Peter in Honduras

Perhaps I need to change the name of my blog, as I am no longer Peter in Honduras. Current status: Peter in Costa Rica. Tomorrow will be Peter in Panama. Hey, that´s got a good ring.

Two Saturdays ago I started on a southern stroll, beginning at the Pacific coastal beaches of El Salvador at La Libertad. From there we (Sarah and I) wandered down the coast back through Honduras, visiting a fellow Peace Corps volunteer in San Lorenzo where we enjoyed a nice dinner on the mangrove covered banks of the Gulf of Fonseca (major shrimp exporter and important Pacific port).

Nicaragua. Satisfied with our brief stop in Honduras, we began a whirlwind Nicaragua tour. Leon, Granada, and the island of Ometepe. Highlights were one night out at the Laguna de Apoyo outside of Granada, a crater lake where we lounged about on the water in innertubes and enjoyed liter bottles of Toña (Uncle John and Uncle Don, remember?). The island was beautiful, we went biking and climbed up the side of one of the volcanoes. The howler monkeys scared us back down though and we didn´t make the summit.

Now we´re one night in San Jose before skipping Costa Rica altogether and heading straight for the beaches of Bocas del Toro in Panama. It´s rumored that although you plan to stay only two or three nights you end up in Bocas for multiple weeks. We´ll see if it has the same effect on us. I also want to explore Panama City and the canal, having just finished David McCullough´s ¨Path Between the Seas.¨

In other news, we won money! On April 29th the organizers for Idea Tu Empresa, the business plan competition we were involved in announced the 8 seed capital prizes. We won a prize of $5,000 cold hard ones. I feel like we were not awarded the top prize because our business didn´t require any more money (not that we couldn´t use it, but we didn´t request it). My first instinct is to regret this decision, but then I remember how annoyed I am by wasteful spending in NGOs so perhaps we did the right thing and created a plan that didn´t involve investments that were not absolutely crucial. After all, this is how I would fund the business if it were MY money. So this means Matias and EcoPlast (our company) have a bit of scratch to throw down on the installations and the machinery. The national beer company also expressed interest in working with us, although I have no specifics because I´m not in Honduras and only just heard last night that we won.

And finally, coming Home, with a capital H. I fly out of Guate on May 30th, rumbo (destination) Los Angeles. Winning that prize has given me some nice closure on my service and I´m excited about the next step working with DukeEngage in Seattle and searching for jobs.

I´ll try to post some pics of the trip, although I don´t have a camera cable with me, so we´ll see if stumble on a card reader. Drop me a line, internet is more frequent now than it was in Nicaragua.

Well, I had given the blog up for dead. I suppose I felt that my life wasn’t changing that much and what I was writing about just felt the same every time, even if it wasn’t. However, now that I’m nearing the end of my service (79 days at the time of this writing), I’ve noticed I’ve been doing a lot of explaining about what my plans are post Peace Corps. Mass email you suggest? No, thanks: blog.

April 19^th, 2008. The date. It used to be the 20^th, but I think they changed it do to all the negative connotations of 4/20: Hitler, Columbine, Pot. So the not so notorious 19^th will be my last day of employment by Uncle Sam. Not to say that the relationship is over, though, they take care of us pretty well. My rich uncle plans to cut me a check for: 

• Airfare to the States
• The $225 a month they’ve been saving up for me since, oh, two years ago.

Plus, they throw in 30 days health coverage, extendable (read: you pay) for up to 18 months afterward. I get access to Peace Corps job contacts, letters of reference and description of service documents, plus 1 year of non competitive status for government jobs. However, like all talented government workers, I’m eyeing the private sector. 

But what a waste it would be to just hop a plane back to the old 9-5. No, you know I’m doing some traveling. The current plan is to stay in San Marcos through the town fair (April 25^th), then head to El Salvador to meet my friend Sarah Wheeler, who’s flying down. We’ll head off for a tour of Nicaragua (Leon, Masaya, Granada, San Juan del Sur, Ometepe) and Panama (Chiriqui highlands, volcanoes, Bocas del Toro, San Blas islands? The Canal). Any suggestions on places will be appreciated.

Sarah leaves me in Panama, but I believe my friend Andrea (to be confirmed) will join me for Costa Rica. I’d love more ideas for CR (Charlie?) so send me some emails. I figure a week in Costa Rica is sufficient and then it’s off to Honduras again to get my stuff (traveling light) and head on to visit Guatemala and Belize one last time (time permitting), a little of Southern Mexico (San Cristobal de las Casas) before flying out of Cancun and on to the states. I plan to arrange the flight to give me an overnight in LA (possibly June 3^rd) and then on to Seattle the 4^th. Dates are tentative. 

