Sarah's Honduran Adventures

Wanderings

2010-06-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

Yes, it has been a while, and as most of you know, I have already left Honduras. I left on April 9 and have been heading south ever since. I´m flying back to the US at the end of July and in the meantime have been to Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and am now in Argentina.

The trip through Central America was pretty quick to have more time in South America, but I was able to visit my friend Jessica who is a Peace Corps Volunteer in southern Costa Rica. We had a great time there seeing some of her work, meeting her friends, and seeing what a Peace Corps village was like in another country. It was much smaller than Ocotepeque and I could definitely tell that I was in the land of lush flora and fauna rather than the land of deforestation, but there were a lot of similarities in the way she interacted with community members and the relationships that she had with them. After visiting her it was a quick trip through Panama to see Panama City and the canal before hopping on a sailboat to head through the San Blas Islands to get to Colombia.

The San Blas Islands were beautiful. I definitely paid a price to get there (being on a sailboat is nothing like being in a motorboat) but the swimming and snorkeling were fantastic. It took us five days to get to Cartagena, Colombia and I could not have been more happy to set foot on dry land. Cartagena was a fun, beautiful city, then we took off for a town further up the coast called Santa Marta. From Santa Marta a group of us did a five day hike to some ruins in the jungle, which was absolutely amazing. The hike was beautiful and out in the middle of nowhere. Possibly one of my favorite parts of the trip so far. I loved Colombia and from Santa Marta we went to Medellin, which used to be the homicide capital of the world, which I´m sure many of you already know. Medellin has changed incredibly and become a modern, progressive city whose people are really living life to the fullest. I could actually see myself living there.

From Medellin we went to a tiny valley town called Salento, then to Bogota. I didn´t like Bogota as much as we´d heard some stories that questioned the safety there and it kind of felt like a high altitude Tegucigalpa. That´s not a complement. After just a couple days there we flew to the Colombian Amazon (don´t worry, not where FARC is) and took a boat up to Iquitos, Peru where we did an awesome jungle tour. I have now seen pink river dolphins, many, many sloths, six species of monkeys including a pygmy marmoset, and visited a true Amazon town. It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Peru included many amazing experiences as I also visited Machu Picchu! It was incredible. We did a two day Inca Trail hike before arriving to the ruins and once we got there, the ruins did not disappoint. It was unbelievable to walk through the ruins buried deep in the mountains high up on a mountaintop. From Cuzco we headed south to Arequipa to hike in the Colca Canyon, and then to cross into northern Chile. Many of the places I wanted to see in Chile are south of Santiago, where it is probably too cold to visit at this time of year. Because of that, we only stayed in northern Chile where we visited the desert town of San Pedro de Atacama.

We are now in Salta, Argentina and will be heading to Mendoza (wine country) on Mondya. I have a month in Argentina to eat some great food and to explore before coming home. This has been a wonderful trip so far and I´m excited for what is still to come, but I am also looking forward to coming home. I´ll have several weeks in Davis to enjoy time with family and friends before moving to Boston!! I have decided to attend Boston College for their outstanding Global Social Work program and am really excited to go back to school. I think that being in South America for winter is preparing me for the winter back east. Hopefully at least...

One last bit of news from Honduras before wrapping up: I have started a scholarship foundation for the girls in my Yo Merezco group. They are really bright, motivated girls, but I think only one would have the opportunity to attend university. The others simply do not have enough money. I told them before leaving that I was going to work really hard to get money for university scholarships, and that they in return had to work hard in school to earn the scholarship. They and their families are really excited for this opportunity. I am looking for donations and if you are interested please contact me for more info at sarahcwest@gmail.com.

Yo Merezco camp and closing up

2010-03-02T19:20:00.000-08:00

Hello! It's been quite a while since I've written, but I wanted to update those who don't know about the camp that I organized with another volunteer for our youth groups. It was a four-day camp in a town called Copan Ruinas, which is about five hours away from Ocotepeque. We left on Friday the 19th and came back the following Monday. The camp was awesome and all of my Yo Merezco girls had a wonderful time. They made some new friends and really learned a lot about themselves and their culture. Some of it was pretty hard work and I'm proud of them for how it turned out because at times it was a bit challenging. It was also the first time for almost all of them away from their communities (this had some unforseen carsickness consequences) and the first time for all of them to be away from family.

On Friday we started right after getting to Copan Ruins with some introduction activities, rules for the weekend, and an activity called the eight faces of women so the girls could see that women are so much more than just someone who cooks and cleans. On Saturday they had to do an activity to think about what they liked about themselves, what goals and dreams they have for the future, and got to listen to a panel of successful women talk about their experiences since many of them were able to rise above poverty to find success. After that session the girls couldn't stop talking about what their dreams and goals for the future were. It was great!

On Sunday we visited the ruins (which they all loved) and then to this fancy hotel up in the hills to eat our lunch on the grounds. We ate in an open air place that is designed for yoga and sits right on the hill overlooking the ruins below. After lunch we were sitting in a circle to check in with them before continuing with our schedule and a conversation started about everything that they've all had to live through. Most of the women chaperones shared their stories, as did some of the girls, which was really emotional. I think it was good for some of them to say what they've been holding back for years about emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and absent fathers. Some pretty scary stuff about home life and what they've been through, but I think it helped the girls a lot to see that others had been through similar things.

That evening we had our clausura (close of the weekend). Lena and I had gotten every girl's parents to write her a letter about why she's special and why they love her, which was a secret, and gave the letters to them the last night. People are so closed in this culture and I think it was probably the first time for a lot of them to even hear what their parents really thought about them and got to hear something positive rather than negative. They were really emotional about this too and will really cherish those letters. I know the girl in my room slept with hers that night. This camp was a once in a lifetime opportunity for them and was something I know they will never forget. When we circled up the last night to reflect on the weekend, there were a few tears when the girls were explaining how much it meant to them.

I've attached some photos of the girls and some of the activities we did. The first is a photo of all of the girls in my group who went as well as the women chaperones at the Mayan ruin site. The second is a picture of the mural they made on Saturday afternoon. They each had to create a couple pictures representing their culture which was then put into a huge mural that we will always have hanging up in our town library. The third picture is a few of my girls (and chaperones) tracing another for an activity where they had to explain who they are and why they like themselves. The final picture is at the ruin site again and I've attached it so everyone can see some of the ruins and the t-shirts we all have as a group. Enjoy!

I also wanted to update everyone on the coming close of my Peace Corps experience! I'm leaving Honduras on April 9th, which is quickly approaching, and will be heading south until coming back to the US at the end of July. I'm planning on updating along the way. These past two years have just flown by, been full of so many ups and downs, but at the end of the day I wouldn't change anything about it. It's been an amazing and really meaningful experience for me.

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010

2010-01-06T10:46:00.000-08:00

I am looking forward to this upcoming year. Although 2009 was my only full year in Honduras (2008 was just a month short), I am happy to leave behind the stresses of still being somewhat new, the political instability as a result of the June coup, and the frustrations of unsuccessful projects. I have my last few months of Peace Corps to look forward to that will be followed by a trip through Central and South America and adjusting back to life in the US. Things are looking up.

My last couple weeks of 2009 were great. My parents came to visit me again and we were able to spend a couple days in Guatemala and spend time with my friends around Ocotepeque. The girls in my Yo Merezco group made them a fancy lunch that was followed by some dancing in the library specially decorated for the occasion. They were able to visit the health center and finally got to meet the doctor I work with, but we were all disappointed not to make it to Polcho to distribute more toothpaste. It had been pouring for 24 hours and we were unable to make the trip due to the mud and growth of the rivers.

After the trip, instead of saying goodbye at the airport, I got to go home with them! I spent eight days in Davis seeing friends and spending Christmas time with my family followed by a couple more days visiting the boyfriend in Henderson, just outside of Las Vegas. I can’t believe I’m going to be done with Peace Corps in just a couple months but am looking forward to being back.

There are some pictures from Lago Atitlan in Guatemala, the lunch in Ocotepeque, and hiking in Nevada. Happy 2010 everyone!!

Election Day and Then Some

2009-12-02T05:59:00.000-08:00

Sunday was election day, a day much anticipated across the world. There was potential to end the political crisis as well as for possible violence amid protests. I was preparing myself for all possibilities on Saturday evening before going to bed, but when I woke up on Sunday morning, I found that I had not anticipated what actually happened. It was dead silent. There was no one on the streets and it was as quiet as Christmas morning when everyone is sleeping in after staying up until 1am the night before with firecrackers exploding everywhere. I went down to my neighbor’s house and spent several hours there chatting with them and watching the news.

Elections here are normally accompanied with wild celebration, more firecrackers, and a lot of noise. None of that was present last night, even after they finally announced the winner around 11:00. People in general just want to move past this situation and are looking forward to the future. I am hopeful that things will finally get back to normal, as normal as they ever are here, and that everyone can move on.

Since the school year ended early, I have been doing a lot more activities with the girls in my Yo Merezco group. We made and sold bread to fund an excursion we want to take to the nearby cloud forest to go hiking and we also hiked to hot springs in the mountains a few weeks ago. It was about an hour hike each way, but the uphill on the way was not so easy as we were all carrying food for lunch and I had a watermelon in my backpack that one of the girls couldn’t carry anymore, which we are eating in the first picture I posted.
We spent a wonderful afternoon swimming at the hot spring in both the hot and cold pools and I have posted some pictures of this activity and of making the bread. The third picture shows the oven we used to cook the bread, and it is a traditional oven that has to be heated with wood, leña,before the bread could be cooked and in the last picture the girls are greasing the pans before we put in the batter. Enjoy the pictures!

My 25th Birthday

2009-11-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

I’ve now had two birthdays in Honduras. The Halloween tradition for volunteers here is to go to the Copan Ruins, which is a cute town by Mayan ruins, to celebrate together. I went for the day before my birthday to see friends who I hadn’t seen in a while and to spend some time in a town where I can feel like I’m living a life of luxury (meaning running water, hot showers even though it was too humid to take them, and a couple restaurant options).

