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.