Paletas

Necessity is the mother of invention or so some say. I think that Yarumela is the mother of creativity. When you are in a small town with nothing to do you have to find things to kill the time, my activities usually range from attempting to run to cutting hair, or in my case giving myself a mustache. There are always little things to entertain yourself with, but this last week I finally decided to something beneficial for myself, my family, and the community... OK, that might be a little too far, but I'm proud of my work. When it is ridiculously hot in La Paz there is nothing better than a good paleta or charamusca, essentially a sketchy street vender popsicle or a frozen bag of flavored ice. After my obsession slowly started to take a toll on my bank account I decided that I'd do something about it. The other day i went to the pulperia (corner store) and bought some plastic cups, popsicle sticks, found a stash of limes and went to work. I quickly cranked out 16 very sour lime popsicles to share with my family and everyone who wanted or could stand the sour punch. The next day, in order to appease the sweet glands of all Hondurans I made some amazing paletas de piña. Although it's not the most exciting activity I'm having fun and spreading 6oz cups of joy to the residents of Yarumela. Next on my flavor list are mango, mora, guava, horchata, coco, chocolate, and the ultimate flavor combo thanks to John, peanut butter-milk-Oreo.

La Tormenta

So as I was writing about the orphanage I was very rudely interrupted by a gigantic rain, wind, thunder and lightning storm. It started to rain about 8:00 and by 8:10 it was a full scale torment. It is still pouring rain about 45 min later but i think the worst is over...hopefully. This is arguably the hardest I've ever seen or experienced rain in my life, but being from Seattle I'm loving it while my family is freaking out. The rain is so hard it is nearly impossible to talk, i even resorted to yelling in English just for fun because nobody could hear or understand me, the fact that we have tin roofs that act like kettle drums probably don't help the sound and there are many holes where the rain is coming in, but at least it keeps the majority out. I have also noticed another key difference between the American and Honduran lifestyle, as they ran for cover I did what seemed natural to me, i kicked off my shoes, tossed my phone and wallet in my room and ran through the rain, being soaked to the bone within 5 seconds, my family looked at me like i was crazy, but i had a great time none the less. Also, I'm not really sure what happened, but the US Army seemed to have the same mentality as me because there was at least one helicopter that was flying very low over my house for a while, who knows what they were doing, but word on the calle is that there are some houses in Yarumela that profit from illegal activities, maybe it had something to do with that...who knows. anyway, I'm going to get back the writing about the orphanage and listening to my music with headphones just to try to lessen the bulla from all the lluvia.

El Orfanato

So part of being in the ´avanzado´ group in terms of Spanish abilities means that instead of having 4 hours of normal Spanish class every day we get to actually do something with the Spanish that we already know. I got the last pick out of the group of five of us, but I’m positive that I got the best project, maybe I’m a little biased, but whatever. I get the privilege of getting to work at Hogar San José, an orphanage in La Paz, working alongside Fortunato, a PCV from Seattle, and Sister Edith, an amazing nun from Honduras with a sweet story. In short the orphanage is located in the remains of an abandoned hospital and houses 23 kids from 9months old to 13 years old, run by the Sister and it receives little if no funding from the government. From that quick description you can probably get a little picture of what’s going on, but it is an amazing place. I am in charge of getting records and medical information for the kids, a very important issue from the health aspect, but it is also part of the process for them to hopefully get government help. I am in the process of taking pictures, weight, height, MUAC (middle upper arm calculation) measurements, as well as creating and finishing records for the kids, including going to the La Paz registry department to get birth certificates. This is great practice for me, related to the AIN-C program but also getting me experience talking to government officials, doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals. The thing that really makes my project the best isn’t the work I’m doing though, it’s getting to hang out with the kids and get to know them. After a long day of technical training there’s nothing better than while walking and sweating through the streets of La Paz to have a group of kids run up to you shouting your name and giving you huge hugs, that’s why my project is awesome.

my address... for now

Stuart Fluharty, PCT
Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz
Apartado Postal 3158
Tegucigalpa, D.C 11102
Honduras

Fiesta de Baile 4/3?

La fiesta de balie (the dance party)
So last weekend a couple of us went to the town dance, but didn’t end up dancing, partially because we had to leave early but also because we didn’t know how to dance Honcuran style. My host dad had a good time making fun of our lack of dancing skills so I challenged him to teach us how to. After some planning we decided that Wednesday night would be good because we didn’t have class on Thursday. Tuesday night after another late night painting party (my family, relatives, and I have been painting the house, usually starting at 9 pm and going till 1 AM… don’t ask why) my two host cousins (who can dance like crazy) gave me a couple of dance lessons, a quick intro to Punta, Salsa, Meringue, Bachata, and Reggeton. I learned a little, but not much, but they had fun with it. Last night everything came together and we had the dance party at my house. It started a little slow, like everything in Honduras we didn’t get going till about an hour later then planned, but finally people started to show up and my dad started bumping the music. We ended up dancing every type of Honduran dance possible, or at least the girls did, the guys mostly clung to the walls. It ended up being really fun, about a dozen gringos and probably that many Hondurans dancing the night away, muy cheque.

Lobo, the love of my life 4/3

So Honduras has been full of surprises, especially after coming to Yarumela, mostly all for the good, I just never feel like I know what’s going to happen, why it’s happening, or who I’m talking to and how they are related to me. One example happened last night, after having a fun and full day of adventures I found myself at my house with half the neighborhood kids running around like usual, but at around 8:30 my host dad asked if I was going to help paint the house, not wanting to be rude I said ‘claro’. for the next 3 ½ hours my dad, me, and one of my ‘primas’ (I think) painted the outside of our house while bumping latin music for the whole town to hear. As if yesterday wasn’t random enough, today i got home from classes to find another 20 people at my house, we ended up having an impromptu family dinner party capped off by another painting party at 10:30 PM. Although some of these things catch me off guard, the biggest change to my life here has been that I found the love of my life… in the shape of a 2 month old ‘siberiano’ (husky) puppy named Lobo. When I got here I didn’t even know he existed for the first 2 days because my family didn’t pay him any attention and he is in a small cage behind the house. I have taken it upon myself to love this little puppy as much as I can, a concept foreign to most Hondurans. He is a tinny little guy, pretty skinny and has fleas, but I am absolutely head over heals in love with him. So far I daily clean his cage, give him water, and sneak him my extra food from meals, I also made him a makeshift dog house, donated my only comb to him to keep him clean, and last weekend I gave him a bath. I’m pretty sure my family thinks I’m a little crazy for caring for this dog so much, but they are starting to see that he is really only happy when I’m around him, nobody else gets this much of a reaction, there have even been hints from people talking about how Lobo has ‘a new owner’, although I’m not really sure what to make of these comments if there is any way that I could keep this dog I’d do anything. Although I know the odds are slim that they will ‘regalarme’ him, I keep hoping and keep making hints in hope that they come to realize how much I love him. I’ll keep yall updated and hopefully post some pics of him because right now he’s the highlight of every day for me, oh ‘mi amor’….

El baile en Yarumela 3/27

3/27 El baile en Yarumela
Today was a very Honduran day, hand washing clothes, hand washing my dog, and wandering around Yarumela trying to find something to do. Finally I ran into some other gringos and we decided we’d go to a play put on by the Instituto de la Juventud, a group that we have met before. The play was supposed to start at 3, some said 3:30, others said there was a second showing at 4, but after an hour and a half of waiting we realized that it, like many events here, got cancelled…fijese que… So instead of being active members of the community we went out and got ice cream and drinks. The day was not lost though because there was a community dance planned in Yarumela for the night. I discussed the safety factor of the dance with my parents before leaving, they thought it would be OK so they dressed me up and my dad even sprayed some cologne on me…thanks dad. Somebody said it started at 7 so we thought we’d show up fashionably late at 7:30... But this being Honduras of course it didn’t start at 7 or even 8 so a group of us hung out and discussed the chances of the worldwide hour long blackout that was ‘planned’ to happen from 8-9... I don’t know where that rumor came from, but the power did not even flicker. Since the dance was pushed back so much we hung out with my parents and grandma as they talked about how we should dance, how to ‘matar el guano’ and how on Sunday we could all have dance lessons from my dad. We finally showed up to the dance at around 8:45 to find out that the actual dance doesn’t start till 10:00, but that there is a dance competition before that, we figured ‘why not?’ and proceeded in. there ended up being 7 or 8 groups that danced/sang/break danced to very inappropriate English songs or to regaeton music, entertaining, but not always appropriate… whatever. Because half the group had to be home by 10ish we didn’t get to stay for the actual dance, probably for the best, but there is always dance lessons tomorrow to look forward to. Happy semana santa!

