In the Trenches

We were up again at 5:30. Breakfast was french toast and papaya. Everyone seemed to have slept well. I have to admit that I get a little joy out of waking those girls at 5:30. You should hear the groans when I announce that the light will be going on momentarily.

Leah seems to be feeling a bit better. I put her in charge of playing with the little girls and taking lots of photos today. She was also in charge of supervising water bottles and sunglasses. It helped her to feel a part of what we are doing.

We did not have to carry bags of cement, sand, or bricks anywhere today. There were some Honduran men that took over the task of hauling bags of cement and sand. I also saw one burro making that trip multiple times. We began digging trenches. Almost everyone had a chance to try their hand at using the pick-ax. That task pretty much fell to the men after a bit. The rest of us helped by shoveling out the trenches when the guys needed to rest for a bit. Cole kept breaking handles on his pick-ax, so we all had a chance to watch the Hondurans make new handles.

I noticed a lot more conversations going on today. The students recognize each other and call each other by name now. There are lots of hugs when we arrive and when we leave.  The villagers are at work on the water tank. I have been told that the water tank will hold five thousand gallons of water and they are making it of brick and concrete. They were also working at the water collection site today. That is harder to explain. They had a cement water-holding tank already. They are building another support with that. Inside that cement holding tank, they have dug deeper to catch the spring water properly, cemented the spots that allowed water to leak out and placed pipes inside it. Rather ingenious, I think. The motor will set atop that.

Some of the village ladies cooked lunch again for us. All of their meals have been delicious. Today we had pieces of chicken, rice, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and tortillas. Then we invited all who wished to join us to mass on the soccer field. Some of the villagers went home to quickly clean up. We had no choice and attended mass in our filthy clothes. Part of the mass was in English, and Sr. Juanita translated the sermon and latter part of the mass. Tony played the guitar and we sang some of the songs Mrs. Klein had assembled for us.

On our return drive we picked up a group of Hondurans who were waiting for a ride to Esquias. They climbed on top of the bus to ride. In one village sister pointed out the white flowers, called Isota I think, that people chop up and put into their eggs for flavoring and iron. Miss Rogers expressed a desire to have some. Carlos, our bus driver, asked a local villager walking by if we could have one and he assented. So one of our friendly hitchhikers climbed the tree and cut it off for us. We will let you know how it tastes.

At this time everyone is taking their showers. An extra person always goes along to the showers with the girls and they coordinate turning on the water. They are very careful to not go over their sixty-second of shower allotment time.  Perhaps we´ll go to the park this evening and then begin preparing the gift bags for the village families.

Tomorrow we will have another work day in La Florida. Once again Angel has told me we will be digging trenches. Today we were extremely fortunate. Though my thermometer has disappeared, we felt the temerature was around the mid-seventies. I am sure it won´t last, but it sure was nice today. We did not need to escape the heat as much while we worked. We had cloud cover most  of the work time and many were hoping for rain, but it never materialized.

It seems many of you are reading the blogs. Please feel free to post comments for us. I will pass them along as I can.

I cannot remember if I reported another item the group voted upon. Julio had mentioned that there is absolutely NO food in Montana de la Flor. He is very worried about it. We also know some Kids Against Hunger food is going to be shipped soon. But we are afraid some may die before it can arrive. Thus the group also voted to purchase some bags of rice, beans, and corn (used for tortillas) to take to the mountain so the people have some food, little as it is, to sustain them until the KAH food arrives. We hope it can make a difference.