Thanksgiving Honduran Style

The Saturday before Thanksgiving I flipped a coin to help me decide what to do; stay in Santa Barbara or go to the north coast. I felt torn because if I stayed in Santa Barbara I would get to dance at the opening of the Cultural Center, which would be attended by the president of Honduras and I would get to attend my first quincinera (like sweet 16, but 15, it’s a big deal here). On the other hand, I wouldn’t get to visit Mary and Raphael on the north coast or share in their holiday meal. In the end I flipped a coin and went to the north coast (in the end it was the right decision, the president didn’t show up, big surprise). Katie, my site mate, and I started off early Thursday morning and arrived at Mary’s house in Sonaguera about 7 hours later.

Translation=war zone

Although it was a long trip it went well a luckily we didn’t have to take the advice of this sign that was posted at the front of the bus…
Translation=Ask for a bag in case of vomiting (which unfortunately happens quite often on buses here).

We decided to celebrate on Friday, since not everybody could make it for Thursday. The next morning when we woke up I asked Mary if she had turned off the fan in the middle of the night and she replied that the power was out and she had been lying awake in bed since 6 am trying to figure out what we would do if the power didn’t come back on. The problem is that Mary has an electric stove and oven, so no power means to turkey. Well, Mary’s neighbors have a gas stove and oven, so they said we could use their kitchen to cook if the power didn’t come back on. Well, eventually the power came back on, then went off again, then came back on, then went off again, etc. until it finally came back on and stayed on in the early afternoon. Then the cooking began! We had virtually everything you could want on Thanksgiving Day: turkey, gravy, stuffing, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, sweet potato pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie and apple pie! We had to go shopping all over Honduras to get the ingredients but we made it work.
The spreadFrom left: Me; Katie; Raphael; Dan (Raphael´s friend visiting from the states)

I was especially excited about the pumpkin bread, one of my favorites. I can’t buy canned pumpkin in my site so I had to buy it in Tegucigalpa, the capital, when I went to the Peace Corps office. Most people in my site don’t even know what a pumpkin is. When I tried to explain that pumpkin pie is a Thanksgiving favorite people seemed confused. First of all, the word for cake and pie is the same (pastel) and the word for pumpkin (calabaza) refers to a gourd or a calabash in general. So, I’m sure they were imagining a cake made out of gourds and it probably didn’t seem very appetizing. Katie made excellent pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie, although we had a little trouble with the pie at first. The crust around the edges collapsed and the filling started spilling out in the oven. We had to take it out, clean the oven, fix the crust and then bake it, but it tasted great in the end.

It was wonderful to be with good friends and enjoy Thanksgiving even though we were all far away from home.
Peace Corps volunteers, friends from home and Agua Pura volunteers

We also did lots of relaxing and reading. Here is Katie sitting in the hammock in Mary’s apartment reading. Why don’t we have hammocks in our living rooms in the states? They are so much cheaper than couches…
Katie relaxing in the hammock in Mary´s apartment reading Psychology Today

On Saturday a few of us headed up to Raphael’s site in Trujillo, which is right on the beach. From what Raphael tells me his site is scorching hot in the summer and raining constantly in the summer. Luckily we had amazing luck as it was absolutely beautiful the entire time we were there; clear blue skies and not too hot.

View from Raphael´s roof

While in Trujillo we of course at Thanksgiving leftovers (actually we ate most of the leftovers on the bus on the way from Sonaguera to Trujillo because we got hungry), visited some tourist sites, swam and relaxed.

This is an old Spanish fort located on the hills above the beach

On Sunday we visited Casa Kiwi, a hostel owned by New Zealanders a few miles outside of Trujillo. They actually keep their beach clean (unlike many other beaches in Honduras) so we took advantage and went for a swim (my mom would like it, the water is really warm).
Clean beach Dirty beach

The water is not super clear, so there wasn’t much to see, but Raphael did find a starfish.
Katie & I with a starfish on my shoulder

Another interesting attraction was the very large beached boat about a kilometer down the beach from where we were swimming. Apparently something went wrong during a storm and the boat got stuck and has been stuck for over a month (the crew we met assured us that they would have it out by next week and they were nice enough to give us a tour).
The crew that got left behind to deal with their beached boat, I think they were getting pretty bored...

