I will be serving as a Protected Areas Management Volunteer with the Peace Corps in Honduras from June 2010 to September 2012. I will also be conducting research for my MS in Forestry from MTU.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Whew...first week at sight completed

Alright, since I updated last time I have successfully sworn in at the US embassy. I'm a real Peace Corps Volunteer now!!! The last few weeks of training were great. I'm sad to leave all the awesome friends I made, but it's time! This is what we came here for.

So, I have been assigned to work with the Agricultural University in the wild department of Olancho. As the locals say "Olancho, donde entra lo que quiere y sale lo que puede." --where enter those who want to, but leave those who can-- With only three PCV's from my group in the entire department, I thought it might feel a little lonely, but I have two awesome PAM volunteers right up the mountain, and it's my job to go visit them, get to know their sights, and involve university students in extension work up there. Pretty awesome job description.

In this first week, I've been getting to know the faculty in my department (natural resource management). I've been assisting with one of the university modulos where we've been developing a Pech botanical garden out on our demonstration organic farm. The Pech community we are working with is about three hours away, but I got to travel up there last Friday to help bring down more plants for the garden. It's in the beginning phases still, but we've put in about 120 native plants used by the community, and we'll eventually have it filled with 1500. The organic farm is also still in the beginning phases, but it's also my job to help them get established. We are trying right now to get the chickens, rabbits, and goats into pens so they stop eating our plants and start producing usable manure.

I've also started working with a women's group out in one of the aldeas with another PCV. We successfully had our first meeting, and I'll be going back out tomorrow to brainstorm ideas with the group's leaders. Spanish is coming along too. I was pretty intimidated to have to speak and teach here at the university, but the students and the faculty have been awesome and patient with my Spanish level. As always, I still believe the key learning Spanish is watching "Soy Tu Duena!" the best telenovela available in Honduras. Reading books in Spanish also might help, but watching the novela is certainly more fun and less work ;)

I was also excited to get a chance to go meet one of the local bird experts. He lives up the mountain in an area still forested (cuz he bought and protected it), where people still see white faced monkeys, jaguarundies, and tucans. I'll have to work my way up there as much as possible.

Alright friends, that's all for now. Stay tuned to see what happens next!

Love, Ruth