Hike

Hello everyone!

A week ago last Saturday we went on a really nice hike near Danlí. A family friend of our host family’s who was always over at there house when we were living there knew we liked to hike so he came over one and invited us on a hike Saturday morning. Luke was the one who answered the door so he didn’t get all the info like who all was going, where we were going, etc. but we decided to go anyway. Turned out to be pretty fun. Ended up being our host family’s friend (Carlan), four of his middle-aged guy friends, two ten-year-olds and a Japanese volunteer who is living with Carlan’s parents, and Luke and I. We drove for about 35 minutes on a dirt road out of Danlí and ended up hiking for about 4 hours through one of Carlan’s friend’s private property that is still really well forested. The guy who owns the property definitely had to be with us because we weren’t walking on any well worn trails. We walked through dense jungle, moving over and under logs, pushing vines and branches out of the way, etc. We didn’t make it to the top of the mountain we were headed to due to lack of time but we did get some good exercise and got to see wild monkeys! We started hearing their growl/howl soon into our hike but didn’t actually see any until we got pretty deep into the jungle. We saw them from below as they were high up in the trees but one of the guys had binoculars. They made some really cool sounds and were pretty big (about the size of a 10-year-old kid). We also saw a small waterfall and returned to Danlí in the afternoon around 2. Here are a few pics. I´ve got more from the hike but don´t have time today to wait for them to download but I´ll post them soon.

Getting ready to head out of town

A close-up pic of coffee beans. Coffee won´t be ready to pick until Nov/Dec.

On the hike we stopped by to look at a field of red beans.

A neat pic Luke took of the landscape.

Work update

Hey everyone,
I feel like I have to apologize for not blogging enough every time I blog, but Annie seems to keep everyone up to date on most of the goings on. So sorry for not blogging and you’re welcome for marrying a blogger. It is also a challenge to blog because life really isn’t that exciting…..although Saturday we saw some 100 lb wild monkeys, which was exciting.

I have been spending 3-4 days working in El Paraíso per week and the other days either chasing other work around the area or working on the computer. I have a copy of EPAnet software and AutoCAD software and some different GIS softwares that I am trying to find the time and projects to work with so I can keep up-to-date with engineering softwares. Work in El Paraíso still consists of me following around the técnicos from project to project trying to get things built correctly. JAM currently has 7 projects that are scheduled to end in September and construction needs to be done by then (when the bank account quits giving Swiss money). I am still of minimal impact with this organization. The técnicos are very capable in my opinion (and they speak the native language). It has still been beneficial to me though as I have seen quite a few different projects, the subsequent problems, and have done a few surveys that have saved them some time. I have also had some worthwhile experiences. For example, just today I spent 5 hours hiking around the rainforest in the rain (imagine that), and I managed to fall down in the mud on 3 separate occasions. We were walking along the newly buried conduction line to check if some new air valves were installed correctly so the trail was nothing but saturated clay. My second fall was the best. We came to the top of a hill and the trail was pretty steep. There were 2 ways down, slide on your ass or try and sort of run/slide down and stay upright for the 40 yards of downhill. I tried the running method (genius) and my foot caught on a root at about the point of maximum velocity and it was a face first yard sale into the mud and water. The guy I was with thought it was hilarious how much earth I moved with my face/shoulder. I then took a shower and washed my clothes in an overflow from the water system along the way because I figured I might as well just be wet and not both wet and dirty. I promptly fell down a third time. On the way home I rode in the back of the truck.

Of interest, the project we were working on is right along the border with Nicaragua and in one of the areas where the heaviest fighting took place during the contra war in the late 80’s between the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and the American backed Contras. You can still see machine gun placements along the ridge, and the stories that the guys I am working with tell are not of a pleasant time, especially for the communities unfortunate enough to be in the area. If anyone wants to know more about what was going on at the time (politically, culturally and economically) read the biography “The Death of Ben Linder.” I can’t remember the author, but it is definitely worth reading and a book both Annie and I recommend.

