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

Almost Home

Almost Home

The reason I’m using Craig Morgan’s “Almost Home” for my post title is because I am no longer planning on moving into a new house, like I mentioned in my last post. I discovered this fact while talking with my counterpart last week about what I had hoped would be my new living situation. He informed me that my host mom was really “triste” or sad that I would be leaving her. He also doesn’t want me to live any farther away from his house in fear that I would stop coming to visit. Even though the house I would move into is only 5 minutes away from where I currently live, everyone around me is begging me not to move. Since I am currently living in a bedroom attached to an empty house that has not yet been finished, my host mom has offered to finish the rest of the house for me. After trying to convey to everyone how much I would prefer to move into the other house, I decided staying where I am and finishing this house isn’t so bad. Once I agreed to stay, we started talking about fixing up the rest of the house. I offered to help with any kind of labor that they needed and some of the neighbors are going to pitch in as well. My host mom then told me she doesn’t have money to pay for all the materials, and asked if I could pay for the cement and flooring. Oh well, I guess in the end I’ll at least have my own house. If you scroll down to the end, you’ll see I posted a little movie to show you what my house looks like. Enjoy.

About a week and a half ago, we had a regional safety and security meeting. This was cool because 1) I got to meet all the other volunteers that live close to me, 2) I got to sleep in a nice comfortable hotel bed for 2 nights, and 3) I got paid for it. We met in a town called Santa Lucia, which is a beautiful place where Peace Corps used to do it’s training. We had a full day of lectures about the emergency action plan, recent safety incidents, medical stuff, and some presentations of current projects from some of the volunteers that have been in country for a while. It was a long day, but the food was good and we all went out afterward and had a good time.

Here’s a kind of funny story: So when I first arrived here, I had a community meeting in my neighborhood (Quebrada Grande) and then another one for Mata de Platano, which is the larger town here. In the meeting for Mata de Platano, we decided on a few things that would be good to do for projects, and then set a date for our next meeting when we could discuss which project I would commit myself to and how the project will go. The date we set was November 15, and after that meeting I started working and visiting houses here. On November 10, I called my counterpart to see if he wanted to sit down and prepare for the meeting. He didn’t pick up, I left a message, and he never called back. On November 14, I told my host mom we were supposed to have a meeting the next day, and she said everyone had probably forgotten about it, and it was too late to tell people. So November 15 came and I assumed the meeting was cancelled. I woke up, made breakfast, did some laundry, and went to church. Toward the end of the mass, a woman walked up to me while the priest was speaking, bent over, and started talking to me very quietly. Now, my Spanish isn’t too hot, and I couldn’t really make out what she was saying, so I just kind said “Oh si, si…esta bien”, which is what I say every time I don’t understand something. She looked satisfied with my answer, turned around, and headed back up to the front. When it came time for announcements, she got up, read off a couple of events coming up, and then said “And we have one more announcement, come on up Miles”. The entire congregation turned to look at me while I stood up and started walking slowly up to the front of the church. I bowed to the priest (I wasn’t really sure what the rules are for walking up to the alter), took the microphone, and said the only thing I could think of,

“Hi, I’m Miles”.

Everyone kind of smiles and sits there waiting for more…but I got nothing. I turned to the lady who had called me up there and gave her a look that said, “What the hell do you want me to say?” She whispered “el reunion”, meaning the meeting, and I realized why I was standing next to the priest in front of everyone. I turned back to the couple hundred faces staring at me, and told them in my broken Spanish that we were going to have a community meeting to discuss a latrine project that same day (which is what I plan to do after I’m done with my pila project), and that everyone was invited. Looking back, I probably should have been able to guess why I was up there since I knew we were supposed to have a meeting that day. However, I had had it set in my mind that the meeting was cancelled, and had therefore completely forgot about it up until that point. In the end, it all turned out really good because a lot of people showed up to the meeting, and I had a lot of info I wanted to share with them. But I’m never going to forget how scared and confused I was while walking up to the front of the church packed to the brim with Hondurans staring at me with absolutely nothing to say.

As far as my current pila project goes, everything seems to be working out as much as I could hope for. While I was gone at the security meeting in Santa Lucia, my “directiva” or board of directors, went door to door in my town to see who needs a pila. It turns out we will have 54 pilas to build, which is a pretty big project. They also got a list of prices for all the materials to build a pila. After doing some math, I found out that the maximum amount of money I’m allowed to request wouldn’t cover the costs that I had been hoping for. This just means that the families who want pilas are going to have to pay more…hopefully we don’t have too many people drop out of the project because of this. Also, last time our directiva met, we had planned to have another meeting this past Friday, to go over the info they collected and to plan a meeting with all of the families involved in the project. I was really encouraged because my president showed up half an hour early. But as we sat and talked about the project, it was clear that the other 6 members of the directiva forgot about our meeting, and no one else showed up. Us two got pretty much everything done that we could, but I’m really hoping this situation doesn’t repeat itself in the future.


As always there’s lots of stuff going on here, but it’s tough to write it all. Things are definitely picking up, but the idea of living here for 2 years still seems like an impossible task right now. I guess adapting is just going to be a really long process. It’s good to hear from people back in the states though. I’ve received letters and packages from a few people, and it really helps. Also, it’s going to be really weird not celebrating Thanksgiving with my family. I wish I could come home to be with everyone and eat all that delicious food…I should have thought more about the holiday feasts I’d be missing before I signed up for the Peace Corps. Oh well, you win some you lose some. So to sum up, here are some things I learned since my last post:

1) Don’t assume people remember there is a meeting if you told them 2 weeks ago
2) Assume people remember there is a meeting if you told them 6 weeks ago
3) Ask who will buy the materials for a house before you agree to live in it
4) Always check your cowboy hat for spiders before use
5) Always check your boots and shoes for spiders before use
6) Always check the inside of the toilet bowl for spiders before use
7) I almost hate spiders more than I hate cockroaches…I really hate cockroaches


Peace,
Miles

Famous In A Small Town

This is my "directiva" or my board of directors for my project.

