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.

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.

Political Situation

Most of you have probably heard about the current political situation in Honduras. If not, go to any news website and you can read lots about it. We are fine here in Catacamas. Basically, the military surrounded the president's house early yesterday morning and forcefully took him to Costa Rica where he was let go. There was no power in most of Honduras until noon yesterday and most radio and television communications were cut off. This happened right before his constitutional referendum vote was supposed to take place. The ballots were then collected by the army and the president of congress was sworn in as the new president of Honduras. This of course did not make many people happy, especially the president of Venezuela. Right now pretty much all political leaders outside of Honduras (and many people here) are refusing to recognize anyone but the old president as president of Honduras. We have no idea what will happen. A national curfew was imposed for last night and tonight and nobody is supposed to be outside from 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM. It was actually kind of nice last night because everything was closed up and quiet for the first time ever. It was kind of bizarre. It did anger Shannon because it meant that she could not go running since she goes at 5:30. There is a march supporting Mel (the ousted president) in Catacamas today which we will be staying away from. He is from Catacamas and has a house here so it is likely that he has a lot of supporters here. Peace Corps has kept us fairly well informed and be assured that if anything violent happens we will most likely be evacuated. Hopefully things will calm down soon and we can go back to normal life. Right now we are still not allowed to travel or leave our sites. Good thing we have everything we need here! We will keep you posted about the situation here.

Ropa Americana Parties and Possible Chaos

Things have sure been interesting lately and probably will continue to get more interesting in the next several weeks/months. First off, we had a welcome party at our house last weekend for all of the volunteers in Olancho to get to know each other since we have four new volunteers in Olancho. It was a lot of fun and Shannon, of all people, was on the winning team of the beer pong tournament. She and Erick were unstoppable. It was pretty impressive since she had never played before. The Thursday before the party, we come home from a long day of work and tried to turn on the TV to get our daily dose of The O.C. and the outlet didn’t work. Weird. Then every time the refrigerator would kick on it would make some really weird sounds. Our electroducha also stopped working and later that night, so did the fridge. When we tried to plug in our fan that night to stay cool, it spun about 3 times as fast as normal and started to smell like smoke. We unplugged it. We contacted our landlord about the problem and they said someone would come out to fix it but no one came all day Friday so we had a clean out the freezer/fridge dinner party which was very nice. We were expecting about 15 people the next night for the welcome party and were getting nervous that we wouldn’t have a fridge to use. Saturday morning an electrician came out, after a call to the landlord again, and a wire coming into the house had burned in two making all of our outlets 220V instead of 110V like they should have been. Don’t ask me how that works but that’s what happened. The electrician fixed it and surprisingly everything worked after that except the voltage regulator that Shannon had been using with the computer with that got fried. Good thing she was using it or else the computer probably would have been fried. That would not have been cool. The party went well, all except one of the Olancho volunteers came and he was in the U.S. The theme was ropa Americana (think stores that sell clothes that the thrift stores in the U.S. couldn’t get rid of) and there were some great outfits! We have a pretty good group out here in the wild wild east!
Kevin tried making and ant trap out of yeast and honey with the idea being that the honey attracts them and the yeast explodes them. For three weeks we had trails of ants going to the “traps” in the kitchen but not really anywhere else in the house. He finally got rid of the traps and now there are still trails of ants in our kitchen and ants in the rest of the house too! Shannon doesn’t think that the traps worked but Kevin insists that there are less ants…if anyone knows a better remedy to kill ants let us know!
This week, we got a message from Peace Corps telling us we are on Stage two of a five stage alert system which means we are not allowed to leave our site this weekend. The message arrived with no explanation whatsoever. Interesting. Thanks for the info., we would like to know what is going on. (we did receive an email late Thursday night) Basically there is a struggle for power in Honduras and the president is trying to remain president after his term is up, blah blah blah, and they are having an illegal vote this weekend to see if the people want to vote on the November ballot to change the Constitution. Read this link if you want to know more: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/25/honduras.general/
So we heard a bunch of rumors that the Salvadoran army is going to come help our president because the Honduran army won’t support him and people going to the airport to burn the voting equipment that is being flown in from Venezuela, people getting shot at demonstrations and people buying tons of food and water at the stores and not leaving their houses for 3-4 days because they are afraid to go outside. Most of these are untrue but we are pretty sure people have been shot but that is normal anyway. So far, everything here in the hometown of the president is normal but we will see what happens come Sunday. We are planning a movie marathon and watching the US play Brazil in the Confederations Cup Championship game Sunday at 12:20 Mountain Time, that is assuming we have electricity as there are rumors of strikes and protests of workers including those running the electrical plants, not that the electricity is reliable anyway. We shall see and keep you informed (if we can).

