Friday, February 12, 2010

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.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Transitions

My one month break at home came and went in a blur. After over two years away, one month at home was kind of a tease. Once again I boarded a plane and left the States for the Peace Corps, although this time for a one-year extension in Honduras. I was less than thrilled that the Peace Corps insisted on booking my flight at 5:30 AM. I was in Honduras by noon.

The Protected Areas Management program specialist picked me up at the airport and bought me a baleada, a flour tortilla filled with refried beans, cheese, egg and drizzled with mantequilla, a sauce similar to sour cream. She told me there wasn't anything more typical of Honduran food than the baleada. I liked it. Less than a week later I realized that baleadas or some version there of are pretty much all that Hondurans eat. Sometimes they mix it up with corn tortillas.
Pretty much upon landing the PC staff whisked me away to the office to commence my own personal training. Admittedly, the one-on-one training was kind of intense compared to my experience in Peru. Doing participatory activities when you are the sole participant is not exactly a ball of fun. Also, going it alone was far more difficult than I imagined it would be. On day two, I cried in the office bathroom.

After a week in the office, I was sent off to shadow a fellow environment volunteer for 10 days. Her site is located in the buffer zone near the Parque Nacional Azul Meámbar and has beautiful views of Lago Yojoa, the largest natural lake in Honduras. We passed the time visiting various places and organizations in the area. On my second day there we actually made the trip to La Esperanza, a larger town about 1.5 hours away, for the annual potato festival. It struck me as being a bit ironic since I just came from Peru, the home of the potato.

We also visited the lake which is really beautiful and surrounded by hills and two national parks - Parque Nacional Azul Meámbar and Parque Nacional Santa Barbara. Through a connection of the volunteer's we also went to visit a nearby lead and zinc mine. We ended up meeting the owner (a Canadian) and the second-in-command (a Chilean), who met each other in Peru at a mine in Ancash. We were invited up into the lounge of the mine's admin staff and I felt like I had stepped back into the 1950s -- picture foreign engineers with their fancy wives drinking wine and cocktails. Of course, the people who actually work the mine live below in shacks while the admin staff lives in a gated community with a pool and hot water and the owner makes $55,000 a month. The mine does do a lot of social work and the workers are well compensated compared to most Hondurans; however, there is something very telling about the blatant disparity in wealth.

On the weekend we went to visit a Honduran friend of the volunteer's who lives in San Pedro Sula, the largest city in Honduras. Hot and crowded, there isn't much to recommend about San Pedro. We paid a requisite visit to City Mall, a super fancy mall which looks silly in juxtaposition to the urban squalor of San Pedro. San Pedro and the highway leading to San Pedro from the south are among the most dangerous areas of Honduras due to intense gang activity related to the cocaine trade. Nonetheless, the search for opportunity and jobs brings people from all over the country.

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Unexpectedly, the transition from Peru to Honduras has been really hard for me. I know no one. The culture is very different while still maintaining certain similarities, which perhaps makes it more disorienting. The official language is still Spanish but very different nonetheless. The language here is more formal which makes me uncomfortable--they even use the formal Usted form here with children. In Peru I obtained a certain comfort level which is now gone. When it comes down to it, I'm homesick. But I'm homesick for Peru. I'm sad that I'm not there. I'm sad that I won't live there again. I miss it. I miss the people, the food, the weather, the market, the bus rides, the moto-taxis. I miss it all. I even miss Lima which is saying something.

During the first two weeks, I found myself constantly comparing Honduras to Peru. It was even difficult to find beauty in the verdant, rolling hills of Honduras because I kept comparing them to the stark peaks of the Andes. Finally, however, I realized that I could cherish and miss Peru without directly comparing it to Honduras. Personally I think the transition hit me hard because I felt guilty about moving on so quickly, about leaving Peru behind and going someplace new, about leaving. When I think about my little host-brother it still brings tears to my eyes, but there is no way to tell him that.

I'm finally starting to feel a little more settled. Taking the bus back to my host-family's house no longer makes me extremely nervous. Also, they finally gave me information about my new site so I can at least picture where I'll be for the next year. My new site is a small, mountainside community of 350 people called El Sauce (Willow). It's located in the buffer zone of the Parque Nacional Santa Bárbara, a national park which harbors cloud forests, subtropical wet forests and highland pine forests. It is also home to Santa Barbara Mountain, which at 9,000 ft. is the second highest mountain in Honduras and, also, the only high-altitude limestone mountain in Central America. The community has expressed interest in the following areas: latrines, environmental education, chicken coops, eco-tourism and household gardens.

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If you are interested in finding my site on a map, here's how: Look first for Lago Yojoa, the big lake between Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. The National Park Santa Barbara is located on the NW side of the lake, and my site is on the northern side of the park. On a good map you should be able to find a town called San Luis Planes which is my district capital and fairly close to my site. If you can locate Peña Blanca and the town of Santa Barbara, San Luis Planes is pretty much directly in the middle of those two towns.