Back in the Saddle

The searches at airports continue to become more intrusive and time consuming. The latest one in Edmonton took first prize in my experience. Swabbing the hands of toddlers and rifling through the pages of every book were two of the rather extreme measures taken. Considering the port of entry, the procedure was tedious to say the least. This is the first time I have been in a line where the passengers are openly talking of the procedure and questioning it.

The good news, for me, was that my one plastic crate was resealed by the ubiquitous but invisible searchers. I attached extra zip ties to the top and they actually used them and even added some more duct tape. What a delight. My rather eccentric collection of things must trigger their curiosity as they invariably pick my luggage to open and leave their paper document droppings behind.

Going through customs in Honduras was made easier by the arrival of two groups of volunteers with their mountains of luggage. I simply tucked into their line and left without so much as a glance from the officials. Two taxi rides and a long bus ride later and I was home again.

New students are waiting each day now that I have returned. One of our teachers, Edel, is a super salesman and has spread the news far and wide. There are a couple of potential village groups which might sign on and that would be fantastic. We will see how that goes. We have students from two new communities, one of which is in a new direction from Santa Cruz. That is fantastic.

As I was leaving, twenty trap hives arrived from the fibreglass man. My orders for Santiago (James to you) were that he wash them with vinegar to remove the fibreglass smell and then fit them with five top bars and a lid. Because of our limited space, I told him to hang them all in a tree behind the school. He followed directions with zeal and the tree was soon festooned at all levels with hives. Most surprisingly was the waves they made in the bee community. Evidently, two or three days were somewhat interesting in the school and yard with three swarms meandering about (even a few scouts into the office where we store beeswax foundation sheets). There are three trap hives with bee activity in them now. Truly amazing that swarms will settle so close to each other and that there are that may swarms in the town. Yesterday I sent five of the remaining hives to other locations so that we don’t have too many bees here. They are, after all, Africanized bees and I don’t want things to get too hairy for the students – we are, first of all, a school. It makes it even more surprising as we were told a few years ago by a couple of agriculture people that there were no bees in our area.

The front of the school fence is now bright and white with a coat of whitewash. I had hesitated to paint it because of cost. Well, the whitewash cost $3.00. Sigh. Had I known that a year ago, we could have been putting a second coat on by now.

My night noises have acquired two new sounds. My neighbours welcomed a set of twins last week so their night cries are something I will have to become accustomed to. Not having to get up for them will make that process fairly quick and certainly painless.

I will try and have a couple of biographies by next week. It was encouraging to hear from a number of people in Canada that my blog is being read. Feel free to comment and/or ask questions. There is little eye contact and no noise of conversation from electronic media.

TTYL
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