Last Blog

December, 20 was a sad day. I received an email from my country director stating that the Peace Corps program in Honduras was being put on hold, and possibly canceled all together. The volunteers were told we were no longer allowed to leave our sites and that sometime in January we would all be sent home. Confusing right? That is how I felt. With time we received more information. It turns out after reviewing the security situation in Honduras they decided it wasn’t safe enough at this point to have volunteers in the country. Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world. Although most of it revolves around drugs, gangs, and corruption. However, the danger was still leaking out to the volunteers and many had been robbed at gunpoint, raped, and one had even been shot in the leg when gunfire broke out during a bus robbery. Peace Corps decided the incidents were to occurring to often to consider Honduras a safe enough country for Peace Corps. Peace Corps said they needed to close down for a month to run a more in depth security analysis of the country and possibly try and make changes to see if they could still keep it open in the future. So they rounded everyone up on January 12 and we had a 3 day Close of Service conference, just like we would normally have had if we had finished our 2 years of service. They told us at the conference, in all likelihood no one will come back right away, because they need time to make all the adjustments to Peace Corps, but if anyone came back it would be very very few and in very safe areas. They also told us some very scary statistics. Now I may not remember the exact numbers but they are close so you get an idea. Central America is about the size of Spain. In 2007 in Spain 300 people were murdered. In Central America it was 14,300. We always hear about the war on drugs in Colombia. In Colombia the homicide rate is 33 per 100,000. In Honduras it is 86 per 100,000. In the US it is 6 per 100,000.Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world for a country not at war. Honduras is in a very sad state right now. The people constantly have to live in a state of fear not to upset someone or mix with things they shouldn’t so they don’t end up dead on the side of the road somewhere. You also know not to go to certain areas, and never to carry a lot of money on you. The really sad thing is that all of the gangs is related to the drug trafficking. Honduras is a hot point now to bring drugs in from South America to send by land to the states. OUR DRUG PROBLEM IS KILLING HONDURAS. For every bad person, there are 10 good ones, all of those good people have to live in a state of fear, and now Peace Corps is pulling out and leaving them to fend for themselves. I am American when things get to scary I can just pack up and go home. Unfortunately all of the good people that I have come to love in Honduras cannot escape. They are forced to live in this violent state that our drug addiction problem has created. It was very hard to say goodbye to Peace Corps, and to Honduras, and it was even harder to say goodbye to all my friends. When they were there looking guilty, apologizing for living in such a dangerous country, when it was not their fault. They were born in Honduras. I was born privileged. I can always come back to the states and live in a safe environment, with food, and electricity, water, and a good government. I can truly say after my Peace Corps experience GOD BLESS AMERICA. I will never again take for granted a hot shower, running water to flush the toilet with, paved roads, US police men, a non corrupt government, electricity, butterfingers lol, and so much more. Although it was such a sad, fast ending Peace Corps was truly the best experience of my life. I learned so much about the world, and experienced firsthand the hell other countries live in, I learned so much about myself I now truly understand my greatest strengths and my greatest weaknesses. I met so many people that truly touched my soul, and did work that made me feel fulfilled. I come back to the states now feeling like an old woman. I have such knowledge and experience, and such a different way of viewing the world, which most people couldn’t wish to ever understand in a lifetime. I can say with all honesty that “Peace Corps is the toughest job that you’ll ever love”

In addition: I am going back to Honduras. I am engaged to Tilo and will be getting married May 26,2012. I am applying for an internship at USAID in the US embassy. If I don’t get it Tilo and I will be coming back to the states to look for a job and then grad school. So keep your fingers crossed for me!

Recapping everything you missed

So I pretty much stopped blogging, but I wanted to finish out my Peace Corps blog since my Peace Corps experience is finished. So I will give a basic idea of what happened in all that time. I finally did my stove project. I trained like 15 people to build the stoves, and gave a lecture on the environment to the people receiving the stoves. Then I built 76 improved stoves. It took quite a bit of time considering it was only me and the volunteers who learned how to make the stoves, constructing them. It was a good project, and I felt well afterward. The people were happy receiving the stoves and bettering their health and I was happy to help.
I also did a municipal spelling bee. The people had never had spelling bees in my municipality, and spelling is one of the worst parts of their education. Not even the teachers spell well! And they hate to teach it. So a spelling bee was a great way to get kids motivated to study spelling. We held school spelling bees and the top two winners from each school were then invited to the municipal center to attend the municipal spelling bee. It went really well and everyone was happy. The top three places were all from small villages, and every said it was nice that the villages got to win for once, because they almost never win against the kids in the town center.
I also have been giving computer courses. I gave three different computer courses. One was to high school students, another was to more high school students, and the third was a village without electricity. A NGO donated a solar panel and a computer lab with computers so the people could learn computers. It was hard teaching people that had never really used any type of technology.
In addition, I have been giving lectures on HIV, hand washing, and GPS. But at different times of course lol!
My last big project was working with the women’s office. The women’s office got a new head, and she is energetic, and willing to work and learn. So we started right off organizing women in every village and creating women’s groups. I then created what I call the 12 step plan, because it is 12 different speeches and trainings on how to become an independent self loving woman. They different trainings included gender and sex, and equality and inequality, self esteem, women’s rights, good communication skills, basic business, and more. At the end we got loans for each group to start their own small business. Unfortunately, I was unable to finish the project because Peace Corps was evacuated from Honduras(see last blog) but I left the head of the women’s office with all the knowledge and training to finish it herself.
Other than work I was mostly hanging out with my boyfriend and dog. We have gone on lots of hikes to waterfalls, and just around my municipality. We have gone on two vacations, one was to the big lake in Honduras where we stayed for a weekend with Peace Corps friends, and we went and saw a big waterfall and were actually allowed to walk underneath it with a tour guide. It was very intense there was so much water coming down on your head and with such force you couldn’t see and could barely breath, but it was a great experience, very empowering. Tilo , Dulce,and I also went and stayed on one of the southern islands for a weekend. It is a volcanic island with all black sand beaches. It was a very nice relaxing vacation with beautiful scenery, but you couldn’t swim in the water. There were millions of jellyfish in the water! Tilo and I took a kayak out and just stayed at the edge of the water and saw hundreds of them. We were so afraid to tip especially because it was a really cheap unstable kayak and we had dulce on board too, who kept running from side to side. We tried to leave her on the beach, but she came swimming after the kayak! So I have been having lots of fun along with all the work I have been doing.