After spending some time with friends I took off before the actual Halloween festivities to attend a graduation ceremony. School here is divided into kindergarten, 6 years of elementary school, and colegio, which encompasses both junior high and high school. There is a graduation ceremony after kindergarten, elementary school, and high school. Graduation from sixth grade, the ceremony I attended, is a big deal since some students cannot afford to go to colegio or are needed to help the family.

After some speeches (fortunately not too many) the students are called up one by one to receive their diplomas. To receive the diploma, they walk up with their families and padrinos. Padrinos, godparents, are usually family members and are chosen especially for this occasion. I was asked by the mother of a family who is like my host family here, to be the madrina, godmother, for her daughter, Daritza. The ceremony was going to be in December but since the school year ended early, it landed on my birthday.

I have posted two pictures: one of Daritza and I with her diploma and the other of the family, one of the kindest and committed families I know here. It was a really big honor to be asked and it meant a lot to Daritza and her family. It was a great way to spend my birthday.

Getting Back to Work...Again

2009-10-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

The last couple weeks have been pretty crazy. (Ex?)President Zelaya snuck back into the country at the end of September and has been holed up in the Brazilian Embassy since. As a result the entire country was placed on a 24hr per day curfew that lasted three days. It was awful. No one left their houses and some of my neighbors who actually did leave to go to the emergency clinic were stopped by the police and only let go after explaining their health situation. The airports and borders were closed for a couple days but I was finally able to leave for my vacation after my flight being cancelled three times.

I had a great couple days in DC before getting sick and ended up having to stay two extra weeks until I got better. While I was there five constitutional human rights were suspended in Honduras until after the November elections and when I got back to Honduras last week I found out that the rest of the school year had been cancelled as well. School was supposed to end at the end of November and after already missing two or three months of class due to strikes, students started vacation last Friday. Micheletti decided that every student across the entire nation would pass every class, whether or not they had been passing throughout the year.

This leaves a couple projects on hold until school starts again in February but I’m planning more events with my girls group so they aren’t as bored during vacation. We’re also going to have some more meetings at the health center, which will be coming just in time since we have several pregnant girls, 14 and 15, in our pregnant women’s group. Every time I try to get some new projects going, the political situation escalates so I’m just hopeful that after the elections everything will calm down and we can get back to our normal lives.

Brushing Teeth

2009-08-20T18:50:00.000-07:00

Here finally is the video that I took a couple weeks ago in Polcho. All the kids are outside the classroom so they don't drool all over the floor and you can also see Cinthia, the nurse I work with, the mountains, the classroom, and teacher. Enjoy!!

A Day in the Life of the Gringita

2009-07-31T10:26:00.000-07:00

Trying to get my life back together I am finally going each week to Polcho, the aldea where I am doing the hygiene project with the Colgate grant. I absolutely love going and the 30 minute walk each way is beautiful…or so I thought until I got a different view of it today. I went again with Cinthia, one of the nurses at the health center and a good friend, and we were chatting the entire way about different ideas for activities and charlas for these kids during the rest of the school year. When we got there they were really excited to see us and it was obvious they have learned how to correctly brush their teeth since they now volunteer to demonstrate in front of the class and are not afraid of shouting out the next steps during the demonstrations. They’re getting a lot better at actually brushing as well as evidenced by the significant decrease in toothpaste and drool on the ground and on their clothes. I took a great video but have been having problems posting it, so hopefully it will be up soon.

After they finished brushing, showing me their pearly

whites, and playing a game, Cinthia and I finally headed out to go back to Antigua. The kids really like to walk partway with us (and we like it too even though it turns into a battle of wills when it comes to how far they can go) and it took forever to get them to turn around to head back to school. We tried everything until Cinthia saw some cows coming and hollered back to warn them and they finally took off running for the school. That may be something we have to try again. Anyway, as we were passing the man who was walking with the cows warned us that the path was not in a good state. We thanked him but continued on since we didn’t want to head back to the original path because we were going to take a shortcut.

About 50 feet later, we saw exactly why he was warning us. The entire path had turned into grey mud that was mixed with cow poop and who knows what else. We kept going and started to step on the rocks so we wouldn’t slip. I was following Cinthia a little too closely so decided to step on a different rock than she had. I have no idea what exactly what it was I saw, but it definitely wasn’t a rock. My foot immediately fell a foot down into the goop and as I tried to hurry out, I tripped, my other foot and almost entire leg sank down into more mud, and my right shoe came off, stuck in the mud in the first place I stepped, still a foot down. Having at least one free leg I reached dry land only to crash into a thorn bush. Picking out the thorns and laughing, I tried to tell Cinthia that my shoe had fallen off, but she could barely even tell since my foot was now black, the same color of the shoe. When she finally saw that I had lost it and saw where it was, she went back in the mud in her starch white nurses uniform to dig it out.

Covered in mud while she only had a little on her, we slowly made it to another village on the way where her aunt gave me some water to clean myself off as all the school children were watching, mesmerized. I don’t think they’ve seen many gringas walk into the school with mud and cow poop up to their knees as well as on their hands and arms. After taking the long way back since after all that we completely missed the shortcut, we finally got back to Antigua to make a work plan for the rest of the school year but ended up putting it off until Thursday. I had to get home to take a bucket bath.

Keeping Busy

2009-07-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

It hasn't been easy to keep myself busy when the country is pretty much at a standstill and no teachers are working, so I finally did something this weekend that has been on my list for a long time...I learned how to make flour tortillas! Most people here eat corn tortillas and although I can make those I really wanted to learn how to make flour tortillas from a family that has a baleada stand in the park and makes the best flour tortillas I've ever had. I went to their house on Saturday and helped them prepare the masa (dough) from 40 pounds of flour that they were going to make into tortillas to sell at their stand that evening. They thought teaching me was fun and took lots of pictures, some of which I have posted above. I'm going to keep practicing and hopefully will still be making tortillas when I get home.

Trying to Get Life Back to Normal

2009-07-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, so my life doesn’t quite fit the standard for normal, but whatever it was a month ago, I want it back. I spent a lot of time away from Ocotepeque in June starting with a women’s health workshop where the manual I have been working on with other Peace Corps Volunteers was finally debuted, which was followed by a wonderful vacation at home. I was really excited to be coming back to Honduras with loads of motivation and plans that I had been waiting to implement in order to be done with the women’s health workshop, but then we have nothing less than a golpe de estado to once again throw things off. I suppose this is part of the experience living in a developing country and although this is an extreme case I think there is always going to be something interrupting life and productivity.

Rather than getting right to work I barely even left the house my first week back because no one was sure if things were going to turn violent or stay peaceful. I have finally been able to go to the health center a few times to follow up on some consultations I had scheduled (somehow no matter how many times I tried to explain the difference between being a psychology major and being a psychologist it never came across so I just gave in), but most of my other projects are on hold. The teachers are on strike until Zelaya comes back so I can’t continue with the tutoring with the girls from my youth group or the hygiene project that I had started just before vacation in Polcho. It’s also going to be hard to start a women’s health group because people right now aren’t really in the mood to go to meetings or to talk about anything else, which is understandable and is exactly what Peace Corps Volunteers are going through too.

The first week and a half of this was pretty agonizing just waiting to see what was going to happen. I didn’t really think or talk about anything else so now I’m trying to find distractions even if they can’t be work related. I’ve been doing the work I can while researching grad schools and trying to study French so I can distance myself from everything that’s been happening. Maybe it’s not the most productive in terms of my work goals here in Honduras, but I’m hoping that when things get back to normal I will have avoided driving myself crazy and be ready to get back to work.

Oh Honduras

2009-06-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

I believe most of the world is aware by now, but for those of you who don't know, there was a military coup here in Honduras on Sunday. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm safe and to tell a little bit about what's going on here. I'm not sure how it appears to everyone on the outside or how the international press is describing things, but where I am, things are actually just like normal. I believe the only protesting is going on in Tegucigalpa, which conveniently is 12 hours away (although it didn't feel as convenient when I had to go for my medical checkup). People outside of Honduras know more about what's going on than a lot of people here do, but I think everyone is just waiting to see how this plays out. Peace Corps has us on standfast, which means we aren't allowed to travel anywhere, and has told us to have passports ready and our bags packed just in case we have to be evacuated. So far I haven't heard that this is going to happen but it's been a waiting game for the last couple days. Not very fun.

This is the news for now and I hope everyone is doing well and not too hot now that it's almost July.

Risk Taking and Adventure Seeking

2009-06-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

I have never thought of myself as a risk taker. I’ve always been cautious when it comes to making decisions, especially those where there has been potential for me to get hurt (in any way). I started thinking about this more the other day on the bus with a friend of mine who is another Peace Corps volunteer. She is similar to me but we started talking because we both had recently been described as risk takers and didn’t understand why. We were in complete agreement that neither of us were big on taking risks as we were passing through the outskirts, the most poverty-stricken area, of Tegucigalpa.

Perhaps it was just a result of looking out the window with the eye of an outsider as a result of the conversation and thinking of home, but it occurred to me that living in Honduras is a risk that not a lot of people would take. Leaving a place where it is comfortable and you know what to expect is not easy. That got me thinking that maybe I am a risk taker in the sense that a lot of the things I do in my life do not follow a ‘normal’ path and have very uncertain outcomes.

I like to think of it as seeking adventure in my life since I have no desire at the moment to do it any differently. Is this good or bad? I don’t think the answer would be the same for everyone, but for me, I think it’s good. There is no where else in the world I would rather be right now and I am constantly thinking about all the cool places I could live in and travel to next. Living and working here has made me think a lot about what I want to do with my life and although it could change, I know that whatever I do, it will take me all over the world in search of the next adventure.

Colgate Grant

2009-05-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

I got a Colgate grant! I decided to start a hygiene program in Polcho, which is the poorest aldea of Antigua, and will be teaching the schoolchildren how to brush their teeth and how to keep themselves clean. I think a couple of the children might come from families that can afford to buy toothbrushes, but I’ll be getting a toothbrush for each child as well as toothpaste so they can brush their teeth each day after they eat at school. I’ll be walking once a week to the school to teach them how to brush their teeth correctly and will talk about other hygiene topics as well.

