Lots to say! Semana Santa Adventures and Stories!

Howdy All!

WARNING: EXTREMELY LONG JOURNAL ENTRY

Ouosh! Long time and no journal entry! My bad. Well, here we go…

With the beginning of Summer (yes, Summer, there’s little Spring here) means the dry season here in Honduras. So I’ve been helping the Junta de Agua. The Junta de Agua are the guys who maintain the pipes that deliver water to Santa Elena. Our water source is up in the protected area of Parque Nacional Cerro Azul Meambar, so I get to be a dutiful “Protected Areas Management” Peace Corps Volunteer and make sure that we take the water in an eco-friendly manner. But in all honesty, and listen up Peace Corps Volunteer wannabes, I hardly contribute a thing other than normal manual labor. Yeah, I’ve got a bachelors degree from a state university, but on the mountain here in Honduras it’s experience that matters, and my bachelors degree has the value of balogna. So I dig ditches, listen, and watch. That’s about it. So you can erase anything in your mind of the stereotypical Peace Corps Volunteer saving the world, because that just isn’t the reality. I’m learning. I’ll certainly take more from my community (in knowledge and experience) than I’ll actually contribute, for sure. Luckily I knew this much before I came to Honduras. I had a good mentor who was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Samoa who was kind enough to tell it like it is. So thankfully I’m not in complete depression and shock. But I feel it’s my turn to pass on the knowledge, tell it like it is, and paint a more realistic portrait of what the Peace Corps is all about. And there are exceptions, sure, but don’t bank on it Volunteer wannabes!

Okay, I thought it would be a good idea to list a few habits I’ve picked up here in Honduras, before they become so much a part of me that I don’t even notice them. So when I return to the United States don’t be surprised if I…
- point at things with my lips.
- point at things with my lips while I’m talking (yes, seriously).
- pick my nose blatantly in public (although I did a little of this before I came to Honduras).
- cook with lots of oil.
- drink coffee no matter how late or hot it is outside.
- wonder where the tortillas are at the dinner table.
- scrunch my nose when I don’t understand what you’re saying.
- speak in Spanish.
- show up late.
- pull my shirt up over my belly to cool off.
- am very hospitable and offer you coffee and/or food upon your arrival in my house/apartment.
- walk at an absurdly slow pace.
- make a very loud noise to get your attention from a distance.
- neglect my silverware.
- spend way too much time talking about the weather.
- gossip.
- throw my used toilet paper in the waste basket rather than in the toilet bowl.
- always wear flip flops when laying around the house.
- drink lots of Coca-Cola.
- don’t shower for three or four days.

I’ve done way to good of a job of integrating I’m afraid.

What’s on the horizon? Well, I’ll be heading down to a town called “Sabanagrande” (Big sheet, in English) this week to give a training session to new Peace Corps Trainees on building wood burning stoves. Wood burning stoves that burn wood more efficiently than the traditional stoves used by Hondurans to cut back on firewood needed and thus deforestation. We make the stoves a little more efficient by adding ash and roof tiles (the ones you see on traditional hispanic homes and on Taco Bells) to the walls of the stove to increase insulation and thus more heat allocated to actually cooking. This is a very “Peace Corps” like project.

I’ll also be hanging out with friends for Semana Santa (Holy Week). Which in Honduras it is a week full of eating, visiting with family, and swimming/bathing in rivers/lakes/waterfalls. Elana, Dan, and a new non-Peace Corps friend of mine who’s volunteering with a church up in Puerto Cortes Adam have plans of celebrating Passover together. Elana and Dan will be sharing their Jewish traditions with us.

----------------------one week later---------------------

Training with the new group of Volunteers was a lot of fun. They were a good group. Lots of engineers and smarty pants. I also had a great homestay while I was there, awesome food. It was really nice to have someone cooking for me again. I think I might have taken that for granite a little during training. Rain and I showed the new trainees how to make stoves and how to get nice and filthy. Good time.

