On Friday, July 17 I left with the 3rd year natural resources students, some faculty and guides in pipantes (large canoes made of one solid piece of wood) on a six day trip on the Patuca River down to the community of Wampusirpi and back upriver. The Patuca River forms one edge of the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve and is in the middle of what is called La Moskitia, the largest preserved primary forest in Central America. Basically we went to the middle of the jungle. A huge plus of going with the students was that all expenses were paid by the university and an NGO named Proyecto Corazon.
The first day involved leaving the house at 5:40 in the morning and meeting everyone at the university. Then we drove for 3-4 hours on dirt/mud roads to our departing point on Rio Cuyamel. We loaded up two pipantes with six days of food and tents and sleeping bags and the personal things of 19 people going on the trip. The first day involved a lot of getting in and out of the boats to walk around the rapids so we wouldn't tip over. It involved a lot of walking on land and through the water, often waist high or sometimes deeper. It started pouring that afternoon while we were in the boats and we all had ponchos but as we were so we already, no one even used them. We spent the first night at one of the boat conductors house at the junction with Rio Patuca. We unloaded both boats and in the morning we loaded everything into one much larger boat as Rio Patuca is a much larger river that can handle bigger boats. We spent a few hours in the boat going down river until we arrived at the small community of Krausirpi, where native Tawahkas live. There are several very small communities strung out along the river the entire way. That evening we went upriver to a small community to where some students from Tegucigalpa are conducting studies on local animals including Jaguars, fish, rats, and bats. That night we set up a bat catching net so see how it was done and caught two types of bat, one a vampire bat. Krausirpi had a gas generator that powered several houses with power for a few hours each night. Day three we went on downriver to Wampusirpi where, amazingly, they have a giant cell tower for Digicel, one of the cell phone companies here, and they even had internet. We walked around the town and talked to some local people and learned about the chocolate processing they did as the area's income relies a heavily on the large amounts of chocolate farms in the area as well as some ecotourism. We all stayed at a convent that night and headed back to Krausirpi the next afternoon were we stayed one more night. The fifth day we headed back to the junction of Rio Patuca and Rio Cuyamel again and camped on the beach this time. I also talked to some people who were panning for gold and even had gas powered machines to help them. The gold only comes in small flakes and never in nuggets and our boat driver pays for everything with gold. A boat comes by his place twice a month to deliver what he had requested the time before. There is no cell coverage there. In fact, about an hour drive out of Catacamas we lost cell coverage for the entire trip except for Wampusirpi. They also find very small rubies in the river, but too small to be worth anything. That night it poured and poured and we sat and talked and played volleyball in the river as we were already soaked anyway. I only listened as they were speaking Spanish of course. The river was warmer than the air and rain at that point and we finally got out and went to bed sometime well after dark. We had cup soup and tortillas with packets of refried beans to eat for dinner. The next morning we headed back up Rio Cuyamel and the river had dropped since we had come down and was about 70% of normal flow, which meant more rocks and hazards and slower going upriver. It took several hours and then several more to drive back to Catacamas and we finally made it back at about 8:30 when we stopped at the Texaco to have some fried chicken and french fries for dinner and, of course, Coke.
The trip was an awesome experience to go traveling by boat, the only form of transportation in the area until Wampusirpi which has a small airstrip, into the middle of the jungle. We saw Coati, monkeys, iguanas, crocodiles, wild makaws and other birds, frogs, insects and various types of trees and plants. I got to practice my spanish A LOT as everyone of course spoke Spanish. One facutly member speaks good English so he was able to help me out a lot when I needed it. In the communities we visited, many people speak 3 languages, Spanish which is taught in schools, Miskito and Tawahka, both native languages in the region. It was interesting to see how the people lived there and also to see how the outside world has drastically influenced the area. A giant cell tower in the middle of nowhere with internet. Coke, Pepsi, Tropical, Mirinda and other sodas. Wampusirpi had Schlitz Malt Liquor, I don't even see that in Catacamas, not that I want to. All types of chips and other normal Honduran snacks as well. Now I can only sit and wait until my next adventure begins.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Murders and Strikes
So things are still not back to normal here. School was supposed to start this week and did in some places, just not here. Kids actually went to school Monday but the teachers refused to have classes. The university students at the university where Kevin works went on strike because they were afraid that the university was not going to have enough money to finish the school year (which is supposedly true). Then all but the external classes were canceled so the students could go to the marches in support of Zelaya. On Thursday we both went to Kevin's English class and it turned out to be the only class in the entire school that day because all the teachers went to the march. The students were mad but we decided that they needed to learn since they are the worst class ever. At least it gave us something to do! Shannon did an HIV/AIDS training last week at one of the private high schools since they still have classes. She was happy to be able to work and the training went really well. The kids gave great feedback, participated, and really seemed to enjoy it as well as learned something (their post-test scores were significantly higher than their pre-test scores).
