La Ceiba Carnival

After just three weeks in site I already felt like I needed a break (is that a good or a bad sign?). Well, good or bad I sure did enjoy the vacation. A bunch of other Peace Corps volunteers and I went up to La Ceiba, a large city on the north coast for Carnival and it was awesome. It was a very different Honduras than I have become accustomed to. First, it is right on the ocean, which I haven’t seen for a long time (and really miss). Second, it is much more ethnically diverse due to the Garifuna (African descendents). Third, it is a lot bigger, more economically diverse and a lot more touristy. It was odd for me to see so many foreigners, especially hippy backpackers. Before I came to the Peace Corps I kinda thought of Peace Corps as an alternative slightly hippy thing to do, but as it turns out we volunteers are pretty clean cut, especially because it is important for us to look presentable for our work. So to see tourists with long dreads and tattered clothes and backpacks is pretty funny.


The first night we checked out the street carnival. Music, dancing and food lined the streets for blocks and blocks and went all night long. I even got to dance punta (traditional Garifuna dance) on stage! We finished off the night at a dance club and I was appalled that I had to pay 100 limpiras (~$5) cover to get in.
Saturday we left Honduras (figuratively) and went to La Quinta Real, an actual luxury hotel for lunch. Again I was appalled to have to pay 180 limpiras (~$9) for lunch. Then we took advantage of being white (I know that sounds really racist, but it is true) and swam in their pool until we got kicked out (which goes to show you that skin color isn’t everything). Then we went swimming in the ocean, although the beaches aren’t that nice and the water apparently isn’t that clean (the volunteer that lived there told us not to put our head under water). Nonetheless it felt great to be in the water, it is so warm!




In the afternoon we watched the parade for about 4 hours. Various school bands, horses, floats, beauty queens, dancers and musicians paraded down the streets surrounded by thousands of onlookers, including close to 20 Peace Corps volunteers and various other foreigners. It was great fun to watch buy completely disorganized. There were no ropes/barriers lining the streets, so when no floats were coming by people rushed the streets. Also, people from balconies were throwing money and beads (think Mardi Gras) down into the street (I was sure it would start a riot, but luckily things remained pretty safe). Again we spent the night dancing in the streets and didn’t go to bed until after sunrise.



We had planned to head back to our sites on Sunday but we got a call from the head of Safety and Security for Honduras saying there was a bus strike and we weren’t allowed to travel. So, we had to stay in La Ceiba for two more days, how horrible! So instead of getting up early we slept in and again left Honduras (figuratively) and went to Appleebees in the mall. Then we spent the rest of the day at the Rodeo, watching bull riding and checking out artesanias (crafts).



Monday we stayed in Honduras and went for a hike to a beautiful waterfall and went swimming in the river and jumped off the waterfall. The water was so crisp and amazing, I miss being able to swim every day and see the water wherever I am! I had been wondering where all these gorgeous places were that they show you in the guide books. All the picture in Lonely Planet are of beautiful waterfalls and pristine beaches and tropical forests…now I know, they are all on the north coast!



Tuesday we were told that it was okay to travel so I headed back to Santa Barbara, but when I got to the bus station it turns out the strike was still on. The issue is this…in Honduras a “bus terminal” is not what you think of a bus terminal is the US. In the US a bus terminal means a large building where many buses drop off and pick up and depending on the size of a city there will be just a few. In Honduras a bus terminal is where a certain bus happens to park to pick people up and there are upwards of a hundred “bus terminals” in a large city. So, in San Pedro Sula they built a gigantic bus terminal where they want all the bus companies to park to streamline the process and reduce bus traffic within the city. Well, the bus companies don’t want to move, so they are on strike. So this meant that we had to take another bus to another city and get off at our turnoff and hope to hitch-hike the rest of the way. Luckily there was a taxi waiting at the turnoff so we didn’t have to jump in the back of a truck (I’m sure that will make my mother happy to hear). In the end I made it back to my site safely and it feels good to be ‘home’ again.

