Santa Rosa de Copan

Sunday, October 24, 2010-October 31, 2010




Playing a dinamica, similar to the Lifesaver/toothpick game

This past week I was fortunate enough to participate in a health conference in Santa Rosa de Copan. The conference was titled “Yo Tambien Merezco” and focused on creating self-esteem/communication skills, as well as HIV/AIDS and abstinence information to 10, 11, and 12 year old boys. I was really excited to get a chance to attend this conference after my time as a board member with Mama’s Kitchen in San Diego, www.mamaskitchen.org who focuses their attention on HIV/AIDS clients. HIV/AIDS is a huge issue is Honduras, and making youth aware is where it all starts. I also thought this would be a great opening for me into the schools and colegios for my upcoming Project Citizen classes, which will start sometime around April.

So, the first thing PC asked me to do was find a counterpart to attend the conference with me. This sounds so much easier then it is. Most people would jump at the chance for an all-expense paid trip to Santa Rosa de Copan, in a nice hotel, and a chance to network with other counterparts from around Honduras. But, not where I live. First, I went to the counterpart I work with in the colegio everyday, on my recycling project, the library we are trying to build, as well as Project Citizen. He wasn’t available to go on those days, but said he knew another teacher that was. So, the three of us sat down and discussed the program and Victor said he’d be really happy to go and what a great opportunity. That was two weeks ago. Two days before we were scheduled to leave for the conference he called me and said he couldn’t go. That was on a Sunday, when no one is out and about for me to bother and talk into coming with me. So, first thing Monday morning I went back to the colegio and my original counterpart and I sat in the director’s office for over an hour discussing the program and why it is so important for the students. She offered another teacher (note: I had to take a male counterpart to this event) and brought him in to the office. The four of us talked for over an hour about the program, its importance and he agreed to go. We sat a time to meet the next day at the bus and all shook hands/kissed cheeks/said goodbye.



Planning our charla from things we have learned

 The next morning, Tuesday: It is 5:00 am and I am on the bus all by myself. I call my counterpart eight times looking for him, but he never answers the phone. I keep going on the bus because I am supposed to meet up with my friend John’s counterpart down in Choluteca, plus it takes 13 hours to get to Santa Rosa de Copan, so we have to leave on time or we’ll never make it in one day. Once in Choluteca I tell the bus driver to let me out at the Blanquita Express terminal, but he says “No, the other bus is a directivo for Tegucigalpa.” I tell him I know, but my friend (John’s counterpart) is at the terminal. He keeps repeating “No, no, this bus is faster” until he takes me where he wants to go and leaves me at the main bus station, where I am standing and Lucy is not. It is then that I call John’s other counterpart and tell her, since I don’t have Lucy’s phone number. It is only 6 am and the two of us trying to figure out where I am and Lucy is and her being the middle-woman is difficult, not to mention I am standing out there with two backpacks while people shout at me “Tegucigalpa! Tegucigalpa!” Finally, I hop on the bus and call Lucy, since I now have her phone number, telling her to be outside of the terminal in two minutes. Once we swing by, the guy thinks that I am getting off of the bus and tries to take my backpack off, but I keep repeating “No, she is coming on!” (Why would I only take the bus three blocks with a large backpack?) Finally, Lucy appears, I am thankful and the two of us continue on to Teguz. About 30 minutes later I call my counterpart again, who finally answers the phone and tells me he decided not to come today. He decided to come tomorrow. I remind him that it is a 13 hour bus ride and he tells me he didn’t know that (even though the colegio director and I discussed this during our hour long meeting), so he tells me he will come the next day but miss part of the conference. I silence my phone and settle in for the three hour trip to Teguz.




