January 23, 2011

So my main activities this past week were doing nothing, and doing nothing, and a little bit of trying to organize people to want their market to be better. The Sunday market in Camasca used to be the best municipal market in the area, but over the areas various factors have caused it to become almost nonexistent.  I have been trying to organize key figures in town (town leaders, store owners, etc) to come together to make a plan to improve the market but it has been difficult for sure. Few people came to our first meeting and the ideas were just all over the place. I was facilitating the meeting but feel like I kind of lost control of it, there were so many tangents. We are not meeting until the following week so I think I’ll meet before with my friend Marlim from FAO/PESA to figure out exactly how I want the agenda for next time.

I also went to San Juan de Dios, and they are doing major work there. They received funds from the mayor’s office to build a new building in the school, which is so necessary because the roof and the walls were falling down. They have also been building the latrines and cement floors from the COSUDE (Swiss NGO) money, and good news, I got my SPA grant officially approved! That means 21 more houses (around 200 people) will have cement floors. The funds should come in the next few weeks so that will be a lot of work for me, can’t wait.

So here is the bad news. A friend of mine in town died yesterday, on Saturday. It was so tragic. Carlos was 27 years old, had a baby that I would guess is 7 months old or so, and I heard he was going to get married in a few months. He was a bus driver in town and every day he drove from Camasca to La Esperanza and back, and was a super nice guy. He always offered to bring me back whatever I needed from La Esperanza, and I remember he would  help me bring up heavy things to my room if I couldn’t do it myself. I actually talked to him Friday night. I feel badly because I was walking by with Zach and Sarah and he shined his lights on me but I just waved and kept walking. He called me and we talked for a few minutes, and he said he’d bring me some Diet Coke from La Esperanza the next day so I was excited. Never guessed that would be my last conversation with him. So Saturday, he left at 11am from La Esperanza in the bus, and they had some trouble with the bus less than an hour out of La Esperanza. As always, the bus ayudante (“helper”) put rocks behind the wheels and they put on the emergency brake, and then Carlos got under the bus to figure out the problem. According to a friend of mine, he pulled out a screw and the emergency brake came undone, and the rocks were too small to hold the wheels, and the bus slid back over him. I didn’t really understand when they were explaining that it wasn’t he wheels that killed him, something  else under the bus, but regardless, in 30 minutes he was dead. They took him immediately to the La Esperanza clinic but he was already gone. Luckily, the bus (which was full of people, and to think that they weren’t told to get off the bus while he was under there looking!) started to slide back in reverse and someone jumped up there and put on the brake, or more people could have been seriously injured.

It makes me so sad to think about it. I really liked Carlos, and so did a lot of people. Saturday evening there was a mass and a viewing of the body at his family’s house, and there must have been 200 people, all just standing around his house. We arrived around 8pm and left at 12pm and there were still lots of people there. Today we went to the graveyard in a nearby municipality and they buried him. I didn’t even know him that well, but felt so depressed about it. This morning I didn’t even want to get out bed. Its just wild to think that one minute you are alive and well and the next minute you are dead. You just never know. It makes you think about life and death and really examine what you think. It would have been different if Carlos had been older and lived a full life, but he didn’t.  Seeing him in the casket was just surreal. I still expect to see him on the bus next time I ride to La Esperanza. The family of Carlos will now pray for 9 days for him, and then in 40 days they will do another mass. Death is this concept that just eludes us, and these ceremonies make us feel like we can do something about it. Obviously Carlos has no idea if I come to his funeral or not, but I go because I feel closure and it helps me deal with this situation which I really have no control over.  His family will continue praying and crying over him, but Carlos is gone. I look at him in his casket, and he is lowered into the ground, but that is no longer my friend, just his outer shell. Maybe he is in heaven and I will see him again someday, but in the meantime he is just no longer in my life or the life of anyone else. I don’t know, the whole thing is just weird and morbid and inevitable.

