Lauren's Peace Corps Experience in Honduras

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed and experiences described in this travelogue are mine personally. Nothing written here should be interpreted as official or unofficial Peace Corps literature or as sanctioned by the Peace Corps or the U.S. government. I have chosen to write about my experience online in order to update family and friends; I am earning no money whatsoever from this endeavor. Please do not copy or forward any of these contents without my permission.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Winding down...storms....other observations

Hi all! I feel like it´s been a while since I´ve written. Well, I just wanted to comment on a few things. One, it´s so weird to me that I only have a month of work left...May´s pretty much all I have, and then June I´ll still be here but traveling mostly...to El Salvador, a week in Teguc for Close of Service, and then a few days in the islands for a PCV wedding...it´s exciting but also disturbing about how fast two years have flown by.

I got stuck in this mini-hurricane about two weeks ago when I was walking back to Dulce Nombre from an aldea and I never did write about it online...I wrote about it in my journal though and since I´m feeling lazy I will add the story next time and bring my journal with me.

I have been mainly working on finishing the stove project...my last demonstration is next week in Las Caleras and then I have to do supervision in Oromilaca, where I did the demonstration with my dad, and that´s it! The new volunteer Kito comes here in two days and I am very excited to work with her and introduce her to Dulce Nombre. It really has been a great place to work, with all it´s problems and frustrations, but compared to many other sites, it´s wonderful. it´s a small place that´s easy to get to know people in, but big enough for basic comforts and close to Santa Rosa. I liked being the only volunteer in my town...it made me improve my Spanish and make some amazing Honduran friends. The other main thing I have been working on is getting the application ready to apply for funds to do an orchard project...I found 26 families and measured each of their yards with an engineer from the library committee and figured out that we can put in 927 fruit trees (mandarin, orance, avocado, lemon, nance (a disgusting fruit that they love here) amd some others). I am excited about it. The funds come from the Honduran government and USDA, so I am getting everything ready...the budget, history, and other parts, so that when Kito gets here we can send it together...she will be the one managing it. It´s been a good bit of work but fun visiting the families and talking up tree planting and improving the earth....if the funds get approved I will be responsible for almost a thousand more trees in the world :) Deforestation is a huge problem here...and it´s much better that the fruit will nourish the families and provide a small income as well.

I was running the other day and I started to reflect on how typical it is that running becomes a completely unique experience in Honduras...every few minutes a car passes and kicks up a huge cloud of dust, making my hold my breath and run with my eyes closed for about 15 seconds. Then there´s dodging the piles of manure in the streets, the kids waving and shouting "Lauren!" and the landmarks I look for...the soccer field, the huge rocky hill by the cementary, the fork in the road, the central park of Concepcion, the house where the old man always throws me a cat call. I will surprisingly miss much of this, when I am running on the boring clean streets of my neighborhood in Baltimore in relative anonymity. Or maybe I will cherish the experience in the states as well. We shall see.

Well I gotta sign out...Lester is waiting for me right now to go get something to eat. We came into Santa Rosa to pay the light bill at the bank, buy groceries, pick up his passport from the visa office (he got it renewed!) , use internet (as we speak), pick up the tops of the stove chimneys, and get my silver necklace cleaned...a full day :) Btw, I made some delicious calzones last night...I was very proud of myself!! Lots of love to all.

1 Comments:

  • At May 4, 2007 at 11:21 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Lauren, did you make a decision on your post-PCV plans? grad school? what's going to happen w/ you and Lester? fill me in :)

     

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