Honduran Birthday # 2

Bienvenidos,

Thanks for tuning in again. So what's new? Well, it has been about a week since the new volunteers' arrival and during that time there has been plenty of adjusting, getting to know life in Juticalpa and preparing for the upcoming school year. Some are adjusting more easily than others partially due to personal dispositions and tolerance, but also because some houses have more consistent water, internet and less bugs.

In general things are good, especially since we have had 3 birthdays in the last week. We wouldn't let a chance to celebrate escape, so we had to have 3 parties. My birthday was yesterday and so myself with the other volunteers had a gathering.




We grabbed baleadas at the nearby street stand (a sort of burrito type food special to honduras) and enjoyed each other's company.


Here we are.
We had cake that Andrew made too. Andrew has turned out to be quite the cook. He has made cakes for all the birthdays and a couple rico (delicious) dinners. He's winning because he loves cooking and we're winning because we love eating. Here he made cake covered with chocolate sauce and marang topping.

Que rico!

There was plenty for the 14 of us.

We still are getting to know each other, so we had a good time chatting on topics like "first cd ever owned" and "movie that always makes you cry."

After a couple drinks we enjoyed a lively set of relay races. Here is Andrew with his tin cup of rum and coke showing how the relay is done. I don't want to go into details about rules of the race, but it involves dropping a quarter into a cup between your legs and you can't use your hands....yea....Here's the Instituto's (junior high) directora, Maki. She was actually the one who brought up the idea of this relay and showed all of us how to do it. I am sure the parents of our students would be glad to know their children were in the hands of such sophisticated and upstanding people.

We all got in on it...here's Bridget (1st grade teacher)

and Anne (pre-school)

Jeff (6th grade)




and yours truly complaining about how the quarter kept bouncing out of the cup.

Here is our guy's relay team.

And after that, Andrew who is British, decided to unveil his college drinking songs. We all enjoyed the him about the great pubs of Yorkshire.

It was a great birthday, even though I wasn't home with all you in the States.

Tomorrow school starts for the Escolar (primary school) and the following week for the Instituto. Also, I will be going back to the San Diego on Thursday for a friend's wedding, Brendan Summers, but returning quickly for the beginning of school.

More to come later.

Te bendiga (bless you)

The Cavalry Has Arrived

Hola a Todos,

Thanks for tuning in for another blog. The latest big news down here is that the new volunteer teachers have arrived. The got in late Thursday afternoon after traveling all day, some of them were traveling since 1:00 a.m. that morning. Needless to say we didn't really start to get to know each other until Friday when we took a tour of the three OAF schools and the city of Juticalpa.

Here are most of the volunteers at the spanish speaking high school, Cardenal. In total there will be 15 volunteers this year, 9 new volunteers and 6 returning.

Sunday morning we all went to mass in a little town outside of Juticalpa called Jutiquile. If you remember back to my first blogs, we did this same thing last year. At the end of mass Padre Ricardo, OAF's founder and the regular priest for Jutiquile, had us come up in front of the congregation to be introduced.

Here's Padre with (from left to right) Michelle, Anne (from Chico, California!), Carrie and Ginny (returning volunteer). The short man in front is a mentally handicap man who is lives in Jutiquile.

This is Peggy with the microphone. She is the primary school's, Escolar Santa Clara, new directora (principal) now that our past directora, Annie, moved back to the USA with her husband and baby boy. Annie was an incredible leader, educator, colleague, etc. last year and many people were up in arms when she announced she would be going back to the States. However Peggy has been doing a great job so far. I think we are in good hands with her. To the left of Peggy is Andrew, the 7/8th grade art/activities and history teacher. Next is Mary, a returning teacher, who will teach 5th grade. Mary actually went to Cal Poly with me (although we didn't meet until Honduras ... small world) and is from Woodland, CA. Finally is Jackie, who will be teaching prepa, which is the equivalent of our kindergarten.

Here (from left to right) is yours truly. I will be teaching 7th/8th grade math, 7th grade geography and I will be co-teaching 7th/8th grade PE. I will co-teach PE with the secondary school, Instituto Santa Clara, directora, Maki. I did not get Maki in any of the photos, but she has volunteered with OAF several times in the past. She is full of great energy and, like Peggy, will do a great job this coming year. To my right is our english teacher, Angela, who is from Claremont, CA. This is actually where my family lived until I was five years old. After having a conversation about this, I found out that Angela knew the street my family used to live on, the kindergarten I first went to school at and the swimming pool where I learned to swim ... again, small world. Next to Angela is Jeff. He is from Boise, Idaho and will teach 6th grade at the Escolar. To the left of him is Michelle who will teach 3rd grade, and finally Anne, who will teach Kinder, our equivalent of pre-school.

