Winter Wonderland

Okay, so Honduras isn’t quite a winter wonderland but it is “winter”. Honduras has two seasons: winter (aka the rainy season) and summer (aka the dry season). Right now we are in winter and things are actually starting to cool off and it feels amazing. Summers in Santa Barbara are usually around 90-100 degrees, I try to wear as little clothing as possible and sweat constantly. I sleep with a fan on me all night long. Now that it is winter the temperature probably gets down to around 60. During the day it can still be hot but at night it is usually cold. While in the summer I wear flip-flops 24/7, now I can actually wear socks and tennis shoes with jeans and my fleece. Not only do I no longer need my fan at night I am actually cold because all I have on my bed is a sheet. So I had to dig my yoga pants and long sleeved shirts out of storage and wear warm PJs to bed. Although I hate being cold and I don’t want it to get any colder here it is nice to feel cozy and drink hot tea for a change. In the states I never really appreciated seasons (because I didn’t like the cold ones) but being here makes me a little nostalgic for the activities that come along with the seasons. I reminisce about fall growing up and going to the cider mill, picking apples and drinking hot apples cider and eating donuts. There are actually apples available here but they are imported from Washington state and cost a ton so I probably won’t be making apple cider anytime soon. Although we will have to make an exception and splurge for Thanksgiving so we can have apple pie.

Another element of winter is the rain. Before the rainy season came around I was a little scared because I imagined non-stop torrential downpours. Luckily it isn’t that bad (at least not yet, they tell me the rains will still get harder). It usually rains in the afternoon and sometimes at night. If I am inside at night I love the sound of the rain outside and it makes everything very cozy. If I have to walk in the rain it is not as pleasant however. Although the rain can be nice it does bring some difficulties. I now have to strategically plan washing and drying my clothes. During the summer I could basically do my wash any time of the day, hang it outside on the line and it would dry within a few hours. Now if it is overcast it takes forever to dry, or if it is raining I´m totally out of luck. One time I put my clothes out in the morning and they didn’t dry because it was overcast so I left them out all night and brought them in the next day. Although they were dry they smelled a little musty from being wet outside in the cold. Another problem is that people don’t seem to want to do anything if it is raining. Sometimes this makes sense, for example if we are planning to install filters in a community but the road is washed out obviously we can’t work. However, sometimes it is just a lame excuse. Last week Katie and I invited three friends over to eat pizza with us. Well, it happened to be raining that night so only one showed up and the others called to say they weren’t coming because it was raining. So what, you get wet! It perplexes me that in a country with a rainy season the rain can stop so much from happening. I guess in the states the weather (especially rain) doesn’t affect our daily activities as much because most of us commute in cars from our garages at home to our offices and most of our roads are paved so most weather doesn’t stop us from working. At least I should be thankful that it didn’t rain during my Men’s Health workshop last week, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have even had 13 show up.

Men’s Health in Santa Barbara

The past two weeks I have been busy preparing for the Men’s Health training of trainers in Santa Barbara. I was awarded a community grant from the Peace Corps in order to do a short term HIV/AIDS prevention activity. I decided to use the money to hold a 3 day Men’s Health workshop to train adult men in Santa Barbara to be facilitators of the “Aqui Entre Nos” methodology to teach HIV prevention and other men’s health topics to adult men. The first two days of the workshop involves teaching all the information and the third day the participants actually have a practicum for which they teach the activities they have just learned to other groups of men. I worked in collaboration with the Santa Barbara HIV Network to plan the event and facilitated it is with three other Peace Corps volunteers. All in all the event was a success, but there were a number of “glitches” that made for an exciting planning process…