Yarumela For FBT 3/24

3/24 I have now been in Honduras for a month, it’s crazy how fast it is going already. I am now living in Yarumela, a little town outside of La Paz, where we have the majority of our training sessions. Yarumela is really small, all dirt roads and not much going on, but my family is really nice. When I got here they made me a welcome sign and have been very welcoming. There is the mom and dad, Carmen and Misael, who are in their mid 30’s, two kids, Litzy who is 9 and Misael who is 1.5. They also have a employee who takes care of the kids and does most of the cooking and her 7 year old daughter. I’m excited for semana santa because we are going to go to the river, maybe fish a little, swim, play soccer and I’m going to teach them how to cook burgers and omelets as they teach me to cook Honduran food. Today I made the discovery that we have two dogs here too, that might give you a clue to how much attention they get here…. I found Lobo, who is what appears to be a husky puppy, 2months old, today; he is tiny and pretty dirty and has fleas but I think I’m going to try to give him a bath and start taking care of him. Today I snuck him some of my liver that we had for lunch and gave it to him. It’s going to break my heart to leave him so I might see if I can steal him… not really, but maybe. Other than the home life we have a lot of classes, from 7:30 - 5:00 now, but today we got to learn how to do some healthy cooking, learning about nutrients, breast feeding, and vitamins. Spanish classes have also gotten harder, we are now doing ‘charlas’ or discussions/presentatoins, today it was a sex-ed talk in class but tomorrow we have to give a charla on different learning styles to a group of workers in la institucion de salud, it should be fun, but a little stressful, it’s supposed to be up to two hours long, all in Spanish, without very much preparation. That’s pretty much all for now, my fingers hurt a little from flipping tortiallas, but it’s all good. I haven’t been on the internet in 3 ½ weeks, hyopefully I’ll actually get to post these some time soon…

Volunteer visit to Pueblo Nuevo 3-17

3-17-2010
So I survived my Volunteer Visit this past few days, this was to be a chance for us ‘aspirantes‘ to finally get to see more or less what a normal Volunteer actually does. My volunteer was located on the other side of the country and I’d have to go through San Pedro Sula to get there, fortunately it turned out that another volunteer was also going to the same general area so we were able to take a bus to San Pedro Sula together which definitely calmed the nerves, everything went completely according to plans but after hearing all the security talks about that area I wasn’t too keen on going up there. From San Pedro Sula ~4 hours from Teguz I had to find the Costiba bus to Pueblo Nuevo, this ended up being harder than planned since this was by far the biggest bus terminal I’d ever been into and there was nobody to get help from. I finally made it to Pueblo Nuevo and met Iljeen, my volunteer partner, and we immediately went out to get some food, I hadn’t really eaten on my trip 6:30-3:30 so I was hungry. Fortunatly there was a little restraunt in town that served fried chicken, rice and beans, and relleno (vegie mix) all for 30 lemp = $1.50, unfortunately for Iljeen something didn‘t sit well resulting in a 2 day fast for him and frequent trips to the bathroom. Early the next morning we went a pre-school - 1st grade school run by a local NGO where Iljeen teaches English. I thought I’d just observe but instead I was put in charge of teaching English numbers, letter, and handwriting to the kindergarteners, a fun but unexpected surprise, I finished of the 4 hour class with a half hour of PE, aka getting the kids to run around the classroom because it was too hot to go outside. The rest of the day was pretty relaxing, including a 4 hour blackout from 7-11 where we got to listen to neighbors sing along to the radio for our entertainment. Tuesday morning we took a bus to Santa Barbara where we met up with some other volunteers and then were driven to a close by ‘water park’, we got picked up by some Honduran friends of another volunteer who was told to find us by looking for the ’gringos’ in the town center….and it worked. One of the volunteers had earlier talked the owner of the water park to open up special for our group, 12 gringos and one Honduran family. The water park turned out to be a number of connecting pools with some covered areas to sit around under, this might not sound like much but it was amazing! After 6 hours and only $2 each there we headed to Asuncion del Sur, the site of another volunteer where we had a bonfire, roasted hotdogs and hung out late into the night. It was really cool to see volunteers from Health, Water/sanitation, and PAM from different training groups (H 12, 14, 15, and 16) all meet up and hang out, they had some great advice and some crazy stories to tell from their time here, there was even a volunteer from Seattle who had also worked for a summer at Rainier…small world. It was also great seeing how much the volunteers had done to let us trainees have a great experience. After a short nap that night it was back to the Honduran busses by 6:30 AM and then back to the training center by 2:00, where, like every Peace Corps activity isn’t complete without analyzing how it went, what we learned, and what could be improved… All in all it was a whirwind trip across the country but was very encouraging and fun

