Belen Gualcho

I went to another town the past two days with people from ODECO (my organization) to 1) get out of the office 2) learn more and hear Spanish. During the charla I desperately wanted to write out a blog, but alas, I didn’t have my computer. Instead, I took notes of what I wanted to write about, but we’ll see if it transfers a couple hours later.

So, yesterday in all honestly was pretty boring, so I won’t tell you about that. We just went to a high school and the two guys I was with told them about ODECO and what ODECO was. It was meant to include information about the environment, but we were running TWO hours behind, it being a Honduran event and all.

Anyways, so today I went with Wilmer and Carlos (my counter-part) to a barrio (neighborhood) beyond Belen Gualcho.

OH, side-note, so Saturday I went with my host dad and host siblings (Lorbing and Merlin) to, honestly I dunno, some land they or their family owns. This is how the conversation went:

Lorbing: “Do you have anything to do today?”
Me: “No. Well, yes. I go to party at house of other Volunteer. Later.”
Lorbing: “Do you want to go to the finca (this I thought meant farm, here it usually pertains to a coffee farm. Apparently, it means a lot of things…) with us?
Me: “When we get back?”
Lorbing: “One. We’re walking.”
Me: “Yes.”

Anyways, so we crawl into the truck, the girls in the bed of the truck (naturally), and start driving up the mountain. Now, as I understood, we were going to a farm and I knew there were cows. So, I’m sitting in the back of the truck with Merlin, in silence, and my ONE lame attempt was, “So the guys come here every day to work?”

She looks at me like I’m crazy (natural for me), and says, “No.” Well with that, I’m done trying to strike up conversation. So I would estimate we drove for about one hour. Farther and farther north, until we reach a road, which clearly has been recently built. Want to know how I know? The men were STILL working on it as we drove to our final destination! Now, it continues to amaze me that there are communities here that only recently have received roads that can support a car.

Oh, and by this time I’ve noticed that there isn’t any coffee growing in this area, because we’re pretty high up. Now, forgetting that I often lose things in translations, I start to panic about what is really the mission for this jaunt into the mountains…

1) They’re selling me into the sex trade and we’re going to the obscure meeting spot
2) They’re going to kill me, because I haven’t paid them rent yet
3) They’re going to sell me into regular slavery, because they don’t like Americans

Well, we get to a point where it doesn’t appear that cars would be able to go much further. It’s a lot cooler, and just extremely beautiful. So, eventually the road does end, we hop out, and start climbing upwards. Well, apparently they have animals up here, and we’re checking on them. Where’s here? A national park. Turns out we were in Celaque National Park, which is an extensive park in this area, which I think includes a cloud forest, which is where the forest is in the clouds? I don’t know. I feel like a bad person, because apparently everyone else did a lot of research on Honduras before we got here, and one of the major attractions was the Bosque de Nubles (Cloud Forest). So I wandered around, KICKING MYSELF, for being so stupid and not understanding enough Spanish to understand we weren’t going to a coffee farm, but a national park. Granted, I don’t think I would have known anyways, because those details weren’t provided anyway, but I should learn to just bring my camera everywhere I go.

The point of that was to tell you, but also to note that I went back towards that are the past two days and I brought my camera. That was pointless….

Back to the original story…

They were going today to talk to community members about responsible farming techniques. They live in an area that has poor soil, and they need to optimize their techniques to ensure that they still have a living in a couple of years. This community is a community of Lencas, which are indigenous people of Honduras. As in most countries, these communities tend to be most stricken with poverty.

These people are mostly doing subsistence farming (only meeting their own, personal needs), and have very little opportunities to expand into the bigger markets in the area. Either way, ODECO is very environmentally conscious, and is present in Tejeras (the barrio) for many reasons.