Again, relaxing in hammocks, which is great until the wind dies down and the sand flies attack! They don’t hurt at first, but after about a day they itch like crazy.

The highlight of the trip for me was seeing and dancing the punta. The punta is a traditional dance danced by the Garifuna. We got to the dance club and at first they were playing reggaeton and reggae and people were just chill. Then, the punta band showed up with various types of drums, maracas, and a conch shell and the entire scene transformed immediately. Everybody formed a circle around the band and people took turns going into the middle of the circle to dance solo or in a pair. But before you could dance you had to give money to the band by dropping it in their bowl and then you can dance. Everybody that went in the middle to dance was great. The beat is incredibly fast and the dance involved moving your hips up and down with the music while keeping the upper body basically static. I was nervous at first to dance in front of everybody but I knew I would regret it if I didn’t, so I paid my 5 lempiras and went in the middle to dance, but only for about one minute because the punta is hard!

Overall it was a great weekend and I hardly felt homesick. I think the thing I missed most about Thanksgiving with my family in the states was sitting around after eating and just talking (and of course eating leftovers).

Danza Folklorico

Dancing is one of my greatest passions and one of the things I miss most about the states. So, to help fulfill my desire to dance again I decided to join a local danza folklorico group in Santa Barbara. Danza folklorico (Folkloric Dance) is traditional Honduran folk dancing. There are about 80 different songs (think ranchero type music) with assigned choreographies to each one. The dances are generally danced in groups with partners and represent the dances that Hondurans traditionally danced. I joined the dance group Guayabal about 3 months ago and practice with them every weekend. The age range of the group varies from 14-50 years old, and most of them have years of dancing experience. The steps are all very simple and easy to pick up, for me it’s just a matter of memorizing the choreographies (so far I know about 5). Although I still miss the salsa and samba I danced in the states, I have really enjoyed dancing with Guayabal. It is a great way to meet people from my community, both within the group and when we do performances. Also, it is interesting to learn the dances themselves and indirectly learn about Honduran culture and history.

I did my first performance with the group on October 27th in a neighboring town for some type of cultural night. I wasn’t nervous at all because we dance in groups and with a partner so it takes the pressure off the individual. I only danced two of the dances, one of them I learned the night before, but it was fine because my partner knew what he was doing. My favorite part is the skirts and how they flare out when we spin (although they weigh a ton!)

Minnesota Rotary Men

When Andrea and Bernardo, the previous PCVs left Santa Barbara in July they left me with a list of contacts from the states that they had worked with in Santa Barbara in the past and who would be expecting to work with the new PCVs when they returned to Santa Barbara. One such group is a Rotary Club from Minnesota that has been coming down to Santa Barbara every year for the past two decades to do medical brigades and other projects. They had a reputation for being the most fun and having famous “security meetings” at Jose’s Sports Bar every evening before dinner. A few months ago one of the members of the Rotary Club contacted me to say he would be coming down late in October and would like to work with Agua Pura on a water project (ie. designing and building a water system to deliver water to communities). At first I was hesitant because Agua Pura works with water filters, not water systems and I personally know nothing about water systems. Furthermore, the community they wanted to work with, Buena Vista, is over 3 hours away from Santa Barbara and difficult to get to. The Club discovered Buena Vista during one of their previous trips and found a great need there and suggested Agua Pura install filters there, which they did. When I found out that Agua Pura had installed filters there I questioned the decision to install filters in a community so far away because of the great transportation costs (gas and delivery of filters) and time (6 hours driving a day). Considering that there are other needy communities much closer to Santa Barbara I wondered if we should spend more time and money to install filters so far away. In the end I referred the group from Minnesota to Katie, the Water & Sanitation engineer in Santa Barbara to work with them on the water project.


