The light side.

So, after what was probably the dark side of Peace Corps in those last two posts, I decided that I should bring us back to the lighter side of Peace Corps: actually successful work.  Of course, success depends on your own definitions, but right now success in my book means having work to do!

As I wrote about a month ago, my Alcaldeza (female mayor, or in this case, vice mayor) came to me because she wanted to start a micro-empresas class for women.  I suggested to her that we work in conjunction with the Women's Office for our municipality.  We set up a meeting for the following monday, and promptly sat down, went through names of needy women, thought about how large a class I could do, and right then and there wrote a proposal to take to the Mayor.  The following day it was typed, the Alcaldeza and I signed it, and it went to his desk.  It was approved before the end of the week.  Sometimes it is awesome to work with the vice-mayor.

However, that was the end of the awesome efficiency we had going and we promptly waited a month for funds to be released.  We had timed the class to end right before reconnect, but in reality, we started the week before reconnect, and I did three of the scheduled six classes on a thursday, friday, and the following monday.  The very first day there were 25 women who attended--some of whom walked an hour to come.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, as my class got smaller), there are about 14 who stayed on, and I had a regular attendance of about 12, not including the Alcaldeza, women's office director, and librarian (classes were at the library).

The class concluded last week with the women being in three groups, and preparing business plans for three businesses (a cafe, a restaurant, and artisan jewelry).  However, in my attempt to bring some start-up funds from the government, the women realized they needed a group of at least 10 to get the seed capital and promptly decided to give up their plans in favor of one big panadería (bakery).  I think this is extremely unfortunate, because they could have formed a group of ten or more, obtained their small business loans, and still started three businesses.  One large panadería is a terrible idea here, because there is no way a business of a size large enough to support 10 families can be successful or sustainable here.  I mean, I haven't even SEEN a business with more than 5 employees who aren't related to one another.  So, I'm still trying to talk them out of it.  I was happy, however, when one of the best students was like "Even if we don't decide to be a part of this group and get the loans, now we have the capacidad to start our own businesses", and one of the students even called me yesterday to see if I could continue advising them.

So, it's not all a wash.  After seeing Carrie's presentation at Reconnect on her class "Mi Vida Empresarial", I'd really like to adopt that format, though I have doubts about how to obtain the funding for that.  Jeff might be starting (read: the doctor wants him to start) a pregnant teens support group, and this might be the next step for them toward income generation as well.

P.S.  I'm sorry that our blog lacks photos.  This is because until recently we only had iPhones to take photos with, and those are likely to get stolen if we take them in public.  We have a digital camera now, but are waiting on a connection cable and battery charger for it.

Reconnect and S&S

So I know that I promised the next post would be about family vacation.  I lied.  Well, it's not my fault really.  You see, mom and Mariah just started school again and John.... well he doesn't really have any excuse.  Anyway, I'm going to write about other things instead.



The 7th-10th of September was our Reconnect.  Reconnect is where everyone of the same project gets together to share about their work, sit through some boring-but-occasionally-useful lectures, and remember how great friends we were during training (or not).  This year, due to the budget situation, PC-H decided to hold Business, Health, and Wat-San reconnects all at the same place.  Not only was our entire training group there, but also the H-16ers--most of whom we hadn't met before.  All in all, most volunteers treated it like a giant party, and sometimes it was. 

Reconnect was hard for me.  It's difficult to sit and listen to other people talk about their work--especially when they are working in Food Security and neither asked for that, nor wanted to.  I was (and probably still am) angry at my project staff for building up my expectation of my counterpart which have turned out to be all false.  I think I could have handled not getting a FS project much better if they hadn't mislead my beliefs about what I was getting.  Disappointment is a harder emotion to get over than the others.  We also sat through several lectures about the new Acceso program from USAID which we don't qualify for in the east.  That was an awesome kick in the ass, especially since my project team is well aware that I sent them an email about what is up with my counterpart, and they haven't acknowledged it.