Baseball, Chicken Coops, and Schools

Well, since the big earthquake a little over two weeks ago, we have had several aftershocks including the latest one registering 5.4 last Monday. We still have not felt any of them, however, but other people have. Almost all of them happened in the middle of the night though so I guess that would explain most of it. We have not heard of any damage caused by the aftershocks.
Last week Kevin helped build two chicken coops as examples for the rest of the community to use to build their own in the future. A former Peace Corps volunteer came back with some of his family to participate in this project and it was a lot of fun and hopefully will last a long time to keep the chickens safe and more productive at laying eggs. During that time Shannon went to visit our friend Elizabeth in Minas de Oro. It is a small community located in the mountains, very different from Catacamas! It was much cooler up there and she had a great time. Elizabeth still lives with her host family so it was good Spanish practice. They basically have a Honduran mansion and it was a nice vacation! Shannon also went to Tegucigalpa for a rural baseball tournament sponsored by Peace Corps. Elizabeth’s team participated but lost in the first two rounds. The team from Tegucigalpa won but many thought it was not fair that they were invited since they are not rural and have many more resources and get to practice more. It was an interesting experience as baseball is not very big here. Hardly anyone came to watch, including the parents. The bus station was fuller than she had ever seen it before on her way back and she had to wait three and a half hours just for the bus to come then another four hours to Catacamas! Good thing she met a nice Honduran to pass the time with. While Shannon was gone, apparently the mosquitoes had nothing else to feed on and attacked Kevin’s feet something wicked. He’d never had bites that looked and itched like that before.
Today we went to talk to some community leaders about helping them get funding to build a new building for their school. We made a budget with a list of materials and costs plus a time line for getting the school built. We still need to check on prices of materials but we now have a rough estimate of what it will cost. The town is located a two hour walk from the end of the road and right now they have one room for all school kids, 60 total. They actually started building a new building last year when they ran into problems like someone leaving with a bunch of money and never returning to do the work and the project sort of fell apart from there and ended up basically washing away during the rains so now they must start all over again. We are hoping to help them secure some funds to finally get this thing built so the kids have some space to breathe while learning.

Earthquakes and Donkey Polo

Well, apparently there was a very large earthquake just off the coast of Honduras that many people have asked us about. This happened May 28, 2:24 a.m. local time and was centered about 150 miles north of where we live. The quake registered at 7.1 on the Richter scale (although the USGS website has 7.3 listed). Unbelievably, this size of a quake only killed 6 people in a third world country. Luckily the epicenter was in the ocean and did not cause a tsunami as was feared at first. It did destroy some homes and a major bridge along the north coast outside of San Pedro Sula. Many people here in Catacamas woke up but neither of us felt it. Maybe the Northridge and Loma Prieta quakes desensitized us to large quakes or we have just been working so hard lately that we were exhausted. It supposedly shook the ground for over a minute. Many other Peace Corps volunteers felt it, especially those along the north coast, and for many of them it was their first earthquake. It was the biggest in Honduras recorded history and the last big one they had was in 1999 registering at 6.7. There have been 4 aftershocks of at least 4.5 magnitude since Thursday including one just on the Olancho border. We did not feel any of those either.
In other news, last week was natural resources week at the university and we attended a concert and a Bar-B-Que there. It was fun and a good cultural experience. It was also the 21st anniversary of CEREPA, the drug and alcohol center where Shannon works and the week was filled with activities. She participated in a peaceful march against drunk driving which was very interesting. We went to the quaint city of Yuscaran this past weekend to participate in the 13th annual donkey polo event during their feria del mango. This annual event pits Volunteers against the locals riding donkeys and trying to hit a plastic soccer ball with a stick into a small goal. The hardest part is trying to get the donkey to move, as Shannon found out early on in the game. Kevin's moved much easier but never wanted to turn to the right. We also didn't have saddles or even blankets to sit on and their backbones were not the most comfortable thing to sit on in the world. The locals fared much better as they basically had a professional donkey polo rider on their team. They ended up winning by a lot but we at least scored one goal (yay Haley!). It was fun but somewhat chaotic and we don't think the donkeys enjoyed it much. The local kids insisted on hitting and kicking the donkeys if they didn't move and it was terrible. At one point Shannon threatened to hit one of the kids (really good for a youth development volunteer)and they finally left her donkey alone! Shannon is now pretty sick (we're not sure why) so we are taking it easy this week.

