If You Can't Handle the Heat...

(written 5/5/09)

Don’t come visit me in Orocuina! As many of you may already know, yesterday I found out I will be serving my next 2 years in Orocuina, Choluteca. Choluteca is the southernmost department of Honduras that borders Nicaragua. My site, Orocuina, is a relatively small town with about 6000 people living in Orocuina proper and over 8,000 living in surrounding aldeas (kinda like villages). The city is only an hour outside the department’s capital and the third largest city in Honduras, Choluteca, and about 3 ½ hours from Teguz which should make future travel easier than a lot of other sites. Most people make their living through small scale farming of beans, corn, sugar cane, watermelons, cantaloupes, and peppers. My principle work counterparts will include two women’s’ groups, one which makes hammocks and another that makes spices, as well as the local municipality and schools. I am really excited because this is the type of work I have the most interest in and exactly the type of projects I pictured myself working with when I first started applying for the Peace Corps.

After my last technical interview I was pretty sure I was going to Orocuina based on my work interests and site size preferences but I kept myself from doing any research or getting my hopes up so that it would still be a surprise. And even though I knew where I was going, the site announcement process was pretty torturous because Jesus and Jorge (the Business PTS) enjoyed dragging it out and watching us all suffer while they described all 17 sites and pointing them out on the map before telling us which site was ours. As part of the process we made a tape outline of Honduras on the floor with all the sites marked out so once Jesus and Jorge were finally ready to announce our sites they called us each down one by one to receive our packet of info and stand on our site. Once all the sites were announced, I looked around and was a little sad to see that all my friends have been placed really far from me. In fact only 4 volunteers out of all 44 are being sent to sites in the south. However, I am trying to look on the bright side that I will be forced to integrate that much quicker with the locals and I will also have a ton of beautiful places to visit. Now all we can talk about is what our sites are supposed to be like and how we are going to get there (we are all praying our counterparts have a car because if not we will have to ride a public bus with ALL our luggage, basically saying please rob us!) More than anything I can’t wait to be sworn in and get to my new home for the next 2 years!

As far as training goes, today we were supposed to start our Business simulation with the local high school but as luck would have it today was the first day of a nationwide teacher strike so there was no school. I really hope we are still able to work something out though because the simulation is our final big project of training and supposed to be the most fun out of all the activities. But vamos a ver!