First, the overall process of planning in Honduras happens a little bit more last minute than I am used to, which caused a slight bit of stress on my part. I had initially hoped to deliver invitations with 3-4 weeks notice, since the workshop was held on Thursday, Friday and Saturday people may need to get off work and I wanted to give them enough notice. Well, I printed out all the invitations and signed them and was ready to have my counterparts, the president of the HIV Netowrk, sign them as well. It turns out she was on vacation for over a week, which I didn’t know about. The following week I was out of town and then our weekly meeting with the HIV Network were canceled for a few weeks in a row. In the end we didn’t end up giving people the invitations until about a week or two in advance. Some of the invitations were delivered a day or two in advance and some were never delivered at all because the members of the HIV Network never got around to doing it. I had hoped to have 25 participants and the day before the workshop we had 25 confirmed…how many showed up? 13! Growing up in the states I became accustomed to the fact that if you say you are going to do something you usually do it, if you RSVP to something it generally means you will go, or call to cancel if something comes up. Well, here in Honduras, when you say you are going to do something it means that you may or may not do it and that one can’t really know until the last minute. For example, I talked to some of the confirmed participants in person the day before and even the morning of the workshop and they assured me that they would be there…and then they didn’t show up and didn’t call to explain. Sometimes I feel as if many people here have no sense of responsibility and that their word means very little. I think it may come from a desire to please. Those who I invite want to make me happy and so they say they will do something because I ask them to, but it really doesn’t mean they actually have the time or desire to do it. So, in the end only 13 showed up…although 25 would have been better, 13 is better than nothing.

Second, setting up the practicum groups was also challenging. Like I said before, the third day of the workshop consisted of the participants themselves teaching the material they had just learned to other groups of men. It is an important part of the workshop because it forces them to immediately put in practice what they have learned and move from just listening to doing. It also shows them how hard it actually is and that they have to do a lot of preparation to do well. The members of the HIV Network were instrumental in organizing the four groups of men and everything worked out well in the end, but was a little rocky getting there. Two wonderful members of the HIV Network (who actually do what they say they are going to do) organized one group of police and two groups of prisoners. Another member said she would talk to Real Juventud, the Santa Barbara division II futbol team to see if we could do the practicum with them. Well, a month later and she still hadn’t even approached them to talk about it, so I figured out how to meet with their coach and asked him the week before if we could work with them, which we couldn’t because the players would be traveling that weekend. Later I told another member of the HIV Network that I was really embarrassed to have asked the coach with only one week’s notice if he could work with us. My friend didn’t seem to understand why I was embarrassed. Maybe I need to remember that lots of things happen last minute in Honduras, so even though I feel like it is rude to ask somebody to do something last minute, they don’t think it is. So, then we were left without a group…I told the members of the HIV Network that we needed another group so someway or another they better make it happen. Since I didn’t have much control over whether we could find another group or not I just figure I would leave it up to them and things would work out in the end.

Third, we had to find a location to hold the workshop and so one of the hard working members of the HIV Network managed to get the mayor’s office to loan us a conference room in the municipal building. We confirmed and re-confirmed that the room would be reserved for us for free, with AC, for three days. Well, when the day finally arrived Raphael, Cynthia, Conor and I all arrived early at the municipal building to meet with members of the HIV Network and start to set up the room. Well, when we walked into the room we discovered that the mayor was holding a meeting in the room that was supposed to be reserved for us. We talked to the Vice-Mayor and he said the meeting would be done by noon. No problem, our workshop didn’t start until 1:30 pm, so we could come back at 12 and still have an hour and a half to set up. Well, we come back at 12:30 and the meeting was still going on. I talked to the Vice-Mayor and he said they won’t finish until around 1:30 so we would just have to postpone our meeting because the mayor is the ultimate authority. I wanted to scream at them! I wanted to ask them what the word RESERVED meant to them because it was obvious we had different understandings of the meaning of that word. In the end they finished a little before 1:30, we set up quickly and didn’t start until 2:15 anyway because people arrived late. Another issue with the room we were using was that it was the main entrance to the mayors office, so everybody would use it to cut through to the rest of the building although there was a side door. I put a sign on the front door announcing the meeting and asking that only participants enter. On the back door I put a sign that said meeting in process, please do not interrupt. Well, either nobody can read or they simply don’t care because people walked in and out of the door throughout the three days we were there. Most of the time it was just obnoxious but sometimes it was very disruptive. For example, we had an HIV positive man come and give a testimony about his life and people were continually walking through! Then the final glitch…Friday it occurred to us to ask who would be opening the room the following day (Saturday) and at what time. Well, they informed us that the office wouldn’t be open on Saturday so nobody would be there to open and close the room. So apparently RESERVED means that you can write your name down on a calendar but it doesn’t actually mean the room will be unoccupied or open for use! So, Friday afternoon we started to brainstorm other conference rooms we could use. In the end the guy with the key agreed to come in the morning and open the room and then leave the key with us to close it at the end of the day. He actually ended up arriving 5 minutes early the next day and ended up staying to close the building at night! These things get me so worked up while they are happening but in the end always seem to work out (most of the time anyway).