Here are some pics I took on a visit to see a community building a tank last week:

Charlas with the 5th graders

I thought I’d get some pics up and blog a little about the charlas I’ve been doing at two different elementary schools in Danlí. I’m doing a 3-month course with 5th graders (I’m working with 6 classes in all which is about 210 students), dealing with topics like good communication, self esteem, values, stereotypes, relationships, puberty (physical changes), pregnancy, HIV/AIDS prevention, and future goal setting/plans. So far it’s been difficult but lots of fun working with the kids. I think I mentioned in another blog how difficult it is to be heard because of how each “aula” (classroom) has windows open to the courtyard. I almost lose my voice after giving two charlas in a row! And when it rains...it´s impossible! The schools have tin roofs and when it´s raining, I have to quite early. I have some pics to post thanks to a Japanese volunteer (a nurse) who is doing a 2-year volunteer program similar to Peace Corps and is living in Danlí. She accompanied me to a charla the other day to see what I was doing with 5th graders and took a few pics.

The pic below shows me doing a self-esteem demonstration. The bottle represented one’s inner self-esteem. The volunteers against the board each took turns reading a slip of paper I gave them with either a positive comment (Annie, I like your shirt) or negative comment (Annie, your charlas are boring). With each positive comment, I filled the bottle up a bit with water and with each negative comment, I squirted the bottle at the students (I poked a hole in the bottle with a seam-ripper so every time I squeezed it, it shot out a stream of water). The students loved it! We then talked about how we can make sure our “self-esteem” bottle stays at an equilibrium and how it’s ok to feel sad or not content with yourself sometimes.

Here is a class of students intently listening to what I have to say! Notice the uniforms…every public school I’ve seen in Honduras requires their students to wear uniforms. Girls in skirts, boys in pants. For physical education, the girls wear skirts with shorts underneath and the boys wear shorts.

Here’s me monitoring a “dinámica” (fun participatory activity). The kids got into groups and had to write positive comments (we first practiced what a “positive comment” is) to their classmates, writing them on a piece of paper taped to their back. The students then got to look at their list to see if the qualities their peers see in them are qualities they knew they had. I stressed the importance of giving compliments and their homework was to intentionally give at least 5 positive comments before going to bed that night.

A big sincere thanks to family members who have contributed to this project! GRACIAS!

Work update and pics

As some of you already know, we’re finally in our own place! It’s great to be on our own again (after 5 long months). We are living pretty simply with very little furniture (only 1 plastic table and 2 chairs and 2 thin foam mattresses for the floor that we sleep on) but we couldn’t be happier. Our next big purchase will be a couch, a few more plastic chairs, a bed, and maybe eventually, a tv. Send me an email if you want to see pics of the house.

I am sitting here on my plastic chair on a cool (low 70s) Thursday evening thinking of something to blog about so I thought I’d talk a bit about the sand filters that Agua Pura and Rotary International have been installing all over Honduras. I’ve tagged along three times now with employees from Agua Pura and an American environmental engineering student who is here doing a third-party evaluation of the filters. In the department of El Paraíso, around 9,000 filters have been installed. Each filter costs about $27 and is installed inside a family’s home. The family is responsible for coming up with 200 lemps (about $10) of the cost. Check out the pic below to have an idea about what it looks like.

Before I go any further, a little about how the filter works…the cement column contains several layers (starting from bottom) – gravel, smaller gravel, sand, and a layer of water on top of the sand. To keep the filter functioning, at least one 5-gallon jug of water has to be poured into the filter each day to every other day. Basically viruses in the water are attracted to the sand and parasites and larger bacteria get trapped in the sand. Other bacteria are killed off by the biological layer. So, by the time, the water comes out it’s drinkable.

Through the third-party evaluation, they have been finding out that many people are not using the filters correctly or at all. (Ahhh…the joys of development work!). The problem is that the 4 employees (all Honduran) of Auga Pura in Danlí cannot possibly oversee the proper use and maintenance of 9,000 filters. So what we would like to bring to the drawing table is training the already established community leaders in the monitoring of their community’s filter use and general hygiene and come up with some way of reporting back to Agua Pura so they can keep a better eye on things.