I’m really excited to be working in this community. The school is the only cinder-block building in the community and the rest of the houses are all made of mud and have either partially tiled roofs or just a sheet of tin to block out the rain. There is just one teacher for 18 kids from kindergarten to fifth grade and only a couple of the kids will be able to afford to continue with school after they graduation from sixth grade. Talking about hygiene might be a little difficult, but I’ll be going to the school over a period of six months and will hopefully be able to see a little improvement after that amount of time. I’m taking off for Tegucigalpa next week for our yearly checkups and will be picking up the materials there. I’m really looking forward to starting this projects and will post more once I start!

Work, More Work, and a Little Fun

2009-04-22T14:25:00.000-07:00

Life here in Ocotepeque is definitely picking up. Like I wrote in my last blog entry, I’m finally starting to figure things out. They say that the first year of your Peace Corps service you hardly get anything done and that all of your work gets done the second year. Just starting my second year in Honduras I can already see that this is going to be true. It takes a really long time to get people to trust you and to want to work with you but now that that is finally starting to happen, I’m starting to get some great results. One of the things that I’m really excited about right now is our pregnant women’s club I’m running with Julissa, one of the nurses, at the health center. She’s really excited about it and we work well together, which has made our meetings lately very well received. The meetings are once a month and are really fun. We talked about breast feeding and infant nutrition at the April meeting and will be throwing them a mother’s day party in May (along with giving them an educational component if I get my way). I’m so excited with how things are going and am also writing up all the lesson plans we have for the meetings so the nurses will have a rotating curriculum to continue the meetings after I leave.

I still see the girls in my Yo Merezco youth group fairly often. We have tutoring at my house once or twice a week in addition to continuing our monthly meetings. Next month we’ll be talking about study skills and test-taking strategies so they can do better in school. I’m also going to the house of one of the girls who failed the year tomorrow because her parents don’t let her leave the house and I’m going to try to get her permission to come to my house for school work and to the May meeting…we’ll see how it goes.

Honduras right now is in the national vaccination campaign, which is where the doctors and nurses go to each village covered by the health center to make sure all of the kids have received their vaccinations. I went this morning with two of the nurses to two different communities, La Comunidad and Los Estanquillos. The walk was beautiful on the way up to La Comunidad and we could see the entire valley. The rainy season hasn’t started yet so it’s extremely dry, but still beautiful. We gave a lot of the kids vitamin A because people generally don’t get enough in their diets here and caught other kids up on their vaccinations. Although I mostly went for fun and to talk to the people in the communities since I don’t vaccinate, I did give some kids vitamin A, which you can see in the first picture I’ve posted. In the second are Nolvia and Julissa, the two nurses I went with, checking to see if the kids who stopped by were in need of any vaccinations.

Although I don’t have much free time when I’m here in Ocotepeque, last month I was finally able to get out to one of the Bay Islands for vacation. I went with some friends to Utila and it was absolutely amazing. We went snorkeling with Whale sharks (they don’t eat people) and dolphins and I also tried scuba diving for the first time! Scuba diving was really fun and I would like to get my license at some point while I’m here. I’m trying to get to know Honduras while I’m here as well as work a lot in my town which means there isn’t as much free time as I was expecting before coming to Peace Corps, but this is exactly how I want it to be.

Reflections on a little over a year in Honduras

2009-03-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

Some days I can’t believe I’ve been here this long. It’s going by so quickly and I know I haven’t been in site quite a year yet, but I’m getting there. I’m just finally starting to figure out how my time is best used here (I think) and coming up with some projects of my own that I want to start rather just doing the textbook Peace Corps programs so I know this next year is going to go by even faster!

At the same time, however, it does seem like a long time since I was in California. When I think of all the bucket baths I’ve taken, all the power outages I’ve been through, all the catcalls and kisses blown to me from men on the street, all the frustration I’ve felt feeling like I’m not doing enough, and all the projects I’ve tried or completed not going quite how I envisioned, it could seem like ages. I’m used to the bucket baths by now, and can even shower sometimes, have plenty of candles and my headlamp for the power outages, am getting really good at ignoring all the men on the street (even if it’s someone I know and they want to talk to me), and am coming to terms with the work I’m doing, so I chose to look at the bright side and think about all the things I’ve enjoyed and how quickly time flies when you’re having fun.

I’ve realized that the thing that I enjoy most here is working with my youth group that I started for the sex ed curriculum. We finished that back in December, had a wonderful closing ceremony that my parents got to be there for and decided to keep meeting once a month. In between those meetings I started having some of the girls over to my house and exercising with others, but there isn’t as much time for that now since they’ve started school again. The school year ends in November or October if the administration decides to cut the school year short, and start again in February. To keep working with them, I have decided to start a tutoring/study hour program where they have a few designated afternoons per month where they can come to my apartment to have a quiet place to study or to get homework help. I started this in reaction to the devastating that four of the ten girls in my group failed seventh grade. Four. Of the six who passed, one was already repeating and two others failed their final exams, only passing on a second try. I see so many improvements that could be made in the education system here, but since I am not in the position to make them, I will put a lot of effort into these girls with the goal of every single one of them passing this year.

I also want to put more effort into the youth group we have in Antigua. I helped out a lot with their meetings last year but want to become even more involved this year. The students come to the health center once a month for a health-related talk, but I would like to do some other activities with them as well. I want to do a world map project with them where we paint a world map on a wall somewhere in Antigua, but that will probably have to wait until the rainy season is over. I also want to take them along with my Yo Merezco girls to a leadership camp at the Copan Ruins once they’re done with school. I would run the camp with another volunteer, who would also bring her girls as well. This is just an idea at the moment and won’t happen for a while, but stay tuned. I really want to make it work.

I think one of the hardest things lately has been dealing with the feeling that I’m not doing enough. When I first came to Honduras I said that I knew that the changes I would hope to make would be small and would touch a few people rather than my entire town, but it’s a lot different to accept that now that I’m here. I knew that’s what I was supposed to say, but I didn’t know what it was like until I actually got here. I realize that I’m serving as a mentor for the girls I’m working with and that I’m supporting my friends in town just by being here and talking to them, but I think part of me is still looking for that big project that is going to make the huge difference I’ve been wanting to make. How am I supposed to know where the line is between setting high goals and being realistic?

I’ve just been taking it one day at a time and using time in my day to talk to my neighbors, the girls in my youth group, and my friends. I have plenty of time during my day and really enjoy choosing my own projects and my own path through these two years in Honduras. Looking out the window this afternoon at the beautiful valley that encompasses parts of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, I realized that life couldn’t be any better. I’ll get through the bad days, the frustrations with work, the endless catcalls, and I’ll be doing it all with a smile.

P.S. The picture is from Christmas Eve with some friends up on the mountain overlooking my town at sunset.

Obama´s Inauguration

2009-02-21T14:22:00.000-08:00

After witnessing the reaction to Obama’s election back in November, I decided along with two other volunteers that we needed to make the trip to Washington D.C. for the January 20th inauguration. We bought our plane tickets together after many frustrations with the slow internet connection, just four days after the election. As we got closer and closer to our departure date I could not believe that I was actually going to be in the US again after almost a year of living in Honduras, and that I was going to be there for the inauguration. Before I left I even had several friends tell me they were going to look for me on TV and to tell Obama that Honduras loves him.

I finally got to the airport in San Pedro Sula after a five hour bus ride and 45 min taxi ride only to discover that the system was down to check in bags. My friend Anna and I nervously checked our bags full of nice, warm winter clothes hoping they would still get there with handwritten baggage tags while Matt carried his bag on with some of our more necessary items just in case. Our boarding passes were handwritten slips of paper as well that would supposedly take us all the way through our layover in Miami to Washington. After not too much waiting we all finally got on the plane at Gate 4 (of 5) of the most used of two airports in Honduras.

The flight to Miami was just a few hours long and we couldn’t get over how much leg room we had. There was no luggage on our laps, no sweaty people standing over us until we hunch lower in our seats, and no people throwing up all around us, where were we? We also got reprimanded by the flight attendant for not recycling out cans after the beverages were passed out, but how were we supposed to remember that planes miles high recycle when there aren’t even any trash cans in any of our towns?

Our layover at the Miami airport was the first time in this trip we realized that we probably needed to work on our social skills before spending too much more time in public in the US. We stared at all the gringos there, were in awe at all the restaurants and food options, and talked loudly about other people forgetting they could understand what we were saying. Classy. We also had huge problems going back through security after customs and then again boarding our plane because no airport personnel knew what to do with our handwritten boarding passes. Each time we had to show them to someone new, we were asked where we were coming from as they called friends over to stare at our strange documents.

Finally arriving in DC, we were welcomed by freezing cold and by Anna’s parents. They dropped Matt and I off at Matt’s cousin’s apartment where we stayed for the next few days and planned to meet up the next day. We ate some amazing food and even went out dancing after dark. I think I saw more people out after sunset than I have the entire time I’ve been in Honduras.

Our first whole day in DC, the day before the inauguration, Matt and I walked around DC with some of his friends from college and meet up with Anna in the afternoon. While we were on our way to meet Anna, we were stopped by a couple who asked us to take their picture. The woman, who was one of the representatives of Kentucky, asked us if we were going to pick up our tickets to the inauguration and when we told her we didn’t have any, she told us to try the representative from Puerto Rico since none of his constituents were able to come. We got really excited with the prospect of possibly getting tickets so went in the building to give it a shot. When we got to the Puerto Rico office we found out that they had given all their tickets away an hour ago but decided to keep trying. We tried many other offices, and after one of the staff members in the office of my representative told us rather rudely that it would be a complete waste of time and wasn’t worth the effort to look, we still kept searching. On the way to a representative from Minnesota we passed by the office of the Northern Marina Islands delegate and decided to give it a try. I went in alone to be less overwhelming and had my Peace Corps Honduras shirt on. I told the people who were in there all about our experience with the election in Honduras and our decision to make the trip up when one of the women went to a back office and came out with three tickets for us. We got their last three!! We were so excited that we made a scene in the office and I think they were really glad they gave us the tickets due to our reaction.

