In the Fraternity

So now’s the time when you all get to hear about my new site (those of you who are still following along after my 2 month hiatus that is). For starters it is a small pueblo of about 1,400 people surrounded by a municipality that encompasses about 4,000 total people, though they are quite spread out in a series of aldeas that are only connected by a series of worn out dirt roads. The municipality, and the casco urbano in which I live, is known as La Fraternidad (or in English, “The Fraternity”). It is one of the smaller municipalities in the department of Ocotepeque (the smallest department in the country), which is located in the westernmost corner of Honduras and is sandwiched in between Guatemala and El Salvador. It is actually far closer from my site to San Salvador than to Tegucigalpa (like 7hrs by bus closer), and I live within 50 kilometers of both boarders.

The pueblo its self is located on a dirt road off of Central America rout 4, nestled in between majestic mountains alongside a verdant cloud forest, situated at about 1,300 kilometers above sea level. So yeah, it’s pretty beautiful and idyllic. It is a coffee growing region, so this accounts for about 80% of our agriculture (the rest being taken up by bananas, plantains, cabbage, carrots, and a few other miscellaneous vegetables). Thus most of the people here are simple farmers and the most important time of year is the coffee harvest. This period for us, is between late November and February, because we are situated at relatively high altitudes and thus it is relatively cold and the harvest comes later than in more low lying regions. The best coffee comes from at or above 1,400 meters, the majority of the farms in our region being at between 1,300 and 1,600 meters (oh yes, I have been learning about coffee, it is kinda the biggest topic of conversation here, besides soccer, and of course religion).

Weather wise, as I mentioned it is a very cold region by Honduran standards, in the winter (which here is around November to February) it is actually light jacket weather during the day, to legitimate jacket weather at night. It is also quite rainy here for much of the year, and this contributes to the chill feeling in the air. At times looking out across mountain pastures here, with a fine mist in the air and a grey over cast sky, I am a few sheep and a Guinness away from feeling like I am back in Ireland. Needless to say this is not what most of us think of when we think of Honduras, and to be fair it is not a good representation of the climate of most of the country, but I could not be happier at being stationed here. Those of you who know me, know I hate the heat and die every year in DC summers. Thus this is the perfect environ for me to comfortably wear jeans, and laugh at my companions who were stationed in Choluteca (or Cholutexas as it is known by volunteers, or the mouth of the dragon), sweating their asses off in a country in which wearing shorts is basically never ok.

Basically it is a really beautiful place with beautiful vistas in all directions, and they are in the process of beautifying the town by putting in a really nice little park and amplifying the Catholic Church in the center of town. The people are also very friendly, and I am rapidly making friends now that people are starting to understand that I am here for the long haul and not just a gringo stopping though. On this note, I am the very first PCV stationed here in Fraternidad (which is actually quite impressive in a country in which the Peace Corps has been operating since 1962), and I am pretty certain the first gringo to take up residence here. Though before me there were a series of Cuban doctors who lived in the house I live in now, which is the town’s only comedor (a small eating establishment) and basically the only house that rents out rooms. Thus when I got here a fair number of people asked me if I was Cuban (which I will either take as a compliment to my Spanish or an affront to Cuban peoples Spanish).

I have overall felt nothing but welcome here, which was probably helped by the welcome party the municipality threw me my first week in site. This basically consisted of shutting down the municipality for the day and decorating the whole upstairs with pine needles, balloons, streamers, and giant posters saying things along the lines of “welcome to Fraternidad, Stephen Demarais” (a name by the way none of them can pronounce, but which interreges many of my coworkers to the point of often just saying their versions of my last name many times in the course of a day around me to practice). Also the mispronouncing of the first name has led to some people just calling me Esteve, which basically is their version of Steve. This led me to realize the other day that it took me coming to rural Honduras to start going by Steve, and living in a fraternity (also for profesionality I have taken to wearing mostly polo shirts here, to complete the whole frat image), who’d of thought.

And away we go

So I am finally a real volunteer! That’s right this guy made it through the three month training period and is now a real volunteer (incidentally those three months do now count towards my 2 years here, so as I write this 2 weeks into my service I still have 23.5 months left to go). As I mentioned in an earlier post, the training period in the Peace Corps really does feel like your back in middle school, so I’m super happy to have graduated and made it to out into the grown up world again. Though these elated feeling at graduating are also tempered with sadness at missing my fellow H17 (Honduras PC group # 17) volunteers, who are now spread out all across the country. It is actually remarkably similar to the feelings I experienced five months ago upon graduating college (except it is accompanied with far less partying). Seeing as a lot has happened in the months since I last put up a blog entry (my bad) I figure I should fill those of you who are still interested in my life (mom) in on what has been going on.

