how 'bout them dawgs...

    Hi Everyone!

 

         Its been quite a while hasn't it?  It hasn't been because of a lack of trying that you haven't heard from me.  So I guess now my updates will be a little less regular and a little longer, yay right?!  But in all reality not a whole lot has been going on.  Just a few momentous moves in my Peace Corps career.  OK that's over-doing it a little.

         So the last time i left everyone was right after I had my site visit, and I admit I wasn't as pumped as I thought I was going to be.  But now things are different, although I am in Teguc writing this with electricity and hot water I still 900% better than I did when I wrote that last message.

     I guess I will start a little from the present.  I've been away from my site since Wednesday of this week because I went to a conference in Catacamas, the same place you will recall that we had our FBT, about men and their role in family and production integration.  Basically it was about Honduran men and their perceptions of women's roles in society as well as a look at integrated farming practices.  We were supposed to bring either our counterparts or a person from our community but I has some problems finding someone to come (we'll get to why in a min) so I came by myself.  I really wished that someone would have come with me because it ended up being a great conference and it would have benefited someone from my community greatly but I'm glad I went nonetheless because I had the opportunity to listen to clear proper Spanish and catch up with someone of the other volunteers in my training class as well as some older volunteers.  I hate to say it to but I kind of needed the little vacay from my site.  But as they say, absence does make the heart grow fonder.  I guess I'm just getting more settled in and adjusted to my little aldea so it's more like home than anything else in this country.

     So I was going to go back today but since I have only been there two weeks (although everyone in my community swears its been at least a month) I really have limited resources for finding a jalon back to my site.  The bus situation is rather intimidating.  I have a bus that goes past my site at 7:30 in the morning to go to Teupasenti and goes back up the mountain at 2 and gets to my site around 4ish.  The first bus that leaves for Teguc is at 5am and the second is at 9am.  So unless I spend the night in Teupa and took the 5am I could never get to Teguc at any reasonable time to do stuff and come back, it takes about 2.5 hrs.  And also there is always the chance that the bus just won't show up, like the 9am bus on Wednesday.  What do you do in that case, you ask?  Well...

       My counterparts drove into town Wednesday morning because Nolvia had a meeting so I got a jalon with them and they dropped me off at the bus waiting corner.  Around 8:45 everyone started looking really nervous, and when the Hondurans are all doing something at the same time you know something is not right.  So I asked some young girls next to me, is the bus coming.  No they said.  They next will be at 2, but in an hr there will be a bus going to Las Crucitas (the little area right before the dirt road that goes to Teupa).  All of a sudden a pickup pulls up and everyone climbs into the bed.  Still not really knowing what to do, I hesitated and then the pickup looks too full.  Great, I'm thinking.  And then I move toward the car and the passenger side door is still open and there is a guy standing there holding it and he asks do you want a ride, laaaaaaa like angels singing from heaven.  I got in the truck, because it seemed like the right thing to do.

        It was a nice trip, I didn't have to speak too much Spanish, there was another younger lady in the front with me, she ended up being a teacher in Teupa and the guy was really nice knew a lot of the other volunteers that use to be the city.  So we got down there to Las Cruscitas paid the man (he made a killing for an hour's work) and walked to the highway.  A bus coming from Danli stopped for us, so we got on.  After a while we arrived in Teguc, I was waiting for the usual market to appear so we;d stop and then all of a sudden I realized we were going toward the airport.  I asked a lady on the bus where we were going and she said Comayaguela, better known to PCVs as the kill zone.  Great, right?  So we driving and we're getting farther and father away from where I need to be and then I see the bank that we met at when we had our market visits in training.  I got off the bus and took a taxis to the hotel I was meeting up with other PCVs for the night.  It ended up being cheaper for me to take that bus farther away and take a taxis than my normal bus and taxis.  Anyway I made it safely.  But that is the reason why I am spending another night in Teguc because I am afraid that I would have gotten a bus back and another one not shown up.  Hopefully a year from now this will not be a fear.

