Too Popular – Finally

The last two weeks has seen a flood of people coming in to register for classes. We show them our snazzy power point presentation, give them a tour of a computer and they are even more eager to sign up.

The MAJOR problem is computer space. With more than 30 new students, we are running out of computers to work on. We went around the school yesterday trying to see how many more computers we could fit in. We will modify the existing table-desks so that they can hold three computers. With several new tables as well, we have room for about 20 more computers. Of course … room and budget to buy are two different things. Hopefully that can be solved.

The first table is now at the welders for modification. Between Santiago and I, I think the modification needs are clear. We will see later this morning.

The heads of two regions in the country – Comayagua and Cortes are both interested in our program and have promised support. They are desperate to find ways to offer more schooling to students without any increase in their budgets. They rarely get their complete budgets as it is.

In our area, there are a number of primary schools that have computers sitting idle. We may be able to get them working for our students. That is another exciting opportunity. People are now wanting to help us implement the program in their area.

Side news. I only have a few minutes today to talk so must hurry. I filled out the evaluation form for Natasha – a government program that is enabling Canadian students to work abroad for several months – a semester. It is a fantastic program because it pays their expenses. Only one tiny glitch. Their evaluation numbers are opposite to what I expected. Number 3 is the highest score and number 1 the lowest. Fortunately, I sent a copy of the evaluation to Natasha for approval before submission and she caught the error. ¨We´re number three, we´re number three¨. No wonder our athletes have trouble going for gold.

Yesterday, Santiago and I went to lay out a Mandala garden – a circular garden which utilizes about 80% of the space for growing (with nitrogen fixing ground cover on the pathways we will actually be in the 95% range). We left Marcos, another worker, with the task of planting the mulch plants around the perimter and in the pathways. We will see on Saturday how he fared. We will see in a month or two how the plants fared. The circle is 10 M diameter so is a fair size. I am confident that it will prove a good alternative method for cropping vegetables. A family with 16 of these circles could feed themselves and, likely, make a basic income from sales. We shall see what it looks like with vegeta bles. So much easier on paper.

As we turned a corner, a flash of white ran off the road into a stream bed. Split seconds later, we heard guns cocking and police came into sight. Another few seconds and a police pick up sped off. As it was on our way, naturally, we followed. A second corner and we saw the fugitive dashing through a cornfield. The police were out and after him, firing as they ran (not too effectively as nothing happened to the runner – however, having done hunting in the past, I know all too well what adrenalin does to your shooting ability). Very shortly they caught up with him and we moved on to the next scene of the day.

We are trying to download an antivirus program. Our first attempt didn´t work. We tried again last evening. I will see how the computer in the school fared. My computer here at home, failed at the first attempt – I checked at 1:30 a.m. but seems to have succeeded in round two. We have to burn a cd and then try it out.

That is about it for news today. Having some repair work done in my house so have to run and get that organized. Santiago is planting some mint and basil seeds and I need to see how that is going. They are so small it is difficult to work with them. Hopefully one or two will grow. We can grow others from cuttings.

Yeni, Carolina and Jessica are working on the digital library, Manuel working on registration and liasons with other groups, Edel is working on programming and mathematics. I hang around and look busy.

TTYL

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Happy New Year

The New Year has started with a bang for us. This last week we hosted a group of seven leaders from CRWRC who work in various parts of Honduras. They were delighted to spend two days learning our program and finding out about our other projects. A number of them work in the field of village education and our program was an answer to their dreams. Hurrah.

In preparation for their arrival, we had several intense days working on books and getting them in shape to include in the digital library section of our program. We endeavoured to change the appearance and add colour and pictures to make the books more appealing. I realized (better late than never I guess) that my staff, having never read books, had very little idea of how to make a page look more interesting. Some crash courses and demonstrations later, we were all on the same page ... so to speak.

New students are arriving every day and we have several NGO’s making inquiries about our program. It is exciting to be on the cusp of something big (we hope). A visit to the head of the Comayagua region educational system started out cool but, after seeing our new and improved power point presentation, he was very interested. So interested, in fact, that he phoned the deputy minister and asked about our program and then phoned us ready to sign on. We have been confident that our system is the best of show in Honduras and these past two weeks are showing that others are also impressed.

At the same time, we tracked down two new types of stoves being made here in Honduras. Both use the Rocket Stove principle of combustion but one is movable and the other is stationary. It was such a pleasure to see them. The stationery one, Lucy (model name ... the stove that is) has good potential to incorporate a water heating system in the chimney. The makers, who came to talk to us about the stove, were quite pleased with the idea and, after I showed them a Jompy water heater (courtesy of my trip to Kenya), they were very excited. We can use gravity/convection and the waste heat to heat a small tank (200 litres) of water for domestic use. The babies should be rather pleased to have a warm bath I should think.

On Friday, we went to see yet another form of building using the Poured Earth concept. Gradually we are narrowing our search for a cheap yet durable building system that is within the reach of the poor. This may be one more piece to the puzzle.

We have had some cold, rainy weather. Once your body becomes accustomed to plus 30’ weather each day, a drop into the high teens seems like bitter weather. Of course, none of the people suffering mid-winter storms have any sympathy for our plight. I enquired from some of the guys working with me on a housing project if they had any family to rent for cold nights. They all thought they could spare one or two kids and still be warm enough themselves.

Manuel has been putting up with flooding in his barrio and the resulting backed up sewers, transport delays and so forth. The other day, in a crowded bus, his cell phone was stolen. He is hopeful that he can recover the information on his contact list from the phone company’s computers. Wednesday will see if that is the case.

This weekend was an adventure in cultural expectations. I keep hoping that I will get over these but ... sometimes I still get caught by surprise. I still like to make plans for the week and am never sure how to respond when others’ lack of planning leads to sudden surprises. Ah well ... it happens everywhere. How to live with chaos ... the challenge so far for January :)).

We are very hopeful that project funding will continue to roll in and that our project will be approved by those we have applications in front of. With the potential of some rapid expansion it is exciting but a wee bit daunting at the same time.

TTYL
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