My First Official Topo Study

I am proud to say that I have started my first topographic study as a Wat/San Volunteer in Peace Corps Honduras!

Kathryn and I started the study in Quebraditas on Tuesday. This is a small town (aldea) 45 minutes outside of Santa Rosa de Copan. Quebraditas actually already has a water system, but it’s over 20 years old (they’re designed to last for 20 years, if well taken care of) and has a lot of problems. The town is organized and the president of the Junta de Agua, Tito, is a great guy and really does a lot of good for his community. Thus, it seemed like a good project to start with.

I headed up to Santa Rosa on Monday afternoon because Kathryn wanted to play around with the equipment before we started on Tuesday. Monday night we pull out the equipment and start fiddling with the different knobs and going over the steps of using a theodolite. I really hope the people of Quebraditas never read this blog (highly unlikely that they will), but if they were to read this blog they would probably think, “Sweet Jesus, these girls had no idea what they were doing!”

It’s kind of true. There are lots of different kinds of theodolites and it just so happens that we only learned on one kind almost two months ago. Needless to say, having only spent a couple of days with the equipment in the first place, after two months we were most certainly rusty.

Kathryn and I are standing in the kitchen and we can’t figure out nine of the ten knobs that are on this piece of equipment. Luckily, a couple in Gracias had the equipment before they gave it to us, so we called them up … casually asking them what the hell was going on.

Kathryn: “Hey there guys … so Hannah and I are fiddling with this theodolite and we, well, we um … we just don’t understand what’s going on.”

B & K were really nice about trying to explain what to do over the phone, but when you’re just standing in the kitchen it’s really hard to imagine all that you would be doing and what makes the most sense. We still couldn’t figure it out after like three calls.

“Screw it, I’m going to the top,” I declared as I whipped out my phone and called Carlos, one of the wonderful coordinators on the Wat/San team (can’t remember his real title). It’s like 7:30 pm at this point and Carlos answers really quiet, like he’d been sleeping.

“CARLOS! Weneedhelp.KathrynandIaredoingastudytomorrowandwecan’tfigureoutourequipment!!!”

“Can I call you back in a little bit,” says Carlos.

“Did I wake you up? Were you sleeping? I’m sorry.”

“No … I’m in a meeting and I can’t really talk right now…”

“OOOOH! Sorry. Yeah give me a call back, because we really need to figure this out and we have no idea what is going on.”

Carlos must think I’m crazy, because I only really call him when I’m desperate for help and I’m always overly dramatic and probably sound really squeaky. Oh well.

So we keep playing with the equipment and considering I don’t even really understand all the logic and mathematics behind topo studies (that’s a little extreme, but somewhat true), I got really annoyed pretty fast. I mean, give me international political theory any day, but start talking about angles and math and you might as well try to teach a dog this stuff. Kathryn, on the other hand, has an engineering degree and it took her an extra 10 minutes to stay “screw this.”

By the time Carlos calls back I’m cursing Carl (that’s the equipment’s name) and really starting to get anxious for our first day out there. He was distracted and on his way home, and not remembering exactly which theodolite we had, he couldn’t really help us.

Come bedtime (8:30 pm) Kathryn and I had decided to leave it up to the Wat/San and Honduras gods that be and hope for the best. Pretty risky I might say.

First Day

Bright eyed and bushy tailed (not really), Kathryn and I head out to Quebraditas. We pull into the community and are met by a band of men. Seriously, like 7 – 10 men are sitting their in their rubber boots with their machetes.

Sidenote: We’re in an aldea, which are really rural communities of already rural communities. These people work day and night to barely get by supporting their family and missing an entire day helping two gringas move their equipment about the jungle is a big sacrifice for them; finding that many men willing give up a day’s work in a small town like Quebraditas is really impressive.

Tito, the president of the JAA, meets us and explains the deal. These guys know where we’re going that day and he’ll meet us in the afternoon when he brings lunch. Luckily, we got a ride up closer to the toma (source of their water), because we were in for a rough day!

We hop out of the truck and try to break the ice with our band of men by introducing ourselves and being friendly. After lacing up our hiking boots and talking about our intended path for the day, we set off. Now, the men REFUSED to let us carry anything. We had our tripod, our estadia and Carl, and they would not let us put a finger on the equipment to walk it up the mountain. Come to think of it, I’m grateful for that because I barely made it up there just carrying my Nalgene. They tried to take Kathryn’s backpack, but she refused to let it go.