      So I'm sure what everyone wants to know is what am I doing.  I talked to Justin the other day and he asked me when I had to be back to work, as if I was on a lunch break.  This question seemed very funny to me but then I realized that it might have seemed like I had a 9-5 job.  This is what my daily routine has been like, but hopefully will change next week.  I wake up around 4, 5:30 and then finally I get out of bed by 7:00/30 because of the chickens in my yard and the sun is up high enough where the room that I sleep in has started to bake slightly.  I get dressed and walk out to wash my face and brush my teeth in the pila and I see my counterpart who says hay cafe.  So the I drink a cup of sugar with cafe (as in there is more sugar than coffee) and have a piece of pan.  And then I sit and watch the dogs play for a little while while I finish up my cafe.  The I wash my mug and go and get a book.  I read for another hour or so and then feel guilty and get out my Spanish texts and reviews Spanish grammar.  After that gets boring I get my book back out and read some more.  Around 12 Nolvia comes home from school (she teaches the morning classes) and she starts cooking lunch.  I ask if she needs help and she always says no.  So i go to my room and try and look busy, which really means I'm reading.  Around 1 she tells me to eat lunch (as in the command form of almorzar).  So I do, and that usually consists of rice, beans and some vegetables and tortillas, which is not as bad as you might be thinking, I like the food.  I stand by that.  And then after lunch she says, "hace calor."  And I say,"verdad."  And then I think she goes and naps.  I go back to my room and read and then feel guilty again and go and look for someone in the community that I can harass and talk to.  Usually I do or I walk around in the street and look for some kids and then they drag me to their house to meet their moms and then I have some more coffee and sit around and talk about the weather or something.  And then I get around to leaving and they usually send me away with some kind of present, like mandarins, oranges or eggs.

     Aside from the typical days I've been doing quite a bit of other stuff.  We've had several meetings.  One with the junta de agua (water board) they really want to get a project started with reforesting the watershed.  And that is actually why my counterpart or any other responsible man could not go to this conference because on Friday there was a meeting with all of the water boards from all of the aldeas (39 in total) in Teupa.  Also we had a padres de la famila meeting to plan the Sept 15th festivities and also I went to an organizational meeting for forming reds de mujers in Teupa with 2 women from my community.  All of the meetings had men and women in attendance (except for the women's group one) and everyone pretty much participated.  Although it is many of the same people that are involved in all of the civic activities in the town.  The fact that these organizations are still there is great.

    The 15th of September was the Honduras' Independence Day and San Isidro had a parade!  It was very exciting.  Although it wasn't really anything like an American parade it was still very entertaining.  The school children were the only ones marching but it still worked.  A lot of the people from the town came out to watch and cheer.  The parade ended at the school where the kids got up and sang and presented the flag and all kinds of different activities to honor the country.  Later that night we had a disco at the school which lasted til 2am and we still had light, so those solar power lights are pretty fuerte.  I got the whole, you want to dance 50,000 times again.  And finally I got some little girls to go dance with me, but the whole time she kept pulling on me and asking if I wanted to dance with this guy or that guy.  It was cute, but I didn't really want the attention.

    Also we had another holiday the first weekend I was back in my site, Dia de los Ninos.  That was also very entertaining.  The kids all played games and sang songs and whatnot.  Luckily, I got pictures of both of these days, because for some crazy reason my camera is working!

   A quick note about swearing in.  We had a nice ceremony at the Embassy (US) and said the same oath that the president says.  We had a nice lunch and then afterwards got to go to the Ambassador's house for a "fun day."  He has a pool and tennis courts and a beach volleyball court.  That was fun but we were all exhausted and wanted to go out later that night.  We all got rooms at the Marriott.  But as we were leaving, the President of Honduras was also leaving the house, so we all got to meet the President of Honduras.  Just like that.  It was very surreal.  The Marriott is also very surreal.  It felt like we were in America for basically the entire day, the people at the hotel spoke to us in English even.  Unfortunately I threw up later that night before we went out so I opted to stay in with one of my better friends from training because she just found out that her mom has two large brain tumors.  She has since gone home to be with her family during the surgeries, and hopefully will be coming back to us soon.

     That's about all I've got for right now.  Any questions or comments, let me know.  The internet place in Teupa was started and is run by the government so it's not the best and more reliable place in the world but when it has internet it works, right?  So hopefully I will be able to send out another update soon.  Until then take care!

 

PC Amor,

Bridget
--
Bridget Kathleen French
954.650.5084

get out your Honduras maps

    OK now put them away, because you won´t find my site on a map.  I don´t want to lie, it was kind of a surprise.  The name of the aldea, its not its own city, its part of another a larger city, is called San Isidro.  The name of the city it is a part of is Taupacenti, which you will probably find on a map.  Its in the southeast part of the country, in the department of El Parariso.  The population of my little pueblo is about 300 people.  We have no electricity but we do have running water.  There are latrines and pilas for cooking, cleaning and what have you.  To get to my site, I take a bus from Tegus to the municipality (there are three that run daily) which is a 3 hour trip and from there if I get into town by 2 I can take a bus up to my site (there is only one bus that runs down and up to my site) if I get there after 2 or want to go back before then I have to jalon up a mountain for an hour, I´m not sure if that is just a Honduran word, but basically it means hitchhike.  Sorry gran gran, I´ll be safe I promise.  The good news is that almost all of the people in my community have a car, and my counterpart goes down to town at least once a week, they have electricity and internet and places I can buy food.  There are no commedors (kind of like restaurants but only serve plato tipico) and there are 5 pulperias (connivance stores) in my site.  But no one has electricity so no one has fridges to keep things cold, so I can basically buy Tigo cards and churros (chips).  This is not going to have any logic to it, I´m trying to type fast and get everything down, so ask questions if I confuse anyone!