It’s so interesting to see all that goes into a project like this. This is the first NGO that I’m really getting to see a lot of the inner workings of. After the several trips we’ve been on to communities to either do water samples or present the idea of bringing filters into a community, the environmental engineering student (and now a public health student who’s also here for 6 weeks doing an internship) and I have to have coffee and debrief to process everything that is involved. Some of the issues that have come up are:

If a community already has a water system, do they really need household sand filters or are there other methods of water purification that would be more suitable?
If a community has a system and was previously treating their water at the tank with chlorine and have now stopped chlorinating because chlorine doesn’t work with the sand filters, what do the people do in the community who don’t have the sand filters?
Are the sand filters being provided because it’s really in the best interest of the community or because numbers are needed to report back to the administration so funding and jobs of the employees can be secured and foreign donors can feel good about themselves?
If filters are being installed to provide clean drinking water but not much is done in the way of education on general hygiene (washing hands, wearing shoes, keeping animals out of house, keeping trash covered, use of latrines, etc.) people will still get sick so how do you manage that (staff, funding, etc.)?

I’m neither for nor against the filters…just bringing up some of the questions that I imagine arise when working with any NGO or similar development agency.

Anyway, below are a few scenes from the campo on one of the visits I went on with Agua Pura. To check out Agua Pura´s explanation for why they´re working in Honduras click on: http://www.purewaterfortheworld.org/our-projects/why-honduras/

Bridge we had to cross to visit a home with a filter.

Corn sitting on someone´s kitchen floor ready to be milled to make tortillas.

The joys of living abroad

Living in a foreign country has its advantages and disadvantages. There are things about Honduras that we love (fresh fruit and veggies, hospitable people, etc.) and there are things that are more difficult to grow accustomed to. Luke and I spent some time thinking about things that we are dealing with or have seen here in Honduras that to us seemed funny, strange, or just something that we’re not used to in the States and wanted to share it with you. Enjoy the list!

· Sweet-tasting ketchup
· Not flushing your toilet paper (systems can´t handle it)
· Cockroaches
· Feeling “chilly” when it’s 79 degrees
· No speed limits, stop signs, or any regard for what we would consider “safe” driving
· Restaurants that are closed during meal times
· Ropa Americana (American clothing) that has somehow made its way to Honduras. We’ve seen t-shirts that say things like: “Too sexy to study,” “Baby princess,” “My boyfriend’s out of town” “In God we Trust,” etc.
· Putting a plate of food to be eaten later in the microwave (somehow the microwave will keep anything fresh and safe for hours or even days)
· Water shortages
· Difficulty starting things on time
· A love for music from the eighties and early nineties (especially the sappy ballads)
· Excessive honking – could almost be considered it’s own form of communication
· Badly dubbed American movies in Spanish
· “Store dogs”: dogs, usually short legged long-haired ones, that belong to the owner of a store and hang out in and on the street nearby the store
· Stale baked goods
· “Piropos” from men (catcalls)
· Not covering food that’s in the fridge
· Men who walk around ringing a bell selling ice cream from a cooler on wheels
· Being woken up around 4 or 5 am by loud “bangs” that sound an awful lot like gunshots but are really firecrackers called “cohetes” that people use to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
· Bolos – drunk old men who fall asleep in the sun on the sidewalk or are really chatty
· Buying then drinking purified water out of ½-liter plastic bags
· Drinking liquados, soda, and natural juice out of a plastic bag with a straw
· Lots of Tweety Bird posters, paraphernalia, car accessories, etc.
· Seeing commercials on tv for rewards for having more “remesas,” (money sent from family/friends who are living and working in the US). Banks here offer prizes – the more “remesas” you deposit into your bank account, the more chances you have to win a new fridge, car, or whatever it is they’re offering.
· Being asked over and over by everyone why we don’t have kids (we´re married so why wouldn’t we??)
· Seeing an entire family (mother, father, child) all riding on a one-person bicycle

Work update

Hey everyone,
Things here are progressing, I am not sure if the progression of things will lead to any tangible results, but they are progressing…and that is a good thing.

