Neighborhood boys getting insane on my floor.
My tiny baby compost heap! That's right, avocado skins. Bake in the sun and become dirt.
Three of my neighbors, Noel, Neil, and Enner, solemnly displaying in my backyard the new hit of the neighborhood, a giant plastic rainbow slinky that Whitney sent me.
One of my favorite little babies, Douglas, sitting atop a random barrel I have in my front yard for no real good reason.
Here he is again...you can't really see it, but he's holding onto aforementioned slinky.
My bathing quarters.
A view of my house AKA Tarantula Oven, from the road.
Alison and Noel playing in my yard, stretching the slinky to their hearts delight.
Tina and me!
My baby, gazing at my face with adoring eyes.
Igor leads a very indulgent life.
Igor contemplating the gravel in my yard.
Alison, getting her slink on in my backyard.
A CAVE! In La Tigra. I saw giant crickets inside.
An old mining shaft (also in La Tigra) that is now used as a water souce for the local community at the base of the mountain...I think.
Words do not describe my contentment.
Quite possibly the coolest picture anyone has ever taken of Justin, ever.
Same for Dora.
CHRISTMAS CARD.
Waterfall, duh.4 February 2009
Hey, chochachos! It’s an extremely, extremely blustery night here in Alubarén…I feel as though if I were to go outside with the right duct-tape-to-cotton-sheet ratio, I could totally fly. However, it’s too windy to go outside, so here I sit with my computer-machine and a cup of tea (yes, it’s going to be a pee-in-the-bucket sort of night…which is essentially synonymous with “havin’ a real good time”). Igor is lying at my feet, breathing moist-ily onto the top of my foot and being adorable without exerting much effort. I recently purchased him a little green nylon collar, so he has dropped the formalities with his rag bow-tie and is now strutting about like the stud he is (literally...though not forever. Little does he know, he’s about to become the very first dog to ever be neutered in Alubarén. Possibly via machete). I am still falling in love with my puppy…he now follows me so well he doesn’t need a leash, so we parade about the pueblo together, which usually results in old ladies stopping and commenting, “Oh, how nice, you’re with your little pet…and he’s such a fatty!” (It’s true. He’s a total pig.) He’s also very “bien educado,” and draws gasps of admiration whenever he performs the only trick he’s mastered at the tender age of three months, which is to sit on command (in Spanish, obviously…he’s a bilingual pup but I think he’s more comfortable with his native tongue). Of course, he has his annoying habits…he plays this game he calls “haul all of Hayley’s shoes and flip-flops outside and hide them in the dirt,” and has also been known to tear holes in certain people’s mosquito netting, thus rendering it “pigeon netting”…but when he pops his little head and paws onto the side of my hammock and snuggles into my belly for a nap while I read, all I feel is love. SIGH. (In that sense, he’s come in quite handy when the annoying men around town ask me if I’m looking for a Honduran boyfriend…I just point to Igor and inform them that yes, thank you, I’ve found one.) (Yes, I’m aware that’s creepy and kind of gross. I just play the weird-gringa card and run away.)
Enough about Igor…so, the other day, I totally celebrated Christmas AMERICAN STYLE, WITH PRESENTS….even though it was February. Apparently, the mail system here (dude with a backpack) had a bit of kink, and let all the materialized love from the states build up, only to shoot it all to me in a torrent of goodies. The mail-lady called me and was like “Uhh dude come to the post office, and being a kid with you to carry your shit.” I RAN there, and joyfully carried home not one but MANY boxes, filled with awesome Christmas goodies, as well as like 10 letters. Humming Jingle Bells Batman Smells, I leapt into my hammock and, trying to savor every moment, carefully sliced open the cardboard boxes. It was awesome. I cried. Thanks, dudes.
