paved roads end

My first two days in Hato Mayor have been quite an eye-opening experience. I live with a family in town that consists of a mother, father, 25-year-old son, and 34-year-old daughter. The daughter´s name is Beirut and she is also the manager of the Esperanza branch here in Hato Mayor. They are a very nice and welcoming family that loves to feed me. My host mother is
afraid that my (real) dad will think they didn´t feed me here if I come back looking even the slightest bit thinner. It´s quite funny.



To give you an idea of what my life has been like here so far, I´ll give you a little run down of my day. Today I woke up first to the neighbor´s rooster at 5:30am and tried to ignore it until I officially had to wake up at 7. Breakfast consisted of the cereal of my choice and a random hotdog (odd combo, I know). Every day Beirut and I travel via her little motor bike to the office, which is just a 5 minute ride. The town is in the process of updating their water pipelines, so it makes for a very bumpy ride. I´m not convinced that the streets aren´t always this way. Today Beirut, a loan officer named Ruth, and I rode out (by truck) to the countryside for a few bank meetings. The dirt roads begin just outside of town where the paved ones end. From that point on, the long ride consists of dodging the biggest of the potholes on the path. Being out in the countryside I feel EXTREMELY out of place compared to in town where I only feel out of place. Today, for the first time, I saw another gringa walking down the street. This may be odd but it is comforting to know I´m not the only one. Anyway, the meetings are all so interesting because each group and each site is different. The first 'bank' meeting I went to yesterday consisted of 4 groups, each with 5 women. We sat under a little hut outside where Ruth and Beirut collected their loan repayments. I just sat there taking it all in, trying not to make too much awkward eye contact with all of the curious stares coming my direction. I just smiled and focused on the baby chicks with bald spots that were running around looking for food. This meeting I got to see for the first time how the solidarity group concept works. One woman did not show up and pay; therefore, the entire group of women dug into their pockets to contribute a few pesos to cover for their friend.

Today we went to two banks. At the first bank meeting, 7 new members were accepted into the bank. When it came time for those new members to sign along with their group coordinator, it was apparent that at least four of them didn´t know how to sign their name. They simply signed XXX. The second meeting was among probably the poorest community I have seen thus far. It was an inspiring meeting because every single group payed their complete installment, and a select few shared how their lives have been changed after receiving the loan. I forgot to bathe myself in bug repelent before this meeting and started getting eaten alive. I have learned to keep it handy at all times.

We returned to the office and it wasn´t long before it was time to go home for lunch and siesta time. I love siesta time! The rest of the afternoon was spent in the office learning some of the bookkeeping tasks, which isn´t too hard except that nobody speaks English in the office, so I have to try and translate their fast, jumbled Spanish that sometimes seems like another language to me. Another frustration of the learning process is that the electricity shuts off a couple times a day, resulting in a little break from any computer work. The evening consists of catching up on emails, listening to the neighbors´ loud raggaetone music, watching some telenovelas with Beirut, eating dinner (nobody else really eats dinner but they make me a huge one and complain that I don´t eat a lot...something is wrong here), and reading. I go to the bathroom hoping that the water has come back on since shutting off this morning. Lastly, I hang my mosquito net up over my bed so that I am not eaten alive.

I am thoroughly enjoying all of these new experiences, inconvenient or not, because they make me more appreciative of the luxuries I have back home.
(Sorry so long)