They say you gringos got yourself a new prez. Has their been fundamental change yet? What's the hold up?

All is well here. Right now the primaries for the Honduran elections (which take place next year) are going on. Everyone says there is no difference at all between the political parties, the two main ones being Liberal and Nacional. In general, people stick to the party they are born into, so candidates don't bother to spend much time debating the issues. As far as I can tell, all they really do is rewrite popular songs and promise change, so it's not all that different from US elections.


Halloween was fun. A lot of volunteers showed up and stayed out late for two nights. It was also another chance to see Copan, which I haven't seen in 10 years, and the weather was great. The only downside is that I came back with some gripe. There hasn't been much water at my site for the past 2 months, so the hot water showers at the hostel were awesome. I've mentioned that I often have to bathe out of my pila (or my reserve barrel), but I don't think I pointed out that the water is often quite cold. Especially in the week before Halloween, when the temperature at my site unexpectedly plummeted. I not only had to go so far as to keep my shirt on when I got home, but to actually put on a sweater. I found it amusing to watch people in my town walking around in winter coats.

The week after getting back, a Medical Brigade from Virginia showed up in my town. I believe the Brigades are a Lions Club program where a group of doctors visit every year to provide medical care. This is the first time they've been been to San Sebastián, which, I heard, is because the flooding brought on by the past few weeks of rain (which has stopped entirely, since) kept them from their usual location. They set up in the colegio and saw several hundred people. I wasn't really expecting such an influx of gringos so suddenly, but I think it was pretty successful. Hopefully they'll show up next year as well.


The day after, I went on a field trip with some colegio students to Comayagua to do a tour of some churches and visit a museum. One of the churches was new to me, and the museum was pretty nice, with some fossils and Lenkan artifacts. The trip, though, just...wow. The kids were cheering and chanting for literally the entire 1+ hour bus ride, both ways. They were actually pretty well behaved during the tour, but loud public outbursts are very much a part of the local culture. People here are always ahootin' or ahollerin' about something, sometimes completely randomly, and sometimes to taunt. Just in general, people will be very blunt when mentioning other's physical or personality qualities, so chants can be brutal and merciless, at least by US standards. Political correctness is non-existant here. Some of the things they chant at soccer games, well....

All-in-all, a pretty exciting week. So much so that on Saturday I got up early, had some coffee, washed the airplane, dressed for work, and walked to the Mayor's office, only to discover that it wasn't Friday. Then I danced all night at my 1 year old niece's birthday party. I'm starting to get the hang of the punta, ever since I realized that you're only actually supposed to do it at the climaxes in the music, with much less tiring rest steps the rest of the time. Things have since settled back to normal, and I'm finding that normal gets more and more comfortable as I forget to notice the lack of conveniences.

(P.S. Unless otherwise noted, when I mention nieces, sisters and whomnot here, chances are I'm talking about my host family.)

This is winter. Honduras is feeling a trifle down in the weather at the moment. It has rained almost daily for a while now, often at dusk. In this part of Honduras, when there is rain, there is no water. Ironic, I know. The problem is that when there is too much water, there is too much dirt (or turbidity, as the WatSan volunteers say). So, the water systems are shut down. It's not so bad, with a little creativity.

But that's not why Honduras is feeling down. It's fútbol that matters, and Honduras has just lost to Jamaica in the qualifications for the World Cup in 2010. Canada's tie with Mexico kept them in the game. I found it amusing that the townspeople here were cheering more for the Canadians than they were for their own countrymen. Still, Honduras has to beat Mexico now to advance to the next stage. Honduras has only made it to the World Cup once, in 1982.

I skipped quite a bit of what's happened here in the meantime. There was the Día de Niños, where a bunch of piñatas were set up in the central park and in some of the aldeas for the kids. Then there was the gimnasiado, a sort of gymnastics/dance-off competition where the colegio kids made human pyramids and danced to medleys of popular music. Regarding the pyramids, let's just say you'd never see anything like this in the States, for fear of legal action.

The toreado was amazing. El Pajarito nearly managed to jump into the stands, and I'm told that bulls have done so before. Even more impressive, in his second run he jumped clear over the starting gate with the guy riding him still hanging on. I mean, bulls are pretty damn big, and this guy jumped higher than I've ever seen any horse jump in equestrian.

That has all been in the month since Independence Day. For Halloween, I will be going to the ruins of Copan for what is supposed to be the biggest volunteer get-together of the year. That's all for now.

I've now been in Honduras for 7 months. It sounds like a lot until I remember I have 20 more to go. Last week was the yearly Business Project Reconnect, so all the Business volunteers got together in Gracias, Lempira to talk about the things we've been doing at our sites. It was a lot of fun, and it was cool to see how the others from my training group were doing. Afterwards we went to Santa Rosa de Copan to attend the Noche de Fumadores (an event for cigar aficionados), and to hang out over the weekend. It was a really good time, but it did take some adjusting once I got back to my tranquilo little town. There hasn't been any water since I got back, so I've had to "bathe" with what's left in my pila. Here they call it lavando el avioncito, or washing the airplane: windshield, wings, and motor.

It's Patriotism Month here, so the colegio kids have spent the week doing drills to practice for a parade. I'm told they're still having classes, but I've only actually seen the high schoolers in class in the afternoons. All told, I doubt there have been more than 4 full weeks of class since I arrived at my site 4 months ago, due to all the huelgas and ferias.

