Six Month Mark

January 9, 2010


Six months in Honduras

So, I have been in Honduras for six months…and a few days. Almost seven months, actually. In some ways it seems like just yesterday I left Houston and entered Tegucigalpa, a city I couldn’t even pronounce, yet now I visit with such frequency I feel like I live there. The last six months have had many happy memories, like dancing and singing with my first host family Rosa and Gustavo as they showed me their wedding photos, drinking banana refresco and dancing the punta on my birthday, with all my closest PCV friends, building stoves for the poorest of the poor during training, conquering Spanish and learning how to kill a chicken. The last six months have also had stressful times, times upon which I reached for my innermost strength, when I thought about leaving and going back to the USA, like when I had the worst bacteria infection of my life, or contacted scabies and itched constantly for a month. How I thought I would never understand Spanish, broke down crying in front of my boss, listened to Lady Gaga everyday for two months while eating beans everyway possible.

I have forgotten what US money looks like, and now find myself bargaining over L5 when buying a pineapple. Although I know that L25 is already cheap, I stand there and bargain until she gives it to me for L20, which I know is a better deal, when in the long run, what is more valuable, my time or the twenty-five cents? The other day I found L10 in the back of my blue jeans and jumped for joy, would I be this excited if I found fifty-cents in America? I doubt it, but here I can go buy an avocado. My how my perception has changed. I fear that when I return, I will go to the check-out at Wal-Mart and tell the Manager on Duty that I need the onions for only thirty-cents a pound, since I believe their Rollback prices are “muy carro.” It seems quite normal to me now to walk alongside cows and donkeys on the side of the road, as they haul sticks and water jugs to their next destination. Have I forgotten about the clean streets of America, where people actually drive in line formation and state highway patrolmen pull you over for things like “speeding?” What is speeding? Here I take a bus that crosses across the median like we are racing to lunch with the President. These are things that seem completely normal to me. Are they not?

After six months, three of which I spent in training, I find myself no closer to knowing what I am supposed to be doing here than when I arrived. Yes, I had my goals and objectives outlined by my counterparts, but they quickly disappeared shortly after my arrival to site. As a past working professional, this led me to quickly find other projects to which my experience could be used and other counterparts that I could work side by side with. I have found great support in the schools and other NGO’s in town and my projects with recycling, stoves, and the World Wise School Program are keeping me busy. I hope in the next six months they take even greater strides, although they are not the projects I was sent here to do.

Six months. Half a year. I have been gone from the USA for half of a year. It is crazy to think that. Thank goodness for the Internet to help me keep in contact with all my friends and family back home; your support keeps me going. The SKYPE’s, the emails, the snail mails and packages, it keeps my spirits high. After six months I look back and am thankful that I came to Honduras. When I left the USA, I was at a point in my life when I needed to “get away.” Now, I ask myself, will I ever be at a point when I am ready to “get back?” The answer is yes. I am tired of being poor, I am tired of having streets that aren’t paved, I am tired of riding in busses where I have to stand for three hours or more (while being afraid that they will be robbed). I miss co-workers showing up for meetings on time and turning in proposals when they said they would. I miss walking down the street and not being hissed at; I miss noise ordinances being in place. But, it is all part of the package (I don’t really know if listening to Enrique Iglesias until 3 AM was what JFK had in mind when he set up the PC 50 years ago, but that’s what it is today). I have now learned how to clean a pila, kill a tarantula, and make bean soup. I have taught others how to cook chocolate chip cookies and pizza. Sharing cross-culture experiences is one of the main goals of PC, so in that I have succeeded in the first six months.