Seasons

This is yet another post that we will preface with "where we live" in Honduras, because just like anywhere climate can change from place to place based on altitude/coast or inland/and MUCH more.  For example, many times we leave Pastor Fredy's house at the bottom of our hill and by the time we get home on the top (15min. later) it's much cooler. Although the change in altitude seems fairly minor (probably around 1000 feet or so), the altitude does seem to dramatically affect the temperature, around 10 degrees F.

Looking at the above map (a little bit low res), you can see that there is a little green dot in the western half. We live in that little dot. It is somewhat of a micro climate, receiving nearly triple the amount of rainfall (~3400mm or around 134 inches a year) that the surrounding areas typically record. So, needless to say, the climate certainly varies. It's a small country with extensive jungles, rain forest, pine/oak covered hills, tropical islands, sweltering coastal plains, cloud forest and even true desert in the southeast.

We have experienced pretty much 3 seasons here.  Each year the starting and stopping of each season varies a bit, just like it would for us back in PA or OH.

Feb - May "Summer" Also called the dry season.  It rains only about every 2 weeks or so and is very hot.  These are the hardest times because the rain does cool it off substantially not to mention that it is essential for life, especially since our village doesn't have a water system.  Everyone depends on rain water.  It's in the mid-high 90s every day and doesn't drop below 80 at night.

May - Nov. "Normal" This is the best time of year in our opinion.  It's warm/hot and sunny every day from sunrise until about 4pm or so.  Some time between 4pm and 4am a rain shower or thunderstorm sweeps in.  It can be very hot in the sun.  But our thermometer in the shade usually shows high 80s - low 90s at the hottest point of the day and mid 70s or low 80s at night with occasional dips into the 60s.

Nov. - Jan/Feb "Winter" Cool. High of 70-80 F during the day and the lowest we've seen is 50 at night.  But sometimes it can stay in the 50s all day.  Almost non-stop rain with the exception of a few days here and there where the sun will break through.  This is when the whole place turns into mud and unfortunately mudslides are common. 50 might not seem that cold, but factor in the constant rain/fog/cloud cover and the lack of insulation or windows that truly shut, things can get pretty chilly. Add a concrete floor for your delicate little feet and (really) cold water for your shower, then you're actually cold (and typically with a little stronger odor than usual until the sun comes out).

Vroom-vroom.

As I’ve been told (many, many times), “Babies change things.” The urgency of some of these changes are more obvious than others. One of these immediate changes was vehicle. As anyone who has ridden in the back of our old Suzuki Samurai could tell you, it was no place for a small child (or any human being for that matter). It seems that when Suzuki was in their final design phases with this vehicle that they suddenly realized that they hadn’t designed a back seat. Some intern then ran out back and pulled off some metal trash can lids and wrapped some old pants around them, which Suzuki apparently promptly worked into production as a finished design.

So, we’ve purchased a brand new used vehicle, a 1991 Nissan Pathfinder. We’ve been slowly making it Honduras ready (roof rack, decent all-terrain tires, additional lighting, etc). It’s kind of unique because it has a motor that they didn’t sell in the US, a 2.7 Turbo Diesel, which has already won me over. Stacey is won over by the AC, real back seats, and a suspension that doesn’t necessitate a kidney transplant.

 I do miss the Suzuki already (we made the swap in December), but it was a necessary change. In tribute, I’ve written a review below.

1996 Suzuki Samurai

When you first check out a Samurai, the production year is immediately brought into question. Round, sealed-beam headlights? No power steering? Is that a choke-knob? Manually-tightened  seat-belts? No air conditioning? No torsion bars or coils? No carpet? The thing is a true throwback, not just in styling like the wave of posers from the early 2000s.

 To say the thing lacks refinement would be a cruel understatement to a potential buyer. Golden Corral lacks refinement, but it is at least an environment suitable for human life. Driven on Honduran roads, the Suzuki is rough. It seems that its sole purpose is to bruise you with its sparsely-adorned, all-metal, sharp-cornered interior, of which all surfaces are always ~2.5” inches away at any moment. This brutality is mostly due to its Medifast curb weight and cutting edge leaf springs at all four corners. That being said, in two years of truly abusive usage on terrible unpaved roads, over rocks, through mud, into car-slaying potholes, never once did the suspension need an ounce of adjustment. It is tough.

