These Are My People

Wow...I'm sorry. I can't believe the last post I made was back in May, I've really dropped the ball. Ok, well I went home and it was a great trip. Since I got back, I've been working a lot to get my pila project done...and it's just about completed. I also had some friends from the states come visit, Mclain and Cozza. We went to visist the only lake in Honduras and then to see the ruins in Copan. Here's some pictures, and I'll write more about it all next post. (By the way, I decided to use "Gone" by Montgomery Gentry for my post title since it's been so long since I wrote anything on here. )

This was for my birthday...Honduran tradition to smear frosting on the face.

This was carved into one of the pilas for my project...I was really happy to see this.

This is me and Javier, the vice president for the project, in front of his new pila.


It was Dia del Indio here, a Honduran holiday to celebrate a national hero, Lempira. All the kids dressed up in the school.

On top of the mountain near my site.

At Copan

Amy, Cozza, and Mclain at a bar in Copan

Most amazing picture ever. I know, you're impressed.

Ok, well I put up a lot more pictures on facebook, so you can check those out here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2786349&id=1934447&l=3689b8ef52

That's it for this post. Hope everyone is doing well back home...I miss all of you!

Peace,

Miles

Who says you can't go home?

Ok, this post is super short cuz I really don’t have much time. Everything is great down here, and my projects are still going slowly buy surely (we've finished about 12 of the 40 water tanks). I'll get pictures up here in my next post for sure.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I’ll be coming home to visit this Saturday and I’ll be in Chicago area from May 29 to June 14. I’m so pumped, and I hope I get to see as many people as I can while I’m there. I’ll be going to the nationals tournament for college ultimate frisbee up in Madison, WI right when I get in, then my cousin’s wedding on June 4, then down to U of I June 5. Then I’ll be chillin’ in Downers Grove for a couple days before I head up to Michigan for some beach time and a Brad Paisley concert. If you want to meet up at all while I’m home, give me a call…I’ll have my same cell that I had before I left. Can’t wait to see everyone!

Peace,
Miles

Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

Don’t worry, I didn’t title my blog Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain because I’m crying or in any way sad. I did it because the rainy season is starting, and I had an interesting conversation with someone about my eyes.

We’ll start off again with an update on my project. My grant got approved, and the money was just deposited into our account this past week. The plan right now is to buy all the materials for the 40 pilas this week and start construction as soon as we can. I’m getting all anxious now that everything is coming together, and I really hope I don’t mess anything up. At this point, everyone is trained and the plan has been reviewed over and over. I’ve got full confidence that the construction will go well, but I just can’t help but think about all the things that could go wrong. I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out…I’ll keep you guys updated on how it all goes.

My other projects are also going well. I’m still teaching (just gave a test this past week), I’m still looking for funding for the latrine project (come on Global Brigades, you know you want to help me out), and I’m still helping with the water board for my protected area (and I’m starting to understand almost everything they say in their meetings…stupid Spanish)

For holy week (semana santa), I went down to Costa Rica to meet my family. We stayed in an all-inclusive hotel on the coast. Now, I don’t know how many of you guys reading this have stayed in a place that’s all-inclusive, but I never had and I had never been on a cruise before either. I couldn’t believe it! Almost anything you ask for, they just give it to you. Just like that. I felt a little out of my element to be honest with you. It was such a drastic change from what my life is like in my village. We also got to do a bunch of activities like zip-lining, horseback riding, waterslides, hot springs, and jungle tours. It was a really sweet vacation, and it was great to see the family too.

So the other dad, I was chillin’ in my host family’s house, just chatting. My host bother’s daughter, who is about 18 or 19, was talking about babies. She was asking me about my plans to have a baby, and I told her I’m not interested in having a child with anyone while I’m serving in the Peace Corps. She told me that I should have a baby down here because I have pretty eyes. I said I wouldn’t be living down here after my service, and she said that I should have a baby and then give it to her. It wouldn’t matter that I’d be leaving; she could take care of it by herself. She just really wanted a baby with blue eyes. I could have it with anyone I wanted, just as long as I gave the kid to her. Keep in mind that this was a very casual conversation, and we were laughing the whole time. I told her I was gonna tell my friends back in the states about her offer, and she was totally ok with that. I just found the whole conversation interesting and I wanted to share it with you all of you back home.