Passover was a really good time as well. Elana, Dan, Adam, Gringo and I all went out for an adventure on the mountain. We went into the park to find a hidden waterfall I had found a month earlier with the Junta de Agua (see one of the previous journal entries). We eventually found the waterfall after thoroughly getting every inch of our body completely filthy and wet from hiking through the thick rain forest. Gringo was a big wimp, he’s still much to small to tackle many of the rocks we were scaling, so we had to work hard to keep him along with us, carrying and passing him through difficult sections. He’ll definitely stay home for the next expedition.

After our adventure, once we got back and showered up, Elana made pollo sudado, “sweaty chicken,” which was absolutely delicious! With lots of veggies and she brought two boxes of traditional passover matzo bread which had been sent to her from the states. Dan made Adam and I wear hats and he pretended to be an old Jewish man who bossed us through all the passover traditions. I took advantage of the candle light atmosphere to deliver a little mini cello concert after our dinner, and Adam delivered a bit of his own art; poertry – fabulous might I add. It made for a lovely evening of sharing culture, creativity, and art.

I then spent the remainder of Semana Santa helping out Isaias with a youth camp he had planned out since November. I went along and took pictures and ran the projector and all things techinical. Oh, and I played a little cello. Definitely a foriegn object here in Honduras, the cello. I made lots of enemies with the teenagers there because I made slide shows each night from all the pictures we took and I had two of the teenage guys instructed to take pictures of embarrasing things. So every time someone fell asleep during a lecture or started to stuff their face with food there was someone taking a picture of it. Isaias and a few guys from the directiva would go through the photos each night and put in quote bubbles and it made for a hillarious slide show. I also gave my tribute to the King of Pop by putting the slide shows to Michael Jackson songs each night.

I’m now here in Santa Elena with not a whole lot to do. I have a long list of things I could do, but it’s tough to decide which one I want to start. I still need to go to the school and offer myself as a teacher for environmental education. I’d also like to talk to the coffee benificiary about a few things concerning eco-tourism, they’ve got great potential to make an extra buck here in Santa Elena.

In other news… I ran into my best friend Toni a few days ago. He was headed out of town with a batman backpack. “Where ya going?” I asked. He just made a thumb jesture as if to say “eh, just over there.” So I asked “Santa Cruz?” He gave me the thumb jesture again. “San Pedro?” Again the thumb jesture. “La Paz?” Thumb jesture. “Vas mojado?” (Which means “Are you going wet?” Which is a way of asking “Are you going to the States illegally.”) He smiled in a mischevious manner as if to say “I know you don’t like it, but yeah.” “Are you serious?” I asked, “You’ll die trying to get across loco.” I said. It was too late to persuade and he went ahead. He had already heard all my thoughts on going mojado before. I asked him if he had my number, and he pulled out a little slip of paper he had in his pocket which was obviously his contacts book, chalked full of names and phone numbers in tiny little print, and my name was in there. We’ll see what happens. I hope the best for him. His safety is what concerns me the most, I know a handful of guys around here who have permenant injuries that they incurred while trying to jump the border. It’s a really dangerous journey. Toni certainly has an adventure ahead of him.

Things coming up… I might be headed to Costa Rica with Adam. He’s got a contact down there who works on the beach, so if we hear back from the guy we’ll be spending a week down there helping out with their school there, and taking some beach time ofcourse. Then in mid-May, Erin is coming to visit me! My good friend from my Summer in Glacier National Park will be coming for 10 days to get to know Santa Elena and all the great hiking and adventuring around here. I’m pumped!

I’d like to throw out an apology to all those who I owe emails to and haven’t been emailing. I haven’t had a lot of time for internet cafes lately, and when I do finally make it around to getting to one it’s unplanned and I never have my thumbdrive on me. So bad luck and neglect has led to a big gap in communication with many of you, and for this I apologize.

Aight, until next time!

Brazos,
David

P.S. The pics are of 1) Me playing the cello at Isaias's Youth Retreat, and 2) Me, Adam, and Elana after our adventure in the rainforest. The picture doesn't do justice to how filthy we were.(And my expression; I'm not really mad, I just thought I'd do something other than the good ol' fashion smile.)