I have never seen so many people in one place as I did on the morning of the inauguration. People were flooding the streets, Capitol Mall, and the subway. After a bit of difficulty navigating through the masses of people we finally made it to the silver gate where we had to enter to watch the inauguration. It was not very well organized and a lot of people with tickets didn’t get in. That being said, it was extremely peaceful and if something like that happened somewhere else there easily could have been an outbreak of violence. We made it in with the last group to enter and got to stand with a good view of the Capitol right at the first jumbotron. The atmosphere was so amazing and people were laughing, crying, hugging, and praying everywhere. Obama’s speech was amazing and I’m so glad I got to be there.

With mixed feelings to be leaving the states, I got on the plane back to Miami and then to San Pedro Sula completely exhausted. Those four days in DC felt like an entire month was crammed into them. I was so overwhelmed with everything so easily available to people, how fast everything and everyone moved, and just life in general. It wore me out so much that I slept 36 of my first 72 hours back in Honduras. I wasn’t quite sure how I would feel getting back to Honduras since I didn’t even get to see my family even though I was in the same country, but as soon as I stepped off the plane in San Pedro, I knew. I was home.

A Not-So-Typical Saturday Afternoon

2009-01-12T07:14:00.000-08:00

I went on another run today, probably only the third one since my last blog entry about running, but this one was vastly different. I have now finished the sex ed curriculum with my girls group and have continued meeting with them doing various other activities. On Wednesday after an intense Scrabble game, Jessy invited me to go running with her on Saturday. She had told me before that she went sometimes with her sister and I was excited to go with her. We decided to meet up at 3:30 in the afternoon at her house and would then go meet Leily, another one of the girls in the group, on the way so she could run with us as well.

After finally finding Jessy’s house, I picked her up and we took off walking to the Ocotepeque health center to meet Leily. We only waited there for a little while before deciding to start walking on our way to Antigua since Leily lived further away from town than the health center and meet up with her a few minutes later. Leily had brought along her sister Suri to run with us, who she also brought to the party we had at the end of the Yo Merezco course, and had come in flip flops. We set off, alternating running with walking, at the most beautiful time of the day. By then it was about 4 and the sun was starting to get lower to the mountains in Guatemala. It was also a lot cooler than it had been earlier in the day, which was a really nice change. We ended up running and walking a little past the turnoff to Antigua where I go to the health center, which is probably 2.5 miles out of Ocotepeque. We turned around and ran past a man bringing his horse from the day. With a closer look, I realized that I knew him because he had been to the health center with a machete wound on his arm. After saying hello we kept on past the pastures and creeks until we got to El Soldado. El Soldado, the soldier, is a monument up on a hill to the Honduran Armed Forces that fought in the Hundred Days war against El Salvador in 1969. Other places in the country seem to think it was more of a skirmish than an actual war, but either way, Ocotepeque was actually captured by El Salvador. At that time there were a lot of El Salvador immigrants in Honduras supposedly taking jobs from Hondurans and because of this attitude there was also a lot of mistreatment of these El Salvadorian immigrants. Combined with a border dispute (that perhaps is still going on since the map I have of Ocotepeque is missing the border in some places), all that was needed to put the two countries over the edge was a soccer game. After the game between Honduras and El Salvador violence broke out and led to this Hundred Days War, also known as the Soccer War.

Going back to the run from my historical distraction, there is a field by the monument where people often exercise. We went up there, ran some stairs, did some abs, and sat for a while to take in the view. The sun was starting to set and we could see the houses of several villages up in the mountains. It was beautiful. We finally got moving again because a bolo (a drunk man) starting hanging around us with a huge wooden pole. After we got off the field and were approaching the road again, Jessy looked back and saw the bolo running at us with the huge pole. She took off screaming and laughing at the same time, as did Leily and Suri, so I went with them and when we looked back again he was heading the other direction, towards El Salvador. Bolos, because of their being so drunk and most of the time incoherent, are actually pretty harmless but it was pretty humorous to see him stumbling after us. After we finally stopped laughing we looked back again and saw that he had stopped and was trying to do some kind of martial arts movements with the pole against the cars and trucks going by on the highway. I don’t think it was bound to turn out very well so we got moving on our way back to Ocotepeque.

After an uneventful walk the rest of the way, we dropped Leily and Suri off at their turnoff to go home and decided to meet again on Tuesday. Jessy and I then walked back to her house where I had a few glasses of water before heading home. We probably went about five miles and although most of it was walking, I think that was one of the best and most satisfying runs that I’ve ever had in my life.

Christmas in Ocotepeque

2008-12-27T17:34:00.000-08:00

After saying goodbye to my parents on Dec 22, I traveled all the way back down to Ocotepeque to start getting ready for Christmas. My sitemate and I had decided a long time ago that we wanted to host Christmas for our Peace Corps friends in Oco and each were able to convince a few members of our respective training groups that it would be worth it to make the trip all the way to our town in the furthest reaches of Honduras. I had just a short time to mourn the departure of my parents, whom I will at least get to see again in June, before the cleaning, baking, and planning started for the Christmas in Oco extravaganza. Three other volunteers in my health group made the trip and stayed with me.

On Christmas Eve, when the last few of the other PCVs got here, we went to the market to get the last few items we needed to cook. After bringing them back to the apartment we packed all our stuff up for a delicious Christmas Eve dinner, and headed across town to my sitemate's house. She lives on the way to our final destination for the evening, a radio tower on a hill above town. We stopped by to say hello to everyone staying there, then continued on our way to meet them at the tower. From my sitemate's house it's only through a few pastures, across two creeks, and up the rock studded hill avoiding the cows for a 20 min walk to arrive. We plopped down on some rocks setting down a blanket upon which we could lay out all our food. We had compiled many different kinds of cheeses (Honduran and not quite the same quality of those at home), meats, treats, and other appetizer dishes to share for the evening. We had the entire evening to eat, chat, and look at the beautiful view of the city down below us. As it got darker we could even see the fireworks that, little did we know then, would just increase in size, danger, loudness, and intensity throughout the night. After staying up there for a few hours we headed back down the hill, headlamps on, back to my apartment.

Although we stayed up quite a while longer talking and sharing Christmas and family stories with one another, we hadn't intended on staying up late. Ocotepeque, apparently, had no regards for our plans because the fireworks and firecrackers just kept getting louder and louder. The kids on my street were throwing firecrackers all over just outside my bedroom window and the youngest one was probably three. As it approaches midnight, just getting louder and louder, we all get out of bed and decide to head up to the roof to watch. I already live on the second story, a high rise for my town, so you get quite the view from the roof. When we got up there, it looked and sounded like my town was under attack. There were firecrackers going off everywhere and fireworks exploding VERY low to the ground. The loudest firecrackers were blowing up part of the street around the corner from me in front of the police station. You may be asking how anyone can be blowing up the street in front of the police station, but the culprits won't get in trouble since it was the police themselves, in uniform and all. There were some fireball looking fireworks flying through the air looking like they were coming right at us, but overall we made it through the night unscathed, not taking eardrums into account.

Christmas Day was wonderful. It was extraordinarily quiet in the morning, an aftermath of the firecrackers I believe, so we all slept in and relaxed most of the day. We watched a Christmas movie, ate Christmas cookies and peppermint goodies, and cooked for dinner. We had our Christmas dinner up on my roof and I invited my neighbor who is in her practicum to be a doctor and was just getting back after working since 7am Christmas Eve, so she came as well. It was great to have a more tranquila night after the night before and it was a wonderful Christmas away from home and family.

I hope everyone had the happiest of holidays and has a wonderful new year!

Pictures!!!

2008-12-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

So we finally have a few more pictures up of some of the work I´ve been doing in my site! The first four are with my Yo Merezco group that I run at the library in town. The first picture is of the girls putting the steps to conduct a breast self-exam in order, in the second they are listening to some HIV information on a day where several of them were watching younger siblings and had to bring them to the meeting, the third is of Jessy participating in an HIV transmission activity, and the fourth is Gabby participating in the same activity. Below those four are two pictures of some of the work I´ve been doing at the El Salvador border with my counterpart, the doctor from the health center. The first is of the two of us talking to two bus service workers about HIV and the second is of us talking to two truckers about HIV as well. There will hopefully be more to come sometime soon!!

2008-12-09T19:21:00.001-08:00

2008-12-09T19:19:00.000-08:00

Six Month Reflection

2008-11-20T12:43:00.000-08:00

I´ve been in site now for over six months and decided that it was time for some reflection upon my work as well as an update of what all I´ve been up to. I can´t believe I´ve been here this long already and realizing that I´m over a quarter through my service has made me reflect somewhat on what I´ve done so far in site and what I hope to accomplish while I´m here.

My favorite project here so far is my Yo Merezco group. I absolutely love working with these girls and I even love preparing for the meetings. Now that school is out participation is definitely dwindling, which is somewhat discouraging. When school was in I would just go and remind the girls the morning of a meeting and more would show up. I even ran into one mother last week who told me that her husband found out their daughter was coming and doesn´t want her leaving the house. She was one of the girls who came all the time in the beginning and now doesn´t come at all. Another one of the girls who used to come to every meeting also isn´t allowed to come now that school is out. On the other hand, however, there are two girls who started coming late and now come to every meeting. One of them comes each week, and last week twice, all the way from a small village that is 45 minutes outside of Ocotepeque and her older sister has to go with her since it´s far for a 13 year old to be traveling by herself. Although it´s frustrating for me, I suppose that what they´re getting out of the group is worth it and it´s better than not coming to any meetings at all.

I´m still working on improving the monthly meetings at the health center with the pregnant women and adolescents. It´s difficult, just like any type of behavior change, to get the nurses to change the ways they prepare for the meetings. They still look to me to organize it sometimes but I think are at least getting used to the idea that I´m not going to do all the work. Maybe that means that within a year and a half I can get them to be more prepared and enthusiastic going into the meetings. We´ll see.