Now, if we’re going up to the source of their water, we’re not going on some weeny hike in rural Honduras. We’re going UP! Actually, I don’t think we hiked that long or that it was really that far, but man did I suffer. At one point, Kathryn stops to drink water and clarifies with the guys, “Hannah and I exercise every day, but we’re just not accustomed to this!” They politely laughed and carried on. And this is something that amazes me about the men here! Here I am, walking in my state-of-the-art hiking boots and they’ve got these flimsy little rubber boots on and they have more coordination and ability on these “trails” than I do. I just don’t get it; don’t the boots give me any kind of advantage??

We finally arrive at the toma and we try to focus on the equipment so we don’t look too incompetent. Well, I’m going to save us some face and say that we finally got started after … well maybe 45 minutes. I think we took our first shot around 11:30. I was really worried at first that we were still doing it wrong, but once Kathryn stopped wanting to kill me, she explained the process better and I kind of put together how exactly all this worked together.

That’s one thing … Kathryn and I got testy with each other. We’re really similar, which never really works in a stressful situation. She had a better idea what was going on than me, but she couldn’t really explain it very well and my brain heard angles and shut down. There were some short conversations, but all ended well!

It really is upsetting that most of you will never see a Honduran wield a machete. It’s fascinating and I think more than a few times I was caught with my jaw on the floor staring. One guy chopped down a sapling in almost two chops. And the machetes don’t look very reliable, but they could filet me in seconds. Once we told them that we would need estacas (little stakes), they disappeared into the jungle and in five minutes returned with enough stakes for the entire study.

We made very little progress the first day, but at least we made progress. As time passed we got more comfortable with our band of men and Carl. One of the kids started helping up level the tripod and Luis started to laugh when I would yell, “LUIS! Pone atencion! (Luis, pay attention!). Obviously we have to be as precise as possible and I’m looking through this scope to the estadia (big stick with measurements on it) and it’s waving in the wind, because Luis is too busy eating a snack and isn’t paying attention to the estadia. Luckily, I found it pretty entertaining and he did too.

On the way back down at the end of the day, the guys started correcting us on our Spanish. Turns out pala means shovel and palo means stick. Kathryn had been saying pala the entire day and no wonder they looked at her weird, because she was technically asking them to cut shovels …

Also, at the end of the day we were invited to Tito’s house to have some coffee. We had a little glass of coffee with some bread (did I mention how much I LOVE the coffee/bread combination?? Do you realize how much better bread products are when they’re dipped in bread?? Amazing). Tito is a great guy and his family is really great too. He has seven children and we met a few of the girls and they were so friendly and welcoming. It really just makes this whole experience so amazing.

The first day was pretty boring other than the incredible stress of thinking that you’re doing the whole thing wrong. The second day we kind of hit our stride and started moving a little more smoothly. I was disappointed that we had a different crew the second day, but the new guys warmed up to us in the end; they ended up staying with us two days in a row!

Other than that, there aren’t too many stories to tell. There were a couple of funny/entertaining moments.

For example: “Fijeseque (there is no English equivalent that accurately expresses all that this word can mean) instead of going the easy way for conduction line, we’ve decided to go up this CLIFF instead… hope that isn’t a problem for you…”

“Nah, don’t worry, there’s nothing like leveling a tripod on the side of a cliff. No, esta bien!”

This is when I made-out with the theodolite. While trying to take the front shot that was a good 6 meters higher than me, I had to turn the scope as vertical as was possible, which meant my face was pushed up against Carl. Not to mention, I had to make sure I didn’t move because I was standing on soil that Band Member #1 (Eligio) had just made into a platform just big enough to fit the tripod and not really me.

Now, remember there’s a Honduran standing holding the estadia for the front shot. Considering they’re not accustomed to thinking about how the study moves or the importance of the placement of the equipment and I’m not accustomed to taking that into the account …. When I get up to my front shot, I realize that he was standing in between two trees that they had chopped down (for no reason. They were a little machete happy.) and it was going to be really hard to fit the tripod in the space. That shot backwards was interesting. While trying to avoid “killer bees” that were escaping out of the felled foliage, I straddled a massive tree trunk, all while trying to be as precise as possible with Carl.

