Still not in Kansas
As I grabbed for a grapefruit that zinged through the air over my head in the Ambassador’s private pool in Honduras, I realized once again with a certain twist of my stomach that my life was not going to be normal again for another two years. The ambassador lends his mansion every year so that the newly sworn-in Peace Corps Volunteers may run amok (including playing monkey-in-the-middle with fruit in his pool) together for the last time before they are scattered about the country. One of the volunteers broke his nose playing volleyball in the ambassador’s beach volleyball court, but at least he’ll have a good story to tell about it.

My site is a cute little pueblo in the mountains near a beautiful cloud-forest covered national reserve. The community turns out to be far, far flung from the pictures I had in my head of grandmothers in hand-woven shawls slapping out tortillas by candlelight, wizened farmers, tired but content with their life’s work, keeping their families just afloat over the threat of hunger. Nada que ver- nothing to do with it. Rather the little town has electricity, running water, abundant cars and trucks, a handful of university degrees, a wealth of knowledge on large-scale farming, people who eat cornflakes for breakfast, and a pool. Yes, a pool. They fill its hospital-blue cement basin with water from the river on Easter and charge tourists to use it. My host brothers can talk over my head about cooperative administration and accounting. It’s an intimidating change from my village in Tanzania where having graduated high school set you apart from the rest of the world. Yesterday I helped a women’s cooperative plant lettuce and cauliflower in soil imported from Canada. The finished products will end up in El Salvador and Nicaragua in none other than that gaudy pillar of western commercialism: Burger King.

What am I going to be doing here? I’m working with an NGO that co-manages the reserve to better the farming practices in and around the park. But in short, so far I have absolutely no idea of what I will actually be doing. I’ll keep you posted.