Peter in Honduras

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!

One year ago today I was sitting in a conference room at the Double Tree Inn looking for the first time at my fellow Honduras 8 Peace Corps Volunteers. I was nervous the night before about meeting this group of people with whom I would spend the next three months, but upon meeting everyone, I remember a sense of relief, sort of like “Hey, these people are all just like me…”

Well now it’s 2007, and I’m sitting at my “desk” (plastic table with improvised shelf made of old Corn Flakes boxes cover by cloth)

getting ready to go to work, boiling water on the stove because it’s kind of chilly and I don’t feel like a drippy cold shower. There isn’t anyone in San Marcos who’s “just like me,” but that’s okay, it makes me feel special.

In fact, sticking out like this is a very new sensation that I’ve experienced the last year. For the first 23 years of my life, I never stuck out, well, at least not for more than the length of a vacation to China as a little blond boy strutting about the Forbidden City like he owned the place or as an American tourist banging his head on subway doors in Tokyo. In the United States as a 24 year old, blond, blue eyed, six foot something white guy, I settle comfortably into the norm. In Honduras, on the other hand, I’m a spectacle.

I can make a child laugh by taking off my sunglasses to reveal I have blue eyes. And the ladies at the convenience store love me because they don’t have to go get the broom to knock down the boxes of Corn Flakes on the top shelf. Of course, there are the down sides too. I don’t fit in busses, everywhere I walk I get a combination of cat calls, “gringo!”, and stares. I bang my head on everything, and photos usually turn out very asymmetrical.

But 80% of the time, I don’t mind all this. In fact, I think it’s one of the hidden reasons that Peace Corps is such an important experience. Thinking back on my experiences in foreign countries as a tourist, I realize that you don’t get the same class of experience. When foreigners come to San Marcos for brief stays (like the medical brigade), they enjoy the charm of being to outside, but I don’t think they fully understand how ridiculous they look or experience that long term feeling of not belonging, since they are surrounded by their compatriots and cushioned by their tour guide or program director. I also think of immigrants to the United States. Does a Honduran who moves to Los Angeles feel like he sticks out? Well, dining in that Honduran restaurant on the eve of my return to Honduras I felt more like I was in San Pedro Sula than in Honduras.

So, while there is the 20% of the time I just feel like screaming at kids who yell nonsense at me trying to imitate the sounds of English, or I try to tune out the shouts of “gringo” as I pass by, I can’t say that there’s anyplace else I’d rather be right now than Honduras. Well… maybe in the hot tub at Diamond Point.

And now for that bucket shower….

I got back to San Marcos about three days ago, but it already feels like ages ago. It’s strange, being in Honduras feels very normal. However, there was nothing normal about my trip from LA to San Marcos: it was perfect! I got on the plane at the stroke of midnight, and was asleep by 12:05am. Landing at dawn in San Salvador was beautiful, sweeping views of volcanoes backlit by the rising sun. A quick stop through customs where they accepted without argument my Honduran residency credentials (no $10 tourist fee) led to me to be standing on the curb at the airport, looking at my watch, scratching my head, and wondering how I was going to lug 125 pounds of stuff through three busses to San Marcos. I called a taxi.

Worried about returning to the Spanish speaking world, I had to good fortune to dine with Tim Schlosser in LA the night I left, and of all the places in Koreatown, we ended up at a Honduran restaurant. The waitress got a kick out of the fact I was going back to Honduras (she herself being from outside San Pedro, having left 7 years ago) and I got in some good spanish practice, putting me at ease that I had not forgotten the language.

Still not quite confident, I launched into a great conversation with the taxista about his taxi driving cooperative and how cooperatives aren’t necessarily the mortal enemies of capitalism (my viewpoint). We agreed to disagree and he was very friendly, taking me right to the bus I wanted and suggesting alternatives after viewing the giant bag I was carrying. Stepping onto the good old 119 from San Salvador to the Honduran border, I was surprised to be moving as soon as I took my seat. 3 hours later (the normal travel time, despite the fact the route is 95 kilometers long) we arrived at El Poy. Touting my residency card, I stuck up my nose at immigration procedures, and with the tacit approval of the heavily armed border guards and the friendly Salvadorans giving me a grin, I walked back “home.”