The manual that I´m working on for the Women´s Health team with three other PCVs is coming along and we´ll have a rough draft completed in January. I´m looking forward to starting the women´s group because through this project I´ve discovered that just writing programs without being part of the implementation is not as interesting to me. I want to start the women´s group in Antigua with the doctor at the health center because the women there don´t have as many opportunities or access to education as the women do in Ocotepeque. In January my friend Anna and I will be locking ourselves up in my apartment for several days to do all the editing before we submit it to the Peace Corps staff to get reviewed before printing. Then we´ll hopefully be on our way…

Personally, I guess I don´t really remember what I expected, but it probably wasn´t how things have turned out. I´m realizing how hard it is to make change actually happen and am trying to keep positive and to stick with the idea that small change is better than a large and drastic change, but it´s frustrating to see how long it actually takes. There are so many problems here and so many things that could be improved that it can be overwhelming to even think where to start. I´m also trying to come up with some good work activities to do in my communities, which will keep me focused because I think the rest of my time here is going to go by really quickly. Despite the frustrations, I´m really happy here, and there´s no where else I would rather be at this time in my life. I still love hearing from people at home so please send me updates when you get a chance. You can send me a letter at the address on the left or an email to sarahcwest@gmail.com.

Running in Honduras

2008-10-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

As my alarm clock rudely cuts into the middle of my dream, I force my eyes open, notice that it’s still dark, and wonder why my alarm has gone off. Oh yeah, I was planning on running today. I wrestle myself out of bed to look out the window and see the faint hope of daylight through the clouds low to the valley. My running clothes on, I’m finally ready to head out the door. It’s 5:25. I head out the dirt streets avoiding the rocks and make it to the main road. The international highway. Whenever I run, I run on the side of the road going to the El Salvador border and leave my apartment early enough to avoid the human and vehicular traffic leaving or entering Honduras. I head out of town and see two women walking on the other side of the road. A surprising number of people, considering all the times before leaving that I was warned people didn’t exercise here, usually walk or run between 5:00 and 6:30 going south on the only road that heads out of town. There aren’t quite as many people out today I notice, probably because of the rain last night and the overcast weather this morning. I cross the bridge that goes over the tiny creek and see a big herd of cows taking over the road and the grass on the right. I cross the street to run around them knowing that their bodies are not made for running but for some reason still having the irrational fear that one will try to make a break for it and charge me. As I run past, the man herding the cows with nothing more than a stick shouts, “¡Buenos días,” and I wave in return. I look to the mountains on the east side of the valley to see the wisps of clouds weaving through the rocky crevasses and am reminded just how much I love it here. I pass a group of men in their black rain boots carrying machetes, ready to start their day of work in the campo. Harmless, but I pick up the pace. I finally get to the curve in the road where I have decided to turn around today since I am just starting to run again and can see the lights of El Salvador in the distance. I will get there another day. I ran a few times during FBT but upon coming to site I wanted to get the feel for my community before starting to run because in many places it is inappropriate and possibly dangerous for a woman to run by herself. I turn around to start home and can see the whole town of Ocotepeque on the valley floor. I try to find my apartment, one of my very lofty goals on my runs, but have no luck. One of these days I’m going to have to stop and really look for it instead of just glancing for it every now and then. I run past a horse grazing on the side of the road that I didn’t notice on my way out as a truck passes by, coming from the border, which officially opens at six to let trucks through. I approach the herd of cows and the man, with a huge grin on his face, this time says, “¡Adios!” “Adios,” I reply. As it gets to be lighter the clouds settle a little lower in the valley and it begins to sprinkle, a result of the tropical storm somewhere in the Caribbean. I’m almost home. I think about everything I have to do today and the bucket bath I will take before starting. Hopefully the power will still be on so I can heat up the water. I enter town, turn down one of the first side streets to zigzag my way back to my apartment and think to myself, “What will I have for breakfast? Beans and tortillas?” After a run just like any other, I realize how much my standards for normal have changed.

Finally!

2008-10-13T09:58:00.000-07:00

So with some help from my mom at home, I finally have some pictures up! The first picture below is of my apartment and the second is a view out one of the windows in my bedroom. My apartment is on the second floor so I have great views of the mountains out of both of the windows and an even better view from the roof (where I sometimes like to eat dinner). The third picture was taken when Heather and Marisa came to visit and is of Heather and I on top of the bell tower of the church in Antigua Ocotepeque, where I work. The last picture in that set of four is of Cinthia and I at the health center. Cinthia is one of the nurses who works there and I really like to spend time with her. She lives in a small village of Antigua so I don´t get to see her as much as I would like, but she´s a really driven, awesome girl. The two pictures below are of Heather and I then of Marisa and I when they came to visit. It was awesome having them here to show them around and I can´t wait until my parents come in just two months!

2008-10-12T18:22:00.000-07:00

2008-10-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

I Finally Have Water!

2008-09-24T09:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I should clarify and say that I can finally control some of the water access in my apartment. For the last two months I’ve had water in my apartment every two days for just a half a day and rather than being able to just turn on the tap when I wanted water, none of the taps worked so one of them I had shut off and the other, the one in the bathroom, just shot out water every time the water came on. For the entire time. The kitchen also flooded every other day from a combination of the broken sink and all the rain and since my shower doesn’t work I’m still bathing out of a bucket. I know the flooding is a huge waste of water and kept trying to get the landlord to fix it, but things move at their own pace here and it was just finally fixed yesterday. The landlord came in, new faucet in hand, with the announcement that he was going to replace the faucet in the bathroom so it would actually work. After playing around with it for a while he announced that it didn’t fit and was going to keep trying, but the next time I turned around, he was gone and there was a huge gaping hole in my sink. No faucet. I began to worry about how much my bathroom would flood now that there wasn’t even a faucet to control the flow when finally, a few hours later, he came back with a shiny new faucet that is now in my sink and works like a charm. So far, with only day with water behind me, everything works. The water that comes out is brown with chunks of dirt and other debris and since that’s what I’m bathing with it may have been an extremely long time since I’ve actually been clean, but at least I can sometimes get water out of my sink by request, so I can’t complain. By the way, just so you can get a good mental image of my beautiful bathroom, it’s hot pink. That was somehow a result of Heather and Marisa visiting although I’m not quite sure how it happened. I get asked about “La Disco” by some of my friends when I see them on the street and they wonder why there is no disco ball in my baño.

Along with my apartment, my work is finally coming along as well. I’ve started the girls group here in Ocotepeque and meet with 10 seventh graders once a week. So far I really like working with them and they’re all really good kids. I’m looking forward to getting to know them a lot better and to be able to serve as a role model or older sister to them (although at only 23 I’m only a year or two younger than some of their mothers). Kids here, but girls especially, have so few opportunities I just can’t imagine what they would think if they saw all the opportunities for extracurricular activities I had growing up. Even though this course only lasts through mid-December, I’m hoping to continue meeting with them once a month throughout my service and to be a resource for them anytime they want to talk.

As per someone’s request for more photos and less text and with some stateside help, some pictures will be coming soon. Much sooner than when promised the last time.

Yo Merezco, Women´s Health, and Visitors

2008-08-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

I write this overdue entry sitting in my apartment soaking wet after walking/running home on the dirt and cobblestone streets in the pouring rain after this afternoon finally taking my first real, non-bucket shower with water that wasn’t brown in several days. I’ve eaten countless numbers of baleadas (flour tortillas filled with beans) in the past week alone, my kitchen floor flooded yesterday and my bathroom flooded today for unknown reasons (even though I’m on the second floor), yet I couldn’t be happier. I moved into my own apartment a little over a week ago and I’m finally going to be starting some of my own projects.

I’m working right now on getting a group of 12 year olds together that will be comprised of just 10-15 girls. We will hopefully start meeting in September and will be discussing abstinence, self-esteem, HIV and other STIs, good decision-making, communication, anatomy, puberty, and pregnancy in adolescents. The focus of the group is on HIV/AIDS prevention through abstinence and I’m really excited about it. I never thought I would be working on abstinence education here because I think the general feeling, at home at least, is that it is not effective but this program is completely different. I think that few people would argue that 12 years old is an appropriate age to be sexually active, especially after seeing how many 12 year olds and other adolescents here are getting pregnant, and this program gives these girls the tools they will need to make their own decisions and hopefully delay the initiation of sexual activity. So many girls and women here have low self-esteem and if a boy or a man says they will give their love in return for sex (although not so directly), they will usually give in. This program, called Yo Merezco, or I deserve, focuses on allowing the girls to see their self-worth and understand the risks of getting an STI or becoming pregnant at such a young age. It will also empower them just by giving them an activity to do outside of the home and classroom.

The other big project I’m involved with right now is the Women’s Health initiative. I’m on a team with three other PCVs and right now we’re working on writing a training manual as well as planning a workshop for midwives on obstetric emergencies, focusing on hemorrhage. The workshop is coming up in a little over a week and people will be coming from all over the country to attend. Each PCV will be bringing a counterpart from a health center and a midwife. I’m looking forward to the workshop and since I’m a newer member to the team I will only be facilitating a small part but I’m still excited to be on the other side and to learn more about putting on a workshop on the scale.

The Women’s Health initiative is fairly young, so we have a lot of work ahead of us. There are many initiatives within Peace Corps that have developed manuals with training programs to be used both by Hondurans and other volunteers, and we’re going to be developing a guide to be used with any women’s group. The guide will be used to facilitate a women’s group for roughly 15 weeks with a weekly meeting and will be about general health including fun activities for them to be doing outside of the home. Each of us are writing chapters since we’re working on just the first draft of the manual and I’ll be writing the sections for mental health and self-esteem which includes knowing your self-worth and values, how to hold on to these when confronted with pressure or stress and how to deal with stress, as well as domestic violence and alcohol or drug abuse by either the woman or her husband. In addition to these chapters we will also be covering gender, reproductive health, HIV and STIs, and communication. This is going to be a long process to get the manual written and to finally get a group started in our communities but I am definitely looking forward to working on a project that I know will be here after I have completed my service.