The motor is a thing of beautiful simplicity. Four tiny cylinders in a straight line with a carburetor on top. It doesn’t take an Audi certified master mechanic to understand this vehicle’s mechanicals. It is almost like it was built to show people how motors work. I’m not sure if you caught the word “tiny” earlier, but tiny here means that all said and done, the displacement of this motor barely competes with a standard Nalgene bottle. 1.3 liters working for a grand total of 63 hp. I hope you’re not in a hurry. All-in-all, it was a great little motor except for the little detail of consistent overheating. To be fair, we are in a really hot environment and would often abuse it on terrible rural roads then drive it at full speed into the city and then sit in 100 degree traffic for an hour. I was overheated, no wonder the car was. Those being said, once you warp the heads on these things, get ready to spend some cash to get it reworked or better yet replaced.

The simple, slick-shifting five-speed transmission never failed and was one of the snickiest stick-shift experiences I’ve had in a 4x4 vehicle. Placement was easy, quick, and sure. Handy since you often need both hands to crank the wheel in tough off-road type situations. The 4x4 transfer was pretty finicky and once replaced. With the new used one, I often had to pull out the shift arm and boot to realign the internal pins. Caught without a screwdriver once about two-hours away from pavement, we did the operation with a machete tip.

Despite its overwhelming downfalls, this has to be one of my favorite vehicles that I’ve ever owned. Its (painful) simplicity draws you in. On top of that, once you’re actually off-road, this goofy little thing is nearly unstoppable. Part of that has to do with the confidence it gives you. It weighs nothing, so you feel like you can hit obstacles at three-times the speed recommended by your chiropractor (forget about your back, watch your head). The simple manual hubs lock everything together to make sure you’re spinning things where they should be spinning. I can’t count the times that we’ve scooted in somewhere where the rest either didn’t fit or couldn’t continue.. Its slight size is clearly an advantage in tight spaces, but even then, its ability to get through the muck is magical.

Never has a vehicle inspired such a loving hatred within me. It abuses, but simultaneously woos you. I’m a fairly big guy and it makes a Mini Cooper seem Mega, but somehow it was always accommodating. (Also, please realize that I’m speaking as the car-loving driver, I’m not sure my wife would agree with that, and certainly no one in the back seat would agree). The Suzukito was a part of our identity here for two years. Everyone this side of Mexico knew we were the Suzuki’s Gringos. Its fame proceeded us. It was cheap, capable, fun, and ready for the down and dirty, but I’m so glad my little daughter won’t have to ride in the back of it

What is a Pila?

To preface this explanation, we are talking about the villages where we live and work here in Honduras.  In the cities and more modern areas of Honduras they function similar to how we do in the States with indoor plumbing, bathrooms, toilets, showers, etc. 

The pila (pee-la) is a very cultural item. Even in a very nice/modern home, you will almost always find a pila where they will still wash some of their clothing items/shoes/etc. Kind of like how some of our older US houses have a larger wash sink.  The most common location for a pila is outdoors, close to the house.  Although occasionally you may find one inside.

A pila is basically a concrete basin with a scrub board attached.  It is made of 4" concrete block with plaster and skim coat to prevent the water from seeping out. 

It is the only source of water for most families because plumbing (indoor or outdoor) is not common.  Any drop of water they use/drink comes out of the pila.  Just think of what you use water for and they would get it out of the pila to do those things.

Purposes of a Pila:
#1:  Collect water  If the community doesn't have a water system they rig up some gutters of sorts to aim rain water off of a roof to fall into the pila.  If they do have a water system, the spigot is right over the pila to fill it up.  However, the water systems here often fail for a few hrs, days, or even weeks. Thus, the pila allows you to store a good amount of water for such occasions.

#2: Washing clothing  You scoop water out of the basin and pour it over your clothing as you wash and rinse on the ribbed section.  Families use many different set ups until they can have their own pila.  Buckets or barrels are used as the basin and rocks are the most popular "scrub board."
#3: Washing dishes This is also how the family would wash all their dishes, and anything else that needs washed for that matter, hands/etc.
#4: Bathing Families do not typically have a bathing area (except some tarps or the like). Children are bathed right on the scrub board area the same way you would wash dishes.  Adults stand along side a pila and dump water over their heads/bodies to bathe.
#5 Flushing a Toilet If they happen to have a toilet (which is rare) they would use a bucket of water out of the pila and pour it into the toilet bowl to "self-flush" the toilet.

Here is a family's typical water situation without a pila.

They collect the water in the black barrel and use the rock to wash on.  The green bar of soap is their laundry soap.

Here is a finished Pila in use.

