Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

• Home • Up • Next •

Day 1-Tuesday, October 30^th, 2001

We arrived in our site after our counter part Professor Eloy drove us up from Choluteca. We purchased a refrigerator, stove, a bed and some groceries. The ride up the mountain took about 3 hours and we traveled through El Triunfo arriving after dark at about 7:30 PM. The ride was interesting as Professor Eloy had invited a friend along and brought his wife as well; a lot of people to fit into a compact pickup (about the size of a Ford Ranger) with all our stuff. I ended up in the bed of the truck tucked up into the front left corner with just enough room to stand, or curl up in a tight fetal position. When we arrived, there were many people to greet us and help us carry everything in. It was a very nice reception.

We arranged our bed and slept on the new mattress and base we had purchased in Choluteca. This bed combined and placed on the bed frame that had been left behind by the previous two volunteers, Matt and Andrew, put the top of our bed almost 4 feet off the ground. We both agreed that it was a bit excessive and something would have to go, but it would have to happen tomorrow.

Day 2 – Wednesday, October 31^st, 2001

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Halloween is not celebrated here, and its passing was not really noticed until we looked at the calendar. Day 2 was spent working in the house cleaning and rearranging all of our stuff. The task in it self was kind of fun.

During the course of the day we spoke to our dueña (Landlord), Gloria, about rent. During our previous visit a month before, we failed to set up an agreement about rent and figured if the last two volunteers paid 1050 lempira for three rooms if we took two rooms we would be saving some money. She advised us it was 500 lempira per room and rent for us would be 1000 lempira. We told her we wouldn’t be able to pay that much and began the task of trying to figure out what to do. We had counted on our counterparts to arrange the price while we were gone and they failed to do that for us. We were planning on paying L 600-700, and after heavy thought we came to a compromise 3 days later for L800 per month.

Day 2 we continued to clean and rearrange. We found that the bed frame just wouldn’t work, but the thin soft mattress would. We used the base for our bed, the mattress, and thin soft mattress on top of that to make a pillow top mattress much like the one we had at home. Our refrigerator and bed are two of our more favorite items. The fridge we got is a 4’5” deal which seems to be just the right size for the apartment and our needs.

Day 3 – Thursday, November 1^st, 2001

Day 3 was spent relaxing and adjusting to the now house. We had most everything we wanted in place, aside from a few items. We spent most of the day laying around reading enjoying the fact that we finally had free time not taken up by work, training, or social requirements. It was a very relaxing day.

Day 4 – Friday, November 2^nd, 2001

Day 4 was much like day 3 except we ventured over to high school and chatted with the director who told us we could meet on Tuesday and discuss what we had planned in the future involving their school and our assistance. They are 7 computer, 2 of which I know do not work at all, and one with a modem for internet access.

I spent most of this day in hammock reading a good lawyer book called “Mercy Rule” by John Lescroart. We (well Jennifer) did laundry in the Pila and we just kind of relaxed…again.

Day 5 – Saturday, November 3^rd, 2001

Day 5 was spent in Choluteca buying groceries. Going to Choluteca, we left at 7 AM,  rang truer to Jennifer’s fears of taking the trip than to my attitude of its just a bus ride away, no problem. The ride down on the “express” bus took 3 hours with many stops and a driver who didn’t get the bus going very fast. After going to Mas por Menos, returning a 5 gallon water jug that we determined was more trouble than boiling water, and picking up our last box of transported items from our emergency zone coordinator’s (E-zone) house a few hours had passed. We arrived at the bus going back to Concepción de Maria around 2 PM and waited a half hour for our departure time of 2:30 to arrive. The ride back up not quite as slow until we stopped for an hour in El Triunfo, where, as far as I could tell we were just passing and waiting for and hour to go by. We made if back to our site around 6 PM and decided grocery shopping in Choluteca would be done only when necessary.

While in Choluteca, we ran into a man named Mario.  He owns several businesses and cashew farms around Choluteca. We met Mario a few months earlier on our volunteer visit when we visited our emergency zone coordinators (E-zone coordinators). They arranged a tour of the cashew farms which was very interesting. Mario had asked pretty frequently after that when we would be coming back so he could have us over for dinner. When Mario learned we were in Concepción de Maria he told us he wanted to work with us to start a cashew project, either bussing workers down or opening a new farm in the area, that would employ 200 women from our community. We told him that would be great and sounded like something we would really like. He then got very serious and told us that Concepción was an area where we needed to be careful. It is a beautiful town and the climate is nicer than Choluteca, but because it is on the border with Nicaragua there is a lot of gun and drug trafficking. The busses are sometime the couriers, and what ever we did don’t take packages for people from or to Concepción. We thanked him for the insight, which ironically is something I had told Jennifer just prior to our departure earlier that day as we had seen some unsavory characters in town. I explained that if I were a drug runner I would be using our small pueblo as a transport through way as the road from the border with Nicaragua to Choluteca through Concepción has no police check points and very few police men. Our town has 3 all together. The other road to Choluteca has a police check point that vehicles have to go through.

Day 6 – Sunday, November 4th, 2001

Day 6 was a pleasant trip to Corpus for morning mass at the Catholic church. One of the short fallings of Concepción de Maria is that the priest attends only once a month. The rest of the time it is a “Speaker of the Word” guy that does teachings on the gospel. We traveled to Corpus for mass and afterwards I took at look at the priest’s computer, which apparent was doing some strange thing when he typed the word “con” which is Spanish for with. After fixing his auto correct so that the only thing unusual he got was Miguel and Jennifer Silvera when he typed “gringos” he was thoroughly pleased. He invited us for lunch and we enjoyed nice chicken and rice lunch with “rice with milk (and sugar)” for a dessert. He told us he would be in Concepción de Maria the next week giving mass at the church and he would see us then.

The rest of the day was spent reading.