When I left for Honduras, I lashed to my backpack several large and cumbersome camping things, including but not limited to my tent, hiking boots, my sleeping bag, camping pad, camp stove, mess kit, and way too many knives. “Hayley, you’re a durn fool,” said my mom. “That is some heavy-ass stuff. Also you will not use it.” To that I replied, “The HELL I won’t use it; Honduras is all jungle and I totally wanna go camping around in the jungle.” As it turns out, only part of Honduras is jungle, and for the first 7 months I had little time nor opportunity to embark on any nature adventures requiring over-night lodging. However, I recently decided the non-sweltering forests of Honduras had eluded me and my “Best Friends Clubhouse” (aka little two-person tent) long enough, and so me and some buddies finally loaded up the packs and tramped out into the woods. Specifically, I met up in Tegucigalpa with some Peace Corps friends, and we left early Saturday morning for La Tigra, Honduras’ oldest national park, which is surprisingly close and easy to get to. We loaded onto a city bus, and road it as far as Jutiapa, a community at the border of the protected area—it took about 45 minutes, I think. They unloaded us at the bottom of the mountain, and we stood there, trying to psych ourselves up for the incredibly steep multiple-hour-long hike up the paved road to the park entrance. However, the psyching was unnecessary because the ride-gods were good to us and a nice fellow with a pick-up truck pulled up before we had even shouldered our backpacks. We leapt in and enjoyed a beautiful 20 minute ride up the mountain, waving joyfully to the locals on the way and occasionally yelping with spontaneous happiness to not have had to waste half the day hauling our crap up the freeway. Once we unloaded and thanked our jalon, we took our stuff into the visitor’s center, where two cute kids immediately sold us delicious banana pancake things. We left our stuff there, and departed for what ended up being one of my favorite hikes, the cloud forest trail. It’s INCREDIBLE this place is to close to the city...you step in and you feel like you’re in Ferngully, minus Batty. The vegetation was nothing like crusty old Alubarén, where it hasn’t seen a drop of moisture since October….I’m talking hella-rainforest style. (Well, cloud forest…but since I’ve yet to see a real rain forest, this was close enough.) Huge gnarled trees, fluffy with thick mats of moss, awesome fern-trees, which previously I’d only read about, strange plants with leaves big enough to swaddle a manatee, drooping vines, all dripping with water…we saw waterfalls, and heard what I’m sure were the most exotic birds in the whole wide world (except for one particularly elusive species, which upon closer examination turned out not to be a bizarre mating call but actually a shoddy drainage pipe). Later that day, we returned to the visitor’s center and hauled our stuff about 40 minutes into the forest to the only campground in the whole park, which was rather disappointing in many respects (housed what must have been a Large Spider Family Reunion, contained only small, wet sticks for firewood, and was perhaps the only campground in the world that is, paradoxically, never flat). Despite its inconveniences, however, we pitched our two tents, had a fire both nights, and stoically avoided any spider bites, so I suppose I can’t complain. The next day we pretty much hiked the rest of the park (it’s not very large, in comparison to some you might find in the states), and my mind was totally blown. We alternated between lush, jungle-y cloud forest with towering waterfalls, cool pine groves, and stretches of golden broad-leaf deciduous woods with a thick carpeting of crunchy fall leaves on the forest floor that seemed like something out of a Midwestern calendar. We saw many caves (and spelunked most of them, thanks to my trusty headlamp) and several abandoned mines (relics from La Tigra’s relatively recent history as a mining site). The whole adventure was delightfully disorientating, and I can’t think of anything more excellent then lounging in the leaves around a little fire with several buddies, eating candy and burning stuff. The next camping outing is scheduled for April…hells of hooray, yo.
You’d think from the focus of my blogs, all I do as a Peace Corps volunteer is play with puppies and pointedly spend time in the woods that are not in my site, but that’s not the case. I totally do stuff. Summer break is finally ending here in Honduras, and the kids are grudgingly (though not nearly as grudgingly as the teachers) gearing up to get back into the scholastic groove. They start Monday, allegedly (I’ll believe it when I see it…). That’s good news for me, as the summer break season is always a bit slow for the youth-oriented volunteer. I’m going to be starting an oral-hygiene project, sponsored by Colgate, in the surrounding villages, and that should be fun…they donated a bunch of little toothbrushes and toothpastes and I’m going to train the school teachers to do little health classes on a weekly basis, while the kids practice brushing their teeth after the school snack. Should be cool…I’m also going to be teaching the teachers in my town how to teach English to their kids, using American methodology, which is nice and imperialistic but admittedly a huge improvement to the rote-memorization tactics used here. So, no one can say I don’t do stuff. That’s some stuff I’m gonna do!