To see more pictures a family's situation without a pila or to donate toward a community pila project check Heart to Honduras's Sponsor Project Page.  Look for Pila projects.  These are all projects that have come out of communities where we work as Community Development Staff with Heart to Honduras, so we can answer any of your additional questions about them.

http://hth.org/2011/get_involved/projects/

Stopping Buses

  

There is no bus service in Las Lomitas, but that doesn’t mean that there can’t be a bus stop right? This was putting community-based initiative in projects to the test. After weeks of working with the Guy’s Group to identify a project that they truly wanted without any outside input, it came down to a “caseta” or what we would call a bus stop. A basic place that people can sit out of the elements and wait (for whatever that might be: a friend, an empty truck giving rides, or a bug passing by.)

The guys then nailed down a design that they made and figured out how to reach their $500 budget. We wanted to do it all with Honduran funds, but how? The guys ended up saving about $100 of their own, which was a great start. From there, two of them went to the owner of the local hardware to discuss the project with him, which landed a $100 donation, and talking to a local rich land owner another $100 came in. However, the moment of truth came when they went to meet with the mayor.

Two boys from the top of the hill in the middle of nowhere went with me and the pastor for a ride to the county seat, Santa Cruz de Yojoa. Bouncing in the Suzuki on the ride in, we prayed with them, coached them and tried to raise their confidence level. It is not every day that some muchacho from Podunk, Honduras goes to talk to the most powerful man in the surrounding area. I had called in advance, so the mayor came out of his office personally to bring in the boys, which silently shuffled in. After formalities, the mayor looked a Naun and Andres and said, ”Well, then?”

Naun says,“We, uh, uhm, we would like to, uhm, present you, uhm, with a-“

“Take it easy cousin.” Says the mayor reassuring him. “We’re all friends here. Take a breath and explain what it is you would like to tell me. You’re okay.”

With those few words of compassion, the mayor acknowledged the young man’s courage and multiplied it ten-fold. The hardest step of the project had passed and the most important moment in the year process from planning to completion. The two young men who walked out of the mayor’s office with a $200 donation, were not comparable to the two nervous boys who walked in. They were confident. They had stared fear in the face for their community and arrived back home with victory in their hearts. 

 

 From that point on, some other guys from the group went with us to make the purchases. The group then broke the ground on the project and finshed by installing the roof in December. That little shelter is now the pride of Las Lomitas. No other community on our hillside has one and everyone knows it. Whether you’re walking or driving through Las Lomitas, all pass by the caseta and takes note. Those from Las Lomitas are proud. Even the drunks and potheads have said “Thank you,” and taken the time to sweep and wash it, since they use it a little more than the rest.

It is not every day that a Honduran pastor helps lead a project knowing it will probably be used by the town addicts from time-to-time. He has showed the community that he cares about all of them. This project has inspired a rare confidence in the guys. Last year, we needed a full month to figure out one project. This year’s planning session yielded eight solid projects in 15 minutes. That is development. The leftover materials from this project were used by these same teenage guys, with no input from our part, to build a pila with the pastor for a single mother. The leftover sand was donated to a poor family in the midst of trying to install a concrete floor. That is why we are here. That is development. The town’s liabilities have become their most valuable asset, and the love of Christ is made strong.

Not all are pictured here, but this is some of the guys in the group.

New Project for 2014

We were able to get back to the States for two weeks to celebrate Christmas and New Years with family.  It had been a year since Stacey was back to PA to see her family, so that was especially good.  Now that we have seen family face to face and shared the news with them, we thought we would share it with all of you. 

2014 will be looking a bit different for us!

After practicing with rabbits, cats, dogs, chickens, vegetable gardens, guatusas, banana trees and passion fruit vines, we’re going to take a swing at taking care of a baby human. And not just any baby, our baby! Stacey is 5 months pregnant. We’re over halfway there! Little baby girl Eldridge should be joining the family in mid-May.
  
We have been doing a lot of praying and thinking just the two of us for over 4 months now and the bottom line is we are not in control, never have been.  God always is.  Our idea is to return to the States for 6 months in 2014, approximately March - August to finish the pregnancy, give birth, and the first few months of the baby's life.  We will be living in the Dayton, OH area where we lived before we moved to Honduras.  We will continue our Community Development staff position with Heart to Honduras in their offices in Xenia, OH.

Thanksgiving

So I guess we're about a month behind posting this, but still wanted to get it out there.  

A few people have asked us how we celebrate Thanksgiving down here and if Honduras has something similar.  No, Honduras does not have anything similar (it's very much a holiday from our US History).  The 2 Thanksgivings we have been in the country we celebrated with a traditional meal.  This year Stacey's mom was able to join us so she and Stacey prepared Turkey with all the trimmings!  It was great to have our oven to be able to bake the pumpkin pies, corn pudding, and the 15lb. turkey.  In addition to Stacey's mom, we invited our neighbor Argelia who is the closest thing to family and a mother to us here, Pastor Erick (our local pastor), and our coworker in Community Development Pastor Fredy and his family.  We also had Milena, a Fulbright scholar who is volunteering with our department here for 10 months.  We shared with them what our holiday is about and thanked them for their involvement in our lives.  We made 20 plates and still had left overs for a few days!