Day 7 – Monday, November 5^th, 2001

Day 7 is pretty much a blur….I don’t really remember what we did, except we planned our first outing, boiled water, and called my mom for the first time since we got into our site. She informed us that she was concerned and wanted to know if we had to swim too much with the Hurricane that went through Honduras 5 days ago. We confirmed that she had the right country and looked at each other in disbelief. No one told us there had been a hurricane. It rained kind of hard on and off for a couple of days, but no one mentioned hurricane “Michelle” I think the name was.

Day 8 – Tuesday, November 6^th, 2001

Day 8 was our first big “meeting”. We went to the high school to make contact with the school director for our big introduction and welcome session. We met with the director and most of the teachers after waiting an hour or so for their meeting to be interrupted by the school secretary and inform them we were about to leave. We told them we were here to help with the computers, English, the photography club and whatever else presented itself.

After meeting with the school folks we headed to Choluteca to meet with Michelle, who was having a harder time adjusting to the Peace Corps life than Jennifer was, or maybe about the same. She was going crazy in her site and “just had to get away”. Getting away involved meeting up with Roger a partner in one of the few companies in Honduras that do road work he also owns several businesses including the pharmacy we met at in Choluteca. Roger pulled up in what I’m pretty sure a 2001 Toyota Land cruiser which would have been impressive even in the states, and was especially here in poverty stricken Honduras. Roger drove us the 1 hour and 20 minutes to his beach “house” on the pacific coast.

We arrived after dark and, unfortunately, I verbalized the fact that the back patio door opened to the ocean with a nice view of Amapala, which was apparent, but the city of Amapala on the coast of El Tigra Island (a small volcano now an island and one of the more beautiful areas in on the pacific coast of Honduras located in the Gulf of Fonseca) wasn’t visible without shielding your eyes from the street light type light in the expansive back yard. The girls were thoroughly surprised and would have been more so in the morning when the island, perfectly framed into the back patio door, made for an amazingly beautiful site.

Day 9 – Wednesday, November 7^th, 2001

Roger’s house was more like a mansion with 5 bedrooms, at least 3 bathrooms, 2 guest houses, a bar on the lower patio complete with grill and sink, two out door showers, two private beaches, a pool, a hot tub, and a private gazebo with an extraordinary view of El Salvador, El Tigra, Nicaragua, and the gulf of Fonseca.  Another night at Roger’s wonderful mansion and we started wondering what we were doing in Peace Corps. I started to wonder what our neighbors, counterparts, and supervisors would say if they knew where we were. We were on an illegal vacation and no doubt we would be in a lot of trouble if they found out we were Away Without Leave or AWOL. Jennifer billed the hours as a counseling session to keep Michelle from an early termination of service, and for her own mental health. 

We spent the whole day lying by the pool in very nice hammocks, watching the water float by, boats on the water, big black birds flying by, reading, swimming, and eating cookies Jen and I had purchased, and relaxing in a very comfortable environment.

Dinner was grilled steak and chicken with flour tortillas, chismol, and mixed drinks. It was very yummy, the best of “plato tipico”(typical plate or local food).

Day 10 – Thursday, November 8^th, 2001

After panic in the morning and finally a rationalization that we were in Honduras and didn’t matter, we let the fact that we were going to miss our planning meeting scheduled for 1:30 PM or 2:00 PM with our community partners. We arrived back in Concepción de Maria around 3:10 after sitting on the side of the road for 30 minutes with a flat tire on the bus.

Both of our community partners had left for other activities and didn’t wait too long after the 1:30 PM mark, even though we had tried to tell them it would be closer to 2PM. No guilt there, they had canceled 2 previous meeting because they were somewhere else more important.

Day 11 – Friday, November 9^th, 2001

Another day of boiling water. We purchased a large funnel and this time around cooled the water in a cold tub of water, it cut the cool down time to ¼ of what it was before just letting it stand. The funnel came in handy for filling the 5 plastic bottles of water we have in total we can do about 7 liters at a time which lasts about 2 ½ days.  Our first few days we had purchased a 5 gallon jug from Choluteca which we returned as the travel would be too much for just water, not to mention an added expense. We are paying rent and get electricity and water for free (as part of our rent). 

We met briefly with Professor Eloy my counter part today. We visited briefly at our house and then went to meet with the current Alcalde, Miguel Angel Aplicano, who from talking to people has not started or completed programs which many people believe are important. He will be voted out of office in November, 2001. In meeting with Senior Alcalde and found he had much to say about the social break down in Honduras. He also mentioned that there was much need for structure in the lives of young people. He told me they were currently looking at proposals from two foreign mining companies that would like to come in and dig up our little mountain. Apparently, there are 8 sites throughout Concepción that contain pockets of Gold and Platinum.  We’re rich I’ll have a computer in every office of the Alcaldía and a suspension bridge resembling a small Golden Gate to replace the, still in disrepair, bridge that currently fails to traverse the river in our town. I then remembered some of the Municipal Law I had learned in my training, and the comment that my instructor made about the crooked mining companies. Basically mining companies are required to pay 5% of the value of the ore that is taken from the ground back to the municipality kind of like a tax, but what happens is the ore is shipped off to other sites for processing and the companies grossly underreport the amount and value of the ore being taken. In addition to this the Senior Alcalde stated that the two companies that would come in would provide 0% increase in employment. Many of the people in town want the mines as they thing that, much like in neighboring Nicaragua, they would have jobs in the mine. The mines in Nicaragua are older and were developed by local companies. The two companies that would like to come in have told them they will supply all security and personnel needed to run the mine as it is a fairly technical project. On top of being screwed out of their profits and no new jobs for local people he also said that they run the risk of doing serious damage to their environment if the companies that come in do not adhere to the laws regarding mining. He said he was concerned about the town one day sinking into the ground long after the mine had left.  After hearing this I decided that maybe they should just wait a while before committing to any mine. I think I am going to start spending time down by the river with a miners pan though!

After meeting with the Señor Alcalde we ventured back to our house and Professor Eloy who managed to find the nationalist party candidate for Alcalde. We met with him for about ½ an hour and read for a while after Professor Eloy left. He showed up a short time later to tell us that Daisy, a local woman we met the first time were visited here and whom we missed a dinner date with after Professor Eloy failed to show up to take us to her house, was home and wanted us to visit at around 4:30 PM.