Not much else is new, I went to visit a buddy of mine, Eddie, last weekend in the southern part of the country. The volunteers down there all got together for a going-away party for two volunteers that are finishing up their service and leaving next week. It’s much much hotter down there, but we still had a good time. We found a place to play paintball, then we went to the beach for a few hours, then we had a nice dinner and chilled. I don’t leave my site that often for anything but work related stuff or to use the internet, so this trip was a really cool change of pace. I was shocked that there was a paintballing place down here. I’d never gone before, so that was an experience in itself.

Ok, well there a quick update of everything. Hope all is well back home.

Peace.

Miles

Summer's Coming

My 6th graders after building the garden

5th graders

The other 3 kids in this group didn't show up, so these 3 made the bed by themselves. Needless to say, they were fairly tired by the end.

Another group after their bed was complete.

Picking out the seeds

Workin' hard

Mark and I in Amanda's latrine

Just Jacob

I felt it was necessary to demonstrate how to open the compost box at the bottom of the latrine. Mark felt it was necessary to take a picture.

Amanda and me

Showin' off...Cuerpo de paz=Peace Corps

It’s starting to get really hot here. It hasn’t rained since before Christmas and for the past couple weeks it’s been in the 90’s every day. Luckily, I live next to a giant watershed and our town still has water coming out of the faucet. However, almost every other region of the country is in some stage of a drought. I think Clint Black’s “Summer’s Coming” is a pretty good title for this post. However, instead of having summer break here, I’m starting to work more than ever down here.

I’ll start out by giving you guys a quick update on my pila project. About 2 weeks ago I turned in a grant requesting funding from Peace Corps for my project. I got a call from our country director the other day, and we talked for a long time about the sustainability of what I’m doing. She told me that in all likelihood Peace Corps would be able to provide the funds. However, I need to make a few changes to the design of the project first to make sure the beneficiaries understand what is expected from them in return for the materials. I met with my board of directors for the project this past week and we wrote up a contract that everyone will have to sign in order to receive the materials. The project basically states that the beneficiaries agree to contribute some of the materials to build a pila, to pay for transportation of materials, to complete certain tasks by their appropriate deadlines, and a couple of other little things. Overall, I think the project is much more transparent to the people here. I came into town today to print out the contract, and then we will have a meeting with all of the community members involved this week to explain the contents of the contract and have them sign it. After that, I’ll show my country director the contract, and talk with her some more to make sure everything is ready before she approves the grant.

I’ve finally started teaching in the schools here about a week and a half ago. I teach environmental education to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders twice a week, and English to 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th graders once a week. It’s keeping me really busy, but I’m enjoying it a lot. Last Monday, I had all the kids bring in hoes and pickaxes and we cleared out a plot of land in front of the school to have a garden. The kids cleared out all the rocks, cut all the grass and weeds, and built up beds. We were going to start planting the seeds, but there was no water coming out of the faucet in the school (due to the amount of heat we’ve had recently), so we have to wait until next week after we talk to the town’s water board to try and get them to turn on the faucets for the school. I can tell these kids are really excited about the garden by how hard they work and how they are always asking me questions about it. Hands-on learning is something kids in my community have never experienced, so I plan on having the majority of my classes be activities completed outside in the open air. Next week, I plan on taking them to the river nearby to measure the current. Above are some pictures of the kids working to build the beds, of them deciding which seeds to plant, of a couple of the groups in front of the bed they constructed, and of all of them after a couple hours of hard work.

Some of the other pictures above are from other trips. Some are from when Mark, Amanda, and I went to a meeting for AJARCO (the water board for my protected area). Others are from last week when Mark and I visited Amanda, who is about an hour from us, with Jacob, a buddy of mine who is a youth development volunteer, to see her compost latrine project. Jacob is interested in constructing compost latrines in his school, so we used this as an excuse to get to chill out, do a little work, and have a nice lunch together.

