it's not that long, i promise

Long, long time and no update. Well, things have been moving pretty slow around here. I have also lost the desire to blog and share every miniscule detail of my life, because everything here has become so normal to me. My dog ate something of mine: normal. Heavy rains: normal. Blunders in Spanish: normal.

Three weeks ago now I left to go to the states. I went to Erin’s wedding in AZ, hence why no one knew I was in the states. After some snafus trying to get there, I had a wonderful visit. I gained at least 5 pounds on the trip thanks to eating all that wonderful food.

Most of the visit was hanging out and getting ready for the wedding. Kelsey was there already so it was the three of us. One day we went up into the mountains and drove around. Did you know there was a ski resort right outside of Tucson, AZ? Yeah, the mountains are high enough that it snows there. Amazing.

The wedding was gorgeous, eventually I will put up a pic or two. The wedding was in the Catholic church that the groom’s parents belong to and the reception was at a country club. Now, the four of us (adding Devika now) met/ became good friends due to playing tennis together in college, so we took some shots on the tennis courts there; some fun ones where we are playing tennis using the bouquets as rackets and some pretty posing pictures as well. I can’t wait to see those!

Since then I have been on post-vacation vacation. The last few days I have finally gotten back into doing a little work- little being the key phrase there.

What work I have done is mostly for a stove project. The people who live in the villages, and a good portion of those who live in towns and cities have wood burning stoves for cooking. These stoves are generally very inefficient and cause major health problems because the smoke sits in the room and enters the eyes and the lungs of those in the house. Therefore the designs for these stoves have been modified to reduce the amount of wood needed and adding in a simple chimney to remove the smoke from the household.

In the community of San Lorenzo (note you will not find this community on ANY map) I have been working on a stove project in conjunction with a missionary who lives in the city nearby. I help with the building of the stoves and training of the women on how to build them, and she provides the money basically.

A note on small villages here: Each community kind of has a community board for community projects. These include small things like organizing workers to clear the sides of the road of debris, to big projects like building schools. Now, this community currently has 2 big projects, they are building a park (designed by fellow PCV Nathan) and a community center (also designed by Nathan). Each household is required to send people to work on the project. Not doing so does have consequences.

What the missionary has done is to increase participation by rewarding extra work. The big budget items for the stoves are the metal plates that serve as the cooking area and the chimney. Now, it costs less than $30 to build a stove, but if you are a subsistence farmer, this can be a lot of money. The missionary stated that those households that contributed two extra days of work to the projects can get the metal plate and the chimney.

We have used one lady in particular in the stove projects and she has become the leader for the project. A few months ago she was brought to a Women in Agriculture meeting to learn me about better farming practices and how to become a female leader in a very male dominated area. She returned to town too shy to actually try to be a leader, but through this project those things she has learned are coming out and she has taken charge.

You may have noticed that I have used “the women” and “she” a lot, well this is because this is a women’s project. Because women spend hours a day cooking (beans take a long time to make) they are the ones with the worst health problems coming from the poor stoves. It is also to say that if you want something, you must do it yourselves. And this has certainly done its job in San Lorenzo.

When we started the project, I had the women help me with the making of the stoves. Now, men are involved in that they cut the adobe blocks into the shapes that are needed for the stoves and to cut the hole in the roof for the ceiling. Nobody takes a machete away from a man. The first few stoves consisted of me doing the majority of the work, with me explaining why I wanted the blocks shaped in a certain way and why they should be arranged in a certain way.

The last time I went there (this was the fourth trip for stoves) I wanted to back out of the building part and make sure the women could do it themselves, making it a sustainable project. The first house I went to that day was to the leader of the project and she already had several of the adobe cut and the rest arranged on her adobe table in the shape of her stove. Clearly she understood.

The second house was a woman who had only helped on one stove. A few women come up to see what is going on and in the end they wound out helping with the stoves. Now, my forever stomach problem came up in the middle of this stove and I had to sit outside when there was a lack of work going on inside. The women stepped right up and finished, doing an excellent job. Now, thanks to my stomach ails, I decided to take an extra long lunch break and listen to the world cup match on the radio with the man of the house. Towards the end of the match he let me get on his horse and ride about the community a little. It was fun.

