Time out

For the past month I have barely been in Olanchito. After a brief jaunt to Tegucigalpa to take care of business at the main office, I returned to the municipality (kind of like the county) of Olanchito to live in a rural community in the mountains outside of town. There I stayed with a Christian Canadian work group a dozen strong, who came to help start construction on one of the water systems I have designed (for two adjacent communities named Las Almendras and Paletales). I served alternatively but more often simultaneously as head project engineer, construction foreman and translator. Leave it to Honduras to throw more at me than I ever thought I would be capable of. After those 2 weeks of daily manual labor under the tropical summer sun and sometimes mind-numbing amounts of translation, the Canadians invited me to vacation with them in Tela as a thank-you. I vacillated, but in the end did not allow myself to feel guilty about leaving Olanchito (and all my other projects there) for yet another week. By the time I had stopped by to say hi to Ely between Tela and La Ceiba and had followed the Canadians all the way out to Roatan on the Bay Islands, I realized how much I needed the vacation my boss in Tegucigalpa had recommended to me at the beginning of the month when I nearly broke down from frustration in his office. And THEN, another friend called and told me she was leaving the country (also frustration-induced) and could use my help moving, so off to San Pedro Sula and Santa Rosa it was…but before we packed her up for the capital, we (ironically) stopped by the Lago de Yojoa to celebrate with our training group our one year anniversary in country. I got back yesterday. I am so glad to have been gone for 5 weeks.

Not that I suddenly dislike Olanchito. But I was getting too emotionally involved in some of my work, and identifying too strongly with people who I am not. I needed a break not out of the need to escape bitterness, but rather to empty my mind of all the worries that I really am not getting paid enough to worry about. Or rather, that I have no use worrying about because I cannot control them no matter how much I gnash my teeth and rant, in Spanish or in English. Hondurans, and people in general, are much more receptive to humor and patience. Hopefully my work-play vacation of the past month, and my upcoming 3-week vacation in the States at the end of June and early July, will open me once more to both as well.