Reflection of Volunteer Visit

So the last time I wrote, I was about to leave for Volunteer Visit. It was an interesting experience to say the least.

I was lucky enough to take the bus with five other people heading to the same department and more-or-less the same area. Darren and I lived in the same neighborhood and caught a moto-taxi at 5 am to meet three other people on the main road to catch the bus to Tegucigalpa. We were only a few hundred yards from the main road when we came upon a parked pick-up, sitting in the middle of the road. Kind of odd because it’s 5 am, but people here get up early for long trips to work. Anyways, we kind of got nervous because all our safety and security trainings are organized to make us nervous, but decided we were just being ridiculous. Well, our driver, as we were coming up on the truck, flicks his lights, which we automatically assume is a sign “here are the gringos we are going to rob.” P.S. we had to call the night before to arrange this ride because they don’t normally run this early on a Sunday morning. Totally plausible. Well our driver stopped to talk to the guy, and as we were stopped I was just sure we were going to get screwed. At that point I had about 1,1130 Lempiras on me because I was traveling and Peace Corps gave us money for food. Getting robbed would have ruined the trip and I would have turned around and gone right back to my house; forget Volunteer visit. Well nothing happened; anti-climatic right? Definitely woke us up though.

So we got to the bus station wicked early and just sat there for about 1.5 hours. Finally, we got on the bus and were off. The bus ride was about 4.5 hours and we got a 15 minute break half way there. Oh, and we weren’t riding a chicken bus, which is one of those old U.S. yellow school buses, but a Greyhound type bus, which was fairly comfortable. So my visit site was about 30 minutes outside Santa Barbara, therefore I was getting off by myself. A nice guy told me when the stop was and I got off, all by my lonesome, on the side of a massive highway in Honduras. The bus pulls away with all my friends leaning out the window, waving with looks on their faces like, “Whoa man that girl is SCREWED!” Great! Concepcion del Sur is on the backside of the mountain off said highway, and consequently I had to wait for another moto-taxi. Turns out my Volunteer, Andrea, had called a moto-taxi for me, so he putted down the hill in his little moto contraption and shuttled me right to the door of my Volunteer.

This is boring. Long and short of the rest of Sunday, we picked up her dog because she had been away for a couple of days, and sat down to eat while I picked her brain. I asked A LOT of questions.

Monday, now that was a day of fun! The local engineer in Santa Barbara, Katie, is closing her service (COS) in a couple of weeks, and is transferring one of her projects to Andrea. Apparently, this little town of Buena Vista has been told for years that they can never access water because the nearest fuente (water source) is too low to pump the water up to the town. Well Katie is the type of engineer who didn’t accept this answer, and decided this wicked complicated 6 km water system. Peace Corps record, I heard, is 12 km. So, the whole point to Monday was for Katie to walk the tube line with Andrea so she understood the general placement of the system before Katie left.

So we drive (with a Rotary International rep because Peace Corps Volunteers aren’t allowed to drive) for three hours up a few mountains on REALLY bumpy roads. We were driving like 15 mph. When we get to the top, we through on some bug spray and follow the road up to the fuente. Conveniently enough, the ticks here really like to bite you along your waistband, and they’re so small you can’t really see them. We’ve been told you won’t get Lyme’s disease, just really nasty scars. It was a steep climb, but easy because we were on the road. Yeah, well that didn’t last long. Yeah, fuente, it’s a water source, cool. We moved on.

Santa Barbara is a big coffee growing area and after we left the fuente we started crawling, literally crawling, through coffee plants. Keep in mind we were following the line of the tubes, which makes the most sense for water gravity, but not the most sense for eight people trying to walk the line. Hence, me stumbling for FIVE hours, up and down the mountains of Honduras. I cannot accurately convey how difficult this hike was. There were a couple ascents of mountainsides where, if I wasn’t holding onto some sort of plant, I was sliding down a steep mountainside, where I would inevitably get severely hurt if not dead. FUN TIMES!

The local guide, wearing a polo shirt and unlaced loafers, was walking in front of me at one point down a pretty steep slope. Me, in my state-of-the art hiking boots, take a mis-step and my feet go FLYING up into the air, I land on my butt and start sliding down the hill straight towards Umberto. I hit him full force right at the knees and we go sliding a good 20 ft through coffee trees before one finally stops us. Oh, and Umberto was carrying a machete when I hit him. Throughout all of this all I could say was “Lo siento!! Lo siento!!” Needless to say, he stayed away from me after that. After that fall I realized it was a lot less strenuous going downhill when you just slide on your @$$. Therefore, Bert (another trainee) and I took to flying downhill on our backsides with one leg out lick you’re going to tackle someone. Lots of fun until you land on a rock.

Monday was EXHAUSTING, but extremely fun because I had so much energy. Thing is, it’s hard to exercise here. I would get home at 5:30 pm and Suyapa would have dinner ready and because I ate so much it was hard to exercise afterwards. Plus, I always had homework and stuff. Also, a woman walking in the dark in Honduras is basically a really stupid idea. Hence, a lot of pent-up energy because I never did anything; so ridiculous hiking was a great release of energy.

Tuesday we didn’t do anything until later, when we met up in the city of Santa Barbara for a party with other Volunteers. I will reserve my judgments of this party for an offline forum.

Now, the trip back was eventful! Well, another anti-climatic story, but for me it was a big deal! So we left Santa Barbara at 7 am because we had to be back at training by 2 pm. The six of us got back on the bus, but this time, the driver wouldn’t let me keep my bag with me on the bus because it was too big. Well I didn’t feel like arguing with him because the trip out seemed so safe, so I stuck my bag underneath. During all of our safety and security trainings, they tell us to keep our bags with us at all times, and if we can’t, to watch them from the bus so people don’t walk off with them. The buses make several stops randomly on the highway, so it’s easy to people to swipe a bag especially a nice Osprey bag that screams “Good stuff in here!” Well each time we stopped I jumped up to try to see if anyone was going to take my bag. Naturally I couldn’t see anything. Eventually I just decided to leave it to the powers that be, and just relaxed.

Well we all get off the bus, and wait in line to pick up our bags. The ayudante crawls under the bus and starts throwing crap out. Everyone has their bag now, and mine is nowhere to be seen. Now, I wasn’t upset about losing the stuff in the bag because it really wouldn’t be hard to replace, but the bag itself is worth more than everything in it! Well, I start asking the bus attendant, “Where is the red bag?? Where is the red bag??” (in Spanish of course), and he doesn’t seem to care AT ALL that my bag appears to be gone. After more pleading, each time increasing an octave, I finally turn around and start KICKING the brick wall. It was a long day and he didn’t seem to realize I wasn’t joking around when I asked for my bag. After the gringa went ape-$%^# on the wall, he seemed to get a little motivation, and opened the next compartment. There, squished among what appears to be bus parts, is my bag! Gracias a Dios! Well at this point I start to feel really bad for yelling at him and freaking out on the wall, and apologize (a little) before I run away to join the rest of the group. It was a long day of bus traveling after being up late the night before and… wait, no excuses, I was frustrated with Honduras and just lost control. End of story.

Cheque.