As for stuff I’m currently doing, that is basically summed up in one word: BEISBOL! Las Panteras continues to be a lovable pain for me, which I’m sure any youth coach can attest to…it’s fun, and the kids are great, but good GOD they are little monsters at the same time. However, it’s a great exercise in patience for me, since half the things I want to scream at them I can’t, because I can’t do it in Spanish (I definitely yelled, “COME ON, GUYS!” today. In English). Seriously, though, they are great kids despite their constant desire to fight and shout cusses. I usually have about 20 kids at practice, which is perfect. The dynamics are very interesting…I have the older boys who played last year with John, who are great because they help the younger, newer kids, but terrible because they are constantly trying to exert their emerging manhood by seeing if they can break the rules (they can’t). The younger kids are much better behaved, but also much worse at the sport of baseball, which frustrates the older kids to no end. One of the rules of a PC baseball team is you must have as least two girls…I began the season with like seven, but now I’m down to the required two. One is little Nuria, a 10-year-old who can actually throw and catch pretty well and has a very plucky spirit. The other is Lisbeth, a nine-year-old kid with a heart of gold but who is admittedly still too immature to be trolling around with 20 older boys under the hot sun every day…a rare day indeed when she doesn’t come running, sniffling because someone hurt her feelings (the kid can’t throw or catch to save her life, which sometimes results in criticism from her more coordinated teammates). However, I’ve got to hand it to her, because she comes to every single practice with a smile on her face and always offers to help out. The kids are all bursting with enthusiasm these days, because the Peace Corps recently announced that no other than ALUBARÉN would be hosting the regional tournament this year, on the 28th of March. That is big news for us, and the kids feel very proud that the other teams are going to have to truck up our steamy mountain to play in the tournament. We will play against two other teams, Pespire and Reitoca, and the team that wins will go to the National Championship in Tegucigalpa. I really hope we make it…the kids want it so bad, and since they went last year, if we don’t make it this year I will feel like I’ve failed as a skilled baseball coach (which I admittedly am not).
Other than that, I spent a lot of time doing what I’ve been doing since the day I arrived, which is socializing with the townfolk. My new neighbors, especially…Tina and Rubuen, their two children Alex (19) and Nely (26), and Nely’s three adorable children, Alison (4), Noel (6), and Douglas (about 17 months). When I’m not over there, sitting in hammocks in the shade and sipping on sweet coffee, everyone’s over here, sitting in hammocks in the shade, sipping sweet coffee and watching the kids search for “cherries” in the dirt. I truly love them. And I know they love me…the other day, when I was randomly barfing up my guts without avail for 24 hours, Tina brought me several cups of cinnamon tea and was so concerned she almost carried me to the health clinic (I recovered, however). The first thing I do in the morning when I let the dog out is shout GOOD MORNING! to them, to which the kids always bellow back GOOD MORNING! before racing over to harvest any cherries the wind knocked down during the night. They bring me tortillas, I bring them beans. They bring me bananas, I bring them melons. I share my Christmas goodies, and Tina presents me with an embroidered tortilla-cloth she made just for me. It’s like having real family, right across the street…I wish I could help them more. They’re so poor. Ruben, the father/grandfather, has a bad case of Parkinson’s and shakes so bad he can’t even dress himself, but they can’t afford medicine. Tonight, while Tina and I were sitting outside watching the day turn to dusk and the kids charge up and down the road engaged in Coke-bottle-cap warfare, she broke down into tears and asked me if there was any cure for Parkinson’s. I had to tell her no…she told me some man on the bus told her he had the cure and sold her some little bottles of liquid. I held her hand and she cried for the husband she used to have, who is slowly turning in another child for her to care for…every night, she told me, she prays that they will discover the cure for Parkinson’s for her husband will go back to normal. And yet despite the intense emotional and physical challenges this family faces, I’ve never met a happier, more loving and joyful group of people. They appreciate everything. That’s what I love about them…they’re so genuine.
