Back to Square One

I arrived at my new site, El Sauce, on Friday afternoon to find that, indeed, there are no willows in El Sauce. However, from my backyard there is a clear view up into the cloud forest of Santa Barbara National Park. The scattered houses of El Sauce dot the hillside along the edge of the nuclear zone of the park, with farm plots creeping upwards, creating a clearly discernable line between the remaining cloud forest and development as El Sauce knows it.

My new house is nice by my standards, with an indoor bathroom, tile floors, windows with screens, couches and no holes in the walls. There are also no rats running across the rafters like there were in my first house in Huaca Rivera. It is certainly one of the nicer homes in town. My bedroom is, however, roughly the size of my laundry room in the States, with less storage space and entirely occupied by an enormous queen-sized bed.

Of course, my new home also includes a new host-family – two parents, two girls (10 and 5 years old) and a baby boy. Everyone in the family is very nice and the girls are particularly calm. The 5 year old does, however, have the particular habit of racing to finish her food before me every time we eat which is a little alarming because, while she does a fairly impressive job, it always ends in a few disconcerting gasps for air.

Honestly, this family is pretty hands-off and understanding in terms of allowing me to maintain a certain level of independence. After having lived with about 8 different host-families, I’ve learned how to make myself at home pretty much instantly. Nonetheless, it is never really that comfortable. Once again I’ve reverted to feeling a bit like a child. For example, I now have shiny pink toenails complete with floral decorations courtesy of my host-mom. I’ve never had decorations on my toenails, but she insisted.

Also, the other day I wanted to go for a run so I asked my host-mother where exactly I could run. She informed me that I could either run up or down the hill, with the condition that if I ran down the hill I could only run as far as a certain concrete fence. I opted to run down the hill, assuming that the fence would be a reasonable distance away. Well, as soon as I left my house I could already see the fence and I arrived at said fence approximately 30 seconds later, probably less. So, I turned around to run up the hill which was around a curve and, thus, not readily visible. The top of the hill was roughly 15 seconds from my house. It was quite the run.

Amazingly, my host-mom gave me the option of preparing my own breakfast. Nonetheless, when I asked to borrow a pan to fry an egg she took it upon herself to add about ½ cup of oil. I actually tried to get her to take some out and she simply replied that the extra oil would remain in the pan once the egg was cooked. Then she cooked the egg while spooning copious amounts of the extra oil on top of the egg. Indeed, some oil remained in the pan but at least half was absorbed and, therefore, ingested.

Also, along with living with a host-family comes the usual slew of awkward questions: Do you believe in God?, Why don’t you eat meat?, You know that our meat is healthier?, Why won’t you at least try this endangered armadillo?, How much did that box of tea cost? Of course, even if that box of tea cost $6.00, once converted to Lempiras, it might as well have cost you $100 because that’s what it seems like to them.

In terms of work, I’m back to square one, with nothing to do. Hopefully I don’t go crazy because I’m not sure I can handle the lack of productivity again. I saw my counterpart at the Sunday church service and asked when the next water board meeting would be. Since he is on the board and my counterpart for precisely that reason, I assumed it were logical that I would attend. He was like, “Oh, I doubt you’d want to go.” As I suspected I would be, I’m concerned that this site has not been developed at all in terms of PC site development.