I’m proud of this ordinary-looking diploma.  With six years prior military service when I was but a kid, I have now served my country with two years in the U.S. Peace Corps as an old dude.  And I’m staying for another year.  We remaining 26 of 50 initial H-14 trainees who started this adventure back in 2009 met as a group for the final time in Valle de Angeles for our COS Conference last week.  Every six months a new 50-strong group enters service.  They alternate: Business; Water and Sanitation; and Health comprise three projects.  Next cycle comes Youth Development; Community Development; and Resources Management.  Most make it, some don’t.  Ours was a 50% success rate.  We were the survivors.  As you can imagine, our last conference, which focused on administrative separation duties, was filled with nostalgia and excellent memories.  And a little bit of booze (or maybe a lot, I forget).  But it was fun.  Three of my PCV companeras and I will be extending for another year.  The rest will scatter to the far corners of the States and the world, forever friends and companeros and very special folk.  We have experienced an adventure that will remain in our collective memories forever.  Adios amigos!

 This is where the kids have been playing for almost the past two years.  A dirt and rock sanctuary.

The Palmerola Air Base asked me if we could use a few bags of cement.  Hell yes, I replied.  How many do you want?  How many do you have?  We ended up with 50 one-hundred-pound bags of donated concrete that I and insufficient but available help unloaded over two days.  Next came a donation of sand by a local colegio.  All this activity happened around the holidays.  Finally the President’s daughter came to visit and negotiated with the alcaldia the labor of prisoners from the centro penal who were working off their court penalty.      And this is now where the children will play until our new building is constructed sometime at the end of 2011.  We are confident that the Personeria Juridica will be approved.  If not, we have Sister Edith’s unbridled confidence to proceed siempre adelante.

It appears that the monolithic bureaucratic entity is endemic to civilization, no matter the country’s development status.  A word about the Personeria Juridica: a Honduran legality conferring a status to an organization similar to incorporation in the States.  Sister Edith has been engaged in a bureaucratic battle for six years.  Her first two attorneys meant well but accomplished squat and ended up at odds with each other, the process at a dead stop when I became involved in March 2009.  A new attorney expressed interest and then a friend of hers joined the campaign.  Over the past year we have jumped hoops and organized folk to get to the point of completing and getting the required paperwork to the capital city for approval.  We have been in an approval situation since the first of December that is so stereotypically bureaucratic.  The Tegucigalpa governmental bureaucracy is asking for corrections to the tramite (legal paperwork) that have already been submitted.  Our lawyer told me she has completed all the requested modifications but she does not have the influence to move the tramite through the bureaucratic maze.  I have contacted folks to enlist the assistance of a diputado (similar to a congressman) from Comayagua; a lawyer assigned to Governacion y Justicia which is a governmental office, a staff person recommended by the President’s daughter; and the governor of the departamento of La Paz.  There is nothing more I can do.  It would seem that every country has its bureaucratic labyrinth that is impervious to common sense and whose squeaky, ponderous wheels are greased by who you know, power, and pure luck.  The tragedy, of course, is that the construction of a new building for the Hogar San Jose is contingent upon the approval of the Personeria Juridica.

This year we expect the Personeria Juridica to be signed by the Country’s Secretary of Health any day now legitimizing the Fundacion Senor San Jose as a legal entity.

This year a new building for the Fundacion Senor San Jose with space for thirty-two children will be constructed.

This year I expect to write a Small Project Assistance (SPA) grant to remodel the Health Clinic (CESAMO) in a mountain aldea called Concepcion de Soluteca.

This year I will be coordinating the installation of a permanent, everyday 24/7 water system for the Hogar Materno where the peasant ladies from the mountain aldeas come to stay before they are ready to deliver their babies.

This year I will intensify my participation in the Centro de Atencion Integral (CAI), the clinic that administers to HIV positive patients and their families and to those with AIDS.  My goal is to establish a counseling (consejeria) service for the patients themselves to form a self-support group (Grupo de Auto Apoyo) (GAA) that provides them the knowledge and cumulative strength to combat the everpresent stigma, discrimination and rejection that accompany the collective community ignorance concerning this infection.  And of course to ultimately educate the community, if not into an attitude of acceptance, at least into one of tolerance.

This year I will continue to teach my three English classes geared to the three different levels of my students.

This year I will continue to integrate myself into the La Paz municipio community.  Every day I learn something new.  Every day I continue to grow.  Every day I continue to live life to the fullest amongst my contrapartes and my friends.  Every day is an adventure.