Bedtime…I love you guys.
Love and paz,
Hayley
Hey, chochachos! It’s an extremely, extremely blustery night here in Alubarén…I feel as though if I were to go outside with the right duct-tape-to-cotton-sheet ratio, I could totally fly. However, it’s too windy to go outside, so here I sit with my computer-machine and a cup of tea (yes, it’s going to be a pee-in-the-bucket sort of night…which is essentially synonymous with “havin’ a real good time”). Igor is lying at my feet, breathing moist-ily onto the top of my foot and being adorable without exerting much effort. I recently purchased him a little green nylon collar, so he has dropped the formalities with his rag bow-tie and is now strutting about like the stud he is (literally...though not forever. Little does he know, he’s about to become the very first dog to ever be neutered in Alubarén. Possibly via machete). I am still falling in love with my puppy…he now follows me so well he doesn’t need a leash, so we parade about the pueblo together, which usually results in old ladies stopping and commenting, “Oh, how nice, you’re with your little pet…and he’s such a fatty!” (It’s true. He’s a total pig.) He’s also very “bien educado,” and draws gasps of admiration whenever he performs the only trick he’s mastered at the tender age of three months, which is to sit on command (in Spanish, obviously…he’s a bilingual pup but I think he’s more comfortable with his native tongue). Of course, he has his annoying habits…he plays this game he calls “haul all of Hayley’s shoes and flip-flops outside and hide them in the dirt,” and has also been known to tear holes in certain people’s mosquito netting, thus rendering it “pigeon netting”…but when he pops his little head and paws onto the side of my hammock and snuggles into my belly for a nap while I read, all I feel is love. SIGH. (In that sense, he’s come in quite handy when the annoying men around town ask me if I’m looking for a Honduran boyfriend…I just point to Igor and inform them that yes, thank you, I’ve found one.) (Yes, I’m aware that’s creepy and kind of gross. I just play the weird-gringa card and run away.)
Enough about Igor…so, the other day, I totally celebrated Christmas AMERICAN STYLE, WITH PRESENTS….even though it was February. Apparently, the mail system here (dude with a backpack) had a bit of kink, and let all the materialized love from the states build up, only to shoot it all to me in a torrent of goodies. The mail-lady called me and was like “Uhh dude come to the post office, and being a kid with you to carry your shit.” I RAN there, and joyfully carried home not one but MANY boxes, filled with awesome Christmas goodies, as well as like 10 letters. Humming Jingle Bells Batman Smells, I leapt into my hammock and, trying to savor every moment, carefully sliced open the cardboard boxes. It was awesome. I cried. Thanks, dudes.
