Hello everyone. Yes, I am still alive in Honduras. My humblest apologies for not writing a blog sooner. I would give you an excuse but I really do not have one.
So what have I been doing the past months? Oh well I have been all over the place. I have been nearly as far North and as far South as you can go in Honduras. I have spent time with people so poor that they only have rice, beans, corn, and coffee to eat and I have spent time with people who can afford olives and fancy cheeses (of which I shamelessly took the leftovers home). I have been on the top of a mountain and the bottom of the ocean. I have had moments of uplifting joy and debilitating sadness. I have had successes and I have had failures. I have spent days working so much that I barely had time to sleep and days that all I did was sleep for lack of work. I have traveled with livestock, shat behind bushes, bathed in front of a village, been robbed, given myself food poisoning, fought off parasites, hitchhiked in the back of trucks, eaten things that I don’t even want to know what they were, and have continued to try to do some good all the while wondering if I have lost my mind coming to this crazy country.
As you all may have noticed, I try to keep my blogs lighthearted with a humorous look at the odd things that happen to you when alone in a foreign country such as realizing that the reason pages are missing from your Peace Corps library book is probably because the previous reader also got vomited on by a small child on a bus and had to use the pages to remove the bus-food that the idiot woman fed her child on super curvy roads. Not to mention daily routines such as neighbors supplying you with garlic when what you wanted to borrow was a pot (damn similar words), the complete normalcy of a random 2-ton bull grazing in your yard, and idiotic conversations with bus drivers:
“Para donde va?” (Where are you going?)
“Sabanagrande.”
“Como?” (Huh?)
“Sabanagrande.”
“San Lorenzo?”
“No, Sabanagrande. Sabanagrande!”
“Tiloarque?”
“No, Sa-ba-na-gran-de.”
“Eh?”
“Sabanagrande!!!!!”
“Ohhhh SabanaGRANde!”
And so on. But I think it is only fair that once in awhile I tell the other side about Peace Corps service. Usually we volunteers rely on each other to bring us out of the inevitable funks of service when you spend hours staring at the dust bunny in the corner whilst thinking: “Am I helping at all?” “Am I completely useless?” “Is there anything that I’m actually good at?” “Is all of this for nothing?” “Should I worry about that rash?” “Where the hell do all these ants COME from!?!”
But about this time in service (according to the very annoyingly accurate “graph of Peace Corps service”) most of all of us find ourselves struggling. For many of us talking to people at home doesn’t help much as it’s hard for people to understand what service is like and most of our families think we are nuts anyway. Thus being the reason why Returned Peace Corps Volunteers have a tendency to have an immediate bond regardless of where in the world they served and what their project was: “You were a computer technician in a town of 200,000 with electricity, cable, and running water in Costa Rica??? COOL! I had to raise my own sheep for food and taught farming in a town of 200 on top of a mountain in Mongolia! FRIEND!!!!”
I know for myself one of the hardest things at the moment is recognizing how much I have changed and not knowing if I have necessarily changed all for the better. That is probably an unfair statement as it is likely more a stark realization and admission of my weaknesses more than it is that I have changed for the worse. I certainly have become a better person and have realized a lot of the things that we see as truths in the states, subconsciously or not, as false (such as the insatiable need for “things”). I have also realized what I want to do when I grow up (finally) and the steps I am going to need to get there.
I don’t want to go too in depth about my failures in the past year of Peace Corps especially as most of them are personal failures. Suffice it to say that this past year was one of learning and all of this is leading up to me saying that one of the things I have always struggled with in life (as do most of us) is the search for Peace. I think Peace Corps service brings into stark revelation the difficulty of finding inner peace due largely to the incredible amount of time you spend by yourself. The loneliness of Peace Corps can be absolutely smothering even in a “posh corps” country where there is internet and phone access (anyone who thinks Honduras is “posh corps” should sit through our security trainings with our super awesome yet frightening security advisor whom we refer to as Batman). And with overwhelming loneliness comes far too much time to think.
