Description of San José

I got a care package from Wizbif and Heathizzle the other day (um, amazing, thank you by the way!!) and had to pause at their description of where I live: in a rainforest in the searing heat. I guess I never explained what San José is really like. This I will try to do in the following entry. Picture this:

San José de Comayagua is small. There are about 1200 in the “urban” center. There are no restaurants, no supermarkets, almost no fruits or vegetables, and except for the occasional fiesta there is nothing to do after 5pm. Consequently I go to sleep at about 8:30 every night.

San José is set in the watershed of Lake Yojoa, the only lake in Honduras. Honduras is 80% mountainous so it’s no surprise that my town is in the mountains. You can tell whenever a rainstorm is on its way from how it rolls across the mountains and blankets the surrounding aldeas before reaching town; pretty cool. Climate varies a bit between wet and dry seasons, but on the whole the sun is incredibly strong and the temperature is nearly perfect every day. I have no thermometer but I’d estimate temps in the 80s during the day and 70s at night. Right now we’re in the rainiest month of the year, so the sun hasn’t come out in days. I haven’t washed clothes in a long time and a lot of my things are getting moldy because of the damp. I’d say it’s only in the low 60s (not bad AT all) but it feels much colder since there is no heat and the cold seeps through everything, everywhere.

The whole area used to be a coniferous forest, but most of San José is deforested and converted into farmland. A few of the aldeas still have quite a few pine trees, and it’s markedly cooler where the forest remains. I guess all of San José used to be like that. Way to go, deforestation.

To get into town you need to go through Taulabé, a bigger town, and continue for a long time on a dirt road, past rolling hills and a rickety bridge. The whole town is situated at an incline, and there’s really only one main road that snakes through, so the park doesn’t really bring everything together like in most towns. In fact, if you don’t look for it you’d drive right past it without realizing. As a result there doesn’t exist a true central neighborhood; everything is measured in up and down. The high school, soccer field and billiard hall are arriba (up), while the cantina, park, school, and health center are all abajo (down).

As I approach 6 months of being in site, I look back on my first day in San José: the drive from Taulabé that seemed to last forever; how terrified I was when we first crossed the rickety bridge; the secretary of the mayor’s office (the girl who picked me up) pointing out town landmarks as we blew past them; amazed at the small scale of everything, thinking to myself, “Am I really going to live here for two years?”

Now that I’ve been here a little while, I do miss the conveniences and comforts of a city: peanut butter, movie theaters, nightlife, market days on the weekends. But I think the charms of life in a small town surpass the inconveniences: everyone knowing my name (“Marina Unil” is beginning to stick!), people missing me when I leave, lunch or dinner with neighbors, waving to everyone along the main road, and a town with a genuine concern for my well-being. I could get used to this.

My kitty mugs.... resurrected!

Yes I wrote three paragraphs about a kitty mug. Read or don’t read, but do not judge me. It’s my blog.

Peace Corps material told me not to bring anything of sentimental value to my site, since it would probably get ruined or stolen while I was here. When I arrived in Honduras, I refused to listen to the advice of my brochure (what did Peace Corps know anyway) and brought my kitty mug. It was a Christmas gift from Mom, a huge handmade ceramic mug from Arizona with really cute fat kitties all over it. I drank coffee from that mug every morning for 18 months while working at AED, and with that mug I felt at home anywhere.

So my first month in San José, my host mom decided to hang my mug on a rack above the counter. Except she didn’t think that the miniscule hook might be too small for my enormous mug. So one day it fell, and made a big crack, and I was upset but still used the mug every day. Three months later, I was standing over the kitchen sink in my house, coffee in hand, when my kitty mug suddenly collapsed and SHATTERED in a million pieces. The crack got too big to hold the hot coffee, and my sentimental mug was destroyed. I won’t deny it, I cried a river for this mug. Pathetic that a mug served as my touchstone, but it was true. Was nothing sacred? If first the mug, what else would Honduras take away? My sense of self? My sanity? My SOUL?!?!

