Getting to Work

December is close and, even here in Honduras, the days are getting noticeably shorter. Heavy morning clouds make the light even duller in the early mornings. However, heavy clouds mean cooler days and nights. The last two nights I even dug out a small airline type blanket to augment the sheet as cooler air began oozing through the screen and washing over my bed. Delightful.

Yesterday featured a meeting with our board to begin recruiting students for the school. We hope to have thirty registered and active by the end of this month. It was very exciting to sit and listen to the many ideas the board had for spreading the school to various communities. They discussed challenges and came up with a variety of solutions, many of which did not involve outside help. Wow. A year ago, this same board was unsure of how to act, ready to sit an listen to one person do all the talking and then vote, “yes”. Since these people were chosen because of their knowledge and wisdom, it is especially gratifying to see those qualities being utilized and brought to bear on the project.

In the afternoon, Flavio, the carpenter brought the boards he has been working on. The walls of houses are plastered with cement which makes hanging pictures a real challenge. In order to get around that problem, I had Flavio make some boards 10 cm wide and 2 cm thick of various lengths. These were then mounted on the walls at top-of-window height in our office and in my home. The boys came with bits and boards and began work. I helped a bit with the measuring and marking. The bits left a lot of dust and so there is a great deal of cleaning to be done today.

We went to check on the progress of the metal work only to find that the two brothers had had a disagreement and the brother we had given our order to had left. Sigh. Will start the process again today with the remaining brother. Should be fun as Manuel is away. Lots of drawing and single phrase sentences.

Saturday we went to San Pedro Sula and found that we can get wireless Internet. We subscribed and I have been using it here in Santa Cruz. The towers are not as close as we wish but the email does work. Now I can write emails at home and in the office. However, Skype does not work so we may have to move to a plan B of sorts. What an amazing jump in technology though to even have a chance to try something like this.

As well, Manuel and I looked at computers for the school and for student centres. We can buy new units, complete with monitors and programs for about $320.00 USD. That may be the way we choose to go as they are faster and come with a guarantee. It is staggering to me that there is such access to technology and, thus, information and yet we struggle to find ways to bring elementary and Junior High education to the overwhelming majority of people.

One of our hopes will be to find ways to create pods of students in villages with a computer for four or five students who can then study in their own homes. It looks like this will be within reach.

Time for me to get to work on some accounting. I have three months of books to go through for the construction project. Should be a challenge. Why can’t I just go plant a tree?

TTYL
BB