Once again, a waiting bus departed at my command, dropping me into the arms of another idling bus that lurched forward as soon as my back foot left the pavement. Reveling in my good fortune, I took my uncomfortable seat and passed out. Awakening, I saw the San Marcos bus waiting for me at the highway junction, another stroke of good luck, which turned out to be a personal bus ride for me, as I was the only passenger. The ten minutes of familiar turns and landscapes brought an odd sense of homecoming, lessened only by the ten minute walk from the bus drop off to my front step under the crushing burden of my backpack. I was home.

Opening my front door at 1:30pm was a bit odd seeing as I had been in the U.S. of A. only a bit more than 12 hours ago, but the place was just like I left it, albeit with a few more spiders. I made it in to the office to say hi and get my computer back (left safely locked away). It was fun seeing all the familiar faces, although a bit trying making “the rounds” of hello’s and getting that same open ended “how was it?” question every time.

I worked Wednesday through Saturday, getting in a good day at the CICAL with Xiomara (who loved (maybe too strong a word) her Christmas present of an optical mouse). Friday I spent fighting with the AESMO webpage (www.aesmo.org) which just doesn’t want to display itself correctly at all.

Finally it’s the weekend after a shortened (but seemingly long) week and I went to the market this morning and got all sorts of vegetables to fill my empty-ish kitchen.

So what’s up next? Well, this week a medical brigade is coming to town. I’ve never been here for one of these, but apparently they set up free clinics and people come from all over to be seen by American docs. However, the doctors don’t speak much Spanish so yours truly is being asked to translate. Should be interesting.

Thanks again to everyone who took some time to see me over break, I had a great time and feel 100% refreshed and ready to get back to work here in Honduras.

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 1^st, as I write this in my kitchen with Beethoven’s 5^th 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 (6^th-9^th, I believe I’ll be there).

Time for an overdue blog entry.

Highlights of the past month:

- Rapid progression of work at the women’s cooperative

- Crazy Halloween Party in Copan

- Confianza building with coworkers

- Working retreat to Puerto Cortes

- And much more…

The problem with not writing a blog entry for a couple weeks is that when you finally sit down to write it there’s just too much stuff. You don’t want to leave anything out, but you can’t possible say everything. In sum, it’s overwhelming. Days turn to weeks, and before you know it, you haven’t updated your blog in a month (or if you’re a certain cousin, who shall remain nameless, Tim, two months!). The above doesn’t begin to describe it, but it’s a start. The last month has been productive on so many fronts, but to draw back the readership, I’ll put up a fun post, focused on our trip to Puerto Cortes last weekend.

As a member of the Hermandad family, I was invited to participate in our end of year evaluation. This was the first year they had left San Marcos, and it was decided that Puerto Cortes would be the destination. Puerto Cortes is in the upper left corner of Honduras, very close to the Guatemalan border. It has nice long beaches, unpleasantly strewn with trash.

The point of the weekend was to evaluate what we had done in 2006 and make plans for 2007. In my charge as Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz I presented what we had done. I presented on two projects: the workshops on capitalizing rural banking groups and my work with the women’s coop. My PowerPoint skills wowed them and the closing slide with me posing in front of the Honduran flag didn’t hurt. It was well received.

However, one of the points of my presentation was to show them how we can better organize the information we have. We run so many programs, with so many people that often times nobody has the full picture in front of them. I showed them a few tricks I had used to organize the capital raising plans we had developed with the rural banks as well as some of the sales and production registers we had created at the women’s coop. As a result of this now I have a ton of work because everyone wants to do the same with their own project. The trick will be making them learn how to do it themselves, not just doing it for them.

In the night we went swimming, hung out, and played pool. This was a huge confianza builder between us, as everyone switched to calling me in the informal tu form and joked and kidded around. I also got one of the highest compliments yet, from an older guy named Claudio, who told me that he appreciated my work here a lot and was impressed by my work ethic. I liked this a lot.

Saturday afternoon we put aside the work and went to play on the beach in Omoa. There are some terrific pics from this, which I’ll post shortly. We went out on one of those banana boats, two Hondurans fell off in the ocean (surprisingly wearing life preservers), and a good time was enjoyed by all. I also gave them some good water cooler material by going on a long walk on the beach with the cute girl from accounting.