I had to calm down. So I picked up the pieces of my mug-- and my life-- and tried to move on. Three weeks later I’m in a store in Tegucigalpa, when what do I see but a set of his and her KITTY MUGS!!! I could have been struck dead right then and would have died a happy girl with a full life. I was so happy (and so embarrassed at how happy I was, but whatever) that I immediately bought the mugs and felt that a new chapter in my life had begun. Since then, I really feel I can take on anything Honduras throws at me. Dengue, malaria, facial fungus, rabid dogs, crime, violence, ANYTHING. Bring it on! With me and my mugs, I’m unstoppable.

Unstoppable!

What Paula Abdul and I have in common

I was in the high school the other day, talking to the teachers and doing nothing as usual, when a girl from third course (9th grade) came in and asked my help in a homework assignment for music class. Apparently they were to break up in groups and demonstrate a form of dance. Their group chose reggaetón, but waited until the VERY last minute to practice the dance. So they asked me to teach them a dance. They wanted me as their choreographer. Yikes.

It is true, I’m known around town as the dancing machine, though in the States I think my dancing skills would be considered marginal or so-so. Here in San José though, my moves are different! Exotic! INCREDIBLE! So of course I could choreograph a little dance for them. Except I forgot that teaching Honduran high schoolers is like teaching a class full of kids on ADHD. One girl left halfway through and joined another group. Another girl came in an hour later. Nobody wanted to dance because they had pena. They drew straws to see who would dance, and the two that lost got all upset. Finally, they all decided they’d dance together. Great! Things were looking up.

Then we spent an hour learning 32 counts of walking in a straight line, to the tune of Daddy Yankee’s Impacto. It was simple, they understood, they did it a few times and it looked pretty awesome. Pretty SPECTACULAR, if you ask me! When suddenly they changed their minds and wanted another song. “This song you’re using is too fast,” they said. I protested, “You picked this song! And we’ve been learning the dance for this song for an hour.” They replied, “We want another one!” Just like that, my amazing choreography moves were shot down. They would’ve looked so awesome walking in a line. But no. It was too fast.

So I left. They dealt with it just fine; I don’t even think they noticed I’d left, they were so rapt in finding a newer, better, slower song. My first attempt at dance instruction and it was a failure. Unfortunate. But I wonder if it’s my last…

I heart the Spanish language. And roaches?

I have a roach that lives in my tape player. I pop open the cassette deck and there it is, and I haven’t been able to get it out yet. My two neighbors were at the house when I found it (and proceeded to scream at it). I said how much I hate roaches to which they replied, “but it’s just a tiernita.” Diminuative feminine form of tierno, which means young or small. However in my dictionary it also means tender, soft, affectionate, sweet or kind. Amazing! It almost makes me want to keep the roach.

Mad about Pena

Pena is a word to describe, timidity, shyness, embarrassment. It is used to describe what most Hondurans have. I see pena in the faces of nearly everyone I meet, when I’m meeting them for the first time: men who ask everyone in the room who I am, EXCEPT ME, women who laugh nervously while backing away from me, little kids who bury their faces in their parents’ lap. “Tiene pena,” they say. That explains it all. They’ve got the pena.

The other day my 10-year-old neighbor came over with her little sister, and the sister was too shy to ask me to use the bathroom. I told her she had to ask me or I wouldn’t let her use it (a little harsh I know, but the girl wouldn’t talk to me, what could I say?) and she looked at me like a I was a monster and nearly cried. I let her use the bathroom.

Pena is present at school. It’s nearly impossible to get students to present anything in front of the class. Girls squeal “ayy no!” and hide behind desks. Guys cross their arms and look stone-faced. Pena is present at meetings, too. The tourist group I work with, these guys chat away when it’s just us. But put them in a room with the mayor, or with the NGO that’s funding the group, or with any authority figure, and they suddenly have nothing to say.

Granted, the supposed #1 fear among Americans is public speaking. But we all still do it. Many Hondurans simply don’t, and blame it on the pena. It’s incredibly frustrating sometimes when dealing with people and their pena, which seems to hold groups back from achieving more for their cause. The tourist group, for instance, relies on one person, the president, to say everything in meetings, to mention all completed projects and propose ideas to NGOs for new projects. However, sometimes the president doesn’t come to meetings. Sometimes he has ideas that contradict the ideas of the group. But the group doesn’t say anything—they’ve got pena.

