Friday, February 25, 2011
Thanks to everyone for your concern about my health. I am feeling better overall, although today my stomach is ultra sensitive again. I think I just will have to be conscious of what I eat and super careful for the next few weeks. Which is not great news considering I’ll be spending lots of time in a small community where food standards are often quite different than I’m used to.
Lots of work right now for me in Camasca. We made the purchase of the cement today, and it should be coming to San Juan tomorrow! They also said they could bring the second shipment on Sunday. I’ll probably be in San Juan all day tomorrow because we have a meeting in the morning with the project committee to decide on some things, and then the material comes in the afternoon. I have also been working with the scholarship program. We formed a committee to divide responsibilities and so the program is more structured and transparent. Soon I will be working with two teachers to train them in the methodology we are going to use for a course on life skills for the scholarship kids. I am also trying to organize things for a medical brigade that is coming in April to Camasca. This will be the first time we’d have a brigade stationed here in years, and the first time ever with this NGO. Monday we’ll meet to decide which communities we will visit and determine other logistics. I was also working with a women’s small bread company in San Juan but I realized yesterday that they have already been receiving similar help from FAO/PESA. I think I’ll try to coordinate with FAO before visiting again so we are not duplicating efforts.
It rained today! We are definitely still in dry season but we had a downpour this afternoon, which was great because it really cooled things off. I do hope that the rain doesn’t continue, though, because that will slow down our construction process in San Juan.
Looking forward to helping with a medical brigade at the end of March in El Salvador again with my friend Lisa from home. It’s nice to just get away from Honduras and Peace Corps volunteers every once in a while. Trying to plan a trip to Guatemala and Belize before I finish my service, we’ll see. I’ve been saving up my vacation days and am ready to use them! I’m sure I’ll be extra ready after spending all March in San Juan. And maybe my parents will come visit in May…. (fingers crossed).
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Wow, getting 11 hours of sleep really makes the world look positive in the morning. I was completely exhausted yesterday and went to bed at 8:30pm. Another wild Saturday night in Camasca, right? But I’m glad I did because I have another full day and I actually woke up this morning at 7am ready for the day. Which is good since I opened my door and saw that the stray dogs had gotten into my trash again. And it wasn’t just kitchen trash, but my bathroom trash (quick reminder that toilet paper cannot be “flushed” here), including all my used feminine products, had been strewn across the front of my house. But hey, feeling like a well-rested champ, I just swept it up, the same trash I had swept up yesterday morning too. Note to self—need to start burning my bathroom trash…
So yesterday was a full day. In the morning Julio, the mayor, drove Iris and me to Concepcion, a municipality about 30 minutes away, for meetings. She is the new president of the committee of Shoulder to Shoulder/Hombro a Hombro, and I was meeting with one of the nurses who is charge of the medical brigade that is coming to Camasca in April. I managed to convince the operations director of the NGO to send us a brigade to Camasca, since they get about 40 a year, and he accepted. So now we have to do all the planning and logistics. They want to work with our health clinic one day, doing maternal health check-ups, pap smears, well baby checks, etc. They want to do a day in our colegio with health talks and also check-ups. The brigade also wants to do 2-3 days in outlying communities, and I plan on sending them to the farthest aldeas possible, the ones that never get help. If they have the transportation and the people, why not? They also want to do house visits for the disabled and elderly. I met with the nurse, Karla, and we laid out some of the logistics. I am going to meet with a few key people in Camasca next week, and then we’ll reconvene in a few more weeks to see what we need to do. I know I need to find a place for them to stay in Camasca, someone to cook, etc. I like planning events, so I’m enjoying this, and I hope things go well so that they will want to do more brigades here.
So the meeting ended around 11:30, but since Iris has family in Concepcion, I just waited with her and we ate lunch there. Well, by lunch I mean I ate a few bites of sopa de mondongo, which is cow intestine soup. My stomach is feeling better but I don’t want to risk it by eating another animal’s…stomach. I just ate the veggies and non-intestine stuff. Yeah, I know. I did bum a pupusa off Iris later which was good since I didn’t end up eating again until late yesterday. We waited for the “1pm” bus until around 1:45 and then she continued on to Camasca, and I got off at the desvio (like turn-off) for another community. Shortly after, a car passed and gave me a free, air-conditioned ride to San Juan de Dios, where I had a meeting planned at 3pm. I had hoped to go home and change before this meeting, but alas, I found myself in tight stretch jeans and sandals walking in the 100 degree heat on the dusty highway, awesome.