My marathon bouts of thinking have led me to my own personal truth that many people around the world try to live, some even successfully: only you can give yourself Peace. It doesn’t come from your job. It doesn’t come from your friends. It does not come from your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, or children. It does not come from your car, house, iphone, or your brand new cornflower blue upholstered duvet from IKEA. I do not believe it comes from religion (and yes, I consider spirituality and religion to be different). And it most assuredly does not come from volunteer service overseas. Jobs are fleeting. Friends come and go. Relationships come and go, dynamics change, and children grow up and move on. Your stuff breaks or becomes old. Religion can be as damaging as it can be a salvation. And service is just as selfish as it is altruistic. And though these things are normal parts of life the only thing you really have control over is your choice to learn, grow, and find the Peace you are looking for within yourself. And there is no need for you to agree. We are all on our own journey and this is simply a glimpse of mine.
So I am hoping that the things I have learned about myself both good and bad will lead to good things in my second year of service. When I am able to see past the difficulties of life in the Peace Corps I feel lucky to have another year to work on myself without the pressures of life in the United States. And I am looking forward to embracing my successes and learning from my failures, growing as a person, and discovering Peace within myself. First, I have to get up in the morning. I have to put one foot in front of the other. I have to put my pathetically bedraggled pants on one leg at a time. I have to laugh and cry. And I have GOT to win this food war with my neighbor.
FOOD WAR
I don’t know exactly HOW I ended up in a food war with my neighbor and I thought this was an isolated situation until another volunteer told me that SHE is having a food war with her neighbor TOO! What is a food war you might ask? Well, it starts out as a simple typical conversation with your Honduran neighbor that goes something like:
“So what exactly do you EAT Rebecca?”
“Huh?”
“Well you can’t cook, so what do you eat?”
“What makes you think I can’t cook?”
“Well you don’t cook in the US. You just make things from cans and eat at McDonalds.”
“(…long disbelieving pause…) Well, I can actually cook.”
“You can?”
“Yeah I used to cook all the time at home I just don’t cook as much here because I live alone. (Which is true. I eat like a college student now. Mmmmm popcorn and cookies for dinner…).”
So after this conversation I made some delicious coconut-curry lentil and vegetable stew and took it over to my neighbors’ for her to try. 
She looked at it skeptically but tried it and said it was fantastic. Well, I didn’t think much of it until a day later when she brought me over a plate of carne asada. And then I brought over French Toast which she didn’t know how to make. And then she returned with banana fritters. Cantaloupe is answered by Blackberry Juice. M&Ms with balleadas (a most fantastic Honduran food). Peanut Butter Toast is countered with fried fish! I can’t win with this woman! I sneak popcorn to her kids at 2 in the afternoon and by 7 at night there is candied papaya at my door! At the moment I think I am up by an offering of tangerines. But I know deep inside that I may have won the battle. But the war rages on.
HOLIDAYS
So it has been so long since I have written that I actually have to go all the way back to Christmas and New Years. I decided to stay in my town for the holidays so that I could see a Honduran holiday at least one during my service. And I must say that I am very glad that I did. It was an absolutely charming time.
First of all, here in Hondyland they do not celebrate Christmas Day but instead Celebrate Christmas Eve. So at 10pm Christmas Eve I set off to church with my neighbor. Which in and of itself was interesting as I do not frequent 
churches, I’m not Catholic and have never been to mass, everything was in Spanish and since it was Catholic I wasn’t really catching the Spanish versions of “thus” and “thou,” and I was most obviously the ADD gringa sitting in the middle of the church looking harried and awkward. After mass I took pictures of Nolbia’s kids including this lovely one at the right which features the feet of a passed out man across the street from the church and at the foot of the nativity. Even on Christmas Honduras is charming. We then went back to her house and ate some of the best food I have ever had in Honduras which apparently is only made at Christmas including chicken cooked with pork. Which ironically I’m pretty sure is anti-bible. But whatever, who am I to point fingers? Actually, I must say, it was nice to see a Christmas that was completely about the meaning of the day rather than commercialism. People here are too poor to give gifts except maybe one small gift so the day is really very meaningful.
