Container School - Day 1

The container is now in Las Delicias. When one says that simple sentence it has no reflection on the amount of energy required to accomplish that.

Arriving in the village - Men ready to lift power lines

In the valley just before the last climb into the village

The container arrived in Santa Cruz an hour early. However, one block on the way to Las Delicias, it developed a mechanical problem. All said, we sat until 3.00 p.m. when another tractor arrived to help out. This was a minor problem because Honduras was due to play the United States in a soccer game at 3.00 p.m. Sigh. The sacrifices we make to bring education to Honduras.

By 5.00 p.m. we had made the journey to Las Delicias. Fortunately, Chepe, our chairman, had a friend with a big truck. We used that truck a great deal last night. It helped the container truck up one steep stretch and then helped pull the container off the trailer.

Halfway point

Current location of the "school" - 40 students study in this small living room/dining room

At the bottom of the hill to Las Delicias, Trinidad and other community members were waiting (as they had for 8 hours) to help out on the steep climb into the village. Everyone was out to watch the container arrive. Talk about being better than a movie.

Raul suggested that he would like to try taking the container off the trailer. This was fine because it would save us a great deal of money if we didn't have to bring in a big forklift or crane (which was scheduled to come early this morning). Three hours later, the container was sitting on its four foundation tires in, basically, the right place. Amazing what enough hands can accomplish. Hydraulic jacks are truly a wonderful invention. A small jack that is used to change a tire can life the corner of a huge container. We used the jacks extensively.

Hooking up the chain for the one of the really tight corners
 

We stopped for a supper of baleadas and coffee which was very welcome. The village men and boys kept getting the container moved to the right spot and set on the tires.

I left Las Delicias at 9.00 and was home by 10.00 - ten miles. Two students had gone with me for the adventure and so the trip was enjoyable ... especially if you like Ranchero music played at full volume.

First stage of unloading - lifting the container off the pins.

Next week we will start the construction process. I am confident it will go together nicely but, at the same time, super nervous that I have forgotten a major item in the budget list.

TTYL

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El Chilar

On Friday past we were able to go up to a small village above Copan and give certificates to several students who finished a grade. It was cold (18' C or so) so all were bundled up. I was so happy that the car we rode up in had a heater.

At the gathering, I was able to show the students how to prepare a banana flower and the stem of the plant. It is painfully obvious that malnutrition stalks the children of this area with a vengeance. Any plants that can augment their diet are desperately needed. We also left some Lablab seeds (a type of bean that provides a great deal of green manure, edible leaves and seeds).

Manuel and I checking the boundaries for our next housing project - not seen ... the tiny insects that left our ankles itching for the next 6 days.

El Chilar graduates in the local primary school

Carol, an Albertan, who is providing the computers for these students.

The banana evangelist showing the edible core of the banana stem. The white debris below is, likely, also edible. It is certainly a good feedstock for animals.

As we drove up the hills to El Chilar we passed two trucks offloading groups of people. They were families with young, primary school children among them. They were returning from the higher hills where they had all been picking coffee for a week. I have no idea where and how they slept, what they ate (and if?) and what the sanitation facilities were like. It was a sobering reminder of the cost of a cup of coffee in social terms.

Accounting update:  It seems as if all the staff are keeping track of their money now. A couple showed me their books from a week of recording. Amazing. Edel, who supports a mother and two sisters, bought a small notebook for each of them and, last Tuesday, told me that the next day was the day of reviewing their week's worth of records. I have yet to find out how the "judgement" day went.

Everyone is amazed to see how the money is spent. A friend of Edel's noticed his notebook and asked why bother. They talked and Edel asked the friend what he had for lunch each day. The friend said he had a coke each day. The upshot of the conversation was that Edel did the math with his phone calculator and showed his friend how he was spending over 10,000 lempiras ($500.00 and about 1.75 month's salary) a year on soda. He also has to buy medicine to deal with the stomach problems caused by the coke. Both of them were totally shocked.

Last weekend we drove along the coast of Honduras. Enormous swathes of the coastal plains are being planted to oil palm. Millions of plants are being grown in nurseries and then being planted out. It was deeply troubling to see this monoculture robbing the area of diversity and potential. Oil palms provide income for large landowners but very little employment per unit of area. As well, there is no biodiversity and nothing of nutritional value for local people to benefit from. For the landowner, oil palms are a great option. They don't really have to protect the harvest ... hand production of oil hasn't really hit the scene here. They don't have to pay large labour costs and the trees last for many years.