See a spot you fit in? Give me a holler.

Safely back in Seattle, I’m hoping to work for a summer program called DukeEngage that will run from mid June to mid August. Basically I would be coordinating a group of 15 students in their summer internships with a focus towards service in your community. I think I have a lot to offer in this respect having just completed 27 months of service and having a pretty good idea of what to do in Seattle, but if my skills don’t get me the job I’m counting on nepotism. 

So the Duke opportunity is temporary, but a good transitional job, I think. My main interest right now is in Microfinance. Last November my uncles let me join them for part of their tour with a group called Global Partnerships based out of Seattle. GP is a non profit that attracts institutional investors seeking socially responsible investments (and thus willing to accept a lower rate of return). With this money, as well as donations (they’re not 100% sustainable yet) they turn around and make loans to Microfinance partners located in countries around the world. We were in Nicaragua and I got to visit with Fundenuse in Ocotal. I think it’s in a previous blog.

Anyhow, that’s the idea. Take capital from Developed World, move it to underserved markets in the Developing World. Oversimplified, for sure, but you get the idea. So where do I come in? Well, there have to be people to make connections between institutions in the United States (Global Partnerships) and counterpart agencies in country (Fundenuse). There are many companies in this market (as we say in Spanish, it’s de moda), but a few that I’m looking at are: 

• Developing World Markets
• Microvest
• Blue Orchard
• Kiva

You can look all these up online, I’m not putting the links so that you don’t get lazy. Of all of them, Kiva has been my most recent interest. They hit on an idea that I may have talked about before, connecting people to people. 

In my personal case, I enjoy logging into my Schwab account daily to see that I’ve earned an extra nickel in the past 24 hours. However, for many, this is not as scintillating as it is for me. The solution? Create a story. You log on to Kiva.org (non-profit, no good do-gooders destroying the market for robber barons), and find your borrower:

Norma Aguilar, 28 years old, 3 kids. Owns a restaurant in Chinandega, Nicaragua. Wants to put up a little awning and buy some tables to expand her business. She also wants a deep fryer, a mixer, and a new display case whose windows don’t fog up every 5 minutes. Needs $800. 

Would you like to donate $25, $50, $75, $100?

Oh, you take credit cards? Paypal as well? I can buy a gift card for someone (great present idea, or congratulation gift for finishing Peace Corps volunteer)? 

Terrific! Now I’ve got my $25 investment in Norma’s business, as well as 12 other people who have made small to large investments. I can view the loan in my portfolio and watch as it nears maturity and as Norma makes payments. I get to see updates, the occasional picture, and finally, assuming Norma doesn’t go broke, I get my $25 back.

Genius. 

Compare this with Microplace’s new website (an eBay company). They’ve also got a good idea. You invest in Microfinance organizations in specific countries or areas of work (health, pure business, gender, etc). Here you earn a return (around 3%), but you’re lending to institutions, not individuals (note: through Kiva, you’re not actually lending to the individual either, but it sure feels like it). That’s nice, but not quite as sexy as seeing the end user story, which for me is worth the 75 cents I would earn on a $25 loan for one year at 3%.

So I see tremendous opportunity here. People want to see their money put to good use. They want to help people. They’re just lazy, and Kiva provides a great way to help people and put your money to good use without lifting a finger (except to click your mouse). I think Kiva could go even farther, perhaps connecting people with relevant skills in the United States directly with the people who are trying to improve their business (what do you think, Uncle John, do we have a market? Bakers?)

So that’s what I’m looking at right now. Suggestions, ideas, connections, donations, and job offers always appreciated. :-)

What’s that strange feeling? What’s that word….? Satisfaction?

Is the spark actually back?

I hope so.

After months of having given up on international development and generally feeling depressed with my work in the Peace Corps I suddenly feel… good!

How do I know?

I can’t sleep.

I toss and turn, dreaming/thinking about ideas and future plan, occasionally fully opening my eyes when a really good idea enters my mind, only to wish I had never thought of it because now I’m lying on my back (I can’t fall asleep like this) with my eyes wide open staring at the ceiling.

I suppose I owe some explanation. As you might have noticed, since about April I haven’t been posting as frequently, and the posts I’ve put up have been of a dispirited nature. This has many causes, but perhaps the easiest explanation is simply monotony and lack of visible results.

But then came this week.

A few weeks earlier, my site-mate Chris, a Water & Sanitation Engineer, mentioned a little town called Tomalá and said they were interested talking to me about some projects. We went out there Monday morning on a bumpy country road. The town is only about 36 km from San Marcos but it takes 2 hours and 15 minutes in bus and a bit faster in car. Yes, that’s an average speed of 12 MPH.