We returned to San Marcos on Sunday, a bit tired, but refreshed. This week I’m working more with the ladies at the CICAL, finishing up a web page I started long ago, and celebrating my birthday this weekend. This is actually a serious production, as I have a number of different groups of friends that don’t easily mix. Friday we’re doing the Gringo only birthday, Saturday I’m doing my own private birthday celebration by sitting in an internet café to watch text updates of the USC-CAL game that will decide the Pac 10 championship, Sunday I’m going out with my neighbors to the farm, and Monday the English language class people are throwing me a party. Next week is Thanksgiving and we’re all going to Santa Rosa to have a Thanksgiving dinner together, but it just won’t be the same as in the U.S. Hope all is well, and I’ll try to update more frequently. Take care.

Que suerte, verdad? Two updates in one week? Unheard of! But I had to do it, and it´ll be a short one, because I just wanted to describe how wonderful this day was. Let´s read on…

As promised, I’ve uploaded some pics, 4 albums, actually.

The albums are:

The fair in Mercedes
Visit to some gorgeous waterfalls
Giving the workshop in Mercedes, and
Visiting the organic farm in El Salvador

You can click here or use the link on the sidebar. Remember that the newest albums always appear at the bottom and are organized by date for your convenience.
Also, as a disclaimer, I am forced to remind you that everything written on this blog is to be considered personal opinion of one Peter Thomas Schlosser, or as it would be in Spanish Pedro Tomas Castillo. What a powerful name. These writings should not be considered policy of the Peace Corps, the United States government, nor official policy towards North Korean agression.

Another week in the books, so we’ll start off with some fun facts:

77 – Number of days until I will be on an airplane, headed for Los EEUU
249 – Days I have been in Honduras, as of this writing
561 – Days left in my service, unless I choose to extend or finish early
30.74 – Percentage complete

This week was a fun and productive week, Que bueno, verdad? Monday I arrived back from an enjoyable weekend trip to San Pedro Sula, where I indulged in College Football, free Internet access, grocery stores that sell SMOKED CHEDDAR and hummus, and generally had a very enjoyable, albeit expensive, time.

Tuesday was El dia del Soldado, an official Holiday in Honduras, so I cleaned the house and otherwise busied myself preparing for the workshop I was going to give on Wednesday.

Wednesday my coworker Carmen and I delivered a training workshop that we called “Mecanismos de Capitalizacion” (Pictures here). We’ve given it three other times as well, so it’s getting pretty easy to do, although also a little more boring each time. The idea of the training is to talk about ways that our rural banks can raise capital, which they will in turn loan to their members, Los Socios. This, of course, turns into discussion of glorified bake sales, and such, but it’s good to get them thinking along these lines. What I’ve developed is just a simple sheet for them, where they can write a description of the activity, fill in the timeframe (according to month), a fundraising goal, a coordinator, etc, and at the end of the year they can see how they did. What I’ve realized though, is that we need to spend more time talking about goal setting, because they don’t really seem to have a firm grasp on this.

We also spend a good chunk of time on basic math and how to use a calculator. This is painfully slow for me, but terribly necessary, as many don’t understand how to operate the calculator. We also struggle through interest rates and other financial calculations. We had a debate on Wednesday about whether 1.925 rounds up or down, and luckily I was able to convince them that it is indeed 1.93. It’s the little battles that are important, right? Along that line, I had a great conversation with what must have been a 70 year old woman in the market, and she warned me that it is ILLEGAL to possess maps in Honduras. Not having the heart to correct her, I told her I owned many maps, but perhaps some types of maps were indeed illegal, but I, not being a map expert, wouldn’t be qualified to say.

Thursday was perhaps the pinnacle of the week. The whole PRODERT (a project administered at Hermandad de Honduras, my NGO) went to El Salvador to observe an organic farm (Check out these great pics). First, it’s a good feeling to be “part of the team.” There was no question if I was going or not, it was just assumed. This made me feel good. I also got a nice compliment from my counterpart, who, while introducing me to a new coworker and explaining my various roles at Hermandad, remarked “Actually, Peter works in all the projects here!” “Si, jefe” le dije.

So the organic farm was great, we got to tour all the facilities, the highlight for me being the processing plant. It was very simple, but so effective. Presentation is something Hondurans have not learned, and these Salvadorans had it down. Everything was washed and put in nicely labeled plastic bags, driven in an air conditioned truck to the big supermarket chain. The owner was also very passionate about organic foods and environmental concerns, which was refreshing to hear. I carried off some Cebollín, (green onions) which we don’t have here in San Marcos.

