Forced labor, head trauma, and bean juice pizza.

(FYI I posted two blogs at once today. This is the 2^nd)

 

You lucky bunnies get two posts today. I am not so lucky because it is midnight:30 and I am wide awake and thus writing this blog. Today I am not terribly hot, I just simply keep thinking and can’t sleep. This happens occasionally but combined with the nights that I am hot makes for a sleepyface cocktail during the day. Today I actually lost my patience and snapped at a friend during an activity. He looked at me totally aghast along with everyone else there, and I’m pretty sure the look on my own face was one of stunned disbelief. I have kind of become known as the cheerful, happy one. (A teacher told me today that “When Rebecca isn’t talking or laughing something is wrong.” Ummm….. Thanks???) So I totally apologized and he was cool about it. I felt like a turd sandwich though.

 

Lately I have gotten clever and put my iPod on soothing music at night. For example at the moment I am listening to the “House of Flying Daggers” soundtrack. But unfortunately, now instead of thinking about my normal things that keep me from sleeping, I am thinking things like “Damn that was a good movie. The cinematography was just amazing. And the artistic direction? Priceless.” So I have given up for the moment. I even tried drinking milk. But like all things Honduran, the milk here is strange so it didn’t work. (Not strange like hot dogs in your fried rice, strange delicious like really cold melted vanilla ice cream)

 

So from where I left off the other day, we finished our stoves. It was a shit ton of fun (yeah, you can groan at that joke). I actually had to leave before it was totally complete because I had to go dig dirt up. Yep, you read that right. Long story. I will probably explain it in the next paragraph. Anyway, so we got tagged by Carlos as the slowest group. This was awesome because we were working in a space owned by a humanito. It was pretty much 5 feet high, maybe 4 feet across, and about 6 feet deep. So we could only have 2 people making the stove at a time. I literally hit my head on a cross beam (fancy word for large, thick, stick) about 10 times (no exaggeration). People here love to use English in their Piropos and I’m pretty sure that after all of my swearing from hitting my head that any day I will hear “God damnit!” “Shit!” or “Stupid f*cking stick!” shouted at me in amorous voices. Once I cracked myself so hard I literally got knocked on my ass. Thankfully, the only people watching in that moment were 2 Spanish teachers, the 2 trainees who weren’t working, a volunteer there to help us, 2 of the owners of the house, and 3 or 4 neighborhood kids. So at least nobody really noticed. That would have been embarrassing.

 

Anyway, so we shot dagger eyes at Carlos when he accused us of working slowly. We also all looked like the cast of Marry Poppins from all the soot we had on us. I don’t know what the stove looked like before we came (they had ripped it out) but it certainly wasn’t healthy. The tin roof and the wall were all totally black. Oh yeah, we were also building the stove against a wall so there seriously was no room to maneuver. Anyway, so even though I have a mild concussion, a hunchback, and black lung, we totally finished an awesome, more fuel efficient, and safer stove for this super poor family. It was an awesome Peace Corps moment that hopefully I will remember with my dain bramage issues. One of my group members got a photo of the completed stove so I will post it with glee soon. I know you all think I am a liar. I really will when I get a good enough internet connection.

 

 So I did not win the most popular Peace Corps trainee award the other day. This is directly related to digging dirt. So what had happened was (I miss my little ghetto students), they have to give me Enviro Ed training because that is why I am here. To start the Enviro Ed program for the Wat/San Farmer Tan Clan. But since I am technically the first person here in this capacity (although they have had vol’s do a lot of education) they have to have on paper that they gave me training. So my training has been to work with a local organization to organize a Tree Nursery activity between us and them. But what ended up happening was I was relegated to gathering all the materials (which was basically the only work for this). So I managed to gather most everything with the exception of the seeds, bags, and soil which was the responsibility of the LocalOrg. But, she couldn’t find soil to purchase. So I asked one of our people, Javier, where to get the soil and he told us to get the soil by the river and to use vol’s for help. So I relayed this to the LocalOrg and she scheduled with my boss Carlos that the first group done with the stoves would go get the soil. So I left the stove project early (if you recall, my group was slow) and went with the first group done. Well, turns out we needed 20 sacks of soil and the soil was not exactly moist and fluffy. So we proceeded to hack out chunks of soil with pickaxes. I totally thought that the 4 people helping me were going to ET (early terminate) in that exact moment. They were totally pissed that we had to hack up dirt and that the LocalOrg didn’t get it done. And I, unfortunately, was caught in the middle.

