its a long one

It’s been a busy week. I left to go to a Peace Corps workshop. This workshop was on the other side of the country, and was for my Water and Sanitation group on how to do a wastewater project. I knew about this in advance, but being Peace Corps in Honduras, it wasn’t exactly smooth.

Now, my main counterpart was going to go with me, but less than a week before we were supposed to leave, he tells me he can’t go. Well, then I was thinking, I’ll go on my own and just take a few days afterwards to travel in the west. Then one day I go in the office, two days before leaving, and my counterpart tells me one guy is going with me. I don’t recognize this name. Hmm, so the morning comes to get on the bus and although I had tried to contact him twice, I am not sure we will be in the same bus (through an intermediary, I suggested the 5am bus, then to realize 6am was ok). I’m on the bus not really knowing what to, and someone I kind of recognize gets on the bus, but walks right past me. So, the bus takes off and the guy does not respond to another text message. The bus takes off for Tegucigalpa and oh well, I think I am travelling alone again.

In Teguc, the guy who I saw earlier comes up to me and he is the guy I am bringing. This works, we get off at the bus stop, get a good fare to the next bus stop. Side note: here you kind of barter for the taxi fare, its not a generic per distance rate. We get to the next bus terminal 10 minutes before the bus leaves. Now, we took the good bus up to San Pedro Sula. Its expensive, but very nice. Even the stop in the middle is better than the other buses; it goes to a nicer restaurant and gives you enough time to eat a real meal.

We get into the terminal in San Pedro, and in 15 minutes we are leaving in the last bus of the day. We just had really good timing. Now, it took us 11 hours, which was really, really good. I was thinking 13 hours, so I was happy with 11. The drive was really beautiful.

The next day my counterpart and I decided to go out for a walk. The thing about this trip is that a nasty cold front was going through. You have to imagine me who lives in an area with an average low of 72 degrees in the coldest month of the year, going into a place that was in the 50s all week. My counterpart didn’t even bring a sweater, so part of walking around was going to find him a jacket. We did so and I found an indoor market that reminded me very much like a flea market. When my siblings and I were younger, one of our aunts brought us to flea markets a lot, and so it was great to walk though there.

We then followed that up by walking around the city. Well, we walked the nicer parts of the city. I don’t think there were any really bad places, but after one large loop and shopping, it was 2 hours later, and so we went back to the hotel early. After lunch we had the first part of the meeting. It is a part that is supposed to address how is our work relationships are going, what we are doing, how we can work better together. That kind of stuff.

The next morning starts the real presentation on how to have a wastewater system. It included a background on theories of it and old ways and new ways. Then it went into how to design the connection sewer system. This day was very hard to follow because this guy was talking about 100 miles an hour about very technical material.

Everyone is having problems keeping their attention on the presentation. Now, half the people in my group are engineers, and even they, who have seen this material before, are struggling to keep our attention on the guy. The other people have just given up, and are downloading things online and chatting with friends. At the end of the day I was worried about how my counterpart was doing because it was very technical material and he doesn’t have a technical background. I went up and started talking to him and was surprised at how much he got out of it. He was paying attention the whole time, and while he didn’t understand the details, he got all the large details.

The next day continued in very much the same way. To celebrate the last day, the volunteers went out for good pizza and then some karaoke.

The morning we all dispersed, I got a ride with a Peace Corps staff member who was in the area and travelling on the same road as my friend and I. He is the head honcho for the business group, and it was really good talking to him. We talked to him about his experiences working with the Peace Corps and volunteers. How are different groups, what do you think about the impact that PC has on Honduras, etc. It was just really nice to talk openly to someone who in Honduran and gets to see what PC does for his country. He also had a different opinion than most volunteers on the political stuff that is going on within the office, and that’s all I am saying on that.

He was in the area preparing for the next group of volunteers. Before sending a volunteer to a town, there is generally two or more visits there. The PC staff need to know that the town wants that volunteer, that the counterpart is going to take on the responsibility, and that the town is safe enough for a volunteer. We stopped in a small town along the highway that had requested a town, and we (my friend and I) got to listen in on their conversation, getting to know how the PC end of site development goes. Also, it gave me more of an insight into the business project.