Already tired from meeting with two politicians who liked to talk and walking around in the hot sun Jennifer wasn’t too excited about the prospect. Professor Eloy showed up at 4:45 PM and we walked to the other side of town to Daisy’s house. Daisy was not quite home yet, but we were sure we said “hi” to her on our way in; she was sitting inside someone else’s house. We watched TV and converse with Daisies Husband or uncle or a male someone who lived at the house. He brought out his parakeet for us to see. He placed the bird on my finger and thought it was pretty cool that I was brave enough to take it as Jennifer was pretty scared about the whole affair. The coolness quickly wore off as the bird sensed some real “stranger danger” and started attacking the finger it was sitting on. They don’t bite too hard, but I was reminded of an instance in FBT when I got bit by the same type of bird, and the little monster actually drew blood. He just happened to catch my finger just right, but if I started to bleed Jennifer would freak out and probably rush to Tegucigalpa to see a doctor. The bird owner started scolding the bird and sensing that his pretty parakeet was inching closer to a rather quick and violent death at the hands of a gringo, he took the bird from me and proceeded to whistle the Honduran national anthem in the bird’s ear; after that it was the “Happy Birthday” song.

Daisy finally appeared and we were treated to dinner, much to Jennifer’s surprise. I had half expected it and told her the same, since the last date we missed was for dinner; she wanted to pay us back. We had tortillas, steak, stinky cheese, scrambled eggs and beans. All in all it wasn’t that bad. The meat was a little tough, but I’ve had worse, and the tortillas were thick, but had a really good texture and flavor. I later found out Jennifer really didn’t like the food, and I started wondering just exactly what she ate in FBT.

We left Daisy’s and wondered down to the road to meet with the Liberal Party candidate for Alcalde who informed us that we were in a “blue town” which means the town is dominated by people from the Nacionalista Party, and he didn’t really feel like he had a chance. Professor Eloy tried to assure the man that he still had a chance. He spoke for about 30 minutes about how the current Alcalde hadn’t really done anything and how he would build a bridge across the river, improve the portable water situation, and create a waste disposal system. During the course of the “conversation” he told us he had the direct support of the Liberal Party Candidate for president and had secured promises for assistance for the water system. He also told us he had the support of another non government organization to assist with a waste disposal system.

Day 12 – Saturday, November 10^th, 2001

Day 12 was fairly uneventful we hoped to make Mass in our own town and sat on the steps of the church covering all hours of possible services, from 9-10 and then returning again at 11 AM. No sign of life, or people, or priest. We were thoroughly confused as we were certain that church here happened in the church and surely they would open the front doors to allow people in and out, but no one was around.

Jennifer later talked to a neighbor girl who said she saw the priest drive into to town and that he even asked for us. She also said we had to enter the church from the back. We seriously questioned weather any of this actually happened as we didn’t see a back door to the church, the priest’s truck, or any other people on the church grounds when we went. The explanation for this is, I’m sure, going to be interesting.

We returned to the house to make lemon chicken sandwiches, and had planned on sharing this meal with the priest. His loss they turn out really well and I was happy to have a semi “American” food.

We spent a better part of the afternoon reading. I finished “Mercy Rule” and, forget that our library is limited, managed to give the ending away to Jennifer who was not too happy. In fact Jennifer was not too happy for most of the day. She is suffering from culture shock. I’m pretty sure our trip to Roger’s mansion only added to it. She has had some trouble adjusting and doesn’t feel like she has connected with anyone here, that our accommodations are minimal, and we should have gotten a more beautiful site, with more resourced, closer to some “fun” spot and began to weep when she realized that her mom’s visit correlated with the hottest season in Honduras in February, apparently her mom doesn’t like hot weather. In a town where the high temps in the “cool” season can push 95 degrees in the afternoons the prospects of us even being here in the “hot” season was rather disheartening for her as well.

Having trouble comprehending why my wife was so unhappy and being thoroughly frustrated dealing the negatives of our new “home” for the next two years being constantly being brought up, along with the usual strains of just being a newly married couple who still haven’t perfected the art of “clear communication”, I stormed out of the house and told her I was leaving. In our little town I got as far as the corner pulpería where I purchased a Pepsi(side note- They can get Pepsi Cola up the mountain, but purified water in large quantities is not a possibility here) sat in a plastic chair in the street and endured the “who is this crazy gringo” look from everyone who passed by. Jennifer later passed and went to the cooperativa where she returned with a stick of butter for a surprise peace offering. I gave her the other half of my Pepsi as my peace offering and we walked back to the house.

I was thoroughly surprised by chocolate chip cookies, which we were saving for our month-a-versay in 2 days, but worked well now to stem the tide of miscommunication between us. As I finished my book, she finished baking 6 small cookies in our little toaster oven. They turned out wonderfully, chocolate chip cookies never tasted so good.

She also was lamenting the fact that we haven’t really connected with any one here and is worried that we will not make any friends over the next 2 years, since we haven’t really connected with anyone in the last two weeks. I reminded her of when she moved to Coon Rapids in 9^th grade. How many good friends she had and how she basically spent the two weeks of summer alone. She met her best friend the first day in 9^th grade because she had decided she wouldn’t sit by herself at lunch. The best friend is still the best friend to this day. I reminded her that we haven’t really committed to not sitting alone for lunch and this is kind of our summer before we go back to school to start the 9^th grade at a new school far from our old friends.

This seemed to pull her a little bit closer to getting on board the “happy train” as I managed to illicit several smiles from her. She countered with a “I’m not even loosing weight here” I told her “sure you are honey I think you look thinner”. “No I’m sure my face is fatter.” “nonsense honey I know for a fact that your face is thinner that when we came” She then said, semi-patronizing “I guess I wouldn’t know that since we don’t have a mirror!” We both laughed.