For the peasants, after four or five years the canopy closes over and there is no space to plant maize, beans, edible plants and fodder. Large acreages of land which would, at the least, have provided small pockets of places to grow food are now taken out of the picture. The palms allow no ground cover so the soil is bare and open to erosion.

Of course, the processing of the oil is controlled by a handful (or fewer) of plant operators. They control the price, the transport, the production and the sale. Wealth becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

That is enough for today.

TTYL

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Town Square Demonstrations

Happy New Year.

 After a Christmas break, the staff are back and things are bustling. I thought that Monday would be a sort of relaxed, get-back-into-things sort of day. And it was ... for about forty minutes. By then, mothers and children had begun lining up to see about registering for our school year. For the next three days we have had people waiting outside for most of the day. Truly amazing and very rewarding.

Other centres are also gearing up to start with our program this year. That is very exciting to see the program spreading slowly to more corners of the country. Yesterday and today, we are setting up computers in the town square to show off the program. It is fun to have a program which is interesting enough and simple enough for people to stop and understand quickly.

Yeni and Edel (in school uniforms) - two students working on the computers

Potential students checking out the screens

Yesterday, another group of potential students came to visit. There are a group of poor women who sweep the streets in Santa Cruz. The Mayor told them about our program and they came to see if they could study with us. We will have to organize a way for them to study. These are, for the most part, single mothers who make enough for subsistence living keeping the streets clean. Of course, from my perspective, this is what we are all about. It will be so exciting to get them studying.

A diabetic lady has been coming to buy Moringa leaf powder this week. It is nice to have it available and to know that it is actually making a difference in her health. Even though it costs me money to produce, I hate to charge for it. But ... it needs to be worth something. We will try and find a scale this week so that we can measure out the powder more accurately.  A new dryer system will hopefully increase the amount of powder we have available.

I noticed the staff looking at a bookkeeping program Wednesday afternoon. We talked about accounting and I mentioned that all accounting is simply "In", "Out" and Balance. Everything else is just an extension of that principle. We talked about how, for the most part, people who have money know where it is going and those who are poor generally don't. So, I gave them some exercises to do. Surprisingly, three of the staff went home and wrote down a simple journal of their expenses for the day and brought it to show me the next morning. Last night, another staff member was in a store buying tiny notebooks for his two sisters so that they would begin writing stuff down. So ... maybe the little notebook that I carry in my shirt pocket to record my spending is having an effect. (Do not expect to see family pictures of me and my family all sporting pens and notebooks in their shirt pockets any time soon.)

Each of my staff have people who look to them to provide some money. So, they are all vulnerable to having their salary get eaten before they know what has happened. By keeping track of their spending, they have an opportunity to see who and how their money disappears. In addition, having access to computers here at the school means that they can design spreadsheets with multiple columns to show their own particular types of expenditures over time.

Wednesday evening I found that a young mother who does some work for me had been stung by a scorpion the night before. Her foot was quite swollen and she was in obvious discomfort. We took her to the clinic and she got some help. Obviously the effects of scorpion stings here is different from those in Africa. As my friend in Kenya put it, "A scorpion sting is 24 hours of pain. But only 18 hours of that is agony." This sting was lasting much longer and with more problems. She is okay now though.

Well ... that is about it.

TTYL
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2012 Graduation

For the past two weeks everyone has been focused on preparations for graduation. Decorations, hall set up, certificates and refreshments all needed to be readied. The staff were in charge and did a sterling job in preparing a program that went off without a hitch.

Roger - lost all his documents in a flood (as did the school he had attended years ago), runs an orphanage and is taking Jr. High again. An honour to have him as a student. Edel, our staff member with us.

Manuel and his daughter Gabriela - Grade 9 grad

This year, 186 students finished a grade successfully. Keep in mind that our students cover the whole curriculum plus have access to a library of books. Compared to the national average of only 80 days in school per year, our students receive the best education available in the public system.

One of the Canadian board members, Reuben, was here to enjoy the day. He has been the main force in organizing the digital curriculum that we use and has continued to help our staff make the program work smoothly. He even got to decorate most of the 40 cakes.

Reuben and Keysi

From a start of 2 students in 2009, we have grown considerably. Each of our students is reaching a level of education that was undreamed of for them and their families.

Grade 7 Students

It was a real thrill to see the parents and families of the students on Friday. Many I recognized from the community but had never realized they had children in the school. A night watchman, a carpenter, a farm labourer and a myriad of single mothers were among the crowd.

