Saturday, August 29, 2009

Two more weeks of FBT

That´s two weeks since our last post, and also two more weeks planned here in Cantarranas. The Peace Corps is rife with acronyms, like "FBT" for "field-based training." So are other foreign-service organizations, judging by the visits we´ve had from USAID and other agencies.

Part of FBT is TDA, or "trainee-directed activities." In small groups we are supposed to find ways to help the local municipality or other organizations. It is not easy given our time constraints (and those language barriers still). We think we have made some small progress helping city hall with a computer question. Honduran municipalities use a specialized software program to track various financial matters. We have been able to provide some additional flexibility to staff here by determining how they could export data from that program to an Excel spreadsheet.

Last night we attended a "cabildo abierto," or town hall meeting. Not a bad turnout -- perhaps 50 people. Many of the issues were very familiar -- roads, garbage, sewers, schools, dangerous drivers. No noise complaints, though there is noise here all hours of the day and night -- dogs, roosters, car horns, music, loudspeakers, machinery.

We had been warned repeatedly that it would be unheard of if we were ever to schedule a meeting here without providing food. Sure enough, about ninety minutes into the meeting staff came around with trays of Pepsi and sandwiches. Something to consider back at home.

Our routine of Spanish classes and training sessions has been varied by a few excursions, most recently to a cigar factory. If our town is noisier than what we are accustomed to, the factory was far quieter -- thanks to the fact that it really is all done by hand. There were hundreds of people sorting and drying tobacco leaves at one end of the factory, aging and packing cigars at the other -- and, at the center of it all, rolling the "puros." Eighty percent will be exported to the States and virtually all the rest to Europe. Except in that factory I have seen very little smoking here.

In a couple more weeks we expect to return to the Peace Corps´ central Honduran training facility for our final two weeks of training. From there we will travel to the sites where we will be spending the next two years. The locations are still kept top secret (from us, that is). We´ll try to blog once more before we leave here.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Singing Frogs


Life here in Cantarranas - Singing Frogs - is muy tranquilo. This is a pleasant, comfortable town, only a little more than an hour away from the capital, but operating at a much different pace. We have a nice view of the main street into town from our balcony and on any given morning we will see a few cars and trucks, but also an equal number of horses and burros, an ox cart and a few mototaxis -- a three-wheeled rickshaw with a motorcycle engine. There will also be a regular schedule of American school buses, with the names of elementary schools still on them, which are the main form of intercity transportation. But there is never so much traffic that we have any difficulty walking up or down the cobblestone street or standing in the middle of it and talking for a few minutes (Elizabeth carrying her sombrilla for shade).

Cantarranas is in the foothills, below the nearby higher peaks. It is warm, but usually not too hot. We are getting rains every few days, but not too much. It is an agricultural area, with lots of corn fields on very steep hillsides, but a good amount of natural vegetation, as well. There are fruit and avocado trees, some large cactuses, but also something like Spanish moss that grows on the larger trees and the power lines. It all seems very alive.

We spend our week days in Spanish classes, in groups of four, in the morning and in technical training in the afternoons. Thus far we have been learning about access to government, local government organization, a few youth citizenship programs and emergency response. One of our roles may be to assist citizen groups in exercising their rights under the Honduran open meeting and public record laws, which exist, but are not widely known. It remains to be seen how well that will be received at City Hall. We are progressing in Spanish poco a poco. But improvement is not the same as being able to readily converse. We still have a long way to go, but Elizabeth does now have a favorite telenovela that she can mostly understand -- Amor Comprado.

Our zen activity for the weekend is washing our clothes at the pila, using the lavadero. This is a large cistern of water beside a built-in cement washboard. It works very well for cleaning, although it can be rough on delicates. Elizabeth finds it to be very calming. We are thinking of building one when we get back to Bisbee.

We remain in good health and continue to try to be open to all of the new experiences. Que le vaya bien.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Toto, I don't think we're in the Dominican Republic any more

We have finally made it to Honduras after 4 weeks of trying. We were struck by the beauty of the place as soon as we landed. We are only a few kilometers out of Tegucigalpa but it is very rural, mountainous, and green. It's also much cooler and pretty wet. We are headed out to our "Field Based Training" site tomorrow where we will start to focus on our assigned project of "Municipal Development." We also continue with our intensive Spanish classes. Our training site is a bit further from the capital but we think it will be topographically similar. There are lots of steep hills covered with an interesting variety of vegetation and it all seems very fertile. We are in a very comfortable home where we will return in September for a couple of weeks. Tomorrow we will meet a new family who will be our hosts until then. Peace Corps continues to take very good care of us.

Our new site won't have Internet access. We'll see in a couple of weeks if we can arrange some weekend travel to a town with an Internet cafe.