My first week

July 20th, 2009 by Autumn Shapland

Hola! Como esta usted??? So my Spanish is getting a little better, although I still wouldn’t feel comfortable being completely on my own with out someone semi-fluent. So Honduras… I love it here. The weather is wonderful depending on the city anywhere from 75-90 with very little humidity. It is very mountainous and everything is green because it is winter here or their rainy season. The only bad thing about it is the sun is up at 5:30 and down by 7 everyday so my sleep schedule has changed greatly. We usually go to bed around 11 and wake up at 5:15 or so when the rosters start crowing.

So everyone is wondering if I changed programs and everything about that. I loved the city of Gracias and would have loved being there as a volunteer in the Health center however there were a lot of students there from within Honduras at the time so it was almost as though there were too many people that there wasn’t much for me to do. I would have loved to get experience in the health field obviously, but I wanted to be somewhere where I would actually be helping and making a difference, not where I was an extra hand sitting around watching. Sonya is another volunteer here, she arrived on the same flight as I did and we had the same host family in Gracias so we shared a room. She was also doing the medical project and had a lot worse of a time than I did the first day. She had been working in the lab and they just made her a secretary and made fun of the Spanish she did speak to them. So anyways she had decided to switch to the building project in La Esperanza and with my limited Spanish I didn’t want to be the only volunteer in the whole city with the closest ones 2 hours away. So I also decided to switch projects. As much as I wish I could have been of help and gained experience in the medical field I’m glad that I switched. I have meet a lot of volunteers in La Esperanza and feel like if I had stayed and been the only one in Gracias I wouldn’t have enjoyed my trip and would have wanted to come home.

Now what I’ve been doing! Thursday we took a bus the 2 hours to La Esperanza from Gracias it was miserable. I had a lady with a 1-2 year old boy on her lap and he threw up a good hour of the time. The bus was hot and bumpy and the smell of the vomit almost got to me. It is so odd here that they just let him throw up all over the floor of the bus didn’t pull over or get him a bucket. After we got to La Esperanza we meet our new host family. There are about 20 or so people who live in this sort of complex where we are staying. They are all part of an extended family and there are around 10 or so kids between the ages of 3-17. There are no husbands at the house, but we don’t ask why… something to ponder I guess. We got to know the family Thursday and also met Rose another volunteer who is staying at the same house. Sonya and I have like our own little “apartment” it has our bedroom we share and a living room area. The bathroom is outside and everyone shares and there is also a shower, but only running water about 25% of the time.

Friday we met the rest of the volunteers there are 4 others doing building at the moment and 2 that teach English, plus a bunch that stay in the city that we haven’t met yet. We all ride in the back of a pick up truck about 30 minutes up to the school and then we walk about 10 minutes to the building site. We got there around 7:30 or so and began making concrete and mud. We added to the middle of the house using a layer of mud and adobe blocks. We are building up the middle wall so that the roof will be slanted. Friday there was only one building site because a lot of the volunteers had gone out of town for the weekend so there wasn’t a lot to do. Around 11 we walked back to the school and hitched a ride back to town. I don’t want anyone to worry about hitching rides here. **Very few people here have cars so the way to get around for almost everyone is to ride in the back of pick-up trucks. Some of the people will charge you to ride in their truck and others will just give you a free ride because they were already going. I saw a truck with 17 people in the back of it. We have a joke about how many people you can fit in the back of a pick up because every time we see one it seems like there are more people on it than the last one. **

We got back to town around 1130 or so and walked back home. Normally we would then go to the child center to teach and watch the kids from 1230-5. The center is a government daycare for single parents and one any given day there are 20-40 kids, however the government can only afford to pay for a single caregiver. Most of the kids come in the afternoons which is why it’s essential that we spend our afternoons there helping where we can. On Friday it wasn’t open though because of some strike about the President trying to come back.

The building site and the child center are both closed during the weekends so Sonya and I decided to join two other volunteers that were going up to the Copan Ruins. We left around 1 on Friday and arrived there around 8. We got a hotel room for the night for just under $6 a person it is so cheap to stay in the country. In the morning we went to the ruins it was an experience. It’s amazing how over a thousand years ago with no machines people could build such amazing structures and carve such beautiful pictures. We walked around for about 3 hours and decided to make our way across the boarder to Guatemala since it was only 12km from the ruins. We spent the afternoon in the market in Guatemala before heading back to the Ruins to spend the night. Sunday we left around 10 in the morning and arrived back home around 5 it was a long day but the scenery is so beautiful you’d barely notice how long of a ride it is if it weren’t for how bad the roads are. I did my laundry by hand when we got back then washed my hair with buckets of water since there was no running water.

Today we went up to the house at 7 am and build 2 layers higher of adobe and mud before we left around 12. I´m heading to the child center in about 10 minutes, but I thought I´d come update since today is my house mom´s birthday and I wont be able to stop by later. I´ll update in a few days hope everything is going great in the states. PS I think I´m adding another week so that I can help more, I love it here and it´s a great feeling seeing a house be build before your eyes and by your own hands!