Tuesday, July 31, 2007

My House/Fixer-Upper

I don´t mean to complain about this house a mere two weeks after moving in… I´m simply realizing more and more that living on one´s own in a well-worn house is not always what it´s cracked up to be. There is a nasty raw sewage smell emanating from the bathroom. I didn´t have water for nearly 5 days. The pila is crawling with mosquitos and the health center ran out of the little bags they sell to keep mosquitoes away. My backyard is a dump. The kicker, however, was Sunday night when a huge rainstorm came through and I realized my outdoor drain is completely clogged… a bit too late, as it turned out. Since the water had nowhere to go, it decided to head straight for the house… within 5 minutes the entire house was covered in brown rainwater. Hmm. Guess this wasn´t the palace I´d originally thought it was.

But it is still, indeed, all mine. And my old host mom is now my landlady, and seems willing to send people to check out the problems (or at least offer me my old room, and hot meals, and delicious/ridiculously sweet coffee every time I come to complain). And I´m happy nonetheless.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

This is why I´m here

So I’ve been working with a youth tourism group in San José. They’re trying to promote the “Jute Caves” in San José as a great tourist destination. They’ve been working with an NGO that’s supplied them with materials, trainings, field trips to the beach and national parks and waterfalls, all absolutely FREE. In exchange, they made a business plan and initiated a sign project. They would make two signs promoting the caves, and place one in San José and the other along the main highway. Awesome idea! Right?

Well I’d put the emphasis on IDEA, since after starting the project everyone did a whole lot of NOTHING—the two group members who most involved found work in the next town, and the other members sat and held meetings and complained that they couldn’t do the project without them. This has been going on since I got here. Every meeting would be like pulling teeth, it would inevitably start hours later when people finally showed up. Nobody had any ideas on what to do. Nobody had the name of the guy who made the signs. It was always a mystery. It’s been a frustrating group to work with, in short.

SO this past Friday I learned that the folks from the NGO are paying a visit to see the signs. The nonexistent signs. I thought this would propel the group into making the signs, and yet nobody did anything. No talk of signs. So I talked to one of the knuckleheads in this group about it, how I was frustrated and disappointed in everyone, and that I couldn’t work with them if they continued on like this.

This was Friday. I was out of my site over the weekend visiting fellow PC Volunteers and complaining about the youth group and the stupid signs. On Monday afternoon I rode into my site on the bus, and what do I see?

Three guys from the youth group… PUTTING UP THE FIRST SIGN!

I ran home and made them sandwiches, bought them coke and spent the rest of the afternoon helping with the sign. It was pouring rain, the half-dried paint was dripping everywhere, the little signpost turned out lopsided and the tiles on the roof are uneven. But we laughed and joked and exchanged swear words in our respective languages, and in the end we put up the beautiful wooden sign, to greet every person entering the town of San José. I finished that afternoon dirty and soaking wet and covered in paint, and about to cry from happiness. They did it. They put up the stupid sign.

That afternoon, there was nowhere else I’d rather be.

My house

After two and a half months with the host family in the house above the pool hall, I have moved on to my very own place in a nice little house near the park. Thanks to the ridiculously small amount Peace Corps gave me for my furnishings, and considering this was a completely unfurnished house, I’ve had to take my own money out to pay for the majority of my stuff—but it’s worth it. I am in a place where everything is mine. The bed is mine. The shampoo is mine. The decision of what to eat and when, is mine. The responsibility for cooking and cleaning and burning trash is mine. I am so happy.

And it’s an actual house! A front porch, a living room, a BIG kitchen, TWO bedrooms, a bathroom with (cold) shower, a backyard with a banana tree and a shed, a latrine and my pila where I’ll wash my clothes and hang them on my line. The location is, I’ll admit, not as happening as my host family’s house, but it’ll be great to have a little distance between me and the bolos at the pool hall. All I need now is to learn how to cook my own food and wash the pila and burn trash without the house going up in flames. And I’ll need visitors. This means you. Come see this wonderful house.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Hondu lingo

So on the whole, standard Honduran Spanish is fairly clear and easy to understand. There is no Spanish lisp, no Argentine “sh,” no Paraguayan/Andean mixture between Spanish and an indigenous language. That said, here are a few interesting, confusing and/or hilarious phrases I’ve picked up thus far from Honduran lexicon:

Qué pedo? Literally “what fart,” used as a form of “what’s up.” This is interchanged with “Qué pepsi?”

Exagerado- “exaggerated,” an amazing word used to describe a large quantity of anything. For instance, the line of people at the bank? Exagerado. How much we worked today? Exagerado. How well those two get along? Exagerado!!!!

Vaya pues- “go then,” way of saying “ok, sounds good.” The first time I heard this I got offended, thinking the woman wanted me to go away.

Sí hombre or No hombre: “yeah man” or “no man” used very liberally among guys and girls to put emphasis on a yes or no question. For instance, “Are you sure you have the right address?” “Siiii hombre!!”

Cheque: “check,” used as an affirmation or positive description of a situation, like the word cool. How’s it going? Cheque. Let’s meet tomorrow. Cheque. Some even go so far as to use “Cheque leque” or “cheque leque panqueque,” though I don’t think I’ll ever be caught dead saying that. But hey, who knows what two years will bring…

So…. What fart?

Life in a Fishbowl

There are boring things in my town: boring meetings, boring classes, nothing to do on weekends, etc. When people get bored, they tend to find something mildly interesting to stare at. In this case, often times I am one of the most interesting things in town—and I’m not saying this to toot my own horn, but rather as an unequivocal fact. I’m American, freakishly tall, light-skinned, freckly, I speak funny and I’m 23 years old with no kids. Therefore, folks stare.