On Monday Shannon had quite a disturbing experience that broke the monotony. She went to CEREPA thinking that she would be able to do her dental hygiene program because there were supposed to be classes, only to find out that a patient had come in Friday and died of a heart-attack early Sunday morning. It was decided that personnel from CEREPA should attend the funeral and Shannon was chosen as one of the people to go. She went with four of her co-workers and they had only been there for about five minutes when she heard a gunshot. This is pretty normal here and nobody really paid attention. She noticed that it seemed louder than normal so she looked and saw a man in a cowboy hat with a pistol walking behind another man. He shot the man two times in the back while she watched! She saw two blood spots begin to form on the man's chest and he started to fall. Chaos ensued and everyone started running and screaming. Her co-workers yelled "corra Shannon, corra" and she ran like the wind. They ran to a little store and took shelter. The police and ambulance came quickly but only stayed a few minutes as the shooter had fled the scene. The driver from CEREPA picked them up and the rest of the day was uneventful. The murderer was supposedly drunk and killed the other man over "cosas personales". He has since been arrested and sent to jail. Now the talk at CEREPA is how fast Shannon runs, how she witnessed a murder like in a "Hollywood movie", and how scared one of her co-workers was. She is surprisingly unaffected; we chalk it up to hearing about things like this all the time so it seems commonplace. She hopes to never witness a murder again!
Kevin got the opportunity to go with the university on a canoe trip through La Moskitia, a biological reserve. He left yesterday and will return Wednesday. It was all very last minute as the trip had been canceled and rescheduled very quickly. He was almost not able to go as all trips through this area require pre-approval from Peace Corps. Luckily our country director and the director of safety and security worked with him to get everything done last night. There is only one cell company that gets reception out there and his trip hinged on getting a chip from them for his phone. Shannon, like the good wife that she is, had to run around at 6:00 PM last night in the rain searching for a place that was still open that sold Digicel chips. Kevin was at a meeting at the university and was unable to do it himself. She had given up hope when she ran into some very nice men who called all their friends until they found a place. The trip was saved! She's just jealous that she couldn't go too!
On Monday Shannon had quite a disturbing experience that broke the monotony. She went to CEREPA thinking that she would be able to do her dental hygiene program because there were supposed to be classes, only to find out that a patient had come in Friday and died of a heart-attack early Sunday morning. It was decided that personnel from CEREPA should attend the funeral and Shannon was chosen as one of the people to go. She went with four of her co-workers and they had only been there for about five minutes when she heard a gunshot. This is pretty normal here and nobody really paid attention. She noticed that it seemed louder than normal so she looked and saw a man in a cowboy hat with a pistol walking behind another man. He shot the man two times in the back while she watched! She saw two blood spots begin to form on the man's chest and he started to fall. Chaos ensued and everyone started running and screaming. Her co-workers yelled "corra Shannon, corra" and she ran like the wind. They ran to a little store and took shelter. The police and ambulance came quickly but only stayed a few minutes as the shooter had fled the scene. The driver from CEREPA picked them up and the rest of the day was uneventful. The murderer was supposedly drunk and killed the other man over "cosas personales". He has since been arrested and sent to jail. Now the talk at CEREPA is how fast Shannon runs, how she witnessed a murder like in a "Hollywood movie", and how scared one of her co-workers was. She is surprisingly unaffected; we chalk it up to hearing about things like this all the time so it seems commonplace. She hopes to never witness a murder again!
Kevin got the opportunity to go with the university on a canoe trip through La Moskitia, a biological reserve. He left yesterday and will return Wednesday. It was all very last minute as the trip had been canceled and rescheduled very quickly. He was almost not able to go as all trips through this area require pre-approval from Peace Corps. Luckily our country director and the director of safety and security worked with him to get everything done last night. There is only one cell company that gets reception out there and his trip hinged on getting a chip from them for his phone. Shannon, like the good wife that she is, had to run around at 6:00 PM last night in the rain searching for a place that was still open that sold Digicel chips. Kevin was at a meeting at the university and was unable to do it himself. She had given up hope when she ran into some very nice men who called all their friends until they found a place. The trip was saved! She's just jealous that she couldn't go too!
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Shannon's Reflections on One Year in Honduras
So today is our one-year anniversary of arriving in Honduras and we usually write these things together, but I thought I would write my own today as I reflect on my year in Honduras.