Anyway, I talked a while about it with TJ who lives south of us here and is my closest BZ neighbor.  He told me when he got to Salama, it was none of the things he asked for.  He pretty much spent a year not really having work, and feeling bitter about his assignment.  It was only recently that he started to have work again, and now he's happier.  The conclusion that I came to from all of this is that I want to try to love La Union for what it is, instead of hating it for what it's not.  And that, I suppose, can apply to all areas of my life. 


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On that note, safety and security has been much a concern here in Honduras lately.  Some new rules have come down restricting volunteer travel and get-togethers, mostly aimed at curbing public-drunkenness and the dangers that possesses.  It frustrates me a lot that Peace Corps has to put policies like that in place, since especially here in Olancho, we get together for nights of safe fun on a regular basis, and I feel like if we didn't we might all go insane.  There is no social life to speak of for many of us in our own towns.  Jeff and I are in by 6 (7 at the latest, but it's already dark by then), and we don't go out after dark.

Honduras has a lot of security problems unrelated to volunteer stupidity as well.  The murder rate here is the highest in the world (more dangerous than Afghanistan), and rising due to increasing drug violence.  Every month we get more disturbing updates about things like violence outside of Trujillo (there's an ongoing land dispute), or someone getting jumped in the woods by men with masks and then raped.  Thankfully neither of those things are near us, but the potential for violence everywhere in this country is very high.  Jeff and I are constantly asking ourselves if we can be effective here with all the limitations these security problems impose.  I think if asking to be relocated to a safer post was an option, we would be seriously considering that.  Unfortunately married couples do not really have the option, like single people, to not accept their first invitation to the Peace Corps.  We are told that "Very rarely does any couple get a second placement consideration", which means there's only one shot.

If you are considering joining the Peace Corps, think very hard about what is most important to you.  If safety and security is important, make that known to your placement officer.  However, if you had asked me if safety and security was important to me last year, I would probably have said that it wasn't any more important to me than the next person.  However, now I feel like it really restricts our ability to be effective volunteers while not breaking all of the safety and security rules.  

The Blues

Sorry its been so long!  I know some people are very good about updating every week.  We obviously are not.  Mostly because there's been very little going on for us to write about.  This is a post I wrote about two weeks ago now, but was too busy to type up (read: to lazy to type up).  Next up, vacation with my family.

From 28/7/11:

I know we've tried hard to keep this blog upbeat and lighthearted about how amazing Peace Corps is, but the reality this week is that sometimes it is really hard--and really boring.  Community integration is really hard even when you have a daily routine or an office, and we have neither.  I try to note at least one small success each day (today it was making a date with our vice-mayor for monday to discuss forming microemprezas, yesterday it was playing "bananagrams" with our neighbors, 5 & 7).  Some days, though, that is really the only thing I can say was accomplished, and some days it is coupled with finding out the baleada lady has a black eye and didn't work yesterday or that the people we say hi to every day kick their dogs.

Still, we are living a relaxed life, full of new experiences, great (and sometimes terrible) food, and new friends.  However, sometimes it is just hard, and lonely, and I miss feeling effective.

From Today:

I'm ashamed to admit that we've become a bit reclusive.  Our house is kind of a walk from the main town and Peace Corps won't approve our bicycle request because my form isn't signed by my counterpart (who I haven't seen in nearly a month), so we spend many days just in our house or our neighborhood.  It's too easy to become absorbed in a book or training manual, dreaming about the counterparts or projects we could have.  I've been really at a loss, since neither of my counterparts really wants to work with me.  I had that meeting with the vice-mayor, and we got funding from the municipality to run a taller for single mothers about how to start a business.  Now we are (still) waiting for the funds to be released.  I'm tempted to just front the money myself and get reimbursed, but that sets a bad precedent.  At least then I'd have something to do.  When we get together in two weeks for reconnect I'd really like to be able to say I've done something, but it sure doesn't feel like that right now.  I'm frustrated with my job and our location (I really really wanted to work with food security, and made that clear to my project team.  USAID just started a huge new FS program here called Feed the Future.  Guess where they work?  The West.  That's right, they absolutely do not give any funding in this entire half of the country.), my counterparts, and my general lack of activity, and its making me short with Jeff.  At least he has opportunities (and when he doesn't want to follow all his job leads it make me even more frustrated that I have none.  Not his fault, but my fuse is short right now).  All that coupled with the security stuff and I just don't feel like leaving my house. 