January 16, 2011

So today has definitely not been an I-love-my-life day. Spent a few days in La Esperanza which is usually good for my mood, because I stay with a Honduran friend and her family is just so great to me. I have my own room whenever I stay there, and I eat all my meals with them.  I love the grandpa that lives there. He is just so wise and has lots of interesting experiences, and always makes me feel so welcome. (So that part was good…)

Yesterday I made sure I arrived in time to Camasca for an interest meeting for English classes. So many people in my town have asked me to have classes, so I finally put posters around town advertising for classes for adults (can’t deal with disciplining children) a few days ahead of time. I show up and not one person comes. NOT ONE PERSON. I stayed for thirty more minutes and finally left. Almost all my of my Peace Corps friends say it is not worth doing English classes because most people don’t really want to make the commitment to learn English, and this proved true for me. It just made me mad because I wanted to help, I wanted to teach them because even if its not sustainable and may not help them that much in their life, it is a valuable thing to want to learn something new.  Not sure what happened, but I definitely won’t be offering English classes anymore…

So that was yesterday. Today I went to church as normal, and none of the four Sunday school teachers showed up, and they were begging people to help do class for today. Well I have no idea how to do an improv Sunday school class for Honduran children, but I ended up helping alongside another church member. My activity was for them to write five things about God or things He has done in your life, and then for the little ones (we had ages 4-12),to draw God. The kids actually had really thoughtful things to say, I was impressed. And the kiddie drawings were…interesting. One of them was of a white person in glasses (wonder who that could be) beside the church building. Not sure how to deal with that…Default children’s Bible lesson, check. Made lunch (tuna sandwich, with my prized tuna can from the USA) and then we had our basketball game against a nearby municipality. I show up fifteen minutes late, for good measure, and not one person is in the court. I wait for thirty minutes before anyone else shows up. Two hours after the starting time, the first game starts. I only played for one quarter (15 min), which was fine for me. These girls on the other team were so pushy and fouled ALL the time, and it just made me too mad. The other girls on my team took it in stride but I couldn’t, and I seriously wanted to punch the girl who was guarding me in the face. But I didn’t J I also got mad because they said I fouled a girl when I really didn’t, but the whole crowd was saying I did. Stupid stuff, right? For some reason it made me really mad.

I think its hard for me right now because I had such a great time in the USA, and I return to…no work and no social life. I feel like I have been in country long enough that I shouldn’t be twisting people’s arms to do projects with me. Didn’t they request me? Anyways, I guess I’ll just take it easy until school starts back in February…

January 7, 2011

You know you are a Peace Corps volunteer when you find your brown rice (not found in country, mailed in a care package from the USA) infested with little bugs and worms, and instead of throwing it out, you hand pick out the bugs. NO, really, I went through a bag of rice twice with a flashlight to pick out the buggies. I am hopeful the ones I missed will die during the cooking process and then serve as extra protein, since I don’t show the same dedication to cleaning meat and thus rarely prepare it.

So my house was filthy when I arrived. There was tons of dust everywhere, large dead bugs in all the corners, my sheets were covered in who knows what. I did a quick sweep but still need to do a thorough cleaning. It was exciting to unload all my goods from the USA—oatmeal packets, couscous, crystal light, CHRISTMAS CANDY (even though I have less than I’d like since I’ve had to pass it along to some of my community members who want to know what I brought them from the USA), body wash, etc etc. Most of my bags are still somewhat unpacked, but I’ve already cleared out the food products, including the ones that came open during the trip, so I’m not too concerned about animals or bugs getting into it anymore.

I forgot how loud Honduran towns can be. I was trying to talk to someone on the phone and some car in front of my house was just honking for literally 3 or 4 minutes. The screaming children, loud Ranchera music, roosters crowing at all hours of the night…I think I had just stopped hearing it before I left for the USA. The bus ride between La Esperanza and Camasca was particularly long and uncomfortable, not to mention the waves of dust that covered the bus and me. The heat, however, feels a bit nice after being cold all the time for 2 weeks.  Washing my clothes was as painful as I had imagined. One nice thing about having a washing machine in the USA is that after a trip, you can just throw all your clothes in to wash, since everything smells and is gross, regardless if you wore it or not. I have the same end goal in Honduras, just that it takes me several hours to achieve it by hand-washing my clothes. My neighbors will be pleased to see that I bought new underwear that actually fit me (not stretched out by the pila) and don’t have holes in the crotch. Somehow I accidentily packed a few stretchy silky pairs, which I quickly realized was a mistake when I put them  on and tried to walk around in my community at lunch time (need cotton to BREATHE in this heat).