Lots of fun activities so the men don’t get bored. This one is like group rock-paper-scissor, but with wall, hunter, deer.

The workshop itself went well. Raphael, Cynthia, Conor and I all took turns presenting different activities. I had to present some I had never done before so it was challenging and I felt slightly self-conscious about my Spanish because the rest of the group speaks better than I do. The group was a little quite and a few of them a little young, but all-in-all seemed to enjoy the activities.

In addition to teaching HIV prevention we do “quickies” (pun intended) that quickly touch on other men’s health issues such as smoking, different types of cancers, erectile dysfunction, domestic violence, etc. Here Raphael and I are demonstrating how to do a testicular self exam.

The first two days we presented all the materials and did the activities for them and then on Friday afternoon we broke them up into groups and had them start preparing their materials and presentations for the next day. We originally had arranged for 4 groups because we anticipated having 25 participants, but since only 13 showed up we combined 2 groups into one. Two groups went to the jail to work with inmates and one group worked with a group of police and Social Promotion students (10 of them showed up but they misunderstood that the workshop was only for me and sent 5 girls and 5 guys, se we sent the girls home and the 5 guys joined the police).

Although all the needed information for each activity is written out in the manual, including a materials list, the activities still seemed to challenge the participants. The concept of reading through something and figuring out what you need to do to prepare and practice seems like a foreign idea to them and we had to hold their hand through the whole thing. It was clear that many of them hadn’t even read through their activity and just got up and stumbled their way through the presentation.
Charles is one of my counterparts that attended the workshop. He is the coordinator of Jovenes sin Fronteras, an NGO that teaches HIV prevention to youth. He was the best participant and I can’t wait to teach Men’s Health with him!

As I said, two of the practicum groups went to the jail and presented to the prisoners. I have only been in one jail in the states (in Georgia) so that is my only frame of reference, but I think it is safe to say that the jail here is a whole lot different than the ones in the states. Conor, another Peace Corps Volunteer described it as a little city with walls around it. First of all it is right in town, about half a block from the central park, right behind the cultural center. Second, it doesn’t have individual cells like in the states, it is all just open. They have pool tables, open space for sports, people cooking, people making hammocks and hanging out. I actually wasn’t working with on one the practicum groups so I visited all the groups to take pictures and make sure they had all their materials. I arrived at the entrance to the jail and said I wanted to go to where they were doing the practicum. A guard escorted me to the classroom and left me there. I hung out a while in what looked like a regular elementary school classroom with the alphabet, shapes, numbers and classroom rules on the walls (except it was for adults).

Practicum group in the jail.

When I arrived they were in the process of figuring out role, who was supposed to be there and who wasn’t (lots of people wanted to come).

This is Telma, she is a retired teacher and a very active member of the HIV Network. She was one of the most helpful people throughout the entire planning process and made sure things got done that needed to be done. She has worked with the prison extensively through the Catholic Church so she was able to set up the two practicum groups there. Here she is calling role and doing a darn good job of it.

Although I wasn’t there very long my general impression is that the inmates didn’t seem like malicious or dangerous men. More than anything they seemed young and uneducated. Many of them couldn’t read and probably came from very poor backgrounds. When it was time for me to leave (I don’t think my parents will appreciate this…sorry) the guard had already left so I just left the classroom by myself and found my way to the entrance, meaning that I had to walk through the open courtyard of men alone. I was wearing a nametag (which I forgot I had on) so many of them called out my name, but they weren’t disrespectful and I didn’t feel at all threatened. When I came back later on during the morning to deliver the diplomas for the participants the guard recognized me and just opened the gate and I walked to the classroom alone. Although Santa Barbara is considered a more low key prison and I felt safe and had no problems it is probably not a very safe practice.
Practicum group with the police and 5 Social Promotion students.