Me and my counterpart, Santos, after picking coffee all day.

Teaching Santos' kids how to juggle. The boy on the right, Pedro Luis, eventually got the hang of it.

This is my host mom and her daughter making tamales.

A pretty cool rainbow

This is basically the view from my front porch

This is my pila...my project will be constructing these for families that need them.

Me next to a guayaba tree...which is one of my new favorite fruits

My host mom with her son and his daughter...who are my nextdoor neighbors

This is my host mom with 2 of her kids and some grandchildren

Mark and me at the swearing in ceremony

My counterpart, Julio Antonio, the U.S. embassador, Hugo Lawerence, and I

My old host family during training.

Me teaching my community how to line dance during cultural day in training.

Our PAM group after a 'team builiding' exercise













Hey everyone,

I finally got some pictures on here. They are in order from top to bottom with the most recent at the top. I've got more pictures on my facebook if you want to check those out.

I’ve been in site for 6 weeks now, and all in all things have gradually been getting better here. The culture shock was pretty overwhelming when I arrived, and during my first week in site I was honestly scared to death of living here for 2 years. It’s weird to say, but the truth is I was overwhelmed by having nothing to do. Getting accustomed to small town life is tough, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. When I had nothing to do before, I would sit in my room and drive myself crazy thinking about what I’m doing here. But now, I have work to do almost everyday, and if I don’t, I find myself visiting neighbors just to pass the time…just to sit and talk. I feel more comfortable with my host mom and her family as well, even though I only understand a little over half of what they are saying to me. It’s a very stress-free lifestyle here, and I’m getting use to it more and more everyday.

I’m continually surprised at how interested people are in me. I think I’ve been the talk of the town for the entire 6 weeks. Everyone knows who I am here and they all want me, the “gringo”, which is a fairly friendly term that basically means “white guy from the U.S.”, to know them and their family. I met a complete stranger the other day, and when I introduced myself, they said they already knew of me. They also said that they knew that I don’t like cilantro in my soup (something I told my host mom a week before), and that they have cilantro on their farm and that they really like cilantro. Anytime leave my place, people know, and if I decide to walk down the street, everyone will stop what they are doing to watch me walk. They will of course say hello, just as they greet everyone that walks down the street in this tiny village. However, after they say hi, they usually turn to whomever they are with and say something along the lines of “Look, he’s going down the road today”, or “There goes the American”, or “That’s Miles, he doesn’t like cilantro”. Sometimes I welcome the attention because it makes it easy to talk to people, but sometimes it’s kind of awkward, and a bit annoying, to have everyone gawking at me all the time. I decided “Famous In A Small Town” by Miranda Lambert is a very fitting song to title my post since it so perfectly describes my life right now.

Last week, I met a woman who said she would be willing to rent out a house for me. It has 2 bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. It took a bit of sweet-talking, but I eventually got her down to a price that I could manage on my Peace Corps budget. I’m supposed to live with my host family for 2 months before I’m allowed to live on my own, so I plan to move into my house on December 15. As of right now, the house doesn’t have a stove, refrigerator, bed, or anything else in it. It has an indoor pila and latrine, which is really nice, but the latrine leads to a tank, which is cracked open in the back, and really needs to be repaired. I plan on buying some kind of electric stove or hotplate, but there’s a good chance I’ll have to build a wood-burning stove in order to cook when there is no electricity. All in all, I’m really excited about it, and hope everything goes as planned.

As far has my daily life goes, I don’t really have a routine here. I kind of just tell people I will visit them or work with them on their farm on whenever my next free day is. I usually wake up around 7, have a cup of coffee with my host mom while making something for breakfast, wash some clothes by hand in my pila and put them on the line to dry for the rest of the day (while hoping it doesn’t rain too much), and then either work on a farm, travel into town on the bus, visit Mark in his town (half hour walk away) and work on a farm there, or visit houses in my community. As far as farm work goes, I’ve been doing things such as picking coffee beans, planting cucumbers, picking mandarins, installing irrigation systems, picking eggplants, picking cilantro leaves and wrapping them up into banana tree leaves (which is how they sell it in the local market in order to cut back on packaging material), picking plantains, or just cutting weeds with a machete. If I travel into town, it’s it do my grocery shopping, use the Internet, and get a nice meal at a restaurant.

A couple weeks ago, I went around to every house in my community to introduce myself and ask them about problems that I might be able to help with in the community. This was a fairly long process as everyone wanted to sit and talk. I took my notebook along to write down anything that could be useful, but everyone wanted to make sure that I was writing all the things that they were telling me, no matter how useless it was. By the end, my notes honestly looked something like this:

House 1: Wants to build a latrine
House 2: Really likes the Evangelical religion
House 3: Uses a barrel as a water tank and would like to build a real pila.
House 4: Went to visit the nurse Friday and liked the walk because it was good exercise.
House 5: Has a 6 year old that refuses to wear clothes.

Despite listening to countless stories that were fairly useless or that I could only barely understand, it was good to visit all the houses and get to know the people in my community. I got to really see how much poverty there is here, and how much help they need. I can’t tell you how many times I walked into a house that more than 6 or 7 people living there and it only had 2 rooms: a 10-foot by 10-foot kitchen filled with smoke and a bedroom with 3 or 4 single beds. There were a lot of times when people had really devastating problems, and would ask me to help them. I was asked for medicine to cure their cough which they had for 3 years, to get them access to drinking water, to help them find work for their 12 year old sons, and to help get supplies for their 16 year old daughter who is pregnant. These were all real things that people asked me for, and I didn’t always have an answer for them.