The women of San Juan are incredible, they show up right on time and are always ready for meetings. Unfortunately, the material for the school water system project came in at the same time, from La Esperanza, so all the men went to unload it and we were waiting for another hour. I don’t know that I would call the meeting successful. There are so many details to get right for this upcoming floors project, and the people are just unhappy about certain things. Not things about the actual construction, or about me, but they don’t like the location the materials are going to be stored at (it is at someone’s house, not close to the center), but we need someplace with constant vigilance, because people will break in and steal bags of cement. We were using the school before but classes have begun, and people weren’t showing up to do their shifts at night to watch over the materials. And if the material is stolen, there isn’t any more to give. The decision to move the materials was made by the committee in charge, but it turns out everyone has dropped out except one guy who is doing everything, and he isn’t even a beneficiary of the project. Thankfully they elected three more people to help him. We want them to work in groups so it will go faster but they want to work individually because they say that if they work with others, maybe the others will want to finish the work day earlier, won’t do a good job, etc. I want to force them to do it because they need to learn to work together, but they are grown adults, and they were really against the idea. This project was supposed to take two weeks and now who knows. And then after the meeting a few women came to me and said they wanted to be exchanged for the group that is going to work on floors in a few months, because they have projects going on in their homes that can ruin new floors. I mean I understand, but its annoying because why are you just now doing these repairs, and it just means more work for me. And if something happens and the funding for those other floors (not Peace Corps, its from COSUDE) doesn’t come through, I don’t want the responsibility.
So yeah, I know that these things always come up, but it can be stressful to be the one deciding. This is THEIR project for THEIR homes so I don’t want to put on them a million stipulations, but I also have to manage it and I don’t want to be doing this project in May. I am going to call the president of the local town council tonight so we can talk about this. I know that even if the management of the project isn’t perfect, the outcome will be a good product, but I’d like to have people satisfied with how we did it all too.
Plan for today: church in a couple hours, then going to Iris’ house to work on the scholarship program stuff, hopefully to get it well organized. Then I think that night Zach and I are hanging out with Nere, the cafeteria owner, we’ll see. Then tomorrow I have to go Teguc once again for medical stuff and a Volunteer Advisory Council meeting. I think I’ll take a super early bus back from Teguc on Wednesday so I can get to Camasca before the work day is over, so we can call and order the cement from La Esperanza for the San Juan project. There is a big 50th Anniversary Event the following week in Teguc that I’d like to be at but really, I’ve been in Teguc every week for the last 3 weeks, and the 9 hour bus ride is getting old, even if it’s paid for by Peace Corps ( it costs a whopping 8 dollars).
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Sometimes Hondurans amaze me. I will set up the story first…So although we are technically in the dry season, we had a torrential downpour this afternoon. I can’t complain, we haven’t had any rain for months and the dust is almost unbearable. The plants along the road all have a nice dusting of white, kind of like snow, but…dust. Anyways, today it was pouring down so all the little creatures and bugs are coming out, and since my house has zero insulation, they just come right in. I’ve seen all types of creepy crawlers, from large spiders to the tiny ants that get into EVERYTHING and form these lines that seem to never end. Ok, to the point. So a particularly large spider ran across my wall tonight as I was working on my laptop. They don’t freak me out as much as they did when I arrived, but let’s be clear, I still hate bugs. So it lodges itself in between the wall and the window right in front of me so that I can’t even get it out of my mind because I see its little legs sticking out from the crack. Several minutes later I see it move a bit and I try to coax it out the window (you know, poking at it with a pen and praying it doesn’t jump on me/kill me/suck my blood). No luck. Instead, it jumps onto my desk and then I can’t see it anymore! Then I DO freak out because watching a spider move is one thing, not knowing where it went but having it closeby is something else. I finally locate it again and it is beside my bag of splenda (thanks Michelle!). Well I ran and got one of the landlord’s sons to see if he could somehow get it out of my room. He walks in, takes one look at it, and picks it up with his hand, and takes it outside. He doesn’t say anything to me. In 2 seconds my hour-long dilemma is resolved. And its not just the men who can deal with the HUGE bugs here, it doesn’t seem to phase the women either! So in my growing list of Honduran attributes, I will add “fearless of bugs” to “able to climb mountains in flip flops without slipping” and “can tie amazing knots” and “can fix anything.”
