The past couple weeks have been pretty eventful. Two weeks ago, I returned to Tomatin to help Alex with the monitoring report for the agricultural store there. I had told Roberto, the president that I would help him with his English and had planned to spend an hour of the visit doing that. When we arrived at the meeting, 14 members of the Caja were there and wanted to participate in the lesson as well. They actually got a chalk board for me to write on. It was pretty funny since I had never formally taught English before. I taught them basic phrases and words and also some microfinance related vocabulary. They were not as interested in knowing financial terms and began asking me about food. Everyone was more attentive than usual during the class and very appreciative. In addition to teaching English, we were able to get all of the current information and book balances with their agricultural store, which is running perfectly!
As I had mentioned prior, women's involvement can be difficult. In order to increase that involvement, we made a recommendation to the women of Tomatin that they should be in charge of all of the operations with the agricultural store with some supervision from the men. They liked the idea and hopefully next time we return will have more women involved with the store.
Most of the products the communties purchase for their agricultural stores are from the closest larger town but often the products are pretty expensive. Alex found a distributor in Tegucigalpa that sells fertilizers and pesticides much cheaper and has recommended to all of our Cajas that they purchase their products at this distributor. Currently Zurzular and Pajarillos are doing this and Tomatin will do the same. In order for the community members to get to the city, they typically get a ride from a friend has a car to a nearby town where they then take a bus into the city. However, two of the Caja members from Pajarillos rode their bikes down an extremely rocky road from their community to Cantarranas (neighboring city) which is about 2 hours away. Imagine riding a bike 2 hours on a rocky road?! Incredible!
Once they arrived in the city, Alex drove them back to Pajarillos with their products (and their bikes).
This past week was definitely a bit of emotional rollercoaster. I recently started going to an aerobic dance class owned by a man named Carlos who spent some time studying dance in Costa Rica. He and his Canadian girlfriend teach classes that are somewhat like Zumba- a combination of salsa, reggaton, and bachata-typical latin dances. They have classes all day --usually. I started out my day on Tuesday waking up early to get to a dance class at 7 before work started. I had a cab pick me up my apartment and take me there and arrived about 10 minutes before the class was supposed to start. I waited until 7:15 and no one arrived, so I had to call the cab and have him return to pick me up. It was slightly frustrating because I had confirmed with Carlos at the class the night before that there would definitely be a class that morning. He told me when I went to class later in the week, that if they do not have enough people coming they cancel and he usually calls the regular students that attend. However, since he did not have my number he could not call me to notify me. It wasn't a huge deal, but definitely an inconvenience having to pay for a taxi both ways when i could have just woken up an practiced yoga for free on the porch.
After returning to the house, Daniel (who we call D strong because his name is Daniel Truong) one of the staff asked me to go to a cafe to work that day since the power/internet had been pretty inconsistent the past couple days and we were not able to be too productive. So Daniel, Frank, and I went to the French cafe which has a really nice atmosphere, and great internet and food. After spending most of the day inside, i decided to relocate to the patio where Frank and D strong were sitting and didn't bother to tighten the lid to my canteen since i was just moving locations quickly. As soon as I set my computer on the table where they were sitting, i inadvertently placed my canteen near D strong which was unfortunately right next to my computer. D strong moved his hand and accidentally knocked my canteen of water all over my keyboard. The moment the water hit my computer, the screen went black. I convinced myself that since battery doesn't function for longer than 10 minutes without being plugged in, that it had gone black for that reason. After talking with my brother later that evening, he told me that was probably a bad sign.
We immediately left the cafe and returned to the house where I submerged my computer in rice. I left it in our living room in rice for 2 days and since there are always tons of people in and out of that area my computer was decorated with random things, including the tiles from banagrams arranged in different sometimes inappropriate sayings.
However, after a few days, miraculously my computer still turned on! Then Frank and I spent about an hour removing each key of my keyboard and plucking out the rice from underneath with tweezers. Since the incident, I feel that liquids are still out to get my computer. i am currently using the interenet at Denny's, which is surprisingly extremely nice, has great service, bottomless coffee, and pretty good vegetarian options as well. i was holding my cup of coffee trying to keep it away from all hands and potential accidents. One of my friends and GB staff, Jen was sitting next to me and bumped my arms nearly spilling coffee on my computer but just missed. Then, Danny got up from the table and shook it nearly spilling coffee on my computer again. Not to mention, the night before the water disaster, I also spilled tea on the edge of my keyboard. Needless to say, my computer has almost been destroyed several times this week. So i am going to be extra careful until i return home in September for a week. I am considering buying a Mac as this computer does not run as well as I need it to for my job.
Other than my computer incident, this week has been good and productive. Yesterday, I went to Parque Aurora, a really beautiful park about 1/2 hr from Tegus, with Katie, who is the new Research and Evaluation lead for GB. She lived here 2 years ago in a city called Comayagua, which is also a surrounding area of the city. She taught English at a boys home called Horizontes al Futuro, and we went to the park to spend the day with the boys from the home. The home is run by a Spanish monk named Don Goya and they have several volunteers that come from Europe, the US, and Canada. The boys range in ages from 3-21, some are orphans and others have parents but are unable to take care of them. Many of the boys have been through some extremely traumatic experiences where they have been addicted to drugs, been part of a gang, and even killed people. They need so much and it is so sad but at the same time heartwarming to see how happy they were yesterday at the park and their relationships with the volunteers and staff that work for Horizontes.
The park was really nice. It had a pool, horses, a lake with canoes, and ducks roaming around.I played volleyball/soccer with some of the boys and talked with one of the older boys named Hugo. Hugo is 20 and has lived at Horizontes since he was 8 years old. He is really bright and happy despite all that he has been through in his life. He wants to go to college to study computer programing and English. We were talking about music and how that listening to the lyrics in English/Spanish can help you learn the language. I told him that I had a hard time understanding reggaton because it has a lot slang and I said like "caliche", which is what the street-talk/slang is here in Tegus. He told me that he used speak caliche when he was on the streets as a kid, and didn't like to remember those times. I felt bad for mentioning it but at the same relieved that he no longer has to live that life and that he has so many more opportunities living at Horizontes.
After returning home late afternoon yesterday, we had a dinner with our entire US staff of about 25 people. One of our staff, Sam left earlier this morning and we had a nice evening together talking, eating, and watching a video that we had made for her.
This is such an incredible group of people to work with, and everyone has become so close during their time here. Even though it is challenging living with 15 people, I feel very lucky to be surrounded by people with similar interests and the same passion for life, work, and helping others.
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