goodbye, sabanagrande

It's been awhile. Sorry about that...around the time last week I was gonna take care of this, I was just unmotivated. Then some stuff came up that was more interesting to me. Without further ado, I present to you highlights from the last couple weeks.

Apparently word spread of my computer know-how. I told a few people I had skillz, so a few people came to me with generic software problems...reinstallation of Windows, reinstalling drivers without the original manufacturer's CD, etc. And I helped a couple other trainees successfully. So one trainee told her family that I knew a bit, and asked me to head to her house to take a look. It was a desktop, one of the horizontal chasis that the monitor can rest on top of. Never worked on something like that before, but I figured out the locations of major components easily enough. The thing wouldn't POST. Never good. Got a basic history of the problems, found out that over the past 4 months of this thing sitting useless, a few overzealous teenagers had poked around in it, too. One guilty party showed up, I asked and he didn't even know he had to ground himself before handling components. Nor did he realize that if you remove the processor and heat sink, you can't clean off the thermal compound and put it back together again and expect things to go well. So with that knowledge, I isolated the motherboard and processor from all other components like I used to do on my own rig (this thing had a processor marked 1995, btw...oooold, so old I told them that the techniques I'm used to might not apply at all) but even then the motherboard wouldn't post. Oh, also, the kid removed the BIOS battery and put it back in and taped it there. Wow. And he had the CD drive chained to the HD and plugged into the one port on the mobo that wasn't labeled for the harddrive...that just won't fly. So I put all the wires where they were supposed to be...gotta give him some slack here because all the components were labeled in English, though.

So yeah, I told her I was pretty sure the problem was in the motherboard or the processor. Or both. But I tried to explain how much of a pain it is to replace either...tried to explain compatability issues and whatnot when dealing with old components. Recommended she ask another technician she knows to take a look and see if he agrees. She was worried the problem was just in the new monitor she bought, I told her I was positive it wasn't the monitor. Also that I would wager that the hard drive and RAM and sound card and CD-ROM were all also fine. I can't order components for her...can't help her shop since I'm not in this site very long...but it was a nice encounter. She was crazy grateful for me spending two hours working in her living room. Told me I was welcome in her home whenever I wanted. Said I was very friendly.
This can kinda tie in to my relationship with the internet cafes here. There's a cheap one at 15 lempiras an hour, and a nicer one at 20 lempiras an hour. The cheap one has a network protocol that, if it detects you're using a disproportional amount of bandwidth, starts reducing your bandwidth usage by closing all open or minimized windows on your screen. Without prompts or warnings. The first time this happened, it only interrupted conversations I was having with friends. The second time, I lost about an hour's worth of writing. I don't go there anymore.
The second one is nice. Computers of various quality, but 3 functional webcams, and no malicious network nazi software. I downloaded the Skype installer and Firefox installer onto my flash drive, so whenever I sit down at a computer, I install both and browse in style. Working on downloading all 60 megabytes of the iTunes installer so I can organize my iPod, too. Wish I could do that on this XO. So my chick and I spend hours upon hours talking to eachother. Sometimes video chats when bandwidth traffic is low, sometimes just voicechat like a phone call, sometimes just text. I'm there so often that the owners say hi to me in the streets. The place technically closes at 9, but I can stay in until almost 11 pm because they realize I give them a ton of business and zero hassle. They don't even watch me anymore...so I could theoretically rack up another 120 lempira bill and just walk out, because they trust me. Good thing for them I'm a good person.

But I decided that a good side project for me would to work with internet cafes in my site, and with computers in business offices, the mayor's office, various schools and businesses and see what I can do to make things better. Show people what I'm doing, walk 'em through stuff. Show the internet cafe people some of the better anti-virus and anti-spyware software. I'm positive a ton of these computers are crawling with that sort of malware. I don't have much experience with networks, but I imagine I can remember, or learn what I need from the internet.
So. We aren't just learning about surveying and water system design in these 6 weeks of WatSan training. We also learn about other stuff loosely related to sanitation, in the form of health. So one day we listened to some veteran Health volunteers give us a presentation on HIV/AIDS prevention. Put condoms on plantains. The statistics they gave were pretty bad. Estimates put HIV infection rates at 50% in some areas. Highest per capita infection rates in Latin America, if I remember correctly. This was all to prep us to give the same presenation to a classroom of high school kids in the area. We had about two days to prepare a 5 hour interactive talk.