After awhile I realized where some of this pena stems from. The little girl who had to pee, for instance, almost never leaves the house. She almost never meets new people and doesn’t know how to introduce herself, how to shake hands, how to say please or thank you. Asking me to use her bathroom must be hard to do. Also, self-esteem is not always high. From what I’ve seen at school in San José and elsewhere, the “everybody wins a trophy” mentality of Americans does NOT exist here. There are clear winners and losers. During spelling bees and beauty pageants, parents and teachers say point-blank if the kid is better or worse and why. Maybe this contributes to the pena. It makes sense, and it makes me understand the pena phenomenon a bit better. But it’s still frustrating.

Stupid pena!!!

Finally... more pictures!

Piñata party at my house!


View of Lake Yojoa from the nearby national park. The lake is about a 30-minute drive from my site (in a car… in a bus it can take about three times as long)

Folks from the youth tourism group in front of the welcome sign they made. Amazing what an organized group can do—if only they’d show up for meetings they could do so much more!

Me and my bestest bud/next-door neighbor on her birthday.

Picture from my bestest bud’s property, with coconut and izote trees aplenty. She says the izote (the spiky-looking tree) is revered in El Salvador as a sanctified plant and noone dares disturb them; in Honduras they eat the blossoms. Go figure.

Me and my dear friend/ex-host sister. Can you believe she’s just 15?

General news and random anecdotes

This entry is more than anything an accumulated list of interesting/funny/ridiculous things that have happened in the past few weeks.

Beach! I went to the north coast last weekend for a Peace Corps meeting/chance to go to the beach. We were in Tela, a town of about 30,000 right on the edge of the Caribbean. After our little meeting, I and the other volunteers (about 9 of us in all, two of whom live in Tela) went to the beach, hung out in a sweet hotel and marveled at the sights of a developed beach town. Coming from San José, I was simply awestruck at the amenities of Tela: high-speed internet cafés, coffee shops, pizzerias, trash cans, hot showers, fruit, vegetables, AND the beach a mere two blocks from the center of town. A great trip overall.

Illnesses! I have been sick with about a million different diseases in the past month: bacterial infections, viral infections, intestinal infections, random allergies, colds and fevers and more. None of them are really serious enough to have actual diagnoses like dengue or malaria or rickets or the plague. I almost wish they were, so at least I’d know what’s wrong with me. On the plus side I, being a Peace Corps Volunteer, enjoy the most amazing health benefits on the planet. Thank you American taxpayers!

Operation Fix my House:

My house has been flooding and leaking since I moved in, and I haven’t been happy about it. This is the problem: there is a drain tube in the backyard that connects to two places, the outdoor shower and the dirt road alongside the house. Ideally the rain travels from the backyard out to the street. However, that outlet is apparently clogged, and instead the rain comes out through the outdoor shower, and then into my house. Add to that the half-dozen leaks in the kitchen and living room, and the house is an unpleasant place when it rains.

About two weeks ago I finally got fed up and decided to see my landlady/ex-host mom once or twice every day until the problem was fixed. First she brought a man to fix the roof tiles to stop the leaks. The man she brought, who came barefoot and reeking of alcohol, did a terrible job at fixing the roof and ended up worsening the problem. Then she sent her 12-year-old son to clean the backyard. He cut all the weeds and spruced up the backyard very nicely… only to come back the next day and move this huge sand pile from one side of the yard to another. So now the yard is covered in grass clippings and sand. FINALLY she sent her brother to cover the roof tiles with nylon, fix the leaks and “fix” the tubes. This is how he fixed the tubes: he cut a tree branch and stuck it down the outdoor shower drain. So theoretically the rain won’t come up through this drain anymore. So now there’s a little plant flowering up from my shower drain, and an apparently “fixed” problem. Oh Honduras.



Speaking of my house:

My house has been a hub of activity these past few weeks. First was my friend’s piñata party. Later, a girl in the sixth grade class I teach (which is not going well by the way) turned 13 this week, so we had a little party for her too. She and 4 friends and I made chicken sandwiches and did yoga exercises (their idea, not mine!) and danced around and had a grand old time. Then the other day Doña María, the near-blind little lady that lives up the hill, came all the way down to my house to pay a visit. I showed her around and made her soup, and she commented on how nice everything looked and then cut about a million branches from my trees in the backyard to decorate the Catholic Church. It was just a delight to see her leave the house with an entire bush’s worth of branches over her shoulders. I was so glad she came.