Finally we arrive in the town with our friends and I find out an interesting fact about my friend. She has done a ton of work with GPS/GIS, and its because she couldn’t find her way out of a paper bag. Eventually we find the house, and there are a bunch of people there. The time there is nice. It was a volunteer’s birthday in the town, so people had come in. The volunteer and his wife prepared a great meal and everyone just kind of chilled out. The next day we went and got some good traditional Honduran food before my friend and I took off again for another town. Now, because its after the fact, we jaloned out there, which is Honduran for hitchhiked. Yes, Mom, I know its not the safest, but we missed the last bus.

The drive between those two towns is amazing. I can’t think of another work to describe it. And from the back of a pick-up truck, sitting high on coffee sacks, it was great. The funny thing is that the road would be considered impassable from the standpoint of most Americans, but it’s a major byway. From the other end, they had started building a real highway, but it never got finished. A few years ago they just stopped.

Side note: this is not so uncommon. Sometimes, in many different projects, when there is a change in leadership (mayor), the new mayor will stop the old mayor’s projects. In Siguatepeque, a mayor stopped construction of a plaza in the center of town although it was nearly completed. By time a mayor who came along that wanted to complete the plaza, which had become an eye soar for ten years, came around, it cost ten times more to finish it. Now the town has a beautiful central plaza.

In town, I meet my friend’s contact there. He is a 70 year old guy named Fred that is just great. He was one of the first PC volunteers ever, in Pakistan. I have to give that first generation some serious credit, to go someplace you don’t know much about, and not to have any one that you can ask for reference, that takes guts. Anyways, in his working life he became a water treatment technician in the states, and is now working with a non-profit agency in the states as the go between man between them and local agencies here in Honduras. He is just an amazing wealth of knowledge. I have the education to be here, but I am completely under-qualified compared to this guy with the experience. He has worked in projects in China and Haiti as well.

A shout out here to those in Haiti impacted by the earthquake. If everyone could take a moment of silence for the thousands dead and millions affected.

Anyways, going back to meeting with this guy. He told my friend and me much about his work and what they are doing. We brainstormed on how to improve some things there and how we could bring some of what they are doing there into our communities. We went and saw the water treatment facility that had been built there, or one of the facilities and I was surprised at how complex and simple it was at the same time. The basic properties of treatment are explained in kind of these complex ideas but they can be put into action easily and not so complexly. I was very happy to see that.

Finally the day comes to leave there and go back to my site. That morning I took the time to meet some of the Hondurans that Fred works with and to check out their water quality lab. I will be helping my counterparts with their lab and so that was good experience for me.

The ride into Teguc was rather uneventful. The thing about teguc is that there is no central bus station, and where the buses leave for my area leave out of a different area than the buses for the West. I get in a taxi and ask to go directly (meaning no dropping off five other people first) and I seriously asked the guy five times how much it was going to be. Remember, its not a set rate. The guy proves to be a bit of an ass during the ride, but whatever, I would never be seeing him again. Then he starts talking to me about dollars. He didn’t speak so clearly and only used slang so I was having a difficult problem understanding him. He says something about 15 dollars. Well, in my mind I translate that to almost 300 lempira, and I think he means it would be that much to get a taxi ride all the way to my town. I remarked on how expensive that would be and hence I was going to a bus station. He keeps bringing it up though, and I realize he thinks I am going to pay 15 dollars. Besides the fact that the amount is ridiculous, I had already told him about five time that I didn’t have American cash on me, that I lived in Honduras and saw no reason to walk around with dollars.

The guy almost misses my bus, and as he is pulling over I am now is an almost yelling match at how much he is trying to charge me. I have done that route several times and each time it is 80 Lempira, or quite a lot less that the 300 he wanted. I hand him the money as I get out (he only got 100 Lempira because I didn’t have the correct change for 80) and he starts yelling that he wouldn’t have crossed town for that much. Lessons: always answer your passenger when they ask how much and don’t be an ass. I was so furious when I bought my bus ticket my hands were literally shaking. I have been lucky in the fact that he was the first that tried to completely fraud me of money. Others have charged a little more than they would for a Honduran, but he was the first ridiculous one that saw the color of my skin and thought he could get away with that bull. I live in Honduras people, I know how much things cost.

Ahh, not that my rant is over, not much else is up. I am home and dealing with my hyper active dog again. I had to lock her up in the office today so I could get some work done around the house. I have a tiny garden at my house and she has destroyed it so I went in and did some repairs. The other thing is she started eating her poo again, so I needed to clean the area of poo. I hadn’t realized how much was in there beforehand. Now I know to check every other day or so.

That’s all I feel like writing for now. Happy Belated Birthday to Dad. Happy one month to Lucas.

Jill