Milton turns three

Since Angela’s husband teaches during the week up on the mountain, he wasn’t home last year to celebrate Milton’s second birthday so they didn’t do anything. But since this year Milton’s birthday landed on a Sunday, they decided to go all out with tamales, cake, and a piñata. I helped Angela make over 100 tamales and popcorn to put in goodie bags for all the kids that were gonna come. Here are some photos of the party!

Anggie stirring the tamale "masa"


Angela making the tamales


Angela and me making TONS OF TAMALES


Sister Keimy with Milton


Milton cutting his birthday cake


Milton with father, Maximo

Healthy Smiles

The Youth Development project has a connection with Colgate to improve dental hygiene education. I have been waiting since last year to get my donation and finally it came! Becky came out to help me with a workshop for the teachers of three different schools and two kindergartens in my community and then I went to the schools to turn in two toothbrushes and one tube of toothpaste to each student. Every week, the teachers are in charge of giving a small lesson dental hygiene or general hygiene. Here is a photo of the kids learning to brush their teeth. I ended up collaborating with my friend, Alan, who is in charge of a healthy schools project and so we went around distributing multivitamins and giving fluoride to all the kids afterwards as well.

Ticks, bricks, and puppies!

My neighbor Angela, me, and the new puppy Randy


A flowering mango tree, mango season is starting! Yesss!!!


The same mango tree after the bloom and full of fruit(May 2009)

It’s the hot, dry season now, from about February to June. So everyone has started to make adobe (mud bricks) to make houses and to start any other outdoor construction projects. The best part about summer is that a cold shower doesn’t seem that bad. (Although I recently installed an “electroducha” which gives me hot showers). Also, there are baby animals all over the place! Baby cows, horses, goats, puppies, and kittens! Even baby opossums that Vanessa found! I was visiting a friend in her home and what I thought was a black dog came inside and as it passed I said, “Wow your dog has long legs like a goat.” Then I did a double-take . . . it was a goat! An adorable baby goat that pranced after me and wanted to follow me home!


Pastor Emilio's new puppy! He even has his paws together like he's greeting "Bendiciones" (Blessings) like the people do here.


Another not-so-exciting thing about summer. A giant spider that came into my house.


Baby horses in Olominas


A newborn calf



Vanessa's cat gave birth to five kittens! It didn't seem like a pleasant experience.
The bad part about summer means that it’s time for ticks, fleas, and invisible grass mites to come out and leave more scars all over my body. So since those furry little creatures are so tempting to cuddle, I’m back to shaking my sheets out and ironing and washing all my clothes. The dry season also means that fires on Celaque are very common. Every year, people sneak into Celaque and purposely light the forest on fire. And every year this will be a problem as very little, if anything, is done to find the perpetrator. At least there are lots of people here willing to go help put the fire out. Many people from various communities went to help fight the fires. This year was definitely worst than last year, with the fires only about an hour walk away from where Vanessa lives.


The view of Celaque from the road to Gracias


The mountain has been so dry the fire took the whole side of the mountain in one day


The smoke was so thick it was blocking out the sun and my view of Celaque

What a Way To Start the Year

January again which means that the first medical brigade that I translated for last year is coming back! I was so excited to see the doctors and nurses again as well as the West volunteers who I don’t get to see that often. From last year, only Becky, Kyler, and I were returning from last year. But two other volunteers from the new group of my project, Protected Areas Management, also came along. So it was a lot of fun to meet them and hear about their work.


PCV Kyler with a cute patient


PCVs Maggie, Kyler, Kate, nurse Aaryn, Becky, and me after a long day of work

One of the days of the brigade was also the Inauguration Day of President Barack Obama. The guy who helps organize this brigade every year went out of his way to find us a t.v. that got CNN in Spanish so that we could watch the Inauguration. When it was about to come on, we all gathered in the main room, gave all the kids coloring books and crayons, and watched the inauguration with all the other patients waiting to be seen. It was definitely a momentous occasion that we will look back on and say, “When this happened, we were united, doctors from various parts, Peace Corps volunteers, and local Hondurans, working to improve the quality of lives of some individuals.” The moment more than the speech, which was hard to follow as it was dubbed over in Spanish, brought tears to our eyes. This was one of the rare times that I have actually felt proud to be an American. And I am excited to finally be able to say with honor that I am a North American where our new president is Barack Obama. The feeling of hope was already evident before Obama’s inauguration; but I think that it’s even more so now because the whole world stopped to listen on this day.