After visiting the houses, meeting with the local water board and town counsel, and talking with my host mom, I’ve decided to start a project here to build pilas for houses that don’t have them. There isn’t always flowing water here, and so when there is, people like to store it. A pila is just a big water-tank, about 100 gallons, that has a space to wash clothes and dishes and do anything else that requires water. Since having continual access to water is so important, almost every home in Honduras has a pila. However, those who can’t afford a pila simply have a faucet out in their yard with a bucket or barrel that they fill up with water. If there is no water in the community for more than a day, these families will run out quickly and won’t have water to cook or bathe. There are a total of about 90 houses in my community, and 55 of them don’t have pilas. This past Friday, we had a town meeting to discuss the problem and to form a board of directors to manage the project. My role will be to work with this board and help them write the grant for funding and coordinate everything. For a project like this, there aren’t a lot of options for funding. We plan to request money through Peace Corps, but even the maximum amount that they can give us isn’t enough. So we plan on using materials that can be found in the community such as sand, rocks, and wood, to construct the pilas, and use the little bit of funding though Peace Corps for the rest of the materials (cement PVC pipe, etc). We will then have a professional show the people here how to build a pila, so that they can do it themselves and not have to pay someone else to do it.

So life here is different, but so far so good. As corny as it sounds, there’s at least one point almost everyday when I think to myself, “Wow, I can’t believe I’m doing this…this is so cool!” Then again, there are a lot of times when I get sick of not being able to communicate with anyone, and I think about just throwing in the towel. Peace Corps life is not for everyone, so right now all I can do is keep working and hope it turns out to be right for me.

As always, comments, emails, letters, packages, or anything else are all welcome and greatly appreciated.

Peace,
Miles

A Different World

Well I’m here. After three months of training and a whole bunch of detours, I finally made it to my site. Our group got officially sworn in and I arrived here in Mata de Platano the very next day on October 1, 2009.

The swearing in ceremony went very smoothly and was a lot of fun. The day started with us meeting our counterparts. Our counterparts are community leaders who will be responsible for helping us integrate into our community, and guiding us through our projects whenever we need help. They all showed up on a bus and checked in with the Peace Corps Staff, who then introduced us. I waited and waited, and when everyone around me was talking with his or her counterpart, I realized mine wasn’t on the bus. After about a half hour of talking with a couple of the other volunteers who didn’t have their counterparts show up, mine finally arrived in his truck, along with Mark’s counterpart (Mark is the other volunteer who’s site is very close to mine). This was good, because it meant we would be driving to my site the next day, and I wouldn’t have to wake up at 4:00 A.M. like everyone else to catch a bus. My project manager introduced my counterpart, Julio, to me and talked a little bit before our whole group got together and were welcomed by the staff. Julio teaches third grade at the school, is the president of the town’s water board, and has a coffee farm up in the mountains. We ate lunch, made a little more small talk, had another session with the staff, and then departed for the U.S. Embassy downtown in Tegucigalpa. It took a while for everyone to get though security, and then after standing around and talking for a little bit, we got started. First we sang the national anthems of Honduras and the U.S. Then our training director, the ceremony’s MC, talked first, then the Peace Corp Country Director, then the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, who was the one to swear us in. Immediately following this, we had about an hour or two for cake, sodas, and taking pictures. All the counterparts then got on a bus and headed back to their hotel, while all of us volunteers got on a different bus and went to a little village to eat dinner and have one last night together. We ate, drank, danced and had a great time. I’ll be honest, it was pretty tough to say goodbye to everyone at the end of the night. Even though I’ve only known these guys for three months, we’ve gone through a lot together.

The next day I said goodbye to my host family in Zarabanda, and my counterpart, Mark’s counterpart, Mark, and I all loaded our things into the truck and came here to Mata. After a two-hour drive, we arrived and I met my new host family. My host mom is a sweet old lady named Guillermina, but more commonly know by “Profe Mina” since she was a teacher in this village for over 30 years. She has 8 kids, who have all moved out and now have families of their own. Of course, being that this is such a small town, all her kids that still live here are at her house everyday to visit, and a couple of her grandchildren actually live with her for various reasons. I have my own bedroom that is separated from the main house, but I eat all my meals in her house and spend a lot of time over there as well. I’ve been living here for 3 weeks and I’m still not exactly sure who lives here and who doesn’t. There are so many people that come in and out everyday, it’s hard to keep track.

I also met my other counterpart when I arrived, Santos. Santos is a local farmer and a community leader. On his farm, he grown cilantro, platanos, mandarins, oranges, eggplants, coffee, corn, rice, beans and some type of fruit I’ve never seen before. He and his wife have two daughters and a son, and whenever I’m bored, which is quite a lot, I go over there to chat with them.

I have yet to meet anyone in my community who doesn’t farm at least a little bit of land. My community is completely filled with mandarin trees, and sits in a valley surrounded by beautiful mountains. There’s no doubt about it, this is definitely a Peace Corps site. There’s one main dirt road with a few side roads trailing off leading to different farms. About half the houses are made from adobe bricks stacked on top of each other using mud as cement. We have electricity here, but it goes out so frequently that everyone usually just uses their wood burning stoves to cook meals instead of an electric oven. The people here are very kind and humble. However, it’s been really tough to talk with the people here because everyone has a really thick accent and with my low level of Spanish, I find myself not understanding even really basic sentences in conversations.