Taiwanese Medical Brigade

After a tiring yet rewarding week of working with the optometry brigade I decided to take it easy Monday and do a little “community entry”. I went to the local hospital to meet a woman who I may work with in the future. She organizes trainings for community health workers and may be starting an support group for people living with HIV/AIDS. So I gave her my information and she said she would call me when they figured out the date of the next training. Then I headed down to Ashonplafa, an organization that does family planning and prenatal care to see if I could work with them in any way. While I was waiting to talk to their director I got a call from the hospital asking if I could come back that afternoon and translate for another medical brigade that only speaks Taiwanese and English. It seems like I just keep ending up in the right place (or wrong place depending on how you look at it) at the right time. So I returned that afternoon at 1 and met the team of doctors from Taiwan from ICDF (International Corporation and Development Fund). They brought a generalist, a pediatrician, a surgeon, an internist, a dentist, a gynecologist, nurses and organizers. Obviously they speak Taiwanese and a little bit of English and also some speak a little bit of Spanish (which I find incredibly funny, although I really shouldn’t).
They decided I would translate for the pediatrician so they put me in a room with her and she started to explain what vitamins and formulas she had brought. Then the Honduran nurses started coming in and asking me how they should organize all the people they had on their lists and that had been waiting since the morning. I told them to organize them according to their number and that their help would be great. Then the Taiwanese people came in and said they weren’t going to us the Honduran nurses’ lists and they had their own way of doing it. I started to get a little frustrated because I didn’t know what to tell the nurses and the nurses didn’t know what to tell the people that had been waiting since the morning. So I tried to explain the problem to the Taiwanese doctors and they just kept saying they had their own way of doing it but were to busy hanging signs up to explain their own way to the Honduran nurses who were responsible for dealing with the people. So after a while of going between the two sides I went to find some answers and walked into the “opening ceremonies”. All the Taiwanese doctors, the hospital staff, the mayor, people from the ministry of health and other important people were together to welcome the group and each in turn had to give his own praise. I have noticed that Hondurans are big on ceremony, they will have five important people get up and say the same thing, like thank you so much for coming, we really appreciate it, etc. It drives me crazy because everybody says the same thing and it takes forever. Also, everything had to be translated from Mandarin to Spanish or Spanish to English, or English to Mandarin because everybody spoke some combination of the two or three. This whole time that they were all praising each other all I could think about were the patients waiting outside since morning and the nurses not having a clue what to do because nobody bothered to explain anything to them. Finally we finished the flattery and began to work at 3 pm and planned to go until 5 pm. That is another thing I don’t understand. Why in the world would you start seeing patients at 3 for only 2 hours? Well we didn’t actually begin to see patients until 3:30 because they had to be pre-screened. It turns out that the Taiwanese had a very organized way to pre-screen the patients waiting in line and make sure they got to the right place, but it would have been better if they would have communicated that and started earlier. We didn’t finish until 6:30 pm because there were so many people.
Once I got over my initial frustration we got to work translating. In total we saw about 200 kids with malnutrition, coughs, fungal infections, scabies, anemia, allergies, headaches, sore throats and some random other stuff. The doctor mostly gives prescriptions for allergy medicine, parasite medicine and vitamins and formula to help with malnutrition. The whole process was very frustrating to be part of because giving a short term supply of vitamins or allergy medicine is not going to fix anything. As soon as they finish the bottle the problem will come back. Most of the problems that come in are completely preventable with education. As the translator I was able to give some preventive advice regarding hydration, hygiene and nutrition, but it is hardly enough to cause long term change. Also, some of the advice that the doctors gave wasn’t exactly appropriate for the people. An odd case involved a young girl with only one nipple. The doctor said it wouldn’t cause any harm now but later she may want to have cosmetic surgery to construct a nipple. I told the doctor that plastic surgery wasn’t really available. She said that maybe in ten years when the girl was older they would have it. I said maybe, but she still won’t be able to afford it. The doctor told me to tell her anyway and I said no. It makes me feel horrible to give advice that is completely inappropriate and I know will never be followed.
It is amazing how different this week is from last week. I feel like last week the optometry brigade was able to give a more lasting service by giving people glasses that they can use for much longer than a bottle of vitamins. This week so many of the cases made me want to cry. A 14 year old give came in with a severely malnourished 2 month old and it just ripped my heart out and made me so mad at Honduran men for taking advantage of young girls and mad at parents for not teaching their children about sex and mad at everybody whose fault it was. The whole experience is depressing and exhausting. This week the translating is also much more difficult. Last week all I had to say was blurry or clear, this week it is a million things.
Another particularly hard case involved a few month old baby with extremely high intra cranial pressure (think about those babies with huge heads and tiny bodies). Her mother brought her in and she could barely breathe. I worried that she may die right in front of me. I tried to explain that she needed surgery immediately to relieve the pressure on her brain and that she needed to be admitted to the hospital because she could barely breathe. The mom kept saying that she didn’t have enough money and she had other children to take care of. Finally I got a nurse to come and get the mother and make her admit the child. I don’t know what happened after that, but as soon as she left I broke down in tears. Granted the US health care system has its problems but situations like this make me appreciate the level of care we receive in the US.
The whole experience makes me question the worth of these brigades. How much good can they actually do in a few days? How could money be better spent? Is it appropriate to go another county where you don’t speak the language or know the culture and give advice? Would it be more helpful for foreign doctors to come and train local doctors to make a lasting change? It makes me feel better about being a Peace Corps volunteer because I know I am here for more than I few days and I am going to learn the language and the culture and get to know the people and try to do more than a quick fix.