This year we had dentists come down to pull lots and lots of teeth.


Maggie translating in triage


Me helping Aaryn clean wax out of an old ladys' ears. When she arrived she was so scared because she couldn't hear what we wanted her to do and she kepy getting dizzy with the water in her ears. When a marble-sized piece of wax came out of her ear though, she started shouting that we were a blessing from God giving her the miracle of sound again!

(October 2008) Time for a Break . . . in Guatemala!

Stove construction is off! I don’t know how . . . but once we started construction, everything worked as it was supposed to! All the parts fit, I didn’t screw up the first stove (too badly) and all of a sudden 36 women are trained and making stoves all over the place that I can’t even keep count of who has finished and who hasn’t! In the last two weeks of October, I was helping make two stoves a day, 6 days a week. In general, I helped make two stoves per group. The first time facilitating construction and the second time watching to make sure they for sure get it. So by the end of October, I was exhausted but in a good productive way. The way that makes you want a vacation but also feel like you really deserve it!

So my friend, Susan, (Municipal Development volunteer) and I decided to go to Guatemala for a couple of weeks after a Halloween party in Copan Ruinas. Unfortunately, I got my camera stolen and so photos of the trip are going to have to come later when I can get them from Susan.

One of the highlights of the trip was getting to visit an orphanage in Antigua, Guatemala. Susan has a friend who works in the orphanage and offered to let us stay at his place while we were in town. Our first night in Guatemala, he picked us up in downtown Antigua and after dropping our stuff off at his apartment, we went out to a bar to drink and chat. Orlando is head of the orphanage which is called “Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos” (Our Little Brothers). He has worked there for eight years and the orphanage has over 300 kids ranging in age from babies to adults. The great part about the orphanage is that it offers various workshops in carpentry, baking, and other activities so that when the children grow up and decide to leave the orphanage, they will be able to open a small business or have some experience to be able to find work. There is a basic school inside the orphanage as well and if the students want to continue their education, the orphanage pays for them to continue on to middle school or high school.

To my surprise, none of the kids can be adopted from the orphanage and, in general, it’s very hard to adopt children from Central American countries. I asked Orlando why it was so tough because, really, if families here don’t have the funds to take care of their children, there should be the option to adopt so the child can have a better life. I would have never guessed his response. Orlando explained to me that it’s dangerous to put kids up for adoption because . . . and yes, this reason stopped my heart too . . . people will adopt kids and then sell their organs on the black market. The next day, I found a Guatemalan newspaper and the front article was about an adoption agency that was a hoax. Basically, some people were claiming to be a valid adoption agency and had collected thousands of dollars from North Americans who wanted to adopt Guatemalan children and then disappeared with the money. It’s amazing what people are capable of and how much I’m still so naïve about.

(So I will try to get photos of the trip up as soon as possible. Sorry!)

(September 2008) Finding Friends When You Need Them Most

Finally, we got funding for the stoves project after 7 months of waiting and being lied to and I had all the materials except the “plancha” which is the large metal sheet that the women cook on. This is also the most expensive part of the project. The mayor, who was providing the plancha, said he would have them on a Friday. I was a little nervous about the fact that my first stove was to be the very next day, Saturday. But he told me to trust him. Unfortunately, I wasn’t even in Nueva Esperanza during this time. I was still in Tegucigalpa in the doctor’s office doing all the official stuff for mid-term meds. But all I could think about was getting back and starting building. We only learned how to do these projects during one day of training which was over a year ago, so it would not be an exaggeration to say that I was scared out of my mind that something was going to go wrong. What if the materials were the wrong size? What if everything doesn’t fit together? What if I don’t even have all the materials? What if I screw up the first stove and everyone thinks I don’t know what I’m doing? What if they don’t work once they’re built?