    The people make there money in this community by growing coffee and tomatoes, the reason why my project is working with this specific community is because it is a buffer zone community to a protected biological area, called El Chile.  I haven´t been to El Chile yet, but the closest other PAM volunteer to me and I have decided we are basically going to single handedly map it ourselves.  The potential projects include environmental education, a tree farm with the school and water board to reforest the watershed, crop diversification, finding better markets for the coffee harvest, pesticide management, bringing electricity to the town (this is a bit of a leap, but they asked) and home gardens.  There are plenty of potentials for work, and the people I met seemed very excited to have me in their community, after all they were picked over several other communities. 

     The children we especially excited to have me there, which was a nice welcome.  I went to my site for a visit on Thursday with my counterpart (Antonio), well one of them, the other is his wife.  Respectfully they are the leaders of the community.  He is the president of the water board and she is the director of the school as well as the president of the patronato (which is like a less developed Kiwanis Club, just a organization for the community).  They are both really nice, Antonio is kind of hard to understand, but its because its almost like a different dialect of Spanish, but poca a poca, verdad?  Anyway, lucky for me Antonio drove to Santa Lucia so I didn´t have to take the bus, and thus all my stuff, on the bus with me.  One obstacle of the challenge taken care of!  We got there around 3 in the afternoon, we stopped several times to run some errands and we ate lunch and then I took a siesta, which was nice.  The climate is agreeable, hot in the sun during the day, but breezy and the nights that I was there were pretty cold, although I was told that during the dry months (March -May) it is a lot hotter at night.  As far as the no electricity, it wasn´t so bad.  I had a headlamp and they use candles, but they also have two car batteries charged so they can watch TV and turn on a light in the kitchen.  I just go to bed around 8 now instead of 9 (ha) and get up around 7 (instead on 6:30), no really the chickens wake me up at like 5 but then I get back to sleep pretty fast.  The school also has a pretty nice set up with a solar panel on top that charges 8 car batteries to run lights, 3 TVs and a computer.  They told me I could use the school when ever I needed to charge my phone to I´m sure they wouldn´t mind me using it for computer work.  Also it is a great location to hold town meetings.

   On the first of September they had a little fiesta for the Senorita Inpendencia and Miss Chiquita, because on the 15th is their Independence Day.  I went to the school that morning and met all the kids and helped them set up for the pageant.  They were all really sweet.  It will definitely be the kids that get me through the tough days.  Nolvia (the wife) explained the them why I was there and what the PC was and that you shouldn´t call me gringa, because at counterpart day they made a big deal about the communities calling us gringo/a.  The party started around 5, but it started to rain so we (practically the entire town) waited for the rain to let up, at one point we thought it did, but it started back up so we moved everything inside.  And that started the festivities.  The introduction to the evening also included an introduction to me well, and another please don´t call her gringa her name is Bridget and also she doesn´t speak a lot of Spanish, so talk slowly.  I just kind of stood there red faced the whole time.  But it was nice, there was food and dancing after the pageant.  And I met some more of the coffee farmers.  It turns out that almost all of them are in their mid 20s to mid 30s and single.  So I think I looked a little too much like fresh bait to them, it´ll be interesting to see how a working relationship can be formed, I told one of them I wasn´t married, but I might pull out the boyfriend card and possibly the boyfriend in another site card as well, because Rich said he would visit enough! 

   OK its getting late here, Thursday we swear in as official volunteers and Friday I am off to my site.  I´m not sure when I will get to write another email but hopefully soon.  There is a lot of time to spare in my site right now, so I will be doing ample reading and research and thinking.  Also, my address will be the same for now, until I figure out the postal system in Teapasenti, also if you´ve finished reading any good books, send them my way, I´m ready about a book and a 1/2 a week right now, and supplies are limited!

 

Thanks again for all your support!

PC Love,

Bridget

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Bridget Kathleen French
954.650.5084