Later in the day Jennifer found comfort in listening to micro cassette tapes sent by her friend Andrea from the states of a dinner she and a few other friends had a month or so ago. She started taping her response and voicing some of her concerns about our site to the tape recorder, which didn’t try to convince her that we were in a nice place or that she needed to change her attitude. The tape recorder just listened. Afterwards she started working on learning how to play guitar, a great hobby that can consume many hours.

Day 13 - Sunday, November 11, 2001

Early to bed

Early to rise

Makes a man

Healthy, wealthy and wise

…..or in my case really tired in the afternoon. Today was a bit of a let down. We had aspired to go to mass in Triunfo, but Jennifer has come down with something and isn’t feeling well. I am also not feeling %100, but am contributing my to not enough water and lack of sleeping in time.

We are just kind of resting again since it is Sunday, and well there is nothing else to do.

We went to the “Speaking of the Word” today, which since the nearest Mass is at least 2 ½ hours away is acceptable in the eyes of the church. It was kind of a disappointment. There was no priest, and no communion. It was run much like a regular mass except the guy that does the speaking of the word didn’t really deliver a message, he just kind of went over the gospel reading over and over again and eventually wandered off into some territory that had nothing to do with the gospel lesson the day, 50 minutes later we were ready to finish our session. Mass altogether took 1 hour 30 minutes. Jennifer and I walked away feeling kind of empty. We haven’t missed mass since we got married. Jennifer told me she could count on one had the time that had in her life.

We finished the night off with a few games of cribbage, really glad we brought that with us. We also received some packages from the U.S. Jen’s Mom, Sister, and friend all sent us some nice goodies, and we got a letter from one of Jennifer’s aunts. They were such a nice surprise, especially at 7 PM on a Sunday night. I don’t know anywhere in the U.S. where they deliver mail on Sunday. We received some candy, food, and other goodies, and some very nice letters about what was going on in the U.S. This truly made our day.

Day 14 - Monday, November 12, 2001

We got up nice and early today to make our introduction at the “Colegio” (High School). We had French toast for breakfast and arrived at Instituto Rafael de Valle…something something…. At 7 AM. The director of the school looked surprised to see us show up early. We were introduced to the students, sang the national anthem with the students and teachers, listened to the singing of the school song, and listened to the director tell the students that they needed to study really hard today and tomorrow as their finals would be on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

We spent most of the morning in the computer lab looking at what various problems I had to sort out and cursed the name of the volunteer before me for not leaving better instructions on what going on with the computers and the internet connection.  No one in the school seemed to know, except one of the students, who didn’t have enough knowledge to get it all working either. We were not able to get the internet connection up and running today, and there are 3 systems that don’t function due to varied degrees of being old, and one that needs the operating system reinstalled. This would not be a big deal if the Packard Bell Restore disks had a Windows License with them, which they didn’t, or if the Win98 installation disk, was in the Win98 installation disk sleeve, which it wasn’t. No one seemed to know where the software license for the Packard Bell was and I was informed that the Win98 disk had gone on a trip to Corpus to help out another Peace Corps Volunteer there.

We returned to our house to find out that another plane had crashed in New York and they don’t know why.  We fear the proud strong nation we left is going to be very different than when we departed. In the Peace Corps Handbook they explain that returning to your home country is usually more traumatic than the initial immersion into the host country culture. This combined with the events of September 11, 2001 and what has and is to compromise a nation much different from the one we left.

It is the cool season here and it feels like the hottest days of summer in Minnesota. I miss winter already, and fall seems like a far off memory of my childhood; which was filled with bonfires, hayrides, smells of fall, dropping temperatures, and the promise of snow on the horizon.

Today was also our month-a-versary. After we got back from the “colegio” we had a small snack and Jennifer went to lay down for a nap. I worked on this journal for a while and then ventured out to find some news on the downed plane. The “dueña” (landlord) of our house was kind enough to install a small TV on the porch that can be watched from a hammock! I found a comfortable spot in the hammock and started channel surfing. I couldn’t find any news, but found the movie “The Patriot”, one of the three movies in our DVD collection here. We brought “The Patriot”, “Les Miserable”, and some other movie I don’t remember the name of. I guess we are waiting until real boredom sets in to watch them.  I caught the last half of the movie and finally figured out how to get the English sub-titles on the bottom of the screen since it is dubbed in Spanish. It is one of my favorite movies and shows the sacrifices men have made to fight for freedom in our country.

After the movie I realized that Jennifer was still sleeping. This is not normal and she must not be feeling well. She had been complaining of a sore throat, and being fatigued. I think it is a combination of a cold and dehydration. I picked some wild flowers and put them in a cup and started dinner. I didn’t want her to have to cook if she was sick. We had spaghetti with meat sauce, whole mushrooms, garlic bread, and a really good Blackberry Merlot, which at 10:30 AM I’ve just decided to have a little sip of it. If blackberry Brandy is anything like this stuff I can see why my Grandmother, God rest her soul, liked the stuff so much. I can also see how alcoholism could become a problem for lonely Peace Corps Volunteers. We played a few games of Cribbage and ended our second round with me winning, making our current standing 1-1 as Jennifer won the first round a week ago.

Day 15 - Tuesday, November 13, 2001

I slept in until 8:30 AM this morning and was really tired, or must have been since we went to bed around 9 PM last night. At 9:00 AM we went to the preschool to visit the little ones and make our faces known. It was fun. They are so young and innocent, full of life, hope, and energy. They remind me of the children at the Elementary School I taught D.A.R.E. to. We just said “hola” shook hands, had them sing us a few songs, and show us how they were able to count to 30. I think the teacher was hoping for more. This is their last week of school until February 2002.  We arrived at kind of an odd time. The elections are in 9 days, school is almost out, and people are just not doing a whole lot. We have been having trouble with motivation. We are still trying to get a “feel” for the town, and I guess in a way doing a needs assessment of where our skills could be utilized fully. It seems like we could work full time in any number of different areas, and have plenty to do. Right now developments in the “colegio”, the alcaldia, the “cooperativa”, and in the church are groups that stand out the most. I have also pointed out to Jennifer several houses in town that could use “fagons”. One of the Economic Development projects Jennifer worked on in training was building a fagon. She said she had only done it once though, and would probably need some help.

