La Esperanza...Building the future


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Published: July 4th 2009
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View from La GrutaView from La GrutaView from La Gruta

Until the rains came, this was our favourite spot for leaving parties. Armed with Golazo and Fresca and a bag of Zambos, the party raged until we went home for tea at 6.30pm
A string of coincidences led me to be here, I met a girl from Bishop Auckland (the town where I was born) in Tegus and we talked about visiting Valle de Angeles. I missed the bus stop for Valle and had to backtrack, which meant I ended up on the same bus as the volunteer coordinator for i-to-i. When he suggested I could help at a construction project in La Esperanza, I asked if he'd heard of an English girl called Trish, and lo and behold my friend from San Pedro was staying another month here...So I arrive in this dusty old town again and the family I'm staying with has a one year old called Zoe...what are the odds of that? So I guess it was meant to be and I shall learn to enjoy all the dust, make friends with my new family and give something back to the poorest region in the country.

Intibuca is a department in the Western part of Honduras, bordering El Salvador on it's Southern tip. It's inhabitants are among the poorest in Honduras and many are of the indigenous group 'Lenca'. The area attracts a large number of foreign aid groups so
Our luxury transportOur luxury transportOur luxury transport

Paulo kindly picked us up every morning to drive the half our up the mountains to Chiligatoro.
hopefully the town will progress. On the plus side it is a fertile land and produces the entire potato crop for the country and a large amount of strawberries and blackberries. The town is the highest in the country, the climate is sunny and toasty most days with cool nights. Though as we climb into the pine-cladded hills towards the project site it can get a bit chilly as we cling onto the truck in the damp morning air.

I am helping with the construction project based in a village called Chiligatoro. A local organisation is responsible for identifying needy families who are living in the worst conditions and will provide financial assistance for building them new homes. Don Marcos' family, his wife and six children, were living in a wooden shack which did not offer adequate protection in the cold nights of the mountains. Dona Maria's family of seven children were left destitute and penniless after her alcoholic husband was found dead in the lake. He had left his house to another member of his family so now they were left sharing with some kindly neighbours. Rather than just receiving outright charity, they have to agree to make
Dona Maria and LouisDona Maria and LouisDona Maria and Louis

The Lenca women all wear these bright woven headscarves and colourful cotton dresses.
a certain contribution to the costs based on their means and have at least one person working with the volunteers at all times.

The international organisations linked to this project simply provide the volunteer labour, not any financial support as my colleagues were led to believe. The money that is paid to these organisations simply goes to 'administration costs', with a small portion going to the host family who provide your food and lodging. For this reason, I don't advocate this type of company for people who have the time to research and identify a more valid volunteer opportunity. Most of these organisations are 'for-profit' and are simply a travel agent, hooking you up with an alternative means of travel at a very high price.

As it happened, I joined at the end of completing Don Marcos' house and the start of Dona Maria's. So there wasn't a lot of actual building involved, just a lot of digging and brick making, with a spot of painting at the end. With the small group of volunteers split between the two sites, it took us two and a half weeks to dig a trench for the water pipe to the new house site. We thought we'd made great progress on the first day only to find there was 300m left to go and as we dug, the bloody chickens pecked for worms and kicked the dirt back in! The eldest boys, Nelson, 17, Louis, 15 and Wilson, 12 joined us most of the time with the pick-axes but spent quite a lot of time chatting, chasing us with worms and simply gazing around...hence it took so long! We would only work a morning shift, which sounds like shirking but after four hours of hard labour we were ready for the truck to come and get us at midday.

After the trench came the joy of adobe brick making...Take a hoe and hack at the walls of a clay pit until you have sufficient 'lodo' for a batch of bricks. Chop said mud with hoe until fine and crumbly with no large lumps. Pour on pond water and continue hacking until the mud is blended and sticky. Now is the time to take off your shoes and socks and trample the mud until smooth. For strength, add a liberal sack-full of dried pine needles and continue tramping until an even
Check those guns!Check those guns!Check those guns!

After week six I was getting rather muscly!
texture is achieved. Muster all your strength and heave the mud above your head to ground level using a hoe, carry on a sack to preparation area and pack into wooden molds, lift mold carefully to free the brick and sun bake for 15 days. You won't believe how soul destroying it was after the first rains came and more or less dissolved the prior week's brick output!