 

And just to add insult to injury, my boss was hounding me about being sure that the LocalOrg had indeed gotten the seeds. But I had gone to her office literally 6 times over 2 days (Oh, BTW, they only gave me 4 days to get this done because of Holy Week) and she was never there. AND the 3 meetings that we did have, she told me that she had seeds. But since I didn’t lay eyes on them nobody was sure if these seeds existed or not. And I tried to lay eyes on them but I kept getting the run around. So I think that Javier ended up buying seeds in Siguatapeque (Sorry M if I spelled that wrong… but is sounds like panqueque and corn fleque so I’m assuming it’s right). So anyway, I felt like a jerk. But in the end the vol’s weren’t too angry at me once I told them what happened and a 2^nd group ended up showing up, so we knocked out the 20 sacks in about an hour. But I was really annoyed by the end of it.

 

Then, just to make me really angry, a volunteer had partaken in a conversation which indicated that a volunteer specializing in education would be going to a city called Danli to work with SANAA (governmental water organization) on sanitation education projects. And apparently, Danli is sort of an education hub. So she told me this thinking I would be happy. Really it just capped a frustrating day. Danli is a city of 80K, in the Southeast (thus hot), and in a departamento where I did my volunteer visit (go back and read about Teupasenti if you don’t remember). I wasn’t crazy about Teupa. Plus, we have been told that all of the vol’s are going North and/or West. So that means I would be across the country from all of my training group. The cool thing is that I would be near Mandy who was a cool cat. I hear Danli is pretty great, but for some reason this rubbed me the wrong way (Danli, not Mandy).

 

So between the heat, lack of sleep, knocking myself out 30 times, being disappointed that I didn’t get to finish my stove, annoyed for being told we were too slow, frustrated about the dirt and the angry volunteers, really frustrated about the seeds, and not terribly happy about Danli, I cried.

 

Next day I asked Carlos point blank. Well, actually what happened is I was sitting in the park looking forlorn the next morning. He pulled up in the truck and got out and asked me if I was tired (No.) Sick? (No.) What’s wrong? (Because as you all know I wear my heart on my sleeve). So I pretty much rushed out “IheardarumorthatIwasgoingtoDanliisittrue???” And he was like WTF? Who told you that? So it turned out to be naught but a rumor. I fell into that chisme trap like a stupid gringa. But that’s okay. We shall find out in 2 weeks whether the rumor was false as Carlos says or not.

 

I’m listening to Irish Folk Songs right now. There is something a little mind blowing about listening to Irish Folk Songs in Honduras. Maybe that’s just my concussion talking.

 

Speaking of the Irish, I thought I was really going miss dark beer. But with the heat the Port Royal (kind of like Corona) is amazingly delicious. I mean, that’s what I hear anyway.

 

So today was much better than yesterday other than being a turd to my friend. We did the tree nursery activity and it went pretty well. The only hitch was that the bags for the plants kept breaking when we filled them with soil, but the people planting the seeds (actually the people supervising us planting the seeds) kept hollering at us to add more soil and be sure it was compacted. So this was kind of a catch 22. That and we were making organic bags out of banana conchas which are basically the bark of the banana tree, and I collected all of it the day before “not too wet and not too dry” as I was told. But the next day I walked into the training center and it looked like half of the conchas were gone. Yeah. Because they dried out. Duh, it’s 54 degrees here (judging by my 37 degree body temperature). So our organic bags leaked soil like diarrhea in a cheap baby diaper. Oh well.

 

Sometimes in the night my bedroom smells like a skunk. Are there skunks in Honduras? I’m pretty sure it’s not the burning garbage smell. That is a lot funkier and usually gives me asthma attacks and an upset stomach. (I’m sure that’s nothing to worry about.) Anyway, I haven’t found the source of the skunky smells. I have never encountered a skunk during my late night wanderings between my bedroom and the kitchen. Huh. A mystery.

 

All of the dogs in Honduras are roughly the same size. Slightly smaller than your medium sized dog. I’m assuming this is all the cross breeding.

 

The horses here are tiny and I always feel bad for them because if I was a tiny horse I wouldn’t want somebody sitting on me. I guess technically most of the Hondurans are tinier too. (With the exception of Sergio who is the opposite of every Honduran I have every met. I don’t believe you are Honduran, Serg. I want to see your birth certificate.) Anyway, I have concern for the tiny horses.

 

“Fair thee well my lovely Dinah, a thousand times adieu, for we’re gone away from the Hooooly ground and the girls we all love true. We will sail the salty over and we’ll return for shoooore to see again the girls we love and the holy ground once more. FINE GIRL YE ARE!” God I wish I had some spoons right now. I would totally jam out to my iPod.

