Kelly and Ben in Honduras

Feb/March 2007 new

February is the end of the rainy season in Copan, when it is still difficult and at times impossible to get out to the villages where I work.  Although the Municipality has a 4x4, we were stuck behind the bus in the photos above.  This is actually the main road in Copan that the bus travels every day taking villagers to and from the urban center where we live.  Most people have to walk a good distance just to get to this main road to catch the bus. 

We were traveling to speak to a villager, Don Oloroso who owns the land surrounding a water source for another community– Porvenir.  (By the way, the word oloroso means smelly, so he’s Mr. Smelly, it took a while before I realized why everyone was laughing every time I said his name.)  We already have the design and funding for the project so we really needed to get his permission.   Technically the Municipality can expropriate the land because the Municipality owns all the water, but once it is designated a water source the landowner cannot farm any of the surrounding land and Don Oloroso, like most villagers, depends on farming this land.  Its kind of a sensitive issue so I was going out with the Municipal lawyer to talk to him.  He’s the guy with the red and blue shirt and the pistol is his back pocket…..not quite like lawyers in the states.

This day was particularly long.  After getting stuck behind the bus twice, we got the turnoff to the village and realized that there was no way the car could go any further.  We thought we were going to have to walk, but luckily there was a guy with chains on his tires to take us most of the way.  When we finally arrived, Don Oloroso was not there.  His wife said he would definitely be back at 4, but it was about 4:30 when she told us.  He finally showed up at 5:00 and the conversation went well and he decided to give permission if the Municipality could buy a few acres around the water source.  Things were looking good until we got back in to the Municipality car to finally leave and it didn’t start.  I thought we would be spending the night there for sure.  Luckily Hondurans are wizards with fixing cars since there’s no option to call AAA.  After trying several different things, they  manually turned the car around in the mud so it was facing down hill and it started.  We all cheered and where finally on our way home.

So Jim’s Pizza has become the birthday tradition.  We all went there for Tomoko’s Bday in February.  Tomoko is the JICA (Japanese Peace Corps) volunteer in Copan.  She’s been a few of our pictures– we’ve become pretty good friends.  Now we’ll have to travel to Japan some day.

The picture on the bottom left was on our walk home from work.  Seeing a John Deere tractor always makes me feel at home.  You don’t see too much heavy farming equipment in Honduras so it was strange seeing it crawl up the road behind the mototaxi.

Below is Valentina eating Nori.  Although most Hondurans think anything outside of beans, tortillas, eggs, salsa, plantains, and meat is muy feo (or gross), Valentine has proven to like anything and everything.   We gave her some Nori (which we got from Naomi when she left– another JICA volunteer) just to see her reaction, but to our surprise she loved it and managed to eat our whole package in about a week.  We always think we’ll find something she doesn’t like but she always loves  everything……...ummmmm que rico….is always her response.

Valentina came over her first day of pre-kinder for a picture in her little uniform.  Although she seemed to love school she only lasted about 2 weeks and then stopped going.  I’m not exactly sure why.  I always ask and she says it’s a holiday.

For Valentine’s day we told World Vision, an active NGO here, that we would help them with a water project in Belen Gualcho, which is in an area we hadn’t been about 4 hours from Copan by car.  It’s a beautiful mountain town.  We stayed in the hotel above, which was simple but very comfortable and had a great view.

We had to go evaluate the water source, which unfortunately is the picture below with the cow.  The watershed is pretty deforested with a few houses and cattle.  Supposedly the owner of the land has given permission to use and protect the source, but I’m not confident that will really happen. 

I had to take a picture to the left with Ben looking like a giant.  He’s surrounded by full grown men...those aren’t kids.  His height has definitely helped quite a few Hondurans.  In the picture he’s helping with the installation of a pump for a water project in Copan.  The community finally has running water, but everybody is nervous that they aren’t going to be able to pay the monthly electric bill.  They still don’t have electricity in their houses, just to the pump. 

