La Presa

So today, after fighting the urge to be lazy and not wake up early/ call my counterpart, I had quite a great day. I called my counterpart to ask about todays activities at ten to seven, she told me that the Plan Basica (traveling medical group) was going to be leaving in 25 minutes, I live 15 minutes from the clinic and I wasn’t dressed yet, I told her I’d be there. I had to skip breakfast and book it to the clinic and for the first time in my time in Honduras, things actually got started on time. I jumped into the pickup truck and we were off, to where I didn’t know, with who I halfway knew, and what I would be doing I had no clue. After about 45 minutes of driving to ’who know where’ and after passing a HUGE sugar cane field/factory we got to the aldea La Presa, or at least close. You can’t actually drive to La Presa because you have to cross a sketchy suspensionish bridge over a river in the middle of the forest in the middle of the mountain/hills. After carring boxes of medicine across the bridge I knew that it was going to be an interesting day. We (me, the driver, the health promoter, a nurse, and a doctor) set up shop in their health building, where one part time health provider works and immediately the line started. Our job was to do basic medical evaluations of the people who showed up and then they could see the doctor and hopefully get help/medicine. Out of the tons of people who showed up probably 75% of them were pregenant females, ranging from 15 to 45 and it seemed like they all already had a bunch of kids. I felt completely overwhelmed for the first part of the morning, I was in charge of getting the prescription papers and finding the medicine for the people, the only problem was that all the pills, injection bottles, creams, pastes, condoms, syringes, and every other medical item were shoved into 3 boxes with absolutely no organization. After a little bit of me blindly hunting for pills I decided to use my US organizational skills (bet you didn’t think I had it in me) and I organized all the stuff and by the end of the time I could actually understand the doctors chicken scratch handwriting and find the correct medicine and doses and instruct the patients what to do with them…I felt proud. They also thought I was more experienced than I am, I realized this when I was introduced as ‘medico’ and they wanted me to take blood pressure and do injections, I told them I wasn’t quite ready for that, but maybe next time? All in all it was a great learning experience, getting to see what problems we are facing in the aldeas and what sort of tools we have to work with and hopefully how I will fit into the situation. Tomorrow I’m going to another aldea, leaving at 6:00…woo hoo!

San Marcos

My new home for the next 2 years is the town of San Marcos, in the municipio of San Marcos, in the department of Santa Barbara. It is a pretty small town, it only has about 4,500 people, but it does have a paved main street and, like every town in Honduras a central park with a Catholic church. There are a couple of small restaurants, a bunch of pulperias and small stores. There is a high school, two elementary schools, a Health Center, and a Pregnancy Clinic. Although this might not seem like very much, it is more than Yarumela had and I still haven’t gone very many places in town yet. It is situated about an hour in bus west of San Pedro Sula and about two hours in bus to Santa Barbara city so it’s not far from anything I’d need. Quimistan is another town about ten minutes away, there they have a bunch of restaurants, bakeries, hardware store, and possibly even a hotel, I’ve only quickly passed through but it is pretty nice, another volunteer is stationed there and because it’s in a different municipio we have our separate work zones technically. The municipio of San Marcos is split up into 26 aldeas with a total population of almost 19,000 people, I went to my first aldea today and it was pretty sweet. I’m going to be doing most of my work with the Health Center (going out into the aldeas with doctors) and the educational centers working with the kids. I am also going to be doing some work with the Red Cross, even though they are technically based out of Quimistan, they do some work in some of the aldeas of San Marcos, I’ll probably be helping out with AIN-c, a nutrition/growth program in the aldeas with kids up to 5 years old. My family here is really nice too, my dad (Jose Luis) is the vice-principle of the HS and my mom (Lisbe) is a teacher at one of the elementary schools. I have a 16 year old brother (Jose Luis too) who goes to school in SPS all week, a 10 year old brother Jose Jafet, and a 1.5 year old brother (Jose Yurem). Of course, like all small Honduran towns, half the town is related, making me related to half the town too. Although it might sound like I know what’s going on down here, the reality is that I have no clue what I’m doing or who almost everyone I talk to is, but slowly but surely I’m feeling more at home here, all the kids at both elementary schools already know my name so everywhere I go people shout my name.