I technically live in Quebrada Grande, which is a separate neighborhood of Mata de Platano. So a few days after I arrived, I had a community meeting in Quebrada to introduce myself. Out of the 400 or so people that live in Quebrada, 16 showed up. Nevertheless, I listed off a bunch of examples of projects and talked about when they wanted from me. A few days after that, I had a community meeting in Mata de Platano as well. Out of the 2000 people that live there, I had about 70 show up, which may not sound like a lot, but considering that they were all there to learn about me, it was a bit intimidating. I listed off the same examples of projects, and they seemed to be more interested. We decided that the biggest needs of the community are: constructing latrines, teaching about organic fertilizers and repellants, helping to build vegetable gardens in homes, and constructing improved wood burning stoves. They also wanted me to work with environmental education in the schools.

Since I’ve been here, I’ve been trying to keep busy with various things. Aside from the 2 community meetings, I’ve been going to the schools a lot. I started out going just to observe the classes, but since the kids would stare at me instead of pay attention to the teachers, they asked me to give English lessons. I’ve taught about 10 English classes to various grades, and it turned out to be a great way for the kids to get to know me. However, the school year just ended, so I won’t be teaching again until January. I’ve also spent a couple days working on different farms, helping out with whatever they happen to be doing that day. Nobody around here is going to say no extra help for free, and for me, it’s a good way to get a perspective on common farming practices around here.

Everything I’ve written so far might seem somewhat exciting, but I assure you, living in a tiny village up in the mountains of Honduras isn’t really that thrilling. All in all, things aren’t too bad here, it’s a really different lifestyle that I’m going to have to get used to. In the U.S., I was constantly busy, and never seemed to have enough hours in the day to get everything done that I needed to do. Here, however, I wake up almost every morning and have absolutely nothing planned for the day. It’s tough to go out and find things to do in a community where I have no friends and can’t speak the local language. Everyone told me that the first 3 months of being in site are the hardest, so I guess I should have seen this coming. I really shouldn’t complain though, being that I’ve got Mark only a half hour walk away from me, as well as all the mandarins I can eat. There are plenty of other volunteers who are hours away from the next closest volunteer, and who live in villages that only grow rice and beans. For this, I consider myself very lucky.

Also, from here on out I’m going to attempt to have all my posts named after a song (in all likelihood, they’ll all be country songs). Pretty much just to challenge myself and because I have plenty of time to think about it. So this post is “A Different World” by Bucky Covington. The song is about how much things have changed since he was a little kid growing up. The actual song lyrics don’t exactly match up with my situation, but I am definitely living in a very different world out here then what I was accustomed to in the U.S.

Well I’ve written quite a bit again, so I’ll wrap it up here. Now that I know my site, below is my mailing address. I’ve had a couple people ask if they can send me letters or care-packages…and the answer is most definitely yes, I’d love to get some mail from back home.

Peace,

Miles

PCV Miles Corcoran

Avenida Republica de Chile No. 401

Colonia Palmira

Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Change of plans...again

Let me give you a quick rundown of my Peace Corps adventure so far. It all started two days before my departure date, when the Honduran government decided to wake up Señor Zelaya in the middle of the night, the president at the time, and fly him out of the country. This forced us to go to the Dominican Republic for 3 weeks to start our training while we waited for the whole coup d'etat thing to cool down. So we had a good time in the DR, and then when it was time to fly to Honduras, our flight got delayed. This caused us to miss our connecting flight and we ended up staying in Miami, FL since some crazy stuff was still going on in Honduras, which would have made it difficult for us to arrive. This was definitely a road bump, but we made the best of it by living it up in the Double Tree Hotel for 4 days and doing our thing. We all finally got to Honduras safe and sound, got introduced to the culture in a small town near the capital for 4 days, and then separated into project groups and departed for field based training. FBT was a blast, my host family there was amazing and we all learned a lot about the type of work we’re going to do here. We arrived back to this small town near the capital on September 15 and learned where we are going to be placed in the country (don’t worry, I’ll talk more about that).

Everything seemed to be going as planned until Monday, September 21, when Mr. Mel Zelaya somehow sneaked back into the country. He is now staking out in the Brazilian Embassy where the government here can’t touch him, trying to gain enough support to return to power. Once it was confirmed that he was back in the country, all of his supporters started mobilizing, and the Honduran government instated a curfew Monday evening to deter people from rioting. The curfew continued through Tuesday and Wednesday, which made it so that we couldn’t have training classes. This is a huge problem since we were supposed to have our final language interviews, meet with the Country Director to go over a bunch of policies, and learn how our payments and bank account stuff is going to work. On Friday we were supposed to meet our counterparts, get officially sworn in as volunteers at the U.S. Embassy, and then on Saturday we were supposed to go to our sites. So now that Zelaya showed up, our plans are going to change, and we won’t be sworn in or go to our sites this week. The plan now is to have our swearing in ceremony on Wednesday next week and depart for our sites on Thursday. I have been very impressed with how our group has been able to handle everything that has gone down so easily. Yeah sure, there have been doubts and criticisms of the situation, but my fellow trainees have been incredibly flexible and patient. It truly hasn’t been that bad so far, and I think it may all seem easy due to having such a great group to go through everything with.



Well besides the whole political situation, everything else has been great. Everyday here is a new adventure and brings new challenges. Since my last post I’ve gone camping in the mountains, swam at the base of a 100 m waterfall in the middle of nowhere, explored caves packed full of bats, taught half my group to juggle, taught half my FBT town to line dance to Boot Scootin’ Boogie, drastically improved my ability to dance Punta (the local dance here which consists of nearly displacing your hip), ridden in the back of a pick up truck almost every day, and celebrated the Honduran victory over Trinidad and Tobago by being in the middle of a cheering riot until a drunk decided to start shooting his pistol into the air.