Overall the practicum groups managed to work their way through the 4 hour workshop with the help of the Peace Corps volunteer assigned to help each group. Two participants actually didn’t show up the morning of the workshop so we had to jump in and take over their parts. One of the participants that didn’t show up sent me a text message saying he was sick and may God bless him and give him strength to recover. I didn’t believe it for a second! Later that day I ran into his mother and asked how he was doing and she said he was sick with sinusitis. Later that night I saw him out at the disco and called him out and told him I didn’t like to be lied to. He said sorry, he wasn’t sick, just hung over. As far as the other guy that didn’t show up I called his house and talked to his mom and told him he needed to come because he had a responsibility to his group and she said she would send him but he never showed up…

This is Juan, one of the workshop participants, leading an activity during the practicum.

Once we finished with the practicum we all got back together as a group and ate lunch. Four of the participants had to leave early because their last bus left at 2 pm and we weren’t scheduled to finish until 4:30 pm. On the invitation it said that you had to be present for the entire workshop so I didn’t want them to leave early but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I had them fill out the final evaluations early and gave them their diplomas so they could catch their bus on time. When some of the other participants saw that others were leaving early they said they were also going to leave early. I told them they had to stay for the entire workshop and because they didn’t have a reasonable need to leave early they would have to stay. It was an incredibly frustrating situation, I felt like I was dealing with little boys whining about how “It’s not fair that they get to leave early, I want to leave early too!” Well apparently I let my annoyance show a little too much and upset on of those who wanted to leave early. He told Cynthia, one of the other facilitators, that I was rude to him and he was going to leave right then. He did end up staying to do the final evaluation but pouted the whole time. Cynthia told me that she apologized to him for me but that I should also apologize to him. At first I had no intention of apologizing to a grown man acting like a child. In the end I realized it is better not to burn bridges and if I wanted to work with him in the future I should drop my pride and apologize. I did apologize and he was completely fine after that and told me not to worry about it at all.

In the end we quickly did an evaluation of how the practicum went then we had them fill out post-tests, final evaluations and community agreements. The post tests are given so we can measure if the participants learn anything, but I still haven’t analyzed the data so who knows if they did or not. The final evaluations are given to provide us with feedback so we can improve, but usually they are almost all positive and very hard to read. The community agreements are given to the participants so they can write down an action plan about how they are going to use what they have learned to teach others in their communities. Their plans always sound wonderful and ambitious but if they actually follow through remains to be seen. If I want to see the multiplier effect actually work then I personally will have to follow up and work with each of them to plan, prepare and execute future workshops. Right now they are not ready to go out on their own and give the workshop but I think there are a few who have potential if we work together a lot in the future.

So what did I learn from this experience? First, things will never be perfect, something will always go wrong, sometimes terribly wrong, but in the end things usually end up okay. Second, if I want something done right I have to do it myself, but I don’t have time to do everything myself and things don’t really need to be 100% right so I need to get to know the people I can rely on and focus on working with them in the future.
The local TV station and radio station both came to interview me! Luckily I didn’t see or hear myself but other people did and they said that my Spanish was good.