And do they ever stare. The recent meeting with the agricultural cooperative, for instance, brought people from the surrounding area who had never met me (all men, where are the women?) and therefore considered me a SIGHT TO SEE. The man sitting right in front of me managed to turn completely around in his chair and stare for a full 20 minutes. 20 minutes, I mean come on! My days at the municipality nearly always involve somebody staring, assuming I don’t speak Spanish and asking all about me right in front of me, but never TO me. Bus rides often involve open-mouthed kids, glaring women and ogling men. Really, what can you do?

Well, what I do is, I write it in the blog, and laugh. Because honestly, sometimes you gotta laugh. Otherwise you’ll cry. And cry.

Sick in San José—Honduran Theories and Remedies

So I was sick with a stomach parasite for about two weeks, symptoms being the usual suspects (the runs, no appetite, puking what little I ate, etc.) which was unpleasant. However, it proved to be yet another learning experience in the ways of Honduran medicine.

Apparently my host mom thought I needed a sobada. In fact, she insisted upon the sobada. I didn’t know what sobada meant, so I agreed, thinking it was a tea or a pill. Oh no, nothing of the sort. It was an old woman brought from next door to massage my stomach and limbs for a half hour in front of the entire fam. Uh-huh. She rubbed my forearms and apparently felt the little indigestion balls that were affecting my stomach. She then rubbed the tummy and immediately felt the piece of bad food stuck to the top of my stomach. It was certainly awkward, especially since my ticklishness forced her to cut short the full sobada, and since the family was all staring at me and swearing it would work, but at least for that night I slept soundly. Indeed, maybe it was from popping those indigestion balls or dislodging that piece of fish. Or maybe it was from throwing up immediately after. It’s hard to say.

The next day my coworker at the municipality informed me, in detail, that she and her family all had the same parasite, but luckily they gave themselves sobadas so that should do the trick. In the end, about 6 people I knew in town had the same affliction, all with the same treatment in the form of sobadas. How do you like that?

We later found out that a big snake had gotten into the water supply and was decomposing in the water. Sometimes it’s just better not to know.

Honduras: a study in dependency

Honduras is an interesting case in the world of international development. It has been, for the large part of its existence, a poor place. Many folks struggle to feed and clothe themselves every day, so I can imagine that soliciting funds from a Honduran community is a tall order. However, I have found that as a result of billions of international aid dollars and social welfare programs and free money from family in the States (together with little governance on how to spend it), it seems that people don’t really expect to pay for much of anything. Schools are built by the Social Investment branch of the government. Bridges and highways are built by Taiwan and Canada and other far-flung places. Roofs are repaired with money from a brother in Florida or a son in Houston. Trainings are always free, always include lunch and snacks and oodles of reading material. Why then, should local governments think to ask their community for funds and tax dollars when nearly all projects are covered by outside funds?

This puts me, as a foreign development volunteer, in a sticky spot. People expect me to build things, to fund things and to give things away. They expect me to possess a number of connections, to write proposals and, many times, to do it all for them. Certainly there are people who are willing to organize, to hold fundraisers and to garner community support. But in the end, it is nearly always an outside resource that determines whether a project will take off or fail. After years of studying and working in the field of “development,” only now do I see first-hand the potential harm of throwing money at a problem, or a project, or in this case, a country. Qué interesante…

Ten things I haven’t gotten used to here

1. People blowing their nose on the street, i.e. blowing one nostril and letting the snot fall to the ground with an audible splat
2. The idea of copying tests and cheating as something completely normal
3. Ladies breastfeeding absolutely everywhere—at the crowded market, at church, at meetings, etc.
4. The ability of women to walk on unpaved rocky muddy terrain in high heels and never fall or get their shoes dirty
5. The ability of some men to get so bolo that they pass out in the middle of a main thoroughfare
6. How sudden it is when people leave for the States—no official farewell or gathering or anything, just a passing “Diego went mojado (literally wet, went to the States without papers).” I guess since it’s never for sure if they’ll get there or be sent back.
7. The infinite patience of Hondurans in situations where any American would pull their hair out in frustration
8. How meticulous people are about their appearance—guys spike up their hair and ladies put on their nicest cleanest outfit before stepping outside their door
9. Tin roofs—imagine being under a tin roof during class or a meeting when a rainstorm starts, it’s impossible to hear ANYTHING
10. The fact that my work commute has been cut down, round-trip, from 3 hours (in D.C.) to about 3 minutes (in San José). Now if I wanted to go to a supermarket that’s a different story, but still, 3 minutes to work and back?? Amazing!

Friday, July 06, 2007

Packages!!!! and other less important news

Thank you so much to Mom, Steve, Paul Bonilla, Wizbif, Sarah Dorfman, J.P. Urban and Amanda for the wonderful packages and letters. I´ll have you know that the turnaround time for receiving these things varied... Elizabeth´s postcard won the prize for taking the longest to get here, an incredible 3 and a half months! But the time it takes to get here is all well worth it, I promise... it means so much to me to receive all this chocolate and news from home, and of course love. Sendable love.

Well things have been much better since my weeks-long bout with EMPACHO. This is officially indigestion, but according to the many people I´ve talked to (too many people) about empacho, it is so much more. I´ve devoted another entry to the delights of learning cultural morees while being ill. It was an experience, to say the least.

Other than the stomach parasite not much has gone on: last week was my trip to the PC office and to a PC friend´s site near the capital, a cute little tourist town called Ojojona (try saying that five times fast); my host family promises that my house will be ready in the next two weeks, meaning I´ll finally have to start looking for household items such as a bed and a fridge and maybe a kitty cat; I´m preparing a professionalism workshop for the mayor´s office which I am woefully unprepared for, attempting to translate all the workbooks my mom gave me on constructive feedback and frontline leadership... how do I say that??

So things are still moving along. Will write again soon.