Well a blog is WAY overdue I imagine I have lost all my listeners out there, but I never was good at keeping a consistent blog. It’s been three months since my last blog and I have a lot of ground to cover!
March:
I get better and arrive back home in Honduras. Both my boyfriend and dog missed me a lot, and my dog is huge! She still isn’t fully grown but when she stands on two feet her paws almost reach my shoulder. Some of the people in the village joke that they think they are looking at a tiger when they see her because she is so big and she has orange and black stripes. Although I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say she looks like a tiger but I should have named her tigress for her fierceness. She is named Dulce for sweet or Candy, but she is rarely ever sweet like Candy. Especially with strangers, she barks and them and scares them because she is so big. I know she wouldn’t bite them, but she just wants to show them that she is fierce. She is still very playful too. She loves running around the house crazy chasing after flies and jumping and trying to catch them with her mouth.
Anyways, it was nice to be back. The whole village welcomed me back, and within a week began our town’s festival. It is a yearly festival in honor of the patron saint. It has many fun events, great food, fun things to buy, and good drinks. I myself went to many of the events. I went to the running of the tape. Where the men mount their horses and one by one race them to a cable that is raised in the air, on this cable there is a series of ribbons with a key ring at the bottom, and each ribbon has a girl’s name on it. The man then has to race his horse to the ribbons, and using only a pencil must loop through the key ring and pull the ribbon off. The girl with the name on the ribbon then gives the rider a kiss. This even was a lot of fun and lots of people came out to watch it. I also saw every single one of the bull fights. Although I really shouldn’t say bull fight because they aren’t like the bull fights in Spain more like bull dance and ridding. They release the bull with a rider, and we see how long he can stay on, but there is one man with the red cape that is constantly teasing the bull and dancing with him during the rider and after. It was interesting to watch the men try to ride the bulls, much better than in Spain where they kill them. During the first night of bull riding there was an accident. The man was alone in the corral dancing with the bull with his back to the door, when all the sudden this other bull gets loose and comes charging through the door and spears the guy in the back with his horns. The dancer was injured and they raced him to the hospital (a mere 3 hours away) I never did find out how he fared. Needless to say they didn’t have the next bull fight as scheduled, but the following weekend they found another bull fighter and the show went on without further problems. Another of my favorite events was the horse trick competition and parade. First there was a parade with horse riders from all around, and the giant dolls which are popular in Honduras. After the parade the horse riders all came to one spot where they showed the crowds all the tricks they could do. Many could dance to beats and turn in circles, walk backwards and some could be even told to lie down. The horses were all well groomed and well taken care of which is difficult for the majority of the people in Honduras. Some of the other events were dances, comedy shows, old people dance, traditional dance an dress, and much more. Also Tilo and I were constant customers of the food tents right at the bottom of my street. The lady there had excellent pupusas and grilled meat. Yum Yum. Also there was always lots of popcorn and fries for sale cheap, things I don’t get much here so they were a real treat. The feria was a blast.
After the festival it was back to work for a few weeks and then Semana Santa!
April: Semana Santa is holy week during Easter, but it seems in Honduras to have turned into a Spring break for everyone! Litterally everyone takes to the nearest river or beach or hot springs such as in my case. A week before all the vendors showed up at the hot springs and set up their booths to make and sell food and beer, and then the people came, and they came in ridiculous numbers. The hotprings were packed disgustingly so. In the three giant pools there was almost no room to move, and they were so full the water was overflowing. Needless to say I only got in the first day when there was a bit less people. It was still fun tho. Everyone was there and it was nice to go and eat good food and talk to people, and I even convinced the mayor to get the bad out there playing music the first day. There were also dances in the center of town but I was tired one day and sick the other so unfortunately tilo and I didn’t go. But we did go hiking a lot. I had been dying to see the Mayan carvings we have in our site, and a news reporter came to site and needed someone from the mayors office to take them to the local tourist attractions or what someday may be tourist attractions, and my boyfriend knowing I wanted to go volunteered us as guides and we went with them along with the head of the environmental office. First we went to another sight of hot springs that have not been developed. It was a long hike in the heat, and when we got there it was wonderful to bathe in the river. At this site the hot springs are at the side of the river and they are so hot they are boiling. My poor puppy not knowing ran ahead of us and stepped in one of the hot springs and started crying, but she was fine just a bit of a shock. The springs then run into the giant river and heat the side of the river. Also I think the spring must run right below the river as well because the sand in the one side is hot! It is soo refreshing to swim there. Its truly one of my favorite spots. Also along that same hike there are two spots of myth and rock with symbols which they call the devils symbol, myth being that the devil walked that path, and another right by is is a naturally made bowl in a rock which they call the mules bowl, and they say it always has water. Further down the hike we also passed an old abandoned village, which they say is from the early 1700s and now is not much more than stone foundations. Also along the hike there were beautiful views of the melon farms and the river. It was a long hike but a beautiful one. After that hike we drove to another spot in the municipality and began walking in the riverbed. After walking a while we came across the Mayan carvings. They are a thing of wonder. They are carved on a giant perfectly flat cliff rock in the river bed, and there are so many different symbols and pictures. I just wish I could understand what they mean. It is also amazing that they are in such good condition