Sorry this was a down post.  Next one will be happier, I'm sure.

Mi casa es su casa!

We have a house! Yay!

Some of you have heard about our troubles finding a house here in La Union. In a town this size you just kinda have to know somebody who knows somebody who has a house (there aren't any "For Rent" signs). There were only a few options and only really two of them were good options, both owned by profesoras from the colegio. While we were waiting for my boss to come so we could get his opinion, the one I wanted to rent got rented to someone else, without the owners saying anything to us. I was very upset, because the other option (while it did have water all the time) had almost no solar (yard) for a garden! I really want to do garden projects here, and where better to start than my own backyard?

Anyway, the day my boss (read: project director) came to visit Jeff was asking some people about a vacant house next to theirs, and they said that it was under contract, but hey! They had a family member with a house available! It actually turns out that this house is right across the street from the one we lost, and is better! My boss thought it was a great choice, and it has actual tiled floors, and INDOOR pila, and sink in the kitchen. As well as lots of outdoor space where there is already corn, beans, and yucca planted. AND....

....

....

....a mango tree! Awesome! We're super excited--we signed a lease and got keys yesterday and are going to start moving things over there this afternoon!

Dear H19

Dear H19,

Hi, welcome to Honduras (almost)! We are excited to have you (and by that I mean we are excited to no longer be the new kids on the block)!

I imagine that some of you are probably freaking out about what to pack, like I was. There is a great post from one of the H16 volunteers on what to pack and not to pack, and I have a few things to add of my own.

-You all are in a different position than we were. As you know the housing policies have changed and you all will be living with host families for the entire two years. I’m sure it will be as rewarding as it will be challenging. In my case, when we packed to come to Honduras, I put back half of my clothes and instead brought things like knitting supplies, tea, spices, and household items that we would want over the next two years. You all won’t have to decide there because your host family will likely provide everything you need in terms of household items. Don’t bring them (unless you, like me, have a special magical can-opener that you never go anywhere without). You can buy almost anything you would want housewares wise here, but likely your host family will already have it.

-Jeff says about clothes: I brought too much. Without a washing machine, if you wait more than 5 days to do laundry you are going to be spending hours doing it, so you will get to do it more often. I brought enough clothes to go two weeks without changing, and there was no need. Two pairs jeans, one pair khaki, 1 ‘traveling’ (lightweight quickdry), one pair nicer shorts, two sports shorts(doubles as pajamas). Handful of tshirts, 5 or so button up shirts, sports coat, 1 tie. Done. Don’t be afraid to not bring enough, ropa American stores are plentiful and cheap- Sam bought two pairs of jeans for less than $8 here in site.

-Hobby stuff: If you are a knitter, then please for the love of God, bring your own yarn. They only have terrible scratchy awful acrylic stuff here. Not even the good acrylic, just the terrible pill-y kind. If you don’t know what I am talking about, feel free to disregard this section. If you have another hobby, you will have a lot of free time to do whatever you do, bring your stuff you need for it.

-Sports: Some people in our group brought things like hacky-sacks, soccer balls, etc. Jeff brought a soccer ball (futbol), and a rugby ball, which has proved to be a lot of fun not just between fellow trainees (more than 10% of our group had played rugby), but also in the community. The kids here still haven’t mastered that whole passing backwards part of rugby.

-Games: Small games are highly recommended! Lots of people brought card games like Set or the card version of Scrabble—we brought Bananagrams in both English and Spanish. Lots of fun with the host families and gives you something to do during lunch or other waiting times.

