Life in Site

I know it has been awhile since my last blog and I am sure many of you are wondering what exactly I have been up to since then. Almost two months ago I arrived to my site – Erandique, Lempira. As I mentioned earlier, Erandique is a small town in the western part of Honduras. Initially, it was somewhat of a difficult adjustment. When I first arrived I didn’t know anyone or anything about the town, and in addition to missing all of my friends and family back home I was really having a hard time adjusting to daily life without my fellow Peace Corps volunteers. After being together for three whole months letting go proved to be a bit harder than I had anticipated. Thankfully, after a rough three weeks or so I made some new friends here in Erandique and what lifesavers they have been!

As far as work goes, things were slow going to begin with, however they are beginning to pick up. Recently, I gave two talks to a group of 3rd year high school students studying Business Administration. One talk focused on customer service, a concept that doesn’t really exist here, and the other on workplace/professional conduct. I was a bit nervous to give the talks, just because I don’t have too much experience teaching high school students, much less in Spanish. Luckily, the kids were excellent and we had a great time. Hopefully they also learned a few things.

In addition to that I give computer classes two times a week at the local cooperative. The cooperative serves as a banking institution for the rural population. People come from numerous aldeas (small rural communities) to conduct their banking business. The cooperative offers them savings and loan services that they otherwise would not have access to as no formal banking institutions exist here in Erandique or in the surrounding municipalities. Recently, the board of directors of the cooperative purchased a laptop for each board member and I having been teaching them the basics of Word, Excel and how to use the internet. They are a great group of people and we have a lot fun during our classes.

Lastly, I have also been doing my best to support a group of women that run a small water purification and bottling business. This has proved to be my most challenging project as the women were never really trained in small business operation or management. They currently have no accounting or inventory control system in place and are quite disorganized. There is also quite a bit of internal conflict, which we are trying desperately to resolve at the moment. It’s a great business with a ton of potential to succeed, there is just much we need to do to get to that point. Right now, this seems to be a project that is likely to take my entire two years of service to complete.

Other than that life is pretty low-key here in Erandique. It is a physically beautiful place, tucked away in the mountains of the department of Lempira. The people are kind and welcoming, and it helps that they are not unaccustomed to Peace Corps volunteers – there have been at least 7 past volunteers that I am aware of. Although I do not have a site mate (a fellow Peace Corps volunteer that also lives in my community) I do have plenty of close friends nearby and visiting them is always a blast.

That is just about all for now. I miss everyone so much and I cannot wait for people to start visiting!