Chris and Dr. Ted arrived on Sunday night and met with Katie and I and the local Rotary Club to plan their week. They would be returning to Santa Barbara in February with a large group of about 25 so the goal this week was to plan the projects they would do in February. They planned to visit the hospital to prepare the medical work, visit Buena Vista to investigate the water project and find schools eligible for construction projects. This planning process was quite different than my experience with the previous Rotary Club visit; for which I planned their entire week for them weeks in advance. I think that the fact that the group has been coming down for so many years has gotten them used to how things work here and thus they have come to be pretty flexible and laid back (or maybe that is just how they are naturally).

From Left: Larry from Colorado; Dr. Ted from Minnesota; Rene from Santa Barbara; me; Chris from Minnesota

At the meeting Chris and Dr. Ted re-emphasized their interest in the Buena Vista water project and stressed the importance of working with this community with no water, no latrines and no electricity. They said that if they didn’t help them nobody else would. This made me re-think my economic analysis of where Agua Pura should install filters. If a community really needs something is it okay to spend more time and money helping them than you could spend helping somebody else who is maybe a little less needy? Yet, at the same time I remind myself that they are only funding the projects and aren’t the ones that will be making the 3 hour trips daily, so the extra time and money spent isn’t as palpable for them. What is the best balance between economics and compassion to help us determine who gets helped and who doesn’t?

Monday morning we met for breakfast and headed to the hospital to meet with doctors and administrators to talk about what medicine and equipment the hospital needed and plan the surgeries to be done in February. Dr. Ted had been doing surgeries and supporting the Santa Barbara hospital for over 20 years, so he was well known and respected and even had wards dedicated to him. He was able to introduce me to many people that I didn’t know but was also pleased to see that I already had already formed relationships with many of the people in the hospital. I served as the translator between the groups although Chris can get by just fine with his Spanish. One big change that is happening this year is that the Minnesota Rotary Club will not be sending a medical brigade that will be going out into communities to see patients; the doctors will stay in the hospital in Santa Barbara and focus on surgeries. The reason for this change is that they had come to believe that sending generalists into communities was not effective. Another one of their goals was to figure out how they can make medical brigades into the communities more effective. The general feedback was that specialists were more in demand, such as gynecologists, dentists and optometrists. Working previously with medical brigades I have come to agree with this idea more and more. Honduras already has family doctors that can give vitamins and general medical attention. It doesn’t make sense for foreign doctors to spend lots of money to come to Honduras to do what a Honduran can easily do. However, if foreign doctors can come to Honduras to provide care that Honduran doctors do not have the technical knowledge or financial ability to provide, then it makes more sense to me.
After leaving the hospital we went out to lunch at the new vegetarian restaurant. During lunch Dr. Ted asked me about my eating habits and I said that I eat everything and have never gotten sick. I think I jinxed myself! All of a sudden I started feeling horrible and I had to tell Chris and Dr. Ted that I was sick and needed to go home. My stomach hurt, I became very tired and I felt like I was going to have diarrhea and throw up at the same time. I went home and slept all Monday afternoon and Tuesday. As usual when I am sick I am a big baby and cry and want my mom. Obviously my mom couldn’t take care of me, but luckily Katie has gotten used to me when I am sick and does a pretty good job of taking care of me.

By Wednesday (October 31st) I dragged myself out of bed to go to the lab to get a blood test, urinalysis and a fecal exam (I was convinced I had parasites since my stomach was making so much noise). It turns out that I didn’t have parasites but I did have a mild bacterial infection so the doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotics. Then I met the Rotarians for dinner. Dr. Ted showed his Halloween spirit by showing up with a bag of candy and an Osama Bin Laden mask. When I saw him I started crying because it made me miss Halloween in the states.

Dr. Ted on Halloween

Thursday I joined the group to investigate construction projects for schools. Larry is an engineer and in February he will bring down a construction team who will replace school roofs and paint schools. We got a list of possible schools from the local Rotary Club and set off to check them out (because sometimes the schools don’t actually need what the list says they need and the group insists on helping those farthest away who are most in need). Two have asbestos contamination and need new roofs and a paint job and one is perfectly fine and doesn’t need anything at all. I was happy that I could work with them and help translate but I was still exhausted from being sick and just sitting in the car made me tired.