Santa Rosa de Copan





Park in Santa Rosa de Copan



Once in Teguz Lucy and I don’t really know where to get off the bus. We have to connect to San Pedro Sula, and she has never been there before (and neither have I). So, I just continue on to the bus terminal, assuming all the buses will connect up. WRONG! We get to the bus terminal and it’s just me and Lucy left on the bus. The guy tells me we were supposed to get off 10 minutes ago, so he circles through the terminal and takes us back to our stop. Super nice of him! On the way he is speaking some kind of Spanish I don’t understand, with a really hard accent….I think maybe it’s just me until he tries to talk to Lucy and she looks at me and rolls her eyes and says “No entiendo.” So, I feel a lot better that native speakers don’t understand everyone either. At the bus terminal, we actually get dropped off a few blocks away and have to walk through the streets of Teguz, in an area I am not too familiar with, but we find the bus really quick. We give the guy our ID’s and grab some coffee while waiting. We are paying for the direct bus to San Pedro Sula, since our PC safety and security director keeps liking to scare me with stories of robbery and assaults on the bus. We are taking the bus that doesn’t stop, therefore, not having the opportunity to pick up any robbers and assaulters on the way, and they also send everyone through a metal detector and screening process before boarding. THIS IS THE BUS I WILL TAKE YOU GUYS ON WHEN YOU COME. Unless, of course you are just looking for a good chicken bus story. After we settle in, there is plenty of room, so we both take our own seat and take a nice long nap. The 4 am wake up call is catching up with us (although, actually I woke up at 4:40 after oversleeping and only had 10 minutes to get ready for the bus…the day started rough). After waking up, I look out the window and see places I have only read about, or know my other PCV friends live in, places like Comoyagua and Siguatepeque. There is even a real “shopping mall” plaza, with a real parking lot and drive through windows for places like Popeye’s Chicken. There are more palm trees the closer we get to SPS and lots of signs of municipal development (federal workers dressed in blue vests working on the roads or constructing new buildings and orange cones leading you from one side of the road to the other). Once in SPS, we get off the bus and grab our bags to connect to another bus for Santa Rosa de Copan. It takes four buses for us to get to our conference, and only one of them is direct. As we walk through the SPS bus terminal, it is very modern, with lots of American stores vying for our attention and dollars. We ask where the busses are for Santa Rosa and everyone keeps trying to sell us tix to Copan Ruinas. When we eventually walk through the right door, we get there five minutes before the bus leaves, so after buying tickets, we pay another L3 to use the bathroom and then take a seat on the bus. The sun is blaring through the windows and we are sweating up a storm. I am really nervous about taking this bus, b/c just last week another PCV was assaulted at knifepoint and all his valuables were stolen (another reason I will take you guys on the direct buses), but I don’t tell Lucy that story, and we just keep on going.

The roads out to Santa Rosa de Copan are in bad shape. There are potholes everywhere and they are super windy. The driver drives extra windy b/c he attempts to avoid every pothole in the road. I don’t know how long it takes to get to Santa Rosa from SPS, but the sun begins to set and headlights take over from where the hot sun once blared through. At times there are two buses side by side on the road, as one tries to pass the other, with another car or motorcycle coming head on towards on of the buses. The bus slows down and takes its original position until it’s clear for them to go again. When we finally pull into Santa Rosa, Lucy and I hop into a taxi where we are overcharged, b/c we have no idea how much it is supposed to cost, but the driver takes us directly to the hotel where our conference is.



Where I will take you when you come to visit

 After being in site for eight weeks, and training for 12 weeks before that, I feel like I have landed at the Hilton Waikiki Beach. The tile is so shiny and the receptionist greets us with a huge smile. The PC director in charge of the conference gives us our room keys and we head upstairs where I find a large suite, complete with microwave and sink (What’s a microwave? I have almost forgot!) and two large rooms. I jump into the shower where the water isn’t exactly hot, but it’s not a bucket, so I am not complaining! Then, Lucy and I head out to meet up with Bryan, another volunteer who lives nearby. We chat over kabobs and rice, with a combination of English and Spanish spliced in. It is really nice to meet other PCV’s from other parts of the country, and share stories and projects. Bryan has a podcast of us PCV’s down in Honduras if you guys want to check it out. I think it’s cool. Go here: http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/la-vida-hondurena/id344379527



First meal out of site; L150 or $7.50

 After dinner, we head back to the hotel, where I get to see my other friends in town for the conference, but I call it an early night after 13 hours of traveling. Crawling into bed, I am so thankful for a real comforter, not surrounded by a mosquito net or covered in scabies. In the middle of the night I wake up totally disoriented and walk into the wall. I have no clue where I am and after taking a few minutes to sit on the edge of the bed, I analyze the situation and remember I am in Santa Rosa for a conference…how fast I forget. On Wednesday morning I called my counterpart bright and early to see if he made it on the bus and needed any help with the directions. He informed me that he wasn’t coming b/c it was 13 hours and just too far to travel. So, here I am at a conference with no counterpart. I was really disappointed after I had worked so hard to find a male counterpart I thought could implement the program. So, after taking time to talk with the health volunteers, I learned that I could go back and implement it with Doctora Carolina from the Centro de Salud. She is so awesome whenever I ask for support, I believe she can be a great asset with this program. So, as the program got underway, I was joined by lots of other friends to learn about creating self-esteem/better communication and HIV/AIDS and abstinence programs for young boys. The health team of PC Honduras did an AMAZING job with the conference. I was blown away by the amount of information I learned and new skills I took away from my three days in Santa Rosa.



