Las Bestias!

So, earlier last week Kathryn gives me a call and tries to bribe me to come give a charla with her. She really didn't have to work that hard, because I'm dying for work and pretty much would do anything. Anyways, her big hook was we might get to ride "las bestias" to the community. HORSES! WOOT. I accepted.

So, I went to Santa Rosa de Copan on Friday to do a Junta de Agua (water board)training with Kathryn Pastingual, an aldea close to her. We prepared the charla pretty fast because we would only be talking about the administration (president, v.p., secretary, etc.) and how to decide on a tarifa (what community members will pay monthly to sustain the water project). The guy in charge of the local water projects, Denis, was supposed to cover the rest. With the understanding that this was more his deal, we just copied a few things from a presentation we had, and then left to meet the driver to go to the community.

So, we pull up to the Municipalidad (local government office) in Dolores to pick up Denis and continue our way up the mountain to the BESTIAS! Well, Kathryn starts explaining to Denis what we prepared and that we have it written out on charla paper, and he just gets this look...

"Fijeseque, no prepare nada..." (Fijeseque, I didn't prepare anything.)
Kathryn just looks at him, turns around in her seat and says, "Bueno!"

Sidenote: Fijeseque is probably one of the most annoying/awesome frases that Honduras has to offer. It's like an all around excuse, used wherever possible, and quite often. As long as you use "fijeseque," any excuse that follows it is automatically valid. No matter what.

"Fijeseque, I can't date you because you're an idiot." Acceptable.
"Fijeseque, I'm going to come home drunk tonight." Acceptable.
Those are ridiculous examples, and not true by any means, but that's just to show how ridiculously useful this frase can be.

Unfortunately, when someone uses "fijeseque" on you, you know that you're about to get screwed over. Two-way street my friends.

Back to the story: So, this man A) has not prepared the majority of the presentation B) has NEVER trained a Junta de Agua before. Well this is just awesome. Our already lame presentation has just become the most pathetic thing ever imaginable. Kathryn turns around from the passenger seat and says to me, "Hannah, I'm really really sorry." Apparently something got lost in translation, which happens a lot, and I most certainly wasn't mad. If anything, I was just a lot more nervous than I was when we left her apartment.

So we start scrambling with how we're going to make-up for this HUGE gap in the presentation. Meanwhile, the car can no longer continue up the muddy hills, so we disembark and wait for the BESTIAS! The driver for the organization thought it was hilarious that the gringas were going to ride horses. He was disappointed when I told him I had ridden horses before, but I let him believe it had only been once or twice.

This man from the community comes around the bend with five horses for all off us to ride. I must say, they're not the well cared for horses we used to ride out West on family trips. These horses were old and looked as though they had a hard life. Nonetheless, I actually felt like I was back in the corrals with my cousins, eye-ing up the horse that I wanted to ride for the next hour. I picked one, well suited for my height with a pretty saddle. And we were off! It was actually kind of scary, because we were climbing into the mountains, up steep slopes right after a big rain. The horses kept slipping, and I was afraid we were going to fall down the hill a couple of times.

It probably would have been easier walking, because the poor horses seemed as though they couldn't handle our load. My horse was panting half-way up the first hill, which made me feel pretty bad about myself. Still, I must admit I was pretty excited to ride horses. Felt like a pretty genuine Peace Corps moment. Made me forget about our doomed presentation for a while.

And this is how comfortable I've gotten speaking Spanish. I'm still by no means perfect, but I got up in front of 17 Hondurans and just blabbed my way through the presentation. I mean, I don't want you guys to think we did a half-assed job directing these people how to maintain their water system. It could have been better, but they definitely got the information. I just can't believe we showed up with half of it "prepared," and the other half we had to stumble through. In training, had I not had every word outlined before the charla, I would have collapsed in a nervous fit. Denis gave us help with the language and explaining more technical things, but for the most part I'm pretty happy with how it went.

On our way back down on our bestias, one of the women from the charla asked us in for coffee. These people don't have much at all, and she apologized for not being able to provide us with lunch, but she gave us good coffee with AMAZING bread. I'm now a huge fan of the bread/coffee combination. It's quite delicious. We scarfed down two plates of the bread and had a nice conversation on her porch. I think that's my favorite part so far. This little old lady, with few resources, welcoming us into her house. People in the campo (rural areas) are so giving and humble. It's just so fulfilling, sitting there, stumbling through a conversation with people who are genuinely happy to have you there and converse with you. At the end of the week, it's these moments that outweigh all the earlier frustrations.

Anyways, that was my day in the campo. When Denis said he hadn't prepared anything, I was afraid for the worse, but it went well and we survived. Kathryn might go back to give another, more "detailed" charla.

Afterward, we headed back to Kathryn's sitemate's house where she cooked amazing eggplant parmesan and a fruit-pizza cookie! It was delicious and I was very content. I love going to Santa Rosa. I get good food and gringa company. We even had a stimulating political conversation during dinner, which pretty much fulfilled all of my needs for the next couple of months. Good times.