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

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