Typing this on a scorching September morning with Celine Dion blasting from an adjoining office. Could life be better?
So remember that post I wrote an eternity ago about my work? How I work with FAO, an organization working on food security, and trek around the campo building chicken coups, planting corn, and giving charlas on cajas rurales? Well, as I have learned in my short time here, just when you think you have everything lined up and perfect, it blows up in your face. As a fellow volunteer Carrie says, “Honduras always wins, it always wins.”
Let me fill you in. I put in two months of diligent work with my counterparts, gaining their trust and confidence. As I talked about in my last post, I worked with a bunch of twenty-year old, college educated guys and gals who were a lot of fun to be around. After FAO shut down the Pespire office (another long story) and moved all the operations to a town 15 minutes away, my counterparts and I pretty much roamed all over the Pespire area. Everyday (10 days working, 4 off) Bayron, my main counterpart, would pick me up and we would either work out in the campo or in the office. It wasn’t an ideal setup as I was at their mercy and schedule when it came to getting a ride. I also was seldom in Pespire, my actual site, during the day. However, after two months, I had built a rapport with Bayron and my other counterpart Marissa and was starting to work with them on different projects. Then, Honduras reared her ugly head and decided to erase two months of work.
One morning as Bayron picked me up, he simply said, “Brayton, me voy a Gracías.” This translates, “Brayton, I’m going to Gracías (permanently) and I think you’re the best Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras (I might have made up the last half of that). As the week went on, seemingly everyone I worked with and liked were either let go, or transferred. How it works is FAO employs most of their people on six-month contracts. As this was the end of the project cycle, the contracts were up and because this next project received a massive cut in funding, people had to be let go. Which is fine, they all knew this from the beginning. However, the way the head honchos at FAO went about it will not make it into a human resources textbook. Instead of, oh I don’t know, giving some advanced notice, they let everyone know a day or two before their contract was up that it wasn’t going to be renewed. This obviously caused a lot of unneeded consternation and it was awkward hanging around the office as a volunteer who wasn’t in either camp. Thus, all that time I had put in was for not and it was back to square one with a different counterpart. Again, Honduras always wins.
However, there was a silver lining to this whole experience. As awesome as my counterparts at FAO were, I had become a little too dependent on them. This change allowed me to broaden my scope a little and actually be a volunteer to Pespire, not just FAO. In the ensuing weeks I started working with the Mancommunidad (hard to explain, an organization that receives funds from the government to implement different projects more or less). With FAO, they started a store that sells agricultural supplies to farmers who are members of a caja rural at discounted rates. It’s sort of like a Tractor Supply merged with a Sam’s Club only much, much smaller. My role in all of this has been creating spreadsheets to track their sales and inventory, and creating a database with the names of all of their members. That has kept me busy for the past month or so and there’s always something that needs fixed. However, I’m now ready to move and explore some new horizons. One project that I’ll start on shortly is a water system project where I’ll monitor the use of funds and implementation. It’s sort of complicated, but the short story is a former volunteer in the States has lined up the funding and I’ll be the point man, distributing the money and making they actually build a water system. I’m going to be working with a fellow volunteer (nicknamed Rojo for his ginger complexion) so I’m looking forward to that. We still have a lot of paperwork and red tape to fight through so it might be a while. Also, I’m going to be working with another organization in town to promote recycling and hopefully start a permanent recycling effort. So stay tuned.
Totally switching gears here, I have to write about the Cardinals improbable winning of the wildcard. I’m still on cloud 9 two days later and as Jack Buck would say, “I don’t believe what I just saw!” (or followed on ESPN gamecast). I tried to explain the significance of what happened to the people at my office and they were like, “so your baseball won the championship?” Uhh, not exactly, they just won the last spot to get into an eight-team playoff…but still, it’s awesome! This, combined with my futile effort trying to explain fantasy football, I think, seriously makes them wonder how America is the leader of free world. Sure, they’ll probably get bulldozed by the Phillies and Pujols will leave in free agency, but I don’t even care anymore. Best finish to a season, ever!
As always, I appreciate my loyal readership and love fan mail, so don’t hesitate to drop an email.
Proud to be an American, even prouder to be a Razorback[1]
Brayton
The Rand Family 