All the other pictures are from the yoga platform at Hacienda San Lucas, the fancy bed and breakfast a little outside of town.  The travel channel with Samantha Brown came to Copan and wanted a scene of people doing Yoga, so I volunteered.  It was great– interesting to see how things get filmed and one of the most peaceful and beautiful places to do Yoga.   Luckily the instructor kept it simple so we could look good even thought none of us where experts.  My sister told me it was already on television but I guess they didn’t show any of the yoga– just San Lucas in general.  Flavia the owner said that she’s had a hard time keeping up with all the calls and emails since it aired, so that’s good for tourism in Copan.

The same weekend that I was filmed doing yoga  we helped our friend Ron out with a video he was making for tourist commission in Copan.  Ron and Lisa are a Dutch couple that work for an organization called Arte Accion, which works with kids on a variety of art projects with the motive of inspiring kids to follow their dreams and be more creative.  The more I work with development the more I appreciate the need for this type of work.  So much of development work is changing habits and its much more effective to change the way the next generation thinks than changing habits of adults.  Even with water projects, unless you can train the people to pay a monthly tariff and maintain the system the project is a waste of money.

We went with them to Rubi waterfalls in Santa Rita, where Ben works.  Milan is the little one Ron is carting around while he is filming.  He was born in January here in Honduras.  The waterfalls are really cool.  Its actually a series of different waterfalls, we only saw a part of the whole thing.  Its kind of like a natural water park with different pools and cool rock formations.  The main waterfall is at the bottom and has about a 50-foot drop.  You have to swim back to it because there’s no clear view otherwise. 

Although usually things start drying up in March, there are some villages where it really only stops raining in April and May.  I’m working on a water project in one of these villages– El Amate.  Cooperacion Espanola is funding the water project and they wanted to go visit the community and talk with the people about the project.  It wasn’t raining in town and they had never been to this area before, so they weren’t exactly prepared, as you can see with the photos of the woman in regular shoes and a garbage bag that some one gave her for a rain coat.  It was a great experience because they definitely gained an appreciation for the poverty and the remoteness of the village.  Sometimes people see how wealthy the urban center of Copan is and don’t believe that there are very very poor villages all around. 

This was another situation when I thought we were going to have to spend the night because we got stuck in the mud like 5 times.  The last one was the worst.  Only after we deflated the tires, put a random chain around one of the tires (the vice mayor above had to hold the chain and run with the car– it was quite comical), and we got in the back to jump up and down did we get out.  Its definitely a bonding experience when you get out of muddy situations.  The villagers were also quite entertained by the spectacle we created.

Coincidentally the house where the woman in the orange shirt is standing above is where Don Oloroso lives– the landowner that contains the water source for another community.  As you can see he is not someone who can afford to just lose the right to farm some of his land. 

Ben’s dad and Diane came to visit mid March for a week.  We decided to stay in Copan the entire time because between getting to know our daily life, meeting our friends, and doing the touristy things its very easy to fill a week.  The hardest and most time consuming part of visiting Honduras is the traveling part, not because it is a large country but because the roads are not so good and there is pretty much no direct way to get anywhere. 

The photos to the right are from the bird park, which is featured on our web site frequently.  The pictures of the ruins are actually different than the ones we already posted.  We have been to the main part of the Ruins– all the big temples several times, but we had never been to Las Sepulturas, which translates to The Tombs.  They are not actually tombs, it was the residential area for the higher class.  The archeologists originally thought they were tombs because they found skeletons under each house.  It was later determined that they buried important people under their houses.  Each generation built on top of the past generation, especially if their ancestors were successful or had a special skill.   It was believed by living on top of them their successes could be passed on and built upon.  In some cases people would sleep directly above their dead  father.  It was pretty cool, especially because we went with our archeologist friends in town so they could explain everything and provide a different perspective than most guides.