Week 2

Written on March 11th

Friday night in Honduras!!! It is a very different atmosphere than Friday night in the states, especially considering most of us trainees are in our 20s and definitely have done our fair share of partying. This Friday, most of us went to our different homes after classes were finished and then met up at a local papusaria (a little restaurant that sells only papusas… which I would say is in the quesadilla family) to shoot the breeze a little after a week of training. By 7 p.m., we were all ready to go home and go to bed - we had a long and busy week.

Let me start with last Sunday, the beginning of a new week! Last Sunday, I went to Valle de Angeles twice in one day, and I had actually spent the day there on Saturday as well! Sunday morning, I went with my host family because they go every Sunday morning. My host father sells eggs, so on Sunday morning he has a few stops to check and see if his clients need more, and he also picks up money from a few places that owes him. Also, besides my host mother’s regular job at a medical office, she also sells pillow cases she makes and clothes she somehow gets from the United States. So, Sunday morning consists of driving around Ville de Angeles running their errands, and we end at my host mother’s aunts house to visit. This Sunday, after returning to Los Planes from our morning adventure, Andrea and Melissa’s families were going to Ville as well, and I went with them just for something fun to do. We ended up getting ice cream, which was amazing, and just walking around - We also had papusas for dinner that night that we got from a street vender. That was my first papusa experience. I have to admit, I am actually not a huge fan of these papusas that everyone seems to love. The cheese here is very strong and salty and they use a lot of it. If the papusas came with beans in them, I think I would enjoy them a whole lot more.

Tuesday was a pretty great day. We of course had four hours of Spanish class in the morning, but in the afternoon, the heath project had a technical class about nutrition and malnutrition, but the information was presented to us by a current Peace Corps Health Volunteer. So, we got to experience someone different than Hector, who is fine, but he can get a little boring day after day after day. It was encouraging to hear some of her stories and have her give us an example of a charla (a short presentation to teach a group of people about something that we are soon going to be giving many of.) The volunteer had great information about nutrition and malnutrition - she is currently making the manual for a new program that will be implemented in the Health program soon. Malnutrition is currently not an actual project with a manual for volunteers to follow when teaching mothers or students at a school, so this volunteer is creating the manual so the rest of the health crew can have some basic guidelines when teaching people about it. Three quarters of this volunteers presentation was in Spanish, which made it hard to understand, but she could usually tell when we had confused looks on our faces and would explain something in English for those of us who didn’t understand. She also had games for us to interact, which was nice because it gave me an idea of how - when I get to my site- I could apply a charla like that. It was a good example for me basically copy for when I become a volunteer! Tuesday was also Demarise’s birthday, so we all went to the same papusaria that we were at tonight. I didn’t get back to my house that night until just before 9 p.m. I was so nervous getting back to my house. I was planning what I was going to say to explain why I was out so late. (Los siento, perro no puedo caminar solo, entonces, you necesite esperar por Daniel y Slater para salir) Nine is our “curfew,” so I was fine, but I still felt bad for staying out so late. However, I didn’t need to be worried at all because my host parents were not even home when I got back to the house!

Wednesday, the Health group went to Santa Lucia to a health center. This was our first field trip and it was fun. But, yet again, the talk that was given to us, was all in Spanish. The doctor that works at the S.L. health clinic only speaks Spanish, so there wasn’t a lot that could be done about that, but that just means I understood only half of the information he gave us. Listening to a doctor talk about the Honduraian health care system in Spanish for 2 hours - Ya, that sounds fun doesn’t it? I understood most of the first half of what the doctor said, but then it seemed that my brain hit a maximum intake level and I was not able to understand anymore. Even when I tried to really stay focused, my brain just wouldn’t keep up with what the Doctor was talking about. After he told us about the health care system set-up in Honduras, we got a tour of the center. Apparently, a good handful of us could end up working with health centers in our sites, so it was good to get a tour and see how they operate. Although, Hector did say that the heath center in S.L. is a lot better than other rural health centers, so we can’t really get a good feel for where we may be working based on what we saw in Santa Lucia.

