Free food, lies, and a new way to meet your neighbors

Last Thursday we had dinner with the Deputy Director of the Peace Corps and several other volunteers here in Catacamas. She was nice and we talked about a lot of good stuff. We also really enjoyed the free dinner. We finally got our water fixed this past Saturday so it is nice not to have to bring water into the house by buckets. We do not have hot water in the shower and Shannon does not like that but we may get that problem resolved soon. The shower head is also really clogged and hardly any water comes out of it and shoots all over the place but for now it is stuck and can’t be cleaned out until someone comes to fix it. During the time we were using bucket water, Shannon accidentally drank some tadpole water thinking it was a glass of clean water. It actually did have tadpoles swimming around in it, not in the glass but in the bucket. She didn’t get sick, yet. We have been cleaning the house a lot (mainly Shannon, she has spent entire days cleaning) and someday it may actually get painted. Shannon has been frustrated with how slow things have been getting done with the house. The painters were going to come Monday, it is now Wednesday and they came by to look at it today and said they will come tomorrow to start. Shannon got frustrated yesterday when they didn’t come and went and hunted down the owner of the house to talk to him. He said “Hondurans are liars. They say they are going to do things and they don’t do them. You need to have patience because you are not in the US anymore and things don’t work the same here.” That statement coming from a Honduran pretty much sums up the way things work here. And they wonder why the country is not developing. On that note, Kevin was supposed to go on a topographical study for a water system for a small community up in the mountains about a 3 hour mule ride away this morning with two other volunteers. They caught their six o’clock bus out of town and arrived ready to mount their mules only to find out that the people weren’t ready yet. This is the second and maybe last time they have gone through this exact same thing with the same exact community. Only the last time they waited around for 4 hours before someone told them that the community wasn’t ready. We still have cats here. The momma cat had moved one kitten down out of the attic and then back up to a different part but never moved the other one that we could here crying. Kevin finally found a way to get it down on Monday. The mom didn’t want anything to do with it at first so Shannon fed it milk through a dropper and slept with it all night. It is a lot smaller that the other one. The next day the mom took it and put it with its sibling and they both seem to be doing fine now. Tuesday night, Kevin found out a good way to meet neighbors – let one of their dogs bite your leg. While walking back home from dinner and the grocery store with three other volunteers, the dog that lives two houses down from our house started barking at us as we walked by. This seemed normal to Kevin as he has walked by this dog many times before and he didn’t bother trying to move farther away from the dog. The dog then jumped out and bit at him biting his upper leg and putting a hole in his jeans. It wasn’t too bad really and is more like a scratch than a tooth puncture wound but it wasn’t fun and now he has to take antibiotics. Shannon talked to the owners while Kevin was washing his wound out after talking to the Peace Corps medical staff and the dog is up to date on its rabies shots. Plus, as Peace Corps volunteers we all received pre-exposure rabies shots in Honduras and all is hopefully well.