Kelly and Ben in Honduras

October/November 2007

During October Copan Jaguars baseball team hosted the Siguatepeque team.  Siguatepeque traveled from about 5 hours away and stayed the night.  Copan won the first game and lost the second, which we were pretty happy about.  Our record now stands at 1 and 4.  The games were filled with lots of walks, hit batsmen, and errors.  The highlights of the games were a grand slam by Juan and a triple play.  (It should be noted that triple plays are not that unusual in Honduran youth baseball due to the kids not really fully understanding all the rules of base running—but we are working on that.)

These surrounding photos are of a village of Copan where we were doing a topographic study for a water system.  The village is pretty poor but they have a million dollar view of the of the Copan valley (photo to upper right).  We are usually able to do topographic studies in this part of the country with inexpensive GPS equipment.  But in the case of this village there were some tricky areas of the study so we had to use more traditional survey equipment, a theadolite, which has greater accuracy.  This is equipment that you see on the side of highways or at construction sites with the one guy standing behind a big tripod and the other guy holding onto a giant ruler.  It has a greater accuracy but the downside is that a study with a theadolite will take a lot longer.  The water source was 5 km from the village. Thus we spent a week in this particular community collecting the data, and the slopes were steep with cliffs, and there were no trails anywhere.   

Following the study, with some time to kill, we let the villagers look through the theadolite (which is essentially a telescope that measures angles).  From the village we could see some of the city of Copan’s finer points like the central park, the church, and the drunk guys (“bolos”) in the bars and passed out on the streets (which is kind of sad but the villagers thought is was hilarious).  It was pretty fun to see their reactions to seeing things through a telescope for the first time—total amazement.   

The small contingency of foreigners that live in Copan is pretty tight knit and the unfortunate reality is that people are always coming and going.  For people like Gerardo and Anna Maria (above) who are Belgian and live here permanently they have made a lot of friends and shortly there after had to say goodbye. 

In November, Tomoko (Japanese girl in surrounding photos) the JICA (Japanese Peace Corps) volunteer in Copan went back home to Japan.  She got to Copan just before we did and we were good friends with her.  We had a despedida (Spanish for going away party) at our house where we cooked dinner and had friends over to see Tomoko off. 

You could tell that by the end of her JICA time Tomoko was ready to get back home.  JICA volunteers here are not allowed to leave Central America for the entirety of their 2 year commitment—and for them the culture here is completely different.  For people from the US the cultural adaptation is not quite as difficult.  In the US we have lots of tortillas, the language has similarities, we celebrate many of the same holidays, we looks similar, and share history.  Plus there are distinctly American things here like fast food, and the people here have some understanding of the US (although many misconceptions).  For the Japanese there is nothing similar at all—most people here think that Japan is part of China and refer to Japanese people as Chinos (Chinese).  It is difficult enough for us living here but we have an appreciation for what the Japanese are going through.

After the construction of a water system in a village there is an inauguration party.  This is when the village shows their appreciation to the funders for the project.  There are speeches by the mayor and other involved people and there is a ribbon cutting.  There is also a ceremony where a clay pot is filled with water and then smashed to the ground which represents the people no longer having to walk to the river to carry water home.  The village also makes food and does some sort of entertainment.  In this case some of the kids (photo to left) get up on stage and do different dance routines.  These kinds of ceremonies can be kind of hit or miss but this one was really good.  The kids were pretty fun to watch.

This system was for Otuta, a village of about 1,200 people.  The project funder was a guy from the US through an NGO called Water Missions.  The total system cost was about $60,000.  It is kind of a long story but the donor of the money in the past donated one of his kidneys to one of the villagers as well.

This photo to the left is another photo of Ben looking giant—which seems to be kind of a reoccurring theme.

Every year in November it is Kite season.  We asked a number of people why November but could give us an answer—”it just is”.  The kids make the kites out of paper and wire — thus some flew and some don’t really do so well (see Valentina’s above).  At the old Spanish fort above our house they had a kite competition which consisted of awards for the best kite and then the best kite flyer.  We were not expecting very much but it turned out to be pretty impressive.  The kid that won the best kite flyer had his kite out really far—maybe a kilometer or more.  It unfortunately did crash but he had a good run.  The photo above to the left is the view of our house from the fort.  It is red roof to the left.

The kids in Honduras seem to have “seasons” for things.  There is kite season, tops season, fire crackers season, etc.  Once that specific season is over the kids completely stop doing that activity until next year.  It does seem a little weird—if you like flying kites why not just fly them until you are sick of it—but that is not how they do it.  The end of firecracker season is welcomed with open arms.

Note the stance—all power

This year was the 4th annual Peace Corps Halloween party.  In an act of cultural exchange volunteers from around Honduras descended upon the small town of Copan to celebrate the great American tradition.  This year Kelly was “La Reina de Reciclaje” (queen of recycling) and Ben was “Que Barbaridad” (Spanish phrase “how barbaric” —a little hard to explain in English but essentially he dressed up like a barbarian).  Tomoko (to the right), who is a Japanese volunteer dressed up like a Peace Corps volunteer complete with Nalgene bottle.

Due to the rather minimal Pilgrim influence on Honduras they do not celebrate Thanksgiving - or Dia de Gracias as the US holiday is known here.  However we did have a relatively traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and all the sides, plus pies.  We spent Thanksgiving with Jim and some of the other gringos in town at his restaurant Pizza Copan.  Among other things, Jim is perhaps best known for his pizza, bad Spanish, and not ever leaving the four walls of his restaurant, but he does an excellent turkey. 

The school year in Honduras ends with the calendar year—which just makes sense right?  Jessica from the neighboring family graduated from primary school this year and will start secondary school after the Christmas vacation.  They live in the shop next door to us.  The photo above is Ben sitting in the shop.  They sell a more or less random assortment of pretty much anything you might need. 

Honduran graduations are a little different than we have in the US.  They take place at night rather than during the day and it comes with a steak dinner.  Jessica asked us to be her god parents for the graduation ceremony which means that we walked through and got the diploma with her (photo to the left).  We were flattered that she asked us and on the night of the graduation we got dressed up and went with her and mother, sisters, niece, and aunt.  Her mother is in the red dress in the photo above—she is our landlord. 

For primary school they do not wear the cap and gown but rather the boys all wear the same thing (shirt and tie) and the girls have to get a dress made from the same fabric (getting clothes made is not very expensive here).  It was a fun night for us to see a Honduran graduation and be with Jessica as she moves onto high school.