2nd one... 3/7

3/7 So week 2 of over 110 is over now, it was a good one, but very busy. Lots of classes but it’s been good. Yesterday we went to class for 3 hours for a “cultural experience” which ended up being good, we learned about the 8 ethnic groups in Honduras and got to eat some really good (and some bad) food and drink so it was less like learning and more fun. Sorry that my English is sounding really bad, too much Spanish I guess. After that I went with Alysun, another volunteer (my “niece”) and her family to run some errands including getting bamboo and going to Valle de Angeles to do some adventuring, it’s more turistic there so we got some ice cream, looked at cell phones and met up with some other volunteers before riding the bus back home. Today I washed some clothes by hand and waited for them to dry for a while while I played with my 5x5 rubics cube. Then one of the volunteers came by my house and we walked to another volunteers house where we hung out for a while. It’s about 5 now and I’m deciding that I’m just going to relax and listen to some Coldplay and write some letters. I think I’m getting a phone on Monday, tomorrow after we have a sketchy exploring field trip to Teguz for class, theres about a 50% chance of getting mugged it seems from our security people. Hope everyone is doing good back home, hopefully I’ll post this soon…
-stu


The Market
3/8 So today some of us got to go to Teguz as learning trip to find out how to use the transit systems in Honduras and figure out how to buy stuff at the market. The plan wasn’t too elaborate, take a bus from the training site to Hospital San Filipe, from there take a cab to “mi esperanza” bus station meet up with our teacher and then take a cab to the market. It seems easy until you realize that we didn’t really establish any set plans on Friday and now on Monday we were supposed to figure it out even though we were coming from different places and didn’t have cell phones. The “plan” was to meet at the training center at 7:30 and then as a group take the bus downtown, this didn’t happen, no one else was to be found except one other trainee with whom I had talked to on Sunday to make sure we would go together, trying to find the bus stop wasn‘t hard though because the bus stops anywhere along the road between Valle de Angeles and Tegucigalpa whenever anyone wants to get on. So instead of 7 of us there were two gringos trying to cram onto the ‘chicken bus’ aka an old US school bus filled to the gills with people going to the city. We both were able to find seats fortunately before it got too full, I got to sit next to a super old, tiny man with a cowboy hat on, he was tough to understand but he was really nice, by the time everyone else got on the bus, filling every seat and the isle the old man and I got pretty close…literally squeezed together. He fortunately helped me find the right stop, which other people ended up missing, and he wished me the best of luck before I left. Since the rest of my group had left me, I and another volunteer from another group decided it would be best to get one taxi and go to one spot instead of taking separate cabs which we have heard can be sketchy. We finally met up with the group and managed to make it to the market without too much more confusion which was nice, it was your classic market with meat hanging all over the place but great variety of fruits and veggies, I got a bag of mangos and an avocado for my family. After the market we walked around downtown Teguz, saw the US embassy, the oldest Catholic church in the city which was beautifu, a Wendy’s, and finally the Honduras Peace Corps HQ. all in all it was a fun little trip that, like many things down here don’t go according to plan but end up being great.

First update 2/27

Hey all, I’m safe and sound in Zarabanda, Honduras, just outside of Valle de Angeles about 40 min outside of Teguz (Tegucigalpa). So far it’s been a whirlwind ride, training from 7:30-4:30 mon- fri and 3 hours on Saturdays too. Lots of safety, regulations, health language and team building classes, but the people on the team are all pretty cool, there are 54 of us I think and the Peace Corps staff is really nice too. We are living with host families here, mine is on the wealthier side of things, my parents are 81 and 63 years old and have children in their 30s that frequent the house. It’s really pretty down here, a lot more green than I was expecting and a lot more pine trees too. My family has a cat, dog, and two parrots, the first night the cat slept in my room and I woke up at 2AM to find it playing with a scorpion…fun surprise! My 81 year old dad killed it for me the next day and everything went back to normal. I’m writing this sat. night and hopefully this will get posted on Sunday when I should be in Valle de Angeles where there is internet. So far I’m still not too sure exactly what I’ll be doing down here, I’ll get more health training in La Paz in 3 weeks where I’ll be for 7 weeks at ‘field based training’. hope everything at home is going good for people, feel free to shoot me an email and keep me updated.
-stu