Volunteer Visit

So this past Thursday we finally got the chance to venture out of the city and go to visit current volunteers in their communities. All of us went to different communities throughout the country. I went up to the north to a place called Altamira. Well, technically I was in the mountains outside of Altamira. I got to take several motoconcho (motorcycle taxi) rides while I was there. And apparently I didn’t make it clear earlier that I’m not allowed to drive the motoconchos. There are motoconchos throughout the country and you can pay a motoconchista (motorcycle driver) to drive you to almost any location in the country and in some areas it’s the only way to get to and from certain places. I was totally scared of the idea of having to use the motoconchos but I loved it! It’s really fun to be heading up the hill on the back of a bike with the wind in your hair and the drivers are generally very safe drivers particularly since the “roads” are often just dirt, rocks, and full of ruts and often extremely muddy. One of these days I’ll get a picture of myself on one with my casco (helmet). Where I was is definitely the campo. They call it the campo (country) because it’s not an organized town, although there are colmados (the general stores) and schools spread out throughout the area, though they are few and far between. It’s really neat though because it’s such a small community everybody knows everyone so if you’re sitting on your porch or covered patio (which everyone here has) whenever someone comes by they say hi and ask how you are and vice versa. The local kids love Anne and Tim and stop by every day to visit. It rained tons while I was there and was actually pretty cold. Cold enough that I was sleeping in a long sleeve shirt, long pants, and socks and was still cold under my two sheets and a light blanket. You have to remember there’s no central heat here, in fact the walls don’t even touch the roof and there’s no glass in the windows, just wood shutters usually. And the roofs are made of zinc so it is super loud when it’s raining hard. Here’s some pictures of the area I was in.




I stayed with Anne and Tim who are both Environment volunteers and are great people besides. They met during training and got married last August. Here’s a picture of them below squeezing honey out of the honeycomb. (More on that later.)


They have been working on getting water filters for their site which arrived the Friday I was there and we had a meeting and presentation of the filters on Saturday so people could come pick them up. They are also hoping to get funding to build fogones (stoves). The stoves are more fuel efficient and use less wood than the traditional stoves used and have chimneys so the Doña and her family are not inhaling so much wood smoke.

Here’s a picture of Anne’s Doña Milagros, that she lived with her first three months in site and that they still have lunch with every day. To the right is the fogon that she uses to cook on. She is preparing eggplant as part of our lunch for the day. She also makes these beautiful bags using old rice sacks and scraps of cloth for the strap and inside pocket. I got one and I’m so excited about it. I’ll take a picture and post it later. She’s selling them for $200 pesos, a little less than US $6.00. She’s also a domino genius. She almost always wins! She’s really good at counting the dominoes and realizing what everyone has. Much better than I am, although I’m learning slowly but surely.


Leche de Pollo de Abeja

One of the more interesting experiences I had this weekend had to do with the honey I mentioned above. Some people from the neighborhood had brought Doña Milagros a bunch of honeycomb from a hive that had lost it’s queen. Anne, Tim and I were excited at the prospect of fresh honey. We asked her how to do it and she said to just squeeze it out. We were checking out the comb and realized there were still a lot of larvae (pollo) of bees that had not fully developed and were wondering how you got the honey out by squeezing. Come to find out that you squeeze it with the larvae and the white stuff that comes from the larvae is called leche de pollo and supposedly has medicinal value and mixed with the honey makes a great dessert. Anne and Tim braved the squeezing of the honey and leche de pollo until it just got a little too real for us all. Here’s a picture of the honeycomb first and the second is the honey and leche de pollo all mixed up with Tim squeezing some more in.



The Blue Titanic

So I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this bus. Apparently it is used to pick up day laborers from the area and take them to the tobacco farms down the road for work. I don’t know where they came up with the name the Blue Titanic although it seems an unfortunate choice. Although it is an enormous vehicle to be driving up and down the roads of the campo we were in. I certainly wouldn’t want to run into it on the road.


My New Boyfriend

I fell in love up in the campo. I met this really cute, although awfully stinky guy that was just too adorable to resist. His name is Boli. Here he is sitting on my lap.


Here’s another picture of Boli with Lila, Anne and Tim’s puppy. I’m not sure Anne and Tim are going to forgive me because now Boli comes over to their house first thing in the morning and throughout the day because I would hold him and pet him the whole time he was there! In the evenings when we would go inside he would whine at the door for quite awhile before he would go home to go to bed. He was just so cute and tiny that I couldn’t resist picking him up and cuddling him.