We arrived in the afternoon and went to the mayor’s office. The mayor was out of town getting a master’s degree (on the job training?) but our guide, Tito, knew everything and everyone in Tomalá, so we were well looked after. Tito had come back from the States five years ago after earning some cash working in a factory that recycles cloth. He says he worked up to 60 straight hours once cutting the cloth, surrounded by dust and wearing mouth, nose, and ear protection. Ugh. But he brought back enough money to buy about 100 acres and now he’s got some coffee and raises cattle for slaughter.

Tito is motivated. He’s seen prosperity (albeit moderate, he lived in South Carolina). He’s lived in poverty. And he’s ready to work. The whole drive out, and much of the two days I was there, he would just talk and talk about ideas and problems and more ideas. If we actually do everything we agreed to, I believe I agreed to become business partners with him in a massive coffee operation…

The afternoon we arrived Tito had to go drop some guys off in an aldea so Carlos took us on a tour of the town. We checked out the water system, the new warehouse to store beans and corn, the radio station and training center, and a number of important citizens. Every time we ran into someone important, Carlos would say: “We’re meeting tonight at 7pm in the mayor’s office so that Peter can tell us about Peace Corps.” We must have met 2 or 3 ex mayors during the tour, it seemed like the whole community was involved and excited about working together. My favorite ex mayor was Don Orlando who ushered us into his house to show us everything he had and explain what it was and how it worked. Corn, cheese, sugar cane, chickens, pigs, depulping machines, his new coffee drying patio, everything! It was great.

So at 7 o’clock I went to the mayor’s office expecting to be kept waiting. Nope, everyone was there and full of questions. What does a volunteer do? What does it cost? When can he come? What do we need to do?

Wow.

They also answered all of my questions too. They were full of ideas for projects and ways to involve a volunteer. Working with the high school, the computer center, the radio station, the women’s group, the bakery, the warehouse, the small microfinance groups, everything! And right away they wanted my help in creating a course to teach people web design. So I promised to stay another day and not go home right away so that we could work on some web design ideas.

The next day, right on time, Carlos, Lorena (the administrator of the computer center), and I worked on web design. And they got it! By the end of the day we had a basic website and decided to put together a short course and get community groups designing their own websites hosted through the computer center’s webpage.

Reading back over what I’ve written this doesn’t seem as exciting as it was. I guess I can’t convey the motivation and energy of these people and how reinvigorating that was for me. Since this is getting long, I’ll close with my exciting list of things to do for this next week:

• Create market study for a new agricultural project in order to secure funds for an irrigation project

• Create a marketing plan for a group that is set to raise chickens and pigs

• Attend a workshop on business plans where we have a proposal competing with 66 other proposals (out of 190 applications) for $15,000 in start up money.

• Web design course for the Computer Center in Tomalá

• Meeting with the Women’s Coop to discuss hiring a sales associate to promote their products and increase sales

• Working with the Honey Coop to create an electronic system to handle sales, production, purchases and generate inventory, income statement, and balance sheet reports. 

• Coaching a baseball team of 8-12 year olds

• Business simulation program with youth with the goal of creating a functioning business during the summer (winter) vacation.

Two months ago, I felt bad about not updating my blog, so I wrote out a short update and for some reason never put it up on the page. I’ve included it below and will offer a few reflections and an update afterward.

August 19, 2007

Ah, the long days of summer… Well, actually, the days are not noticeably longer here at all (We’re at 14 degrees latitude, after all) and they call this time of year the Rainy Season, not summer, because it rains on and off until October. But still, today it’s hot and dry and has the feel of a lazy August Sunday.

A quick update from San Marcos:

The CICAL women’s cooperative is still puttering along. The corn harvest is coming in so the floor has been piled high with little ears of corn which they husk, cook, and jar to make their most popular product, Baby Corn. I dropped in this week and grabbed 100 ears to husk – it is not easy work. Not that it’s hard, either, but it takes a long time to do, I think I hammered out the batch in about an hour or so though.

Coffee also looms large in my thoughts these days. I spend a lot of time with my friend Jorge, a producer as well as a toaster of fine Honduran coffee. We’ve been working on a website lately to help promote his coffee locally and perhaps someday abroad as well. For the time being, the target is towards retail shops like Café Americano, the Honduran equivalent of Starbucks. They buy his coffee already toasted and packaged to serve to their clients.