Graduation/Surviving/The Wedding Ceremony

So Peace Corps has their somewhat cheesy and symbolic analogy of a marriage for their volunteers. They look at the intensely long application/interview/waiting process as the “dating stage”, in training we are “engaged” because we have made a significant commitment in coming to the country, but there is still a little time to back out (it’s frowned upon), but it exists. The “wedding” (don’t back out now) just took place last weekend, it was all that I’ve ever dreamed for… but not really. We spent one last week in Zarabanda going over last minute details, more rules and regulations, and processing sessions for days. It was nice getting to see everyone all 52 trainees one last time before getting sent off. On Friday, counterparts/community work partners for everyone showed up at the training center. It was decently awkward, all 52 trainees meeting their blind dates and then being force to hang out with them all day making small talk, it was kind of like a arranged wedding I guess. Friday afternoon we went with our counterparts to the U.S. embassy for the actual ceremony. It was pretty fun for the most part, some good, some corny speeches, and one particularly painful speech on behalf of the embassy, his Spanish was lacking to put it lightly… On Saturday morning all of the new volunteers and their counterparts had to make the journey to site. Fortunately for me, another volunteer who will be working near to me had a counterpart from the Red Cross and they had a car, my counterpart Elda and I were able to bum a ride off of him, he was very friendly too and we got to stop at Lago Yajoa for some pics and then we drove around San Pedro Sula to get a feel for it before getting some Popeyes chicken for lunch. Upon arriving in San Marcos I knew that it was going to be different, but also exciting, it was a little over 100 degrees and the power was out (it didn’t come back for almost 24 hours). I’ve been here for two days now and I’m slowly starting to become accustomed to life here. More to come soon.

Site assignment!!!

So, wednesday we recieved the site announcements, a day that we have been waiting for for close to 3 months now. They have decided to send me to San Marcos, a small pueblo of just under 5,000 people in the department of Santa Barbara. I'll go there in a little over a week and live with another host family, I don't know too much about the town besides the fact that every April they have a big festival celebrating a bunch of traditional Honduran games, although it just passed i'm already planning on how i'm going to start my training of marbles and tops and whatever other games they play. I will be working primarily with a CESAMO(health center) the Red Cross, and a local High school. I'm super excited and a little nervous, but i'm sure it is going to be great.

Bigote

Bigote is Spanish for mustache. dont hate on it, they are amazing and demand respect. and yes, i have been rocking one for almost a month now

Club de Ejercicio STU

So some Hondurans are more conservative, reserved, and or hesitant to changing their behaviors, it's just a cultural thing nothing wrong with that. My family in Yarumela hasn't really had that problem too much; they are very receptive to new things, food, hygiene, music, and other new ideas. One of the funniest things that they have started to come around to is exercise. I love my family here, but they aren't necessarily the epitome of healthy eating or good physical physique, but we have been doing things to change/modify this. I've tried, with little to no success to get them to fry fewer things, drink more water and less Coke, and eat more fruit, some of these things have had more success than others, but one thing that my family has responded well to is surprisingly exercise. I have gotten them to join me on a couple of runs and workout activities, and they actually seem to enjoy it, or at least they come back for more. Although it can sometimes be detrimental to my own workout schedule, instead of doing my normal 40 minute run it turns into a 10 min slow run followed by an hour and a half of walking and resting, but is very entertaining. my entire family has even started to try to do some push ups and situps, even my 1 1/2 year old brother. Usually I am able to get my cousin, my 11 year old sister and my dad to come with me, every time at least one of them has thrown up, but they always keep going and having fun. this was one of the things I thought I'd never get my family to do, but it's ended up being really fun and who knows, maybe it'll make a difference for them.

Chisme

To successfully live and integrate/understand any conversation in Honduras there are a couple of key words that you have to learn, they come up in every conversation and are essentially the life blood of Honduran speech. Cheque, vaya pues, and pucha ka, arise in any situation and can mean a plethora of things ranging from 'cool' to 'see ya later' or 'oh snap' , words like bolo, mal criado, and chancho and the dreaded ‘fijese que‘, all being negative statements are also used all the time to describe any and everybody. The one word however that really defines the Honduran culture however is the word and lifestyle that is 'chisme' otherwise known as gossip. Everything is gossiped about here, especially in the smaller villages like Yarumela, anything newly developed is instantly communicated by the lips of children, adults, men, and women anything with a way to communicate will chismear. Some things are harmless, like the spread of the gringo's names throughout the town, every day while walking through the streets a new house or family that I've never seen before will randomly yell out 'estuart¡', this is fun, but other chisme isn't quite as harmless. Whenever anything bad happens, like a death or a fight or an accident over half the town knows about it within 10 minutes, but nobody actually knows the facts, for example the other day a girl got hit by a car in town, she apparently was between 4 and18 years old, possibly had blood coming out of her ears and had to get brain surgery or was completely fine, the driver was also either going too fast or was drunk and on drugs, these are just a few of the 'minor' details that nobody can ever keep straight. It's funny down here because although nobody wants to be known as chismoso there isn't a single person that doesn't deep down inside absolutely love the chisme.