Tonight, we celebrated Lacey's birthday. She will teach 2nd grade. Andrew, left of Lacey, revealed his culinary skills by baking a cake for everyone.

If the background of our volunteers has any effect on how well the school year will be, I think it will be a very successful year. Many of our volunteers have a education backgrounds, previous teaching experience as well as volunteer experiences. This will definitely be the largest number of volunteers OAF has ever had (every year OAF has seen nearly a 100% increase from the previous year). Vamos a ver (we will see).

Thse are just some more birthday party pictures of Carlos' (OAF's director, not to be confused with directora) sons, Giancarlos and Andre. They think they are pretty cool.
But I reminded them how little they are.

Hope life finds you well.

Engineers Without Borders

Happy Sunday,

I hope you are all doing well and everyone gearing up for another school year (students, teachers, parents, etc.), are soaking up your last weeks of summer relaxation without too much anxiety for the coming year. That is pretty much the situation with me down here in Honduras. We will be starting school the beginning of September, but preparations for the year are already upon us.

However, before getting into that, I recently had one last summer adventure. On Thursday, August 5th, a group of Engineers Without Borders from the University of Akron, Ohio came down to improve the water system and quality in the town of Guarizama. Guarizama is a town about 30 minutes outside of San Francisco de la Paz. I was asked to accompany this group for the 5 days there were here to translate.

So that Thursday all 10 of them arrived at the Tegucigalpa airport. We traveled up to Juticalpa where, to my surprise, we picked up two more people, Mark and Eyal. They were peace corps volunteers who specialize in water projects and would also be translating. After picking them we continued our way up to San Francisco de la Paz and the Hogar del Nino, the farm where I worked earlier this summer. We would be sleeping in the dorms of the Hogar and traveling up to Guarizama to work in the day.

Here is the Hogar in San Francisco at atardecer (sunset).

On Friday morning we traveled to Guarizama where we had a meeting with the alcalde (mayor) to discuss the needs of Guarizama. This is the group above with Mark and Eyal (peace corps) in the front with the white and black shirts.

After the meeting the mayor wanted to show us the water system and so we piled into trucks.

The mayor even had a police escort with us so the people of Guarizama would know that we were not just strangers wandering through their town.

Here is some of Guarizama. You can see that besides the water system, the roads also need work.

We ran into some traffic

and the soon to be bacon.

Here is a typical house.

After getting to the edge of town we hiked up a hill to the water tank which supplies Guarizama.





Here are some of the engineers having a look around.

That is the mayor in the white shirt, Roman Ruiz Diaz. He was really helpful and enthusiastic about working us, unlike some other city officials, according to the peace corps guys. In the back are some of the engineers taking water samples from the tank.

The valley which Guarizama lies in.

After the water tank, we went back down the hill to look at some of the filtration stations in Guarizama which the water passes through after coming down from the tank. Here is Hector, our groups' Honduran promotor.

Here is Elizabeth, Brett and Eric having a look around.

One part of the filtration system. We took water samples here too.

After that we returned to the Hogar for the day. Above is John (a water specialist from Colorado), Michael and Eric running tests on the water quality of the samples we collected.

Interesting stuff.

While they were at it, they decided to test the water quality of the jugged water we were drinking at the Hogar. Here is Dr. Richard Pine giving us the ok to drink the water after the test results came back clean. Richard was not actually part of the engineers without borders. He has been coming down to do projects in Honduras for about the last ten years. Since he is from Ohio he teamed up with the people from Akron and acted as the Honduran guide.

The next morning we got up...

had some breakfast....



and headed into the backcountry of Guarizama in search of the presa (dam), which is where the water that fills the tanks above Guarizama comes from. It was quite a trek. Driving on rocky, dirt roads followed by local farmers and dogs...

crossing rivers...

and at one point nearly toppling down a small mountain where the road had starting to fall away!

However, we finally reached the end of the road gracias a Dios (thank God), which is where we began hiking. I didn't take any pictures of the hike, but that was interesting as well. While I waited for Michael, one of the engineers, to park the truck, Hector, our promoter, left on the hike without us. Without a well marked trail Michael and I had to follow footprints and guess which way the group had gone to the dam.