This coming week I’m heading off to a three day seminar with my fellow business volunteers that we call “Reconnect.” I did this last year with the people from my group and the group before me. This year we’re the old group and we’ll be making presentations to the new group showing what we’ve worked on and giving them ideas and materials for their own projects. I’ve been assigned web design, which is interesting to me, but a hard topic to present. Those who are technologically challenged simply won’t be interested, but what I’m going to try to do is present some tools, tricks, and places to learn more about web design for those truly interested. I also plan to discuss some of the problems with using web pages in Honduras and maybe we can discuss when they are even appropriate.

So that’s what on tap for the end of August. I’m also looking into starting a group with the local high school, as I’d like to do some work with young people before I leave in April. 8 months… Time sure flies.

October 12, 2007

Wow, time sure does fly…. Two months. As for the CICAL, they produced over 200 boxes of baby corn, a pretty good production. The cost of production came out pretty high, but not significantly higher than last year. We got the website up, although it’s lacking some information. You can check it out at cafeplayon.com. Reconnect was good; I gave a well received presentation on how to go about creating a website and getting it running. As for working with the high school, I took on an intern to work with the women’s cooperative, which I’ll discuss later on. My newest idea is to form a group of students to undertake a business project during summer break. What better way to use your time off than to earn a little money (and understand a little more about business in the mean time).

So what else am I up to? Well, the past month I was working pretty closely with the women’s coop again, this time with a high school student. Our work started out strong, but I feel like he became a bit discouraged with the project because of the level of excitement and participation by the women in the Coop. What can I say; Vegetables just aren’t that exciting… So the experience with the Intern wasn’t all I was hoping for. The next thing I’m thinking about with the CICAL is trying to help them improve their sales in outside markets (regional markets). We made a sales trip last June and it was successful, but they haven’t followed up on it, so we’ll see where that leads…

I’ve also been slightly involved in a project to remodel the local kids’ park in town. This is a project spearheaded by one of the town elders who people don’t take too seriously anymore, so it’s a bit tricky. What interests me about the project is the idea of creating a structure to take care of a public space like a park. So often what happens is that a park like this is built with a one time grant and then it quite rapidly deteriorates. Why can’t a community group form to administer limited funds and oversee basic maintenance and improvement? I’m foraying into this question…

What I’m hoping shapes up to be my next major project is something that doesn’t completely focus on business. We call it El Concurso del Barrio mas Limpio and it’s a competition between neighborhoods to see which can clean up its act best. We want to get each neighborhood thinking about keeping it’s streets trash free (a notable problem), public spaces nicely maintained, trash separated into recyclable and non recyclable, and get people enthused about involved in their community. The idea is to form a panel of judges, enroll the different neighborhoods, help them with ideas on how to get people involved and what to do, inspect their progress, and finally award a cash prize that will go towards a project of the neighborhood’s choosing (i.e. fix up a street, put in a small park, fix a pipe, add drainage). We’re fishing for funding to pay for the overhead costs (paper, diplomas, etc) and the prize money. We’ve got $500 and are aiming for about $1500.

On the small scale, I’m always fixing technological problems at Hermandad and this week I’m working with the accountant for the Employee’s Coop helping her set up a system to track employee contributions to their mandatory savings plan. I’d like to educate the 100 or so employees on what this plan does for them as well, so that they actually know it exists and understand how it works.

As for post Peace Corps, I think about that more often these days. I didn’t expect to know what I wanted to do upon finishing when I came in and I can’t say I have more of an idea now as it’s getting close. Well, perhaps a little more of an idea, but not much… My friend Adam (a previous resident of San Marcos) is planning to come down around April and we’re going to do some traveling. He wants to go to Cuba, which I’m interested in, but I’d also like to do more of Guatemala and Mexico or even head south to Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Other dreams are Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru.

As for coming back to the States, I might have a job in Seattle for a few months in the summer working with College students doing summer service projects or I might go earn a bit of money doing SAT tutoring on the East Coast. There are a lot of Peace Corps fellowship programs that I could take advantage of, but in what areas? International development? Economics of emerging economies? Foreign Service? See my problem? Yeah, lots of possibilities…

So that’s the Peter update for October… tune in next month when Peter discusses birthdays and hitting the quarter century mark while living in Honduras.

To quickly reflect on my last post let me just say I was glad to see all the feedback and comments. I appreciated the anecdotes from your own lives and it’s good to have reinforced the notion that “this ain’t easy.”

And in truth, there have been positive developments! Xiomara and I organized a sales trip to Gracias, Lempira, a city two hours away. We sold L. 6000.00 worth of product there to 4 medium sized grocery stores, establishing good contacts, and an additional L 8000.00 on the way home passing through Santa Rosa! This second sale, although bigger, is not as important because it was an existing customer, but still, the liquidity is great.