While I'm on the topic, the school structure is a little different here. They don't have 1st through 12th grade, exactly. Instead they have 1st through 3rd grade of each of the ciclos.


What the chart shows is that 1st through 9th grade are part of the ciclo común. Then there is 1st through 3rd grade of bachillerato, which is a program geared more towards a specific career path. At my colegio the bachillerato is in agroforestry. I think it's less than 8% of Hondurans that make it that far. This is largely due to access - the further out one gets, the less likely it is that there will be a school, let alone a high school.

As for what kids actually learn in these places...not much. Most graduate from bachillerato without ever having seen algebra, and there's no equivalent to English classes. The teachers that are available don't have the knowledge themselves, so they can't teach it. Of course, they'd have to be teaching in the first place. Not that they aren't, but it's ridiculous how often I show up at the school and find out that there are no classes. They are many reasons for that, but the most common is the huelgas. All the teachers are paid by the government, and some go months without pay. When that happens, they strike and the whole country's education system shuts down for as much as a week at a time. It's crazy to me because every teacher I've ever met here hardly seems to be struggling and usually has one of the nicer houses in town.

On top of that, the kids are only in school for half a day. Ciclo común in the morning, and bachillerato in the afternoon. This is partly because the kids have to work to support their families, but also because there aren't enough teachers for all of them. Still, though most of these schools barely have the funds for basics like textbooks, it's not too unusual to find that someone has donated computers, even when there's no place to put them and no one who knows how to use them. There are 8 at the colegio in my town, and there is even a computer teacher, who I work with.

Given all that, I spend most of my time trying to figure out ways to expose the kids here to subject matters they would never normally come in contact with. My pet project is to find a way to teach programming, because it will expose them to important concepts in math and problem solving. There are lot of really cool projects along that line that have had a lot of success in high schools in the States. That's been hard to sell, though, because people don't see it as practical, which is important here.

I work mostly with teachers at this point, giving classes on basics, like typing and Microsoft (Meecrosoft) Word. It's slow going, but the idea is that at some point, hopefully, they will feel comfortable enough to use what they've learned to help with their classes. I was warned before coming to Honduras that I'd only be able to do very basic things when teaching computers, but the truth of that didn't really hit me until I actually tried it for myself. Volunteers who have joined the Peace Corps to work with computers tend to get bored and leave early. I don't see that happening to me, but it does take a lot of patience.

So, I haven't had a lot of work to do, which is not unusual, but I am getting used to the lifestyle. It's nice in a lot of ways, but I doubt many who are used to the comforts of US life would be very happy here. Then again, most of the Hondurans I've heard from who went to the States (1 in 8 Hondurans currently lives in the States, usually mojado) say they weren't happy there. I suppose it's less about what you have and more about what you're used to.

After 6 months in Honduras, I've finally moved into a place of my own. It's a pretty nice place: two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, porches in front and in back, and a back yard. The bathroom is outside, which is pretty standard here, but the toilet flushes.


Many houses here have cement or dirt floors, so I was glad to find one with tiles. I also have a ceiling, which isn't all that common. The landlord was nice enough to leave me some furniture. There are actually two houses on the property. The other is a mirror image of mine, but is currently empty. Houses here are often on shared property so that siblings, children, or other family can all live together.

The first picture below is my kitchen. I couldn't resist getting a fridge and a microwave, even though most houses here don't have either. In the second picture is a pila. Every house in Honduras has one of these. They store water when there isn't much to go around, and they're used to wash laundry and dishes. There are no washers or dryers so, yes, I've had to wash my clothes by hand.


And, finally, some of my new friends:


There are dogs everywhere here. Pretty much every house has at least one, and they roam freely on the streets. Most of them have scars or broken/missing legs. They're very territorial and they love to bark when I'm about to go to bed, and just before my alarm goes off in the morning.

This past week my town held thier second annual India Bonita to celebrate the Semana del Folklore Nacional. It was a pretty big event, and really well put together. Not unusually, the students at the high school were given the whole week off so they could prepare. Each class built a hut around the basketball court to sell indigenous food, mostly corn-based. They also sold the traditional drink, chicha, some of which actually had some guaro in it (or so I'm told), which is the local equivalent of moonshine.


Every class also made a mural. The little bag the boy is holding in his hand is chicha. Drinks are often sold in bags here, even water and milk. The festival started on Wednesday with a parade, followed by the presentation of the candidates for the India Bonita.


On Thursday there was a square-dancing competition with other schools from the area.


Friday was a soccer competition followed by the election of the Indio Bonito. The basic rules for both the India and the Indio are that the costumes have to be made entirely out of unprocessed materials and should be representative of one of the indigenous tribes of Honduras: Maya, Pech, Lenca, Tiwahka, Miskito, Garifuna, or Chorti. The candidates also had to present some info about the tribe, though the boys didn't do so well. Of course, the competition is much more fierce for the India, and far more effort went into the preparations for that. The kid in the middle won.


Saturday was the big day. My host family was up late preparing because my niece was one of the contestants. I think her mom was more nervous than she was, but she did really well and ended up winning.

That's her on the right, and some of the other contestants on the left. Afterwards, everyone went to dance to the music of Kazzabe, who mostly play music for the punta, where you basically have to shake your hips really fast. It's not easy.

So, it was a fun week. I was impressed with how well it turned out. It also kept the kids out of class for almost the second week now. I was hoping the teachers would go off strike this week, but no such luck.


The week started with this guy landing on my bed just as I was about to go to sleep. Scared the crap out of me.