Yesterday, Friday, I continued the lessons with Xiomara, the administrator at the Women’s Coop. This is going okay, although sometimes I feel like we’re not making much progress, but every little bit matters, and she’s definitely learning a lot more about Excel. Plus, I’ll be here for the next 19 months to keep giving her guidance, so she’s got that safety net. One thing I do like about this work is that it really fulfills, for me, what the point of Peace Corps is- delivering one-on-one assistance to small business owners, who otherwise wouldn’t get this kind of training and advice. I visit her twice a week, we talk about things at the Cooperative, talk about life in Honduras, life in the United States, and work together on making the Coop a better run place. Good stuff, no?

Pues, si, now it’s the weekend and I plan to relax, clean the house, and cook me some good food. The San Pedro trip devastated the October budget, so I’ll be eating my low cost favorite: Rice, squash, tomatoes, onions, eggs, cheese, and hot sauce. Tasty.

When was the last time you hear that song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

Remember that Sunday night feeling when you were in high school? It was always a mixed bag. You’d just enjoyed two days, relatively relaxing, doing things of your choosing, and now you had that weight beginning to press down on your shoulders, just a little bit, but growing heavier, the reminder of the responsibilities and work to come in the week ahead. Maybe you have a little homework still undone, and that test is coming up Wednesday, which you still haven’t studied for, but on the bright side there’s a good game of Sunday night football on, and besides, you’re going out to eat pretty soon… maybe you can forget those worries for a few more hours. 

Well, that’s kind of where I am tonight, Sunday night in San Marcos. The church bells are ringing, I can hear music and singing, and I just came inside after sitting on my front step eating dates and almonds, enjoying the fading light as I watched the mountains, the palm trees, and the sky all fade into one. I had a great day, hiking out to a waterfall with my friend, Adam, swimming around in natural pools, and eating a makeshift lunch while sitting on a hot rock. But there’s that weight again, Monday is coming, announcing it’s presence in the pit on my stomach.

Now, I generally don’t mind Mondays, rather I usually like them. But the last week was both difficult and draining, which has left me less than psyched for the week to come. Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way, but this time feels different because I actually have things to do. Normally when I’m not excited about a week it’s because I’m lacking a plan or a course of action, but this week I’ve got tons to do, various commitments that I can’t back out of now-I’m just not excited to do them. 

Monday, September 25, 2006

Well that was how I felt last night, when I gave up writing the blog and went to go watch a mediocre game of Sunday Night Football, one of my “I feel like I’m in the U.S.” moments (except that the broadcast is in Spanish). Today I’m feeling a lot more motivated. In contrast to last week, this week has started off on the right foot and greatly improved my mood. 

I came into the HDH Office at the stroke of 8 and made up a little map of what I wanted to do for the day. Thusly organized, I decided to drop in on the Monday meeting of Project Prodert because it is for their benefit that I am delivering these workshops on Capitalization, so I figured it would be good to be in the know. Well the meeting lasted two hours, but was great, and they even gave me some good ideas for the next workshop, a few changes that will make it flow a lot smoother.

So now I’ve got my week mapped out, a general battle plan of how to get it all done, and a bit more enthusiasm on my side. 

On tap for this week is more “Excel, Computers, and You,” taught by Prof. Schlosser to the ladies of the Cooperative La CICAL. This week we’re going to work on creating our own Cost of Goods sheet, complete with time saving formulas. Wednesday and Thursday I’ll spend up in the mountains of Mercedes, right on the border with El Salvador, giving a workshop on how to make a plan to raise capital in the small rural banks we organize. We’ll talk about old ideas, new ideas, and ways to get it all organized better, plus a little review on how to calculate interest rates over different periods of time and more on how to keep records of loans, etc.

I’ll keep it short this time, but plan to be back next week to let you know how it all went

Adios.

Yes, the blog has suffered, but again, this time, with reason. For you see, I’ve been out of San Marcos quite a bit lately. First, the series of visits and the family vacation, and now I just got back from a ten day stretch in Tegucigalpa and elsewhere. During the month of August I was in my site less time than I was out of it. I’ll explain.

Every year each project holds an event called “Reconnect.” This serves to get all the volunteers from a specific project together to share ideas, experiences, and actually get to see one another. The business project held it’s reconnect last week in Tegucigalpa, up in the hills in a nice little hotel/conference center. But those of you who are geographically oriented will note that Teguz is a loooooooong way from San Marcos, about 9 hours in bus, so I took this opportunity to do a little visiting while I was out an about.