However, I continue to be frustrated by forgotten promises and general apathy.

But life goes on, what can you do? At the very least, it’s interesting to observe behavior in other cultures. For example, my most recent frustration was with a newly formed financial cooperative in a little mountain town 20 minutes outside of San Marcos. The girl who is running the books asked for help on using some of the financial software, so they asked me to come out and take a look. Well, the first time we went, the key to the office did not come along, so we had a nice talk and set another date. That day nobody came to pick me up and the meeting was canceled. So finally, a week later I’m ready to go and the day before they come to tell me that the President of the coop has said that his written permission is needed before I can visit. The trip is canceled.

Now of course none of this really makes sense. If his written permission is required, why didn’t they just get it? Instead, they leave it up in the air whether we will follow up on this and nobody is sure what to do. Do they want me to wait a week and mention it again? Do I just wait and let them ask me again? Today, two days after the fact, my contact with them came by and we had an awkward “How are you? –Good. And you? –Good, how’s it going with you? – Good…” I take this to mean he’s waiting for me to ask about a follow up visit.

The other interesting aspect is the President’s denial of the visit. It’s important to realize that this cooperative has no paid employees and therefore there are no set schedule or office hours. So to even find the President on a given day would be hard. However, as President, he must make his presence felt and give his stamp of approval. Truly the fault is with us in not approaching him, kind of the tradition of giving credit where credit is certainly not due. This reminds me of advice my uncle John gave me before leaving of making sure you introduce yourself to the local jefe even if he’s completely unrelated to what you’re doing. He (or she) needs to know you’re working for him and not against him. Unfortunately I wasn’t even aware there was a president until he squashed my plans. As coach says: I need better situational awareness.

Lately another interest has been working with my friend Jorge on his coffee shop. He has a little corner of his mom’s huge store in San Marcos and has got himself an espresso machine and one of those break room automatic coffee machines (flavored coffees from a pre-made mix). So we’ve been decorating the place with all sorts of coffee paraphernalia. Uncle John’s favorite coffee blend, Caffe Umbria, is proudly displayed, although the bag is not full of Honduran coffee. I blew up a favorite photo (displayed below) in black and white and printed it on 16 pages of printer paper then assembled it into a huge poster and put a border on it. This hangs on the wall.

Jorge had a table built that is full of roasted and green coffee encased in the glass top. Really, I out to take some pictures of this. As for the business side, for my part I’ve created a basic program to track sales trends of different products so that we can see what sells best and what we need to eliminate. I’ll probably be coming to the states in the next few months to visit, so if you’re in Seattle, collect anything coffee related and I’ll haul it back to Honduras. Starbucks may also notice a disturbing trend of missing mugs…. Just kidding.

May 25th, 2007

Oh the time’s a flyin’. According to my ledger, I’m 59.14% of the way through my Peace Corps service, barring an extension or an early termination. According to the Peace Corps Cycle of Feelings, I’m entering the dangerous “Disillusion with development work, self doubt, and feeling of being time constrained by the ever nearing end of service date.” I regret not actually having that particular hand-out in my possession as I write this on the couch in my house, as it truly is a beautiful bureaucratic document, serving at once everyone and no one, kind of like a horoscope. However, just as this week’s predictions for Scorpio seem to fit (an interesting opportunity will present itself, stay away from the color orange, lucky numbers 27, 11, and 18), I feel like I’m pretty accurately summed up by the Peace Corps’ mood gauge.

So what causes the disillusionment that the “average” Peace Corps Volunteer feels? I think a contributing factor to this is the number of “corpses” that one sees alongside the international development highway. Last month it was a fully equipped processing plant which has been gathering dust for years. It’s the mayor opting to buy a new car for the mayor’s office (read: personal use) instead of purchasing a tract of land so that the European Union will construct a school on it. And most dispiriting at all is the cycle I so often see in my own projects:

1) We have a problem

2) We identify the problem and various solutions

3) We delegate responsibility

4) A minor problem complicates the situation

5) Nothing is done.

Reflecting on past attempts by others at projects here in my site of San Marcos de Ocotepeque, I see so many well intentioned ideas, so much time spent, material purchased, but at the end of it all, there’s almost nothing to show. No changed behavior, no progress.

I often attribute this to people simply not wanting to work. Unconsciously, they make the decision that the work needed to accomplish the goal is not worth the discounted value of the goal. That is to say, they don’t value a reward in the future as much as they value a smaller reward in the present. It’s the same idea as choosing between the option of having a dollar today and two dollars a year from now. Everyone would take the dollar today. But what if it were a dollar today and a hundred dollars a year from now?

