May the ground be solid beneath your feet and that the path slope slightly in your favor

I walk up with a group of men with machetes, a few kids, and a few dogs to observe the water source at the top of the mountain. I struggled to keep walking. The first hour we walked from one town where they were going to get the new water system, to the neighboring town, about 6 km away on an impassable dirt road. There the community members were arranged and an agreement was reached between the two communities to allow the use of the water source for a fee of about $1000. Before the contract could be signed, we had to view the water source, a task much easier said than done. I was still tired and covered in mud from the hour walk out to the village, but if everyone else wanted to do it, the engineer couldn´t refuse giving her professional opinion of the water source. So we started on the 2.5 hour hike up and down and up the mountain. I don´t know how I made it to the top. One of the villagers offered to carry my backpack, and another cut me a hiking stick which I definitely needed as a third foot to make it up and down the muddy slopes. Somehow I mustered up enough strength to make it to the top. I was able to have a little rest when we made it to the top. There was plenty of water at the source and it was well-protected. We took a measure of the flow rate, and then it was time to descend the mountain and return to the village. It was going to be a struggle to make it down the muddy mountain, and I was already past tired, but I didn´t have any choice but to continue. But then it started to rain. It quickly became pretty much impossible to walk, and after sliding down for a while, someone cut me another stick to try to give me some more balance. I was now skiing down the mountain. The community members were accustomed to walking in such conditions, and only I and the mayor´s representative seemed to be struggling. Somehow I made it back to the village; I was soaked and covered in mud, but fortunately without any serious injury (my camera did not fare as well). They wrote up and signed the agreement and we walked the hour back to town, where my ride was waiting for me to drive the hour back to La Esperanza. I got home just after dark and ate a big supper. Then all that remained was to do the 18 km study of the water line, beginning the next day. Somehow I managed to back it back out there the next day and begin and we finished with the study 2 weeks later. The following week we finished the report, and are now waited for funds from the government through the Strategy to Reduce Poverty. I don´t think I have ever been so sore or tired in my life, but if the project gets built and the 130 houses get water, it will be worth it. And when else can you go hiking on paths where no one else travels, where the path is cut right before you measure by your small army of men with machetes.

The other week, we had the biggest cultural event of the year in La Esperanza, the Potato Festival. There was plenty of street parties with music and dancing, and even a potato parade and a potato queen. I still don´t know where all the people came from for the festivities. But it was a nice change of pace from the normally quiet atmosphere.

It no longer feels so much like I´m living in a foreign country, it feels more like normal life. But even so, there are still plenty of new experiences, and I feel privileged to be able to really live here. I went out to San Miguelito last week to do a water study. Just getting to the water source was quite an ordeal. When we finally got a ride out in the back of a police pickup, we drove about an hour on a narrow, rocky, dirt road. From there we had to hike 3 kilometers up to the water source to begin our measurements. We had a group of men with machetes going out in front of us to cut the line so we could measure it. It was quite a way to go hiking on an untravelled path with an amazing view and a group of ´tour guides´. While of course I slipped a good number of times at the muddy parts and got some wet feet, fortuneately I didn´t fall off the side of the mountain.

I am struck by the level of poverty I find when I leave La Esperanza and go out into one of the small surrounding communities. If you go into someone´s house there, even someone who is relatively well off, you find that all the people usually sleep in one room. If they are lucky, maybe they have a concrete floor and a bench or a couple plastic chairs, but that is about it. There are usually no decorations on the wall except maybe one random photograph that someone has given them or a diploma from some workshop. You see the children running around, 8 or more in one family, often only half dressed and with their stomachs sticking out from worms. You are forced to realize what you take for granted when you see people who really have nothing. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the poverty and think that it is too great to do anything, but then again if you can do anything small it can make a huge difference.

