So, with one eye on the immigration line (which I can conveniently see from here), let’s check out a few pictures…
This is San Jose. I found a new little hill that gives the only view up the hill, so for a bit of perspective, I thought I would share. In this photo you are looking at San Jose Centro and Guanacaste, only two of the seven communities! The “main road” to the “city” runs along the top of the ridge. The little cluster of buildings in the upper-center of the photo includes the school, store-building and community center of San Jose Centro. That’s my “home!”
These are my beans. They had been closed in this Tupperware for a few weeks, and when I opened it up to cook ‘em up, out came the plague! Well, not the plague, but there were indeed hundreds of little beetle things. I thought I had bad luck, but upon consulting my friends here, this is the norm. The beetle larvae enter when the beans are in the field, grow and eventually hatch. Eat the beans early and you have a little extra protein, eat them late, and you have to wait for the visitors to fly away!
One morning, I made the 2 hour trek down to the very bottom of San Jose, to the Rio San Juan. I didn’t know this much water existed in Honduras during this part of the dry season!
I visited the Rio San Juan to check out a potential fish farm site. Ah yes, fish farms, surprise! That’s one of my new projects, little backyard tilapia ponds. More on that as things progress… For now, here are the two men who are looking to make the fish farm, Vicente and Santos. Kirsten and I are going to visit the river once more to test out the inertia-driven pump that we’re thinking of using for the fish farm.
It’s a ghost! Nope, it’s just me, ready to jump in for a swim. I think I gave a little Honduran girl a good scare when my big white carcass popped up next to where she was standing on the bank. The speed with which she ran crying to her mother was impressive!
The water was refreshingly cool… and probably filled with all the crap (literally) from everywhere above, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. Vicente, Santos and I all took a quick dip. It was quite lovely.
One of the traditional, hand-embroidered tablecloths that many women in San Jose make. Another new push of mine this time back is to connect these women artisans with the gift-shop in the “city.” They’ve got the products, they just need the market. Kirsten and I are hosting a meeting on March 9th to help the interested women organize themselves.
What is this? It’s a tomato farm, of course! This is Bernabe, one of the more progressive farmers in San Jose, among his tomato patch. Who said you couldn’t do anything with 2 feet of bad soil on top of pure bedrock? We are helping Bernabe try a new, piped irrigation system to water his tomatoes during the dry season. Right now, his irrigation system is a pile of jugs (plus his 6 kids).
Ah yes, the scholarships for middle school! A very good chunk of my time in the last month has been spent setting the new scholarship program into motion. After a bit of difficulty with getting the cash for the scholarships, cancelled matriculation days, overpriced housing and overwhelmed parents, all has turned out well!
This photo is at the house which 5 of the female students are renting. They all live 3+ hours of walking (round trip) from the school, so their scholarship includes a room and board stipend. After the rich dude in town tried to get $110 a month from them to rent a room, I used my white-dude privilege (sometimes being the gringo has its benefits) to find a more reasonable landlord with a house to rent for $30 a month. The house did lack a “cookstove” to make tortillas, so all mothers came and made one. This is the crew and the completed cookstove.
But wait, isn’t that another white dude in that picture!?! Sure is.
For the last week I had the pleasure of hosting two guests! Here are Andrea and Adam, college students from Ohio who were traveling for 2 months to all the Shoulder to Shoulder sites to check on the water filter program. While here, they helped me do a bunch of follow-up surveys for my research, pitched in with the cookstove and a slow sand filter (champion sand-washers that they are), and kept me company on long walks and chilly evenings, with good conversation and some quality ukulele playing. We had a busy, fun and productive week.
The slow sand filter that we made, at a source in Mangal.
Argentina, the younger daughter of the woman who owns the source, posing with the slow sand filter, prior to remaking the filter. On a scouting mission of the filter, we had a jolly time hitting mangos out of the tree with rocks. She was grateful of my big-boy arm, but I was equally impressed with her quite-powerful little-girl arm! And yes, I did sing her “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” by Madonna.
Ah yes, another big time-eater: our new piped-water project! Here I am on delivery day of all the materials for our new piped water system in a cluster of houses called “The Little Mountain.”
Love this photo. It was supposed to just be a group photo of the 11 families receiving piped water, but then two women hauling water walked by. The folks on the stack of pipes will soon never more bear the physical, nutritional and educational burden of hauling water like this. Yeah!
The beneficiaries and the facilitator.
And last, but not least, the home visits for my research follow-up: I’m visiting all homes with filters once more, and it has been a very rewarding experience. For one, everyone really likes their filter. But more importantly, a good handful of mothers, with another good busload of kids have told me, “yeah, this summer my kids don’t have any diarrhea,” “we used to think our kids just got sick with the change in season, but apparently it was the water,” and “we never even realized we were sick all the time, but now we realize what it’s like to be healthy.” VERY awesome.
I’m also offering a family photo at each house this time, and a few have requested that I join them in the photo, so…
Here I am with Paublina and (some) of her kids. The house is courtesy of the government of Germany.
And with Wilson (a scholarship recipient), Vicente, the grandmother, and Lidia.
Ok, time to meet my much-awaited guest! We (Kirsten and I) will surely have plenty more stories to tell quite soon.
Love to all,
mateo
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