Watching The Grass Grow

I am lucky that I can place a lot of faith in my counterparts to get things done and be proactive. This isn't the case with my original municipal counterparts, but rather with our town's head soccer coach, Oscar, who is also the President of Jutiapa's Sports Committee, and Chuzo, town-handyman and albanil. Over the past year I've worked closely with them as we guide our park project to completion.

I left for Guatemala and the US at a pretty critical point in our park project's timeline. The rainy season was just commencing, and the municipality still hadn't come thru on it's part of the project deal, which was to plant new grass seed on the field that they had raised. Also, we were about to take responsibility for another aspect of the project, which was the parquecito across the street from the field. All of this pressure was combined with the fact that we were desperately behind schedule because of the municipality's decisions to:

• Dump more than 150 cubic meters of nearby dirt on the field to make way for temporary carnival and future building project across the street.  Doing so without ever studying the hydrology of the area, or the added costs that raising the field would add to the project. These new costs now entail replanting the entire field, extending drainage systems, repairing the street that now floods because of offset drainage areas, and upgrading street flood systems etc.
• Cut down trees on the south side of the field and removing installed lighting, without the money to then remove the tree stumps or replace the lights, thus ensuring that the grass could not be planted before the rainy season because of the work involved with reinstalling the lights. 
• Destroying over 30 seats in the process of raising the field, and the waste of precious heavy machinery on a project that did not necessitate it.
• Delaying the planting of grass seed, hence missing the optimal planting time before rainy season. 
• All of which was done unilaterally, without consultation of any community group, residents, or local businesses, or me. There is a long history of heavy handed planning, both from the central government and the development entities or businesses with specific goals and needs met. 

Sorry, rant over. All of this, however, has done little to dampen the spirits of my new counterparts, who seem optimistic as ever about the project's future. So before I left we set out our work plan and the budget for the parquecito. During my absence I had some reservations about leaving when I did, but I returned to be more than pleasantly surprised. All the work we had planned was done, and better than I could have imagined.

I was most impressed that when my counterparts found out that the municipality wouldn't be planting grass seed that instead of giving up they used a solicitude I had written awhile back to get about a 1/3rd of new grass seed for free, and then worked out a rock-bottom deal for the rest of the Bermuda grass seed (the stuff that will grow the best in this type of environment).

Oscar was then able to get the head coleigo profe, also a member of the Sports Committee, to give student volunteers so that the benches could be painted, and to help plant the field. The best part of the entire process was that they did everything on less money than we had originally budgeted. If there was an award for counterparts of the year, they would be winning it right now, hands down.

The battle for many volunteers in Honduras is just finding the right people to work with. It really is. It's not unusual to hear, and I say the same thing myself, that, "I spent the first year just trying to figure out who to work with." Some country's, like Guatemala, undertake volunteer's service in 6 year project cycles, with volunteer's serving during one of 3 distinct phases of the development process. Smart stuff. Honduras, for the most part doesn't do this. We instead struggle with continuity and sustainability as a result. it's being worked on though.

Waiting on the balcony overlooking Jutiapa. A well known game.

Anyway, we still have about 1/4 of our budget left. There are new stadium seats for the field, and benches for the basketball court. The park area now has a new smooth concrete finish on all of the walls and planters, and now just needs a little paint. The grass on the field is growing in thirds, and is being partially washed away by the heavy rains, but has been planted and is beginning to take in some areas. Now, however, we have a ready supply of coleigo volunteers. Most importantly, the Sports Committee has shown that they can function and succeed without me. The true sign of sustainability. I couldn't be happier. There's a month to go to make our deadline, and I doubt the field will be ready, but at the  very least it will be growing. So now it's time to just sit back, wait and watch it grow.