Jennifer is still feeling sick and spent most of the morning after our visit to the preschool in a hammock reading her book. I hope she gets better soon, or we will have to go to the doctor. I’m not sure if we use the clinic here in town or if we would have to go to Choluteca 3 hours away.

We had left over spaghetti for dinner and had a quiet night together.

Day 16 - Wednesday, November 14, 2001

We got up this morning and tried email. It didn’t work very well. I’m pretty convinced that if we don’t use it in the wee morning hours or late at night it is not going to work very well. We have a bad connection to begin with and when the internet is clogged with other people in Honduras doing who knows what, we are not able to send and receive email very well. I have no idea how we are going to update the website, the amount of information I have now would take 4 hours to upload if we could stay connected. I may have to wait until we go to the Peace Corps office in a few weeks for our training sessions and do it form there, otherwise someone said there is a place in Choluteca that has internet access that is a lot better for 1 lempira per minute, which is the same we are paying here.

We hung out for a while at the house having yogurt and granola for breakfast after trying the internet thing, and then went to meet with Jennifer’s community partner who was still out in the “Campo” (country) and wouldn’t be back until 1pm. So we set out in search of food. We had food back our house, but coming out of the High School earlier we had spotted some kids eating Honduran enchiladas (a fried corn tortilla with chicken, cheese, and cabbage. We wanted to buy one then and there, but I had forgotten my money in our house, so we had to go with out. They looked and smelled really good. There is a little store on campus that sells sodas, food, candy, and chips. We went to a place in the center of town that had been mentioned in the town summary we received from the previous volunteer. They had two things on the menu, Fried Chicken and Tacos. Fried chicken here is pretty much the same as in the U.S., but tacos are a corn tortilla rolled up with a chicken mixture in it. They are covered with a lime soaked cabbage, with a mayonnaise catsup mixture on top. It sounds completely nasty writing it, but the combination is perfect, they are very good and are big enough that two filled me up. We ordered one for starters and I ended up getting two. Jen and I split a Pepsi and enjoyed our $2.40 lunch.

I watched some western movie with Paul Hogan in it (the guy from “Crocodile Dundee “and read a little bit. We cleaned the house this afternoon, read email, wrote email, had more spaghetti for dinner, and had our “dueña” show us how to cook up a local pumpkin (they don’t look anything like a pumpkin till you cut them open). We cut this big green, dark orange (inside) gourd into small pieces (like you would a cantaloupe) then cooked it with a little water and ½ pound of concentrated brown goo that come from sugar cane. It turned out to be really nasty looking, but very very tasty. I am continually surprised in this country by the different type of food that are here that look completely ishy, but turn out to taste really good. Of course maybe I’ve just been here long enough to have learned to have grown accustom to the different food.

We spent the rest of the night with me emailing and Jennifer catching up on written snail mail correspondence. I’m very luck to have her as she does a great job with snail mail, I on the other hand am terrible.

Day 17 - Thursday, November 15, 2001

I lost it today…the country finally got to me so I went for a walk.  I woke up and left the house today after leaving Jennifer, who was still sleeping, a not that said…”Jennifer, I’m going to walk up the river until I can’t walk any more, then I’ll turn around and come home. I’m going to try to figure out the meaning of life and why we are here.” In my mind, I was thinking that I would really like to just keep walking until I got home, but about 2-3 miles up the river, which has a pathway running along side it for a good portion of the distance. I started getting tired and the trail was quickly disappearing. The sun was getting hotter and I hadn’t brought any water, so started back to the house.  Before I left I purchased a pair of high cut waterproof combat boots. They have come in handy more than once: first during the rainy season when the streets would flood in FBT, and now on my hike up the river.  At several points in the trail you have to walk up the river or jump from rock to rock to get to where you are going.  During Hurricane Mitch the rivers width expanded by 3-4 times it’s original width taking out homes, the town bridge that gets people across the river to the other half of the town, and the trail that runs up the river and looks like it used to be wide enough to drive a vehicle down.   For most of the broken sections of trail, I jumped from boulder to boulder, but in several locations, I had to find shallow passes to walk through. My boots held up wonderfully and my feet never got wet.

When I got home, Jennifer was slightly amused, but worried at the same time. I told her I didn’t want to talk about it and played solitaire for about 3 hours before going outside to watch TV. When I was done watching TV Jennifer had made us Baliadas (a flour tortilla with blended beans and cheese or mantequia).  The food was good, but I was still depressed. I watched some more TV, played some more solitaire and went to bed.

Day 18 - Friday, November 16, 2001

I woke up today still depressed and not very excited about being in Honduras. We went early to the high school to email and meet with the director regarding the computers and our involvement in the school curriculum.  This meeting was very interesting because the director told us the computer room was our room and we could use it as an office.  She also said that we were the only ones allowed on school grounds after school hours if we visited, and under no circumstances were we to bring youth on the ground with us.

When we got home we spent about 2 hours sorting a bag a red beans. The beans, which we eat on an almost daily basis, have to be gone through one bean at a time to assure that there are not any bad beans, insects, or rocks in the batch. I hate rocks.  Jennifer then boiled the beans for 3 hours. We added garlic, onion, and tomato to add a little flavor to them. We had bean, rice, chismol, and tortillas for dinner.

Day 19 - Saturday, November 17, 2001

Oh happy day! We went early this morning and did email at the high school. It worked very well and were very happy to get our email and update the website. We spent the rest of the day writing lots of emails, responding to the people that written to us.

Jennifer prepared the most delicious hamburgers I’ve had in a long time. She chopped up onion, garlic, and green pepper and put it in the hamburger. We had real hamburger buns, onion, tomato, and cheddar cheese. She also made fresh chismol (like Mexican pico de gayo) and we put that on the burgers too! They were super delicious.