Although this experience has been difficult there are a few redeeming qualities. First, I am learning a whole lot of new vocabulary words and improving my Spanish. Second, I am working with other Honduran translators and nurses and administrators from the hospital which allows me to make good contacts. Third, there may be some longer lasting education going on. One of the Honduran nurses told me she was watching how well they organized everything and how efficient the Taiwanese doctors were and she was learning from them. This made me so happy!

The hospital The line outside the hospital
From left: The organizing doctor, Karla (daughter of Honduran doctor helped me translate all week, what a huge help!), me, Dr. Sun (the pediatrician I translated for)

Coffee Festival

After a tiring week of translating and playing tour guide for the medical brigade I headed up into the mountains to cool off and relax. A Peace Corps couple lives in San Luis Planes, a small town in the mountains about 2 hours outside of Santa Barbara. Their village is wonderfully refreshing, about 30 degrees cooler and a whole lot greener. The town has just under 2,000 people, most of whom grow coffee beans for a living. To celebrate they put on a weekend coffee festival with a parade, music, a coffee queen, competitions, food and coffee competitions. The only thing it seemed to lack was coffee. One of the volunteers I went with loves coffee and was excited to be able to taste and buy tons of Honduran coffee, but much to her surprise and disappointment it wasn’t really like what we would expect in the states for any type of festival (ie. They would actually have the item being celebrated available to taste test and buy). Oh well, even though there was no actual coffee at the coffee festival it was still fun to watch the other activities, especially the horses. They strung up a rope above the road and hung small rings from the rope. The riders had charge full speed on their horses at the little rings with a pencil like pointer and hook on of the rings. If he got a ring he received a bandana and a kiss from one of the local girls.
I also learned more about coffee processing and testing than I ever wanted to know. They had a competition of local beans and did a number of crazy taste tests including smelling the beans, the ground coffee, the coffee with water, tasting the coffee hot and cold, etc. The smell, the taste, the intensity, etc. are all important.
We also met a group of Canadians from the organization Care, a Canadian NGO. We got involved with them to help translate from Spanish to English/French. The leader basically explained to us that he started all of what we saw. Before Care came there was no coffee and no coffee festival. He also explained that he is the director of Care in Quebec and he raised all the money himself to start the coffee production in the town and he arranged the Canadian buyer, etc. He is also the chief lobbyist, chief of this and head of that. It was so disgusting to listen to his arrogance. Just like the American last week, it reminds me how important it is to stay humble. No matter how much good I do or how much money I raise it is not about me. The Peace Corps couple that lives in the town knows some of the farmers that work with the new coffee group and they say that they are not making any money. The volunteers expressed this concern to the representatives of Care and they didn’t seem to care (no pun intended). They said that things seemed to look good and they weren’t going to investigate it further. Hmmm…