Amapala, the United States, and return to poverty

May 18, 2009
Part I
It has been about a month since we last wrote but hey, we were in the US seeing many of you in person for more than half of that time so give us a break. We made it home finally, after a grueling day of flying and then spending the night in the cold, cold LA airport only a 50 minute flight away from home. It was a nice day, not humid or hot and we enjoyed relaxing and eating US food after a long time without it. To make a long story short, we saw a lot of people, ate a lot of food (I mean a lot of food), and most importantly of all we got to see Robert and Erika get married. Congrats to the newlyweds and thanks for taking us to the airport on our way out of town. The wedding was beautiful and a lot of fun.

Part II
Before we went home we went to Isla del Tigre, an island that is part of Honduras in the Gulf of Fonseca in the Pacific Ocean, with other married couples in PC Honduras. We spent our last weekend in Honduras there before going home so that was lots of fun. It is a nice little place with nice sandy beaches and warm water to swim in. We also hiked to the top of the dormant volcano where we could see Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. It was beautiful and we saw some amazing sunsets while staying there. (See photos). To get to and from the island you have to take a boat, which was fun. Apparently on weekends they have a swim to the island but sadly no one in our group participated in this. As a side note, the island is also featured on the back of the 2 Lempira Note here in Honduras.

Part III
We have been back in Catacamas now for 4 full days, getting back into the swing of things. The first night back, Shannon found a GIANT Wolf spider on our kitchen wall and made Kevin come kill it. The thing was huge, bigger than the palm of Kevin’s hand! Kevin wanted to take a picture of it but was afraid it would escape and Shannon would never forgive him for that (besides the fact that she probably wouldn’t have slept at all that night, fearing the spider would come get her in her sleep because what else would spiders do?). It has rained every night we have been home and the power has gone out every day since we have been home, including right now as we write this. Of course we started when the power was on but it left, tried to come back on, and left again. Now the air is still with no fan to blow the air around. When we left three weeks ago, everything was dead and the fields were being burned off for the planting of the new crops for when the rains come. Now, things are as green as they possibly could be and apparently it rained A LOT while we were gone, a month or so ahead of normal. It is nice when it rains because it cools things off but then it gets humid and sometimes the air gets really still and we don't like that. Work is coming along here. Shannon is continuing where she left of and Kevin starts his English class at the university on Thursday where he will teach Thursday and Friday mornings and they just started a new trimester so he will also be busier helping some other teachers with field activities. We also received a new volunteer here in Catacamas, a female business volunteer from California so that is exciting. We received 4 new volunteers in Olancho, all females, taking our total females here in Olancho from 2 to 5. Shannon was happy about that, and frankly so were some male volunteers in the area. That about sums it up for now as life continues on in the third world.

May 23, 2009
So, we have had problems with internet and have been too busy to get this darn blog post posted. It has continued to rain every night, except Thursday where it only rained in the afternoon and evening. A couple of nights it rained really hard and we found we have three leaks in our roof when it rains hard, leaving a puddle on the kitchen floor. When it rains that hard our street also turns into a river, a pretty awesome sight actually. Our back patio also floods and we have to sweep it off. Things are pretty much back to normal here. It was really hard to adjust at first and Shannon especially, was not very happy. We are getting used to living in a third world country again but still miss the U.S. We have been showing the new volunteer around and it is interesting to see her reactions as we were there 6 months ago. We have both been told that we look fatter which is true since we both gained about 5 pounds at home! The new kittens have grown a lot and we are looking for homes for them and hopefully getting the older ones fixed now that we have found a vet who performs that surgery. Today on the bus back from Juticalpa, a car passed us and we heard what sounded like gun shots. People on the bus said that they were shooting at cows but who knows…oh Olancho.