Happy New Year - Again

A simple cooking basket from a plastic bucket - thanks to Ingelore in Germany for the photo

 

Yesterday morning I spent almost two hours in the lawyer's office trying to get more things done on our paperwork. That is such a frustrating waste of time and energy. We continually hope that things are being done, even at a snail's pace but we often wonder if anything at all is happening. Lawyers are rather notorious in Honduras for their lack of integrity and their lack of haste.

Tuesday featured another couple hours with a different lawyer going over some paperwork. We are a little more hopeful in this case. Because lawyers take so long to do things, there is often opportunity for unscrupulous people to file alternative papers and bogus claims. So, then you have to deal with those in addition to dealing with the work you are trying to get done. For the average Honduran without any education it is a total and hopeless nightmare. 

We were scheduled to have a meeting in Tegucigulpa this afternoon. After my visit to the lawyer's office and a few errands I went to a car rental agency. It was going to be impossible for us to make the meeting and return the same day without a vehicle. I was just finishing the paperwork, putting my credit card back in my wallet when Manuel phoned to say the meeting was cancelled. Phew. Any later and we would have had to pay for a day's rental. There was a $5.00 fine for taking off the stuff from the credit card but that was cheaper than the rental.

Sunday I went to visit a young girl and her brother who were orphaned last year. Their father passed away a few years ago and her mother was killed in a machete attack about 18 months ago. She is just 17 and he is 18 or 19. They were wanting to start making their yard more productive. Currently it features brownish, eroded soil. Two friends of mine had told her I might be of use. She came to see our plants at the school and seemed quite interested.

Friday morning Santiago and I had found a few more trees that needed pruning and had another big pile of cuttings. I took 30 Moringa and 30 Chaya up to Ada and Eduardo's place. We talked about how and where to plant them and Ada immediately started dig a hole to make sure she had the right idea. I was impressed. We planted one cutting of each and she said she would have the rest done by Tuesday. Sure enough, she did. Pretty cool.

Tuesday was her birthday and I was invited to her party. It turned out to be rather tame - two neighbour ladies were there. I had found 100 Leuceana seedlings at the mayor's nursery that needed moving. They gave them to me and I took them up to her place for an erosion control hedge. Will see about going their Sunday to mark out where to put them. We can plant the trees, cut them back and then plant the cuttings. About 50% of the cuttings will likely survive and so she should get another 50 trees if she is lucky.

Another graduation is coming up and so next week will feature and bunch of projects being done. I hope to have three girls make a hay basket cooker and another three do something with maize sprouts. Have never cooked them before but they may be something of use.

Last Sunday was the final Sunday of the liturgical year. This Sunday is the start of another and the start of Advent. Monday morning I had Santiago help me hang my Christmas mobile. I have tried to plant too many trees in too many places to start cutting one down for a month's use. I rather like Christmas trees but ... sigh. Instead, I have a mobile with each decoration hanging by thread. It catches every current of wind from the window it is in front of.  The last two years I have been working on my Christmas Carol book. Finally, I have the next stage done. Maricella helped scan each of the photocopies I have and I then tidied them up as much as possible. It looks much nicer. As well, I tried to find out a bit of information and any interesting anecdotes about each one and organize that. So, if any of you are needing 104 Christmas carols to sing this year, let me know and I can send you an electronic copy. I like to sing through the book each year during Advent. Had a few moments this morning to sing the first two so ... Christmas season is starting early for me. It will still take till January to finish all the songs.

Last week Julia helped me make masa. It is so fun to watch someone measure things with their hands. She has a different way of holding her hands for each type of measurement. So, in fact, it is quite accurate. But, try writing that down. We added the calcium (lime) to the maize and then cooked it. As it was cooking, we made banana bread. After the maize was cooked we ground in by hand - twice - and had a nice quantity of masa.

A fancy cooking basket - Ingelore in Germany made this one.

The next day, I made banana bread using masa instead of wheat flour. It actually turned out very well. Everyone who tasted it was impressed.

The vetiver grass cuttings that we planted a few weeks ago are beginning to sprout nicely. They should be about 60 cm by the end of December if we get enough rain. Once they are at that level they will begin to develop more plants. It never ceases to amaze me how resilient that plant is.

That is about all the news here.

TTYL

BB

Predators

This week, Penn State is trying to decide whether the life of a child is more valuable than a football program. I have been walking with another institution, one I grew up in, which is also trying to decide whether the Institution is more valuable that the children and adults who were abused within it. 

A strange fear that reflects our own sense of self-worth and the limits, I suspect, of our religious beliefs. We worry that admission of incompleteness is equivalent to admission of being valueless.  And so we will spend the lives of others without compunction in order to hide the faults lest our good be lost. We don't realize that this is the very thing that erases the good we seek to hold.

Sexual predators destroy all of us.

Their immediate victims are, without saying, the ones destroyed the most. They must live with that destruction for the rest of their lives trying to piece together shattered lives in quiet darkness using whatever tawdry resources they can find. What child knows anything beyond glue and string? What good does contact glue on eggshell do to replacing the sunny yolk and full life potential?

That destruction alone is horrendous. The numbers of people in our society living with this pain is staggering. Hiding or ignoring one predator is telling these brothers and sisters that they are without value, that their pain is irrelevant, that something else - anything else is more important than dealing with their abuse.

But it goes even further. We allow these men and women to poison every day healthy interactions throughout our society. The mistrust that their actions engender cause us to lose the ability to trust and to love in what should be normal ways.

Can I as a teacher give a crying child a hug? Can I as a parent be comfortable knowing that it is okay for my child to talk about sitting on my lap for a story? Can a child talk about crawling into bed with their parent after a nightmare?

Our reactions as parents and caregivers are also damaged. Not all strangers are to be feared. Children, and indeed, ourselves, can learn from and enjoy being with people who are outside their immediate circle of acquaintance.

When we stand up and seek accountability and justice for predators; when we seek redress and healing for victims; when we continue to love and touch others in positive ways we are standing up for ourselves and our children as well. We take back our language of love and purge it from the contaminating misuses of predators and predator protectors.

Institutions and supporters who protect them in the face of dealing with sexual predators are, in the end, destroying themselves. They and their children will be sickened by the poison that they refuse to acknowledge. It is the people who seek redress who are, in actual fact, looking to the health of society.

Today I will take action. I will continue to smile at strangers. I will continue to give my children all the physical contact they need and deserve. I will continue to tell myself and others that we are loveable and loved.

TTYL

BB

Sunny Morning

Someone reminded me that I haven't written in awhile. It seems like nothing exciting has happened. Of course, in many ways, each day is exciting in its own way.

The last two days have been cool and drizzly. For boys brought up in sunny Alberta, a few days of overcast weather and you are really anxious to see the sun. Wading through sticky mud isn't that much fun ... although on the steep streets it is an adventure. So far the seat of my pants have not gotten muddy.

Yesterday Santiago and I took an hour to prune the trees and bushes in my yard. We began planting some shrubs and seeds nearly two years ago and, now that they have gotten established, they are growing profusely. We have done some trimming on a couple of other occasions but yesterday was time for a major cutting. (Rather like the haircut after a summer of freedom when I was growing up.)

We have several hundred cuttings now ready for planting elsewhere. The sun is hitting my wall for the first time in a few months so it will be interesting to watch things recover. Lest you think we cut huge numbers of trees - well - no. Only needed to cut about fifteen to get that many cuttings. By March we will have even more cuttings for planting. A year from now, many of these cuttings will be two to three metres tall so it will be great to see that. Just have to organize where to plant them.

A week and a half ago Santiago and I spent a day planting Vetiver grass. We are making a Vetiver nursery for the city of Santa Cruz. They have many places that need the grass for erosion control but do not have a seed stock. We planted 800 sections of the plant so will see how they grow. They should (based on every other location) increase tenfold in the next six months. Then we will have a real task ahead - where to put 8,000 plantlets. My goal is to see the city have an area of one or two acres in Vetiver grass. That would give them enough seed stock for some fairly major projects.

Vetiver grass nursery

Amaranth flowers and seeds

Saturday I helped my workers on another project plant a few hundred plants of Arachis Pintoi - a ground cover. They have a couple thousand more to plant this week. If we get any type of growth then we should have plenty of seed stock in the next six months.

We are harvesting amaranth seed fairly regularly now. So, last week we tried cooking some of the seed. It makes an interesting porridge drink. I suspect it is best in a soup of some sort. We also tried the flowers with scrambled eggs. Fairly good results there. I have two bunches of seeds drying in the office so each morning I am greeted with the fragrance of Amaranth as I open the door.

We are harvesting seeds of Ceylon spinach as well. We have planted some and are waiting to see how they do. Rabbits have been preying on a bunch of the plants so I really need these seeds to be viable so we can continue increasing our stock. The seeds have a wonderful purple covering. It is the stuff of dreams for kids to play with. Maybe a cosmetic industry???

Friday we took another computer out to Las Delicias. They are going to have 40 students in January. Our program has made such a huge difference in the hopes for that village. We are so grateful to Trinidad for his efforts to help his community. He is, as well, very knowledgeable about agriculture and a lot of fun to talk with. My delivery stop only took about two hours - five minutes for the computer and 115 minutes to talk about other stuff. As always, I learn a great deal ... and hopefully so does he.

We tried making a flour from soya beans, maize and cinnamon. It turned out fairly well and we tried using it to make a nice hot drink. We added hot chocolate mix to the drink and it was very well received. The nutritional value of this drink is outstanding and we wanted to see if it would work with the local grinder machines they have here - used for grains (different from ones for meat).

Tomorrow I hope to learn how to make the masa (the maize base for tortillas). Julia has promised to show me how. I know the recipe but have never tried it. The traditional way of making tortillas provides a great deal of calcium. Using machine ground flour is easier in some ways but has no calcium. Since one of our workers is pregnant, we are trying to get more calcium into her diet and, through her, into the diets of others.

Spent an afternoon walking around the grounds of an orphanage nearby. That may turn out to be a place I can try some new project ideas. The kids need a great deal of experience in just doing things. It would be nice if they can learn to make some money in agriculture as well. But, most importantly, they need to be kept busy.

I had company on Sunday evening so made a cake. The office staff was happy because they got a couple pieces each yesterday. How to win friends - chocolate cake is a good first step.

Not much else to report.

TTYL

BB

Behind the Smiles

Yesterday I had the chance to see a different side of Honduras, a side that lies behind the smiles of the ordinary day to day interactions with my neighbours, friends and students.

Edward, a man I met at the Copan conference, heads a small organization which seeks to make a difference in the lives of children who are in State child welfare institutions. We visited two such places in San Pedro Sula yesterday.

The first centre was for girls who are deemed at risk, girls who have no apparent family and, sometimes (rather strangely in my mind) girls whose parents are unable to deal with them and want them somewhere for a time out of greater severity. At present, the population of the centre is only about sixty girls. It fluctuates with up to 150 at times (two to a mattress - four to a bunk bed - in +30 degree weather). These girls range in age from 12 to 18. A number had babies and about 20% had obvious mental and physical challenges. The majority have suffered physical and sexual abuse.

The staff were friendly and, obviously, did what they could for these girls. The kitchen was clean and the noon meal included meat and vegetables. There was a tiny classroom with a teacher who teaches the different levels throughout the day. Difficult to establish a routine when the girls come and go as their time in the facility comes to an end.

In the centre of the small plot (about 3 residential plots) was a large building with offices, storerooms and so forth as the 'walls'. The centre of the building was a cement floor. No chairs, no furniture. The bedrooms are locked during the day (understandably - many of these girls come from horrific backgrounds) so the girls are free to sit on the floor and amuse themselves. Quite bleak.

Edward's group has set up a small library (first major lesson is to sit quietly in a library - his words) and a small computer lab. They have a staff member who runs these two rooms and interacts with the girls. We hope to help them with our education program so that girls can use the time to study.

The girls are not allowed out of the facility (it has twenty foot walls topped with razor wire - to keep people in and out) because, as bad as their situations are, they are still home and that is where the girls would run to. So, the walls are to protect the girls from their own 'home' situation. Truly staggering.

What was most troublesome to me were the unanswered questions. Where do these girls go when they turn 18? What are their options when they have no family, no education and no skills? I have no idea how the people working there are able to deal with that.

The second stop was at a boy's detention centre with about 95 boys under 18 being held for various crimes (from murder on down). Again, staff who were trying their best to make the boys' stay meaningful in some positive way. Again, very little space and very little activity options.

The day was fascinating but, of course, rather depressing. I feel so very helpless. The good news is that our program will definitely be of use in these situations. When one thinks of the prisons for adults and other such juvenile facilities, we could have a huge student body very quickly.

TTYL

BB

Conference in Copan

Over the next week or so, I will be giving you snippets from a conference I attended in Copan. Over 150 people from a large number of NGO's (Non-Governmental Organizations) working in Honduras met for three days of sharing and learning. Sessions were in English and Spanish so a couple hours of concentrated listening each day.

Saturday we had a visit from the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras. She arrived in a convoy of three bullet proof cars and with about eight armed men.  She was dressed casually but the effect, nonetheless, was anything but. Her talk was short and informative. The drug trade, rather unsurprisingly, was an important part of the talk.

Statistics to amaze. The U.S. is 5% of the world's population. They consume 90% of the world's illegal drugs. 60% of those drugs funnel through Honduras. You can understand how the 50 Million dollars spent on drug traffic control is certainly horribly outclassed by the billions garnered by the trade itself. When you consider that many of the traders pay for their services with drugs, the problem in Honduras is multiplied.

The gangs are fuelled by the drug trade. There are more gang members in Honduras than in the rest of Central America combined. I don't see the gangs so much here in Santa Cruz, but the recent increase in drug related killings suggests that they are very much present.

Their power was brought home by the story of one man who runs a children's home. One of his girls is between 15 and 16 years of age. She decided to run away and was seen in the company of gang members. The man posted flyers asking for help in getting her back. A mistake as it turns out. The gangs realized that this girl was valuable for more than just the tricks she would turn. They are now tracking this man and asking for money for her ransom and also making threats against him, his staff and the other children. The poor man was completely distraught by all this. Police are powerless (willingly or unwillingly) to assist him.

Final sobering paragraph. Only 20% of birth certificates in Honduras currently name the father of the child. 3/4 of all households do not have a permanent male figure. Wow. A nation of fatherless children. Where is the future?

On the good news front. Many people were excited about our approach to education and the opportunities it offered for them in their work. We really are creating a product that will allow young men and women to have a focus of study and education rather than the alternative - gangs and nothing to do. That was very affirming.

I will talk more in the next few days and give some reflections as well.

TTYL

BB

Various Photos

Omilsa, Ana and Chepe prepare piñatas for Children's Day at La Barca Primary School

First Typing Lesson - San Bartolo - New Satelite School

San Bartolo - New School

Exploring the program for the first time