And the road to Quebrada Honda is still scary…

In the distance the mountains that you see are Honduras.


This is the road outside of Quebrada Honda.


Don’t worry I haven’t contracted some other horrible disease and ended up back in the hospital, that is not why I haven’t been around. Instead, I took a journey back up to Quebrada Honda. Surprisingly it was more scary this time then the last time around, but mainly that’s because we were traveling in a light weight Toyota truck that I literally had to hold my breathe and pray that we would make it up that winding, steep, dirt road to the center. I had two “becados” (scholarship students) with me who had to help me with administering the surveys to 50 parents and 50 students. Although I was riding in the cab of the truck scared to death we might backslide down the mountain into oblivion, the ride for them was much worse as they were in the back of the truck the entire bumpy ride.

When we got there only bad news awaited us. Although it was 8 am in the morning Tuesday, the power had been out since Monday at 2 pm so there were not able to print copies of the survey for us to administer. Also, there was no water since Monday. In addition, the kids didn’t have school so there were no kids to survey. All in all Tuesday was wasted time as we sat for most of the day and really only worked for about 2 hours administering surveys to the 30 parents who showed up. That means for Tuesday we had to administer 70 surveys in 4 hours because we were leaving early in the afternoon to return to Somoto.

The power came back on Tuesday at 4 pm. But, still all the surveys couldn’t be printed because they didn’t have enough paper. They printed the youth surveys so that we would have them for Tuesday, but we had to hand write all the questions (3 copies of 27 questions) so that we could ask the parents and then used the codebook to write the answers on a separate piece of paper. Those parent surveys still have to be transferred to the survey form, because anyone just looking at them will not understand anything that it says without seeing the questions and the codebook!

The water never did come back on Tuesday. So, on Tuesday night, there we were, me and my two trusty assistants walking up the mountain to the outdoor latrine before we went to bed and then walking back down through all the slushy mud and rain covered chicken poo. Yeah, fun times! Finally, when we went to brush our teeth we realized we would have to do that outside as well with bottles of water. Have you ever had a moment where you realize how ridiculous your life is and you can’t stop laughing? Well, I had that moment standing outside our bunker in Quebrada Honda brushing my teeth and swigging bottle water to spit into the bushes. Me and the girls couldn’t quit laughing once we started and tried to avoid choking to death on toothpaste, but overall it was good just to let go with a great big belly laugh!

That night we stayed in the little house they have for the staff slightly up the road from the center. When I say house, you should read barracks. The room had a bunk bed (I slept on the bottom and the two becados slept on top, the joy of being the one in charge), and a table. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling but other than that there was no electricity so I couldn’t charge the computer or anything else for that matter. I didn’t sleep at all because it was freezing cold so high up in the mountains. All night I tossed and turned trying to get warm and the metal from the bed was digging into my back. I woke up cold with a crick in my neck and my back, but at least I didn’t get bit by any of the 20 spiders I had to kill around my bed!

The water finally came on Wednesday morning for only an hour, and by the time I got my turn in the shower, it was gone and I couldn’t even go use the “old school” shower outside (read bucket of water) because the water hadn’t been on all the day before and the guys used it up! Boo no electricity which causes no water!

So, on Wednesday we finally got the surveys done. It was down to the wire though. We were still surveying at 2:45 and they were picking us up to traverse down the mountain at 3:00. We finally got our last parent and student done in time for the truck to arrive to bring us back.

The ride down the mountain was even more terrifying as it had rained pretty heavily all day and the road was sludge. We slid around several curves as I prayed fervently that we didn’t run into any chickens, dogs, horses, cows, cars, people, etc. while hurtling towards Somoto. Unfortunately for my becados it started to drizzle on the way back to Somoto and they had to pull a tarp over their heads because of the rain, so the ride back was not fun at all for them.

We made it back to the center and I made it safely to the house. I slept really good last night, even though it was plenty cold here in Somoto. Unfortunately for me the water went out during the night! So this morning was another exercise in the utter ridiculousness of my life as I had to “shower” (I use the word loosely here) with a water bottle that was literally freezing cold since it was in the freezer because my refrigerator doesn’t work. Not a happy start to the day!

Also, the power went out by the time I walked to work, so there is little actual work going on here. Since there was no power last night I couldn’t charge the battery and when I got to work I couldn’t charge it either. Not so much with constant energy shortages and I could get a whole lot more work done...Ha like that's gonna happen at this point.

Speaking of which, they really should stop abusing the rural areas this way. If the power goes out in Managua, it’s usually for a couple of hours. But up in Somoto, Quebrada Honda, and Cusmapa (the more rural mountainous region of the country) the power is going out everyday for hours. This week the power has been out for 6-8 hours a day. We are paying the biggest price for the energy shortages here.

So friends, I have only 21 days until I return home. Can you believe it? I can’t. 3 weeks to administer 150 new surveys and 50 replacement ones because they changed the questions. So all in all I have 200 surveys to do, 2 reports to write, a newsletter to create, and a pen pal program to finalize. Nothing major! Here I go, here’s hoping the energy holds up enough to get it all done!