Alright, until next time.

Peace,
Miles

Workin' Man

I have come to realize that this blog is getting updated so infrequently that I can no longer really describe to you guys what my life is really like. I’m learning something new everyday and have definitely had my fair share of adventures. So since I would never be able to describe all the cultural challenges and escapades I’ve undertaken in one blog entry, I’m just going to focus on my work this time and try to update my blog more often in the future. For this reason, I’ve named today’s entry after the song “Workin’ Man” by Cherryholmes, which is actually a bluegrass band instead of country.

So starting with my pila project, everything is just starting to come together right now. In case it wasn’t clear last time I explained it, a pila is a water tank. People here need to have a water tank in their house because water isn’t always available (meaning sometimes I turn on the faucet and nothing comes out), so when it is available they need to have a way to store it. I started out by forming a committee, or board of directors, to manage this project back in November. So with those 7 community members, we tried to have meetings once a week or so to figure out who would be in the project, what kind of pila we wanted to build, what materials we would need, how we would manage the construction aspect, etc. We weren’t able to have meetings as often as I hoped for since people here are always really busy working on farms or taking care of their families, so the work was kind of slow paced. The most time consuming part of these meetings was writing the grant. I think this was so hard because I, a gringo who can barely speak Spanish, was teaching a group of Hondurans that only speak Spanish how to write correctly. I can’t tell you how many times everyone in the meeting would be talking and I had no idea what they were saying. But after hours and hours of me trying to say what we needed to do and them slowly explaining what they were saying, we finally got the grant done and the project planned. When the grant was done, we went to visit a couple of organizations to ask if they could fund our project and to give them the grant. We didn’t have much luck, and I think this might have something to do with the political problems Honduras has been having. After talking with 5 or 6 different NGO’s and government agencies, we went to visit the new mayor, who just entered office in late January. He said our municipality had some PVC piping that he could give us, which would cover about 3% of the cost of the project. So after all the traveling and begging for money, I decided to just request money from Peace Corps through the Small Project Assistance (SPA) program. I filled out the forms and turned it into my boss while desperately hoping they would fund the project. This was one week ago from today, and I still haven’t heard anything. I’ll let you guys know how it turns out next time I get on the internet.

With this pila project coming together, I’m getting busy and don’t have much time for the other work that I have devoted myself to. The pilas are only in my neighborhood of Quebrada Grande, but my project in Mata de Platanos is constructing latrines. This project is WAY bigger and harder to manage. We have 150 houses out of about 400 that don’t have a latrine or any other kind of bathroom. In January, the town nurse and I went around to all the sectors of Mata de Platanos to give a little informational session about types of latrines that exist, proper latrine maintenance, and the importance of having a latrine in preventing sicknesses. At each session, we elected one person from that area to be in the committee to manage a latrine construction project. With this committee, we visited every house in Mata de Platanos to see who needed a latrine and to collect demographic information about the potential beneficiaries of this project. After this survey was completed, we took the information to a couple of NGO’s and institutions in the capital to see if they could help us. Getting funding for latrines is easier than getting funding for pilas…or so I’m told. Pretty much every place we visited told us the same thing: they don’t have any money right now, but if we write up a grant, they might be able to help us in the future. So we returned to our community to start writing the grant. This is going a lot faster than the pila grant because 1) I know what I’m doing now, and 2) my Spanish is way better than when I first arrived. I’m not really sure if we will be able to get money anytime soon, and I’m thinking we’ll just write this grant so that the community will be able to solicit funding later when the government isn’t in such a mess. I really hope the community gets latrines, however, because there really is a huge problem of water contamination in the area. I’ve seen a couple houses that have their toilet bowl connected to a PVC tube that just travels down a hill into the creek. Children play in that creek and farmers use that creek to wash off crops that they have grown. Something really needs to be done to prevent this kind of contamination, but without money, I can’t think of anything I can do other than teach people about the dangers of not having latrines.