 Day 20 - Sunday, November 18, 2001

Today we went to Mass in an a small pueblo outside of our town with the Mayorga family (the parents). The mass was 2 ½ hours long and was also the confirmation service, which they only have every 2 years.  The sun was very hot and the Mass was held out side under a make shift canopy.

Later in the evening we went to a birthday party for the Mayorga’s daughter, Ruth, who turned 26. She is one of the teachers in the school is married and has 1 daughter.  

Dinner was barbecued chicken, corn tortillas, and rice. It was very good. During dinner we talked to Matt Colburn, who was the volunteer that lived in the site before us and now works for the Rieken Foundation developing libraries in small towns in Honduras.  He became very good friends with the Mayorgas and even took their 15 year old son to the states with him for a few weeks, before returning to Honduras.  We spoke at length about the library project as well as some of the dynamics that we encountered in the high school. We found out that he had a sustainable project when they left and it was destroyed by the director. No one has used the computer lab at the school since he left.

 Day 21 - Monday, November 19, 2001

We went to the high school to return the keys and try to get out a few quick emails. It worked well for about a ½ hour and then started acting weird, disconnecting, and we decided we would just wait until the weekend to use it. Jennifer wrote 21 snail mails that we finished addressing and preparing for sending.  I am so happy that she takes care of those things, because if it doesn’t involve typing I’m not using all that interested.

We had beans and rice for dinner today and Jennifer made oatmeal cookies from a Betty Crocker bag mix. They were very yummy. We then planned and packed for our trip to Pespire for Thanksgiving the next day.

Day 22 - Tuesday, November 20, 2001

We left for Pespire, which is about ½ between our site and the capitol, at 4 AM today.  28 other volunteer + Jennifer and I traveled to Pespire to celebrate Thanksgiving together.  I was told that we had the record now for the largest Thanksgiving gathering with 30 people.  Our bus ride down the mountain was frustrating. We asked several people the day before when the busses left and we told the first bus leave at 2 AM to Tegucigalpa (the capital) with busses leaving every hour after that to Choluteca (the department capitol).  The bus driver must have over slept because our 4 AM bus didn’t leave till 4:40 AM. On the way down the mountain the driver, who was having a lively debate about presidential candidates with a few other passengers, was driving really slow. He then stopped about ¼ of the way down and got on the side of the road to continue the debate with a few other men who were there.  After about 25 minutes we heard the horn for the next bus leaving our town indicating that it was leaving.  When we asked the driver’s assistant why we were waiting he told us we were waiting for another bus to arrive so we could take its passengers and we would be there for about 20 minutes more.  Two minutes later, without any new passengers aboard, we departed.  At first we were going pretty good and started making better time, then the driver started talking again and right outside the next major town that marks the halfway point down the mountain the bus that left 30 minutes after us caught up to us.  The bus driver seemed surprised and everyone on the bus thought it was so funny, except for Jen and I, who were thoroughly annoyed as the last time we rode on a bus with this driver he stopped to talk to every Honduran who was walking on the road.  Three hours later we were in Choluteca and transferring to another bus that would take us to Pespire.  Considering the bus down is supposed to take longer that the bus up and the bus we ended up taking back up made in 2 hours, we are going to try to figure out when the driver works and avoid taking his bus.

We arrived in Pespire just after 9 AM, had a small breakfast of Balilladas (blended beans in flour tortillas), and started catching up on the last few weeks of life for the volunteers we went through training with.  We then loaded the 30 people and all their stuff in to a large flatbed 2 ton truck with a walled in cargo area and a small pickup. How many gringos can you fit in the back of small pick up? 12 if you pack them tight.  We arrived at our location about 20 minutes later. It was a large “farm house” that consisted of a small interior room for sleeping and surrounded by a large open patio for the rest of the house.  There was also a semi enclosed area for preparing food with a fugon (adobe stove), tables, and two bathrooms with a pila.  There was no electricity so after sunset we set out candles.

Jennifer enjoyed a nice afternoon swim with other volunteers at the nearby river, while I enjoyed a few refreshments and a few games of cribbage. Dinner consisted of turkey, with all the fixing, which were prepared by volunteers and brought.  The oatmeal cookies mentioned before were our contribution.  After the hottest started carving the turkey with a machete, she decided it was a little too difficult and I stepped up to the plate to take the handle of the machete and start cutting the bird.  I got through pulling out the stuffing and started cutting the breasts when the owner of the house brought me a sharper combat style knife to finish cutting up the turkey with.  The turkey was a little dry, but very welcome in a country where turkey is usually only eaten by people who have a little money on New Years Eve. It was also very nice that we were able to have turkey on for Thanksgiving. 

Jen and I with 3 others left later in the night, the other 25 people stayed the night sleeping on the floor of the open air patio.  We slept in a nice new bed at the house of one of the volunteers that lives in Pespire.

 Day 23 - Wednesday, November 21, 2001

The next day we woke up feeling a little sick from having eaten more in one sitting the day before than we usually eat in a whole day, but very happy to have had the experience and opportunity to eat so well.  We needed to get back to Choluteca and Jennifer and Michelle (another volunteer) decided that the busses were too crowded and would take too long to reach our destination.  They started looking for a suitable “jalon” or ride. “Jaloning” as it is called here is basically hitch hiking.  From speaking with other volunteers there are no bad jalons, although I heard some pretty scary stories revolving around taking rides with strangers.  The first two guys that stopped for us were driving a newer Toyota king cab pickup so we all got to ride inside the cab.  They look like professionals and had the air conditioning on which was nice because at 9 AM when we left it was already pushing 80 degrees.  The guys were police officials of some sort in the upper ranks of the national police department, and were not on their way to Choluteca, but said they could take us about halfway there before they would have to turn off the road.  The second “jalon” came about 5 minutes after we were left off from the first one.  This guy was driving a nice Isuzu Rodeo, which was from the US as it didn’t have the speedometer in Km/hr but in miles per hour.  The car had leather seats and was even cooler (temperature wise) than the last one.  The driver’s name was Jorge and was a corporate lawyer from San Pedro Sula, a large industrial city in the north.  He was very friendly and dropped us off right in front of “Banco Atlantida” where we needed to go to take out some money so we could pay rent for December.  We talked quiet a bit on the trip into Choluteca and he invited us to look him up if we were ever in San Pedro Sula (*the Forbidden City).  He said we could come over to his house, meet his wife (who is from Italy and expecting a baby at the end of December), and he would show us around San Pedro Sula.

