Reitoca - March 13th

Reitoca – March 13th
These last two weeks I have spent in Reitoca – where it is now hotter than any other place on earth. It is so dry that everything has turned to dust – the land, the trees, the leaves, and especially the road. Eddie and I still constantly grabble with how to do “development” well in this corner of Central America. During this time of year you have to wonder if anyone should live here at all.

In any event, the heat and the dust are two large inconveniencies that you quickly forget about, instead only remembering the smiling faces, the grand welcomes, the few successes, and the melancholy that comes with moving on. That at least is how I feel about Orocuina which looks and feels very similar to Reitoca.

Last week I was mostly in the Reitoca CCF office, trying to work on a few proposals with a new colleague, Jose, who is supervising the technical assistants in the region. Over a period of three days, we had electric probably for a total of 12 hours – which makes doing excel spreadsheets very difficult. I was sooo frustrated. I had budgeted a certain amount of time to get the work done, carried my heavy laptop thru the heat and dust, only to fowled by the lack of electric. In the rainy season I thought they had a half decent excuse, massive electrical storms would knock out the power lines. Now in the dry season, it is the wind that does the damage. I seem to be out of luck in both seasons.

This week I was there with Rachel, who did her Peace Corps service in Reitoca, and who is one of my very best friends (she’s the one who spoke Spanish at my wedding mass). She left Honduras about 5 years ago. It was great to walk about town with her to see her old friends and acquaintances - to see some old friends tear up, others whose lives have changed dramatically, and others who remember Rachel fondly but her memories of them are now foggy. It’s not an easy thing to do – to go back to the site where you did Peace Corps. The time you spend there is so formative and with each year that goes by your memories become embellished, a bit exaggerated even, about how nice your life was there. Coming back is never the same, which is not to say it’s a bad thing. A good friend told me when I came back to the States after Peace Corps that you can’t live (mentally) in two places at once. The only thing you can do is cherish the memories you have and make sure the people you cared about here know how much you will always value their friendship.

And the funny story of the day…the place where I stay in Reitoca is at Dona Cepherina’s place, she has 4 tidy rooms she rents out and is usually super accommodating. I of course always bring her a small present, like baked goods or rosquillas, so that she will give the good room, with a table and a fan. Upon arrival we learned she was in Teguc and had left her old sister in charge, not a good sign. The room was not ready, she didn’t sweep or mop the room like Dona Cepherina, nor put the sheets on, nor could find a table or fan. I was so irritated, mostly because we rode here in the air-conditioned car and then got out to blasting 95 degree heat. We did our thing this afternoon and then I feel asleep for a bit, Rachel went out to do more visits but only after waking me up and taking the last cigarette. I woke up sweating around 6, and the lightbulb blew out. Now this is something that Dona Cepherina would have easily taken care of but her lazy sister is here in charge. I finally found a man to go get me a lightbulb and he was going to fix it. Except the only ladder we could find was made of two tiny tree trunks with big twig put in between for the ladder rungs. And it was not a stand alone ladder. And the man weighed like 300 pounds – so guess who had to climb up the ladder? With the man just holding it straight up into the air? And the ceiling is really high, like 15 feet I guess. Oh it was horrible. And then my legs started shaking so badly that the ladder was swaying back and forth. I never thought it was going to work and I was calculating how long it would take someone to get me to Teguc if I broke something. The lesson here is – it is possible to climb straight up a shaking ladder that someone is holding straight up, but I wouldn’t recommend it.