My Site!

So, my site! I’m dying to share some of what I know about my future home for two years. On Friday, I only got clues from my interview with my supervisors but after conspiring with the other aspirantes, my host family, and current volunteers, I am about 98% sure I know where I’m going from our list of nineteen sites. There are only about six people who are completely unsure of where they’re going; the rest of us know or have it narrowed down to one or two sites. But I’ll go forward for now without naming anything since it’s still a bit uncertain.

I also want to say that most of the stuff they told me took me by surprise. I don’t know why, but I was picturing myself in a big city, kind of running around and trying to save money and stay safe. When they were telling me things during the interview, I was at first surprised but not upset. I hope my face didn’t show that, at least. But by the time we were through talking, I was thrilled and smiley and just really happy and excited to share with everyone everything I knew. OK I don’t really know where to start here…

But I guess a good place to start is why I’m in the site. There is a big population of children with disabilities in my site. My supervisors suggested I could make it my own project to try and record some data about all this (locations, ages, types of disability, etc. of the people with disabilities) or try to work with the health center/nearby health volunteer or something to try and hypothesize why this might be. But really, I was put there because the town has requested someone with experience working with people with disabilities. They want someone to work closely with the teachers to try and help them figure out how to teach the students with disabilities and work with the parents as well. That is all super exciting to me.

So that’s why I’m put in the site. As far as description of the town, it’s an aldea (dictionary translation: village or hamlet, which is kind of funny), which basically means it’s a small offshoot of a bigger town (which has a real center but can also be very small or rural). The aldeas can be really far from the town or pretty close, but I’m imagining mine is on the far side since it was described several times as “very rural.” I would never have chosen a rural site for myself, but I’m actually really excited to live there with the choice made for me. Another amazing part of my site is that it’s up in the mountains. This means it’s beautiful and, most importantly, cool. I’m so lucky that the site that specifically requested someone with experience with people with special needs happens to be up in the cool mountains. It’s also a coffee-growing community.

Since it’s up in the mountains, I think I’m somewhat isolated. But the nearest PC person is a current health volunteer, only twenty minutes away. If I’m where I think, there are a lot of other volunteers on my side of the country in general, though not so many in my actual department (equivalent to state). I forgot to ask how close the nearest person from my training group will be. There has been a YD volunteer there before; I’m unsure about when exactly she left. I am also within two hours of two big cities. I am about two hours from a very big city and an hour and a half from a big city. So in Honduran terms, those are relatively close by. I still have to look at a map to figure out which cities those are. I need to buy a map, actually.

The family that I’ll start off living with sounds great. They’re the same family the previous volunteer lived with, so I know they’re pretty good and the volunteer spoke extremely highly of the mother’s cooking, saying to tell me to eat all my meals there and savor it while I’m living there (she moved out sometime after the two months required). So hopefully I can learn a lot from her, my host mom. She’s a single mom and she has four girls, but they’re all older and unmarried. My supervisor said they’re all around “my age” with the youngest being around 17, which is kind of cool. I think it will almost make me feel like living with roommates or something rather than little or big sisters (the oldest one is late twenties). They have lots of pets apparently, including a turtle. Good to know, I guess.

Speaking of pets, the volunteer there before me had her own horse. Like, she bought and cared for an actual horse of her own. Kind of crazy and not something I think I’m capable of. But they told me this when I asked about a bike. PC provides bikes for those who request them and show that they’d use them in their sites. My supervisors told me the previous volunteer (I can’t wait until I can just use her name) said she didn’t want a bike because it was too hilly and mountainous to ride, but that kind of intrigued me. I’ll see how it is when I get there. They said I could definitely have a dog though, which is awesome.

Finally, my official work with my official counterparts. I have three of them, and the main one is the principal of the only school in the aldea, a centro basico, which is basically a school for kids in first through ninth grades. There is a teacher for each grade and the school is a fantastic one, according to everyone. The teachers all work during the strikes and even during vacations. Only some of them live in the aldea (some travel to the school) but they’re all really involved and passionate about teaching and learning and the students. Since they’ve had a volunteer before, they’re all ready to have more of the same programs they’ve started (Joven a Joven, Yo Merezco) and they’re ready to start more (school for parents, TEAM). This all sounds really great and like I’ll get to work with a variety of ages, which is cool -- plus all the student with disabilities, of course.

My second counterpart is a library (biblioteca). There is a type of library here in Honduras called a Rieken library, which was started by a former PC volunteer and can be found in lots of places all across the country. The Rieken foundation (based out of the US) provided funds for librarians to be paid, books to be bought, and internet/computers to be used in each library. Unfortunately, the company that funded all this fell with the economy about a year and a half ago and had to stop virtually all of its funding. So it’s really sad; all the Rieken libraries across Honduras are all still standing but many are completely nonfunctional. However, my town still has it functioning as a library, with one full time librarian but no more internet. So she is another counterpart and they want my focus with her and the library to be on improving reading and writing (like having tutoring or something in the library), early stimulation programs (basically starting Mommy and Me type classes with parents and young children), arts and crafts with the littlest kids, and helping run the youth group (Zona X) that was already started by the previous volunteer. That all sounds really cool to me too, and I definitely might be calling on Darby and Janis for some help with some of those things.

Finally, my third counterpart is a health center (centro de salud). I’m really excited about working with them and general and figuring out ways to work with them. But the programs they have set up that they specifically mentioned wanting help with so far are definitely things that will challenge me. They want me to help out with the pregnancy club (clubs for pregnant women to share information about pregnancy, childbirth, staying healthy, all that stuff) and with giving charlas/information in whatever way to mothers for how to help young kids stay healthy and have life skills and everything. They also want me to form some sort of teen pregnancy prevention program. Again, all of these are things I have virtually no experience doing but it will certainly be interesting to try it all out.

So those are my three counterparts. My supervisors also mentioned the possibility of working with/starting sports teams, helping out at the local kinder, working with the patronato (like the group of involved citizens that meets and makes suggestions to the government), and helping out with women who want to start exporting honey. However, the previous volunteer said to only give me those three counterparts because I will have more than enough work with just them. Here’s the only really negative part of the entire site: I’m replacing a super volunteer. Like, I was told that in those words by my supervisors. Super volunteers are just what they sound like; they are incredibly amazing and successful and involved volunteers that are universally loved and respected and accomplished lots of things in their sites. I wouldn’t have minded replacing or not replacing a volunteer, but I did not want to replace a super volunteer (or a bad volunteer). It gives me a lot to live up to. One other person in our group was told they were replacing a super volunteer too, so hopefully together we can at least not disappoint our communities too much!

Anyway, that’s what I know as of now. It was mentioned to me that sometimes the information given to us at this point is not always completely correct. I don’t want to get into that now, but I’m still pretty sure I know where I’m going. Only ONE MORE DAY until we know everything!