Men’s Health National Presentation

During reconnect, Helmuth, the Health Project Manager, invited me to be on the Men’s Health Team, which means that I would be part of the planning for the Men’s Health projects for Peace Corps at a national level. It turns out that the first event I would take part in with the team was a biggy. The day after the Rotary Club left I went to Teguc to help the team put on a National Men’s Health Presentation. The goal of the meeting was to present the Men’s Health teaching methodology developed by Peace Corps to national and international institutions in Honduras. The meeting was attended by representatives from the Ministry of Health, USAID, ONUSIDA, the National Police and Military and other major institutions, which meant we had to make it perfect. I arrived Sunday night and the team was already hard at work. We worked late, went to bed late and woke up the next day at 5:30 to start working again. I personally woke up in a horrible mood and in no mood to work. I had just gotten over a bite on my foot and exhausting weekend, the last thing I wanted to do was work on five hours of sleep. Well, I got over it and we worked until about 10 pm on Monday. Tuesday was the big day, the event was held at the Clarion hotel in Teguc and everything went very smoothly. I didn’t have a large presentation role, so I helped out mostly with the behind the scenes logistic work, making sure all the little details were taken care of. In the end I enjoyed the whole event and the team was very pleased with the outcome. When I signed up for the Peace Corps I definitely did not see myself doing even planning for national meetings in fancy hotels attended by heads of organizations…but hey, not much of this experience has been what I expected it to be.
The Men´s Health Team, that´s me, second from the left.


After all the work was done we went to Ruby Tuesday’s for dinner and I discovered they have amazing veggie burgers! Who knew? I was amazed and can’t wait to go back there. I also discovered a great Argentinean café with incredible sandwiches with real crusty gourmet bread, not of the Wonder Bread kind. The owner of the café also gives tango lessons, so next time I go to Teguc I am going to try to check them out. If the lessons are anywhere near as good as the food at her restaurant I am in luck.

My “infected” foot and the Maine Rotary Club

Agua Pura para el Mundo is funded by a partnership with local and international Rotary clubs. Currently we have grants from Rotary Clubs in Maryland and Maine. Part of my job as a Peace Corps volunteer working with Agua Pura has been to facilitate communication between the local Rotary Club, Agua Pura and the donor clubs in the states since the folks in the states don’t speak Spanish and the folks here don’t speak English (although Nineth is coming along with her English). Periodically groups of Rotary Club members from the states come down to Santa Barbara to check out the project here. I had been working extensively with them to plan the trip and was very excited about meeting the people face to face who I had been e-mailing for months. I had planned to spend the entire week with them to translate and help them out.
The Agua Pura crew, a few local Rotary Club members, a local driver and I picked them up at the airport. While at the airport I unexpectedly had to fight back tears, I think being there made me miss my family, like I should be picking them up at the airport instead of strangers. We loaded their 15 suitcases and the 7 of them into three cars and headed back to Santa Barbara without any glitches. Well, except that it started to rain on the way back and the bags were in the pack of the pick up so we had to stop and buy a tarp, no big deal.

We checked them into The Gran Colonial, the nicest hotel in Santa Barbara and let them get situated. That night myself and three other PCVs met their group for dinner at Casa Blanca, also the nicest restaurant in town, to talk about the possibility of working on other water projects.
We all woke up early on Sunday and headed to Descansadero, San Nicolas, to do a filter training. We had a great turnout and the Rotary Club from Maine was very impressed with Nineth’s presentation and ability to capture the attention of the audience and use humor when appropriate. Nineth giving a hygiene talk in Descansadero
The Rotary Club from Maine


While there something apparently bit my foot and immediately started to swell. During the training itself I had to loosen my Tevas all the way and they were still tight. By the time I got home my foot was huge and became very painful to walk on.


That night we had a meeting and dinner with the local Rotary Club to give an introduction to Santa Barbara. By the time dinner rolled around I could hardly fit my foot in my flip-flops and I had to call Nineth to come pick me up with the Agua Pura truck. I limped around the meeting and dinner to follow and Nineth dropped me back off at home afterward. I intended to take Benadrly before I went to bed except we had to wake up early the next morning and I was scared I wouldn’t be able to wake up, so I didn’t take anything and I hardly slept both because the pain in my foot and worrying about what I would do the next day if I couldn’t walk. We had arranged for the Rotary Club to go to El Nispero, a neighboring town of Santa Barbara where another PCV lives to visit a school and give the kids shoes. Well I called the volunteer that would be accompanying them at 5 a.m. and told her I wouldn’t be able to go because I could hardly walk. Luckily she thought she could handle it. I finally took a Benadrly and slept all morning.
I basically just sat around the house all day and read and iced my foot. Eventually I made it to the doctor’s office and he told me that my foot was infected. Well, this didn’t really seem right to me because the only sign of infection was swelling and it seemed a lot more like an allergic reaction to whatever bit me. I told him this, but he was convinced that it was an infection so he gave me an injection of antibiotics (Hondurans really like injections) as well as antibiotic cream. At first he wanted to give me the shot in the butt but I started crying and refused to let this old man who I had no confidence in give me a shot in the butt. He tried to convince me and repeatedly asked me why I didn’t want a shot in my butt and finally resigned to giving it to me in the arm only to tell me that it would hurt more and I would be sorry and when I came back the next day for the second shot I would want it in the butt. Later I called the Peace Corps Medical Officers (PCMOs) in Teguc, the doctors employed by Peace Corps to take care of all our medical needs and she said it was probably an infection and it would even turn into a staff infection and spread to the rest of my body and be very serious, so if it didn’t get better soon they would have to send a Peace Corps car to come pick me up and bring me to Teguc for medical attention.

