hot dog factory

23 September 2008
Dudes I am actually writing this blog in an internet café, so im gonna make it short and sweet. Basically, everything I said in the previous post (which is new to you guys, so read it) is still true, and in three days I will swear in as an official Peace Corps volunteer! Then I´ll go to my new home in Alubaren and start saving the babies.
Love,
Hayley

16 September 2008
Hey, chochachos! Heavens, it’s been a while. You guys had better get used to that, the nearest Internet source to my site is about two hours away. But I will have a P.O. box in town, so I guess it’s time to do it old-school style. I recently got some letters from you guys, it was the most awesome thing in the world…like a jillion baby pandas being born at once.

A whole lot has happened since I last blogged…I departed from my Talanga family, but not before Dona Dulce and I planted a sapling sand-dollar eucalyptus tree together in the near-darkness, using a pole and a spatula. A lady was selling plants out of a truck on the way home from school that day, and I decided it was the perfect parting gift. I spent my last night hanging out with my host sister at the Cocodrilo, just talking with her and my host-brother Carlos (he’s a dude who lives in Tegus usually). It was really chill and really awesome. The next morning, I got up at 6:00am, ate my last delicious greasy restaurant breakfast, hugged and kissed the fam goodbye, and hopped on a bus for Santa Rita. I arrived in the morning while the girls were at school, then left again to go to classes…when I finally arrived again that evening, the girls saw me coming from the top of the hill and screamed “HAAAAYLEEEEEY!!!” like their vocal chords were going to explode. Seriously, I was worried. It was so great to be back in the house, hanging out in the little living room with Suyapa, Javier, little baby Javier (who can now roll over, sit up, crawl, and edge around the room), and Melani and Madeline. I really forgot how much I love this family here…I am so, so lucky I got TWO families who I love and who love me.

I was only there for a night, though, and left the next morning for a four day visit to my site…ALUBAREN!! I was right, as was every single other gringo in Youth Development...guess they gave us pretty good hints. Anyway, one of my counterparts (who is also my host grandmother) showed up the day before in Valle de Angeles to escort me down south. She’s a solid little old lady, very old fashioned and no-nonsense, but I like her a lot. She wears a lot of matching pantsuits, but instead of pants, it’s a long skirt…skirtsuits? Her name is Paola, and she’s the principal of the elementary school I will be working with. We hauled one of my huge suitcases on the top of one of old American school buses that Honduras uses for public transit (complete with “Blue Bird Transit” signs and stickers inside that say “Values matter in South Carolina!”), and departed from Tegucigalpa for Alubaren. About two hours later, we departed from the highway and began ascending a mostly dirt mountain road, which we climbed and wove around for almost an hour and a half. My jaw was basically open the entire time…it was so beautiful. The mountains were just thick with brilliant green jungle plants, trees with sled-sized leaves and vines hanging from mossy mango trees. We drove through lots of small villages (aldeas), crossed several rivers (on bridges), and finally arrived in the center of Alubaren. There are a little over 1,000 people in the center (casco urbano), and it has the vibe of a very small, isolated, rural town…which it is. There is a pretty park with old gnarled trees in the middle, with a huge white Catholic church next to it. The streets are dusty dirt with stray dogs trotting around and little shoeless kids running up and down, kicking plastic bottles or small balls, sucking on bags of frozen juice, and even doing that thing that kids in the 1800s did that involved smacking a rolling wheel along with a stick. It’s so stinking hot here, I though I would die…I’m basically bathed in sweat at all times, including the middle of the night. All the ladies walk around with umbrellas to protect them from the harsh rays, so I immediately bought a pretty green one and now intend on walking out of here in two years without skin cancer. There are a handful of pulperias (corner store, ranging from a shack with a workbench to a storefront with refrigerators and microwaves…they sell basic food supplies, soap, candy, diapers, whatever), as well as two comedors, which sell meals (fried chicken, baleadas, etc). There is the local government building, called the alcaldia, a health clinic, a post office, and several NGOs, including one that I’ll be working with, called Christian Children’s Fund—it’s a U.S. organization, and it’s great—they basically just sent money and this office (with all Honduran staff) gets to spend it on projects that help develop the community, such as youth groups, community gardens, and preschools, all of which I will be working on. It’s nice because a lot of times NGOs come in, with foreign leadership, do the projects they want to, and then leave—and two years later the projects have all disintegrated because there was no local ownership or personal investment. When the projects, like those of Fondo Cristiano para Niños, are developed, planned, and executed by community members, they actually stick around and continue to improve (usually). Peace Corps volunteers base their community development work around the same principle, and we’re supposed to do only do projects that are sustainable and include local leadership and involvement.