Towards the end of FBT, we had our final technical interview in which they gave us clues about where we would be living and what kind of work we would be doing. They gave me a choice between working with coffee farmers in a very rural area and working with environmental education in a somewhat less rural area. I picked environmental ed. because 1) there will be coffee farms no matter where I’m placed, so I will still have the opportunity to work with them and 2) I think I’ll be able to make more of a difference working with a school.

So we came back to Zarabanda near Tegucigalpa, and had our site announcements. So everyone in my project, Protected Areas Management, got together and our project director had us come up individually and place a pin on a map of Honduras where we though our site was. About half of our group knew exactly where they were going based on the clues from their interview, but I had no idea. It turns out I’ll be living in a site called Mata de Platano for the next 2 years of my life. I’ll actually be living in a sector of the town called Quebarada Grande, which has a population of about 700 people. The town is right next to Corralitos Biological Reserve, which is the nearest protected area to me. I am lucky enough to have electricity as well as a buddy of mine, Mark, who will be about a 30 minute walk from me in a town of around 300 people. I am about an hour north-northwest from Tegucigalpa by bus, so that will probably be convenient. All in all, I am really happy with the description of my site.

My project director gave me 4 possibilities of potential work in my site. As I mentioned before, I will be working in environmental education and public outreach programs. I think I’ll mostly be working with teachers, but I plan on starting an environmental club in the school as well. Secondly, I could also be doing micro watershed management and education, which consists of encouraging improved strategies for sustainable uses of the local water source. Thirdly, I will help to support the development of a water board (Junta de Agua) that manages all the water sources that come from Corralitos Biological Reserve and run into surrounding towns. Fourthly, I can work with locals to promote integrated farming techniques. The main produce there is “mandarinas”, but the problem is that everyone grows them. So integrated farming means encouraging crop diversification to reduce vulnerability to losses due to low production in a given crop of to the lack of markets. Crop diversification will also help to make families eat better by diversifying their diets.

Well there’s the update, hopefully my next post will be from my site. If not, maybe it’ll be from back in Chicago if things here get bad. On the other hand, maybe they’ll just send us back to Miami…I wouldn’t mind spending another week with my own king-sized suite overlooking the beach.


Paz,
Miles

PS...Sorry for the lack of pictures, I forgot to bring them to the internet cafe I'm at. Next time.

Field Based Training...

Hey guys,

Above are some pictures...I wanted to put up more and put captions below each one, but it won´t work for me for some reason. Anyways, here are what the pictures are of...

First...This is our training coordinator, Luis, at a farm standing next to some weird fruit that I don´t know. Luis flew to the Dominican Republic and trained us for three weeks while being away from his family. He is an awesome trainer, really knowledgeable, and actually started the whole PAM program a few years ago.

Second...this is a picture of the soccer field right in front of my house, and with the mountains in the background. My house is the closest one on the left.

Third, fourth, and fifth...these are pictures of a stove-oven we built for a woman here in our town. Sorry that these are out of order, but I don´t know how to fix them. The fourth one is the ¨before picture¨, the last one is what it looked like while we were making it, and the third one is the final product. This is called a fagon, and is made up of bricks, a metal plancha as the stove, and a mixture of mud and horse manure that we used as cement. This type of stove is more efficinet than the common type of stove that most people have because it burns the wood more efficiently, has a chimmney for the the smoke to escape, and also has an oven.

A few stories…

Community problem assessment session
The other day, we broke up into 3 groups of 5 or 6 people in order to run a simulated community assessment. Our group’s objective was to identify the problems that the community was having with it’s water source, the next group was supposed to narrow down the problem and think of possible solutions, and then the last group was supposed to finalize the solution and plan it out. While our group presented, one of the other groups played the role of the “community” for us to assess, and the last group evaluated us. Our language teachers and other staff also pretended to be members of the community. So we had our plan organized as to how we would ask people what they thought the main problems were, but when we started we quickly found out how difficult it was to control a meeting like this. Everyone in the “community” came in talking and yelling at each other while refusing to listen to us. By the time we got everyone to sit down and start the meeting, we had more community members arrive and disrupt everything we were doing to greet every person there. Throughout the whole meeting, everyone was yelling without listening to anything else being said. They kept bringing up problems unrelated to water or out of our control (like there being less rain this year than past years). It was the most frustrating thing I’ve experienced yet in the Peace Corp because not only could we not control the crowd, but I only understood about half of what was being said since my Spanish still needs work. Speaking Spanish in front of a rowdy crowd of Honduras is way different than speaking it in a classroom with my teacher and peers listening patiently. The whole experience was a major wake-up call with regards to how difficult it will be to do an actual project when I get to my site. It also made me think about how much farther I really have to go in terms of learning Spanish.

How I spend my time
Here in Honduras, almost all of my time is taken up by training. I have language 4 hours a day, and then technical class for another 4 hours after lunch. Technical classes are really interesting and we are actually pretty active. So far in training, I have:

>Gone hiking through the mountains (in pouring rain) to find the main watershed that supplies the town with all of its water
> Built a wood-burning stove (as described above).
> Traveled to a local organic farm and learned all about different crops that grown in Honduras, using different composting techniques, and proper small animal care.
> Given an hour presentation with another volunteer to a class of 50 first graders about the water cycle.
> Shadowed a local farmer for a day and cut all the weeds around his corn with a machete.

