Clap Your Hands

Well hello the seven of you following my blog! At the request of my mom and those possibly wondering what the heck I will be busying myself with for the next two years I´m gonna lay it down for you all. Right now I am living outside of Gracias, Lempira in the west of the country (which does still eat tortillas contrary to what my other host family said). However, I am only going to be working 50% of the time in my community, which is unusual for the typical volunteer. In my community, they are interested in diversifying their diet. In short, Im (hopefully) going to teach them about family gardens (huertos) in the most sustainable way possible as well as potentially help develop an irrigation project they have started with nearby water/sanitation volunteers. But as many volunteers find their projects they are initially given are never realized and usually find themselves doing something else. For right now, I am simply being an awkward andy walking from house to house with my host mom making conversation with my stunted spanish about their lives in short. Hopefully I´ll impress them enough that they want to come to my future meetings. Hopefully.

The other 50% of the time I am working with an org called MAPANCE, Mancomunidad de Municipios de Parque Nacional Celaque. An org than came from the environmental management branch of the municipality, MAPANCE manages the Celaque National Park (cue wikipedia!) which boasts Honduras highest peak actually. With my supposed monitoring expertise, I am going to help MAPANCE collect data within the park about what sorts of flora and fauna exist since this data does not exist. This data, along with much more already accumulated and that still needs to be accumulated, will be assimilated into an application to be a UNESCO world heritage site. Different areas in the world can apply for this certification if they have exceptional biodiversity, programs to protect the biodiversity, and some sort of unique cultural aspect. If an area is internationally recognized as a UNESCO site it greatly boosts tourism potential and I imagine they get a pretty groovy stamp on their literature or something. Im not quite sure if this qualifies as latin bling bling. But MAPANCE hopes to become one of these sites and hopefully myself and the other PCVs around Celaque can help them achieve it.

Yes mom, I will put up pictures soon. Hopefully more than the three I already put up. I was gonna do it today but se me olvido mi camara. puchica. Also I decided the wittiest way for me to blog is through lists. You have been warned.