I spent a day with my former host sister in Tegucigalpa, finally getting to see her house there, I went to Danli for two days and visited my host family, spending one day swimming in a river way out in the eastern countryside of Honduras (beautiful), went to Carnival in Danli, got pickpocketed for my cellphone, and generally enjoyed myself. On Tuesday I headed back towards Teguz to attend our project workshop (Reconnect).

The workshop was held up in Hotel Las Gloriales, perched up in the mountains above Teguz, where all the ambassadors and international workers live. What amazes me is that even in these supposedly affluent areas, the roads peter out into dirt and you never seem to lose site of that 3^rd world poverty. It’s been my experience that even in very poor countries, you tend to find areas where you couldn’t tell you’re even in the country. I haven’t found this to be the case with Honduras, at least as far as public areas go. Sure, you see wealthy estates, but these are behind barbed wire fences and guard stations. It seems like Honduras is still enduring the legacy of its history: people come here, say that their being here is going to help the country (ie Banana companies building railroads), but then only develop a small part for themselves, and leave the rest of the country in the same (or worse) condition than before. I asked a coworker about this once, asking why people don’t do anything about this. His answer: “The Honduras people bear it.” How do you change a country’s mentality? Maybe the Peace Corps should think about that.

But back to the project workshop. It was great to see all my fellow volunteers, many of which I hadn’t seen for 4 months. We shared experiences, talked about challenges, and discussed this issues we wanted to see raised at the project workshop. They fed us, gave us beds, and treated us like hotel guests — it was great. Every day we’d start at 8am and finish at 5pm, which was a bit long given the amount of stuff we packed into each day, leaving my head feeling a bit swollen. In the evenings we had music and dancing and one night we even organized a Monopoly tournament, in which I shared the first place prize, taking an early monopoly on Baltic and Mediterranean (for which I gave up Boardwalk), and then expanding into the light blues and Virginia, States, and St. Charles’. The great part is that we got to keep the board games, which are in Spanish, so I’m looking forward to playing with the kids in my town. Mom never lets me forget that Monopoly is how I first learned to read.

The workshop ended well, we formed Task Forces to work in three specific areas: Working with Artisan Groups, Developing Business Themed Games for Kids, and finally a Task Force focused on developing Business Plans for small businesses. I am part of the latter, where I specifically want to focus on the marketing of small businesses and possibly web design as well. I was thinking it might be useful to set up a basic web template that any business could use by simply adding it’s information and filler material. Just a thought, the task force meets again in two months.

The Reconnect workshop thusly finished, I headed out Friday morning, the 1^st of September, stopping about 4 hours out of Teguz at my friend Andrea’s site, Pena Blanca. The plan was to crash there one night and continue on to San Pedro Sula, hoping to catch the first weekend of college football, because SPS gets the English feed from a Colorado ABC Station and a New York CBS station. Well, one of the guys I was traveling with ended up getting Dengue, so he had to stay in Pena, but I survived the mosquitos and traveled on to San Pedro. But alas, to my chagrin, neither station carried the USC game, I was forced to watch a mediocre Notre Dame game, interspersed with a few USC highlights in a 50-14 victory over Arkansas. Thusly encouraged by USC’s performace, I returned to good ole San Marcos de Ocotepeque on Sunday, thoroughly exhausted.

Adjusting back to site is never easy, but it seems like it’s getting a little easier each time. It seems like I always have to answer all those annoying questions: “How was your vacation?”, “I thought you had gone back to the United States”, with the response: “Remember, I told you last week that I was leaving and would return this day…” But now things are pretty much back to normal and I’m getting down to work on some projects.

On the forefront is my work with this women’s cooperative, La Cical. We’re computerizing all their paperwork, and I’m trying to teach them how to use Excel and Word, but it’s going to take some time. It’s hard to make people realize that once they learn the system it will save them SO much time. I’m also working with AESMO (an Environmental Preservation group) in translating proposals and creating a website. At Hermandad the work continues, as always, we’re trying to create a system to manage the small groups of farmers they work with, creating forms to evaluate and track their performance, so that we can see what works and what doesn’t.

On top of that, it’s all just the normal day to day stuff: experimenting with cooking new foods, cleaning out the Pila, and keeping my giant house clean. All in a day’s work.