I was supposed to go to my host family’s party that night but I didn’t as there are some politics between Nolbia and my host family, and frankly it was 3am. So I went to bed. Next day I woke up and realized that not only do Hondurans not celebrate on Christmas Day but the whole town is deserted. Everyone stays at home with their families. And who is the unprepared gringa who has no food in her house? This girl. So around 3pm and very very hungry I finally
decide to go to my host family’s house to beg for food. And when I arrive… the party is still raging. Now I have never seen my host family party. So they make up for lack of partying by throwing one gigantic party. I barely walk in the door and my host dad is handing me a….soda (cough cough). What better way to celebrate the birth of Christ than a nice cold… soda… I always say. After a few drinks and an empty stomach I grabbed my host mom while she was walking by and said “Please. I am so hungry. Do you have anything to eat???” And she brought out 3 tamales cut up for us all to share. And on the sly she hands me a giant plate of rice and chicken. Thank god for host moms.
New Years was a blast though it started out with me sitting in my living room watching Ocean’s 12 and 13. Around 10pm I decided I was being lame and needed to go out. So I went to the park where to large groups of kids were throwing fireworks at each other. You should probably know that fireworks are common enough here that I can now easily distinguish between fireworks and gunshots. At Christmastime it is ridiculous as fireworks are very very cheap. And we are talking about REAL fireworks. Not those prissy little ones we have in the states but legitimate 1st degree burn, finger loss, toilet exploding fireworks. So this firework battle was like a full scale war. If a kid got close to hitting a kid the air was filled with whoops and hollers. And at least twice I had to hop over my bench and duck to avoid being hit by a stray. This went on for at least an hour and a half with gaps in the action only occurring when an occasional little old lady walked slowly through the milieu. After a screechy pink firework flew past my ear, I decided to go back to my host family’s house and see what they were up to.
Well, the host fam was pretty partied out after Christmas so instead I went with Alejandro (related to host family by marriage and boyfriend of former volunteer) to watch the formal fireworks. Now, I was expecting a piddly little firework show with some kid throwing bottle rockets into the air. I was surprised to find out that precisely at midnight the skies absolutely lit up with fantastic fireworks right above all of our houses. It was so awesome and amazingly fire-starting dangerous. The best part was that all around town were “muñecas” which are basically effigies of people (some included ousted president Mel Zalaya, Baraq Obama, Pepe Lobo the new president, and others). Well these life-sized effigies are FILLED with fireworks and are placed all around town. At precisely midnight they are all set off in this fantastic display of explosions and fireworks streaming out of them. This is a really beautiful (literally and figuratively) tradition that is meant to get rid of all of the bad things of the past year an usher in a fresh start to the New Year. It was really cool. The night got quite a bit crazier after that but sadly I cannot divulge the goings-on on my blog. I will have to tell you in person. Let´s just say it involved pushing a car down a road, a nearly boyfriend, clear liquid in a bottle with a hummer on the label, and climbing my fence to get back into my place.
WORKING HARD FOR THE MONEY
So besides fireworks and food I have actually been occasionally finding time to work as well. I’ve been up to a fair amount including a 2 week gender training with USAID in Tegucigalpa. This happened purely by accident thanks to a contact in the USA who I developed a course for at UF who was personal friends with the lady giving the training. So I was able to act as an instructional designer and help her create and give the training. It was a lot of fun and was really cool to see another aid organization from the US. Especially one so different from Peace Corps.
The best part, I have to admit, is that the lady who I did the workshop with bought me food at restaurants that I would look at longingly and never enter on my Peace Corps salary and she even let me take a BATH in her bathtub in her super posh hotel room. It was my first bath that didn’t come from a bucket in a year and I felt like a princess. I think she thought I was slightly off my rocker especially when she took me to the hotel restaurant buffet and I stood there for about 5 minutes literally gaping at the amount and variety of food. Of course, on the other hand, Peace Corps changes your perspective so much that I was horrified at the gross lavishness and excess in a country of starving people (whilst licking a 4th helping of deliciousness off of my fingers).
My main project is the Water Board Training Manual which is quiet boring to talk about as it is a pretty solitary job. But maybe you can appreciate that I’m trying to create a training manual for illiterate audiences. I mean, can you think of how to teach accounting and bookkeeping, even a very simple version, to illiterate people? Dear god in heaven it is stretching my instructional design creativity to the maximum.