As far as working in the schools, I think I’ll have a very full schedule. I’ll be teaching English to all the grades (1-6) every Monday. Then every Monday and Wednesday I’ll be teaching environmental education classes to all grades. We plan on starting a garden in the school so the kids can learn about how plants work, the parts of a plant, different types, etc. I might be helping families build gardens at their actual homes later, but for right now we’re just going to start with the kids. Some other volunteers have also been working to develop an environmental education manual for schools in Honduras, so I will be one of the people testing this new manual and helping to revise and edit it. In addition to the classes during school hours, I plan to have a science club that meets after school once a week. This club won’t be as strict as the classes, and the kids will have the opportunity to pick which topics they will want to cover.

I think between these three projects, I’ll be extremely busy. The thing about Peace Corps is that there is always work to do; it’s just a matter of figuring out how to make it count. Another project I’m working on is helping to develop an association called AJARCO which, when translated, means the Corralitos Reserve Water Board Association. Corralitos is the protected area that I live next to, and this water board will help to protect the natural resources of water in the reserve. Right now, AJARCO is just getting formed and trying to get legal documents in order before they can do any kind of project, but I think down the road this group will be able to do a lot of good. I’m working with two other volunteers that live very close to me, Amanda and Mark, to help develop this group. We give talks at meetings about why proper watershed management is important and possible projects.

Here’s a quick list of some of the other things I’ve been up to:
Reconnect – a weeklong reunion with all the volunteers in my project group from this year along with the volunteers from last year. We talked about community integration, project management, grant writing, environmental education, women in agriculture, proper care for cattle, and a couple other administrative stuff. This was great because I got to meet all the other PAM volunteers in Honduras
VAC – Volunteer Advisory Committee. I got elected as the representative for our project group to meet with the country director every few months to talk about policy issues and problems that volunteers have been having. It’s kind of like student counsil for the volunteers here. We had this meeting about 3 weeks ago, and it was cool because Peace Corps paid for me to come into the capital and stay in a hotel.
Scabies – I got scabies…and it was awful. Somehow about half the volunteers in country got it, and I think I got infected from someone at reconnect. Peace Corp was great about sending me to a dermatologist and getting everything taken care of, but I still had to use this cream for a while and boil all of my clothes and bed sheets.
Garden – I started a little garden with Mark, the volunteer near me. The corn I planted is doing well, but the onions and tomatoes are slow going. Mark already picked some radishes, but since neither of us like them, we just gave them to neighbors.
Mark’s dad – Mark’s dad came to visit in early February, and while he was here we went up to visit a tiny village called Montaña Vieja, to help get some kids into the next town over (because there isn’t a school in their town, and none of the kids are being educated). We also went into the capital to meet up with some other volunteers and go Salsa dancing. It was great meeting Mark’s dad and hearing about everything in the states.
Costa Rica – My family is going down to Costa Rica from March 31 to April 5, so I will be flying down there to meet them. I’m really excited for this trip because I’ll be able to see my parents and brothers, I’ll be able to see another Latin American country, and we’ll be staying in a nice hotel with hot water and nice beds. Yeah…I’m excited
Frisbee – I’ve started teaching Frisbee in the physical education classes here. The kids in my village don’t know any other sport besides soccer, so they are excited to learn something new, but they aren’t really picking the game up really well. I’m completely devoted to this however, so I’m confident they’ll get it eventually. Thank you to Brian Phelan and the University of Illinois’ Men’s Ultimate Team for donating Frisbees to us.
Dance – Mark’s community had a dance the other night, which I was able to attend. The community hired a DJ and rented some lights, so it looked to be really fun, but then the DJ’s computer broke and Mark had to bring his computer over to play the music. The dance turned out great, and the community made a lot of money. Not only that, but Mark got to copy all the music that the DJ had onto his computer, which means we now have all the popular Honduran songs. I can’t wait to bring them home and show everyone what I’ve been listening to every day here.
Puppy – I got a puppy. She was adorable and amazing and all my neighbors loved her. She got some kind of parasite or disease and died three weeks after I got her. I will never get a puppy again.
Food – I like Honduran food, and I like my host mom’s cooking. But I’ve decided that I shouldn’t rely on her anymore, and I might really like cooking for myself. So I bought a refrigerator, a stove, a table, and a couple boxes of Macaroni and Cheese and I feel like I’m back in college.
Farms – I still work on random farms here all the time. The coffee season just ended here, so now when I work on farms it’s usually corn or some other boring crop. Sometimes I help with the cattle, but that just usually involves making sure they don’t run away.

