Life in the mountains

This past weekend we had a class trip to a rural community in the mountains to see how life functions in the country. We have been focusing on this lately in my poverty and development class. How do you develop a community that lives way high up in the mountains, 85% of children malnourished, all sorts of diseases, closest doctor is 30 minutes by foot, roads are inaccessible, poor education, etc. I mean life is rough for the campesinos. The topic in class this week was NGO’s and how they can be successful or unsuccessful.
On Friday we first visited a farm. The farm is being helped by American engineers to better use their land and resources. With the help of the engineers the people have gained knowledge among pther things of how far apart to plant certain plants optimum growth, what to plant near each other to spur on the development of other plants, etc. Best of all, these farms are completely handled and controlled by the campesinos. They have a lot of pride because everything they have comes from hard work, it was not given to them from the states.

We also visited a mothers group where they make sure pregnancies go well and that kids aren’t malnourished. They have a primitive system of weighing children and keeping records that works well for them. Something that shocked me a little which I haven’t seen since Guatemala was public breastfeeding haha. The very first thing mom’s do when a baby is crying is pull down their shirt and push the baby into the chi-chis. I’m pretty sure what we do with pacifiers they do with actual nipples. Our bus got stuck trying to get up a hill so we had to walk a while in the pitch black to get to where we stayed on Friday night. Pretty intense, the roads here suck haha.
Saturday we had some free time to do a little hiking and see a small waterfall. Honduras is absolutely beautiful and I see all sorts of crazy new plants every day.
















Halloween was pretty fun. I went to a gringo Halloween party during the day where we carved pumpkins and had typical autumn food. It was a lot of fun. In the afternoon I carved a pumpkin with my family on our roof. It was strange cause it is so hot and sunny here. Then, I had a great video chat in Dunkin Donuts with my parents. I came back home, ate some real sketchy soup and my family was like “Donovan, vamos para la casa de Jimi” So at 8:45 we left for my older bro’s house where I taught everyone the post-it note game(they are horrible at it) and ate some more food. It was a little weird for a while when the women were all inside watching a scary movie and my brothers were out taking tequila shots and telling crude jokes. I rode back in the truck bed and got home at midnight and started homework that was due today. Today is a sleepy day.
4 MORE DAYS TILL VACATION AND SCUBA DIVING!!