One of my favorite projects that I have been up to was a survey in Guapichilin. This is a very small rural coffee farmer town on the top of a mountain. There are around 50 houses total and this is one of the poorer places I have been. For example, the only family with a latrine was the one that I lived with during the survey. The rest of the survey, if I wasn’t at their house, I was going behind bushes. This family was lucky as they had a pila to hold their water (kind of like a concrete holding tank). The houses are all dirt adobe with dirt floors. Most of the community walks 2 hours one way to work on a coffee farm for 70 lempira a day ($3.70). This is their entire income to supplement what they are able to grow as subsistence farmers. I asked them what happens if their crops fail and they say “We don’t eat.” Working with this community for a week was very moving.
The funniest part was at the end of the survey. Usually, during a survey, you end up collecting kids who are curious and follow you around most of the day. I always stop and lower my total station so they can look through it as it has a powerful scope and you can see for miles. The look on their faces when they look through and see a house that is very far away like it is up close is absolutely hysterical. Well, on the last day of my survey I was packing up my equipment and my host mom says “My son says you can see really far with that.” And I say, “Yeah you can. Do you want to see?” And she shyly says, “Yes, please!”
So, I set up the total station in their back yard from where you can see at least three towns (we were very high up) and focused on a house. She looked through it and gasped and started chattering so fast I couldn’t catch her Spanish. Next thing you know there is a line of about 30 people including men, women, and children who are all vying for a chance to look through. I ended up focusing it on a soccer game in a nearby town and one by one they would look through and narrate the game “The guy in the red shirt just scored!!!” (kid gets pushed away by another kid) “The guy in blue has the ball! He passed it! (another kid pushes that one away…). It was a great moment. One I will always remember.
Oh dear, I have so much I haven’t written about yet. Let’s see, other work stuff is pretty much more of the same. Surveys, designs, workshops, more surveys, lots of tortillas and beans, hmmm… I have seen some more of Hondyland…
AROUND HONDURAS
Utila continues to be one of my absolute favorite places in Honduras if not one of my favorite places anywhere. It is such a relaxed little island but with enough of a developed world vibe to make it a nice break from mainland Honduras. I spent another week diving in Utila in February. Every moment I spend diving just solidifies more and more that this is something I would like to do for a lifetime. I will certainly get my professional dive certification after service and will very likely stay in Utila for the longer term. If you hear of any distance-based Instructional Design jobs be sure to let me know.
On this trip to the funky little island one of the best moments was diving with a sea turtle for 45 minutes of an hour long dive. It was only the second time I had ever seen a turtle (the previous being the day before and only very briefly) and it was just the coolest time. There were 4 of us diving together and apparently during the dive we were all having the same thought “I hope the others don’t mind I keep staring at this turtle…” But how could you possibly want to swim away? Their personalities are absolutely adorable and literally remind me of the turtles in Finding Nemo (which has captured the personalities of the sea life in the movie in astonishing accuracy… though I have not yet encountered a vegetarian shark but I imagine they are just like that). At the end of the dive when we finally had to go up the turtle literally stopped and watched us swim to the surface and get out of the water. I am virtually positive he was thinking “Duuuuude! Where ya going!?!?”
Other crowning moments of the dive included seeing a porcupine fish on nearly every single dive. They are hysterical creatures and one of the dive masters describes them as swimming around the ocean and going up to other sea life saying “Will you be my friend???” with doofy accents. I think this is a completely accurate description.
And my other favorite moment was with a huuuuge Anglefish who decided to come investigate my mask and ate one of my air bubbles. I was cracking up! Yeah, I will spare you from going on at length about diving. I feel like my blog is becoming too much like “Becky’s Blog of Sea Life Fun!” and there is plenty of time for that after Peace Corps service.
I will also say that I sadly got my bag stolen on the way home from that trip and lost all kinds of stuff including all of my toiletries, books, clothes, all my diving/swimming clothes, a credit card, and so on. It cost me half a month’s salary to replace all of the toiletries alone. That stuff is really expensive here. I will now likely be diving in soccer shorts and a t-shirt as well. Ah well. At least my bag was only stolen. It could have been far worse here in Honduras.
