Habitat for Humanity and Basketball Tourney

July 1, 2008

I am finally back in site after visiting Corinto, Morazán (northeast part of the country near Honduras) for a little while, but more on that later. The patron festivals have come to an end, although I wasn’t here for the final Mass and festivities due to the Corinto basketball tourney, but I was here for the rest of the stuff during the week. Thursday night they had Cocolito come by and do a comedy routine as part of the festivities. It was good, but when the rain came everyone in front opened their umbrellas and no one could see, so things got a little interesting.
Everything seemed to fall all on this week of festivals. During the day I was working near the coast with Habitat for Humanity translating and a few times I had to leave early for other meetings, and at night I passed through the town for the festivals. They have the ferris wheel and French fries and cookies and masses and people, and lots of other little things.

The luncheon we had for COSALCO, the health committee.

Anyways, in other news, Tony Gasbarro, one of the guys who helps us out a lot as far as scholarships go from Alaska, was in country this week and I got to meet up with him and chat about a few things. He has opened a few doors for us as far as the medical dispensary and scholarships and other things so I hope we can take advantage of them as a community.
Also on another day I came back for the three year anniversary of the Health Committee for La Comunidad (now COSALCO) to have a lunch and some fun activities with them. It went very well, it was good because they work hard.

The first day on the job.

We are a little further.

A little further.

That's the level we finished up at. The masons will take it from there because the work week has expired for the building brigade. This was the group I worked with all week, they were great people.

The final lunch and thanks with all three groups.

As far as Habitat for Humanity goes, it was actually a really good learning experience. I was contacted by some of the people I had met in the embassy back a few months ago and had already visited with here in San Pedro a few times about getting some Peace Corps translators in La Paz for some groups coming down to build. Apparently, online Habitat has different dates for different places around the world where there are opportunities to go and build houses. The people pay their own way down, as well as pay for their portion of the house. So it is actually a pretty big commitment monetarily, and a week’s worth of time as well. However, they had close to 50 people come down to build three houses. They split up into three groups with a translator in each site as the go between for the masons and US groups. The US groups were from Oregon and Boston mainly with some other people from Utah, Illinois, California, and some other states. They were all really nice and all with interesting stories and conversations. I also made friends with some of the Habitat staff that I hadn’t known before, the driver guy Don Luis was pretty funny and always offering me rides….great hombre.

Gabriel checking Chesterton's The Well and the Shallows

You are seeing the main town of Corinto, Morazan

Friday, the last day on site with Habitat and the US groups, I hitched a ride with Habitat to the capital where I arrived in time to catch dinner with JB (a volunteer in my group that’s in Sonsonante) and a girl that was passing through with FINCA, an assessor of the levels of poverty in different countries. She was an ex-Honduras volunteer who is now getting her Master’s at Harvard and working with this company in the summer. Nice girl. She told an interesting story of one of the three girls that they were with who left El Salvador a few days ago because she “just didn’t feel safe.” I feel bad for the other two girls because they have a lot of work to do just between the two of them. I left them after dinner to go check out the new Incredible Hulk movie…. I SAW A MOVIE!!!! I was excited a few weeks ago to go see one when I had to pass through the capital, but it didn’t work out….it didn’t escape me this time though. I haven’t seen an English movie in a while though, my luck has been all the movie in Spanish.

A view of the new central park in Corinto with the church in the background

A game in progress in the tourney.

The next morning I headed out to Corinto, Morazán in the northeast corner of the country for a basketball tournament at another volunteer’s site. I left at 8 and got there at 1, everything worked out perfectly for that to happen, which was good because we started at 2. I met Gabriel (another volunteer from my group) and we got lunch and then we headed straight for the courts….I was missing me some basketball!!! There were only four of us because our 5th was playing with his own site’s team that had come, so we picked up a random Salvadoran. We had a bye the first round, won the our first game to get to the championship (with another bye) and then won in the final against the older Corinto team. It was really fun, and the mayor gave us a trophy and all, so that was cool. I think they are going to put it up in the Peace Corps office (its small no worries haha). I was glad for the volunteers of the site though, it was a good turnout.
I hung out with Chris and Samantha who were volunteers in the main town of Corinto and Gabriel who is in a cantón outside of the town for the rest of the evening and the next day Samantha made us all French toast which was awesome, and then Gabriel and I went out to his site in the country to check it out. We passed by some ancient petro glyphs that have been discovered as of late and are said to be some of the oldest in all of Latin America. His cantón was spiffy and he just moved into a new little house that is stellar and pretty centrally located. We took a shortcut on the way back, but got caught in a nice storm, so we ended up being wet for the next little bit. We visited their fiestas in the evening, where I proved to them that I could make pupusas, fun stuff haha.

Team Gringo, haha. We had to turn the shirts inside out because they had some political stuff on the other side.

Champs. Our other two guys had already left.

I headed back the next day at 8 and got back to San Pedro at 4 and eventually got to crash in bed instead of a hammock. But, I must say, I almost enjoyed my two days sleeping in a hammock in Corinto more than my bed (they were nice though). Oh well, definitely going to get me one when I get back to the US.

The sign coming up on the petro glyph site

The little alien guy, haha

A few red paintings.

Chris and Samantha. He has a master's in Geography and her in Cultural Anthropology.

Take it away Chesterton:


“Now the great danger of the moment is that young men will go on being content with these revolts against revolt, these reactions against reactions; so that we have nothing but an everlasting seesaw of the Old Young and the New Young; the last always content with its fleeting triumph over the last but one. And the only way to avoid that result is to teach men to stretch their minds and inhabit a larger period of time. It is to insist, not that we now feel inclined to stress this or stress that, in mere fashion or mere fatigue, but that there really does exist somewhere a reasonable plan of the proportions of things, which, at least in its general outline, is true all the time.”


p. 102, The Last Turn, in The Well and the Shallows, G.K. Chesterton