We recently took a trip with an hombre from a NGO called Vecinos Mundiales (World Neighbors) that works here in Honduras. We made this contact earlier on a trip with another guy from Vecinos, I think we blogged about that trip already. Anyhow, it seemed to be a quite successful trip, and we have tentatively planned to stay around 5-7 days a month in the community we visited working on a number of things from beginning to start to think about the potential of a water system, and working with some agricultural producers to giving talks at the schools about self esteem and things of that nature. Vecinos seems excited to have Annie available to work in the health sector as they do not have a health worker in the zone right now, but are doing a lot of health education there.

We left on Monday at about 2:30 and after 3 river crossings on a dirt road big enough for one vehicle and 3 hours in a pickup (I was in the back covered by a tarp to keep dry while Annie was crammed into the single cab with 2 workers from Vecinos) we arrived at the community. It is pretty high up in the mountains, 1,300 meters, and was actually pretty chilly, although to us 75 F is chilly. We talked with some people and found a place to stay. Vecinos is building an office and once it is finished hopefully we can stay there when we are working in the community. Right now they’re using a part of a family’s house as their office where have several desks and a couple of cots to sleep on when they’re in town. We stayed at the house of the lady who makes food for the Vecinos employees while they’re there. The food is “típico” but excellent – rice, beans, cheese, tortillas, eggs, fried plantains, and of course sugared coffee.

The zone is dominated by coffee production and is pretty rough, steep, wet country. Deforestation is taking its toll, but fortunately hasn’t yet left the place an eroded desert. There are 2 small communities that don’t have potable water systems and I am going to attempt to find out how much interest there is in these 2 communities to build a system. I am looking forward to the opportunity to work there as the communities right now don’t have anyone working with them on the water system so I will get to start from almost the beginning and ‘si Dios quiere’ in 2 years some progress will be made towards a potable water system, and maybe they will even have a functioning system. The barriers at this point to the communities getting a functioning system seem almost endless, but you have to start somewhere.

The place we stayed was nice. The outdoor showers in the morning were a little chilly with no hot water (Annie says she could see her breathe while she was showering). When we go to the campo people are usually very hospitable and this time they even moved stuff around so we could have the “master” bedroom. Mostly because they thought I was too gigantic to fit on any of their smaller beds. It is very nice of them to go so far out of there way for us, but sometimes it just makes me feel like more of an intruder…I really can sleep wherever (please no rats if possible)…and I get the feeling that since we’re gringos they think we’re pretty soft. And in comparison we are pretty soft, but I would appreciate a chance to prove that I am not a total pansy ass and can sleep on the floor just fine.

I will try and post a blog sometime soon on all of the things that starting these waters project is going to entail…….once I figure out what that is.

So things are going well for us here, thanks to all who have kept in touch and kept us in your thoughts and prayers.

Hasta luego,
Luke


A couple of additions to the campo trip that Luke blogged about. On Monday night when we got there, the sun quickly set (the sun still sets here around 6 pm…Honduras didn’t do Daylight Savings Time) and the temperature quickly dropped. I was chilly the entire time we were in the campo except for during the day from 9 to 5. The first night it started to rain during dinner and kept raining hard all night. I was convinced that the whole mountain was going to slide away, taking us and the house with it. Luke told me not to worry but in the morning told me that he too worries about mudslides even though he knows it would takes days of hard rain to wet the earth deep enough to make a mountain slide away. Anyway, I woke up the next morning knowing I would have to take a cold shower outdoors while the rain continued to poor down. Sure is a good way to wake up! To give you an idea of how “cold” it is…I was wearing my jeans, boots with socks, a long sleeve shirt and my rain jacket and was wishing I had a sweatshirt and a stocking cap. It’s supposedly “winter” here now that the rains of started but even with the rains it hasn’t been exactly chilly in Danlí so the fresco of the mountains surprised me.

Luke and I both complained about the sugared coffee when we first got to Honduras but now we both enjoy it when we’re in the campo. It seems to fit with the “plato típico” and gives you a bit of something sweet that you otherwise wouldn’t get.