Every year there is a large PCV Halloween party in Copan Ruinas where local businesses hold parties and PCVs from all over the country gather. I had planned on going and even had my parents send me my belly dance costume. Unfortunately I still felt sick and had very little energy so I decided not to go. It was disappointing but I think I made the right decision. So I hung out some more with Dr. Ted in the hospital and was lucky enough to observe surgery. Katie and I both went with Dr. Ted and put scrubs on and were actually allowed to stand in the surgery room and watch a c-section, a circumcision and a hernia (obviously we didn’t watch a hernia, we watched the doctors fix it, but I don’t know what the surgery is called, they just called it a hernia is Spanish). It was really interesting and probably not an opportunity I would ever have in the states.

From left: Me (yes I am smiling); the Cuban surgeon; Katie

Katie and I always joke about how we want to meet handsome Cuban doctors working in Santa Barbara who can dance salsa but I think this one is a little too old for both of us.

Above: Katie and I, below: Dr. Ted and Katie

Overall it was a wonderful week (even though I was sick). Dr. Ted, Chris and Larry were amazing to work with because of their laid back yet get things done attitude. I could really see that their years of experience have taught them how things work down here and how to effectively help people (so many times foreign aid groups have no clue how things actually work with the people they are trying to help and don’t even speak their language). They are well respected by everybody who knows them (which is a ton of people; they actually introduced more people to me than I introduced to them) and are willing to give their time and money to help those who need it most. I can’t wait until they come back in February!

A Food Revolution in Honduras

When I moved in to my own apartment about four months ago I realized that I had never had to cook for myself before, I didn’t know how to cook very much by scratch and I didn’t have any recipes. So, I sent out a call for recipes to my friends and family and didn’t get very far (not even my mom sent me recipes). Although some of you did indeed send me some good stuff, so I thank you. Then for my birthday Katie, my site mate in Santa Barbara, gave me a Peace Corps cookbook with recipes accumulated by PCVs. That served me well for a few months and I started to figure things out. I cooked beans for the first time in my life (which takes forever! No wonder people buy beans in a can) and started shopping in the market.

Then one day I get a package in the mail that I had completely forgot about…Susan Garcia, a friend from my samba group in Cleveland sent me The New Laurel’s Cookbook! For those of you who have or are familiar with this cookbook you know how amazing it is. For those of you who don’t, it is a vegetarian, health food cookbook that has tons of wonderful information. I have spent hours just sitting and reading the cookbook and imagining all the wonderful things I am going to make. It is great because it has information about different vegetables and grains and how to cook them and what nutrients they have in them. The book totally inspired me to eat and cook with tons of vegetables and whole grains. Also, I realized that my two years in the Peace Corps was a wonderful time for me to learn how to cook because I probably have more time now than I ever will in the future and I have a fresh vegetable market available to me every day. I don’t have much choice but to buy local, in-season produce. Yet, at the same time it also made me a little sad because some of the amazing things that they talk about in the cookbook I just can’t get here, like whole grain flour and brown rice and tofu and lentils and cottage cheese and yoghurt, etc. Basically my options were white rice and beans. I longed nostalgically for health food stores in the states.

Then another amazing thing happened, I discovered that I could buy flax seed and soy beans in the market and that every once in a while the mini-supermarket has lentils and garbanzo beans.

And then, yet another amazing thing happened, a vegetarian, health food restaurant opened up in Santa Barbara!!!! The owner is an American man and they make veggie burgers and whole grain bread and soy milk and all sorts of other good stuff. What’s really great about it is that they use brown rice and whole wheat flour which they are willing to sell to me, so I will actually be able to cook with whole grains. Honduran food is not generally very healthy and usually involves meat, so a vegetarian health food restaurant in a small town in central Honduras is a pretty progressive thing. So far people seem to like it though, so maybe the whole idea will catch on.