So my group of 6 did. It went pretty well. There's a definite need for basic sex ed. here, I'm totally convinced about that. But it'll be awhile before I can see myself leading such a presentation on my own or with one buddy.

Begin sparsely-written section of the blog. Sorry for the poor quality. I'm a bad person.

My group of 17 worked on building two latrines and two pilas for two houses in an aldea a few miles away. One set for each house. Weird working for people who have no electricity, no bathroom at all, but they can still make calls on their cell phone. Their priorities are foreign to us. Mud brick house with a sheet metal roof held down by wires and rocks rather than nails.

Basically we had to hand mix a ton of concrete. Over 2 afternoons...about 5 hours each time. Good stuff. And I took down a 5 or 6 inch tree stump with a machete. Took about 10 minutes. Fun!

We went on a trip to a place called Nueva Armenia...there's a river there that chiseled its way into a thick layer of bedrock. Pretty cool. But it rained the day before, so I knew it would be muddy, so I didn't bring my trunks. I brought my computer instead. I read my girl's emails while everyone else is swimming and making fun of CyberAlex for bringing his computer to a river.

Then my buddy broke his toe jumping off a rock. But he's ok. Got a free ride to a hospital in Tegus. Now he walks like a slowzombie. After I read, I stowed my gear and went wandering on my own.

What little parkour experience I have is being put to good use here. I love that I can sprint along the rocks scattered in a creek without losing my footing once, making 8 foot leaps over running water only to land on all fours like a cat onto another boulder, gripping it perfectly so I don't slip and can position myself to hop to the next rock and keep running, one foot on one rock at a time. Confidence in my physical abilities. I haz it. Knowledge of my limitations, i haz that too. I couldn't do 2 years ago what I can do now, and I feel a great amount of pride.

Even if it still takes thoughts of a girl to get me motivated to go full tilt like that.

Everyone in my barrio knows me and says hi when I walk somewhere. I used to get a bunch of kids yelling stuff I couldn't understand at me as I passed them. Then after I realized they were saying "Hey, man!" in heavy accents, I stopped and chatted with them. Introduced myself, etc. Now I usually have a gauntlet of handshakes with kids to get through if I want to get out of my barrio. The friends of my family are my friends now. If we meet up in the street, we can walk together and chat for a bit, and I enjoy that immensely. I don't wanna leave this town or these people I've spent 6 weeks growing fond of. I don't wanna have to gamble again with a third town and a third host family in my real 2 year site. Can I possibly get this lucky again?

A contrast is that when I leave my barrio, I stop making eye contact and saying hi in a friendly manner. People don't know me outside of my barrio very well., save for the owners of the two internet cafes. There's one guy who is either mentally challenged or totally wasted on booze, or both, but he's really friendly and wants to chat with me for way longer than I'm comfortable with. But everyone else just stares at me (so I say hi, so they have to say hi back and then it's not awkward for me anymore) or whistles at me or says "Hey handsome" or "Hey baby." Not as much now as before.

Short blip about the worst thing I've had to do in Peace Corps so far. Does everyone know what a Water Board is? In Spanish, you call it a Junta de Agua. A water cooperative, I guess. Basically it's a board of trustees who oversee a town's water supply, from the water source, to the surrounding watershed, to the water system that collects and distributes it to people. They maintain it all, educate the people not to wash clothes or let their animals poop upstream, and collect a fee from everyone for receiving water, which gets spent on the salary of the plumber maintenance man and supplies for maintenance, like more chlorine. Typically a Junta has a president, VP, secretary, treasurer and more. That's it in a nutshell.