We went to a pizza place that had some of the best pizza I’ve had in Honduras.  Afterwards we went to the shop where we purchased our bed and bought a blender.  The bus ride home was much nicer and only took 2 hours a record in our travels so far.  Although I experienced some “oh no we’re all going to die” feelings as the bus driver was going way too fast.  He would take up the whole road and bank way into the oncoming lane around blind corners utilizing his horn to tell anyone in the corner that he was coming and they should get out of the way.

We arrived home to three packages from home and one letter.  We also arrived to find that our Dueña (landlord) had her baby earlier in the day.  She had a plump little baby girl who looked very healthy.  The letters were a nice surprise. My Mom sent us two placemats, two napkins, and cardboard turkey napkin holders for our Thanksgiving Day dinner.  She also sent a few, much needed, dish towels and a photo of my niece dressed in her Halloween costume.  When I saw the photo and how big she had gotten in just four months (she is almost 2 years old) I started to cry.  I feel like I’m missing out on some of the funniest years of her life.  Andrea, one of Jennifer’s friends, sent us a little Christmas tree box with some candy and Christmas cookies, which is kind of ironic because in the mail that we sent the day before there was a micro cassette tape addressed to Andrea asking her (jokingly) to send us some Christmas cookies!  We shared the cookies with our neighbors and ate the remaining ones as dessert for Thanksgiving.

 Day 24 - Thursday, November 22, 2001

Today is Thanksgiving.  After we got out of bed we had breakfast and shortly there after Jennifer turned to me and her eyes started tearing up.  I asked her what was wrong and she said everyone was going to have Thanksgiving dinner with out us today.  I hadn’t really thought about it, but as I did I felt my own tears starting to form in that place where tears originate from deep within.  I then turned my mind to other things and didn’t allow myself to get caught up in the feeling.  I later told Jennifer that “One of the differences between men and women is that when women think they can’t help but to feel at the same time and usually think about thing in depth, while men can usually choose to not think about it and are better able to detach themselves emotionally from their thoughts.”  She told me I should write this in the journal, of course I wasn’t very good at doing that yesterday when I saw the photo of my niece.  Christmas is right around the corner and I think it is going to be really hard to be away from home.

We talked to my family on the phone at around 1 PM.  Everyone was there including an aunt and uncle with my cousins.  I got to talk to everyone but one of the cousins.  It was nice to hear their voices and fortunately we had a really good phone connection that made us sound like we were right next door.

For dinner Jennifer fixed chicken breasts marinated in garlic, onion, and mushroom mix, mashed potatoes, and cheese bread.  We had it with a nice peach wine and had the cookies Andrea sent us for dessert.  We also used the place settings my Mom had sent us.  After dinner we went up to our neighbors house to wait for Jennifer’s parents to call.  We waited for an hour but they didn’t call.  We are hoping that there was just some miscommunication about the time, or that there were problems with the phone. We have a chat session scheduled for Saturday as well via the internet. 

Day 25 - Friday, November 23, 2001

Today was spent working on email, the web site, and generally relaxing.  The elections are on Sunday and we are trying to keep a low profile.  There is damage that could be done to our reputations if we were to associate with a political party with in the town.  Politics is a very hot topic and everyone here seems to know what party everyone else belongs to.

We had two visitors today two water and sanitation Peace Corps volunteers were working on a project near by and stopped at our house to say “hi”.  We chatted for a while and offered them lunch. We had “balilladas” (a flour tortilla with blended red beans) with “chismol” (similar to pico de gayo), and rice.  It was refreshing to see volunteers and know that people actually pass through our site every now and then.

Day 26 - Saturday, November 24, 2001

Today was a rough day. Jennifer is sick with a sore throat and possibly some kind of sinus infection. The dry weather and dust are getting bad as we haven’t had any rain for about 2 weeks.  The adjustment to our town is coming slowly and the fact that we don’t have a Catholic priest here every weekend for Mass is really depressing. We keep wondering why God has put us here and what our purpose is.  I guess that is part of faith, trusting through the seemingly useless mess in order to experience the grace of God. 

Jen and I worked several hours on our group emails. They are getting better and better. She did all of the writing in the latest one and it is a very good essay on the extreme discrepancies of life here in Honduras and life in the U.S.

Day 27 - Sunday, November 25, 2001

Today was election day.  Honduras has had free open election for about 20 years now.  Before that it was a military dictatorship with a military force that also served as a police force.  Today they elected a man named Ricardo Maduro to be president.  There was a 73% turn out and people were very excited when they announced the winner.  There were fire works going off everywhere, people in the streets cheering, and tomorrow night there is a big celebration in the neighboring town where alcoholic beverages are permitted.  Our town is a dry town and there are town laws against the sale of alcohol and being intoxicated in public.  The first one is enforced the second seems to be ignored.  People can bring alcohol into town, but they cannot sell it.  So everyone is going to Triunfo for a party tonight.

We stayed home for the day, did some deep cleaning by mopping, moving everything around to get the dust out from under it and took the windows apart to clean the screens and glass.  Later in the night I started on a home improvement project.  When we first started looking at this place to live we were very disappointed that there wasn’t a doorway connecting any of the room, all the rooms were separate and you had to go outside to get from one to another.  There is a row of 5 room and we have two of them.  Before we moved in they cut a hole in the way to create a breezeway.  We were very happy for this.  The landlord also put up a plastic shower curtain in the doorway to give it that homely touch.  Needless to say it was kind of ugly.  When we purchased our bed we received free pillows and sheets.  The sheets were a polyester weave that were very slippery to sleep on and felt kind of like a thin burlap.  Luckily we brought sheets from home.  Today I took the sheet cut it up and spent 4 hours with a needle and thread making a nice looking curtain to put in the doorway.  The patter is actually really nice.  Tomorrow I’m going to make some curtains for our bedroom window out of the other half of the sheet, and a table cloth out of the fitted sheet. 