Then the other day my friend (ex-host sister, piñata party friend) came by on her own to visit, which is a rare occurrence since she’s normally at home and isn’t allowed out much. I was happy to see her, but wondered exactly why she came. It turned out a boy wanted to talk to her and she asked me if they could talk at my house. At that moment I was reminded of the challenges of being a teenager in small town Honduras: i.e. NO privacy, and NO tolerance for teenage dating. So I said sure, went in my room to take a nap and let the kids talk at my house… I’m not sure if this makes my house a permanent go-to spot for teenage couples, but at least my friend can talk here whenever she wants. Because they’re not asking for a place to make out, snuggle, etc.—they just want to TALK in peace!!!

Other than that: I saw, and killed, my first Honduran scorpion the other day; my birthday´s coming up and I think a few girls are planning a party for me; my neighbor told me I looked really fat, meaning it as a compliment but nearly making me cry as a result; not only the mayor´s 12-year-old son, but now his TWO-year-old son gives me piropos (screaming “Marina mi amor!” from his stroller).

More interesting/funny/ridiculous moments to come.

Pictures!

It took nearly 8 months of living here but at last I’ve posted pictures of my little life in San José. Enjoy.

Shot of the mountains, the entire town is surrounded by these.

....allright so this was the only picture I could upload, apparently it takes about 15 minutes to upload a picture from my interet cafe. More pictures to come!

San Jose: international news hub???

So nearly all TV channels in San Jose are pirated, so it’s not uncommon for a channel to suddenly switch from Spanish ESPN to a random cooking network. Some channels are indeed completely random, as I found out the other day while looking for any show that wasn’t a telenovela or bad Honduran news program. I was about to give up on finding something good from my 15 channels, when I switch to channel 11 and what do I find…. But AL-JAZEERA IN ENGLISH!!! I was in complete shock—I was actually watching a segment on the Nigerian Phizer lawsuit, in English, while in RURAL HONDURAS!! Of course after 10 minutes the channel abruptly shut off (probably someone realizing that only one person in the entire area would be interested in watching it) and switched to televangelism, which is more popular among the San José viewing audience. I was so thrilled, I immediately told my neighbor and she feigned excitement, but had no clue what I was talking about. It’s almost like it didn’t happen.

But I know it did. The Al-Jazeera Day. The day I received 10 minutes of real news.

You gotta have friends

Let me tell you a little about my friends in San José. In town there are plenty of acquaintances: the kids that play Monopoly with me, the folks at the mayor’s office and the colegio, the delightful old ladies, the knuckleheads in the youth tourist group, and more. But so far I have a few people I consider true friends. I won’t tell you their names so you won’t go off looking for them—they’re my friends, mine!

Friend #1 is my next-door neighbor. She’s a real find in San José in that she’s 23, unmarried and has NO children… again, she’s one of a kind. Friend #1 is currently finishing her last year of junior high (equivalent of 9th grade), since after the 6th grade she spent 8 years working in San Pedro Sula as a nanny and housekeeper. When she earned enough money for her family, she came home and went right back to school, and hopes to continue through high school and, si Diós permite (God willing), through college. Her house has no electricity so she comes to my house to study and watch novelas with me. She always listens patiently to my “problems,” when the problems in her life have been so much more profound and weighty than my nostalgia for frozen yogurt and curly fries. She’s a great person.

Friend #2 is the 10-year-old preacher’s daughter, who has adopted me as her new best friend since her former best friend was the last volunteer who lived in San José. It’s a gringa friend swap, if you will. Friend #2 loves to catch me up on San José gossip, play hide-and-seek and make me cute little cards saying how great friends we are.

Friend #3 is my 15-year-old former host sister. She lives with my former host family as an “hija de crianza,” i.e. her family is too poor to take care of her so she lives with a more well-off family and is able to continue junior high. In turn, she’s worked to death washing clothes, cleaning house and selling in the pulpería (family convenience store). This girl is smart, funny, beautiful and totally laid-back and cool considering the family she lives with works her like a mule. She’s also mature way beyond her years; when she turned 15 on Sunday (which is a BIG DEAL in Latin America) and the family did absolutely nothing for her, she decided to come to my house with a few friends and make her own party, piñata and all. A truly amazing girl and a great friend, that Friend #3