San Luis Planes
Parade
Music
Competition
Coffee Competition

Week 2: Medical Brigade

I planned to spend my second week in site working with Jovenes sin Fronteras for two days and Agua Pura for three days…but it didn’t quite work out like that. Monday morning I showed up at the Jovenes sin Fronteras office to wait for Darwin, one of the educators, so we could go give an HIV/AIDS workshop at the middle school. After 40 minutes Charles, the other educator, showed up to tell me that he didn’t know where Darwin was and couldn’t get a hold of him. I guess this was my first experience of getting blown off with no warning or explanation, and luckily it didn’t really bother me. I decided to walk around town and see what I could see and who I could meet. I went to Hondutel, a place to make phone calls (only $0.10/min to the states), to check out their schedule and I saw a flier on the door that advertised a medical brigade in town. So I asked if anybody knew about it and a man came out to tell me where it was. Well I had no idea what neighborhood he was talking about so he told me to wait 20 minutes and he would take me. 30 minutes later he drops me off in a neighborhood about a 10 drive outside of town and I walked up to the people in scrubs and start introducing myself. They were so happy that I spoke English and showed up out of nowhere. Since I didn’t have work for the day I told them I would stick around and help with translating as much as I could.
As I got to know the group I figured out that they were optometry students from The Southern College of Optometry and all members of the Fellowship of Christian Optometrists. They also brought along an optometrist, a nurse, a nursing student and a future Spanish teacher, 11 of them in all. They teamed up with La Iglesia de la Gran Commission, a local church, and worked out of the house of one of the members. I also met a missionary family from the states that is living in Santa Barbara and working with the church. They were able to get donations from a number of organizations and bring over 1,000 pairs of donated glasses, $60,000 worth of eye drop treatments and various supplies necessary to do the eye exams. In five days they were able to see 1001 patients and give away hundreds of glasses completely free of charge. The first day was a little crazy, we weren’t quite sure how to best organize the space or the jobs and we didn’t know the right vocabulary yet (but I quickly figured out blurry, cloudy, clear, teary, dry, painful, etc.). By the second day we had rearranged the set up and things started falling into place. It was very satisfying to put a pair of glasses on somebody and just watch their face light up because for the first time in their life they could see clearly. It was also heartbreaking to tell those that had serious eye problems that we couldn’t help them and that they would be near blind for the rest of their life. The first three days were pretty easy for me, but Thursday it got rough. A mother brought in her 11 year old daughter with seriously compromised vision and I had to tell her that there was nothing anybody could do for her and she would be like that forever. I started crying and so did the mother. At that point I felt so helpless I just wanted to go outside and cry and get it all out but I couldn’t because there were 100 more waiting to be seen. Another aspect that was very difficult was telling people they needed surgery. We probably had about 50 or more people come in with cataracts that were making them close to blind and would need surgery to have them removed. So I had to explain this to them and tell them that they needed to go to San Pedro and pay for the surgery and that glasses wouldn’t do anything to help them. Upon hearing this most asked how much the surgery would cost and explained that they were very poor and didn’t have the money. It felt so wrong giving them advice I knew they could never take but I didn’t know what else to do. I tried to remind myself that even know we couldn’t help everybody we helped hundreds of others. Since being in Peace Corps this is the first thing that had really affected me. I knew that I would see things and have to do things that would dig into my heart but in three months it hadn’t happened yet (not even hearing stories from people living with HIV/AIDS or commercial sex workers or seeing drunks passed out on the road got to me emotionally), I wondered if my heart was getting a little hard. Well, if it was, this week definitely softened it up.
I ended up working with the brigade all week and accompanied them to lunch and dinner as well. It felt good to be needed and appreciated and it was a joy to get to know all the volunteers. Most of them had never been out of the country and some of them had never been on a plane. A few had some Spanish background but most of them had to learn on the job. Although they were just here from a week I can definitely tell that the experience gave them a broader perspective on life. It also made me realize how comfortable I feel here. It was funny to realize that so many of the things that shocked or interested them were totally normal to me. Although the week was challenging in so many ways they were so positive and loving. It was really refreshing to be around such caring and good natured people.
I can honestly only say that there was only one negative aspect about the entire experience. Along with the group of 11 came another American who worked administratively with medical missions in Honduras. He spends part of his time in Honduras coordinating eye surgeries and treatment. Although he was generous to donate his time and was able to refer people to his clinic for surgery I think he is the rudest person I have met since being in Honduras. He was tall, fat, loud, rude, arrogant and spoke atrocious Spanish. I’m sure he has some good in his heart or he wouldn’t be spending so much of his time trying to help people but he definitely didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. Not only did he physically look down on Hondurans when he spoke but he had a way of cutting them down in every other way as well. Although I couldn’t stand to be around him and was embarrasses to be seen in public with him I was thankful for the reminder he gave me. When my dad finished his Fulbright service in Korea they told him that they liked him because he wasn’t too tall (and they weren´t just talking about his height). It reminded me how very important humility, patience, empathy and respect are in the work that I am doing. However frustrated I get with Honduras or the people I am working with I need to keep my ego in check and respect them as every human being deserves to be respected. It is also an encouragement for me to continue to improve my Spanish.