Quick update on the “house hunt:” WE FOUND A HOUSE! Some of you have heard our good news by email but to let everyone know, it’s official! We signed the contract today (Sunday) and paid the first month’s rent. It’s a really nice house only 2 houses down the street from where we live now. We’re happy with the neighborhood (only a few blocks from the main plaza and plenty of neighbors that will “watch our for us”) and even happier with the house. We’ll have a bit of a yard and an 8 foot wall that gives us complete privacy! Now the task of finding furniture and other household items. We have to buy everything from a fridge to a bed to kitchen utensils and a couch. Bit by bit. We may be sleeping on “colchones” (small mattresses you put on the floor) and sitting on plastic furniture for awhile. But I’m not complaining…we have a house! We hope to be moving into it at the end of this week. -Annie

This past week went by fast. On Monday I practiced for my first charlas to give on Tuesday. Then Tuesday morning I went to the school and found that another group of young “gringos” from a church were doing some sort of program with the kids. I decided I didn’t want to have to give my charla after the kids were all wound up so I decided to go back on Wednesday. I went Wednesday and a Japanese volunteer who also works at the hospital (in nutrition) accompanied me just to see what type of work I’m doing. I gave the charla to a fifth and a sixth grade class of 36 and 40 students, respectively. The first charla was a basic introduction to the course. We went over all the different topics we’d be addressing throughout the series of 15 or so charlas, talked about good communication, did some fun activities (what they call “dinámicas”), and the students came up with rules for the course. Even with the large amount of students, it went really well although I’d almost lost my voice after giving the two charlas. It’s hard to understand how the kids can learn anything in the schools here due to the structure of the buildings. Because of the hot climate, most schools are built in a square or U shape with an open center courtyard. The classrooms have windows that face the courtyard as well on the opposite wall to let the air pass through. Sometimes there is glass in the courtyard windows but usually they just have the metal bars for security. So it is incredibly difficult to hear anything because something is always going on…some kids are on break, others are doing a loud activity in a classroom nearby, etc. You really do have to practically yell while you’re in your classroom so that all students can hear. This coming week I’m planning to do the same introduction charla at two other schools.

On Thursday and Friday we went to Zamorano, a private agricultural university between Danlí and Tegus for a meeting with some PC staff and all the volunteers from the department of El Paraíso. We stayed over night Thursday night, had breakfast, and then came back to Danlí on Friday late morning. It’s a neat university with a huge campus. Students come from all over Central and South America to study there.

On Monday-Tuesday we’re hoping to accompany two employees of Vecinos Mundiales (NGO) on a visit to a few communities they’re working in. The last excursion we went out with this NGO put us in contact with these fellow employees who are working in another aldea near Danlí. We’re going this time just to get to know the communities and see if there are any work possibilities.

A couple of food/drink tidbits...I’m now addicted to the unripe mangos that sort of taste like an unripe apple. You can buy them off the street from usually older ladies who peel the skin off the green mango then cut thin slices of the fruit. They sell a bag of the slices for 5 lemps (25 cents) and put salt (mixed with dry chilies spices) and hot sauce over the slices. It’s a salty/spicy treat! Luke definitely is not a fan but I love them…it fulfills my need for salty snacks. We found a great juice place near the centro. The owner has yummy pastries as well as lots of fresh juices called “frescos naturales”. She usually has about 7 different kinds to choose from. This morning (Sunday) Luke and I went on a walk and stopped there afterward. Luke got guayaba and I got maracujá (passion fruit). They are so good!

Hello

¿Cómo les va? Things are going alright here.

I am not sure what to blog about…it seems like quite a bit has happened since the last time I blogged. One thing I had wanted to blog about was an addition to Annie’s blog about Honduras and the “slower pace of life” here. I wanted to write a little something to demonstrate that while things here are slow there are still plenty of people working very hard.