The other excitement here in Ocotepeque is that my first visitors are coming on Friday! Heather and Marisa are coming and I can’t believe that people from home are actually going to be seeing what my life is like as a Peace Corps volunteer. I think it will be really interesting for them to see where I live, meet my friends here, and see what kind of work I’m doing. I’m hoping one or both of them will write a blog entry after the visit to give the perspective of a newcomer into my life and since I haven’t even asked either of them yet I will admit this is a shameless attempt to get them to write.

I also love to hear what everyone is doing at home and appreciate the comments, emails, and letters I get. Please keep them coming!

What a Psychology Degree Means in Honduras

2008-07-16T15:35:00.000-07:00

Since I arrived in Ocotepeque people have wanted to know what I studied and after telling them I studied psychology, have proceeded to become quite excited about meeting a psychologist. Now you may be wondering how you missed me going to grad school and getting a master’s or a doctorate, but to this there is a simple answer: you didn’t. In no city or town at home would I be considered qualified to counsel or work in any psychology-related profession but no matter how many times I explain this to people here they continue to ask me to help with whatever problem they or someone they know may have.

It started the first week in site with each of the people I work with coming to me with some personal problem and has now progressed to the outlying communities. I was taken aback when my coworkers started coming to me because we had just met yet they were opening up and sharing some of their deepest insecurities with me. Another health worker is convinced that I am continually analyzing him and the rest of the staff and always wants to know what I have decided about each of them*. Needless to say, I think it enabled us to have much more ‘confianza’ from the start, which has made for great relationships both in and outside of the health center.

The rumor that a psychologist has come to the health center in Antigua Ocotepeque has also now arrived in the aldeas. Several weeks ago when I was visiting a friend another member in her community asked if I would come back to see her mother who has been depressed lately, which I now find myself doing this Saturday. In another aldea over the weekend, as soon as people realized that I was the other Peace Corps Volunteer in town, they knew that I was the gringita Sarita, the psychologist at the health center and immediately a woman asked me if she could bring her daughter into the clinic to see me.

Although not prepared for this part of the job description, I am doing what I can. Real psychologists are uncommon and extremely expensive, so aside from me these people have no hope of ever getting help with their mental health. I figure once I talk to people I will have a better idea of what can be done to improve their situations at home to alleviate whatever problems they may be having. As a result of talking to a fourteen year old girl this week I am going to be heading up to her aldea hopefully sometime soon to give a charla on reproductive health, adolescence, and self-esteem. The woman who I am going to see this Saturday just seems really lonely so I’m hoping that it will help her to just have someone to talk to. Hopefully this psychologist title won’t get out of hand and in the meantime I’m just enjoying meeting and talking to new people to try and help them be happier in their everyday lives.

*I think an extra note would be quite appropriate here. As I am learning to pick my battles, I decided to just let these comments go rather than explain to him that it is human tendency to make snap judgments of people and situations right away, not just something done by ‘psychologists.’ If we did not make quick judgments daily we would continually be hampered by decision-making. This is the same mechanism we use to assess the safety of a situation. Rather than consciously thinking about each aspect of a scene to decide whether it is safe or not, which would take way too long if we needed to get out quickly, we make a snap judgment which usually comes across as an uncomfortable feeling that tells us to leave. This judgment is made from cues we pick up, consciously or unconsciously, the moment we enter into a new situation. Sidetrack aside, judging is something everyone does, even though there are many who like to say they do not, and is necessary to make it through life.

Ando sin Pisto

2008-06-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

Wow how things have changed since I´ve come to Honduras. At home I never had a lot of cash on me, but the amount I used to carry around would be a fortune here. I also knew that I always had access to an ATM as well and could take out money anytime I needed. Here I am fortunate enough to have a bank in my site (as several volunteers do not) and I even discovered the other day that there is a person in one of the hardware shops in town who you can go to if you want to take out money as well. Last Friday I realized I should have gone to the bank because I only had 50 lempiras to get me through the weekend, which is roughly equivalent to $2.50, but as it isn´t open on the weekends I needed to wait until this week. By the time I got to the bank yesterday, with a grand total of 2 lempiras (ten cents), the system was down and no one could take out any money. I had gone to the bank with my sitemate who had slightly more money than I did, 40 lempiras, so not being able to take out any money we went to the agent in the hardware store. We didn´t have any more luck there as I couldn´t remember my pin number (because I have never used an ATM) and when my sitemate swiped her card it said it wasn´t a valid account. So now we are stuck with barely over two dollars between us until the system is fixed at the bank but at least people here understand the situation and will let me pay them back. Before coming here I never would have imagined myself walking around with so little money so we´ll see how long it lasts me...

Icy Hot and Expired Zythromax

2008-06-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

At the health center in Antigua Ocotepeque we get shipments of medicine only four times every year. If we run out of anything before then, well, the people who have walked all the way to see the doctor are just out of luck. That’s how it was when I first got here but we just got a shipment of medicine a couple weeks ago. Before getting the shipment the doctor and nurses go through the pharmacy to see what they need and how much of it to request. They always have to request more than they actually need because they never get as much as they request. When the shipment came in we didn’t get a lot of the medicine we had requested and we also got a lot of medicine we hadn’t requested and didn’t need. In addition to the medicine on the list, our health center also received various donations from the US and while this seems like a great idea, it probably didn’t work out as well as was hoped. One of the extra items we got was Zythromax. It is a great antibiotic and we received cases and cases of it. Once we opened the boxes, however, we discovered that it expired in just one week. All of it. During that week we took it up to the aldeas to people who were sick and the doctor prescribed it to anyone who needed it and came into the clinic, but we barely made a dent in all that we had. It’s really unfortunate that it expired so quickly because it’s a drug we would never otherwise have access to.

We also got several boxes of Icy Hot patches. While they also have the potential to be helpful, the patches we received have no way of being attached to the skin because they are meant to be placed in leg, arm, or back braces so they can be applied to the area in pain at the same time that the area is being supported by the brace. Not only do we not have access to any braces, but the instructions to use and apply the patch are in English. I was able to explain how to use it, but health centers where no one speaks English may not be explaining correctly. You have to make sure you put a certain side against the skin and unless you read English, you would have no way of knowing.
We have a lot of people coming into the health center right now because word has gotten around that we got in a new shipment of medicine, but we’ll see how long it lasts and how health care continues in the next couple of months until we get the next one.

Border Work and the Rainy Season

2008-06-05T14:04:00.001-07:00

I’ve been in site for a month now and am starting to really get to know Ocotepeque. I’m meeting more people as well and rarely leave the house without running into someone I know. The rainy season has started and, aside from making laundry difficult, so far I love the rain. It has taken away the heat and has also made the mountains and entire valley very green, but it doesn’t seem like June because it’s warm and rainy while I’m sure it’s blazing hot at home.

About a week ago I went to visit my friend from the health center in her aldea, which is a small town of about 250 people 20 minutes outside of the town where I work. I met several of her aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well as her grandparents and had a great time. On my way home I had to cross a bridge that went over a small gorge and a river. I have no idea how old it was, but it was made of pieces of wood tied together (not very securely) with wire and there were several holes and gaps in the bridge. There was a wire handrail that was also extremely wobbly and did not help much to balance as I was crossing. After already having crossed it once, and not much braver for it, as we were getting ready to cross to head back to the highway it started pouring! When it rains here you have hardly any warning until the sky just opens up and lets loose. So not only did I have to cross the bridge again, but I had to cross when it was slippery and as I was getting drenched. Cynthia was walking me back and we were laughing the entire way trying not to slip between the pieces of wood. Going home in the rain, across the bridge, just completed my afternoon.

My work has been really interesting so far. I go into the health center every morning so I can become more familiar with the doctor, nurses, and the people from the surrounding communities. I haven’t started any of my own projects yet because I’m waiting until I understand the needs of the community better, so I have just been participating in the activities the health center already has planned. I have gone a couple times to El Poy, which is where customs is to pass between El Salvador and Honduras, to talk about HIV to the people passing through. There are a lot of trucks that pass though on the way to San Salvador or San Pedro Sula and these drivers are a high-risk population for HIV since they spend so much time away from home. Each time we went we were able to talk to a lot of men about HIV and the methods of transmission. Many of them are really interested in learning more because it’s spoken about so much but there are a lot of people who don’t know the difference between HIV and AIDS or that it can be passed from mother to child during pregnancy, birth, or breastfeeding. We are also trying to encourage people to get tested and other times the health center has gone they have taken rapid tests and tested people while they were waiting for their papers, but right now we are short on tests and need to save them for pregnant women. It is extremely important that pregnant women get tested because they can take anti-retroviral drugs to prevent transmission of the virus to their child during pregnancy. They can also have a C-section and learn about alternatives to breast-feeding in order to have a healthy child. While we were at El Poy we distributed condoms, showed people how to use them correctly, and educated them about the nature and transmission of HIV. It was a little intimidating at first, just walking up to groups of men and asking them what they know about HIV, but I really enjoyed the activity. I even got to board a couple tourist buses that were passing through to talk to all the passengers about HIV. These activities have been really fun and have given me more of an idea of the health situation in my site and the surrounding areas. I’m starting to think of some projects I can do during my two years here and it’s exciting to actually be able to begin to implement them soon.

I have been having trouble uploading pictures here, but hopefully some will be coming soon!

First Days in Site

2008-05-12T14:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve been in site for a week now and so far, so good. I got here last weekend after our swearing-in ceremony at the US embassy. The swearing-in ceremony was a nice event and it was great to see everyone dressed up for the first, and probably last, time. The training director spoke as well as one of our fellow trainees and we got to hear from a representative of the Ambassador as well. After having lunch at the embassy we went to the Ambassador’s house way up in the hills above Tegucigalpa. We had access to the pool, tennis courts, basketball courts, and volleyball courts, but I didn’t get out of the pool the whole time since who knows when I will even see a pool again. It was a really fun afternoon and great to spend it all together.