I left as soon as my meds were done and arrived home after dark and exhausted from the 8 hours of travel. The next morning, Friday, I walked to the municipality just to make sure we had the planchas. When someone is about to tell you an excuse or is about to tell you that they are going to let you down, they start the sentence off with “Fíjese que”. I held my breath just hoping those weren’t the first words. But sure enough, the mayor told me, “Fíjese que, we don’t have them”. Usually it’s not worth it to show how disappointed you are because frankly you get disappointed a lot here. But I couldn’t help but let the mayor know how much I really didn’t want to hear those words. I hurried over to the house of the lady who was first in line to start building her stove to hopefully catch her and tell her not to undo her old stove. But I was too late, she had already been cooking outside since Thursday. When I told her we wouldn’t be able to make the stove, her son got angry with me and told me to just show him how to make the stove because he was a bricklayer and could make it on his own. I told him I couldn’t show him because: A) We didn’t have all the materials B) No other women were going to show up to help build (there had to be a minimum of three women building each stove) and C) This was a women’s project and his wife had to be there to build. When he told me he came representing his wife, I told him he was more than welcome to come and learn, but his wife was the one in this project and thus I wouldn’t teach him until she was present. At this, he muttered something along the lines of I didn’t know what I was doing and this project isn’t ever coming and then left.

This incident pushed me over the edge. For almost a year, this project has caused me constant stress and anxiety trying to find the balance between keeping the wheels turning and also keeping everyone involved by assigning jobs to others who don’t come through when they are supposed to. I know I could have done everything faster myself but at the stake of the sustainability of the project. And when the mistakes or inaction of others comes back to reflect poorly on me and only me, it takes a lot of tolerance and patience to resist taking everything into your own hands. So getting yelled at after months of hard work was the last thing I needed. I felt like no matter how hard I tried to make things work out, it was to no avail. And how backwards is it that someone was basically telling me I was doing a poor job of getting them their free stove? Good grief what the heck am I doing here?!

Here, I find it’s easy for a small dilemma to grow out of control and become more overwhelming than it should be which is what was happening. As volunteers, our work environment is also our living environment and the lack of distinction between the two means we lose it easier. Being alone also definitely does not help and even though I really wanted to talk to someone, I felt like I didn’t have anyone to call. I started to think about how much I left behind in the states and how long it had been since I had been away from my family and friends. And for what? So I could live alone in a country that doesn’t respect women and work on a project that no one seems grateful for and get lied to and yelled at by machista men?

There was a full moon out which lights the roads really well so I decided to calm down and take a walk. That was definitely the best thing I could have done because I really needed someone to talk to and I ran into my neighbor, Juan Ruperto. I was too upset to talk to him at the moment but when I came back an hour later, he came over to make sure I was okay. We went on a walk again and he just listened, which is all I needed. After a couple of hours, I felt so much better. He made me realize that there are people who care about me and that I should be proud of the accomplishment that the whole town has accepted me and supports me. Sometimes things go unlike we anticipate and it’s important to not take to heart what a few individuals say because as he observed, the majority of the women in this project are motivated and organized. And since there has never been an organized group of women in Nueva Esperanza, there are more ways to fail and more challenges that come with it. But in the end, he told me that all the hard work and problems I encounter will make this project even more worth it and even more rewarding. It takes very little effort to become frustrated with work and the way things are here, so it feels great when someone from this country can remind me why I actually love being here. I think Juan seeing me in a state that no one else sees created a confidence between us that I don’t have with any other Honduran, man or woman, and I’m thankful for this friendship that came about when I least expected it but most needed it.

Trip to Tegucigalpa with the potters!

Seeing us off for our adventure to Tegucigalpa!