Grade 8 Students

 We look forward to 2013 (if the world doesn't end tomorrow) with anticipation. Plans include a container classroom for Las Delicias, Grades 1-6 for adults and a Grade 10-11 program for our graduates. It is more than overwhelming right now but it is exciting to think that we can continue to provide this opportunity to growing numbers of students.

Grade 9

Keysi with her baby and mother

I would like to thank all of you for following along this year. God rest you merry and may you have a Happy New Year.

Paz,
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Emelyn

Emelyn and her daughter Emily came to school this afternoon. Emelyn is working hard to finish Grade Eight so that she can graduate next week. She and Emily walked to the bus stop on the highway (20 minutes), caught the rapidito to Santa Cruz (30 minutes) and then walked to the school (10 minutes). Obviously, Grade Eight is worth the effort for Emelyn.

Hope this photo makes your day. It certainly does mine.

TTYL
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A Word From The Dalai Lama

New Foods

A few weeks ago, I came across a line in an article about how the banana stem was edible. Intriguing. That triggered some research and, thanks to the internet, some neat conversations. A lady, born in Sri Lanka, worked as a volunteer in Tanzania and had done some work in this area. As well, a myriad of recipes for various banana parts, including "how to" videos sparked some exploration.

The banana plant is a type of grass. Each stem produces one stalk of bananas in its lifetime. Once the stalk of bananas is harvested, the stem is cut down and, usually, left to rot. New stems (shoots - or daughters/sons) spring up from the roots. At the end of the stalk of bananas is the flower. As the stalk hangs upside down, the flower is at the bottom ... usually a rich purple in colour.

"Stick flowers"

Yeni, Anna and Edel getting to the 'heart' of the flower

It turns out that the inner part (heart) of the flower is edible - along with numerous "stick flowers" that are inside each bract (petal if you will). One flower produces 500 - 1,000 grams of food. All of this food is high in potassium (good for developing brains) and other vitamins.

Each stem has an inner core which is edible. As stems can be anywhere from 2 - 6 meters long and the inner core is up to 5 cm in diameter, there is an amazing amount of food there. In addition, the outer stem protects the core for weeks, even after the stem is cut down and lying on the ground. We have opened up some stems which have been lying on the ground in daily rains and heat for weeks and found the core fresh, firm and appearing to be edible (haven't tried those stems - want to try truly fresh ones first). The point is that, as an emergency food source, this has great potential.

Anna cutting up the heart - I'm cutting the stick flowers

Finished stew

A third part of the banana that is edible are the peelings themselves. They can be cut up and cooked. Evidently, you can even put the whole banana into the blender when making a smoothy. Not sure that I would want to use Canadian store bought peels in a smoothy because of chemical residues. However, here it should work ... unless you are buying the Grade B bananas from the export companies.

We tried the flowers twice last week. On Friday, we cooked up four flowers with onions, potatoes, sausage, tomatoes and spices. It turned out to be about 6 litres of stew when all was done. All the staff and three visitors had a try. There was still a lot left and I was worried about what to do with it. I went out on an errand and came back less than an hour later to find all of it gone. Students and staff had dived in and finished it off. Great sign.

On Saturday, I showed Valero a banana flower and stem. It was quite exciting to fill his hands with the food from a small flower ... something that, until then, he had thought of as useless. He has a few children and no steady job. Rather miraculous to create a meal for a family from "nothing".

Flowers

Valero has been doing some work for me on a project and has used the money he earned to buy a small pig. Saturday he said that he is buying a second pig this week. That is truly amazing. His horizon lines have expanded enormously. From thinking only of food for tomorrow ... or, at most, a maize crop away, he has now changed to looking 4 - 5 months ahead and using precious resources to risk a reward. As well, he has walked an hour uphill to his house with bags of plants and cuttings to plant around his house. He even sold some bags of Moringa seeds to neighbours.  Valero is illiterate and these steps are changing his self confidence and ability to use his skills and knowledge to good effect.

Pith

A group working four hours away has a project teaching women how to be self sustaining in business and agriculture. A volunteer from that group spent two days with me to learn what she could about plants and so forth. We started designing their garden space on paper. We will see what happens when they lay it out in reality.

Graduation is coming and people are becoming excited. Decorations are being made. A sign of how valued the occasion is to the students is the fact that they pay for the decorations themselves. That is rewarding.

TTYL

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