Comayagua, Baby!

Well friends, we FINALLY know where we are living and what we will be doing for the next 2 years. Our new home is Comayagua, a city of about 100,000 on the highway between San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. It doesn’t look like much from the highway at first glance (i.e. the makings of a big, dirty city) but that is because this is the outskirts and it’s not fair to judge any city from the highway. It is actually quite a charming city in the central district – with Spanish colonial style churches, plazas and buildings. The homes and businesses are colorful and there are shops bursting with things to buy. (This is quite a change from Cantarranas, where there were only small pulperias – convenience stores – and you were lucky if the milk or water truck had come that day to restock their meager inventories.) The streets are busy with cars and pedestrians, but not in an overwhelming way, and the city streets are relatively clean. There are several supermarkets with all kinds of types of food (we even saw turkey pastrami lunch meat in one – wow) and there are two vegetable markets. Again, this is quite a change from Cantarranas where we had one vegetable store with half way rotten produce and one entrepreneurial farmer who sold vegetables from his truck in the streets. He would drive around announcing incoherent promotions through his loud speaker and we would run after him with the hopes of buying a fresh avocado. But I digress. We are very excited to live here in Comayagua and we feel very lucky to have been given such a nice site.

When we were first told our new home at our "site announcement luncheon" on Monday afternoon, we weren’t sure what to think. At first all we knew is it was a big city, and we hadn’t seen too much to get excited about in big cities in Honduras so far. Some of our friends here got some beautiful spots in the mountains of western Honduras, some people in the health project even got sites on the Caribbean coast (lucky bastards!) so we slightly jealous. But that was before visiting Comayagua and realizing that we too were given a great spot. Many were given Cantarranas-like towns, which aren’t bad for their tranquility and the fact that everyone knows your name, but we have to admit that we are pretty happy that we have stores where things like turkey pastrami can be bought. There is even a movie theater here.

We are close to an American military base, so people in Comayagua have had exposure to gringo faces. There are about 500 soldiers at the base, not including the contractors who support the operations out there. We’ve already seen a few around town, and I already got hit on by a few at the supermarket last night. (yay.)

All this talk about the city and I haven’t mentioned our new jobs yet. We are REALLY excited about the contacts Peace Corps has set up for us here. We have each been given main counterparts but we plan to work together in the beginning as we learn our way around the different organizations and as our Spanish improves. My main counterpart is the Escuela Taller de Comayagua, an organization that teaches vocational skills (carpentry, electrical work and metal work) to youth and men and women from the marginal neighborhoods of Comayagua. The really interesting part about the school is that it is using funds from a Spanish government endowment and funds from the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History to repair and refurbish the wealth of colonial monuments in Comayagua. Several buildings have already been repaired with these funds (all through the work of the students in the school) and the results have been spectacular. We toured the main cathedral in town and it looks absolutely beautiful. It reminded us of a church in Andalucía (in the southern part of Spain) but with a Honduran colonial flare. They have given us a long list of things we could help them with at the school, including teaching students basic business skills, helping them form a foundation for the school, several research projects and possibly some projects in our old lines of work involving compiling financial statements or assessing internal controls.

Javi’s main counterpart is the Chamber of Commerce in Comayagua and an organization called FIDE. They have mostly expressed an interest in us helping them give technical sessions to local businesses (again teaching general business topics) and helping them with the exportation process of several different types of fruits and vegetables to the US, Canada and Europe. We have a lot to learn about exporting produce to the United States, but we are really excited to understand more and look for ways we can help.

Both our counterparts have been extremely professional and have also been very understanding of our situation (i.e. Spanish difficulties and being foreigners). During our visit to Comayagua, our counterparts have treated us with great respect showing us around the city, introducing us to integral people of the community and offering their help and support in any capacity that we could use it. It seems like we have stepped back into the professional world here in Comayagua, and we are both going to have to step it up a bit after a laxy dazy school environment in Cantarranas. We both have a lot to learn about our different organizations and Spanish wise, but we are excited for the challenge.

I know this entry is starting to get lengthy but I wanted to write one final note about Comayagua. We will be sharing this city with another volunteer who we have been in training with from the health project. He is actually from Albuquerque believe it or not, and we are excited to have his company because he is a really interesting, smart and funny guy.
We are here in Comayagua until Sunday, and then we will head back to Santa Lucia for a few more days of training with all the projects together. We have two more days of language class and a few more meetings about general stuff, and then we will be sworn in as Volunteers Thursday, May 3 at the US Embassy. After that, we will be coming here to Comayagua for good!
Obviously internet access will not be problem like it was Cantarranas so we should be posting a bit more regularly again, as long as we have something interesting to say. We'll also post some pictures next time, too.

Bye for now.