Field Based Training

25 de Marzo del 2011

I have been in the Villa for 60 hours. These last 60 hours have been excruciatingly difficult. This is not because we are working hard physically or because we have a ton of work to do. It is excruciating for me simply because of the heat. The mornings are not too bad, until about 9:30 or 10, but then it quickly begins to heat up, and it just keeps getting hotter until about 2 in the afternoon. From 3-5 it is just stays hot and then finally, about 6pm, the temperature begins to drop. Thankfully by about 7 the sun is almost set, so the temperature drops quickly. However it is currently 10pm and I am lying in bed sweating, so saying that the sun went down and it cooled off does not by any means, mean it is cool. It is simply less-hot. Being from the rainy/cold climate, I’m currently being tortured, but I’m just going to have to deal with it. And, everyone else is just going to have to deal with seeing me glimmer with sweat and having pit stains in all my shirts. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Being in Honduras, an extremely hot country, and working with an organization like Cuerpo de Paz, I have to dress professionally, meaning I am not aloud to wear thin strapped tank tops or shorts. I would be able to tolerate this heat if I could dress for it a little bit more. I have definitely decided I need to take a trip to the near by city to buy some more clothes. I don’t have enough “business causal” tops that are cool enough, and I need a couple more pare of Capri-length pants that are LIGHT weight.

Currently, the thing I want most in the world, is a fan. My bedroom would be perfectly fine if I had a fan blowing on me right now. I have heard other trainees talking about their fans and I am so jealous. It actually does get cool in the middle of the night, though - as in like 2 or 3 in the morning. I have woken up a few times around then and decided I would actually get under my sheet.

Besides the heat, the Villa is really nice (Villa de San Antonio). It is a small town, with about 3-4,000 people in the community - but there are 7 aldeas around the town. (Aldeas are small clusters of families/groups around a town/city). And la Villa is very close to a large city, which I like. I like being able to go do things on the weekends with other volunteers. When you are in a really small community with nothing to do, the heat just seems so much harder to tolerate. But, when you have things to do to keep busy and just keep on truckin’, in my opinion, it is easier to deal with the heat. Water is also KEY. We have been informed to always make sure and drink enough water. Our families do have potable water that we can drink, but I always feel bad drinking all their water because I drink a lot. But, our classroom always has jugs of potable water, too, so it makes it easier to stay hydrated. However, we were informed that we will only be supplied with 2 or 3 jugs of water a week, so we are all going to have to ration just a bit - there are 17 of us.

We are just beginning out technical training about HIV/AIDS (VIH/SIDA in Spanish). Today we had our second technical session, which was about STIs. If we want to, or end up in a community with a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, we will most likely be giving lots of charlas (little talks) to members of the community about HIV/AIDS and other STI’s that often times tend to go hand in hand with HIV/AIDS. We saw a lot of pictures that were not that fun to look at. But really, what better way, when giving a charla, to get people to have safe sex in Honduras than show them gross pictures of different STIs. There is one here called Trichomoniasis that I had actually never heard before. That one is a protozoan rather than a virus or a bacteria. If I have to give a charla to some community members, or to a group of teenagers, about STIs, I will probably include pictures because I really think that is one of the best scare tactics to keep them from partaking in un-safe sex.