There were several points along this 3-day study (we’re not done yet), that the guys would say, “Oh, don’t touch that. It’s going to give you a terrible skin rash.” Or, “Oh, those big bees flying around your head … yeah, they’re like bees on steroids. It hurts A LOT when they sting. Maybe you should watch out …” We were in a pretty “tropical” looking forest. There were the bright plants that National Geographic tells you means they’re poisonous and things were really wet. Closest I’ll get to a rainforest for now.

After that shot we were served lunch. The first day Tito brought us our lunch, but the two days after that his family hauled it up to us. Women in Honduras don’t hike; they don’t think it’s fun and there’s no reason to go up into the mountains, so why do it? Well, after 20 minutes from Quebraditas to this ranch, you then have another 20 – 30 minute hike upwards, through coffee farms and jungle.

Menu (it’s ridiculous):
-Fried Chicken
-FRIED potato (like baked, but really fried whole)
-rice
-4 tortillas (saucer sized)

Could you eat more carbs??

The second day, after hearing how much we liked chicken soup, three of Tito’s daughters walked all the way up the mountain with a pot of soup, rice, tortillas, orange juice (homemade), coffee and bread (for later) … in flip flops. Chicken soup here is a special meal that most people make for Sundays. It includes carrots, potatoes, yucca, chicken and it’s really good. They put rice and (of course) tortillas in it too. God, how amazing is that that they did that for us? The oldest daughter had never been that far up before, and she did it just to bring us lunch. And they weren’t resentful either; they were really genuinely ok with walking a pot of soup up the mountain.

Hah, there was another change of route that day after lunch that had us going down another steep slope. We’re walking down and Kathryn is carrying the bag with the bread, coffee, and breakable china cups. She does the classic, feet-up-in-the-air, land hard on your butt and go careening down the mountain. There was a loud clink, but luckily the cups didn’t break.

Now this was my favorite meal, because I think it added pound #3 onto the total weight I gained in these five days:

-Fried chicken
-Spaghetti
-Fried potato
-SIX tortillas
-2 liters of Pepsi

I mean, could you ask for anything more glorious than that meal?? AHH!

Last story: So Copan is big coffee country and these fincas (farms) are everyone’s salary. The coffee is their life. Coffee is a major pain-in-my-@$$. We were going at our steady (albeit it kind of slow) pace and were considerably slowed down when we entered the coffee. The first few shots we tried to work with the gagillions of branches in the way, but the shots got considerably shorter and it took a lot longer to find the estadia/back shot. Noticing the change in pace, the guys started to fell coffee left and right. I mean, one minute you’re looking through the scope and in the time it takes you to stand up and try to find the estadia with your own eyes, the guys of have felled every little twig that might have posed a problem. They cut A LOT of coffee. Luckily, Tito had permission to do so.

Anyways, Kathryn was all concerned with the amount of vegetation these men had successfully slaughtered, and knowing how valuable the coffee is, was really distressed by the amount that they eliminated.

:Sound of machete hitting wood:
“OH! No, you really didn’t need to cut the huge branch off! I don’t want you to cut so much of the plants! No! STOP IT! I can see! AWWW man…” Meanwhile, I’m just standing their laughing, because Honduras has really decreased my concern for the environment. I mean, it’s not that I don’t care, but there are SO MUCH bigger problems in these people’s lives than saving a tree that’s in the way of them receiving running water. I think some variation of this conversation (one-sided) happened with each shot.

All in all it was a great experience and Kathryn is still my friend. I hope all of my studies work with communities that organized and willing to give of their time and meager resources to bring water to their communities. We worked with a great bunch of guys and Tito seems to be a great community leader. Not to mention his family, which fed us like kings (much to the dismay of my weight loss goal) and especially to his wife, who brought us our lunch all while toting her two youngest children.

We haven’t even come close to finishing and there are ninety houses in the conduction line, but I look forward to spending time in the community and being out in the tranquil, beautiful setting that is Honduras.

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I wrote this blog about a week ago. I hope it is ok. Wednesday I went to the doctor because the rash that I had ALL OVER MY BODY (itches like crazy) hadn't cleared up and I'm not interested in getting some funky tropical disease. Anyways, turns out I was bit by fleas! I DON'T HAVE FLEAS!!! Just want to clear that up, but I did get bit and had an allergic reaction. Now I'm on medication. Great first experience! Haha