Life in Honduras is quite different from life in the US. Things do not happen at the same pace and are much more dependent on the surroundings such as weather. I have to wait to shower until there is enough water pressure. Catching a ride in the back of a pickup truck is not the best idea when it is pouring rain. I think a lot more about what I throw away when later I have to burn it in the backyard. The walk into town also seems too long in the rain. A 4 hour bus ride seems short and potentially luxurious is the road is paved and you have a seat. Time is relative. Now half of the country is on daylight savings time and half the country is on the old time, with no real certainty as to who uses which time. Some buses follow the old hour and some follow the new hour, but in either case nothing happens on time. The other day I was eating ice cream (yes, we have one small ice cream parlor in La Esperanza, but it was unfortunately raisins and not chocolate chips in my ice cream) and I realized that I no longer felt self-conscious when people stare at me, because it is such a common thing here. The saying that it´s not polite to stare does not apply to Honduras, and a gringa is something that everyone stares at. The other day I went out to do a topographical study. I had arranged to be at the community at 8 (and had specified the new time), but had to wait around at the office until 10 for a ride. I finally got out there, after being delayed 5 times along the journey by cows in the middle of the road, around 10:30 where the members of the water board had been waiting an hour and a half. I went out with the community members to see the water sources and existing tank (a nice hour hike where I learned about quick mud, twice, and that waterproof boots are not useful when the mud comes in from above).
Here in La Esperanza, I´m pretty lucky to have access to many modern conveniences. We usually have electricity and water and even have a telephone in the house. We don´t have a television (which makes us rare here) or a washing machine (so I am getting good at pila washings, but now that the rains are starting it´s hard to get your clothes to dry). There are numerous internet cafes with decent connections when the skies are clear. We have a wonderful vegetable and fruit market where Lencan people with colorful head scarves come from all the surrounding villages to sell their produce (from strawberries to broccoli and now even wild mushrooms) at pretty cheap prices without bargaining. The market used to be a few blocks away, before it was burned down on Christmas last year (the day when no people were there) for some political reason I don´t understand. Now the vendors have taken over the street in front of my office, which has created an interesting traffic situation.
Sometimes it feels that the cultural and language barriers make it too difficult to accomplish anything, but then at the same time I am doing things here in Spanish that I probably wouldn´t have been willing to do in English. Gringos here stand out no matter what, and for better or worse are automatically seen as being some sort of great authority. Still I wonder if I will really ever fit in here or fully be able to communicate in Spanish. But the people are welcoming and it is heartening to walk toward my house with the neighborhood kids calling out my name and running up to give me a hug. And the work here is exciting and useful. I am able to go work in communities where there is a real basic need and actually help them to fulfill that need.

It´s hard to believe I´ve already been settled in my site for a month now. I´m pretty accustomed to the sights of sounds of the ´big´city of La Esperanza. The rains are starting to come, which is good because it gives my eyes a break from the dust, but it´s not a whole lot of fun walking in the pouring rain either. I´ve had a plethora of experiences already in the first month, from teaching physics in Spanish to translating for a dentist extracting teeth to examining water systems for expansion. I am now a pro (más o menos) at maneuvering over, under, or through barbed wired fences.

After a 3 month whirlwind of training in Santa Cruz and Santa Lucia ending with us swearing in at the US embassy in Teguc, I have arrived permanently to my new home in La Esperanza. I moved in last Friday, and have been settling in, meeting people, figuring out what I am going to be doing for the next 2 years. The first week has been a somewhat atypical experience, since the group I´m working for, World Vision, had it´s yearly regional conference in Tela, which happens to be located about 5 hours away on the beach. It was a good introduction to the people I´m going to be working with, though not much work was accomplished and following a schedule is a foreign concept. I met too many people and know I won´t be able to keep anyone straight for a good while. Fortuneately the volunteer I´m replacing is still here for another week and has been great at showing me around even making up a cheat sheet of people´s names for me. And then yesterday, I went up to one of the villages for a Lenca cultural day, involving some skits, speeches, and traditional food and dancing. Getting out to the community was an adventure with a one hour drive on a little dirt road in a car that had seen better days, and then a one hour hike through the mountains. Fortuneately it didn´t rain leaving the mud roads unpassable.
La Esperanza seems like it will be a great place to live, with fruit and vegetable markets abounding and pretty much all the basic necessities and trivilities are available in town. It´s nice to be settled down with a home base. This week I´m going to be getting introduced to some of the villages with water projects in various stages. I´m also going to start teaching a physics class which should be interesting considering I´m still struggling with the Spanish. I´m looking forward to 2 great and challenging years and hope that I can do a decent job and have some success with the water projects.

I am currently in La Esperanza, my home for the next 2 years. It is a small city of about 20,000 people located about a mile up in the mountains, making it about the coldest place in Honduras. I´m returning to Santa Lucia tomorrow to finish my last two weeks of training, before moving in here permanently. Training has been great, but I´m excited to finally be settling down and beginning working on water systems.
My time in Honduras has been full of excitement and adventure, which is partially why I haven´t really written anything on the blog until now. Some of the highlights are cliff-jumping behind a marvelous waterfall, hiking through forests and through barbed wire fences to follow existing water systems, drinking cerveza and playing games with other volunteers and Hondurans, constructing pilas and latrines, living with 2 wonderful families, being unaware of what´s going on around me since I couldn´t understand Spanish, and eating baleadas, platanos, and other Honduran specialties.

Arrival in Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Everyday is a new adventure. I wake up to the sounds of roosters and dogs without knowing what to expect. I have 3 months of training in Santa Lucia and Santa Cruz in language, technical, and cultural aspects before being sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer.