Student Day - School Dance

Even the old man danced

June 11 is National Student day in Honduras. It marks a week's holidays after Mondays assemblies and marches. We are skipping the week's holidays and celebrated on Friday with a school dance.

The students arrived dressed in their best. They had contributed a few lempiras each so that there would be cakes and snacks. It was definitely not National Nutrition day ... but everyone was happy.

Yeni, Cake and Students

Checkers - for the two left feet crowd

Someone organized a set of speakers large enough to provide an adequate level of volume. The laptop connected to the speakers and so there were plenty of songs to choose from along with an array of DJ sounds to liven the proceedings.

For those who were not inclined to dancing, a couple of checkerboards circulated around the fringes. I took on a few students just to maintain top dog on the porch position. The rules are slightly different, especially for the kings (queens). That keeps me on my toes and changes the strategy considerably.

In addition to the dance ... can there be any other news talking about? We made moringa leaf powder on Friday morning after using a solar type dryer for the leaves. It turned out well and was the appropriate colour. We have more leaves drying as we pruned all the trees at the school and in my yard (one two year old tree was 9" in diameter (23 cm)).

This week we have been preparing some booklets on various topics for some seminars which we have been asked to give. The first booklet was on, unsurprisingly, Moringa. If any of you want a copy in English or Spanish let me know and I will email it to you. We are working on Hay Basket cooking and Soy Milk with various green leaves and Vetiver waiting in the wings. The staff are helping with the layout and translation. Google translate is only so good ... and we don't want to have the equivalent of "Made in China" assembly instructions.

We have also had a chance to 'harvest' some Vetiver grass clumps formed from slips we planted a year ago. Each slip that we harvested (3 of them) had increased to 75 - 95 slips. There is a parable that talks about that kind of increase. We are waiting expectantly to see if the plant will also regenerate from the root system (so far nothing :(( ).  

Yesterday evening one of our board members arrived to look for Moringa leaves. Well ... I just happened to have a very instructive booklet, seeds, leaf powder, cuttings and leaves ... along with a bunch of other stuff. She is suffering from anemia as a result of chemotherapy treatment. It was so rewarding to be able to send her home with cuttings and seedlings of other plants that have high iron contents in their leaves and tell her about even more that she can access around her house. I so hope she benefits. It was obviously a serious matter as several family  members accompanied her. They all listened carefully and translated my Spanish to each other and added information from their own experience.

Enough for now. Will add some pictures so that this is ready to post when the power returns.

TTYL

Bryan