Teaching the boys about self-esteem

 The days were packed full of informative sessions, all in Spanish, in which we learned about good/bad forms of communication, why young boys in Honduras try to act with the “machismo” factor, and how 26.5 percent of men between 20-24 say they have had sex before age 15. The numbers are staggering. On Friday we visited a local school to present to the young male audience. My group was given communication, focusing on emotions, how gossip and bad communication can affect people’s feelings, and how good communication can build strong, lasting relationships. For my part, I led the telephone game with the boys giving them three difference sentences and adding more boys into the mix each time. Just like in the States, the sentences were skewed when all was said and done. I also had a part where I listed forms of good and bad communication on the wall and then they told me why they were good/bad. Some of the words from the manual were really hard for me to read, so I decided to have the boys read out of the manual. That way I could get them involved, and I wouldn’t have to read/speak in Spanish the whole time! Genius, right! I thought so, and apparently so did PC, b/c when they gave the evaluation feedback from our group, they said they really liked it when I brought the boys up in front of class and had them read, or put my arm around them and asked them to give me the answer or talk louder so everyone could here (they said it made the boys feel special). Let me just tell you, that was a little trick called “Jen letting the audience lead the charla for you.” If the audience leads the charla, they are actually doing your presentation for you without knowing it! And, they are speaking YOUR Spanish, and they are LEARNING how to implement the “Yo Merezco Tambien.” All in a good days work!

Throughout the conference we ate A LOT OF FOOD. More food then we ever needed to eat. Everywhere I looked there was cake or some pasta in cream sauce or pancakes in honey. It actually got to be too much; I have gained so much weight that it needs to stop. STOP HONDURAS!!! A general theme throughout the week among all us girls is how much weight we have put on during training and how much we don’t like our bodies right now. It made me feel good to know I am not the only one. Because, I really do not like myself right now. My self-esteem is very low when it comes to myself right now. I don’t like anything about my body and can’t fit in any of the clothes I brought to Honduras. I hate my hair, not b/c it is so short, but b/c it makes my face look even more round and plump. I can not wait to move into my house this upcoming week where I can cook for myself every single day and eat healthy and not have people judging my eating habits in my house. Where I can work out with lots of room b/c I will have a house, not a small little room. I have gotten so weak, I tried to do pushups the other day and I could only do five pushups on my knees! I used to be able to do 25 pushups normally! I don’t mean to keep focusing on my body image so much, it is just really depressing to not fit into any of your clothes and to have people call you “little gordita” which means “little fatty” (although it made me fell a lot better that they call my friends that too….sorry guys!) and to just have people shove Coca-Cola’s and fried tacos at you all day long. I didn’t even go to Wendy’s in the USA, but I go here, b/c it’s like I can be “at home” when I go…to know something of the USA. And the unhealthiness continues.




Want some cake?



How about some more?



We aren't done yet!



Still going!!!



Don't forget the MAIN course!

 


Using my "skills" to present to the boys

As the conference came to a close, the leaders put on some music and we danced around. Then, they handed us all diplomas and yes, gave us another big ol’ chocolate cake. I downloaded a “Modern Family” episode and we hooked it up to the projector, being able to watch it on the wall (like a movie) with the loud speakers. It was great, b/c all of us like that show and just for a while we felt like we were back in the States. As I packed up my “Yo Merezco Tambien” manual, I felt energized to go back to my site and work with the youth there. This is such an important message and although I couldn’t see myself talking about it in the States, here it must be implemented. I have already shared the information with Doctora Carolina and she seems excited. Although, it would really be nice to have a male counterpart for some of the tougher questions (we had a male volunteer discuss his role in the program and he said the boys ask questions like “What happens if blood gets on my pee pee?”) I am DEFINITELY not in a role to answer that one! So, thanks PC for the awesome opportunity to attend the conference, it was the bomb!

Enjoying our diplomas after graduating from Yo Merezco Tambien