When I left for Honduras, I lashed to my backpack several large and cumbersome camping things, including but not limited to my tent, hiking boots, my sleeping bag, camping pad, camp stove, mess kit, and way too many knives. “Hayley, you’re a durn fool,” said my mom. “That is some heavy-ass stuff. Also you will not use it.” To that I replied, “The HELL I won’t use it; Honduras is all jungle and I totally wanna go camping around in the jungle.” As it turns out, only part of Honduras is jungle, and for the first 7 months I had little time nor opportunity to embark on any nature adventures requiring over-night lodging. However, I recently decided the non-sweltering forests of Honduras had eluded me and my “Best Friends Clubhouse” (aka little two-person tent) long enough, and so me and some buddies finally loaded up the packs and tramped out into the woods. Specifically, I met up in Tegucigalpa with some Peace Corps friends, and we left early Saturday morning for La Tigra, Honduras’ oldest national park, which is surprisingly close and easy to get to. We loaded onto a city bus, and road it as far as Jutiapa, a community at the border of the protected area—it took about 45 minutes, I think. They unloaded us at the bottom of the mountain, and we stood there, trying to psych ourselves up for the incredibly steep multiple-hour-long hike up the paved road to the park entrance. However, the psyching was unnecessary because the ride-gods were good to us and a nice fellow with a pick-up truck pulled up before we had even shouldered our backpacks. We leapt in and enjoyed a beautiful 20 minute ride up the mountain, waving joyfully to the locals on the way and occasionally yelping with spontaneous happiness to not have had to waste half the day hauling our crap up the freeway. Once we unloaded and thanked our jalon, we took our stuff into the visitor’s center, where two cute kids immediately sold us delicious banana pancake things. We left our stuff there, and departed for what ended up being one of my favorite hikes, the cloud forest trail. It’s INCREDIBLE this place is to close to the city...you step in and you feel like you’re in Ferngully, minus Batty. The vegetation was nothing like crusty old Alubarén, where it hasn’t seen a drop of moisture since October….I’m talking hella-rainforest style. (Well, cloud forest…but since I’ve yet to see a real rain forest, this was close enough.) Huge gnarled trees, fluffy with thick mats of moss, awesome fern-trees, which previously I’d only read about, strange plants with leaves big enough to swaddle a manatee, drooping vines, all dripping with water…we saw waterfalls, and heard what I’m sure were the most exotic birds in the whole wide world (except for one particularly elusive species, which upon closer examination turned out not to be a bizarre mating call but actually a shoddy drainage pipe). Later that day, we returned to the visitor’s center and hauled our stuff about 40 minutes into the forest to the only campground in the whole park, which was rather disappointing in many respects (housed what must have been a Large Spider Family Reunion, contained only small, wet sticks for firewood, and was perhaps the only campground in the world that is, paradoxically, never flat). Despite its inconveniences, however, we pitched our two tents, had a fire both nights, and stoically avoided any spider bites, so I suppose I can’t complain. The next day we pretty much hiked the rest of the park (it’s not very large, in comparison to some you might find in the states), and my mind was totally blown. We alternated between lush, jungle-y cloud forest with towering waterfalls, cool pine groves, and stretches of golden broad-leaf deciduous woods with a thick carpeting of crunchy fall leaves on the forest floor that seemed like something out of a Midwestern calendar. We saw many caves (and spelunked most of them, thanks to my trusty headlamp) and several abandoned mines (relics from La Tigra’s relatively recent history as a mining site). The whole adventure was delightfully disorientating, and I can’t think of anything more excellent then lounging in the leaves around a little fire with several buddies, eating candy and burning stuff. The next camping outing is scheduled for April…hells of hooray, yo.
You’d think from the focus of my blogs, all I do as a Peace Corps volunteer is play with puppies and pointedly spend time in the woods that are not in my site, but that’s not the case. I totally do stuff. Summer break is finally ending here in Honduras, and the kids are grudgingly (though not nearly as grudgingly as the teachers) gearing up to get back into the scholastic groove. They start Monday, allegedly (I’ll believe it when I see it…). That’s good news for me, as the summer break season is always a bit slow for the youth-oriented volunteer. I’m going to be starting an oral-hygiene project, sponsored by Colgate, in the surrounding villages, and that should be fun…they donated a bunch of little toothbrushes and toothpastes and I’m going to train the school teachers to do little health classes on a weekly basis, while the kids practice brushing their teeth after the school snack. Should be cool…I’m also going to be teaching the teachers in my town how to teach English to their kids, using American methodology, which is nice and imperialistic but admittedly a huge improvement to the rote-memorization tactics used here. So, no one can say I don’t do stuff. That’s some stuff I’m gonna do!
