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Published: January 11th 2010
Man, where to begin? So training for Peace Corps in September and I got assigned to live in San Lucas in the department of El Paraiso in Honduras. The country has 18 different departments, and mine is in southeastern Honduras, close to the Nicaraguan border.
San Lucas is a little smaller than the average for a Youth Development site, it has about 2,000 residents in the heart of the pueblo, but there are a lot of surrounding villages, so in total there about 6,000 people in the municipality. The surrounding villages and fairly far away, most about an hours walk.
I´m still living with a host family because there isn´t any available housing, but this host family is actually really great. I´ve always had good luck with my host families...except with the doña in the D.R., but thats for another blog entry! In my barrio, there is constant electricity, other parts of the city and in the aldeas (surrounding villages) there isn´t any power ever. Water comes about once every three days, but people have big tanks (pilas) that they fill to have a water reserve and thats what we use to bath or do your laundry. The water, however, is HORRIBLY contaminated, so it is never safe to drink, for that you either have to boil it or buy bottled water...which is what most people do.
There has traditionally been a ridiculous amount corruption within the municipal government, there´s a new bmx track and enormous cell phone tower, but there are people who live without electricty or water. One of the big projects I worked on was to have a political debate for the mayor candidates during the campaign season. The town eventually voted for the candidate from the Liberal party who has said that he will work to have transparency during his tenure, so we can only wait and see what happens.
So the reason why I haven´t blogged in a long time is because currently there isn´t any internet in San Lucas. Previously there was internet in the library that was funded by a US non-profit, but when the American economy tanked, so did the non-profit. There´s also a state-run internet cafe, but after the coup, Micheletti stopped paying the internet service provider, so internet was cut off. Through the cell phone companies, they sell wireless internet modems, so after a few months I decided to go for it. Well, it was much easier said than done. What happened was that the internet modem that I bought through the Tigo company was programmed to work within a 3g internet network, however San Lucas can only work within a 2g network. After many visits and some slight argueing, it all finally got squared away and now I have internet...but it is incredibly slow. I would love to upload pictures, but I think that might take the duration of my 2 years in Peace Corps.
What is it like to live in Honduras? Well, that could go on forever. Instead I´ll just quickly tell some funny stories. So people in Honduras are incredibly gullible, I convinced nearly an entire city during training that Spider-Man existed and was my uncle. Karma eventually comes back around because today I got locked in a latrine and had to use a swiss army knife to open the latch from the outside.
Town drunks love the gringos, so I´ve become a local celebrity with nearly most of the kids and every single bolo (drunk guy) in town, including on a bus when the second grade teacher in a nearby city was drunk as a skunk and invited me to go fishing with him, I kindly and regretfully declined.
Hondurans have these ridiculous beliefs that they live by. For instance if you bathe with cold water within three hours of sweating, you will die; and almost everybody knows somebody who has died because of it. Also eating ridiculously hot soup on a sweltering day will help you cool down, but you can´t drink anything with the soup because you´ll get sick, and when you´re sick, guess what? YOU EAT MORE HOT SOUP! Another good one is any time you sneeze or begin to show symptoms of having a cold, they all urge that you receive an injection in the behind. I have been told that if I don´t, I will get sick....and of course then have to eat hot soup.
There are countless stories to catch you all up on, and now I´ve got 1 year and 9 months to do it!
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Bridget
non-member comment
hey!
So great to hear from you!!! Love the stories. We miss you!