Independence Day

Happy Independence Day! If I recall correctly, today Honduras is celebrating 189 years of independence. It's a big deal; many schools and businesses are closed for all or most of the week.

My visit to La Campa last week was great, although exhausting! The bus we were supposed to take broke down before it even reached the bus terminal, so we got to wait 3 hours for the next bus. We reached Gracias shortly after dark and were met by the husband of the CASM director who drove us into La Campa (16km = 1/2 hour). Before going to bed I had to overcome a bit of exoskeleton anxiety (one scorpion and five cockroaches can cause that).

La Campa is beautiful! Megan told me that I have won the placement lottery. It's a small town (120 houses) in a valley surrounded by mountains. Megan and I each tried to photograph it, but a camera lens doesn't do justice to the beauty. Clearly, you'll just have to come and see for yourselves :)

I met my supervisor, Cristina, saw the office and demonstration farm, and learned a bit about what I could be doing there. Based on my skill set (which I hesitatingly described in Spanish) she said there were three projects that might work for me:

1) Coffee processing creates a lot of agua miel, or sweet water, that contains a lot of organic matter and is generally released into the surface water to the detriment of the water. I can start a project to help mitigate this.

2) If there are available funds to do soil testing, I can test some soil samples to see what nutrients/other chemicals are present, and figure out what additives might be useful to increase crop production.

3) People are using more agro-chemicals on their farms since coffee production has been good in recent years and incomes are higher. However, when the first rains come everybody in the villages gets skin problems from the chemical runoff. I can start a project to help mitigate this.

Needless to say, I'm excited and terrified by these projects! At first I will likely just be accompanying other workers and building relationships with people. But then I can start my own work. Option 3 interests me the most, but it is probably the most complicated of them all!

I've been in SPS since coming back from La Campa, staying with a lovely family. This afternoon Megan, Noel and I are heading out to the farm until the weekend, as nothing is really open in the city for the next couple of days. Then on Sunday I go to Copan Ruinas for one more week of language study before heading to La Campa to start work on Sept. 27.