The next day I had to call the Rotary Club to tell them I wouldn’t be able to go out again, but luckily, Erin the other PCV was still with them. Then I called and talked to another PCMO and luckily this one agreed with me. I told her what the doctor said and she thought it sounded odd as well. She suggested that I go see another doctor for a second opinion. Luckily I knew a doctor who works at the hospital who I know and trust, so I called him on his cell phone and he told me to come right in. I assumed this meant he would still be there and attend to me, but when I got there he had already gone to lunch so I had no idea what to do and was on the verge of tears the whole time at the thought of some other doctor I didn’t know wanting to give me a shot in the butt. They checked me into the hospital like a regular patient and took me to the ER. Eventually the doctor saw me and ordered blood work done just to make sure it wasn’t an infection, which of course the blood work showed it wasn’t. I was on the verge of tears the whole time because the hospital was such a depressing place. It was incredibly dirty and full of poor sick people. It almost made me feel guilty that I could just walk in there and get almost immediate medical attention and have confidence that the Peace Corps would pay for everything. The doctor ordered me two shots of hydrocortisone and Benadryl, one of which had to be in the butt. Again I started crying when I heard this, but at least this time it was a woman nurse and she just smiled so I felt a lot more comfortable with her. However, we were in the middle of the emergency room with no privacy so I made her take me in the other room where I had to lay down on filthy sheets and get a shot in the butt that really hurt and made me cry even more. I went home and was completely knocked out by the shot and felt horrible. I was also mad at the first doctor for telling me my foot was infected when I knew it wasn’t.

Up until this point Katie had done a great job of taking care of me, but then when she came home she felt like she was coming down with something and had a fever! We both just laid around being infirm. Then we had another decision to make…Wednesday, the following day, Katie and I had both been invited to go to Copan Ruins with the group so we had to decide if we were well enough to go. I decided that I should take it easy so I would be ready to work with the group on Thursday and Friday when we would be taking them out to do filter work. Katie woke up the next morning at 6 and called them to tell them she still had a fever and couldn’t go. By Wednesday the swelling in my foot had gone down substantially and the redness had pretty much gone away, but I was exhausted because again I could hardly sleep worrying about not being with the Rotary Club and trying to find a comfortable position that didn’t hurt my foot or the shots in my arm or butt. Since the redness had subsided in the rest of my foot the actual bites began to look a lot worse. In all I had three visible bites, but one in particular looked pretty bad, about the size of a quarter, red, raised welt that itched all around but hurt in the center.

So, Wednesday Katie and I watched movies and read and wrote e-mails and just took it easy to get better to go to work on Thursday. I had to call Nineth to bring me food for dinner because we were both almost out and neither of us felt like going to the market. Although I couldn’t be with the group for the first three days things went smoothly anyway, which made me feel like I did a good job planning so that even though I wasn’t there things still happened on their own.
Thursday I was finally able to walk on my foot although it barely fit in my tennis shoe. We went to Jimilile, a village with filters, to do monitoring. Which means we went to each house with a filter to make sure it was working properly and to talk to them about how the filter had impacted their health. Every family that we talked to reported improved health, most of them experiencing no diarrhea since initiation of filter use. This aspect of our work was very important for the Rotary Club from Maine to see because it showed them what an important impact the filter project has on real people’s lives. That afternoon we went to the filter workshop to show the group how the filter production process works. I actually hadn’t ever observed the whole process so it was a learning experience for me as well.