Anyway, I LOVE Alubaren. When you stand in the little streets and look around, all you see in the horizon is great big green mountains and blue skies (evil, hot blue skies). There are lots of little creeks and rivers surrounding the town, which I got to see more of when my new host mom and aunt took me to a funeral. We had to walk about an hour in the heat up a nearby mountain, and it was the greenest, most beautiful thing I’ve seen in Honduras. Just dense jungle forest, full of mango and banana trees, occasionally opening up to large meadows. We were not able to benefit from the canopy, though, because we were hiking up the dirt road, which is basically an oven. The umbrella protects my skin, but it also captures the heat in a little dome of hell right around my face…which is, I suppose, why the women also walk around with little towels draped across their shoulders, to mop sweat off their faces. Despite the heat, though, the hike was gorgeous. It’s very depressing through, because the more rural you get in this country, the more people seem to disregard the concept of a garbage can. Adults and children alike will unwrap whatever they’re about to eat or drink and just toss the garbage on the ground. When we arrived at the home of the man who’d died, we sat on little wooden benches in front of a dirt-floor house high atop the mountain (it was actually cooler up there) under the shade of gorgeous almendra trees, with thick vines hanging all over the place and ferns covering the ground. After I finished my plate of rice and tortillas I asked where the garbage can was, and they just squinted at me and pointed (with their lips, as is Honduran custom) to a little gully nearby. I peeked over and it was filled with plastic bottles, plates, as well as lots of food waste and some Styrofoam. It sucks because this is the most beautiful, undeveloped land in the area and they just chuck garbage all over the place. I know there isn’t a formal garbage collection method up in the mountains (it would have be on donkey if it existed), but they could at least consolidate and bury it instead of spreading it all over the place, including in their only nearby watershed…the school wants me to do environmental ed, though, so I wonder if we can change any of that…the rest of the “funeral” was pretty awkward, because it was just like 20 people sitting outside, eating and not talking. I asked one of the kids to show me the horses on the hill behind to house, and soon I had about 10 little escorts. They were extremely quiet and mainly just watched me with big eyes…I don’t think they’d seen a gringo before, actually. We kind of stood around the horses for a bit in silence—I’d ask them something and they’d just avert their eyes and look at the ground. Finally, I took off my sandals and started to climb an enormous mango tree (mango trees are the best to climb, by the way), and the kids started to giggle. Soon they all followed me up and we spent the next hour sitting up in the canopy, chewing on mangos and talking. I was so relieved because I don’t think I’ve ever felt so awkward around Hondurans before…the silence was unbearable.

My third and final host family is pretty nice. It’s a mom named Sandra, who is a teacher at my elementary school, a dad named Walmar, who works for Fondo Cristiano, and a little three-year-old girl who is adorably cute but rather sinister in character…she’s the kid who pinches the sleeping baby just to make him cry. It’s not the same as my other two families, but I’m pretty comfortable with them and certainly won’t mind staying for my first two months. However, I wish my bedroom had a door, all it’s got is a curtain…and the bathroom doesn’t have either (yes, this is very awkward, and in my four days there I learned how to execute certain maneuvers with extreme speed). They seemed hurt when I mentioned I’d be looking for my own place in a couple months, but nearly all PC volunteers find their own place, and I think I’d want a little more privacy for my next two years. Also, when you guys come visit me, you’ll have a place to crash…and I promise to buy some fans so no one dies of heat exhaustion during the night.

I also met the kids who will be on my baseball team, Las Panteras, and I’m really excited about that. They’re all stellar kids who love to play (they told me they practice every single day for two hours), and informed me they’re the best kids in town because they will never ever drink or do drugs. Alubaren is actually a dry town, but booze is still illegally sold in some places. However, the amount of drunks in town is quite small, which is awesome. Anyway, my baseball kids (all boys and some girls between 8-12) are totally rad. However, on the scale of Knowledge Regarding Baseball, I fall between “Repressed Childhood Memories” and “Understands Kickball,” so if anyone has any pointers or books or anything on how to teach kids baseball, let me know/give me them. Also, if anyone wants to draw parallels between my new sports endeavor and “Kristy’s Krushers,” please be aware I am open to such ideas.

While I’m kind of stressed about all the work that’s ahead of me, as well as the concept of being my own boss, I’m just overwhelmed with how happy I will be in Alubaren. Sitting on the porch of a neighbor, chatting with whoever wanders by and sipping sweet coffee…it’s just so tranquilo. Seriously, give me a hammock and some children that need a friend, and I feel like I could live here forever…

After celebrating Children’s Day for four days with piñatas and toys (Dia del Niño is basically a holiday we don’t have…think birthday for every single kid, all at once, and you’ve got the idea), I departed from Alubaren as the kids were ironing out the last details for the parades they were to take place the next day, September 15th. Every child in a public school in Honduras has basically been out of school for the past month, practicing marching, playing drums, twirling batons, shaking pompoms, carrying flags, and otherwise preparing for Honduras’s independence day. It’s an intense, countrywide sensation of patriotism as every single kid is forced to march for hours in the parades—no one here seems to think, “But isn’t four hours a day of rehearsal with almost no schooling for an entire month rather extreme??”. I was back in Santa Rita in time to see the preparation, and Suyapa was up until 1:00am doing the hair of the girls’ in our neighborhood…and up at 4:00am doing the hair of her two little daughters. I got up at 6:00am, and we were out the door by 7:00am, along with the rest of the world. We arrived in Valle de Angeles and I was overwhelmed by the thousands of people, the majority of whom were teeny miniature cowboys, Indians, policemen, firemen, cheerleaders, baton-twirlers, and of course marching band members…it was a spectacle. Little Madeline was a cheerleader, by the way, and Melani was a baton twirler, complete with high-heel boots and tiny dress. It was an exhausting day, though, and we all slept like rocks that night.

By the way, I definitely got run over by a horse last night. I had taken the kids to the clearing the woods where we play soccer to play games in the dark again, and we were taking a rest in the grass. Two kids on horses came up and starting showing off, galloping up and down. I told them to go on, and that they couldn’t ride in that area because there were little children around. One kid, however, took off galloping anyway. I was seated cross-legged on the grass with Madeline the three-year-old in my lap, and I heard the horse coming up behind me. I turned around just in time to see the boy trying to pull his horse up short behind me—he was running it at me to scare me! The horse couldn’t stop in time, though, and I screamed and ducked down over Madeline, and the horse trampled right over me. It was miraculous that I wasn’t hurt—his hooves grazed my head a bit, but that was it!! The kids kept insisting the children on horseback were drunk, but they just seemed so young I can’t believe it. Either way, one of my more random Honduran events.

Oh my sweet heavens it is bedtimes folks. Buenas noches.
Paz,
Hayley