I would take the hundred. The aid recipient who chooses not to do the work today for the reward tomorrow is taking the one dollar bill.

This makes me ask myself, will some people always be poor? The standard middle-upper class Honduran will tell you: I worked hard, and I still work hard, and that’s why I have a house and enough to eat. Of course, what he’s not telling you, and neither is the middle class American, is that he had a bunch of help along the way. Ok, fine, that’s the idea of development work: we’re here to provide the helping hand to pull you up so that you are able to support yourself on your own. But it takes a large effort on the recipient’s end, who is severely discounting that possibility of reward at the end of the hard work.

That’s the cycle.

Could it be the influence of this cycle that affects the Peace Corps Volunteer? Most people judge themselves on the visible fruits of their labor. In the cycle I described above, there are no results, only frustration.

June 6^th 2007

I wrote that entry last week, at the height of frustration. Re-reading it now doesn’t change my opinion much, but it makes me think of some new questions:

How do we identify a willing participant in international development? There needs to be a greater focus on partnership between recipient and donor. This is generally attempted by requiring the community to contribute labor or money. Is this enough?

What do we do about the non willing participant? Are they relegated to standing in line to get a bag of rice instead of attending a class on how to plant rice? Is there any other option for this “eternally poor” group?

How do you keep the aid worker connected to the aid recipient? I have found that the “cure” for these blues can be as simple as working on something where I am no better or more qualified than the Hondurans on the project. For example: construction, manual labor, etc. I’ll go to the women’s coop and cut jalapeños or go help lay bricks for a greenhouse. I find I become more disconnected when I’m explaining a new system or organization or teaching a class on excel because I’m far beyond the Honduran’s level of skill. It’s important for both donor and recipient to identify common ground and experience.

So those are some reflections, I’d appreciate your thoughts and comments, or just an update of how you’re doing. Also, check out the new pics that are located in the New Pics section. The link is on the sidebar to the right.

Just a quickie here as I’m a bit pressed for time. Oh the difficulty of finding 30 minutes in a 24 hour day to write a good blog entry. Well, a little bonus, I put up the pictures from my Spring break trip to Belize. In Central America almost nobody works the easter week of each year (including, unfortunately, busses). Taking advantage of these vacation days, I went to Belize with my friend Adam.

We went through San Pedro, Honduras, up to the north coast, across to Guatemala, and in boat to Southern Belize, arriving in Punta Gorda. From there we went to the beach side town of Hopkins, where we stayed in a quirky inn call “Kismet Inn.” Hanging out with the local Garifunas (dark skinned Creole people) and exploring the close by jungle and waterfalls were the highlights. Next we went up to a town called Orange Walk, close to the Mexican border. There we hung out, enjoyed speaking Spanish again, and went to the Mayan Ruins at Lamanai, one of the earliest sites in Central America. We negotiated a deal on the boat ride to fit our budget and enjoyed a day exploring and playing Frisbee. On the way back our boat collided with another boat (the dangers of bartering the price down too low), but nobody was hurt, although the other boat contained some pretty irate French tourists. I told them to worry more about their general election and not stress the little things. C’est la vie! 

The return was an adventure, as busses were not running in the north of the country. But, being resourceful gringos, we stuck out our thumbs, first getting a ride about 10 miles down the road towards Belize city (where there were rumored to be busses). Standing on the side of the highway playing Frisbee isn’t a bad way to pass the day and soon enough we were in the back seat of a jeep heading to the city. Like most Central Americans, Belizeans are generally quite friendly, and speak English to boot. Once in Belize, we caught the only bus to Punta Gorda (a six hour ride that took 7.5). This was the fullest bus I have ever been on, cramming more and more people in the aisle. We were lucky to board in the city and therefore get seats. The continual shout of “move to the back please” interspersed with curses and shouts in Spanish, English, and Creole got old after a while. Finally we arrived in P.G., enjoyed a nice plato tipico (beans, rice, chicken, spaghetti), went to bed early, got up for the sunrise (see beautiful sunrise pictures), and headed back to Honduras via Guatemala. After many more shouts of “somos gente, no vacas!” (We’re people, not cows!) we made it home. 

That was a week ago now, and there’s so much more to talk about. Things go well with the women’s Coop, we’re working more on the chain of production. I’m also working on web site stuff, basic computer classes, financial projections, all the while dreaming in my own business plans…

Also, new developments with Coffee Certification, I attended a meeting with an exporter who is working with medium sized producers in my area. We talked after the meeting and I told him that I’d be happy to help with the process, which was well received and in fact he’s already contacted me again. Vamos a ver…(we’ll see…)

Well, it’s March 12th. Exactly 405 days into my 810 day service. Yes, I’ve reached the halfway point. It’s amazing how fast we adapt to new surroundings, because there is really nothing foreign about Honduras for me anymore, it feels like I’ve been here a lot more than just 405 days. That being said, I’m amazed at how fast it’s all going. To think, after replicating this half, I’ll be unemployed and on my 30 days of medical coverage until I’m expected to rejoin society!