I have had so many experiences that I could never have fathomed before coming such as learning to share my house (although not happily) with so many bugs and even spiders; not freaking out every time I see a spider (only if it is really big); washing my dishes and my body in dirty water after a rain and thinking that it is better than not having any water; getting used to the electricity and water disappearing, sometimes for days at a time; washing all of my clothes by hand; cooking; walking everywhere in the heat and humidity; getting harassed by EVERY man I walk past; eating my body weight in beans and realizing that I really like them (rice, however, I could do without); seeing children running around half-dressed, half-fed, and usually sans shoes and not thinking anything of it; talking about bowl movements all the time including at dinner; becoming accustomed to the smell of burning trash; liking beets; and eating whole fish with the fins and eyeballs (I didn't eat those parts but they were there looking at me).
I have also learned a lot of things in my year here. I now no longer take so many things for granted... good food (cheese), friends and family, being able to go places at night, being able to run alone, safety, having a decent/non-corrupt government, freedom of expression, all of the material things that we think are so important in the U.S. (washing machines, furniture, air conditioners, etc), and people who tell the truth to name a few.
I have also learned to get satisfaction in the small things in life: children yelling, "Hola Profe" and hugging me when I come to a school, an e-mail from home is great, a letter/postcard awesome, and a package the highlight of the month, home-cooked flour tortillas and beans made by a friend who knows that I love them, someone making me beans because they know that I don't eat meat, teaching a child something new, newly bathed cats meeting me at the door after a long day, the construction worker in my back yard who yelled at another construction worker for catcalling me, the freshness of newly mopped floors, spending time in the campo away from all the madness of the city, visiting other volunteers and catching up, and most importantly a phone call home.
Top 10 things I have learned here:
1. Do not judge a book by it's cover. There are so many people that I have met here that I never thought I would be friends with simply by the way they dressed or something that they said, who have turned out to be some of my best friends...now if only I can remember this when I get back to the U.S.
2. Speaking Spanish is exhausting and much harder than I had thought it would be!
3. Mantequilla (aka crema in the rest of the Spanish speaking world) is always bad no matter how many times I try it.
4. Washing clothes by had really isn't that bad...
5. No matter how much people complain about schools in the U.S., they could be much worse...
6. Putting birth control in the water may not be that bad of an idea...
7. Putting "fijase que" at the beginning of an excuse works every time! Also by saying "si Dios quiere" you can get out of any future situation. I mean, what if Dios didn't want me to go to that meeting?
8. I now understand why people of the same race/that speak the same language tend to hang out together. It's just so much easier to spend time with people with whom you can easily communicate without problems and share the same basic values.
9. Dinámicas (icebreakers) really make everything better.
10. ANY television program in English is usually better than one in Spanish.
It's so hard to believe that a year has passed. Overall that experience so far has been great, I have learned so many things and continue to learn new things everyday! So many of my expectations were wrong (I never thought that we would live in a city twice as big as Reedley, have electricity, let alone cable and internet in our house!) but I have learned to be a bit more flexible. We still have one year, two months, and fifteen days left (not that I'm counting down or anything) and these, too, will hopefully fly by and before you know it we'll be home! I'm sure I'll learn a lot more in our remaining time, hopefully improve my Spanish a lot, and have many more experiences that I will carry with me forever!
I have had so many experiences that I could never have fathomed before coming such as learning to share my house (although not happily) with so many bugs and even spiders; not freaking out every time I see a spider (only if it is really big); washing my dishes and my body in dirty water after a rain and thinking that it is better than not having any water; getting used to the electricity and water disappearing, sometimes for days at a time; washing all of my clothes by hand; cooking; walking everywhere in the heat and humidity; getting harassed by EVERY man I walk past; eating my body weight in beans and realizing that I really like them (rice, however, I could do without); seeing children running around half-dressed, half-fed, and usually sans shoes and not thinking anything of it; talking about bowl movements all the time including at dinner; becoming accustomed to the smell of burning trash; liking beets; and eating whole fish with the fins and eyeballs (I didn't eat those parts but they were there looking at me).
I have also learned a lot of things in my year here. I now no longer take so many things for granted... good food (cheese), friends and family, being able to go places at night, being able to run alone, safety, having a decent/non-corrupt government, freedom of expression, all of the material things that we think are so important in the U.S. (washing machines, furniture, air conditioners, etc), and people who tell the truth to name a few.
I have also learned to get satisfaction in the small things in life: children yelling, "Hola Profe" and hugging me when I come to a school, an e-mail from home is great, a letter/postcard awesome, and a package the highlight of the month, home-cooked flour tortillas and beans made by a friend who knows that I love them, someone making me beans because they know that I don't eat meat, teaching a child something new, newly bathed cats meeting me at the door after a long day, the construction worker in my back yard who yelled at another construction worker for catcalling me, the freshness of newly mopped floors, spending time in the campo away from all the madness of the city, visiting other volunteers and catching up, and most importantly a phone call home.
