Have Wheels ... Will Travel

The headphones are on and playing a section of African music which I am preparing for the music group tomorrow. I do hope that at least one or two will appreciate the songs. New types of music are often hard to appreciate. The current song is from David Fanshawe’s “African Sanctus”. This work takes sounds and songs from Africa and then combines them with a Latin Mass sung by a British choir. The work has some wonderful combinations of sounds and music. He has, in my opinion, kept true to the wide variety of situations, religious expressions and sounds of Africa. This song combines the Call to Prayer from an Egyptian mosque with the Kyrie (Lord have mercy).

Today I took the last batch of seedlings to the Santa Rita project. Five pickup loads of seedlings in all – 800-900?? Muncho is beginning to see some of what I want to accomplish and, now, the real work begins. Many of the previous plantings are doing well. Trees planted in April are now over one metre tall and beginning to take off. We are all learning new species and, from them, getting new ideas. Today we unloaded lemon grass (neat flavour and essential oil), a second grass for thatching and medicine, chaya, chipolin (both good food sources), aloe vera (good for medicinal purposes), passion fruit, flame trees, calliandra and leuceana (good nitrogen fixers and animal fodder trees).

The whole family piled into the truck to help unload. I let the little boy ‘drive’ down the hill afterwards and he was some pleased with that.

Some banana circles are being formed from some clearing that we are doing for vegetable beds and so forth. It is so exciting to see some of the ideas starting to actually take shape. We will seen what happens in the next week as we endeavour to get all of these planted.

This week featured, as well, two trips with the Honduran board. We went and toured three different project sites. The board members are so very wise and patient. They brought with them many suggestions and solutions. When we descended upon a recalcitrant shop keeper, he visibly paled and shook and promised that everything would be in order by next Wednesday. We will see. I think the threat of having us all in his shop again will be enough. Two of the members showed our housing project families a better way to prepare pineapple seedlings and thus rescued a couple hundred dollars worth of seedlings. At another place, they rounded up the local village officials and explained our projects and got them on board to help protect some of our plantings. I got to watch and chauffeur.

On Thursday we took two more computers to a centre that has over thirty students. Currently they have shifts to all have access to the (now) four computers. Generally two students study from the same computer at the same time. They will up the numbers now with extra computers.

While there, I got to see some houses built from compressed earth blocks. This is a way of building which is rather dear to my heart and it was so exciting to see some of the similarities and differences. I had the benefit of working with an engineering professor in Uganda so had some different suggestions. However, their brick shape is different and offers some very interesting strength potential. During the earthquake last year, many of the concrete block houses cracked but none of the eighteen earth block houses suffered damage. The cost of these houses is very exciting as well. A three bedroom house for under $3,000.00. Simple, dirt floors but still, very adequate and useable. I would like to work with some of the African recipes for dirt floors which are beautiful and very sturdy.

We hope to start sprouting maize next week to use as fish food. We will see how that works. New idea being transmitted through several minds and two languages. We will try it at the school as well to get two ways of doing it.

The power just went out. I am glad I can touch type ).

Thursday night, as I returned from San Pedro Sula, I passed the body of a man who had been killed in a car accident. Obviously, the vehicle to take his body away had not arrived. The police were there and directing traffic. I was struck by the absolute aloneness of the man. One moment able to communicate, to plan, to be and, the next ... beyond.

One of the features of having a vehicle is police checks. So far, so good. I had to renew my licence in Canada and the new one did not arrive before returning to Honduras. Fortunately, I was able to receive a picture of the licence via email. I made a laminated copy of the licence and carry it along with a copy of my passport. I can always try to explain that I am worried about theft.

At both police checks, we got talking about our projects and, after a couple of minutes I was waved on. Phew. At the second stop, the policeman was excited to think he could join our school. I am eager to have a computer in one of the police stations so that word will get out to all the policeman in our area that I am their friend ).

The last exciting thing this week. I successfully explained to Muncho that I needed forty-one local chicken eggs to put into my incubator. Yesterday, we went up to the house of the lady who had collected them for me. I worked with the incubator last night – it was good to have something to do each time I woke up – and got the temperature stabilized. The machine is obviously not calibrated to +26 and higher temperatures. This afternoon, the eggs went in. I went over with Julia how the table with the eggs is not to be bumped for the next three weeks. I haven’t done this before so have no idea of how touchy things are. Likely they are much tougher than I think. Will let you know in a week or so the results of candling and ... hopefully, in three weeks, the results of hatching.

TTYL
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