There’s no place like home for the holidays…
By the numbers:
304 – days since I left Miami International for Central America (exactly ten months)
22 – days until I will land, once again in Miami International (exactly 528 hours)
1 – number of times I have been sick in Honduras from something I ate
11 – days Joel spent in Honduras
1 – number of times Joel was sick and cried like a baby
It’s December 1st, as I write this in my kitchen with Beethoven’s 5th playing softly in the background. Ten months ago I was sitting in a sleepy haze in the Miami airport, eating an Egg McMuffin and wondering what Honduras was going to be like. How things have changed. Today, I’m sitting in my favorite Salvadoran made chair that Sarah bought me, contemplating the huevos, frijoles, platanos, queso, y tortillas that I have in front of me and wondering what it’s going to be like to be back in the United States.
Despite illusions of comfy living in the US, I’ve still been hard at work this week, after a festive Thanksgiving celebration. Actually, the week started out on a pleasant non-work related note, as I got to be a father for the first time in Honduras. GODfather, that is. I was asked by German Ortega (the family with the finca in the mountains) to be the Godfather for his 5 year old daughter at her kindergarten graduation. We all got dressed up, I bought her a little skirt and top, we went to her graduation ceremony, took lots of pictures, and called it a day. Check out the pictures here, she’s terribly cute.
After the graduation, I had to go back to Hermandad to work on a project with the Womens Cooperative CICAL (Cooperativa Industrial Conservador de Alimentos Limitada). This week there was a forum in Santa Rosa (Pictures) about food production in Honduras, and CICAL was invited to participate. However, Xiomara (the administrator) is a little behind when it comes to marketing, so we sat down and talked about what we wanted to do and put together a quick little display to show off our products. Tuesday morning we headed off to Santa Rosa.
Oh man, I totally forgot how much I love selling stuff. First of all, I have a natural advantage, being a gringo, people are inherently interested in me. Imagine some sort of supermodel (yes, I’m making a comparison between myself and a supermodel) that attracted not only men or women of a certain age, but the whole spectrum. It’s amazing. The women come over and stare at my eyes (regáleme sus ojos), the kids think I’m a giant, and the men want to know my opinion on the best place to cross the Rio Grand (Don’t worry, I have a great speech on the dangers of illegal immigration). It’s gotten so much better now that I can speak Spanish more or less fluently, because my gringo powers bring them over and my Spanish ability sends them off with some of our delicious encurtido de jilote (baby corn).
We sold about 1250 lempiras worth of product (70 bucks), but that was about half of what we brought. However, there were a number of important accomplishments:
- Meeting contacts in other NGOs and government organizations that want to help us sell our product in new markets.
- Getting Xiomara into the action. By the second day she was a lot more active as a saleswoman and I even made her give an interview on the local television station.
- Further proving my abilities to the people of Hermandad.
That last one is a personal goal of mine, and has a huge impact on my work here. One of the difficulties of Peace Corps, for me, has been the language. When I came to San Marcos, I was a completely different person in Spanish than I am today. My ability to express myself, make commentary, and get things done, has grown enormously. The result is that coworkers are beginning to take note that I can be of more assistance than I previously was. I think I spoke earlier of Claudio complimenting my work and how that meant a lot to me, well this time I got a compliment from one of the jefe’s himself, Alcides, when he told me that he was sure glad he brought me (sí, valió la pena traerlo, Peter!) and that he needed my help on another project when I had time.
So that’s where we are in San Marcos right now. The work with CICAL is what most interests me at this moment:
- Recruiting new members to the Cooperative
- Establishing contracts or another mechanism to ensure supply of raw material
- Smoothing out the production process
- Developing some basic marketing
- Expanding into new markets, acquiring new distributors
I’m also working on slightly more boring, but necessary, accounting and information management problems. We’re setting up controls to help those small rural banks I spoke about earlier, manage their loan portfolios, track balances, and know when accounts are overdue, etc. I also continue to work with AESMO, a local environmental protection NGO, and we hope to launch their website before I leave. Lastly, I want to get out into the fields before I leave and do some coffee cutting. If I ever want to have my vast Honduran coffee empire, I better at least learn how to cut it off the plant.
Ok, I plan to upload a bunch of pictures today, and there are some great shots, so check it out. Also, shoot me an email if you’re planning on being in Seattle over Christmas or Los Angeles in January (6th-9th, I believe I’ll be there).