-Headlamp: Bring one of these! You will be happy you did when the power goes out. I recommend one that takes AA batteries, not funny button batteries. You can find AA and AAA batteries here, though batteries are expensive, so bring a bunch or have someone send you some. In our site, the power has been out about 20% of our time here. One week we only had power half the time.

-A clipboard! I know that sounds ridiculous, but you will seriously use this all the time. I wish I had one.

-Ladies: bring some flats. I did a silly thing in having only practical shoes (tennis shoes, Birkenstocks, flipflops, hiking boots), and apparently the thing here is to wear flats, and they are expensive to get good ones that don’t fall apart. Flip-flops are not ok for work (and hence, no ok for training), but “decorative sandals,” which are flipflops with crap on them, are ok. Honduran business wear is jeans or skirt, nice shirt/blouse, so consider that when you are packing.

-Jeans: It is totally acceptable here to wear jeans all day every day. Skinny jeans are really in, but capris are nice too when it is hot. I only brought one pair with me, and have since bought 2 more so that I don’t have to wash them so often. Go read Kristi’s post and listen to what she says about cotton/poly blends! We have plenty of cotton stuff, but the polyester helps. I have some sturdy oxford shirts from LLBean that are holding up well, but other than that the 100% cotton wears a lot faster.

-If you have a non-smart phone, or you have an older phone that works but you just don’t use anymore, get it unlocked and bring it. You need a GSM phone, one that takes a SIM card, and need to go to the company you bought it from (ATT/T-Mobile, ect.) and have them unlock it. The cheap phones here are cheap, but will cost you around 11 days of trainee income--save that for beer money.

-Bring a computer and an external hard drive. You will use your computer for work, and you will want the external hard drive to back things up. Honduras is hard on electronics, make sure you back things like documents and pictures up regularly. A larger external lets you store more movies, music, and pictures. We have a terabyte external, and it only has 100gb left. Peace Corps probably told you not to bring a computer. Do. You can always choose not to use it, but you will find them prohibitively expensive once you get here.

-GET INSURANCE. We are spending $200ish a year, and have our electronics and stuff covered. It’s pricey, but completely worth it, especially since just replacing your clothes would probably cost more that what you are going to make in a year. If our laptop or something is stolen, we wouldn’t be able to afford to replace it otherwise.

Along those lines, don’t bring anything irreplaceable. You will likely go through service with no problems, but every year people get robbed. If you have a family heirloom or something else one of a kind, the likelihood of it getting lost, stolen or damaged here is high.

If you have any questions, post a comment or email us.

Goodluck! Training will likely be long and at times boring, but stick with it!

Honduras Knits

As some of you may know, I worked at my LYS before becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer.  What’s an LYS, you ask?  Why, it’s a Local Yarn Store.  But Sam, you ask, Don’t you have a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science?  Yes, yes I do.  As it so happens, being an international school approved by the Department of Education to receive FAFSA funds does not actually mean that the government will believe that the quality of your education is as high as in US institutions. 

I always knew I wanted to work in the public sector, because consulting felt a little bit too much like selling my soul.  Government has inefficiencies, but so do private companies, and at least in the government there is such thing as salary caps.  I know that this creates an economic incentive that leads better-qualified people to take private sector jobs over public sector ones, but I think that the economics fails to account for values (as usual).  Many of the people I know who work for the federal government do so because they believe in serving their country and giving back to/improving the system we live in.  I also very much believe in collectivism (one of the reasons I like Honduran culture, despite its often ineffective government), which means I believe the public should be providing certain services with its tax dollars and those should be available to everyone regardless of their ability to pay.  Enough of that, Peace Corps doesn’t want me to talk politics.

What all of this really means is that while my Master’s degree was awarded in December 2009, I wasn’t “qualified” to apply for government jobs requiring a master’s degree until the summer of 2010—after we’d applied for the Peace Corps and been accepted.  Since we had a tentative leave date of February 2011 (it was August at that time), I decided to walk across the street from our house to the LYS and beg them to give me a job through the holidays.  It turns out they had just posted on the interwebs asking for someone, and it all worked out beautifully.  While the customers didn’t know about PC until it was official in November, Fibre Space employees were amazing and supportive through our whole lengthy and frustrating medical process, and the long waiting for our invitation.