because every year during the rain when the river rises it must erode it a little bit at least, but you can make out all the pictures perfectly. Finally after that hike we went to another place where there was a very old aqueduct that is carved into the mountain. It is about a 15 min hike to hike the entire aqueduct and it is all carved into stone! It must have take then Indians or the Spaniards years to carve that much stone it’s a wonder. Water still runs into it from the river, however unfortunately it is dirty and doesn’t go the whole way down the aqueduct, will a little bit of care I bet it could work again. Tilo and I had such a great time at the hikes that we went again the next day with his sister’s family who were visiting from the capital. It was a fun Semana Santa. The rest of the month it was back to work. Until the last weekend when I had the going away party for the department of El Paraiso in my site. All the 8 volunteers from the department came, and we had a little party and a piñata. Then I got my Honduran friend to drive us to the hot springs where we grilled meat and had some drinks and swam. It was a really nice time. The next day we went to the neighboring municipality of Guinope to celebrate there. Along the way we traveled through my mountain villages there, and many of the volunteers were impressed with their beauty. Especially at my favorite spot where we stopped to eat lunch. It is right on top of these enormous rocks raised out of the ground which are overlooking this mountainside. There is always a lot of wind coming up the mountainside and its very refreshing, and you can see nothing but pine tree mountains for miles. Its very beautiful. In guinope we bought very good strawberries which are impossible to find in other parts of Honduras, and I tasted the local wine which they are known for. Like the majority of the volunteers I did not like the Orange wine which is their most popular, but I did like the wine they made out of a fruit called nanci. I actually don’t like the fruit itself but I like the drinks and wine they make out of it. We then went to this beautiful pool and lake area for tourists and we swam in the pool. Unfortunately living in a valle I am not used to the cold anymore. Guinope is a mountain municipality and is much colder and so is the water! It was freezing but we still had a good time.
May:
I went for a weekend with my boyfriend and his friend to one of the municipalities further north. We went to where he grew up to see his family for a day and then pick his mom up and take her to where she lives now, because she had been visiting family. It was a nice little trip with some beautiful scenery. Honduras is very beautiful! Although I did see a huge area of pine trees that had been burnt in a fire, which made me angry because it was probably a deliberate fire by someone. The last few months have been very dry and there have been horrible problems with people slashing and burning their properties and forest fires. There has been so much burning and so little rain that Honduras was literally covered in clouds and smog which were produced from the smoke. Its terrible and I have heard many say so themselves but they do nothing to change it. Well luckily in May the rains are starting. The dry season is ending so everything will turn from desert like to jungle and the animals will grow fat with food again. However the rainy season also brings lots of dampness and bugs o so many bugs and the diseases they bring! Also there are the problems that the rains bring to my projects. The rains make the rivers rise and destroy the roads, and in a municipality basically without bridges this makes travel to many of the villages impossible by car. At the end of May I also went to the capital for the weekend with my boyfriend of spending. I desperately needed new clothes and I bought clothes and shoes, and a cell phone. Plus I got to go see the new Pirates of the Caribbean!
Work:
Work the last few months seems to have been scheduled around the weeklong celebrations. But that is how things are in Honduras. The week before the celebration none of my counterparts want to do anything because they are doing a little to set up. Then the week of celebrations of course no work gets done. Then the week after hardly any work gets done either! However I have been successful in some areas around these times. I have been working with the women’s office still and we are expanding and creating women’s help groups in the little villages. With these groups we are going to give different speeches to help them, and create small businesses, and its also so the women have more of a voice in their local government. I also finally finished the grant proposal for my stove project I had been waiting for one piece for information for months, but my counterpart on this project was truly very busy trying to put out forest fires. Hopefully the money will get approved and come through in a couple months. Also I have given a couple guest appearances at the elementary school for English class. The kids are always so excited to have the white girl as their teacher! They are shout yay and are so proud of the few words they know in English. It’s very cute. The teacher also does a very good job at keeping the class in order a problem I admit I have with children, so it makes teaching very easy. I have also been helping the municipal department of education. We are taught an old program that was enacted years ago with the Japanese and we are having the schools all redo it. Basically the schools, the students and the parents all survey the community their problems and strengths and that of the school. The look at the past present and future situation of the school and its problems. Then they design ways to fix those problems and make it a goal to act on them within 5 years. It is important because the parents are involved, a serious problem they have here in Honduras, and also because the goals are put there in place for them to see so its much easier to achieve them. The last time they did this they actually brought electricity to one of the schools, and got an ambulance donated to the municipality which we still use. I also agreed to start two computer classes which I will be starting shortly. For one I have to go to one of our furthest villages. It is without electricity but an NGO donated a solar panel and computers to the school. I will teach about 15 adults from the village how to turn the computer on then off all the way to using excel and internet. These adults will then teach the children in school how to use them. It is wonderful a village that was once cute off with communication to the world now will have all the worlds knowledge at their fingertips and the farmers will be able to use excel for budgeting and crops!
But yes that is my life so far in Honduras. Until next time
