.

These trips usually consist of people who don’t speak Spanish, who have zero cultural knowledge and who tend to freak out about eating anything that isn’t packaged (I’m generalizing here but that’s usually the majority). It becomes difficult as a Peace Corps Volunteer translating for these brigades to not only translate the language but to also translate the cultural tid bits and serve as general guides. My friend who is a health PCV in the west, wrote an interesting blog about her experience in dealing with these brigades. You can read it at: http://allisonodonnell.blogspot.com/2008/04/wheelchairs-from-washington.html

I apologize for offending anyone here. I don’t mean to criticize your personal experience on a mission/brigade/volunteer trip and what that meant to you. Essentially Luke and I are on a 27-month “volunteer” trip of sorts and believe me, I have enough to criticize Peace Corps about. I do understand that mission/brigade/volunteer trips can be very beneficial to a person – especially a young person – to see life outside the US, to see poverty, etc.

Last was the first time I worked with a group from the States that I felt really good about and felt like their work here is needed and Honduras is better off because of them. A group of Texans from different Episcopalian churches have been coming to the state of El Paraiso in Honduras every three months for 5 years now. The church owns a well drilling rig that a Honduran guy is in charge of and uses when the team isn’t in Honduras. Every three months, they drill a well in a community that is desperately in need of water. For example, the community we worked in last week is not far from Danlí but has no electricity and is hauling all their water (in buckets the women and children carry on their heads) from a nasty lagoon below the community. The water is pretty contaminated and not everyone is chlorinating or boiling their water before drinking it. Lots of people have skin problems from just bathing in the contaminated water. The community has a tiny one room school from kindergarten through the sixth grade with one teacher for FORTY-TWO kids.

They have one American guy that works as their logistical coordinator and comes to Honduras often to “get the kinks out” before the team arrives. The Episcopalian church also has several middle-aged women volunteers living in Danlí to help coordinate and do follow-up.

So when a group comes down (usually about 10-15 people, the guys generally work on drilling the well with some men from that community and a health educator from the States comes and does 6 days (10 am to 4 pm) of hygiene and health training for the women of the community. She has been coming down pretty much every 3 months for the last three years. She doesn’t speak much Spanish but that doesn’t stop her from trying to communicate. After the first few communities in which she gave the health and hygiene classes (and someone translated), she realized that it would be beneficial to train several women in each community to be volunteer health promoters. So she started by asking a few women after the training in a community if they were interested in becoming volunteer health promoters in their communities. Those women would then get special recognition at the graduation ceremony. They take an oath to volunteer in their community to assure that everyone continues to practice good hygiene and they get a book with lots of good teaching pictures and materials. Now two of these Honduran volunteer health promoters (who are from one of the first communities that the health educator from the States started doing the trainings in) go to every community where they drill and run most of the training session with the women in the community themselves. I helped translate between the two Honduran women leaders and the health educator and then between the health educator and the women of the community when she would do some of the training. It was a very rewarding week to see what some time and commitment can accomplish. The two Honduran women are very outgoing and wonderful educators and the health educator from the States has a lot to do with that.

Unfortunately, in like 6 days of work (including various breakdowns of the machine), they drilled to about 44 meters and didn’t find water which was so sad because this community was very united and really really need water. The team was scheduled to leave on Saturday and apparently they will meet when they get back to the States and decide whether to drill again in this community in a different spot. A Honduran guy is in charge of the drill rig that the Episcopalian church owns and they do allow him to drill when they’re not here so we’re hoping they’ll ok it and let him drill again in this community.

Where the team spent a week drilling (and fixing broken parts)
The town church where we held our meetings with the women

A group shot of the women holding up their hygiene puppets (see pic below as well) and jugs that they used to design a hand-washing device (useful because it doesn´t use much water)

A puppet one of the women made to teach hygiene to their children

One of the seasoned health promoters (in middle) doing a skit to teach about nutrition
The women laughing, enjoying the skit

Kids from the community hanging out after a long day watching us pack up
On the last day there was a graduation and the women did a few skits on what they learned. In the pic below the mosquitos (dressed in black on the left) keep attacking the woman sleeping (on ground on the right) because she hasn´t cleaned up the standing water around her home

Regalar

An interesting phenomenon exists here in Honduras and that is the act of “gifting”. “Regalar” means literally “to gift or to give a gift” and is used widely…you can “gift” anything from food to children. Yes, even children. I will explain that in a bit. The trick with using the verb “to gift” is that it should be used in the command form. For example, “Regáleme comida” would be “gift me some food”. One of the best “regálame”s I’ve ever heard is when some girl during a medical brigade asked me to gift her my shirt (the one I was wearing!). “Regálame”s get thrown around a lot when the gringos come to do medical or water brigades. I am, for this reason, against just randomly handing things out to people. The kids start pushing and shoving, the adults get antsy and meanwhile all you can hear is kids screaming “Gift me that! Gift me this!”.

“Regálame”s can be used in much more common, less obnoxious ways. For example, at the beginning of my service I learned from my Honduran counterpart that when you are working in a community or passing through a community and you know someone there, you can always, at a moment’s notice, ask them to gift you rice and beans or coffee and some sweet bread. This is not rude or weird but actually a compliment because it means you enjoy eating their food. Also, if you are working in a community it is unusual to leave the community empty handed. “Regalos” that are common are: bananas, plantains (see pic below of bananas (mínimos) and plantains that we got gifted a week ago. They should start ripening soon!) coffee, any other fruits or veggies that are in season, frijoles (beans), and eggs. I even saw one of the Hondurans that was working in the community with us last week take home a chicken in a box that someone ¨regalar¨ed.


This week we were working in a community about half an hour from Danlí on a dirt road where the Episcopalian church is drilling a well. Part of the agreement that was made with the community was to feed the Hondurans that were working on the well (the Americans brought their lunches made by the cafeteria at the hotel they’re staying at). Luke, of course, prefers the Honduran rice and beans to a white bread bologna sandwich that the rest of the gringos were eating and asked the women to “regálale” lunch. They did and were more than happy to feed a gringo the food they cooked! The next day they brought him lunch again. Well, the word apparently got around the community that my husband likes the Honduran food and one of the woman leaders in the community (not the same one that had been cooking for the guys) apologized to me for not asking me over to her house for lunch with the other Honduran women that were working because she just assumed I didn’t eat Honduran food like the other gringos.

Now...the gifting of children…the family that owns the pulpería on the corner of our street has a “regalo” in the form of a young boy. When they were introducing us to their family members, they said the names of their children and then pointed to Daniel and said, “He was a gift”. This is nothing strange or out of the ordinary. I heard children called “gifts” many times now. It is common for aunts & uncles and grandparents to raise their relative’s children here…be it for economic or health reasons. I suppose there are worse things to be called than a “gift”!