Sweater I finished during training

Now to get to the entire point of this post:  I thought it would be cool to show you all some of the things I’ve made since coming to Honduras.  I realize its absolutely ridiculous to knit with wool when it’s 85 degrees outside everyday with no AC.  I’m doing it anyway.  I was at Fibre Space through winter season, so most of what I have in my yarn stash is wool…. Though I’m not opposed to receiving some surprise packages of lighter weight fibres. 

I started a sweater before we left for Honduras, and finished it here in week 2 of training.  Then I made a sock to complete a pair.  Then I made my host sister some bracelets, and some placemats for the host family.  Next, I started the second pair of socks (finished two weeks ago), and the other night I started on this hat:

Through-the-woods hat in Neighborhood Fiber Company's Rock Creek Park

They look better on, right?

Alana Socks in bdg confetti?

People in Honduras think that knitting socks in hilarious, and why wouldn't they?  It's hot.  It is normally 85 here daily.  But, what they don't know, is that wool is a naturally wicking and fungus-resistant fibre, which makes it perfect for hiking socks (SmartWool, anyone?).  These socks are mostly wool with some elastic and nylon thrown in for good measure.  I also finished a pair in FBT from Louet GEMS (100% wool superwash).

Next, I'll be making Andrea's Shawl by Kirsten Kapur out of two colors of Bugga! by The Sanguine Gryphon.  If that means nothing to you, don't worry.  It just means you are not a yarn snob like me.  Also, for those of you who doubt the usefulness of knitted items in Honduras, talk to some of those volunteers from the West!  It's cold there! I have worn my sweater here in our site on some of the colder evenings, too, and I wear my socks all the time (as often as I wear socks.... which isn't very often).

Civilization? And more....

We spent this sunday-tuesday in Tegucigalpa, paid for partially by Peace Corps.  It was a great trip!  Normally we are not allowed to travel overnight outside of our E-zone (emergency zones) before our two-month travel restriction is up, but I was able to go with special permission, since Jeff had to go to the office.  It isn't possible for us to get to the Peace Corps office in one day, since we get in about 10:30, and the last bus back leaves at 12.  Most of the time the E-zones have a welcome party for new volunteers, but since ours got cut in half two weeks after we got here, we haven't really gotten together to see people yet (and there are now only 6 of us).  So, this was a really awesome opportunity to see some people, since our visit just happened to coincide with the VAC (volunteer advisory committee) meeting.  We got to see some friends from training (Hi Andrea's mom!), and meet some new volunteers too!  We had delicious food variety and lots of luxuries we don't normally have--like showers.  And, more importantly, now we have our own internet modem to use whenever we want!  If you have our US phone numbers, we can now send and recieve txt messages on them for free through Google Voice.

In the job department, things are... going.  I guess.  We got back from the city and promptly ran into one of my compañeros in the park, and he invited me to go to a protected areas charla next week.  Also, they just got a bunch of new equipment for the office that I've been invited to share.  I hadn't really been over to the office until today, since I'm the only person who would be in it, but I found it quite a productive place for me to be.  Today I created a facebook page for the national park, La Muralla, that I'm working with.  If you are reading this and have facebook (or, if you are reading this and don't have facebook, get it!), please go 'like' La Muralla so that I can get a registered username (need 25 likes).  I'm also working on editing the wikipedia page for the park in English and creating it in Spanish.  Who knew wikipedia was so complicated?

Also, now that we're somewhat settled (still looking for a house, but probably going to make that decision this week), I'm going to create a Wishlist page of things that would be awesome to have sent to us.  If you've sent us stuff already we haven't gotten it, and that might be my fault.  Apparently I had a superfluous '2' in the address that Jeff rectified a few days ago. 

Sam

P.S.  Any H19ers that are reading this, I plan to write a post of advice for you if you want it.  I have a habit of forgetting to do things like that, but feel free to hustle me along through comments.