The first example of this I saw in a community JAM is working with, a couple hours drive from El Paraíso. I went with one of the técnicos to visit the caja toma (small damn) that the community had constructed in the mountains to check and make sure everything was done according to plan. We walked uphill for about 2 hours from the last passable road to get to the caja toma, and it was a well built concrete structure. About 3 yards of concrete went into the whole thing, all of the materials for which were carried along the same route we had taken to get there. It’s not an easy hike even when you’re just carrying water, let alone a 80 lb sack of cement. Anyhow, after we got back to the community about 8 guys were unloading bricks to build the water tank, and there was a guy there helping that everyone was joking with and having a good time. He was one of the roughest looking fellows I have ever seen, unloading bricks with no shoes on, he maybe had half his teeth, and on a good day weighed 115 lbs. He looked as if he had spent the majority of his life drunk, and probably had. My first thought was that someone grabbed him and told him they would give him a cigarette if he helped unload bricks. But after awhile one of the guys started telling me the story of how this guy who had maybe never owned a pair of shoes, lived in the community, was a pretty friendly guy, and was helping construct the system voluntarily (no one gets paid, all of the community members do their part to construct the entire system). And when they had started the caja toma, up on the mountain, this guy had grabbed the first bag of cement and walked uphill without stopping to rest the entire way to the construction site. It had taken me 2 hours to walk that far and I stopped to rest twice… this guy did it carrying nearly his weight in cement on his shoulders.

The next example came when Annie and I were talking with a group of guys in a community a ways north of Danlí about the possibility of working towards another system in their area. I was explaining that it would be possible to start the process, but I emphasized that the community needed to really be ready for a lot of work because they would have to provide all of the labor, and there would be plenty. They sort of chuckled and looked at each other and told me that when they had done the system for the first community they trenched and buried 30 kilometers of pipe a meter underground, by hand.

Going on 5 months of host family living…

Our goal the last month and a half here in Danlí has been to find a house. I’ve been keeping a list of how many people we’ve asked, contacts we’ve made, and potential rentals we’ve heard about but so far nothing has worked out. We were about to get an apartment a week ago last Monday but the owner tried to raise the price on us last minute. We told him we’d talk to Peace Corps and get back to him. It’s been a week now and we’ve tried to call him several times to no avail. Apparently he doesn’t want to rent it at the price we’ve offered.

Renting in Honduras isn’t renting like in the States. There isn’t a section in the newspaper with rental listings and no websites to check. You basically have to walk around asking people if they know of a house in the area that is for rent and follow leads. We’ve gotten a lot of ¨so-and-so is a good person to ask¨or “in such-and-such neighborhood I heard there was a house for rent” then we go and either the house has been rented or there wasn’t a house to begin with. The other main difference in renting here is there really are no rental standards. Contracts are made and signed only occasionally. Getting information from the landlord about things like trash pick-up, electric and water bills, what happens if you need something fixed, etc. is difficult. You either take the place or you don’t. Why would you need to investigate everything thoroughly before moving in??

Anyway, if you can’t tell already, house hunting has been really frustrating (especially after the lastest miss last Saturday). The woman who runs the internet place we go to has been really nice to Luke and I and has been asking around trying to help us find a house. When we went last Friday night, she told us that she’d heard that a house in a nice barrio was for rent and gave us directions. Saturday morning we went to the neighborhood, asked around to find where the landlord lives and come to find out, the house had been rented the previous afternoon. The owner proceeded to tell us that it was too bad because the house is super pretty with a nice yard, etc. and a very reasonable price for a house (cheaper than the apartment we almost rented). Who knows, maybe something will come up and we’ll be happy we waited for it (at least that’s what I’m going to continue telling myself). Until then...host family living it is!

Weekly happenings

On Wednesday I was at a meeting all day at the Casa de la Juventud (youth house) in Danlí. It’s basically a hangout out for youth that’s open 7 days a week. The purpose is to provide activities and learning opportunities to keep adolescents out of otherwise risky behavior. The house has been there for awhile but in the last few years, there hasn’t been much going on. The meeting was to motivate volunteers (foreign and nationals) to bring life back to the place.

On Thursday I accompanied Luke on a trip to an aldea about 1 ½ hours on a dirt road into the mountains from El Paraíso. We went with the other PC engineer (about to end her PC service but plans to stay on with the organization as an employee), the Catholic Relief Service’s engineer who is working with JAM, and a técnico. We went to look at an aldea that has a water system that needs improved due to damages caused by landslides. We were about a 20 minute hike (along a steep mountainside – see pic below) from the car looking at the mountain where the pipes have been damaged when some dark clouds appeared and it began to rain.