As for stuff I’m currently doing, that is basically summed up in one word: BEISBOL! Las Panteras continues to be a lovable pain for me, which I’m sure any youth coach can attest to…it’s fun, and the kids are great, but good GOD they are little monsters at the same time. However, it’s a great exercise in patience for me, since half the things I want to scream at them I can’t, because I can’t do it in Spanish (I definitely yelled, “COME ON, GUYS!” today. In English). Seriously, though, they are great kids despite their constant desire to fight and shout cusses. I usually have about 20 kids at practice, which is perfect. The dynamics are very interesting…I have the older boys who played last year with John, who are great because they help the younger, newer kids, but terrible because they are constantly trying to exert their emerging manhood by seeing if they can break the rules (they can’t). The younger kids are much better behaved, but also much worse at the sport of baseball, which frustrates the older kids to no end. One of the rules of a PC baseball team is you must have as least two girls…I began the season with like seven, but now I’m down to the required two. One is little Nuria, a 10-year-old who can actually throw and catch pretty well and has a very plucky spirit. The other is Lisbeth, a nine-year-old kid with a heart of gold but who is admittedly still too immature to be trolling around with 20 older boys under the hot sun every day…a rare day indeed when she doesn’t come running, sniffling because someone hurt her feelings (the kid can’t throw or catch to save her life, which sometimes results in criticism from her more coordinated teammates). However, I’ve got to hand it to her, because she comes to every single practice with a smile on her face and always offers to help out. The kids are all bursting with enthusiasm these days, because the Peace Corps recently announced that no other than ALUBARÉN would be hosting the regional tournament this year, on the 28th of March. That is big news for us, and the kids feel very proud that the other teams are going to have to truck up our steamy mountain to play in the tournament. We will play against two other teams, Pespire and Reitoca, and the team that wins will go to the National Championship in Tegucigalpa. I really hope we make it…the kids want it so bad, and since they went last year, if we don’t make it this year I will feel like I’ve failed as a skilled baseball coach (which I admittedly am not).
Other than that, I spent a lot of time doing what I’ve been doing since the day I arrived, which is socializing with the townfolk. My new neighbors, especially…Tina and Rubuen, their two children Alex (19) and Nely (26), and Nely’s three adorable children, Alison (4), Noel (6), and Douglas (about 17 months). When I’m not over there, sitting in hammocks in the shade and sipping on sweet coffee, everyone’s over here, sitting in hammocks in the shade, sipping sweet coffee and watching the kids search for “cherries” in the dirt. I truly love them. And I know they love me…the other day, when I was randomly barfing up my guts without avail for 24 hours, Tina brought me several cups of cinnamon tea and was so concerned she almost carried me to the health clinic (I recovered, however). The first thing I do in the morning when I let the dog out is shout GOOD MORNING! to them, to which the kids always bellow back GOOD MORNING! before racing over to harvest any cherries the wind knocked down during the night. They bring me tortillas, I bring them beans. They bring me bananas, I bring them melons. I share my Christmas goodies, and Tina presents me with an embroidered tortilla-cloth she made just for me. It’s like having real family, right across the street…I wish I could help them more. They’re so poor. Ruben, the father/grandfather, has a bad case of Parkinson’s and shakes so bad he can’t even dress himself, but they can’t afford medicine. Tonight, while Tina and I were sitting outside watching the day turn to dusk and the kids charge up and down the road engaged in Coke-bottle-cap warfare, she broke down into tears and asked me if there was any cure for Parkinson’s. I had to tell her no…she told me some man on the bus told her he had the cure and sold her some little bottles of liquid. I held her hand and she cried for the husband she used to have, who is slowly turning in another child for her to care for…every night, she told me, she prays that they will discover the cure for Parkinson’s for her husband will go back to normal. And yet despite the intense emotional and physical challenges this family faces, I’ve never met a happier, more loving and joyful group of people. They appreciate everything. That’s what I love about them…they’re so genuine.
Bedtime…I love you guys.
Love and paz,
Hayley
2 comments:
Awesome photos!!
I love Igor's eyes, they're soooo blue! :)
"It’s INCREDIBLE this place is to close to the city...you step in and you feel like you’re in Ferngully, minus Batty." But... he's the fun part?
You are awesome-awesome: I can't imagine trying to coach a youth baseball team IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE. I am completely impressed (which is pretty much the same as my constant state of "totally impressed" by you). :)
Much love, and hugs and kisses...
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, HAYLEY!!!
Much love,
xo
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