Planting Shrubs – A Form of Prayer – Dec. 16

On Thursday, a group of officials from the Educatodos Centre in Tegucigalpa are coming to tour our facility. These are the folks who own and manage the curriculum we are hoping to use for our school. The curriculum is designed for students who don’t have access to schools and regular classroom settings. This makes it ideal for our purposes. If they are happy with what they see, they have promised to give us an electronic copy of their material which would be very helpful. Currently we are starting to type all of the material so that we have our own electronic copy. If they give us the material we will be months and money ahead of the game.

In preparation for their coming we have been trying to get things spiffed up. The man I expected to come yesterday to start clearing the yard was a no show. Fortunately, one of our Board members has a son who was willing to come today. He will come again tomorrow and bring a friend to finish all the things I have in mind. The grass is now all slashed (sharpened machete in one hand and a small forked stick in the other to push back the grass as it is being cut) and in two nice piles (future sites of papaya circles – the seedlings are three weeks away from being ready for transplant). This afternoon I laid out the holes for the shrubs I bought on Sunday and started digging. The handle of the hoe (a long grubbing type hoe – I only know the Swahili term ‘Jembe’ for it) was brand new so I have some blisters to show for my efforts. Once the holes were laid out and cleared of grass, we dug the final part with a machete (in Uganda we used a spear but this works pretty good) and then began planting.

Santos, the nursery man, sent me eight varieties of shrubs so it will look very nice when they begin to fill in. The seedlings are all at least two feet tall so the already look good. I really do think that whenever you kneel to plant a tree or any plant, you are worshipping God and participating in God’s plan of beauty and plenty for all. So, a small prayer for beauty and plenty for my Honduran brothers and sisters was said today.

Yesterday, the Board of CPI Honduras met here to discuss plans and to hear about the school, etc. One of the tasks I set them was to come up with a name for the school. Now, years of fiery, hell and brimstone evangelical sermons have equipped me with an awesome ability in alliteration. So, my first thought was to have a catchy alliterated title for the school. I even went through the Spanish-English Dictionary and wrote down all the ‘E’ words that had something inspirational to go along with Escuela. Well, the words were a good starting point for discussion but the Board, not burdened with my penchant for alliteration, went in another direction. Final product, “Centro de Enseñanza Fraternidad”. Roughly translated that means, I think, Centre for Learning and Brotherhood. Not quite as catchy in English. Everyone was well pleased with their efforts.

The sign painter came yesterday to get an idea of what we wanted. He showed up today with an amazing stencil that he had crafted. It has the Honduran and Canadian flags crossed in the centre and then, in an arc over them, the schools name and in another arc, CPI Honduras underneath. It was an amazing piece of work. He taped the stencil on the side of the building and daubed away with a piece of sponge and blue, red and white paint. He fine tuned the final product with a tiny brush. Impressive.

Went to the bank this morning to get some money for all these expenses – new school tables, new medicine cabinets for village dispensaries, December salaries (in Honduras, you get 14 salaries a year – extra one in December and another in June), etc. The bank is, happily, in the bus terminal (a huge improvement from downtown). Still, a five hour journey there and back. Because it is December, the line up for the bank began gathering an hour before it opened. Fortunately, I was there fifty minutes early so was in the front part of the line. When I got to the teller, I had her update my passbook. I was disappointed to find that the money wired to my account hadn’t arrived. As I was walking out (almost to the two armed guards with metal detecting wands) I noticed that the machine had updated my book in reverse order. The money was up four lines and sort of blurred by some overlapped typing. I turned around and went to get in line again. The teller saw me though and motioned me to come back to the window where she served me as soon as she finished with the next client. We got everything sorted out and she needed only one “Dio Mio” to get the machine to finally cooperate and show us the real information.

Lots of people on the bus today so we had a choice of standing or waiting for thirty to forty minutes for the next bus. We chose standing. A small delay along the road for an accident but, thanks to being full, we didn’t have many of the normal stops and starts to pick up people. I have this feeling that the driver and turnboy keep track of the ticketed passengers but somehow get to share the monies from the unticketed passengers. So, there is that balance. They need to keep an eye on the clock so they stick to the timetable but anyone they can pick up and drop off within that window of opportunity is extra money. Not sure about that but I do have a few suspicions.

Manuel spent the afternoon loading Windows software in four computers. A couple of others wouldn’t respond so we will have to find the problem there. Come Thursday we should look very professional. The carpenter has the table tops ready and the welder has the bottoms done and being painted today. Can you believe it – two days ahead of schedule. Are we on top of things or what?

Night is falling (although not as early as for you folks up north). I do hope that the rain which Hector, my yard man for the day, said is going to fall tonight does come. It will help the transplants get established faster ... I hope.

Bryan