Step 1: Sign in and wait
Step 2: Eye Chart
Step 3: Check eye pressure. In order to check eye pressures it is first necessary to put drops in the eyes. In Spanish the word for ‘drop’ and ‘cat’ sounds very similar and one of the nurses kept saying “I’m going to put a cat in each eye, don’t worry it doesn’t hurt.”
Step 4: Check retinas

Step 5: Get glasses

Step 6: See doctor if something is wrong
Step 6: Evangelism. Being the Fellowship of Christian Optometrists and working with a local church the group’s goals were two-fold; save people’s eyes and their souls. In fact, 44 souls were saved last week.

Week 1

Day 1: I began my first day of work on Monday May 7th, 2007. One of my counterparts, Jovenes sin Fronteras (Youth without Borders) told me they were having a meeting at 8 am so I showed up at the office. What he actually meant by a meeting was that we were going to a middle school to give a 4 hour HIV/AIDS charla (talk). The group of students ended up being bigger than we expected so we split it in two and I helped lead one of the groups. Luckily we had learned some of the activities in training so I didn’t make a complete fool of myself, only a little. Charles, the manager of Jovenes sin Fronteras, told me there was a meeting at 4 pm with the committee and I should come.
In the meantime I headed back to the Agua Pura para el Mundo (Pure Water for the World) office where I met Dave the Canadian volunteer who just left. He asked if I would be going out to one of the sites that afternoon and I said that I had not heard about that plan and that I had another meeting with Jovenes sin Fronteras so I couldn’t. That didn’t make him very happy and he proceeded to ask what my intentions were with Agua Pura and talk to me about how I really needed to dedicate my time to them and that they were doing just what I wanted to be doing. That really threw me off because I didn’t expect to feel pressured from another volunteer. I tried to explain to him that Peace Corps operates a little differently than his organization. What they do is set volunteers up with a number of possible counterparts and give the volunteers the liberty to meet and get to know them and decide who they will work with and how much time they will dedicate to each organization. In my case I have a number of counterparts including Agua Pura and Jovenes sin Fronteras that I will be working with and still other organizations that I have not yet met with. As a Peace Corps volunteer I am not an employee of any of the organizations and have the freedom to work where and when I want as long as I am working towards the goals of the Peace Corps health project. This response didn’t really satisfy him and he continued to pressure me. In the end I realized that he must have just been nervous. He has spent the past six months here working very hard to support Agua Pura and he was about to leave and wanted to be sure that all he had done didn’t fall apart after he left.
Peace Corps actually warns us about the possessive nature of some of our counterparts. They sometimes see us like free employees and basically want us working only with them 8-5 six days a week and it is hard to explain that we don’t work like that. So I still am trying to figure out how I want to spend my time and how I can work that out with my counterparts. Not all volunteers are in the same situation as me though. Some show up at their site with nothing at all to do and have to work for months just to put together a project or somebody who is willing to work with them. So I guess I am just at one extreme of the spectrum and I would rather have to much to do than not enough.
So, back to my first day. I hung out at the Agua Pura office for a few hours then headed over to the Jovenes sin Fronteras office to go to the 4 pm meeting. Well, nobody showed up until 5 pm (I am still getting used to Honduran time, which by the way volunteers are not allowed to use). We talked about some business details and then I had to introduce myself to the group and then they all welcomed me. Honduran are big on flattery and speeches. I introduced myself and talked about how I was so excited to be there and work with them and then they all said how happy they were to have me and that they would help me with whatever I needed, etc. Then we dinner and cake (which I had no idea we would have) and celebrated mother’s day for the mothers in the committee. Well, I was getting a little worried because I had to be home for dinner for the goodbye party for the Canadian volunteer at 6 pm. I ended up staying for food and cake until 6:15 and then rushed home for dinner. Well, nobody was even there when I got home and we didn’t even eat until 7:30 (again, still getting used to Honduran time). We had the goodbye party and in Honduran fashion everyone of us went around and said kind words about Dave and how great it was to have him here and how everybody would miss him. It made me sad that I had just met him a week ago because according to what everybody else was saying he would have been a pretty cool guy to know and he had really done an amazing job with turning Agua Pura around. Nothing like jumping right into things on my first day.