I was meaning to prepare a more in depth blog report because of the significance of the day, but like every day between blog entries, I just haven’t found the time. So, since I’m keeping it short, I’ll give you a few updates/highlights:

Work: Busy. For the last three weeks I’ve been working a lot with the women’s cooperative, trying to get them to organize their production for this year. You see, the way it has been working is that members show up when they please, work for as long as they please, then disappear again. This doesn’t work. It’s impossible to plan or set goals this way. So we’ve sat down twice now (another meeting this week), and discussed how to change this. First, we outlined some goals for the year in terms of production, saying how much and when we will produce what products. Next, we are going to assign crew chiefs to head up each product (we focus on six major products). Each crew chief will be responsible for getting her work force organized, getting the raw materials, and meeting the production goal. I’m proposing bonuses and incentives to help reach those goals.

With the production squared away, I hope to work more with them on sales and marketing. Right now, they sell to their local market her in San Marcos and reach an extended market (nearby cities, San Pedro, Tegucigalpa) through distributors who come to San Marcos, pay the box price for the product (smaller profit for CICAL) and then sell it in the larger cities. First of all, we plan to set up our own little stand in the market here in San Marcos with the idea to increase our visibility. You see, San Marcos is small, but there are thousands of even smaller towns around us. On Saturday and Sunday these people come here to the “big city” to buy their goods. What I want is for them to recognize our brand and for the people who own the pulperias (neighborhood grocery stores) to buy in bulk from us. As for reaching markets farther away, this is difficult without transportation (they have no car or driver). However, we are 1 hour from the border with El Salvador and there are a lot of people in that little country that love bottled baby corn… Thoughts and suggestions appreciated.

Other projects: I finished the HDH website http://www.hermandaddehonduras.org

It now has english and an updated menu. Let me know about errors you find.

I’m also working with a lady who wants to start an inventory in her business and expand to a new location. She’s very anti-planning, but we’re working on that.

A lot of my time is spent playing with Access and Excel, trying to design better ways to collect and sort data that small businesses can use.

Personal: I’ve started a garden! I bought a shovel, borrowed a pick axe and tore up the rock hard earth that is in my front patio. I’ve started burying compost from my kitchen in the ground and my girlfriend’s dad gave me a bunch of tomato seeds and a little Styrofoam container to start the seedlings. I want to plant tomato, spinach, onion, and maybe some green peppers. Gardening advice appreciated.

Yesterday on Sunday Neidy and I went for a bike ride to La Labor, a neighboring town. It’s about 15 kilometers away and just gorgeous. It was a beautiful day: sunny cloud spotted skies, 80 degrees, birds, insects, etc. That good smell of clean, dry, fragrant air was all encompassing and very pleasant. We had a traditional Sunday soup there with a co worker and came back pretty tired. I finished plowing my garden and went to bed.

Friday my Dad is coming with my Uncle and my Cousin! I’m very excited. You too can visit this beautiful land that is Honduras.

Well, that’s it for now. Hasta la proxima.

Seeing as it is Valentine’s Day, I suppose I should write about love in Honduras….

But I won’t.

Instead, I’ve got a great story from yesterday when I went up to Playón with my friend Jorge from the beneficio (coffee processing plant). Let’s go over the cast of characters, shall we?

We’ll start with the familiar. Jorge Aventura is one of the bosses at the beneficio where I got all that great coffee for Christmas. He’s the guy who hooked me up with it all and led me through the whole toasting process. Good guy.

Gringo: Self explanatory.

Moncho: So named because he is known to be gassy, according to the other guys. He is also known as Gordo.

Zorro: Not the sword fighter, it means fox in Spanish. Also known by his Christian name, Henry.

The gang started out as just me and Jorge as we left San Marcos around 3pm. I had arranged the day before to go out to Playón and see the farms and processing plant that his family owns up there. We hadn’t really discussed what we were going to do or what time, and so I figured he had forgotten when he called me at quarter to three.

So we’re heading up there and I ask him what we’re going to do. He tells me we’re going to see a couple of the fincas, drop off some tools and other materials, grab to days coffee harvest, and haul it to the beneficio humedo (wet coffee processing plant). Sounds good.

