Two weeks in my new site as an official volunteer

Well, I'm now a sworn-in, official Peace Corps volunteer. I've fully accustomed myself to the local culture, language and food (see the Honduran Whopper Value Meal below). Okay, so just kidding, I haven't mastered Spanish yet, am still finding funny new things about the culture here, and definitely miss food from the states, but I'm officially in my site where I'll live for the next two years (see preview below)



After a brief introduction to my counterpart, Jauncho (a park ranger who lives in the pueblo where I'll be living for the next two years), a brief despedida (goodbye celebration), and a short night of sleep, I took the 10 hour journey from Tegucigalpa to my site in Ocotepeque. Ocotepeque is a department of Honduras in the far west bordering Guatemala and El Salvador. The region is very mountainous, and I am living in a 250-person pueblo without electricity (one of two of all the 57 trainees) at a chilly ~1,500 meters in elevation. If you read my last blog entry, and remember, areas above 1,800 meters are classified as protected areas in Honduras to protect the upper watersheds, so I am very near a beautiful protected area called Güisayote. My community is a small farming community working primarily with coffee, corn, and varios fruits. And I've been assigned here to help with natural resource management, environmental education, and income generation (the three goals of the Protected Areas Management project here in Honduras). This means that I'll probably 1) help Juancho begin to collect permanent records of the species that exist in Güisayote and make maps in ArcGIS (a mapping program), 2) teach kids and adults about the importance of biodiversity, the negative impacts of some of the agrochemicals used here, etc... and 3) see if I can help to organize a cooperative to serve as a micro-bank or to give more leverage with the bodegas that purchase the coffee.

Peace Corps has a policy that we live with a host family our first two months in site to make sure we do note seclude ourselves, and to assure integration in the community. I've been placed with a wonderful, yet timid, family of three. Roberto, Berta and a 3-year-old Carlitos. The house is a nice, simple house with tile floors, cement walls, and a zinc roof, but beautiful flower gardens on all sides that make it seem like a mansion. Not to mention the modest view overlooking the valley below and the town of San Francisco de Valle. It's awesome at night to look down from a pueblo without lights onto a town filled with lights.

And since everyone asks, it's actually not any different living without electricity. The only thing that's tough is not having a refrigerator, and not being able to charge my cell phone. Otherwise, life's normal as ever. We eat by candlelight, hang out and talk for a few hours after eating, I read by headlamp until I fall asleep, and it's light when I wake up. And since I have a 6-8 hour battery on my netbook, I can even listen to music or watch videos if I'm bored. Rough huh?
My second day in site we had a 9AM meeting in Portillo, a pueblo across the mountain (the pueblo in the photo above). My counterpart met me at 6AM, and informed me we could walk. We plodded muddy trails in a climb of over 2,100 feet up the mountain, at a pace to make it in time for our 9AM meeting (I think we arrived 15 minutes late, but ½ hour early Honduran time—that's right, I fit right in here). But how fantastic was the hike. First of all, it was almost cold at parts, a feeling I had been missing, and especially beneath the cloudy fog that covered the mountain I felt exhilarated. And secondly, the forests here are amazing. Areas that were completely cleared for corn farming up until not more than 8 years ago, when the area was designated as a protected area, already have trees more than 30 feet tall, and vegetation that'd take 50 years to grow in the U.S. Not to mention the forests that are older that have monstrous trees, beautiful waterfalls, fern plants that look like trees, and bountiful wildlife. It was a great preview of where I'll be working.

So certainly I have to laugh at many things to keep myself from missing my family too much, I hope you'll enjoy a few of these:

Because I can change fonts in Word or align a column in Excel I'm considered a computer wiz here.

To practice my Español with my 3-year-old host brother I was trying to explain the circle of life using his plastic set of African animal toys. Suddenly, by the disgusted look on Carlitos' face I realized I must not know how to say “No, the lion can't ride in the car with the billy goat,” (it was an Ibex, but how do you explain that in 3-year-old Spanish), “because the lion will eat the billy goat.” And then he abrubptly injected, “Noooo...son juguetes!” (Noo...they're just toys!). Silly me!

Carlitos also has an uncle and a grandpa named Carlitos (Carlitos to Carlos is the equivalent of Charlie to Charles), and none of them can use Carlos because there are six other Carlos' in the family. So most people here have two first names and to last names, but most of their second first names are Roberto, Juan, or well, that's all just Roberto or Juan, so there still exists much overlap, and you either have to memorize three of the four names for each person to identify them, OR learn their nickname, which will be something like Chepe, Chevo, Mincho or just Che. It's hillarious to me when they ask my name and I say, slowly and clearly, “Jesse,” and they have to ask two or three more times before they settle for Jose.

People dress pretty nicely here for their state of poverty, and on Sunday for church, appropriate attire for men is your nicest dress shoes/boots, new jeans, a button-up shirt, gelled hair, AND your machete in a fancy leather sash.

After walking two days in the valley of the shadow of death with feverish muscle aches, nausea and a host mom trying to convince me that I needed to eat MORE twice refried beans and MORE hot whole milk with sugar, I found a deleriously fun way to cheer myself up. Don't tell anyone, but beneath the defening raindrops on the zinc, sheetmetal rooftop, I got a random urge to belt out Van Morrison's Brown- Eyed Girl to one of the princesses on the Disney fleece my host family gave to me. I think they can add that to the list of Healthy Ways to Relieve Stress. One day when I'm back in the states I'll say to myself, “Do you remember when, you used to sing...”

And definitely the funny little hamburgers.