Luckily after a 1/2 mile of hiking, a sweaty shirt, shoes full of mud and a slight sunburn, we did find them at the dam.

We took a look at where where the water first enters the pipes.

and took some more water samples.

After that we headed back down to lower ground to a river that the mayor wanted us to look at. Apparently this pipe has often been swept away when the water in the river gets high, leaving the part of town it serves without water.

The engineers assessed the situation...

and talked with locals to think of a solution. It was good thing the peace corps guys were there because although my spanish is improving, it was hard to understand some of the locals who don't always speak clearly, especially when they were talking about water jargon I am unfamiliar with.

That was all on Saturday.



Sunday was an interesting day as well. Not only because some of the engineers went to explore more of the water system, but also because several of us split up into groups to go house-to-house inquiring about the health of the residents. The group hoped to see if there are connections between the water supply and the health of Guarizama. We met a variety of people: families with some money who were able to buy purified water, poorer families who drank straight from the tap, smart poor families who boiled their tap water before drinking it and even a drunk guy who drinks beer instead of water (we didn't know he was drunk until after we started interviewing him).

We also met a lady who had wounds on her leg that were becoming black and green because she simply didn't have or know how to use peroxide and bandages. Dr. Pine fixed her up.

After a good day's work we decided to treat ourselves by going down to El Gordo's steakhouse in Juticalpa for dinner.

yummy.








Olancho doesn't exactly cater to vegetarians.

Monday was really great because Dr. Pine wanted to go and visit the under-construction hospital in the town of Catacamas, while the rest of the group continued working on water stuff.

Here is Dr. Pine and his son, Jesse, standing with our guide, Anna Rosales, at the ambulance entry.
Anna Rosales showing the future pediatrics area. You can see there is still much work to be done, but we could already tell this hospital is going to be very advanced and large for Honduran standards.

All the equipment was donated from the States.


Here is Elizabeth, a biomedical engineering student, checking out some of the machines that crowd the hallways.

They've got some pretty advanced stuff.

One thing that Dr. Pine said was that they are going to need people to train some of the Honduran medical personel how to use the equipment (so if anyone is medically trained keep reading because there might be an opportunity for you).

Here is where the babies are kept warm shortly after their mothers, and here is a cool spanish phrase, dan la luz (give the light).

Continuing on, this is the place where all the medical equipment is sanitized before being reused...

and this is the view from the sanitation room.

Getting back to the what I was saying about medical people traning Hondurans to use the machines ... this is the medical brigade's quarters. I learned that a medical brigade is a group of doctors, nurses, medical techs, etc. that come to places like Honduras for a week or so to administer medical care.


Here is the lounge area complete with couches, TV and Scrabble.

the courtyard

sleeping area

kitchen and dining hall

Just before leaving, we saw the chapel...

and the statue of Hermana Pedro (Brother Peter), who the hospital is named after.

It was very exciting to receive a tour of a place where the battle for the beginning and end of life will be an everyday occurrence.

On a lighter note, after the hospital myself and Elizabeth hiked the "1000 steps to the cross" in Catacamas. We counted and found that there were actually only 564, although, as Elizabeth pointed out, that if you go up and back you will have completed your 1000 steps.

The last and final day we again had a meeting with the mayor to discuss what we had found and what our recommendations were for the future of Guarizama's water system. This time the engineers' visit was an assessment of the problems and possible solutions of the water system. In future trips they plan on doing actual construction.

Here I am translating some of the group's recomendations to the mayor.

The local plumber giving his imput.


And finally Melissa, the Engineers Without Borders group leader, with the Mayor Ruiz.

Here we all are in front of the mayor's office.

Over all the engineers work was super successful. They have gone back to Ohio with water designs to be made and funds to raise, while the people of Guarizama were filled with hope about the future of their town. The peace corps guys saw so much potential in Guarizama, where there currently peace corps does not operate, that they were going to recommend to their superiors that peace corps begin putting volunteers there.

It was great being a witness to all of this and meeting so many great people. As for me, I mentioned that school will be starting soon, so I will spend the rest of my school vacaction in Juticalpa awating the new group of volunteer teachers to arrive on August 19th. More on that later though. Hope life finds you well.

Hasta proximo vez (until next time).