After making the long trip yet again I made it to my site and started at the health clinic on Monday. They were just finishing the vaccination campaign so I got to go with a couple nurses to an aldea about 45 minutes away from the clinic by car. I will probably be working in the aldea during my two years here so it was nice to meet the health volunteers in the community as well as some of the community members. I really like the people at the clinic and am looking forward to working with them. I spent a lot of the rest of the week getting familiar with community and meeting people at other organizations that I could work with. It looks like I’m going to have some interesting work to do especially once I get a little more familiar with how everything works here in the health system. Last week I did get the opportunity to go to a vaccination event in El Salvador and that’s one of the neat things about being by two international borders, that I may actually have some work-related events that are in either El Salvador or Guatemala. It was an event to promote the MMR vaccine for adolescents from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and all adolescents that individual organizations brought to the event or were from the area got vaccinated for free. There were speakers as well who addressed vaccination and other health concerns shared by the three countries. It was a well put together event and fun for me to go to since I’m still learning about the health issues faced here and the steps currently in place to address these issues.

It’s going to take some time to adjust to the life of a volunteer after being in training for almost three months. During training our schedules were packed from 7:30 to 5. Here I pretty much decide my own schedule and once I start projects I will work on them outside of my time at the clinic, but for now I have a lot of free time. I’ve been taking advantage of my free time to try and meet people in the community and on Sunday I actually spend a lot of the day with the woman who works in the house I’m staying in. She has Sundays off so we walked around for a while, went to the park, and went to lunch. It was really fun to talk with her outside of the house because we could actually talk more since she didn’t have work to do. It’s been fun meeting people here and although a lot of these introductory conversations are a bit repetitive in time I will hopefully have a few closer friends. I’m pleased with my site and am really looking forward to getting more involved with my work.

New Address

2008-05-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

I´m finally here in my site and I´m really excited about meeting more people and getting to know the area better. I´m going to write a more detailed update soon about our swearing in ceremony and first few days in site but I wanted to post my new address as it will be for the next two years:
Sarah West
Barrio San José
Recomendado al Correo de Ocotepeque
Honduras
América Central

I hope everyone is doing well and please keep me updated!

Midwives and Site Visit

2008-04-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

We finished FBT a week ago to come back to Santa Lucía for our final two weeks of training. It was really hard to leave Yarumela because I had gotten really close to my family and since we were the first group of volunteers there I think we really all got attached to each other. The bus came to pick us up in the morning and all the families were out on the corner waving and crying and I really hope I’ll be able to visit more than once in the two years I’ll be here. The end of FBT was really interesting as we learned about the Men´s health initiative, gave a men´s health charla to a technical school, and learned about obstetric emergencies. After learning about obstetric emergencies we went to a town about an hour away from La Paz to give a talk to local midwives and health volunteers who had come in from neighboring towns. Most of the midwives were elderly women no taller than my shoulder and were really fun to work with. We focused on hemorrhaging during pregnancy, delivery, and post-partum and taught them how to use bimanual compression to stop the bleeding until they can get the woman to a hospital. The Ministry of Health here in Honduras is really pushing institutional deliveries but for some of these women it just isn’t feasible because they live several hours away from the nearest hospital and can’t leave right when their contractions start because there would be no one else to take care of their children. Because of this, midwives are still widely used in the rural areas so it is really important to train them how to recognize obstetric emergencies so they know when to get the woman to a hospital. I really enjoyed the talk we gave and can’t wait to work with midwives when I get to my site.

And as for my site…

I´m going to Ocotepeque! Sites were announced last Monday, we met our counterparts on Tuesday, and left to go visit on Wednesday for a couple days. Ocotepeque is in the far west right next to the borders with El Salvador and Guatemala and I´m going to the city of Nueva Ocotepeque in the department of Ocotepeque. It’s the first stop in Honduras coming from both El Salvador and Guatemala which is going to make my work really interesting. I’ll be working with the Centro de Salud (health center) in Antigua Ocotepeque which is just outside of where I’ll be living mainly with maternal and child health. When I was visiting I went with the doctor and nurses of the clinic to vaccinate in one of the neighboring aldeas. We’re in the national vaccination month right now and since a lot of people don’t go to the clinics frequently if at all most health centers have to go out to the surrounding areas and take the vaccines with them to ensure that the children are vaccinated. It was really fun to go with them and a great way to start to get to know the area. When I go back in a week they will still be vaccinating so I’ll get to go with them a few days a week all around the municipality. My first week there we will also be going to El Poy which is the border crossing with El Salvador to give out HIV information. There is a lot of commerce going in and out of El Poy so we’ll be talking to a lot of truck drivers in addition to people just traveling between the two countries. Ocotepeque and the border crossing at El Poy is a big stop on the way to El Norte which gives us great access to migrants on their way up to educate them more about HIV and AIDS. Being in a border town is going to give me a lot of great opportunities to do a wide variety of work since I will do a lot with maternal and child health with the centro de salud and will also get to do HIV/AIDS work at the border and in town. I´m really looking forward to heading back in a week, integrating into my community and getting started with my work.

We have a lot going on this last week in Santa Lucía as well. We´re having a going away party for our families on Wednesday and then the swearing-in ceremony is on Friday. It’s going to be at the US embassy in Tegus and then we get to go celebrate afterwards at the ambassador´s house. I´ll be getting a new mailing address in a week and will post it as soon as I know since I won’t be going back to Tegus very often. For some reason the 11 hour bus ride isn’t much motivation for me to head back. It´s going to be a busy week before heading off to my site and I´ll have a lot to do once I get there which is a great way to start off my two years.

Baby Weighing

2008-04-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

Last week we did a lot of Maternal/Child Health activities which was amazing. We started the week off with some nutrition, breastfeeding, hygiene, and then finished up with a trip to the mountains to weigh babies and give nutrition consultations. We drove up in our Peace Corps vehicles which are white land rovers that can seat 12 people pretty comfortably. The village was probably 10 to 15 miles away but took 45 minutes as we had to drive through a herd of cows and on some very rocky dirt roads. After waiting a while after arrival the mothers started arriving with their babies for us to weigh. We were divided up into groups and with two other trainees we weighed five babies. The babies, and children since any child in the village under 5 had to be weighed, were placed in a sack with holes in it for their legs and then hung from a scale like you would see at a grocery store to weigh produce. After weighing the kids we had to chart their weight and compare it to their weight from the past month to see if they had adequately increased in weight. Out of the five kids I weighed with my group only one had increased enough. We had consultations with the mothers of all the kids after the weighing about things they could do to help the growth of their children. Most of the kids were just getting beans, tortillas, and maybe some soup three times a day so we mostly just talked to them about trying to add some bananas and two snacks between the main meals. They don’t have access to a lot of variety so there weren’t a lot of large changes we could recommend but hopefully they will be able to make the small changes to have healthier children. We unfortunately won’t be back to the same community to see how the kids grow but this was definitely an activity I would like to do once I get to my site. It happens once a month and I would really like to be able to work with the monitors who weigh babies and give the consultations to help them improve the advice they are giving to the mothers.

As for my site, I will be finding out in two weeks where I will be spending my two years. I’m really looking forward to finding out and getting to know my new community. Although I’m excited to move on I’m also really going to miss my family and the community here in Yarumela where I’ve been for FBT. This is the first time my family’s hosted a volunteer as this is the first time the volunteers have been split up and some of them have been placed outside of the main city where we have our training. It’s hard to explain to people that although there are eight of us here right now not one of us will actually be staying for two years to work. I will definitely come back to visit and I think it will be nice to have ‘homes’ all over Honduras.

Pictures

2008-04-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

Here are just a few of the pictures I´ve taken so far so people can see where I´ve been, what I´ve been up to, and who I´ve been living with. The first five are all pictures from my time during FBT here in Yarumela (and La Paz). Three of the pictures are of the carpets made of sawdust for Semana Santa in Comayagua. They are absolutely beautiful. People start working on the carpets at 12 or 1 in the morning and continue working up to the parade which starts at 10. It is incredible how much time people put into them when they just get trampled by the parade. Another picture is me with three of my host brothers and one of their sons when they took me and a couple other trainees to the ruins north of town in their yellow school bus. Yes, they actually have a yellow school bus from the states which they drive between La Paz and Comayagua five days per week as part of the public transportation system. The last picture of the batch is some of my fellow trainees in Comayagua.

The second set of pictures are all from before FBT. The first is of my host brother and sisters from Santa Lucía after we ran a race for which they had made prizes for everyone. Another of the pictures is of a lake and waterfall where I went swimming on my volunteer visit. The other three are also of my family in Santa Lucía, one after playing soccer and the other with my host parents and their parents as well.

We have two and a half weeks left of FBT and then it´s back to Santa Lucía for two weeks before heading back to our sites. FBT has been flying by and I can´t believe I´ll be in my site in just a month.

2008-03-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

2008-03-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

FBT and Semana Santa

2008-03-25T16:34:00.000-07:00

I’m now in Yarumela, La Paz for our health field based training (FBT). There’s no internet access here so I haven’t written in a long time because I have to wait until an afternoon I can stay in La Paz after our training to use the internet. We’ve been here for two weeks now and I really like it here. Half of the health group is staying in La Paz which is the bigger city where we have our training and I’m with the other half in a tiny aldea outside of La Paz called Yarumela. We go in Peace Corps vehicles every morning to La Paz for training, come home for lunch, and then head back again. Training is going well so far and it’s been nice to get involved in more health-related information. Starting this week with HIV/AIDS we’ll be covering a different theme each week. Living in Yarumela is a very different experience than being in Santa Lucia, but I’ve really enjoying getting to know a different community. Yarumela is smaller and this is the first year in a long time that they’ve had volunteers living here so everyone in town knows who we are and knew who we were the first day we got here. My family is great although very different from the one I stayed with in Santa Lucia. News also spreads really quickly especially since several of the host families are related so there is no keeping secrets here. My host parents have five sons ages 30, 36, 23, 19, and 17. The two oldest live in town with their families although one of them, Ariel, is over here with his family every day. I love it when they come to visit because they have a one year old who learned to walk in the two weeks I’ve been here and another son who is also fun to play with. His wife is my age and is really fun to talk to. She even taught me how to make tortillas by hand! The next two sons attend universities outside of La Paz and were home last week for Semana Santa. The son who studies in Tegus, Edwin, comes home every weekend so I still get to see him a fair amount. The youngest, Alexander, goes to the colegio (high school) in town. There are people in and out of the house all the time which means there is always something going on.

