Cuerpo de Paz

Alright, I apologize for such the long delay on updating the blog. Training has been nonstop so far. So, here I will try to get everyone up to speed. This weekend I went to a small village in Choluteca called Oricuina. I went there to stay with Kris for our volunteer visit. He has been in his site for the past 18 months and is set to leave in June. I was able to see how a real volunteer lives and works. He has been working to build onto a radio station that was started by the previous business volunteer there in town. The trip to Oricuina was definitely an adventure. Thursday morning we caught the bus out of Santa Lucia to Tegucigalpa at around 7am. Once at the drop off point in Tegus we haggled with a taxi driver to take our group of three people to the Mi Esperanza bus station in front of a backdrop that said “Die Gringos”. Once at the bus station we waited for an hour and a half for our bus which is supposed to leave every hour. People do not have a concept for lines. Even though everyone had assigned seats there was a mad dash to get onto the bus. After that, we picked up anyone who waved at the bus while leaving town and all the way to Choluteca and on our connecting bus to Oricuina. Leaving for Oricuina we stopped in the market and had what was the equivalent to a 20 minute info infomercial. We had one person after another come onto the bus selling everything from choros, to coke and other refrescos, and pills and lotions which promise to cure every illness including the ability to stop your child from grinding his teeth. Oricuina is in the southern part of Honduras, about an hour north of Choluteca. It is close to the boarder with Nicaragua and is very very hot. It is still considered a part of the cool season and the temperature reached 96 degrees in the shade and without factoring in the humidity.

At my volunteers sight UNICEF was there to give a two day presentation to the children. The kids were given special permission to leave class from the town and the surrounding areas to see the presentation. UNICEF spoke about children’s rights and health, along with ways that children can, and are, exploited in countries such as Honduras. It was amazing to me to see the guy who put on the presentation. He was a native Honduran from Tegucigalpa. I was greatly impressed with the way he dealt with the children and the passion for what he was doing. I think it will only be because of people such as him that take responsibility to effect there own country that real strides in development will take place.

I was also able to see another NGO called “Ayuda en Accion” that Kris was working with. Ayuda en Accion is a Spanish organization which sponsors children from donations from Spain. It is sort of an Adopt a Child program. This NGO only works in areas where there is a child being sponsored. It was because of the planning and organization of Kris’s NGO that UNICEF was able to be invited. I heard an interesting thing, the guy from UNICEF said that because they work with the government that they have money to do work and projects but that they lack the ability to utilize their resources without conduits such as Peace Corps to guide their work for individual projects.

The capstone project for the children was that they went through the town asking for interviews which they would later present on the radio station that Kris is working with during a weekly, hour long children’s program. The program tells relevant news, issues, and jokes directed to a young audience by young people. We followed the children around town as they interviewed people in the town square, the police station, the central clinic and anyone else they could find to talk to.

Kris seems to have a real talent for working with children. He also is the head of the baseball team in his town for the children. That first day I was able to help with practice by being the umpire for the game. The team is getting ready for competition against the other Peace Corps volunteer teams. Kris’s kids are the reigning champions who were able to go to Tegus last year to win the title.

Friday night me and my volunteer went to Choluteca and met some of the other volunteers from the area who were also hosting trainees. We went out to eat and had a lot of fun seeing the town. We made it to a nice little place called “Tio Rico” (Rich uncle) where the locals came to dance to Latin music. It was real nice to see. We stayed in town for the night and in the morning got ready to back to a cooler climate.

I did make it back safe to Santa Lucia Saturday afternoon but not without catching the bus late and having to stand during most of the way back to Tegus on the bus with another one of the trainees in our class. I think I also caught some sort of illness too. Overall this last weekend was great and I am glad I was able to see what Kris was doing in the field. I am beginning to hone in on what I would like to accomplish while here in Honduras. During my interview this week with the head of our business project I am going to tell him that I want to work with medical brigades and clinics as my secondary project while working with coffee growers and markets as my primary. (I also have heard that melon growers have a great market and need help too.) What ever I do though I think I also want to work with the local women’s group in town.

Now for the last couple of weeks. Last weekend the business group went to La Tigra which is the first national park here in Honduras. It began in the 70’s but was instituted in 1980 as a national park. We went there for team building and to learn about environmental issues here in Honduras. A big problem here is illegal forestation. 80% of the lumber coming out of Honduras is illegal. Next time you buy Mahogany double check to see if it was made in Honduras. Also, burning is seen as the answer to all problems. People burn their crops, which last year caused the airports in Tegus and San Pedro Sula to close for several days because of the smoke, and they also burn their trash. There is also a lot of burning to create new plots of farmland.

On Wednesday, I went into Tegus to learn how to use the transportation system before going on my volunteer visit to see Kris the next day. We took a taxi into the largest market in Honduras, Mercado Belen. It was crazy busy. There are really no street signs in Tegus apparently because they get pulled down anyway. So we really had no idea where we were besides just the general area. Without the taxis we would definitely be lost. We had people approaching us trying to sell what ever they had. Part of the assignment was that we were given a list of items that our host families wanted us to purchase for them.

The business project is great. We have been able to go around here in Santa Lucia and in Valle de Angeles to talk to investigate the different types of businesses that Honduras has. In Santa Lucia we visited a campo (a farm) and talked about the issues he has to deal with. One of the amazing things about this visit was that his farm is on the side of a mountain. One of the major obstacles that farmers face is that no one has a flat piece of land to cultivate a crop. Also, the farmers are almost always price takers. They will produce the food but they have no control over how much their crop will go for in the market. The middle man usually gets a large cut from them moving the crop from the farm to the actual market. An interesting fact about this particular farmer is that he was actually trained in sustainable farming by Peace Corps volunteers’ years ago. He said it was the best trip he has ever taken in his life.

We also talked to a bread maker in town. He sells the most amazing bread. He bakes 5 days a week. But he has hit a wall. He can only make so many loafs of bread in his house with so many ovens. To get to the next level he needs a loan for $2500.00. That is all he needs but the banks are hesitant even though he has been successful for years and is established. He has collateral but it is painful to risk their car, if they have one, or their house which they have worked their entire life to attain. It is culturally not excepted and I think in their eyes it is considered reckless.

Another business we visited was someone from the municipal government here in Santa Lucia. He told of the town’s plans to increase the amount of tourism. He talked about plans to renovate the lagoon and to put in a beach and a fountain. He also talked about how they plan to pass ordinances to clean up the trash. Trash pick up is private. So a person may make arrangements but they don’t have to. If the city makes plans to pick up the trash it may be in the form of a favor and it may not get done correctly if done at all.

In Valle de Angeles, we visited a very successful leather worker. He started from nothing and now has two stores and a distribution system. He is definitely an outlier in the system. He also has been blessed recently by signing an exclusivity contract with a German who happened to stop into the store and believed in his product. What holds him back is that a lot of tourists, who speak English, come in and are interested but because of the language barrier they end up only walking out.

One last thing, I met a representative of the economics division of the US Embassy. He came in to talk to us business people and he was very informative of the current economic and political situation in Honduras. The talk included some of the current reforms that the current administration has done and he also talked about the effects of CAFTA on the region; what has worked and what needs to be inproved upon. It was a great insight.

Other random news, we have been getting pricked by a plethora of different vaccines. Sometimes I feel like a pin cushion. Also, Spongebob Squarepants isn’t half bad in Spanish.

And, my spanish is coming along but I still have a long way to go.