When I get home at 5:00 after training, I immediately start working on language homework or group projects for tech classes. I do, however, get downtime on the weekends to spend with my host family. When with my family, we usually play soccer, visit grandparents and other extended family, go to church, or watch TV. The first Sunday I was here, we went to the river with a bunch of friends of the family, and then later went out to dinner with the priest, who my parents are very close with. Nobody I know drinks here in my town, and the people that do drink are considered ‘bolos’ or drunks (which is not a reputation you want to have).

Unwanted attention
Now, I’ve known for quite a while that I’m very white. What I didn’t know was how much attention I would be getting here for being such a piece of white bread. I had two girls propose to me in Dominican Republic, and one propose to me here in Honduras. The females in my group have it far worse. Anytime they are in a public area, they are at risk of being yelled at or directly approached by men. Of course, the vast majority of Honduran men and women are very polite and respectful, but the cultural difference between here and the U.S. is that it is acceptable for a man here to call at a woman walking down the street. It is also common for the women here to expect that kind of attention. A few people have told me that many Latin American women who travel to the U.S. are disappointed by the lack of attention they receive, and they actually think there is something wrong with them when they don’t receive whistles and calls.


Coffee Farm
This past Saturday I woke up at 5:00 AM to go to my host dad’s farm. After a 2-hour drive with my host dad and brother through the mountains on uneven and rocky winding roads, we arrived at my family’s huge coffee plantation. We first had a breakfast of beans, fried platinos, tortillas, cheese, and amazing coffee, and then talked with a few of the workers there. My host dad is the main boss and has as many as 80 to 100 workers picking coffee for him during the harvest season, which is mainly in March, April, and May. Right now, there are only a little more than 10 workers managing the land. He also grows corn, beans, potatoes, and avocados. The reason for our visit was to pay the workers there (which he has to do every weekend) and kill a pig. Luckily, when we got there, the pig was already dead and chopped up into parts in a bucket. I’m really glad I wasn’t there to kill it because I know the workers would have made me help them. So my host brother and I waited around while my host dad cut up the pig and gave a little bit to everyone as a gift. He then cooked up some and gave it to me on a tortilla. When he asked me how it is, I said it was good, and then he said “Ok, then we’ll take the rest of this meat home and have it for dinner all this week.” Sure enough, I’ve had fried pig skin or slabs of its meat for at least one mean every day since.

Ultimate
Most of the people in our group are pretty active, and I was excited to hear a few of them talk about how much they love playing Frisbee. We’ve been playing with the kids here, and they are absolutely thrilled whenever I pull a disc out to play with. It’s tough to teach them how to throw and catch, but they love chasing it around and watching me and the other volunteers play. This past weekend, we actually got a somewhat normal sized game going (a regular game is 7 vs 7) with a mix of volunteers and Hondurans. It was the first time they got to see what the actual sport looks like, and I am pretty sure they enjoyed it since we had a fairly large audience watching us on both sidelines by the end. My host dad asked me later if I would be able to give a presentation about the sport, as well as a demonstration, to the middle school he works at. I’ll be really excited if I get the chance to do this, but since we would have to do it during school hours, I trying to convince our Peace Corps training coordinator to move our class schedule around and free up some time…but I have a feeling its going to be tough.

On another ultimate related topic…when I was on the ultimate team at UIUC, we used to like to argue about stupid stuff on trips to and from tournaments. One of these things was whether you call ice cream with chocolate and vanilla mixed in a cone a “Twist” or a “Swirl”. I brought up the topic to my fellow volunteers and they seemed to agree it is a swirl…which I strongly disagree with.

Well that’s a few of the highlights from the past two weeks. Sorry this got so long, but I hope you enjoyed reading it. And as always, feel free to comment or send me an email.

Hasta proximo,

Miles

Honduras...Por fin!

Hey everyone,
Well after playing around in the Dominican Republic for three weeks and in Miami for a few days, I finally got here. It´s been quite the rollercoaster ride so far, but I have to say that it´s been worth it. Honduras is beautiful and the people here are unbelievably welcoming.

We came in three groups on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of last week without any problems or delays. We immediatly traveled from the airport in Tegucigalpa to a little town in the countryside. I lived in a village called Las Cañadas with a family that had three sons who were 12, 9, and 7, as well as two neices and 2 nephew (neices were 20 and 11, nephew 4). My host dad is a wood carver and has a store in a nearby town that is called Valle de Angeles, which is mostly a tourist town. He makes everything from little knick knacks to coffee tables to beautiful doors with scenes of mountains or villages protruding out. It´s kind of hard to explain, but trust me, they are really really really good.

On Sunday we came to a new town called San Antonio de La Cuesta which is in the department (which is like a state) called Comayagua, and we will be living here for 7 weeks. We came here for our Field Based Training (FBT), which is where we learn about actual technical skills we will need in our service. Our group split up by project, so instead of 50 people, we now are down to 17. I think I´m going to enjoy this part of training the most because I will be learning about natural resource conservation practices and we´ll have a lot of hands on training sessions. My family here also has three sons who are 22, 16, and 9. I am the first volunteer they have ever had live with them, so they ask me lots of questions about the U.S. and are very interested in everything I say. Our house always has electicity but we only get water on certain days. So that means it´s back to bucket showers. Living in Miami for 4 days and having hot showers got me spoiled, and now the showers here are SOOOOO cold! I´ll say this though...I am really awake after my shower in the morning.

A typical day here consists of 4 hours of language training from seven thirty to eleven thirty in the morning (sorry, the three key doesn´t work on this computer), then lunch for an hour and a half (during which I come back to my host family´s house), and then from 1 to 5 we have technical training. This could consist of anything from researching latrines, to building a wood burning stove, to visiting local farms to ask farmers about crop management and diversification, to listening to other PAM volunteers talk about their projects. We will also be going to camp out at another volunteer´s site to see how his ecotourism and coffee farm management projects are going.