Today I am feeling MUCH better. I still haven’t pushed myself to leave the center of town, but I got some work done in the municipal office and went by the bank. Of course I ran into tons of people in between those errands so my day was rather full. It included two meals of soup, claro. I really want my stomach to get better soon so I’m taking good care of it. Today was definitely an I-love-Camasca day. I had a good meeting about getting started on the construction of the cement floors (in a week!), and spent some time with one of my favorite people in town, the owner of the one diner in town. Those casual conversations in the street are just my favorite. I mentioned that I hadn’t been able to find saltine crackers in town and he brought out a bag of them that he had brought from La Esperanza and wouldn’t let me take anything less than the whole bag. The Pepsi truck FINALLY brought Diet Pepsi to town, which is truly remarkable because I went twice to the Pepsi distributor in La Esperanza and placed direct orders for Camasca, months ago. Nere actually sold a good amount of them (although he says people only bought them by accident, no one would intentionally buy diet soda here), but he filled up a plastic bag with them for me to take back, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. My landlord’s wife had made fresh bread and invited me to talk with her friends and tried to make me take a whole loaf home. Everyone in town seems to know that I’ve been sick and ask me how I’m doing, and Iris sent soup for me yesterday. Zach said several people told him I was sick too, and a Honduran from Colomoncagua, a municipality an hour away, knew too…
So yeah, it makes me feel like people do care about me here. I can’t say that I am best friends with everyone in my town, but having a few people in town I can count on means a lot. I think a lot of volunteers make the mistake of trying to be best friends with everyone, and its just exhausting and impossible. I tried that method at first, but I think it is a better use of my effort and time to know everyone’s name but really invest in a few people, especially people with whom I don’t work directly. It’s nice to have friends who see me as a person, not just the American volunteer in town.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Happy Valentine’s Day to all! I know it’s a bit late, but hey, I get my Christmas cards in February now, so I’m used to it.
So I guess the big story recently would be that I was in the hospital in Tegucigalpa for a crazy bacterial infection, with some amoebas on the side. Yeah, it felt about as good as it sounds. So we had our annual Reconnect Conference, which is an opportunity for the entire project to get together with the bosses and talk about our work in our communities and also get ideas for other projects. We were in Zamarano, which is an agricultural university about an hour from Teguc, from Wednesday until Friday. Several of us decided to stay Friday and relax in Teguc, get some good food, go out, etc. Well that definitely did NOT happen for me. Friday after lunch I felt super nauseous, lay down in bed at the hotel, and didn’t get up until Saturday morning, except for frequent trips to the bathroom. That evening I was throwing up, super dizzy, had the chills, diarrhea, etc. I was sick.
Saturday morning I didn’t feel any better and knew I couldn’t travel to La Esperanza as planned, and I was bummed because there was a big Valentine’s Day party planned at the local going-out spot, El Fogon. Hey, there are few special events around here so I get excited! Anyways, I called the Peace Corps on-call doctor to see if there was any medicine to take, and I think because of protocol, I was told to go the emergency room. I really didn’t think my sickness merited all that, but I followed directions and had a fellow volunteer come with me, since I was too dizzy and nauseous to stand up, much less walk and get a taxi. As soon as I got to the hospital, they said I was super dehydrated and I was put on rehydrating liquids through an IV. They wanted a urine sample and a stool sample, but lucky for them, they got two in one, and soon I was told I had a very severe bacterial infection. At this point I still thought I would leave that day. I was moved into an actual hospital room, and then the doctor told me I also had amoebas, which supposedly had been in a cyst-form before but had burst because of the other infection. Not really sure if I understood completely but the basic gist was that I was super sick and would have to spend at least one night there at the hospital. My volunteer friend stayed with me that night in the hospital which was so nice of him, and he frequently went to fetch me water, crackers, etc, supplements to the liquid diet the hospital had me on. In case you are wondering, the hospital room was quite similar to one you’d see in the USA, with a TV, my own bathroom, etc. The tiny ants that get in everything here found a way into my room there, but that was really my only complaint. Long story short, I ended up spending two full days there, entering Saturday early morning and leaving Monday morning. I had frequent visits and phone calls from the Peace Corps doctor, and she was in constant communication with the hospital doctor. One thing that I am now sure of is that Peace Corps Honduras takes good care of its volunteers if they get sick. Really, I was impressed by the way they looked after me. I was supposed to be one of the speakers at a workshop on maternal health in La Esperanza, but I had to accept the fact that I would not make it back in time. I had prepared a lot for it, so that was a bit frustrating, but what can you do?
Monday morning I was moved to a hotel in Teguc to recover. I’m glad I was in the hospital as long as I was, because being in the hotel made the food situation difficult, since there are no restaurants close by, and even restaurants I could reach in a taxi didn’t have the food I needed to eat, aka soup. Oh, and the doctor said I could have tortillas or rice or pancakes. Score. The hospital nurse said I should stop eating those hot dogs off the street, and to wash my cabbage better. I would like to clarify that I got sick at a Peace Corps conference at a retreat center that is actually really nice. I don’t eat much food off the streets, and definitely not hot dogs or cabbage. The last time I got really sick was after another Peace Corps meeting at a nice hotel restaurant. I would say only really touristy places are actually safe, like Copan, so no worries, Mom and Dad.