Day 2: I decided to tell both my counterparts that I would not be coming to work on Tuesday and instead took some time to do all the personal stuff I had to get done, like open my bank account, buy sunglasses, write e-mail, apply for a Peace Corps bike, walk around town and try to get to know things, etc. During training Peace Corps always talks about ‘community entry’ and illusive notion that you are supposed to do for the first three months of your service. Basically they say you shouldn’t even worry about doing projects for the first three months, you should just take time to get to know your area and the people in it. Well since I was already working my first day doesn’t seem like I will be taking a leisurely three months to ease into things. Although I do want to figure out a way to make Honduran friends and feel like I am a part of my community. With so many foreigners and English speakers around it makes it a lot harder.

Day 3: Back to work with Agua Pura, we drove to an aldea (small town) about an hour away to deliver and install water filters. The filters are heavy cement containers made by my host dad at his workshop. He delivers them to the town in his truck the day before and we follow the next day to set them up. Supposedly the people in the town are supposed to make sure the filters get to each of the houses when they are delivered but that often doesn’t happen and when we arrived they were all laying on the road outside. So we, actually the two guys on the team (the girls supervised), spent the first hour or two delivering the filters to the house with a dolley that ended up breaking in the end. Then we went to each house and installed the filters. The filters are cement containers to which we add gravel and sand and a diffuser (I’ll write up a description of how it works soon enough). We finished the day with some beans and tortillas and mangos from one of the households and headed back to Santa Barbara nice and dirty. There happened to be another Peace Corps volunteer on the way back to town so we stopped by there and chatted for a bit. The day wore me out and I went to bed early that night.
Prior to seeing the condition of the aldeas surrounding Santa Barbara I kinda wondered why Peace Corps was in Santa Barbara. Everybody seemed well off and already capable of doing their work, I wondered if they really needed help. Well, seeing the aldeas reminded me of why Peace Corps is in Honduras. Unlike in most of the cities the people do not have electricity and reliable water sources or nice houses. Many of the houses consist of one room and are made of adobe (mud) bricks or sticks, mud and rocks with floors of mud. Animals and barefoot children are constantly running in and out of the houses. I could see that these people could actually benefit from what I could offer as a Peace Corps volunteer. Although I’m sure I will continue to ask myself the infamous “Why am I here?” question throughout my service.

Day 4: I took day four a little easier, just spending time in the Agua Pura office trying to organize things, figure out what they needed and how I could be a part of it. Also trying to figure out how Agua Pura runs, how they get their funding, etc. is tricky.

Day 5: Out into the aldeas again to install filters. We spent the day going from house to house setting up filters and telling people how to use them. At about three in the afternoon we were treated to lunch. Two rice tamales, which were very good, (usually they are made from meat, so I was pleasantly surprised to find rice inside) and a glass of some unknown juice (which I was scared to drink, but I haven’t gotten sick yet, so it was probably fine). It is tricky eating in the aldeas; we are of course hungry and want to eat, but it is sometimes hard to eat whatever is served to you and it is rude to refuse it. For example we finished eating at one house and then went to the next house and they also wanted to feed us, but we were all stuffed. It is even harder for me because I don’t drink coffee or pop or eat meat, so I have to refuse stuff a lot. Something else that is funny is that they sit and stare at us while we eat. There were probably about 20 people in and around one house while we ate bread and coffee, just watching us.

Day 6: Again we drove out to another aldea to give a capacitacion (training/talk) to teach the people that had already received filters how to use them and general hygiene. It was interesting to see how Agua Pura does it and I am excited to help them continue to improve.

Day 7: Relax, clean my room, do my laundry (in the washing machine), write e-mails, call my mom and wish her happy mother´s day, study Spanish, prepare to do it all over again.