Thursday, we didn’t have any language classes, which I was actually bummed about. I know that we always complain about having four hours of language class a day, but really - I need more like eight. If I want to master Spanish, I need practice! So, not having language on Thursday was a bit of a draw back for me. But, luckily, I had my Spanish tutorial Thursday afternoon with Carlos (my first language facilitator who I think is absolutely fantastic). The hour that I spent just talking with him in my tutorial, made me feel a whole lot better about my usage of the imperfect past tense! Apparently he talked to my current language teacher about it too because Friday morning, in the one hour of Spanish that we actually had, Karla told me Carlos told her that I was doing great with the past tense. Talk about the grapevine, right!

So, because we only had one hour of Spanish on Friday morning, followed by our typhoid and second rabies vaccine, we had the rest of the morning for “independent language.” Do you think very many of us actually worked on our Spanish - NO. There was an ultimate Frisbee game going on, there were people napping in the sun, people taking a sex quiz from Cosmo, and people just chatting. There were some who were being good and working on Spanish, but we had a good three hours of “independent” study time, and there is no way any of us could be studious for that long. The typhoid vaccine we got hurt. It was one of those that the needle stick didn’t hurt, but then you could feel the medicine entering your arm as they pushed in the syringe! No me gusta. They gave everyone two Tylenol after the shot, too, to help with the pain that we were going to definitely feel later. The bummer deal about getting the typhoid shot then was that the Health group was going out for a manual labor field trip after lunch. So, we were going to be using our arms, and one of them was a bit of a dud.

The health program loaded up into three of the PC Land Cruisers with pick axes, shovels, hoes, horse manure, ash, water, yucca, and a bunch of seeds. Yes, it was community garden day. We hauled everything down a windy, steep trail to an area that was covered in weeds and slimy old lettuce. We were broken up into two groups. Group one prepared the area for a new garden, and a seed bed. This meant machetying all of the greens that were currently there, then racking them all away (but we didn’t have a rake, so that was our hands). Then, after that, we hoed the area loosening up the dirt. When the area was cleared and the dirt was loose, we constructed two seed beds, which meant just really loosening up the dirt and making the bed three or four inches higher than the rest of the area. We planned onions, tomatoes, and radishes in our seed bed because - the onions and tomatoes need to be transplanted once they begin to mature, so we also had some tomato starts that we practiced planting in the other bed we had prepared. After we were finished with that, we switched groups.

The other station was all about learning how to start a compost. Hear in Honduras, that is tricky business. You start with an inclined spot 1 meter by 1 meter - in the shade. Then you put donw thick sticks to ensure your compost pile will not be directly on the ground - so it can drain. Then you put a bunch of dried leaves and or grass down followed by a bunch of green stuff. This would be wear you put your compost from your kitchen, but we used a bunch of the old lettuce that was around, along with all the green weed-type things we pulled up with the lettuce. On top of the greens, you put the manure, followed by dirt and then a sprinkling of ash. The, you water it and start the layers over again. You are supposed to build this up a meter high when you make it, and then you let it sit and ferment for a few weeks. Once it begins to ferment, you stir it every week, and after a couple months, you are ready to use this compost to create your seed beds for your community garden!

This was a really fun day. We all go to be in the sun and do manual labor. Even though we all had a bum arm, we made the best of it and we sweated out a lot of toxins that is for sure. Or, I know I did anyway. I kept pretty busy the whole time though. Every time I needed a break I would give someone the tool I was working with, then get a quick drink of water and switch off with someone else again, so I stayed pretty consistently busy, which I liked.

I am getting ready to go with a bunch of other people to the National Park outside of Valle de Angeles - La Tigra. That is going to be a story for another blog, and hopefully it won’t end up like the story the people who went last week had. They ended up walking through the park for 12 hours semi-lost and had to have our training director come and pick them up at 7:30 pm (they had begun their journey at 6:30 that morning!!!)