Honduran Education Project: Student Project Time

As students finish their course work, it is time for them to do a small community project. This week is a bustle of activity as each student is assigned a task. With over seventy students finishing a grade, that is a lot of bustle. Fortunately, many of them are studying in other communities so that relieves some of the happy confusion.

Today we have about twenty primary students reading stories for the first time in their lives. As you can see from the pictures, these little children dressed up to come to the school. Tooooo cute. Right now, they are busy taking turns reading aloud. Each computer has three to four students sharing a story. What is neat about this digital library, is that each computer can be 'tuned' to the same page and the same story so that larger groups can participate. The size of the font is adjusted so that all those who need glasses can read without problems. There is not a lot of running around - everyone is glued to the stories.

Dressed Up To Read A Story

Reading A Story - First Time

Drawing A Picture Of The Story

Other projects include, as always, planting more trees, grasses and ground cover. A group of four boys harvested a bag of Arachis pintoi for ground cover. They got very enthusiastic and the bag was about the size of Santa's. We needed about 200 plants - we got 2,000 ... or more. Fortunately, I have places for all of them and by this evening, they should all be taking root somewhere. In June we planted some Vetiver grass. As we separated slips from the clumps we tossed some 'dead' roots and pieces aside. A month later, Santiago and I noticed these 'garbage' pieces were actually sprouting. We planted them and, yesterday, we harvested eighty more slips to plant.

Santa's Sack of Arachis on the Left

The last three days, three girls have been learning about hay basket (retained heat) cooking. I have wanted to try this for some time but thought I needed more things to do the insulating with. Finally I just used a pile of polypropylene gunny sacks we had and a plastic bucket. Our first try was rice. We boiled it for one minute and then popped it in the bucket surrounded by sacks. One hour later we opened it up and, presto, the rice was cooked perfectly. Yesterday we tried two things: rice with vegetables and pork stew. The rice with vegetables only took an hour and was, again, perfect. The pork stew was boiled for fifteen minutes and then covered with towels and blankets for five hours. Perfect. We all enjoyed trying out the food. The next project is to make one or two 'hay basket' cookers that are a bit more permanent. (If you want information about hay baskets, send me an email and I will send you what I have.)

Rice and Vegetables

Pork Stew and Rice and Vegetables

Three other girls are working on a sprouting experiment. We are trying to sprout maize and three kinds of beans. We will then cook the sprouts and see what the results are. The cooler weather is not helping the sprouting process but it is not causing them to spoil either.

Yesterday I went to Ada's house to help her and Eduardo, her brother, begin laying out their yard for planting. We set up a water level and made some contour lines. They have a lot of work now to dig the lines and plant the several hundred plants that I took them. I do so hope that the plants grow. Ada has already planted some of the seeds I took her a week ago and they are sprouting so that is encouraging.

It is cold this week - down to 16' C at night. Most people are bundled up (including me). I stopped at the hot springs in Santa Rita last night to enjoy being toasty warm and to watch the steam rising into the night air.

Will stop for now, put in some pictures and post this.