As it turns out, Café Playón is in the stages of getting Utz Kapeh certification, a environmental and social rights coffee certification process. This is something I’m familiar with from some of my earlier endeavors into coffee, but I had never actually seen anyone who was certified or pursuing certification. It was awesome, he took me on a tour of all the improvements they had made to the farms:

Signage everywhere- What to do in an emergency, how to deal with agro chemical spills, where not to put fertilizers (close to streams and marsh lands), bathrooms, kitchens, sleeping areas. Septic tanks for sewage waste, water treatment for the aguas mieles (water runoff from treating the coffee, contaminates water supplies), and much more.

After checking out the fincas (farms) we went on up to the beneficio. Check out the pictures for a better idea, but here there were farmers unloading thousands of pounds of coffee (still in the red fruit) and dumping it into the industrial sized de-pulper. This thing can process up to 16,000 pounds of coffee in a day without blinking an eye. So we dumped the sacks we had accumulated so far here and set off to go get the big load.

Enter Zorro and Moncho. Now the gang was complete. We met up with Zorro and Moncho who were on the side of the road guarding the 50-60 sacks of coffee (around 8000 pounds). Introductions were made. Since there were so many sacks, we took only half on the first run. Now, throwing 4000 pounds of coffee from the ground into a pickup truck is not an easy task. Zorro and Moncho manned the pickup bed and Jorge and I started heaving. Obviously the key is timing, and Jorge was quite practiced at giving the “ya” or “vamos” to signify the moment to heave had arrived. Moncho, as we will come to later, was less communicative. As Jorge and I tossed bag after bag over the side of the pickup bed, Moncho and Zorro went organizing it so that as much as possible would fit. We got about 25-30 sack into the back of the truck and went back to the beneficio.

Now we had to unload it and weigh it. Moncho and I got in the back of the truck and started tossing the bags from the truck to the loading dock. As I mentioned before, Moncho didn’t communicate too well. Don’t take that the wrong way, he’s a great guy, but he’s a guy who just knows how it’s done and figures everyone else should too. He was pretty skeptical at first that a gringo could even work with coffee. I insisted that he give me a shot. So at first we had a couple near misses were he would start to toss before I was ready or I would start to toss then slow down when I realized he wasn’t ready yet and we would lose the momentum and nearly drop 150 pounds of coffee. Pretty soon, though, we got a good rhythm down, acknowledged by a smile and a grunt from Moncho, only interrupted when he made a wrinkly “something smells bad face” and told me he had stepped in dog poop. I acknowledged this fact with a grimacing “I know the feeling” look. We were now friends.

We went back for the second load, then a third. My shoulders were getting tired. We swung by the pulperia (informal store in someone’s house) and grabbed some eggs, chorizo (ground pork), avocados, and Pepsi and went back to the beneficio. There was now a file of coffee in the holding area ready to be de pulped. I regret not taking a picture of this, but if you look at the other pictures of the pile when it was smaller, try to imagine the whole holding area full up to the short wall.

We left Zorro and the a couple of the other guys to supervise the depulping and headed for the cocina (kitchen, properly marked with a nice white sign). One of the doñas (older woman) had whipped up the ingredients we brought into a nice big dinner, eaten Honduran style. Again, I should have taken a picture, but I’ll try my best to describe:

On your plate: beans, eggs mixed with chorizo. You break off a hunk of dry cheese that’s on the table (I like to crumble it over my food). You put mantequilla (a thick heavy cream, like sour cream, but not sour) on top of your beans and a little on the side for later. Grab a slice of avocado. Spoon out some picked vegetables from the big glass jar on the table, making sure to get at least one jalapeño. There are no utensils, so you grab a tortilla and use that to scoop up food, eating your improvised utensil as you go. The trick here is to make sure you have enough of your last tortilla to scoop up the remaining food, otherwise you have to just slurp the food off the tortilla at the end and take really small bites of it so you don’t run out of “fork.”

Thusly filled, we set off back down the mountain at about 9pm. Zorro jumped off without me noticing, but we dropped Moncho off at his house and he gave me the campesino (rural farmer) handshake: touch fingers together in small handshake, no grabbing of the hand, fingers remain straight without grasping anything.

He asked if I was coming back.

I told him I was.

Check out new pics of my house at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/p.schlosser/NewHousePics

Yes, the life of a Peace Corps volunteer…

House facts:

Rent: $ 105
Utilities: Never gotten a bill
2Bd, 1 bath
Cocina amplia, pila grande, patio, porton, etc.

Constant electricity, no water from about 10am-3pm usually, but that’s why you have a pila (the big water storage tank). That extra bedroom is calling your name, come visit!