The trail alongside the mountain

A house tucked away in the mountains (view from the trail)

We thought we’d wait it out a bit. Neither Luke nor I had our jackets with us but I did have my tiny travel umbrella. The rain didn’t let up so we decided to hike it out of there but we were already soaked to the bone. We go to the truck, drove back down to the aldea, had some sweet break and coffee and started to head home. We didn’t get more than a few minutes from the aldea when we saw that the small stream that we’d crossed over on the way in had turned into a raging amount of water resembling more of a river. We got out of the truck to check out the situation. Luke put a stick at the edge of the water and within a few minutes the water had grown 20 centimeters past the stick. We knew it would be awhile before the water would start to go down and slow down so we decided we’d go back to the aldea and find somewhere to stay the night. Just as we were about to turn around to head back, a smaller truck came from the opposite direction, paused for only a few seconds at the crossing, and then drove through the raging water with two kids and an old woman in the cab. We all just laughed about how hard we’d analyzed the situation and then this guy, obviously from the area, didn’t even give it a moments notice. So we put the truck in 4-wheel drive and crossed the water (Luke is really sad he isn’t allowed to drive). We made it back to Danlí by about 4.

The ¨river¨ we crossed to make it home

Earlier last week we’d made a contact with Heifer International which I’m sure many of you have hear of. A fellow PC volunteer is working with them in the west and has been really impressed with their work. When we called the office in Tegus we were directed to Heifer’s counterpart NGO in the department of Paraíso which is Vecinos Mundiales (World Neighbors). We contacted them and made plans to meet with the employee who was passing through Danlí on Friday. On Friday morning we met up with him at a restaurant here in town and he gave us the lowdown on the several projects in the area. He invited to us to go with him to an aldea to check out where they’ve been working to see if we thought it might be somewhere we could work. The aldea is about one and a half hours from Danli, about an hour of which is on a dirt road that hugs the side of a mountain with really only enough room for one car to pass. The drive to this aldea was beautiful. The first 30 minutes or so of the drive is through an area that is practically uninhabited so there is very little deforestation. When we got to the aldea, we were served lunch and introduced to 6 men who are the leaders in the 12 small communities on that mountain. They had lots of questions for us about how we could help, what our experience was, etc. It’s hard to explain to them that the support we offer in through trainings and technical support but no financial support (although we can always help them look for it by presenting projects to NGOs, etc.). They’re looking for help with several things, the first one being with water systems. 4 of the 10 communities have functioning water systems, 2 communities have old ones that need replaced and 6 communities have no water system at all. They also have some agriculture projects going (apiculture and coffee) and according to them they need lots of health training in nutrition, basic hygiene, latrine use, and family planning. It was great to see a community where our services could be offered! The community leaders were going to do some investigating to see how interested the communities without water are in putting in a system. The community really has to be united in the fact that they want a system because the community members themselves will be the ones carrying the cement up to the source, digging to lay the tubs, etc. The leaders said they would give us a call when they knew more about where the communities stand but they were sure that they would be interested….we’ll see. A few downsides to working with this community…we’d be on our own (without a counterpart agency or NGO) because Vecinos Mundiales’ funding for these communities was cut recently cut off and because of transportation…2 buses leave in the morning from the mountain for Danlí and return in the afternoon. If we were going there to work, we’d have to take the afternoon bus from Danlí and spend the night, returning several days later in the morning (to have an entire day to do work). Seems to both of us it would’ve made more sense to send us to live and work in an area like this. Anyway, we’re hoping it works out to get something done in these communities. It would provide an opportunity for us to do some work together, to see some projects through from start to finish, and to get out of the city for days/weeks at a time to do the work.

On Saturday morning we went and saw the remains of an aqueduct system just outside of Danlí that was constructed in late 1700s by a Catholic priest that brought water from the top of a mountain outside of Danli to the city itself. The street our host family lives on is called the Calle del Canal (Canal Street) because the canal used to bring the water into the city along that street. See pics below.

This week I plan to start working with the schools. On Tuesday I’ll go to one school and on Wednesday another. On Thursday through Friday we have a retreat type thing with all the volunteers from the Department of Paraíso at the Central American Agricultural University (between Danlí and Tegus).