All of the eight trainees who are staying in Yarumela live within one and a half blocks from each other. One of the other trainees, Katie, lives next door with the sister of my host mom and another, Anna, lives behind me with another one of my host mom’s sisters. This means we get to do a lot of things together and have integrated pretty well into the community already. Several nights of the week we get together with a ton of neighborhood kids to play soccer in the street. The streets aren’t paved and the other night when we played for an hour we only had to stop twice to let a car go by. There is also a river nearby where we’ve gone to swim a couple times. Living here is definitely a lot more similar to how I imagined Peace Corps to be and I would love to be in a village like this one.

Last week was Semana Santa, Holy Week, so we only had half a week of training. A lot of people travel during this week and no one works so that people can really take advantage of the holiday. On Wednesday my class organized a Cultural Day to present some of the culture from the US and Honduran culture as well. Each class had a typical US activity planned, such as Easter egg dyeing, the seventh inning stretch, the electric slide, and singing, to show our Honduran families who came to the event as well. We had all helped our families prepare typical Honduran food as well so we got to try a little bit of everything for lunch. It was a fun event and I think the families really enjoyed themselves.

I also did a lot of activities with my family last week. My host brothers took me and a couple other trainees to the ruins just north of town on Thursday afternoon which were fun to look around. Compared to other ruins around Central America they aren’t very large or spectacular, but I really enjoyed the trip and from the top of the ruins there was an amazing view of the whole valley. Then on Friday there is a tradition in almost every town and city to recreate the stages of the cross so all the trainees in Yarumela got up early and went with three of my host brothers to Comayagua to see the procession. They have a yellow school bus from the US and since the buses didn’t work on Thursday or Friday they had offered to take us all. Comayagua has an amazing tradition where they make carpets on the streets for the procession and there are dozens of carpets made of brightly colored sawdust. People start work on the carpets the night before the procession and some of them only finished right when the procession was approaching. They were so intricate and beautiful and it was amazing to see the work people put into them when they were just going to be walked over less than an hour after completion. The procession was beautiful as well and was amazingly detailed in the recreation of all the stages of the cross. The carpets in Comayagua are supposed to be the best in Honduras and some of the best in Central America and I’m so glad I got to go see them so early on in my time in Honduras.

Getting into Training

2008-03-01T10:12:00.001-08:00

So far in training we’ve been doing a lot of interesting activities and I’ve been learning a lot. Every day we have a few hours of Spanish then either work with our projects or have CORE training where we have been talking about sustainable development and activities we can do when we first get to our communities to assess their needs. My Spanish class has been really interesting so far. I placed into the Advanced group and we’ve been spending this week on debates. I discussed the death penalty and it’s great practice for me because giving and defending my opinion is something that’s a little harder for me to do in Spanish. In my group we only have four days of class per week and the fifth day we use to do research for community projects we’re working on. My topic is women’s groups in Honduras and their history and I will be presenting my research to at least some if not all of the other volunteers next Friday.

The highlight of this week was going into Tegucigalpa on Monday. All of the Spanish classes went this week to go to the market and to practice navigating the Honduran transportation system on our own. We had to catch the bus from the town center and take it to our stop in Tegus, take taxis from there to the market, and then meet our teacher there. The bus ride was amazing. All the buses here are old yellow school buses from the US and seventies disco music was blasting the whole way to the city. It was also pretty packed with a lot of people standing in the aisles and hanging out the door. Once we got off the bus the taxis that were supposed to be there for us weren’t there so we hailed some other cabs and were able to bargain the price and save a little money. The market we went to was pretty small and we all had grocery lists from our host mothers of things to buy. We also had an assignment to find out the prices of a lot of products which was hard because it isn’t culturally acceptable to ask a price without at least an interest of buying whatever it is you’re asking about. Although I learned the hard way, I found it was a lot easier to get people to talk to me about prices if I explained first what I was doing and why I needed the price information. After the market we all got to go to the Peace Corps office in Tegus before heading back up to Santa Lucía. It was really fun to see a little of the city since it was the first time going since we got here.

This Sunday we’re leaving Santa Lucía for a few days to visit volunteers. Each trainee is going to a different site to visit a volunteer working in their same project area so I’m visiting a health volunteer working in the mountains towards the El Salvadorian border. I’m really looking forward to going. She works with an HIV/AIDS support group and does a lot of work with maternal/child health as well. I’ll be there until Wednesday when I come back to Santa Lucía. I think it will be a great opportunity to see what kind of work and project options are available as well as talk to a volunteer about her experience and what kind of advice she may have.

After getting back to Santa Lucía we only have a few days before we leave for field based training (FBT). All the groups leave for FBT the next Sunday and I’m heading off to La Paz with the rest of the health group. We’ll be there for six weeks getting more in-depth information about our projects and as part of my language class I will be doing a lot more community research and community-based projects. I’m really looking forward to these next few weeks because we have a lot of interesting activities planned.

First Days in Santa Lucía

2008-02-18T14:57:00.001-08:00

I wrote this yesterday and was able to bring it on my flash drive to an internet cafe...how nice.

We finally arrived in Tegucigalpa Wednesday afternoon after a long delay in Miami, The Peace Corps staff meet us at the airport to take us to Santa Lucía. Driving through Tegucigalpa took quite a while since we ended up getting there during rush hour but after we left the city it was quite a nice drive up into the mountains toward Santa Lucía. Our families were waiting for us at the training center, which is a very nice building with a lot of friendly staff members, so we had a brief welcome to Honduras and then went to our homes. I live very close to the training center, about a five minute walk, with an incredible family. My host mother’s name is Erica and her husband is Hector. They have three children, Hector who is 13, Andrea who is 10, and Daniela who is 7 and Erica’s mother also lives with them. They even have a dog named Jumpy (but imagine it in a Spanish accent)! The kids are so great and since we didn’t have much time to do much on Wednesday they took me around town after class on Thursday. They showed me all around the town which is absolutely beautiful. It’s really fun playing with them and yesterday we even had races in the park for which they had spent all day making prizes (since it’s summer at the moment school actually starts on Monday).

So far I like what we’ve been doing at the training center. Even though the days have been long, from 7:30 to 4:30, we have been receiving interesting information. We’ve even had Spanish classes already but just two that we were placed in according to how much Spanish we’ve had. Most people had their language proficiency interviews on Friday although I had mine yesterday and we will find out what level we’re in on Monday or Tuesday. Then on Tuesday we start small language classes with other people in our level. We’ll also receive a lot of technical training in the coming weeks. I believe we will be here in Santa Lucía for only two or three more weeks and then will be moving to FBT (field based training) with our groups. The health group is going to La Paz which I believe is a community about an hour to the northwest and the Business and Water and Sanitation groups will be heading south of Tegucigalpa. We’ll actually be giving talks (charlas) to various groups about better health practices.

Yesterday we had a cultural fiesta at the training center with our families which was a lot of fun. Representatives of almost all the ethnic groups of Honduras were there and we moved from table to table every ten minutes learning about their cultures and sampling some of their traditional foods. After going to all the tables the Garífuna (an ethnic group living on the north coast of Honduras) danced and brought up several volunteers to dance with them. It was really fun to watch. After the dancing there was a ton of typical Honduran food which was delicious. It was a great afternoon and wonderful learning opportunity for the volunteers and Hondurans. I am really enjoying being here getting to know more about Honduran culture and this town as well as getting to know the other volunteers better.

Here We Go...

2008-02-12T14:45:00.000-08:00

I'm in Washington, D.C. for the staging event until early Wednesday. I left California on Sunday morning after spending the weekend at Stanford to watch Heather's water polo tournament. After getting in on Sunday night I was able to meet up with my childhood friend Alyssa who now lives in D.C. which was an awesome introduction to my few days in the city. We started staging events Monday afternoon so I was able to see some of the monuments and memorials around the Capitol in the morning. Staging so far has been interesting with broad and basic information and meeting other volunteers. Everyone seems really prepared and excited with a lot of previous international experience. Volunteers in this group are divided up into three groups: HIV/AIDS and child survival, water and sanitation, and business.

We leave for Honduras Wednesday morning quite early. As soon as we get there we will head for the training center in Santa Lucía for an orientation and introduction to our host families. We move in that afternoon and get to spend the rest of the day getting to know the family which I'm really excited for because as of right now I know nothing about them. Then for the first few days in country we have several orientation activities, cultural activities, vaccinations, and a language proficiency interview. Training is going to be very busy with activities, classes, and discussions during the week from 7:30 to 4:30 and on some Saturdays. I'm really looking forward to meeting the Honduran people and learning more about their culture.

Finally Going

2008-01-24T15:46:00.001-08:00

After months of waiting, I am finally leaving for Honduras in February! Before I actually leave for Central America we have a Peace Corps orientation in Washington DC to meet the other volunteers as well as get some more basic information on the program and training. I leave for DC early on February 10th to get there for the start of orientation which is on the 11th. After two days in DC all the volunteers going to Honduras, as part of six different projects, leave together so my first day in Honduras will be the 13th. I will be a health educator working in HIV/AIDS prevention and child survival. Although I do not yet know what my specific project will be I am really looking forward to the work. I will have about three months of training when I get there which will be a little north of the capital, Tegucigalpa before I move to a site where I will be for the two years following training. I don't know where I'll be placed but will find out sometime toward the end of training.

I am really excited to go and would like to keep in touch with as many people as possible. I don't yet know how the email access will be, but I will be able to send and write many letters. I will also try to update this blog as often as I can to let everyone know what I am doing. I hope this will provide everyone with a glimpse of what life is like in the Peace Corps in Honduras.

Here is my address:

Sarah West, PCT

Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz

Apartado Postal 3158

Tegucigalpa, Honduras

America Central