Top 10 things I have learned here:
1. Do not judge a book by it's cover. There are so many people that I have met here that I never thought I would be friends with simply by the way they dressed or something that they said, who have turned out to be some of my best friends...now if only I can remember this when I get back to the U.S.
2. Speaking Spanish is exhausting and much harder than I had thought it would be!
3. Mantequilla (aka crema in the rest of the Spanish speaking world) is always bad no matter how many times I try it.
4. Washing clothes by had really isn't that bad...
5. No matter how much people complain about schools in the U.S., they could be much worse...
6. Putting birth control in the water may not be that bad of an idea...
7. Putting "fijase que" at the beginning of an excuse works every time! Also by saying "si Dios quiere" you can get out of any future situation. I mean, what if Dios didn't want me to go to that meeting?
8. I now understand why people of the same race/that speak the same language tend to hang out together. It's just so much easier to spend time with people with whom you can easily communicate without problems and share the same basic values.
9. Dinámicas (icebreakers) really make everything better.
10. ANY television program in English is usually better than one in Spanish.
It's so hard to believe that a year has passed. Overall that experience so far has been great, I have learned so many things and continue to learn new things everyday! So many of my expectations were wrong (I never thought that we would live in a city twice as big as Reedley, have electricity, let alone cable and internet in our house!) but I have learned to be a bit more flexible. We still have one year, two months, and fifteen days left (not that I'm counting down or anything) and these, too, will hopefully fly by and before you know it we'll be home! I'm sure I'll learn a lot more in our remaining time, hopefully improve my Spanish a lot, and have many more experiences that I will carry with me forever!
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Fourth of July and More Updates
President Zelaya was unable to land today as the army blocked all of the runways at the international airports. His plane circled over the airport in Tegucigalpa but finally went to El Salvador instead. There are now a ton (the Venezuelan news station said 200,00 but we don't know if that is true) of pro-Zelaya supporters in Tegucigalpa at the airport. The news reported that the army opened gunfire on the protesters and that two were killed and various others wounded. We now have a curfew starting at 6:30 P.M. which was not announced until about 6:00 P.M. today. Needless to say, there are still a ton of people outside. Things are still calm here in Catacamas. Schools are supposed to resume tomorrow so hopefully life will return to kind of normal again. We are tired of doing nothing. Yesterday we had a Fourth of July party at our house and it was really fun. A ton of people came and we ate some good food, played some beer pong, and hung out. There were no fireworks but it was good to be with other people as we have been cooped up all week.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Political Situation Update
We are still fine. We have received many inquiries into our safety and well being and we are not in any immediate danger. Peace Corps keeps us updated (especially Shannon since she is Emergency Zone Coordinator and responsible for passing on messages to the other volunteers) and does not feel that there is any need to evacuate us. Peace Corps has gone through much worse things than this and we are confident that they have our best interests in mind. Things are pretty calm here. We are far away from the chaos and protests. There was a pro-Zelaya (the ousted president) protest here Monday and then the protesters took 10 buses to Tegucigalpa to join the protests there. On the way they were stopped at a military checkpoint and the tires of the buses were shot out so they were not able to continue. (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/07/03/honduras.video/index.html?eref=rss_mostpopular#cnnSTCVideo) A couple of days ago protesters threw molotov cocktails at the antennas at the Radio America station as it is not a pro-Zelaya station. We don't think that anything really came of it and we aren't even sure where that station is located. We were not able to work all week as all public schools and the university were closed. It is kind of like a vacation only we are not really allowed to travel. We did have our first couch surfers, a french couple who are now living in Mexico but left due to the swine flu. They arrived here Wednesday and left early this morning hoping to go to Nicaragua if the borders are open. They were very nice and it was good for us to practice our Spanish as they spoke Spanish better than English. We took them to the caves and they made us a great french meal! We also finally got rid of the mother cat, Cornflake (Cornflay as they say here). We took her to Calixto, a man that Kevin works with in the mountains who wanted a cat to get rid of the mice. She behaved very well on the hour long bus ride there but ran away as soon as they let her out at their house. Hopefully she came back. Now we only have two cats and that is much better than the six we had at one time. Otherwise things are pretty quiet around here. We are glad to have internet as the news on T.V. here is very biased as many stations are not allowed to transmit and the ones that do are partially owned by the current president. We really only see pro-Micheletti protests on T.V. now. We are allowed to travel in our departments today for Fourth of July so we are having an Olancho party at our house and making lots of desserts, chili, and who knows what else. It should be a great time, especially since most of the volunteers have been cooped up in their small sites with nothing to do for the past week. We will continue to post updates as the political situation unravels. Zelaya says he will return to Honduras tomorrow (Sunday) but we will see what happens.
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