We got two days and 200 pages of manuals to read through to prepare to give a presentation (a "charla" or a chat) to an audience of locals on how to organize and manage a successful Junta de Agua. Then we got told our audience was gonna be existing Junta de Agua members. So we feared we'd be telling info to people who already knew it. We were overwhelmed with info and little time. We get to d-day, go time, and set up in our classroom as the adults walk in. People with far more life experience than us. We ask them right off the bat what they're interested in hearing about. They say they want to hear what we've prepared, then they'll ask questions later. before we start the first section, about the roles and duties of presidents, the two presidents of the two Juntas present tell us they (obviously) know all that already. and the treasurers knew their duties. So...we skipped over about 20 minutes of material and moved on. Then they basically tuned us out while we went over the rest of the basic info we'd been given. it was rough. Lots of filler. Then when one president asked for advice about how he could deal with the lumber company deforesting his watershed secretly and illegally at night, when the city didn't care and wouldn't help because the company brought money to the city, and the cops don't care. We didn't have an answer for him. In hindsight, apparently there are lawyers in Tegus who could help him file a lawsuit. But I have no idea how practical that is.

I'm glad this week is over. For a number of reasons.

Guess what! I got a bihawk. That's like a mohawk, but two, one above each eye, basically. It looks pretty darn good. It'll get shaved completely before I start working for real...not a good way to make a good first impression among conservative professionals...but for now it's a blast. I've always wanted to shave my head in a creative way, and so I have. One of my WatSan buddies did it, and he did it well. Gelled it up with my host brother's supply. First morning walk to class, I heard one "Que feo!"/How ugly! a lot of laughter, and two "Hola guapo!"/Hello handsome!. And there was a class of kids on a sidewalk with their teachers. All staring and giggling, so I said hi. The teacher smiled and said hi, and all 40 kids said hi. As I passed, they all started crowing like roosters. Reminded me of the lost boys from Hook. Call me Rufio. Basically got more of the same, sans roosters, the rest of the day yesterday. My teachers all liked it. One said she loves America because you can actually do wild stuff like this and nobody thinks twice. I kinda gotta agree. I like my subcultures. My boss said he wants his boss in Santa Lucia to see it before I shave it. That thrilled me. He said I looked like Darth Maul. He's a Star Wars fan. He also said he had always considered me one of the most normal people in the group. I laughed at that a lot, inside my head. Let's see...the gringos said it looks like devil horns from the front. Then one chick who asked me why I'd do that to myself said later it was growing on her. The guys told me I have balls. And last night, walking through the dark in all black to the internet cafe to talk to my girl, a group of a dozen or so teenagers were playing futbol in the street. I passed 'em and they all started chasing me. Not running, just keeping my speed and yelling at me to wait up. I kept walking, but turned and yelled that I had a date to meet, and if they wanted to catch up they gotta run. The kids in the front just kept yelling "Venga!"/"Come here!" and the ones in the back kept yelling "El Diablo!" I finally stopped and they all surrounded me. Some touched my scalp. Kinda forward, but that's typical here and I took it in stride. Everybody wanted to know where I got the idea, that they'd never seen hair like it before, if I saw it in the big city of Tegucigalpa. They thought the center airstrip down my head was hardcore. Fresh style, I guess you could translate it. See, weird thing about Hondurans to me. They'll make fun of you to no end if you try to ignore them. But if you humor them and talk to them, you'll realize they're just having fun with you, and they're generally nice people. They might keep laughing at you after you leave, but they're good at pretending to be nice while you're there. Or they could be sincere, and I'm just revealing my inner cynic. Talked with them about 5 minutes before I told 'em I really did need to get online.

Yesterday I also got my first thing in the mail from the States. My girlfriend and a couple good friends sent me various items, vitamins, a book, some keepsakes, trail mix. I like my people. I wish they weren't spread out all over the map. It was standard mail, and she sent it last week Monday. So it took about 11 days.

Today marks two months I've been with my chick in the US. The 19th. 19. Dark Tower, anyone? I forget...can good things be nineteen?

Somebody have a drink in honor of us, if you don't mind.

And now I have finally finished this blog entry. Good grief it took awhile.



I'm leaving for Santa Lucia tomorrow morning.