 

So I learned the other day that in emergencies and sudden emotional situations you forget all of your Spanish. Apparently, this is why all of the Duty Officers (emergency staff) speak English. Because so many volunteers called in a panic and forgot their Spanish. So I didn’t have anything close to an emergency. But Percy (who I could have sworn for days was named Pepsi), my host moms son, was on TV. It was after he left to go home for visiting during Holy Week. They had road blocks set up to look for drunk drivers and he got interviewed by the news while waiting to pass the road block. I was watching the news and my host mom was in the kitchen. And I was like “Damn that dude looks familiar. Where have I seen him before? Is he famous? Hmmm.. OH THAT’S PEPSI!” And I tried to tell Irma but I totally was speaking a mile a minute in English “Doña Irma! Pepsi is on the television! Come here! Come here! Look! Pepsi is on the television!” And she just looked confused. And eventually I stammered out “Pepsi! Aqui! Pepsi! Venga!” She was sooooooo excited. And then I learned from the television that “Pepsi” sounds a lot like “Percy” in Spanish. I thought it was kind of weird to name your kid after a soda. Anyway, I got the awesome gringa award that day. Hopefully she never noticed I was calling her son after a namebrand the whole time.

 

Speaking of Español, o the one thing that I really wish I had learned better in my Spanish classes in the states, other than grammatical structure, conjugations, and how to speak in Spanish, are the family member names. I actually remember thinking to myself “Why would I ever need to know how to say ‘brother-in-law’ in Spanish?” You would think that after a 5 1/2 year relationship with a Costa Rican that I would know that this is essential (You would also think that I could speak Spanish….whatever). Somehow this fact eluded me until Honduras. I don’t know for which case this is more important – the circle-o-chisme, who is related to whom and how, or how to find your way around town. For example, I live with Irma who has a daughter who is married and they have a daughter. Well, the brother of the brother-in-law lives down the road with his mother who would be the other grandmother of the granddaughter. Two houses down is where a vol Juan lives. His host dad is the cousin of my host mother’s daughter. Yeah. Now try to get all of their names correct too. And that was an EASY example. The other day the extended family came to go swim in pee water at the beach and I never did figure out how they were all related. All I could figure is that it was one of Irma’s sisters and brothers-in-law and their kids and I think a few extra cousins, nephews, and nieces thrown in for fun. Oh and one of Irma’s other daughters and her son (Pepsi) too. And the son is married and has a daughter. I think that family members and names are equated to some strategy game. Like the Sudoku of the family or something. I am constantly perplexed as to who is related to whom.

 

Who is related to whom. That’s correct, isn’t it? Dear God I don’t even know anymore. My graduate school application is going to sound like GRE words combined with bad, inadequate grammar.

 

Anyhoo, it is really important to get these family members straight. Otherwise, I can never figure out what is going on in town. The other day I could have sworn my host family was mad with Juan’s host family. But I’m never really sure about anything I hear in Spanish. Sometimes I just smile and nod and hope they don’t ask me any direct questions. The funny thing is how differently people speak to me. My host brother-in-law, David, talks to me like normal and for some reason I generally understand him. His brother, Solomon, talks to me like normal and throws in a bunch of English when he thinks I don’t understand. Irma Aurora (Irma’s daughter who is married to David) talks to me slowly and loudly like I’m “mildy special.” Irma talks a mile a minute with an accent that confounds me and I generally follow every sentence with “Como?” and then brief annoyed look passes her face and she slows down for me. The granddaughter, Aurora? Forget it. I’m pretty sure she talks with 10 marbles in her mouth. I’m pretty sure I am going to be totally lost when I get to site. But learning by fire is pretty fun. Yeah. Fun.

 

Well, I’m going to go back to sleep. And by sleep I mean laying here and thinking about stuff all night while smelling skunks and listening to some sort of ethnic music on my iPod. I have a good 3 hours to kill before Yadira and Suwanee get up and turn on the radio at full blast. And Dear God help me if I wake up late. Last time I got up at 7:30 I heard “Wow Rebecca, you slept REALLY late today!” I wanted to reply with “In the states, sometimes I will go to pool halls and/or bars with both female and male friends and will drink until 2am and then will go home and sleep until 1 in the afternoon. Then I get up and pee and flush my toilet paper down the toilet and I go and get some pizza with this really weird cheese called ‘mozzarella.’” Instead I replied with “Yeah, I was really tired last night! I didn’t realize I slept so late!”

 

Mmmmmm piiiiiiizza. Maybe I will dream of pizza tonight.

 

Speaking of pizza (one more paragraph) the best and worst thing happened to me simultaneously last night. I got home late and there was a plate for me that seriously had a slice of Pizza Hut pizza on it. I was so excited. David had brought it back from a trip to Tegucigalpa. I couldn’t believe it (it was a tiny slice of heaven). But, my host mom had put it on top of my beans and it had soaked bean juice all up through the crust. So I had bean juice pizza. So almost entirely awesome. I still scarfed it down with gusto. I mean, it was for realskies pizza! Mmmmm, I could go for some bean juice pizza right now…

 

Anyway, I’m going to Ctrl Guardar my blog and attempt to sleep. Oh Danny Boy just came on and I’m pretty sure that’s the last track. I mean, if I were a Irish Folksong CD, I would have Oh Danny Boy last…

 

Good night all. I hope you are all sleeping snug in your beds in your air conditioning and cozy jammies dreaming of sugar plums. You bastards.