My town still feels a bit dead. People are slowly rolling in from vacations (in the municipality and the NGOs), and teachers are all over the place since they don’t start back until February. I think one thing that made it hard for me to return is that I just don’t have a lot of work right now. My two counterpart agencies are the high school (no classes right now) and the municipal office, which has just not made it easy for me to work with them.  I dropped by the women’s office today but she is still working on her plan for the year, and most of the things the women’s groups have requested involve funding, which I don’t have, and I don’t particularly feel like writing more grants. There is one teacher who is also part of the municipal corporation and I think she wants to work on projects, so I think I’ll try to stop by her house for an informal meeting this weekend.  I was at my counterpart Iris’ house yesterday and we had an informal conversation about collecting used clothing with the women’s group at church to then donate to needy families, so I hope that works out.  I miss my friends and family a lot more this time than when I came back in May, so I need some work stuff to work out to keep my here. I am still waiting for approval from the grant proposal I submitted last month for cement floors and I’ve heard from other volunteers that it could be another month. Great.

I’m still visiting people at their houses to wish them a Happy New Year and remind them that I am here in Camasca. Seriously, if you are gone a few days, everyone wonders where you have been, so being gone a few weeks is like they haven’t seen you in years. They all ask me the same questions, how my Christmas was, how my family is, did I see my boyfriend (to which my response is always, “which boyfriend? You know I have so many,” and they always laugh), what did I bring them back. A testament to how awful my diet is here is that I think I actually LOST a couple pounds while eating wedding food, Christmas casseroles,  candy, and drinking good American beer. So far I haven’t had any comments about me being gordita (chubby) so I think my community agrees.

I don’t really have any plans for the next few weeks. Im trying to stay in my community as much as possible. There is a basketball tournament in a couple weeks that my friend is trying to convince me to enter, but I am so out of shape for basketball and I’m actually not that good. I’ll probably go, though, since I am a sucker for people acting like they actually want me to participate in something. I’m slowly easing back into tortillas and beans. While I was in Honduras I got used to the diet, but my trip back to the USA has made me a bit restless with it. I think being away from so many options and choices after a while makes you just not want other stuff as much. If you live in a place where you can get tacos, salads, pizza, or hamburgers five minutes from you, you’ll crave the variety. But if you live in my town where I eat the same thing almost every day, your body, or mine at least, stops craving all the other stuff.  I’m very lazy when I cook, and have never really enjoyed to cook, so that may have something to do with my theory, but would just as rather easily make veggie soup than work really hard to make a pizza for myself (having to search out a pizza pan, cheese, an oven..way too difficult for me). NOW, coming back to the USA makes me want variety more, like I’m  starting over again, but I’m sure I’ll be craving the beans and eggs soon enough.

Dec 29, 2010

On my way back to my other home of Camasca. I just arrived in Miami and am now figuring out what to do with myself during my 3.5 hour layover. I really like airports, to be honest, because I love people watching, and the Miami airport just cannot be beat. There are people from everywhere, and I love watching them talk, observing their clothing, trying to guess where they are from. I also feel like spending time in Miami slowly gets you ready for Latin America, since Spanish is widely spoken and many of the stores and restaurants are targeted towards Latinos. At this airport I also like selecting from the screen other places I’d like to fly to and visit. Instead of San Pedro Sula, it would be fun to visit Bogota, Caracas, Santo Domingo… Oh well. I also kind of feel panicked because I wonder if I should be massively consuming Diet Coke, or reading American magazines or buying American candy. It will be until October of 2011 for my next visit to the USA!

I really had a good time being home for the holidays. I was able to be in the wedding of a close friend of mine, and also visited lots of family and friends in the Carolinas. I spent a lot of time with my niece who is now three years old  but is quite intelligent and surprises me with her questions and the way she just sponges up new information.  I’m trying to teach her some Spanish but so far I haven’t had much luck. I’m still recommending that my brother and sister-in-law put her in a bilingual school, hint hint. I feel like I was able to do a lot in a little amount of time. It was great seeing the snow and having an experience so different than my daily life in Honduras. I spent way too much money, but hopefully I’ll be able to replenish my savings one day with that good paying job I’m going to get after Peace Corps… J