My name is Joe Bergstrom and I’ve been in Honduras now for just over a month training with the Peace Corps. I will swear in as a full-fledged PAM (Protected Areas Management) Volunteer in early August of this year, after that my two years officially begins and I should finish up my service in August of 2007. Things are going great so far, I’m training with a lot of very cool people from all over the states. For the most part, my days are spent in Spanish and Technical classes. For PAM, we’re learning about sustainable farming techniques and a little bit of everything. I will be working in and around a federally designated protected area (like a national park) once I’m officially placed in my work site. I should be working with a relatively small community (200-1500 people) and dealing with environmental issues, education, watershed management, recycling, waste management, health education, environmental education, ecotourism, or really anything the community needs or wants. I’ve seen a bit of Honduras so far and met some really interesting people and seen some truly beautiful places. Our first free weekend here, nearly all of my training class headed off to Tela on the north coast. It was beautiful and the Caribbean was warm and clear. We didn’t have time to do much other than eat some shrimp and sample some Nicaraguan rum and Puerto Rican rap music. Reggatone I think is how you spell it, anyways it all sounds the same (sorry to be culturally insensitive) and they play it everywhere here, guess I’ll learn to love it but give me the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band anytime.
Two weeks ago I visited another Pam volunteer named Brian Young from Iowa. He’s working in a small community called Rio Negro, just outside of the city of Comayagua. His site is amazing, high in the cloud forest and you have to catch a 2 to 2 and a half hour jalon (hitchhike) up into the mountains to get there. Right now he’s the PAM volunteer that’s living the furthest from “civilization.” He has no power but he does get drinkable water from a cool spring. Just up from his house you can take a trail to an amazing waterfall called the “Cascada de Suenos” (waterfall of dreams). We hiked up to the cascada after the jalon got to Rio Negro. I was sweating like a pig. I still haven’t gotten used to the climate here and I’m not sure I ever will. I’m going to miss the Idaho winter and can’t imagine what December will be like without snow.
Last week I visited a coffee institute just outside of Lago de Yajoa (the largest lake in Honduras). And learned all about the country’s coffee making capacity, perfect soils, elevations, and conditions. But I guess the drying and processing of the bean is an extremely sensitive process and the Hondurans haven’t all gotten it down yet. You have some organic coffee cooperatives who really know what they’re doing and can put out a superior product but in the end it all gets mixed up with the guys who really don’t know or care about what they’re doing and drying their coffee in the gaillanasa (chicken shit) whose coffee tastes terrible. This is why you don’t see a Honduran roast in Starbucks. The crap gets mixed in with the good and in the end nobody wants to import it and if they do they don’t want to pay for it and the farmers go further into debt and cut down more forests to make bigger plantations. There are cooperatives that sell directly to importers and can get a good price for their efforts but it is rare and hard to avoid the coyote (middle man). This is getting a bit long and the clouds are coming in so that means no internet and no power soon. Later, Joe.