International Extreme Camp

Stacey and 9 girls from the Youth Group in Las Lomitas got back very sore and tired from the weekend at Heart to Honduras's International Extreme camp.  It is a weekend Christian youth camp that focuses on doing "extreme" activities that have a life and/or spiritual lesson.  They were divided into teams to compete (typical camp style) and participated in various games/activities for a while and then sat down for a break while they discussed with camp director Moises what practical life lessons they learned from the activity.  There was another large group from another community so there were about 50 campers total.  This is the kind of development we get super excited about!  Intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and social.  When girls from a rural community go to camp for the first time God is working in many areas of their hearts and minds.  It was overall a great experience and the girls shared what they learned in 2 church services so that we may continue to benefit the lives of others.  Please be praying that the memories of going through these activities & what they learned from them stick with them for a long time and that they would put what they learned into practice.  Here are just a few of the activities, there were over 30 total I think!

Faces painted with team color and letter.

One of the most impactful acitvities called "The Humility Pass" - no one made it out with getting covered in mud.  The girls were left SUPER impacted by this one.  You should have seen their faces when their leaders told them what they had to do! No one wanted to go through this, but they had to :)

Another one where they got dirty!  They needed to swing from one side to another learning trust and personal strength.

Scaling the "Wall of Pride" learning that they HAD to depend on their teammates to make it over.

Talking about the life lessons with Camp Director Moises.

This activity was the hardest for most of the girls.  They needed to learn to conquer their fears of height and water!

They loved this one learning to have focus and balance.  Everyone got wet!

"The Mine Field" taught them to listen to advice from the right people to be able to get through life.

The whole group: Iris, Maritza, Kenia, Dunia C, Yolanda, Dunia J, Amanda, Elva, and Lidia.  Please keep them in your prayers!

Night Visitors

The noise started off innocently enough. Scriiiiiiitch. Tappity tap. Scritch scratch. Waking up, I realized whatever was on the roof, it was alive. Not my favorite revelation. Man-mode kicked in and I listened. After a few tense minutes of staring at the underside of the tin roof in the pitch black, I relaxed again. Maybe it was nothing. Right before falling back to sleep. TAPPITY TAP, SCRITCHY SCRATCH. Smackity-SMACK. BANG! Convinced that we were under attack, I rolled over to comfort my surely-frightened wife, only to find her peacefully sleeping.

My heart was now pounding, and I weighed out my options. I finally opted for shining a flashlight out the window. I don’t know why, and it accomplished nothing. After an hour of calming back down and listening for any little noise, I finally started to drift off again. Right on the brink of sweet sleep, the evil roof creature sensed my relaxation and started up his clogging routine again. With my ears I followed  him as he scratched and screeched all the way across the roof like some dance-crazed concrete block until he reached the edge of the house closest to our meat storage area (also knows as live rabbits and chickens). At which point our guard dog seems to recognize that the obnoxious noise is not good and flips out, scaring the mystery thing back towards our room dragging its hideous chains and tambourines over our thin roof and back out into the tree from whence it came. This whole scenario played out three times over the course of the night. After a long, frustrating night, I was glad to see the sun come up over the trees.

Central American Wooly Opossum (image from Google)

The next day, after some discussion with the local tropical mammal experts (my 11 and 15 year old neighbor boys, Eduardo and Nahun), we concluded that it was probably an opossum out to eat our chickens, which happens with some frequency down here. So, we decided to wait for the thing the next night. Sure enough, around eight o’clock we checked in the mango tree nearest our house and were rewarded with two shiny eyes. After  being on the receiving end of a vigorous round of rocks from Nahun’s slingshot, the thing finally dropped out of the tree to our waiting dog, which promptly finished it off. It was a little possum (a Central American Wooly Opossum to be exact), and I felt a little bad honestly. I don’t think it posed any real threat to our chickens.

That's our dog (Canela) right behind the neighbor dog enjoying the evening snack.  Our dog had brought the possum to the front porch after killing it behind the house by the mango tree.  Other dogs quickly joined her.

Epilogue: Two nights later, the noise returned. I was sure it was the ghost possum returned to haunt me for its unjust death. Fighting through the superstition, Nahun and I searched the adjoining vacant lot, there finding two hideously-enormous possums that met early ends due to some sort of high-speed rock allergy. I am glad to report that we and the chickens are now sleeping much better and our dog is becoming a great hunter.