Ok, this is a wicked long blog so I’m done. Until next time…

Peace,

Miles

Set This Circus Down by Tim McGraw

Hey everyone, this post is entitled Set This Circus Down since the past 2 months have seemed like a Barnamen and Baley’s act to me. My life has been like a circus in that I’m constantly bombarded with craziness, and I’m just sitting here the whole time never knowing what’s going to happen next. There are some parts that I like better than others, and some that I don’t like at all, but I guess it’s just all part of the show. I’ve seriously slacked on keeping up my blog, and so I won’t be able to list everything that I’ve been up to, but I’ll try to hit the hot spots.

First of all, I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year’s. I really missed everyone, and it was tough not spending the holiday season with my family and friends. Christmas here was decent. Many families have a holiday party on Christmas Eve, but due to a couple family issues, our Christmas eve was just my host mom and a few of my host siblings and I who stayed in and watched TV. On Christmas Day, I visited a couple different houses with my counterpart’s family. We went from house to house tasting different dishes and talking with everyone. Well, actually we from house to house and tasted the same dish, just made differently. During Christmas, pretty much everyone in Honduras makes Nacatamales. Nacatamles are like regular tamales, which are made up of mashed corn backed in a cornhusk, except they are also filled with rice, some kind of meat (usually from a pig), and a bunch of different spices. They are really good, but after eating about 15 of them in a span of 3 days, I had had enough. For dessert, most families make this dish that is kind of like flan, except instead of a pudding texture, it’s more like bread. They basically have deep-fried bread smothered in a syrupy substances. The first couple bites were fairly good, but by the end I was so sick of sugar that I was barely able to keep it down. Another strong Honduran tradition is building a nativity scene in the home. Many of the homes I visited would boost these very large and elaborate scenes that consisted of dolls, and many homemade action figures constructed of sticks and finger-paint. They were all really beautiful, and I was shocked by the fact that every family makes one and they are always really big.

On December 28, my family from the states came to visit me. It was really awesome to see them, and I was excited to show them what my life is like here. I met them at the airport, and then when we went to get the car we rented, the lady at the desk said that they didn’t have the SUV we reserved. My dad and I talked to the clerk in Spanish for a long time trying to figure out what kind of car we could get. Even though this kind of sucked, I think I was able to clearly demonstrate to my family that I am able to speak Spanish. So that was cool. Anyways, we went to our hotel to settle in a little bit, then out to a very typical Honduran restaurant across the road. After eating, we drove over to the Peace Corps office, met one of my bosses, and then walked over to the central park. We stayed in the Marriot hotel that night, and I got to sleep in a king-sized bed with fluffy white pillows and real mattress and everything. Needless to say, I haven’t had that good of a night’s sleep since I joined Peace Corps. The next day we headed to my site where my family got to meet my host family, my counterpart and his family (see pictures above), my neighbors, and some random passer-bys that were just curious about all the gringos in town (see picture above of old man). We also got to visit my counterpart’s farm so I could show them where I work sometimes. My parents brought me 5 suitcases full of clothing and other things to donate to my community. I distributed everything to members of my community, so thank you to everyone that contributed and rest assure that it all went to people who could really use the help. We stayed in my community for the night (which I think might have been a little bit of a shock to my family, who described where I live as “a bit primitive”). The next day we traveled to a town called Valle de Angeles, which is a very touristy spot up in the mountains near the capital where my first host family from training have a store. We got to visit with them, grab lunch at another very typical Honduran restaurant, and then head to Tegucigalpa where I got another luxurious night in the hotel. We woke up the next morning on December 31, and headed to Comayagua. Here, my other host dad from training met us, and he gave us a little guided tour of the city, which was this country’s first capital. After grabbing lunch, we drove to San Antonio De La Cuesta, the little town where I lived for 7 weeks during training. Here, my old host family and my real family sat and talked while drinking some coffee before my bothers and I went to play some soccer with a couple local kids. Then we all went to mass and then came back to the house where we had a little New Year’s Eve party. There were many girls there that were my host brother’s friends who were more than willing to teach my real brothers and I how to dance bachata, merengue, and salsa. At midnight, we burned a life-sized dummy of the current president of the country at the time, Micheletti. Apparently, it is a tradition here in Honduras to burn someone famous on New Year’s Eve to represent a new beginning. It’s kind of like saying ‘out with the old, and in with the new’. The next day, January 1, we traveled back to Teguz so that my family could catch their plane back home. All in all, it was really great seeing my parents and brothers, but at the same time, their visit really made me miss home.