Hope everything is going well at home, and thanks to everyone who has emailed me or messaged me in some other way to give me encouragement and support. It´s good to know you all are thinking about me, and I want you to know that I am thinking about all of you too.

If anyone has any questions or if there are other things you want to know about, feel free to email me at miles.corcoran.pchn@gmail.com.


Miles

PS...I know I haven´t put up many pictures at all, so I´ll try to put up a bunch in my next post.

Where am I now, you ask....

Go ahead guess what country I’m in…

A. Dominican Republic

B. United States

C. Honduras

D. Costa Rica

I’ll give you a clue…almost everyone speaks Spanish here. That’s right, I’m in Miami. We tried to go to Honduras on Wednesday, but we just couldn’t make it. Our plane got delayed because the pilot needed a certain amount of rest time between flights, and then we missed our connecting flight because of that. The folks in Washington decided to keep us in the U.S. since no one is sure when Zelaya will decide to come back to Honduras.

So until everything gets sorted out, we’re just going to be stuck livin’ it up in beautiful Miami. Peace Corps sure is a rough life with all the private king-sized suites, lounging around poolside, and South Beach clubs. Seriously though, we are pretty lucky to be here because we are able to keep practicing our Spanish everywhere we go. We’ve been having classes and sessions with a couple trainers that were sent here, so everything has been great so far. I would much rather be in Honduras, but I guess it’s nice to get another last dose of the U.S. before I live in a jungle for 2 years.

I posted some of the pictures from the Dominican Republic on facebook, so you can take a look at them here if you're interested.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2617241&id=1934447&ref=mf

Hope all is well with everyone back home. I miss you guys.

Miles

8 day until Honduras...hopefully...

Hey guys,

So everything is still going really well here in the Dominican Republic. The people that live here are wonderfully inviting, the other volunteers are a blast, and the culture is fascinating. The toughest part is definitely the language barrier. At first, it wasn’t so bad because I was able to greet people and make simple conversation. However, now that I’m starting to get to know all of my neighbors, the conversations are getting more technical and I am getting frustrated with not being able to communicate with anyone. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll start to pick it up more and more as I practice everyday.

Food

Since I’ve been here, I’ve been introduced to a bunch of new types of food. Most of my meals consist of rice, beans, and some sort of meat (usually beef or chicken). They have a type of soup here called sancocho that is pretty good, which has mea,t beans, and a bunch of different spices. I eat of lot of platanos (which are similar to bananas), yucca (which are similar to potatoes), and mangos. I also had “passion fruit” for the first time yesterday, which was amazing. They put a lot of sugar in everything here, especially all the juices they make with different types of fresh fruit, as well as the coffee (which is spectacular by the way). My host mom makes me breakfast and dinner everyday, and then I have lunch at the training center during the week. My body is most certainly having trouble adjusting to the food, but I won’t get into that here. It's also weird not to have anything cold, since we don't usually have electricity.

Training

We have training everyday from 8 to about 4:30. Training consists of 4 hours of language classes in the morning, then we have lunch at noon, and then a couple sessions devoted to various Peace Corps related topics for the rest of the day. These usually have one session that has something to do with our program’s general goals when it comes to development or other Peace Corps policies, and then another session that deals with cultural training. Since we are currently living in the Dominican Republic, we receive Dominican Republic culture training. Some sessions were devoted to learning the local dances (the marengue and the bachata), playing dominos, or talking about local customs and traditions. We get an hour break for lunch, during which we usually sit around and share stories of our new adventures or our cultural misunderstandings.

Host family

As I mentioned in my last post, my living situation has been great. Besides the fact that neither of us know what the other is saying half the time we talk, my host mom and I are getting along great. She loves to dance, but her husband hates/doesn’t know how to dance. So last night while we were all sitting outside on the street talking and drinking, she put some music on and made me (and a couple of the other volunteers) dance with her. My friends have told me a couple times that I really lucked out with my host family since my host mom is so much fun, my host dad is really cool, and the baby is so unbelievably adorable.

My birthday

I turned 22 last Thursday, and I have to say that it was one of the top birthdays I’ve ever had (it was up there with my 5^th birthday party at Chucky Cheese, my 21^st birthday, and the day I was born). The entire group of 50 people sang to me in both English and Spanish during lunch. Then, while we had some free time before our next session, it started raining. It didn’t seem to be too bad, but then all of a sudden, we heard this incredibly loud crash that shook everything. Lightning struck our training center while everyone was sitting in it. Thankfully, everyone was ok, but I was honestly terrified because of how loud it was. After lunch, we had a very entertaining speaker that talked about the Peace Corps’ strategy for helping developing countries. Then we learned how to properly clean fruit and vegetables before eating them. After training, the group decided to go out to celebrate my birthday. I’m guessing that everyone was just looking for an excuse to go out together and have some fun instead of sitting at home. We went to a car wash, which was not at all like car washes in the states. Here, you drive to the car wash, and while its being cleaned you wait in the bar, drink lots of beer, and dance. So about 25 or 30 of us all walked there and had a good time. I think I’m getting better at the local dances here, but all the Dominican guys are still 50 times better then any of us. I got home around 8:00 and my host mom showed me this giant plate of flan that she made. So after we ate dinner, 3 of my fellow volunteers came over and we ate the flan with my host family and a couple other neighborhood kids. All in all, it was a really great day.

