Happy Independence Day Honduras!!! (September 15)

Happy 1 year anniversary in site Brian and Jessica (September 27)

Well, needless to say it has been awhile since our last blog post. A lot has been going on since then….kind of. First, I will update a few things from the last post. We started and finished our teamwork/creative projects program with another elementary school. It was a lot of work, and a little more difficult this time around, but it went well. We did this one at a school that is about an hour walk outside of town, so we did get some exercise traveling out there. We also, after a few delays, started Project Citizen with a class in the High School. We are still waiting on the certificates of completion for our Educatodos students (we have been waiting since March).

There is a NGO, named Shoulder to Shoulder, that is building a health clinic in an aldea (Santa Ana) of Colomoncagua. In July, three people from Texas arrived (Erin, Joey and Katie). Erin is working on her PhD in Epidemiology from Baylor University, and came to Colomoncagua to do a study for her dissertation. Erin worked in conjunction with Shoulder to Shoulder and the Doctor in our town that is running their clinic. They asked us to help them out with the study…..and it was the start of a wonderful friendship. Over the next six weeks Joey left, Becky came, then Katie left (that left Erin and Becky). The study consisted of 3 parts: 1) an interview with the mother of a child under 5 years, 2) weighing and measuring the child under 5 and 3) a group discussion with the parents and other community members about the general health of the community. The goal was to collect data from all of the communities that the clinic will serve (The new clinic is supposed to be built and ready to open in December). Erin was able to employ a small team of local Hondurans to help out as well. Jess and I traveled to 8 communities to help. We were generally in each community all day doing the interviews and helping with the group discussion. Erin, with the help of everyone, was able to gather all the data that she and Shoulder to Shoulder needed, and she and Becky headed back to the US on September 6.

We enjoyed helping with the study. We made some new friends, new community contacts and had some good times. To get to one of the communities, La Hacienda Grande (which is actually quite small), we had to walk across a river! The water was only shin deep, but still. The roads are too bad to drive out there, so this is something that the townspeople have to do whenever they want/need to come into town.

So, what are we up to now? We are still teaching our Educatodos classes. I am teaching 9th grade, and Jessica is teaching 8th grade (these classes are an alternative to school, so our students range in age from 15 to 40+). We are on schedule to finish right around Thanksgiving, which is our goal. We want to wrap up classes and get the students their certificates of completion before we head back to the States for Christmas. We also started Project Citizen in the High School. This is a program that was created by the Center of Civic Education in Calabasas, CA. They have adjusted it and been working to do it in various countries around the world. It was brought to Honduras a few years ago by a few Peace Corps volunteers. In this project, the students (working in groups) choose a local problem, investigate the causes and consequences of the problem, and then propose a solution that can be carried out on the local level. It is a good project for the students because it makes them realize that they can be responsible for solving their communities’ problems instead of waiting for the government or someone else to do it.

In October a medical brigade from the US (Missoula, Montana) is coming to La Esperanza for two weeks. We are going to work with them, translating and doing whatever else they need. We are expecting a medical brigade here in Colo as well. They will be working through the clinic that I mentioned above, and the Doctor (Doctora Carol) running the clinic asked us to help them out. This will keep us pretty busy in the coming months, as we await our trip home for Christmas.

As I mentioned above, September 27 is our one year anniversary for arriving in Colomoncagua. That means that we are almost at the point where we have less than a year left (We finish our service on Sept. 25, 2009). Some days we can’t believe that we have already been in Honduras for 15 months, and other days we can’t believe that we still have a year left.
That is all for now. Remember, that we love to hear from you! Write us an email and let us know what is going on stateside.

-Brian