Black Flies and Cold Chicken

The alarm went off at 5:15 a.m. and I hurried to put some water on to heat for my morning dish pan bath. At the same time I put on water for porridge. Why is it that you work hard to get the porridge hot enough to cook and then work hard to get it cool enough to eat? By 6:10 breakfast was over, bath done and I was ready for the day. Unfortunately, I had to leave before finishing the last two chapters of a novel I was reading – will get back to it tonight I am afraid.

The reason for the early start was a trip out to give some people advice about garden beds. We boarded a rapidito and headed out to Rosa’s farm and met with the five families who are going to start making garden beds in between the rows of papaya that Rosa has planted. We did some measuring and cutting of measuring sticks and demonstrated a few ways of planting the seeds. After doing that it came out that getting seeds was a problem. Not sure why that is but it does seem difficult to find seeds here. Julio, one of Rosa’s workers was along and showed me a number of his efforts. Most commendable. As I told Rosa later, “Planting anything gets you an 80%. The other 20% we can talk about, discuss and even argue but as long as stuff is getting planted you are well on the way.” She is busy planting trees on her property. Her numbers suggest that in 2-4 years each of her fruit trees will produce more than $100.00 of fruit (she is thinking $250.00) a year. When you consider that, as a teacher, she makes $400.00 a month, it means only 50 trees to equal that income. And, believe you me, trees are much easier to manage than kids in a classroom. The lumber producing trees she is planting will be worth more than $1000 a tree in ten to twelve years. It was exciting to see someone putting things in the ground. She also has many roses planted which look lovely.

The down side of the trip was that there is a type of black fly which bites and takes a tiny chunk of skin with it. Whenever I encounter a new type of stinging insect, (mosquitoes, etc.) the bites swell up quickly and thoroughly for the first few days of encounter. Within a week or two my immune system is ready for the new attack and it is not so annoying. My arms look like a Canadian camper in June who lost his tent and campfire.

We had another board meeting this week and, in preparation, I told Manuel that I would buy smoked chicken and put in my fridge and serve it cold. Well, a bit of the conversation got lost in the translation because there was nothing like this in Manuel’s culinary background. He knew that it was okay to store chicken in the fridge but had never heard or thought of having cold chicken at a meal. Consequently, when we were ready to serve the meal, I went over to see that the cold deboned chicken which I had ready to serve was being hustled into a frying pan to be heated. I quickly resolved the situation and we got the translation corrected. Everyone was quite amazed at the prospect but, fortunately, all enjoyed the new adventure in taste.

For the meeting we inaugurated the new Lorena Oven and it performed in a stellar fashion. As well, we put two solar cookers into service to cook potatoes and cauliflower. By noon, fresh beans (evidently, there is a taste difference between new dried beans and old dried beans when cooked) were cooked on the stove and a pudding made from ground milk corn, milk, sugar and cinnamon. Fresh watermelon finished off the meal which we served outside in the shade of one of our palm trees. Sooooo tropical.

Today the men are supposed to come fix the roof. Not sure if that will happen. I hope they did not arrive during the hour I was planting. Juan Carlos called to make sure I could come referee a soccer game this afternoon. Will see how that goes. Hopefully all will stay calm and any Honduran intensity will be saved for the after game drinks.
One other interesting trip this week. We took some scribblers and pencils to children who are kept in a shelter during the school week. These children come from single parent families or live with extended families. For the most part, they are without care during the week because the parent or caregiver has to work. Consequently, the make do with one meal a day. The shelter allows them to have three meals a day, access to schooling and a place to sleep during the school week. They return to their homes on weekends. It was a sobering reminder of how close to the surface poverty is and how it crushes the lives of those least able to do anything about it. Additionally, these children who are malnourished before the age of five face a lifetime of difficulties in health, education and livelihood skills. It is good to think that we are at least trying to do something about ameliorating some of these problems.

TTYL

Bryan