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…