This area was settled by the Spaniards in the 1600’s because it was rich with minerals, and there were a lot of successful mines. Now, the people are in a remote area of Honduras with poor soil that is prone to terrible landslides. Two years ago 28 families lost their homes to landslides that result from torrential rains (that happen every year). ODECO is helping 10 families rebuild their homes, now, two years later. The poverty here isn’t as severe as some places, but I hardly can imagine that these people would be able to recover financially after losing their homes. Most of the homes in this area were built with adobe (mud bricks), because the people can’t afford more stable materials. Therefore, you can imagine a) the vulnerability their homes had to torrential rain and mud slides b) the little resources they must have had to rebuild their homes afterwards.

But, this charla was attended by 50 people, both men and women, which I always find encouraging. They talked about contour farming, live fences, and other stuff that I didn’t quite catch. We ate THREE times throughout the course of the day (9 am – 3 pm). There is a tradition in Honduras that if you have a charla that is longer than 3 hours or goes past 12 noon, you have to provide food. So first, we had a merienda (snack), then lunch (which is the biggest meal here), and then at the end we had coffee. It was ridiculous, but now I don’t have to pay my host family to eat tonight! Hey, I’m in the Peace Corps…

Speaking of in the Peace Corps… here are some of the things that snapped me back to Honduras reality today…

1) I was made to stand-up and present myself to everyone, which isn’t a big deal, but I swear two people whipped out camera phones and video taped me.

2) People then proceeded to stare at me the entire day. OH, especially when Carlos said, “gringo.” Now, mind you, gringo can apply to American gringos, Russian gringos… in many cases the “gringo” applied to a German… why are you looking at me?

3) I went to the bathroom, which was virtually half a toilet on a flooded floor. One of my biggest fears is unknown water in places where there is a good chance it’s nasty water. For instance, liquid on the floor of a bathroom or liquid on the floor in a house where a dog resides… there’s nothing worse than walking through a house in bare feet and stepping in a puddle and thinking, “Good God, where did this come from?!”

Anyways, so I have never mastered the “hover” position, and doing that while trying to keep my pants from dipping in the mysterious liquid was quite a treat. I literally walked in and said to myself, “And I’m in the Peace Corps…”

4) I am camera shy. I have a glorious hunk of machinery, which is on of my most prized possessions, but it is a HUNK of machinery. A lot of people here don’t own cameras and never will. When they see them, they STARE. Now, I could have pretended I was taking pictures for ODECO, but Wilmer already had me taking pictures with their slick, pocket-sized camera. So, I couldn’t very well whip about my beauty to take more. At least, that’s what I think. I mean, even gringos comment on my camera…

“….OHHHH! You have the D70!” As they hold their D80…
“Yes, yes I do…My parents gave it to me.” For some reason I always have to qualify it was a gift for a major milestone in my life.

So, imagine if Americans are impressed by my camera, the Lencas are going to be mighty impressed. Somebody needs to invent a camera that you can put in your mind’s eye so that you can take a picture without people knowing. My limited artistic eye was twitching today, because there were so many great opportunities for great photos and I couldn’t get a single one!

What am I supposed to do? “Hey! You’re a cute, little old Lencan man, can I take a picture of you?!?” Yeah, you try that. Peace Corps already dances a fine line in some communities with acceptance of American aid, and imagine if the Peace Corps Volunteers were taking pictures of the people like they were tourism sites?

5) Things were spelled wrong on the boards of the elementary school. During one of the breaks Carlos pulled me aside and made me pick out the mistakes. I was 2 for 2! They were pretty basic, but it’s very sad. People spell things here LITERALLY like they sound, which makes for a lot of spelling errors when they even pronounce the words wrong.

6) It started raining so hard (on the metal roof) that Carlos had to stop talking. For like 45 minutes. Then, the water started coming in under the door. The school was flooding because of the rain. It rains like this for 5 months every year. They then proceeded to sweep the water out with a broom. It came back.

That’s about it. Interesting day. Besides just plain missing my friends, I also miss having people with me to share ridiculous experiences. Sometimes you just need someone to agree that what you just saw/experienced was indeed strange. Now I don’t have that, and I don’t have English, so I think I’m going to rely a lot more on my blogs to share those experiences I wish everyone was there for. After a day of Spanish even writing in English is a God-send (even if it’s poor grammar).