Lions, Jaguars and a Hippo

A few weeks have passed since the school started in Victoria. All seems well there and activities here are back to normal after the Easter Week. Well ... almost.

This week is the annual fair for Santa Cruz. Yesterday was the day of the celebration of the Holy Cross and there was a procession to mark the event. Included in the procession was a statute of Mary which was ‘visiting’ from a neighbouring parish. The statue is over 600 years old so has done lots of travelling in its day. It never ceases to amaze me how much church history is a part of Honduras. With churches and artefacts hundreds of years old, it is such a contrast to the situation in Alberta where a building of 100 years is something to stop and look at.

This is also an opportunity to pause and reflect about our own roles here in Honduras. We must be careful to ensure that we are walking carefully in the footsteps of generations of people who have maintained and gained strength from their traditions. We are here to walk with them and to enable them and ourselves to maintain and benefit from the wisdom and strength that is already here. It is all too easy to look at the half empty glass rather than being enabled by the half full. It is even easier to forget the huge space above the water level in our own glass.

The fair brings with it a number of, for me, exotic fringe attractions. The usual fair rides are set up in small little lots as close to the town centre as possible. The centre of town is crowded with booths selling used clothing, trinkets, beer, sweets and fair fare. There are two stages set up for different types of entertainment each evening ranging from boxing, a beauty pageant, music competitions to live bands. I skipped the beauty pageant because it started to rain heavily.  Fireworks echo through the town each night at about midnight.

Yesterday, as I was putting gas in the truck, a big trailer pulled in to gas up. In the trailer were 8 lions, 2 jaguars and a small hippo (the hippo safely in a separate cage from the lions – although within scent and sight of the interested felines.) A crowd gathered quickly. They watched the lions and I watched the crowd. All were happy.

Last week also saw the completion of a new stove, Kim 1. This stove uses the rocket stove principle for the inside but the outside utilizes Honduran usage ideas. In the future, we hope to add a water heating component and, depending on our inventiveness, a bread oven component. The builder, Manuel Paz, is very proud of the effort and already has orders to build two more. His mother switched to using the stove even before it was completed so that is a good sign. We shall see what future versions will look like.

Manuel holding up the 'plancha' or stove top.

Note the storage area underneath and the food prep area in the front and the back.

The stove top features space for several pots, opportunity for tortillas, grilling meat and varying temperatures zones.

 The rains are almost here and we have had a couple of showers to settle the dust. This has cooled down the temperature but raised the humidity so ... the net effect is the same.

Our digital library continues to grow. It is a pleasure to walk by students and see them reading a book or working on some math exercises that the staff has created. It is obviously of value to them and that, in the end, is the real test.

TTYL

 bb