The graduation its self was really nice. It was held in the US embassy and we all got dressed up in our nicest cloths and there was a reception on the lawn, attended by us new volunteers, our trainers, and our host country counterparts who had come in to bring us to our site, and who we had met that morning for the first time. We got to hear inspirational speeches from all of the PC brass and head trainers, as well as two of our own new volunteers, and US ambassador to Honduras Hugo LLorens. Overall I was most impressed with the speeches by our volunteers, one of whom came into the program with no Spanish what so ever but was able to pass his language exam and give a very understandable speech in his new language, the other of whom is a native speaker and gave a beautiful speech including a moving poem. The other highlight of the afternoon was hearing 57 American PCVs trying to sing the Honduran national anthem (which is actually really hard to sing as it changes rhythm and tempo like 5 times, so not just those of us who are brutally musically challenged had problems).

After the ceremony I got a picture with Hugo LLorens, which as an international relations major I thought was pretty cool (and I am saying here so that you will all know who that guy with me in the picture is, since ambassadors don’t really have much celebrity recognition status). Once we had all taken pictures and said goodbye to our awesome training staff we all climbed back on the school bus that had taken us there and went to a restaurant in Valle de Angeles (the big town closest to our host family homes). There we partied the night away, as much as people with a 9 pm curfew can, then went home to try and get some sleep in before we met up with our respective counterparts to be taken to our new sites in the morning. For me, this meant waking up at 4 am to be ready for my 4:30 pick up since I was headed out to Ocotepeque, the smallest department (the Honduran equivalent of a state) about ten hours away from Tegucigalpa. Though I had found out the day before that I was actually quite lucky since my counterpart and the others from my department had rented a mini-bus to take me and my fellow volunteers back. This was huge, because most of us had a lot of luggage because we had to pack stuff for two years of service, and the thought of having to lug it all around between the multiple busses we would have had to take otherwise was not a happy one.

After some confusion on the part of my counterpart in finding the tiny dirt road (off the bigger dirt road) on which I lived, we were finally able to reunite. I then realized that the “mini-bus” we were taking, with 14 people and all of the volunteers’ baggage, was actually a normal sized van. This meant that by the time we went to pick up the last three volunteers it was quite clear that there was no way we were going to be able to all fit with the luggage (despite this we tried to tetris things for a while including strapping things to the roof Beverly Hillbillies style before we finally accepted this fact.) In the end we decided that some of us would go in the van with the luggage and drop it off at the other’s sites, while the rest would take a bus. I was originally in the group to take the bus, but as the van was going to pull away my counterpart (who is the vice mayor of my town, and an exceedingly quite and shy man) made an awesome power move and hopped into one of the remaining two seats and motioned for me to follow. We then drove off before there could be any further discussion of who should actually get these seats (this is what we at 4 Farrington would call straight kinging it), and thus I avoided taking a series of public transport busses to my site. Though some of the elation at this fact wore off as a realized that the seat I was in was a fold down jump seat which mostly consisted in two hard metal bars jabbing me in the back for ten hours. This fact aside it was super excited to be headed to my new site.

Visit to La Tigra

So this last Saturday (July 31st), a group of fellow PC trainees and I went to a local national park, La Tigra, which is about half an hour from our site. We were able to catch a ride there on a bus with a group of students and teachers from the local colegio (high school). While this was convenient and cheep in terms of transportation, it came with a catch; namely that we had to travel with a group of like 80 high schoolers. In case you are not familiar with high school students in large packs, it involves a lot of raging hormones and a driving desire to be cool. Thus the bus ride was full of loud yelling, giggling and screeching. Also as in any situation involving colegio girls and male PC volunteers, there was a fair amount of being awkwardly hit on my 15 year olds. Couple this atmosphere with a six am wake up, a migraine, and having to stand up in a crowded school bus driving up a winding road, and you have my morning. Needless to say, the breakfast of hot milk and refried beans on tortillas was doing its part to contribute to my feelings of discomfort; though at least I was able to avoid losing this savory breakfast upon exiting the bus, as one unfortunate volunteer did.