I have gotten used to the catcalls, the kissy noises while walking down the street, the cars full of policemen that call out to me. But come on now, if I am waiting outside the hospital looking like death, waiting for the Peace Corps car to come get me, I think that cat calls should be sanctioned. When two guys in a truck were yelling at me that morning by the hospital, I wanted to say, look buddy, if you could see the pesto-sauce-poo I just left in the toilet back in that hotel, you wouldn’t be so hot for me. It always seems to be when I feel and look my worst that Honduran men like to express their love for me. I’ve had men from eight to eighty make honest attempts to hit on me. In Teguc the other day I had a drunk guy try to grab me, which has also happened to me in Camasca by the town crazy (well people in my town claim he’s not crazy, but he’s definitely strange)—I was informed it’s definitely ok to whop them with whatever I have in my hand if they make another attempt. On the way back from Teguc (oh yes, I did the nine hours back to Camasca from Teguc in one day on the bus with my stomach very “active”, as the doctor said, praying that it would stay dormant until I reached Camasca) yesterday, the money collector on the bus tried to hold my hand as I gave him my money, and then asked me for my number while I was talking on the phone. In my first year of service, I might have just given it to him so he’d leave me alone, but now I just tell them no and then ignore them. I did consider giving it to him if I needed to bribe my way into getting the bus to stop for my bowels…
Before Reconnect, I watched the Super Bowl in Concepcion, a municipality thirty minutes from Camasca, on the road to La Esperanza, with some other gringos living at the Shoulder to Shoulder Clinic. Well, to be honest, I didn’t watch the game much, I more enjoyed the company with other Americans and enjoyed talking about Peace Corps experiences with the operations director who also served in the Peace Corps in Bolivia. The next day I took the bus to La Esperanza and had a meeting about the maternal health workshop I was going to help with, but didn’t make it to…since I was attached to an IV, remember? I got super turned around walking to the clinic somehow and ended up on this path through the woods to get there. Oh well.
On the way back from the meeting (it was on the other side of town, like at least a 45 minute walk), my friend Ana invited me to play basketball but since I was running late I would just meet her later. So she said that we were going to play in a new place, and to just call her when I got the central park. So I called her…and called her…and called her. No answer. As I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do, I run into one of my favorite Hondurans, a doctor from my site who works in La Esperanza at the health clinic. He knows a lot of English so we are chatting and then he invites me to go the gym with him. So I should preface this by saying that Honduran gyms are quite different than gyms in the States. They are super small, there is hardly any equipment (and women rarely use the weights), and the cardio machines rarely work. This gym was no exception. I think it was called Gym Body Buff are something equally weird. As we approach the gym I hear the techno music pounding and I’m already aware that I am about to get sucked into a Honduran aerobics class. I join the class that has already started, putting my wood step in the back, and endure a class that, to be honest, is really repetitive and boring. Can the instructor please change it up a bit between the one left thigh lift for 4+ minutes? Regardless, I am super sweaty at the end….oh, but wait, after an hour, there was more. Another girl got up front and led what seemed to be an impromptu aerobics that was more Zumba-like, with lots of booty-shakin moves. Did I mention that all the males in the gym (which can’t be bigger than a large school classroom) are all just staring? And that there is no separate aerobics room—the women do aerobics in a tiny space with the weight machines surrounding us? So the instructor gets in my face and says I need to get lower and shake more. Oh wow. I do it though, and its actually pretty fun! The whole class costs $1.50 and I’d do it again when I’m in La Esperanza next. But I will try to wear a shirt that I don’t sweat through in 5 minutes, and maybe some stretching because my body was aching for a week afterwards.
So here I am in Camasca. I left my house once today to look for nighttime cold medicine. The “pharmacy” (opens whenever they want to, the doctor comes once a week, very limited supply of medicine, although I heard you could buy the cirpro antibiotic they were pumping through me at the hospital at the pharmacies here without a prescription…) was already closed at 4pm and the other stores didn’t have any, so I bought Dramamine, which always seems to make me sleepy. I haven’t been sleeping well at night so we’ll see if this knocks me out as planned. My counterpart Iris took pity on me and sent me soup, which had only a small amount of oil and didn’t mess up my stomach. The power was out almost all day so I watched Black Swan until my laptop died. My room gets really hot during the day so it was pretty much boiling without the fan (no power, remember?). I also have a cold now, which is super annoying because I haven’t had the cold since I’ve been in Honduras, and to get it in the hospital is ridiculous. I would say that overall I feel better, although I am just tired and sore and my stomach is super sensitive. I did have two of the dark chocolate Dove candies my mom sent me for Valentine’s Day (can you believe I actually got a package before the holiday it was sent for???), and the wrapper said, “Savor the small romantic moments.” Yes, I have been trying to savor those romantic moments when there is no power, my nose is running and my head is pounding, my stomach is gurgling and can’t accept or give out anything solid…oh, and romantic moments with WHO?
Oh Honduras.