I also took a trip to the Pico Bonito National Park with a friend of mine. That was an absolutely awesome time. The place we stayed at was run by a German couple and was very nice. The food was amazing and we were given the “jungle cabin” to stay in which was located just over a babbling brook and was a nice wooden cabin with windows all around the perimeter. The lodge was right in the national park so it was incredibly quiet and peaceful. While at the park we went on a waterfall hike which led us through a river and up a mountain where we first ended up at a small pool of water and
a little waterfall where we stopped and swam a bit. Then we continued up the mountain where I managed to bloody myself falling on a rock, to the main part of the waterfall which was absolutely astoundingly beautiful. The funny part was I ended up interpreting for our Honduran guide for the gringo’s. I guess Spanish can come in handy in… Honduras.
Anyway, the trip to Pico Bonito was incredibly memorable and we spent a lot of time at the river just watching the birds and how pretty everything was. It was, tourist wise, one of the best weeks I have had in Honduras. I can’t wait to go back.
I also visited Lake Yajoa, the only lake in Honduras, with a Peace Corps group. That was also really cool and we also went to see a waterfall. We decided to go with the guide behind the waterfall which turned out to be incredibly treacherous and super fun. One of those moments that you would never be able to do in the states for liability. For some reason, when our guide said “You get completely wet.” I figured that meant “You get somewhat wet.” So I kept my 
jeans on even though I had shorts on underneath. Turns out that “You get completely wet” means exactly what it sounds like! At one point you are up to your chest in water with the waterfall pouring down. You have to look down to breathe. It was sooooo cool.
On the same trip we went bird watching with a quirky British man and saw 44 different bird species! It was so nerdily cool.
FERRIA (CARNIVAL)
And the last major thing that happened recently was ferria in Sabanagrande which is sort of like carnival. This is a weeklong event and pretty much everything stops for it. It was a great time although I spent a great deal of time eyeing the oh-so-obvious 1960s discarded American carnival rides with great trepidation. I did end up being convinced to ride the Viking ship (you know, the one that swings back and forth) and started laughing once I realized that the generator was only for the lights on the ride. The ride itself functioned by two sweaty teenage boys swinging the boat back and forth until it had enough momentum to move on its own. It was freeking hysterical and I was waiting for the whole thing to fall apart at any moment. Not to mention that Nolbia was holding her 5 year old nephew by the shirt collar to keep him from sliding under the railing while he was laughing hysterically.
The other fun thing about ferria were the insane amount of coronations. This is one tradition that completely baffled me. Every night someone was being crowned for something including a little girl, a teenage girl, an old woman, and the “rey feo” or “ugly king” which was basically a bunch of dudes in drag. It was completely mystifying to me but I enjoyed it and the whole town would be out watching. This was one of all kinds of crazy events including boxing matches (kids, adults, men, women… although none of the women would actually fight), a foot race, bull riding, greased pig catching, and so on. They even had a sheep riding contest for the kids. It was like being at a spring festival in 1850.
So that is my odd little life in Honduras. I have a bunch of stuff coming up including trying to raise money for a water system that is ready to be built (I will put up another post about that soon), activities in schools such as a World Map art project and the Colgate (how to brush your teeth!!!) program and reforestation activities. And continuing to work on the manual and water surveys. We have our one year medical review coming up soon which should be fun to find out who has become diabetic or developed high blood pressure from the horrible food here. And who has been walking around unknowingly with a parasite or cavities (coca cola is given out like water here… probably because the water will give you parasites…).
And of course I always have my eye on another trip diving whenever I can afford it and have the time. And if you come visit… we can totally go diving… So I hope you are all well. I will try to be better about making more consistent posts. But you guys should post a comment now and again so I know you are still reading! Until next time. Come visit.
Look at the pretty pictures that I recently put up and you shall be convinced…
Guapichilin Survey
A Very Honduran Navidad
Honduras is Pretty 2010 (Lake Yajoa and Pico Bonito)