Day 28 - Monday, November 26, 2001

We started “working” today. Although I think the adjusting to cooking, cleaning, sleeping, and eating here should be considered work.  We woke up and did our “compo” (Spanish for country) workout.  This involved sit-ups, pushups, deep squats, and few other fun things you can do with out weights.  We are going to try to exercise everyday to help adjust to the walking we have to do, loose some weight, stay in shape, and adjust to the heat.

At about 10 AM I went to the Alcaldia (like a city hall) and visited with the Alcalde.  He told me that he was sad to be leaving office.  With the elections there was a new Alcalde elected as well.  He told me that currently no one thinks he has done anything for the town and people don’t really care for him, but when the new Alcalde comes in they will think he was the best Alcalde the town has seen.  I meant to ask him about the 110 cases of metRX nutritional bars in his office (about $9,000 worth), but I didn’t think it would be appropriate.  I have a meeting with him tomorrow and Friday to discuss the transition period with him and the new Alcalde, and another to talk about the “Yucca Association” that he is the president of.  Yes yucca as in vegetable. They have an association of Yucca members or something like that here, like a corn growers association or alfalfa anonymous or something along those lines.

We had left over pizza that Jen had made for dinner the night before for lunch, and studied Spanish for 2 hours.  Then we worked on Christmas tapes for our families.  We recorded some songs, and dialog about what we are doing here.  I went out and made a tape of the different sounds of Honduras including the birds, roosters, and our friend the pig that lives right next door and eats our garbage.

Day 29 - Tuesday, November 27, 2001

We walked to Gueanacaste this morning starting at around 7 AM and returning at about 10 AM.  The road to Guanacaste runs along the river and affords some really beautiful views, but getting there it is all up hill and really hard work.  Jen and I were pretty tired when we arrived.  Luckily Jennifer’s community partner lives in Guanacaste and we went to his house to visit with his wife and kids, he however was at work.  The walk back down was brisk and it seemed to take half the time it did to get up.

We arrived home and I cooked up some eggs and toast.  I was supposed to have a meeting with the Alcalde and the newly elected Alcalde to be, but they never sent for me and I don’t think they ever met.

We spent the rest of the day making Christmas tapes for our families.

Day 30 - Wednesday, November 28, 2001

This morning we visited with the Centro de Saluda, the local government Health Center, and met with the director.  She expressed an urgent need for some computer help and “if it is possible could you train 2 of my people on them so we can do our annual reports?”  I told her that wouldn’t be a problem and we could start in February and utilize the new information center.  She told me she didn’t think she could pay us and she needed some people trained now, and asked if we could start next week.

I’m not sure we can come up with a 25 hour computer class curriculum in a matter of a week or so, set the precedent of not charging (usually a small fee is paid here that goes towards other projects like the ink cartridges for the information center printers or improve some aspect of the project and community), and in 25 hours teach people with no computer skills at all how to create complicated spreadsheets and graphs in Excel.  I think we may need to start a little more basic than that and work up from there.  

Jen and I spent the rest of the day making tapes for our families that we want to get out in time for them to arrive before Christmas.  We have a micro cassette recorder and have been making tapes of stories, songs, and all the fun sounds of Honduras.  Christmas is going to be very different this year.

Day 31 - Thursday, November 29, 2001

We spent much of the day working on the tapes to send home for Christmas, and praying that the phones would work.  The telephones have been out since Sunday and we have no way communicating with the Peace Corps office which we need to call in order to get permission to leave our site and go to the capitol.  In the mean time our food supply is running low.  We have plenty of beans and rice, but I’ll go crazy if we have to live off that for every meal.  I find it quite ironic as we received a letter today reiterating the importance of getting permission from our director to leave our site for more then 48 hours, which would have to in order to go to Tegucigalpa, the capital.

I picked up one of the new computers from my community partner and brought it home to test out.  They are pretty set up here.  It’s an off name computer, which doesn’t thrill me too much, but they have two printers, a scanner, a digital camera, and modern systems that are at least 750 MHz or faster, all internet and network ready.  I haven’t seen all of them yet, but it looks like one has a CD burner and another has a DVD movie as well.

I was really disappointed when the machine kept crashing when ever I tried to do anything with it, or just let it sit for a while.  Tomorrow I will run some tests on it and see if I can isolate the problem.

Day 32 - Friday, November 30, 2001

We spent most of today working on tapes for our friends and family for Christmas.  What a lot of work.  We finished though, and now have 4 90 minute tapes with songs, jokes, talking, and other things on the tapes to send to our families back home. 

After running several tests I noticed on my 15 restart that the processor chip ID when restarted said Pentium III 750 MHz, I found this a little odd as in all my benchmark tests and in the operating system it registered as a 1000 MHz system.  I double check the Bios settings and someone had overclocked the system so that it was running 250 MHz faster than it was designed to, causing it to lock up.  I fixed it and now it works great!

I met with the alcalde today and talked a little bit with him about my role with his office.  He said he would like to meet in the next week to discuss the following: repairing the bridge over the river (which has been out for 4 years now), developing a committee to manage water and electricity problems, and assist him and his Yucca group in finding a market for selling yucca out side of Honduras.  All this talk coming from a man who has been in office for 4 years now, and will complete his term as Alcalde in 1 month.  He told me he wanted to get started on the bridge project, but the telephones have been out in the town this week so he hasn’t been able to talk to the engineer.  I told him we could meet in a week or two to discuss what resources I may have to assist him.

We hung out at the little corner store just up the street from our house and chatted with our neighbors.  One of our neighbors, the father to our landlord, invited me to go milk cows in the morning.  I’ve always wanted to try milking a cow, and now I’ll have a chance.

Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32