So this is how it went for seven weeks, the occasional fun task of plank and rock carrying interspersed with the mud, it's a tough job but someone's gotta do it! The amazing thing was that virtually all the materials are organic; apart from the nails in the wood joists and the concrete used for rendering. Roof tiles were locally sourced and the wood was felled and sawn in the forest by hand. This caused a small hold-up for the roof as they refused to fell the tree for two weeks before the full moon because doing so would cause it to be infested with insects, or so they say...

Whilst most of us worked on construction, there were two others teaching English at the local school and an occasional
Little CeliaLittle CeliaLittle Celia

The baby of the family...she just sat around and looked cute!
helper for the childcare centre in La Esperanza. This was a government funded project for single parents who couldn't afford (or had no family) to provide care while they worked, these were generally the poorest of the poor and it was so sad to hear some of their stories. One little boy was very small for his age and was obviously cared for and fed something and he wore clean clothes every day but his mother was found looking through the bins for scraps of food. two other little girls were obviously suffering from malnutrition so badly that a Mexican volunteer took them to the doctors only to be told that she couldn't possibly save everyone from Honduras, so why bother with these two. Another volunteer has been sending money from the States to buy special food for the girls and nappies and other supplies for the centre. A Grandad brings a little boy every morning in his wheelbarrow, he cries when he leaves. I only spent one day here with the children, who are very shy at first but within an hour I was playing games and giving piggy backs with the older ones. It was a very frustrating place to be because the local workers didn't seem to spend much time with the children and would simply shut them in the playroom and let them run riot whilst they chatted in the kitchen.

The occasional white face can be seen wandering the streets of La Esp, as we now affectionately call it, but few tourists pass this way. There are a couple of other projects in town but on the whole, we don't really mix with the general population. This is is a bit of a shame as you are never sure what their perception of us is, whether they think we are all here on holiday or whether they know that there are volunteers working within their community. Perhaps it is because the town itself does not really lend itself to socialising or that the people are quite closed and timid of outsiders. Outside of our homestays, we meet the people in places where we eat and the internet cafes that we frequent, people say hello on the street and kids will shout things at you. Men are keen to pass comment, but they are not the sort of comments that I could repeat on here
Ox and cartOx and cartOx and cart

A common sight in the lanes of Chiligatoro, they would often be hauling loads of rocks for building work
and are certainly not welcome. There is only one real bar, El Fogon, the rest are dives for alcoholics, some of the lads have been to the pool halls but gave up when they kept getting raided by the police. We tend to meet up either on the hill of La Gruta or at the internet cafe come ice-cream parlour and coffee bar though most evenings are spent with our host families..with a 6am rise I find myself in bed by 8.30 most nights!

It's luck of the draw as to how hospitable and comfortable your homestay will be. I was particularly lucky with my hosts and the three generations of women I lived with, I won't count the son Mauricio as he never spoke. Gregoria had three children, the eldest being Gloria (about 40) and the youngest was Dulce, 14 and still at school, there was never any mention of the father. Mauricio, the middle child, was married to Jeanette, 20 who had a one and a half year old daughter Zoe, the son/husband was hardly ever to be seen and didn't seem to play a part in family life. Gloria also had a daughter, 16 year old
My Honduran familyMy Honduran familyMy Honduran family

From top left: Andrea, Paula, Dulce and Jeanette, Gloria, another volunteer Monica with Zoe on her knee and Gregoria.
Andrea, who went to school with her niece, no mention of this missing father either.

They were all lovely and made a real effort to make tasty food and make us feel welcome, in my seven weeks in their home there were two other volunteers with which I shared a room. There would always be a cold drink waiting when we got home from work and mostly a tasty dinner served at 7pm. The only bad meals being ones made from gristly meat or a repetition of beans, eggs and rice..which I have gotten a bit bored of. A celebration roast chicken was cooked for Monica's leaving do and they pulled out all the stops for mine and made four large pizzas and a giant 'tres leches' cake! My favourite breakfast was a bowl of mosh (thin porridge) served with crunchy biscuits for dunking. The best dinner by far was the tajadas con carne , a local dish consisting of a pork chop with a spicy tomato, onion and coriander salsa served over a bed of tajadas (fried slivers of crispy platano). if you're ever stuck for a chicken sauce and have some left over Coca Cola, simply cook
Pulhapanzak waterfallPulhapanzak waterfallPulhapanzak waterfall

We followed a ledge about halfway up the cascade and ducked behind to find a secret cave!
it up with onion and coriander for a rich tasty glaze!

