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