Weekend

On Friday, a few of us got together to play some soccer. We went to this old abandoned stadium/church that was a cement floor with a volleyball court in the middle of it. We played soccer for about an hour with some of the local kids, and a couple random men that heard the noise and just walked in. On Saturday night we went to the car wash again with a couple of our host moms. I really love the dancing here, so I had a great time. Afterward, we walked back home and the brother of my friend’s host mom kept saying how hungry he and his friends were. So after a long debate, he started to build a bonfire in the middle of the intersection. Once the fire got started, all the mothers went and got rice, salami, spices, water, and a big pot. It was about 2:00 in the morning, but they just went ahead and started cooking the food. It took a long time, but it tasted really good. We didn’t get to bed until about 5:00 a.m. I guess when you’re hungry after a night of drinking, you have to build a fire and cook some rice here. On Sunday, me and 4 other volunteers jumped on the public busses (which are an adventure in themselves by the way) and went to the beach. We went to Boca Chica, and it was an amazing day. The water was warm and the weather turned out to be perfect by the time we got there (even though it rained the entire time we were traveling there). It was a little too crowded for me, but we found a spot that had a little more space. While playing frisbee, we had a couple Dominican girls come over to talk to us. The only English words they knew were “I love you” and “Marry me”, so I got proposed to several times by them. I ended up declining.

We are still planning on leaving for Honduras on July 22, so hopefully everything goes smoothly. Thanks to every who has emailed me or sent me some sort of message…it’s good to hear from my friends and family.

Miles

Here in the DR.

Hey guys!

Well I’m here in the Dominican Republic and I couldn’t be happier. Everything has worked out really well and it has been a really exciting adventure so far. After arriving in Miami on the 30^th, I met all my fellow volunteers and it’s a really great group. There’s really no one that I don’t get along with, and it’s obvious that we are all very like-minded people. Upon arrival to our hotel, we received a welcome/introduction to the Peace Corps, which took about 5 hours. We stayed in Miami for 2 nights, and then left at 3:30 in the morning to catch our flight here. We flew to Puerto Rico, had a 2-hour layover, and then arrived in the Dominican Republic. After being met by the Peace Corps country director (the guy in charge here in the DR) at the airport, we went to a retreat center in Santo Domingo that was surrounded by armed guards. We later found out that it was so well protected because the president of the Dominican Republic was hosting a party there that night. Unfortunately we weren’t able to meet him, and so we then spent the night in our rooms where were about 95 degrees. The next day, we put all our bags in a truck and came to the Peace Corps training center. We met all the staff and had a quick Spanish class that covered all the basic phrases we would need before meeting our host family.

At the end of the day, my host mom came to pick me up. Her name is Dona Suel and she’s really nice, as well as very patient with how little Spanish I know. Her and her husband, Don Liwik have a 9-month-old baby boy, whose name is Lionard, but it is pronounced Ley-o-na. I really like my living situation. We have electricity ever once in a while, but we never have running water. Bucket showers are definitely an adventure. I will decribe more about my home and everything else in my next post, but for now I’ll put up some pictures for you guys.

Adios,

Miles

My room, and the view from the window in my room, and my host parents.

Leaving Tomorrow!

Hey everyone,

I decided to create this blog so that I can keep my friends and family updated during my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras. Internet access in Honduras is rare and sometimes unreliable, but I will try to keep this updated as much as I can. I'll post stories and pictures so that I can give all of you a better idea of what I'm up to. I haven’t even left yet, and it is already starting to get crazy, and there have been quite a few changes in my schedule.

For those of you who don't know, the President of Honduras was ousted yesterday in a military coup d'etat. President Zelaya was awaken by gunshots and detained by military troops. He was then brought to Costa Rica while the Honduran congress named a new President. Zelaya has been fighting for the past few weeks to change the constitution to allow the President to run for a second 4-year term (like we have here in the U.S.) The Supreme Court ruled against this new change, but Zelaya decided to keep fighting. His ousting came just a few hours before polls were supposed to open up for a constitutional referendum that Zelaya was pushing for.

So after months and months of waiting to go to Honduras, the plans have been drastically changed the day before I depart. As of right now, I plan to leave tomorrow, June 30th, for Miami, FL. In Miami, I will meet all the other volunteers that I will be training and working with down there. We will then get on a plane bright and early on Wednesday to go down to the Dominican Republic. We are going to stay in the DR for about 3 weeks while the conflict in Honduras is settled. We are going down to the Dominican Republic to get started on our training, which will initially focus mainly on language. After those 3 weeks, we will head over to Honduras to continue our training if it is safe to do so. I don’t know what city I will be in the DR or if I will be living with a host family or not. Hopefully everything works out, and until I know more it is just going to take a little bit of patience and flexibility. All I know now is that I’m really excited for this entire trip.

A lot of people have asked me what exactly I’m going to be doing down there. Well my project assignment is Protected Areas Management (PAM) and my main focus will be to increase knowledge of proper management and conservation of their national parks. Another set of duties includes promoting conservation and sustainable use of natural resources in the communities that live just outside of these national parks. I don’t know exactly what my project will be yet because I have to assess what my village needs the most. Past volunteers in my program have worked with water management and purification, small animal management, chicken coops, sustainable agriculture (esp with coffee), environmental education, natural resource management, use of biogas (which is made from latrines or pig stalls to make cooking fuel), ecotourism, marketing for crops, integrated pest management, and trash management.

I want to say thanks to all of my family and friends who have supported me in my decision to join the Peace Corps. I can’t wait to leave, but I know I’m going to miss all of you very much. Anyone is more than welcome to come down and visit me. If you do decide to come down I will be your own personal tour guide and translator (if I get good enough at Spanish). To contact me, you can either post on this blog, or email me at corky7987@gmail.com. Not sure about my address right now, so when I find that out I will post it here.

Ok, that’s long enough for my first post. Hopefully there will be more to come soon.

Peace,

Miles