Out of all of them, only Mauricio and Gloria had proper jobs, the two girls were at school and Gregoria and Jeanette sold pupusas. They would make up a batch of these stuffed tortillas and take them up to the University to sell as lunchtime snacks. The good thing about a lack of regulations is that anyone with a bit of initiative can create a little enterprise for themselves, whether it's selling orange juice on the street of frozen lollies from your front room. The family were not rich in anyway but neither were they as poor as some of the others and with everyone being so busy, they could afford to have a housekeeper to help with washing and cleaning. Actually this sounds very grand, but Paula was from out of town and still studying school classes in the evening, she lived with the family and was more of a relative than an employee. Whilst the standard of education here may not be that high, at least it is accessible; people like Paula can study in the evenings and others can attend University classes on a Saturday
JakeJakeJake

Jake is the one with a bandana and hairy chest..
and fit it around work, which is an increasingly difficult thing to do in the UK.

Gregorias house also had the luxury of a hot shower, some volunteers were less fortunate and got cold bucket baths, if the water was running! Some families were so poor that they could not afford to feed an extra mouth and only rice, beans and tortillas appeared on the menu. Despite a daily fee being due to them, the i-to-i representative only saw fit to pay this at the end of the stay, meaning they had to subsidise the cost from their own pockets. Others had so many people living there and neither the time nor inclination to tidy up after them that bathroom waste bins overflowed (bearing in mind you cannot flush paper here) and chickens pecked for scraps of food dropped on the floor.

By the weekend most of us were keen to get out of town and see a little more of life in Honduras. Since the whole of Latin America shuts down for Easter it was a great opportunity to see the traditional celebrations at Comayagua (see separate blog). Jake's 21st birthday turned into a pilgrimage to the Caribbean port of Trujillo for the weekend, where the owners of Casa Kiwi made a real effort with the party, buying a pinata for us and pouring Jake a yard of ale. Between the beer guzzling and two hospital cases (not alcohol induced) we managed to visit a star-fish colony and snorkel with the night phospheresence. Not too far North was Lago Yojoa and the Pulhapanzak (pull-your-pants-up) Falls, a long day trip but worth it for the chance to climb through the cascade into a small cave behind the curtain of water. Not at all dangerous, neither were the three jumps into a rainbow-ringed pool. I did question my actions before the leap of faith but not wishing to be outdone by some 10 year old boys, I pinched my nose and leapt. As if this day hadn't been exciting enough we got back to town to find the whole population out in force to celebrate 126 years of the formation of the department of Intibuca. The mobile disco and a local band were entertaining the crowds but the locals were intrigued by the crazy foreigners dancing and formed a small crowd around yours truly, who was perhaps having the best time out of all of them.

Closer to home, Trish and I spent a whole four hours searching for Los Hoyos, the holes. The intriguing holes are hidden in a bit of forest somewhere and are thought to be Mayan obsidian mines. Even though we didn't manage to locate them, the roads out of town are speckled with lumps of obsidian and this was enough to get me excited. I have been dying to find some after seeing so much in museums. For those of you who are not big mineral fans, obsidian is a volcanic glass used by the ancient civilisations as sacrificial and surgical blades or polished to form mirrors. It was highly valued and an important trading commodity in both Central and South America.
Wikipedia: obsidian link

If it's sports you're after, then the local pitch of dust and wood-chip could be the place to have a kick-about. For something more bloodthirsty, look no further than the cock-fighting ring where the monthly bout between crazed cockerels takes place. It's true that at times I cold kill the damn things for crowing so early outside of my window but to see them massacre each other is a special kind of fun. Before they are let loose on each other the cocks need to get angry, the owners first hold them and allow them to peck at each other to build up a bit of hate. They will then start ripping out head feathers with their teeth to get them really pissed off before letting go and watching the razor sharp barbs tied to the feet do their damage. I watched two fights before feeling rather sick and going home resisting the temptation to bet on my favourite rooster assassin.

After seven weeks I felt that I'd "done my bit" and was ready to move on. La Esperanza was not the most idyllic destination but it was a very poor Honduran town and the people deserved the help. Living with a typical family gave me an insight into everyday living in this part of the world, which is not too dissimilar to our own, after all, families are families wherever you may be. Most travellers skip through Honduras, only pausing to visit the ruins at Copan and to go diving in Utila. I am glad that I gave this country and it's people a chance and will not forget my time living here.

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