In November, a bunch of volunteers near Tegucigalpa had been working to organize an artisan fair in the US Embassy and invited all volunteers who have some type of artisan group in their sites to bring people from their group and sell inside the Embassy in December. What a great opportunity for the potters! The fair was set for the beginning of December and since July, Ellen and I had been working hard to prepare everything for the trip. There were business workshops we had to cover (which Ellen and I luckily had already covered earlier) and we needed to accessorize our pottery with labels, business cards and catalogs. I also opened an e-mail account for the group and Ellen, who teaches computer classes, taught a group of potters how to use the computer and check the internet in case more orders came from contacts we would make in Teguz. Thanks to Cooperación Espanola, the classes were paid for and the women, who originally could not afford the classes, can now use a mouse, use basic programs, and check e-mail!


Some of the beautiful pottery and clay artwork from La Campa

Because of budget cuts, there were no funds in Peace Corps to be able to cover any costs for this fair. And unfortunately, getting to Tegucigalpa is a long and rather expensive trip. But even still, two women (Herminia and Ursula . . . two of my best friends and supporters here), agreed that this was an opportunity we could not let pass us by and decided to go.

Ursula is a very active community leader and is involved in almost every project in some way. She also has been a confidant to me and supported me in more ways than I imagined or expected from anyone. If it weren´t for Ursula, I wouldn´t have been able to accomplish as much as I have and certainly my experience would have been a lot more difficult. Herminia is very intelligent and her husband, who is the main potter, does beautiful work. However, Herminia is less experienced with taking a leadership role and is even less experienced with traveling out of the community. So, I was most excited for this opportunity for her. This trip was her first time to Siguatepeque and to Tegucigalpa. It was also the longest time she had been away from her husband since they got married when she was 17 years old.


It´s time for the ladies to leave the village! Woohoo!! Herminia on the left and Ursula on the right.

So December 2nd came and we were ready to go! The fair was December 3rd but of course we had to leave a day early. I was excited to see how motivated Herminia and Ursula were for this trip and also excited to hang out with them outside of Nueva Esperanza. It would be an experience that none of us would forget. Herminia and Ursula wrote a letter to World Vision asking them to help us out with transportation and they said they would be happy to take us. So we filled the car with 11 boxes of pottery (each piece with a label tied on with a piece of corn husk), a stack of catalogs and business cards, and a huge sign that said ¨Alfareria de La Campa¨ which Ellen and I spent painstaking hours making and laminating by hand with contact paper. The head of World Vision in Gracias, Guillermo, took us straight to Tegucigalpa with one stop in Siguatepeque. The craziest thing happened when we were in Siguatepeque. I ran into my friend, Andrea, who I hadn’t seen since graduating from high school!! Herminia, Ursula, and I were in a small market looking at aisles of food when she came and stood in front of me. It was such a surreal moment and I was in disbelief. Andrea was on vacation with her family and boyfriend on the North Coast and were headed to Tegucigalpa when they decided to stop in the same rest stop in Siguatepeque as us. Small world, huh?


The artisan fair in the US Embassy


Herminia and Ursula selling to a customer


Some of what the potters make

In Tegucigalpa, I got to show Ursula and Herminia the Peace Corps office and introduced them to my project managers. Again, Herminia was making me laugh because every time we had to cross the road, she would run up and grab onto my arm. All the cars going in every direction was very overwhelming to her and she had no idea how I knew how to get across the street. Even Ursula, who has been to Tegucigalpa, commented that sometimes there’s just too much to look out for in the cities. It definitely is a shock going from the small towns to the big cities.

Herminia, Ursula, and I at our booth

During the fair, there were several other volunteers selling all kinds of artisan stuff. Getting into the Embassy was a little complicated. We sold a good amount and ended up taking the extra to a touristy town outside of Tegucigalpa called Valle de Angeles. There, we left four boxes in a store in consignment. So now La Campa pottery is finally out of La Campa!! Woohoo!!


Our newly labelled pottery and business cards