On the ride, his son (who was walking ahead of the horse so that the horse would just follow him and eliminate my need for learning how to drive the beast) takes us to a house which I was getting a stove. I am happy and excited, and tell them that I will be down in a bit to start their stove. I go ahead on the horse a little more and head back to the house. After regulation period was up (this particular game went to overtime and penalty kicks) I went down to the house and realized I had misunderstood the conversation. The house was slated to get a new stove that day, and while I was listening away to the radio and chatting it up with Tito, the ladies of the community went right ahead and built the whole stove without me. Good for them!

Then I go to another house where the women were in the process of building a stove. I like to build the stoves without the mud to see how the blocks need to be cut and to size the thing, a dry-build if you will, then the actual building of the stove takes a few minutes. This build was great though. The women were on top of everything. They were ordering the men on how to cut the adobe, they were discussing the sizing of the stove, and how they could modify their own stoves, and at one point a man tried to tell them they were doing it wrong. This was a great moment. They women banded up and pretty much told him to mind his own business because they knew what they were doing. I was offered a chair and just watched this unfold from the sidelines.

I hope you don’t think I am man-bashing here. That is certainly not my intention. This is a very machismo culture, very man oriented where women are often treated as second class citizens. By enabling women, you are impacted that half of society, but then they are educating their kids differently in the home, making certain changes in attitudes permanent. If these women and men can see what they can do on their own, they can make improvements in their daily lives and see eventually need less direction from the outside. These people are villagers and they are always going to be villagers (again not using villagers as a derogatory name, but to classify them differently from someone who lives in a city and has more interaction with the world and technology) so the goal is not to change that but to help them live more comfortable lives.

World Cup action: I hope that some have you have at least noticed that the FIFA World Cup passed. As I am writing this, the third place match has yet to be played, nor the final, but who knows when I will actually post this.

Honduras qualified for the tournament for the first time in a LONG time. The whole qualification process was a big deal for us. Honduras did not make it past the round robin play. They lost two matches and tied the third (0-0). The US did better, but was still eliminated early on.

Whenever there is a match here, the town is empty. I live right near the park and when Honduras was playing, it was empty. This is very abnormal. The park is always a busy place. I watched half of one game on a big screen at a bar, but the smoke got to be too much and we left for someone’s house. This is a soccer country, so everyone can tell you details about all the teams and who they support.

Carnecerias: Roughly translated as butcher shops. I learned something new this morning, and it was when the butcher shops get their meat. I left my house a little after 5:30am to walk my dog. There was another activity planned for later, so I wanted to walk her early, plus I was awake. Anyways, while on our first circuit around, I see two guys lift what appeared to be half a cow out of the back of a pick-up truck and into the market.

I had never considered myself a city girl, but have appreciated the fact that I can get my meat in little Styrofoam packages in the supermarket. This, in my opinion, is good. Those people who complain about the lack on knowing where your food comes from is baloney, I know it was once a cow, but I don’t want to be reminded of that by seeing half a cow pulled off a not so sanitary truckbed. The thing had large bars around it, which means live cows probably ride in their occasionally so that means that the meat is resting on top of cow poo. See, separation of meat from the farm is good.

The second part of why this is important relates to dogs. As the butcher shops carve up their halves of cows and other assorted animals, they have some bones lying about, and being nice people, they throw them out into the street occasionally for the dogs to eat. Thus, around 6am, there are packs of dogs that travel from butcher shop to butcher shop. Luckily for me, they have a healthy fear of people, and don’t approach while I am walking Seca.

Mail: I haven’t received any mail in over two months. This is crazy. Someone, and new people are definitely allowed into this bandwagon, should send me a letter. Nothing fancy, just write on paper “How are you? I am fine,” and possible a few other details about what is going on in your life.