Tornabe

Finally I´m here, sworn in as an actual Peace Corps volunteer, and living in the site I will be at for the next 2 years. For the first 2 months, I am living with a family, which actually couldn´t be better. It will be nice to have my independence, but for now, I really am enjoying my place. It is right on the beach, and on Saturday and Sunday it is a Garifuna disco. I explained about the Garifuna in my other blog, so I won´t go back in to that, but it´s a pretty interesting place. Yesterday, I traveled to La Ceiba...I can´t find the parenthesis on this computer so I´ll have to use the ... anyway, Ceiba is about 1.5 hours by car, 2=4 hours by bus. I left my site around 7AM, got there at about 10. I met up with around 15 other PCVs, none of whom live within an hour of me. Nonetheless, it was good to meet everyone and hear about the different projects going on.

More about my site...So far, I have met with the head of the Centro Basico here...it´s the only school in town and has all grades, up through high school. I also met with the nurse at the Centro de Salud here. She is my main counterpart, and is really nice. There is no doctor in town, and the Centro provides support for our town as well as another Garifuna town further down the beach. Interestingly, the nurse is an auxiliary nurse, which means she does not have any university education. I am known as Liscenciada, which means I have my bachellors degree, but is very highly regarded because not many people have continue their education past 6th grade here. I am looking in to several different aspects of the population to work with. For the 1st three months, Peace Corps recommends that we don´t do too much more than get to know our communitees, gain trust, etc. However, from what I´ve seen and heard, there´s a lot of work to be done. I met with the nurse today, who really wanted me to get to work in the school with sex education because it is an area that is extremely lacking. There is also a support group here for people living with HIV that has been struggling to stay together. I´m hoping to get to know some people in the group and maybe eventually help them come up with ways to strengthen the group. There is also a pastor in town that runs a program for kids ages 5=18, most of whom are orphans, many living with HIV and have parents that have died of AIDS. He wants help developing a nutrition program for all the children, particularly those who are on ARVs, in order to keep them healthy and getting the right vitamins. I´ve also come up with some ideas of my own. There is a large population of Garifuna men who live in the States and return here every so often...for example during Semana Santa or the town Fair...and sleep around and spread a lot of disease in the community. I´m thinking of trying to get some women in the community to meet with me in the disco once a week and teach them about how to be safe, protect themselves, and how to encourage this throughout the community. I think the disco would be a great place...it´s only open Sat and Sun...because it´s more of a casual environment and people would be more likely to come. I have also started teaching English in exchange for lessons in Garifuna. It´s a lot of fun. After a while, I also want to look into a secondary project of getting together a Garifuna cookbook. Their food is unique and amazing, and I think it could be a great way to make money for the community if I could find a few women to help me get it going.

Anyway, that´s an update. I have a ton of amazing pictures, but the internet here is slower than anything I´ve ever seen before, so I´m going to wait until I go into the city and buy some groceries. For those of you thinking of planning a trip, the nearest airport is San Pedro Sula...about 2 hours away. The Bay Islands, with some of the best scuba diving in the world, are an hour boat ride from me after a 2 hour car ride. Also, I live in a national park, and this weekend I´m going to pay some local fishermen to take me out to a protected area only accessible by boat.