Foreigners

Before I came to Honduras many people asked if I was going with a friend or if I knew anybody already in the program and were surprised to find out that I was going all by myself. They were also surprised to find out that I would probably be living in a site all by myself. I expected to be the only English speaking gringa for miles around. Well, that didn’t turn out to be the case. Currently there are five PCVs living in Santa Barbara.
In addition to the five that live here there are about ten more PCVs in the surrounding areas that often come into Santa Barbara to go grocery shopping or visit. Furthermore, not only is Santa Barbara popular for Peace Corps volunteers it is also popular for other types of organizations. There are currently two Canadian volunteers living here and working with a water sanitation organization. There is also a Japanese volunteer living here and missionaries come and go. Also, PCVs often assist with medical brigades come down numerous times per year. Although I don’t really appreciate all the foreigners now I’m sure when I get lonely somewhere down the line I will appreciate having somebody around who speaks English. At the same time I am going to have to be very intentional about integrating into my Honduran community and making Honduran friends and practicing my Spanish so I don’t just spend all my time with other Americans and speak English all the time.

Robert Watson is a Water & Sanitation volunteer and has been here for four years! He got married half way through to his landlord’s daughter (green shirt) and they are both going back to the states in three weeks.

Katie Strass is an engineer and came in at the same time I did. She is in the Water & Sanitation project and will be working with an NGO called Plan.

Andrea & Bernardo Aguilar are a married couple working as business volunteers. They will be leaving in about two months.
Chris (2nd from left) and Dave (far right) are both Canadian volunteers working with one of my counterpart organizations, Pure Water for the World.

Host Family Round 3

Although I have been blessed to have kind host families and comfortable living situations I am ready to have my own space and cook for myself. Too bad that won’t happen for another two months, guess I’ll just have to be patient. I am now living in Santa Barbara with Marvin and Melany Chavez and their three kids Estuardo, Ingrid and Nidia. Marvin and Melany own a hardware store and a workshop that sells cement, bricks and water filters. Estuardo is in his early 20s and helps out at the workshop. Ingrid is 19 and is attending university in San Pedro Sula and comes home on the weekends. Nidia is 14 and is in school. A young woman named Dinor also lives here and she does all the cooking and cleaning. Compared to what I imagined Peace Corps would be like I am literally living in the lap of luxury: two stories, running water, two cable TVs (one of which is a big screen), a real washing machine, beautiful garden and a full time employee! I have a two friends from Oberlin who are both doing Peace Corps in Malawi and when they read my blog and saw my pictures they made fun of my for being in the ¨Posh Corps¨. Although I am thankful for the amenities I would almost rather have a more hard core experience. Maybe I’ll extend when I’m done with Honduras and request a tiny island in the middle of the south pacific.

My house
My room
My family, from the left; Estuardo, Nidia, Ingrid, Marvin, Melany, Dave (Canadian volunteer)

Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara is located in the central western part of Honduras in the department of Santa Barbara. According to Lonely Planet the town has about 15,000 people, but I have heard all sorts of other numbers from 7,000-25,000, so I really can’t be sure, but it feels like the biggest town that I have been to in Honduras (besides the capital). Finally, there is a real central park that is beautiful and green and full of people. There is also a large Catholic Church right on the central park and restaurants and shops surrounding it. Around the central park the roads are arranged in grids with all the buildings connected to each other, usually one or two stories high. The town is in a valley and so the outskirts of town climb up into the hills.
Santa Barbara has most everything I will need: internet cafes, restaurants, a gym, pools, mini-supermarkets, an outdoor fresh fruit and vegetable market, stores, banks, etc. The people that live in the city center seem fairly well off, but as you go out into the surrounding aldeas (little towns) they are not as wealthy.