My projects are going slow still. It turns out requesting money is an extremely long process. My community members keep asking me when we are going to start constructing pilas, and it’s tough because I don’t know the answer. We are building the pilas in my little neighborhood of Quebrada Grande, but the other town I live in, Mata de Platano, is pushing me to start a latrine project. So it looks like I’ll be running two projects at once, while doing environmental education and while building gardens for a few families.

I want to wish good luck to my cousin Erin Tuntland, who was diagnosed with liver cancer a couple weeks ago and is currently undergoing chemo. Stay strong Erin, we’re all thinking of you.

I also want to send a shout out to my buddy Dan Stueland (aka wildcard) who recently got engaged. Congratulations buddy, I’m really excited for you two. (I also hope I get a chance to meet your fiancé sometime before the wedding)

Ok, that’s all I got. Enjoy the video of me with a beard…

Peace,
Miles

A Country Boy Can Survive

I started putting things into the rest of my house. First things first...hammock. The kids around love it.

Ok, this was the biggest spider I've seen in Honduras so far. Not to mention it just looks creepy the way it's sitting there.

My host sister just had a baby last week. Here is her husband and two other kids.

This is basically my town.

I think Hank Williams Jr.’s classic “A Country Boy Can Survive” is a perfect title for my life right. I say this because after the past few weeks, I’m now really starting to think that I can do this Peace Corps thing, and that I can survive out here in the middle of nowhere. I’m really getting accustomed to this lifestyle and I’m seeing all the opportunities that I will be presented with in the next 22 months. I think my new mindset has a lot to do with the fact that I can now travel and meet up with other volunteers

Three weeks ago we were granted permission to travel out of our sites overnight. This meant I would be able to be with a bunch of other volunteers for Thanksgiving. I headed out to Catacamas, Olancho, which is basically the “wild wild west” of Honduras (even though it’s in the far east of the country). There are two other guys from my project group that live out there, and we had about 15 to 20 people in total come to celebrate together. Everyone chipped in and made an amazing Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and a bunch of other delicious dishes that made it seem just like being back at home. Getting the chance to share my experiences and learn that everyone else had been having the same challenges I have been having made for quite the moral booster. I hope everyone back at home had a great Thanksgiving, and even though I really wish I could have celebrated with my family, it still ended up being a great day. Since then, I have also gone to visit another volunteer for a birthday party and tonight I am staying in Tegucigalpa for a going away party for someone in our group who has decided to leave Peace Corps Honduras.

My project is going well, but still slowly. Writing a grant is a lot of work, but teaching the people here to write it is even harder considering I don’t have any experience in this field.

Sorry this post is kind of short and boring, but I know I won’t be able to get on the internet again for a while, so I wanted to post something. On my way here, I got a ride from my host sister’s husband’s nephew, and we got stopped by the police on the highway just outside of the city. They said since he was hauling a couple gringos (which means white people) that they could stop him for 20 mins to check out our papers and whatnot. So the guy we were with just gave the cops 6 or 7 cucumbers, and they let us go. I guess bribing in this country is a little different.

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. My family is coming down to visit from December 28 to January 1, so I’m really excited about that. I’m bummed I won’t be able to see any of my aunts and uncles and cousins for Christmas, but my host mom told me Christmas here is usually a great time as well. My next post will have everything about Christmas here and my family’s visit, and should therefore be much more interesting.

Peace,
Miles