Thursday night we had two meetings; the first was to look through the financial records of Agua Pura to make sure everything was in line and the second was with the local Rotary Club, the Rotary Club from Maine and the Agua Pura team and National Director. I was slightly nervous about both meetings for a number of reasons; first I would have to translate everything between the groups and second because we had to bring up some potentially sticky issues (like paying salaries on time) and I didn’t want to be in the middle of it all. Luckily, the “audit” went well, Nineth had everything organized perfectly. The second meeting also went surprisingly well. We were all able to communicate well, clarify operational issues and make some important decisions that will improve our future functioning. I think that having the Maine Rotary Club here brought a certain authority that helped give us [Agua Pura] negotiating leverage. It was an interesting position for me to be in because I could see a marked change in the attitudes of the local Rotary Club with the presence of the gringos (the ones who are actually paying for the project).

Friday we went to Descansadero to install filters. We went in three cars and the car that I was in with the Maine group arrived first followed by the rest of the group and a local Rotary Club member. Then Nineth calls me to tell me that the Agua Pura staff and the Agua Pura truck are stuck in Santa Barbara because something is wrong with the truck…I remained pretty calm and actually felt fine with just saying “Who knows…” when our visitors kept asking me questions like “What happened to the truck? When are they going to get here? Where are the filters to install? Do the people here know we are coming?” So we just figured out where the filters were and started installing and eventually the Agua Pura truck showed up and the day was a success. We finished up by eating tons of fresh corn on the cob, which has never tasted so good to me in my life.

That night we went to another meeting with the Rotary Club, but this time it was a little more formal. The district governor, who is in charge of Rotary Clubs for Honduras as well as two other Central American countries was there, so everybody was dressed up and the entire Santa Barbara Rotary Club was there, including friends and family. I had the pleasure of translating in front of everybody which can be really awkward because some things just don’t translate well. Hondurans use lots of flowery language, especially when they are in formal situations, so the local Rotary Club president would take 5 minutes just to say welcome and thank you for being here, then hand the mike to me and I would say two words. The meeting lasted about two hours and was incredibly boring because it basically consisted of the local club talking about themselves and all the wonderful things they have done. I have gotten to the point where I just sit and smile as I listen to them make themselves feel good and realize that in the end it doesn’t really matter how full of themselves they are as long as we are helping people.

Saturday we packed up the cars again and dropped the Rotary Club at the airport to fly back to Maine. Overall, it was a great week and important to have them come down here and get a sense for what is really going on in the field. Often donors have no idea how the projects they are funding actually work, so it was important for them to come see things first hand and meet the people on the ground. It was also important for me to meet the people I had been e-mailing with face to face and communicate my concerns. One important thing we talked about was my role as a PCV working with Agua Pura. Since being here I have felt a great deal of pressure to take care of all the communication between the states and Honduras and I felt that there was on over reliance on the foreigner working with the project. I was able to talk with the club about this and stress that although my role here is important it is really up to the Hondurans working on the project.

Scorpion in the Sink

So far I have not had too many traumatic animal or bug experiences in Honduras once I realized that geckos are not harmless, just cute and I learned to accept the fact that I will always have little tiny ants in my apartment no matter how much I clean. Well, Katie has not been as lucky as me in the animals invading her house department. The other night she yells my name and tells me to get upstairs. This was not the first time she had screamed like that so I knew it must be an animal of some kind. I go up and find that there is a scorpion in the sink. We contemplated how we should get it out or kill it. Both of us were acting like big babies and wished we had a guy around to do the dirty work for us (what ever happened to strong independent women?) Finally, we put a cup over it so it couldn’t get away and then we boiled water and poured boiling water on it, which of course killed it. Katie swore she heard it scream. Then we used chopsticks to get it out of the drain and then flushed it down the toilet. Katie felt bad. Now I watch my drain very carefully when I brush my teeth.