The central park
The Catholic Church in the center of town

Expectations

It’s hard to know what you are getting yourself into when you sign up for the Peace Corps. They can send you anywhere in the world and ask you to do just about anything. When I signed up for the Peace Corps I had three requests: to be in a warm, Spanish speaking country and to work with health. Luckily I got all three. I also was a little scared of the prospect of having to cook over an open fire everyday; I figured I could handle just about anything but that. Before I got to Honduras I really didn’t know what to expect as far as my living situation, but I definitely didn’t expect it to be this nice. I packed my three bags as if I would have to be able to carry them to my site, (I wasn’t sure if there were roads to all the villages). I packed very few nice clothes and no high heels because I figured they would all get ruined. I only packed one tank top and no shorts because I didn’t think they would be appropriate. I didn’t expect my host family to have running water or electricity and I wasn’t sure if they would have a bed for me, I thought I would be using my Thermarest and sleeping bag.
A few weeks before coming to the Peace Corps I got in touch with a current Peace Corps Honduras volunteer and she told me a little bit about Honduras. She described Santa Lucia, our first training site, as very picturesque, with all the houses built in colonial style with red tile roofs. Once I heard this it reminded me of San Miguel de Allende, a town in Mexico that my family has visited many times. It is a gorgeous town with a beautiful garden at the center of town where everyone gathers to socialize, cobblestone streets and wonderful cafes and galleries. So I began to think that Honduras would be just like that. Well, once I arrived in Santa Lucia I realized that neither of my initial images of Honduras was correct. First of all, we had running water (although cold), electricity, and I had a double bed. Second, Santa Lucia did not look or feel like San Miguel de Allende. There was one main paved road running through town. Along this there was a small downtown area with a few restaurants and general stores. The houses were mostly on dirt roads that came off of the main street with no apparent order.
Once I finally got used to Santa Lucia off we went to La Paz. The set up of La Paz was more similar to San Miguel, with a central park with a Catholic church in front of it. The only problem with the park is that is has been somewhat neglected, actually completely neglected, and is completely brown and nobody goes there. The rest of the city is in a grid and all the buildings are connected.
Throughout training we have no idea where our final site will be, they keep us in total suspense until the last minute. Therefore we have all that time to let our imaginations run wild. Before I came to Honduras I researched Honduran dance and first found out about Punta. Punta is a traditional dance originating from the Garifuna people on the north coast. It involves fast hip motions to strong drum beats. When I arrived in Honduras I discovered that most of Honduras loves Reggaeton, Merengue and Bachata and they basically just grind in the discos. Live music doesn’t seem to be that common. I was pretty disappointed with the dance scene overall, so I decided that I wanted to be placed on the north coast in a Garifuna community so I could learn how to do the Punta and use dance and music as a way to integrate into my community. I imagined living on the beach, swimming on the ocean every day , dancing to live drums every weekend and that everybody would love the gringa who could shake it. I was also most interested in working with HIV/AIDS prevention and men’s health, which is particularly important among the Garifuna. About halfway through training we filed out a questionnaire about our site preferences. I expressed that I would like to do HIV/AIDS and men’t health on the north coast in a Garifuna community. At that point I was convinced that I would get the one Garifuna site where they planned to put a female volunteer. Well, Helmuth, the health director didn’t really see me in a Garifuna community. He expressed the challenges of working with the Garifuna; it can be very hard to integrate and be accepted because they don’t particularly like white people, the cat calls can be very aggressive and explicit, if they don’t like you they will simply speak their own language (Garifuna) and exclude you. He said I should just trust him and that I would be a wonderful volunteer wherever I went. After that conversation I was totally at peace with my future site placement. I had faith that wherever I went it would be fine. A few weeks later I was assigned to Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara. I was neither excited nor upset because I had never been there and didn’t really know what to expect…

Swearing In Ceremony

May 3rd, 2007 I finally became an official Peace Corps Volunteer. Up until that day I was considered an aspirante, still in training and not yet worthy of being referred to as a volunteer. For the first time since I have been in Honduras I blow dried my hair, painted my fingernails, wore a nice dress and put on a pair of high heels. All of the volunteers (well actually we were still aspirantes) piled into a big yellow school bus and drove down to Tegucigalpa. First we went to the Peace Corps office and had a session about finances and then we went to the US Embassy for the swearing in ceremony. We sang the Honduran and the US national anthem (which didn’t sound that great). Our training manager, the US ambassador, the Peace Corps country director and fellow volunteers all spoke words of encouragement and praise. Then we ate lunch and headed of to the ambassador’s residence where we spent the rest of the afternoon playing tennis and basketball, swimming in the pool and relaxing. Then we returned to Santa Lucia for one last night with our host families. In previous years Peace Corps has paid for volunteers to stay in hotel rooms in Tegucigalpa, but past groups have been too rowdy, so they stopped doing that.

On the left is Helmuth Casto, the Peace Corps Honduras Director of Health Projects. On the right is Jorge Reyes, the Honduras Health Project Manager.
US ambassador to Honduras.
Hondu 10 (the name of my training group). There are 50 of us from all over the US working in Health, Business and Water & Sanitation.
The US ambassador´s pool.