Luckily for me and my fellow volunteers however, the days hike more than made up for the bus ride. As a background on the park, it is a cloud forest at the top of a mountain, with some spectacular vistas and hidden waterfalls. Also unlike American national parks, where fat Midwestern tourists can drive their SUVs and campers right up to the entrance (or in some cases can now drive ATVs and snow mobiles throughout and never have to subject themselves to actual walking), at La Tigre you have to walk about two hours up from the nearest little town up to the park entrance. As a side historical note, the park used to be the sight of a major gold mine from the late 1800s through the 1930s. Thus the town was at one point a major commerce hub and still shows the vestiges of its past grandeur, in the form of beautiful classic architecture poking up from a skyline of concrete and mud brick houses and corrugated tin roofs. The result of this is that the town has a very cool, ghost-town vibe tucked away in the folds of the mountain.
From the town, it is a steep uphill trek on a semi-paved side road up to the park entrance. This was definitely the hardest part of the climb, as for the most part you are left in direct sunlight and are still below the cloud line and cool temperatures that accompany it. Thus when we finally reached the visitor center, we were drenched in sweat and full of a sense of accomplishment. From there the next step was getting into the park. This was actually a bit of a tricky situation and involved some finesse, because the entrance fee can vary heavily and is fully dependent on the mood of the park director. This is because there are different prices for Honduran residents (20 Lempiras, or 1 dollar) and foreigners (ten US dollars). Though as PC volunteers we are considered residents and entitled the lower price, as well as a ten Lempira (50 cent) discount. Unfortunately as trainees, we do not yet have our residence card, and thus had to rely on our abilities to talk the director into the lower price. After some haggling we got in for 20 Lemps, and the experience was well worth it, also one of my friends somehow ended up trading boots with the 70 year old park director. It was pretty comical, she was complaining about how her’s hurt her feet and he just took off his boots which were a little bigger, and they traded.
We got to hike through a beautiful jungle and eat lunch next to an amazing waterfall. We also managed for the most part to steer clear of the largest groups of colegio kids and enjoy some of the beauty of nature and its tranquility. We then hiked back down the mountain in enough time to have an ice cold beer at the only restaurant in town and hop the bus back to Cantarranas. I also got to have an intersting conversation with two colegio girls next to me on the bus ride home. One of the girls asked if I was married, to which I jokingly responded that at 22 I was too young to be married, to my surprise the other one who was 18 turned out to be married and already have a 3 year old child. This was pretty telling of the state of things in the country, and it struck me how someone much younger than me could be in a much more mature period of her life.

The Point System

After spending two months here in Peace Corps in Honduras, I have begun to develop new ways of entertaining myself. While in the states, I was constantly bombarded with cable tv shows, sporting events, video games, and if all else failed endless hours of youtube videos (so at the very least I could spend an afternoon watching people making asses of themselves). Here pretty much all of these options are limited or non-existent. For example, television no longer offers me a lineup of new sitcoms and foul mouthed cartoon shows. These have been replaced by badly dubbed American action movies (don’t know why but they like love “Fast and the Furious 4” here) and spectacularly ridiculous Mexican telenovelas. The latter of which are actually good for some solid minutes of laughs the first few times you watch them, because they are super over the top in their plot lines and about as subtly acted as professional wrestling bouts (with interestingly enough are quite popular here, and I had to explain to one of my host brothers that they are in fact staged). Though when this novelty wears off you are left searching the five channels you have for some semblance of a futbol match (oh how I miss the world cup. When that ended I lost like 2/3rds of my cross cultural conversation starters). On the whole however, I don’t really mind this fact, seeing as I did not come here to watch tv (though it is actually hard to avoid watching some, in a country where almost everyone , regardless of socio-economic status, has a tv on and running in their house pretty much 24/7). But without internet access or American tv, you are forced to send a lot more time out and after living between Boston and DC, there is limited entertainment to fill your day with in rural Honduras. You can only play futbol so much in one day, and the other local entertainment of staring at the gringo is far less entertaining when you are in fact that gringo.
This is where the point system comes into play. One of my fellow aspirantes (aspiring PCVs) and I have developed a game, in which we assign random point values to things that we witness in our daily routines here, that would seem strange or outlandish were we to witness them in the states. The number of points for an occurrence is loosely based on how wild the occurrence would seem in the US, how common it actually is here in Honduras, and how much we laugh upon witnessing it. Thus for example seeing a woman standing on her patio in a downpour feverishly sweeping water off of cement (despite the fact that it is falling far faster than she can move it) gets you one point, because while it is pretty outlandish and silly to American sensibilities, it is super common here. I’m pretty sure that nationally, it is like the second most popular sport after futbol.
To give you a better sense of the game here are a list of some of the events that stuck in my mind, with their corresponding point scores. A child throwing dove babies out of the eves of his parents house into a trash can his mother is holding open below, as she cheerily invites us to come take a look at them (she also mentioned something to the extent of “don’t worry we are taking care of them” as if we would see these baby chicks as a menace) : 15 points. A guy taking a poop in the local stream while reading the paper and smoking a cigarette (behind little to no cover): 30 points. A woman breastfeeding her, what looked to be, 5 year old kid in the middle of a town hall meeting: 30 points. Walking out of your room to find a burlap sack full of live chickens: 10 points. Trying to take a shower and realizing there is a huge tarantula in there with you, then having your host mom throw it on your bare leg with a broom: 35 points. Ect…