Up hill

Top to bottom: Leidi, Kenia, Wilmer, Berto. These guys took me on a kid tour around Brisas. Their (new) houses, the kindergarten ("kinder," in the front room of one of the new houses), the trail where they like to play, an orange wheelbarrow. The last stop was the library.

From Copan. A little boy walking after the day's rain. Up hill.

Up hill. Probably best describes this round in Honduras. Four months in and we still don't have a building. The books (in empty corn sacks) and some of the furniture is stuffed in a back room in Cecilia's house. The rest of the furniture is in the carpenter's workshop. Some of the books got wet. Only a few of the women really get how to run the library. The teacher never comes to the school in Brisas. A lot of the bean crop has been ruined by the rain.

Whenever I ask Jose Manuel how the project is going, he always says the same thing. "Subimos." Translated, it means "we're progressing" or "we're moving forward." Literally, it means "to rise" or "to go up." And that's what this whole thing has been about. Slowy, I suppose, we are rising up. There are books. There will be a building. It will stop raining.

The rest comes after.

Deep river blues

Let it rain/ let it pour/ let it rain a whole lot more/ 'cause I've got them deep river blues.

Outside of Cecilia's house in Brisas. Chickens huddling over the fire pit, under the rusted tin overhang, out of the rain. Whenever it rains, they all get together and watch from the same spot.

Luisa watching the rain through the kitchen window. The people all get together and watch, too. We huddle inside the house. After the rain, someone usually takes the broom and sweeps all the water off of the porch.

Radio cure

Listen while you work. A radio hanging on the wall is a village staple. Battery-operated, scratchy reception.

In Brisas, we usually listen to Radio America or Honduras Radio Nacional. "H - R- N! La voz informativa del pueblo!" Mostly news. Sometimes soccer or the same woman singing (church music and old love songs). Commercials for coffee and cell phone service. The kids know all of the words.