A-Team

In Copantle, the village divided itself into three groups to work on houses. Each group works on the houses of all of its members. Working with Don Juan:

Lupe and Tomas (r).

Lupe is in charge of the group. He gave me pointers on my brick-laying skills. Also taught me how to make a rebar column.

Tomas was pretty quiet.

Marlen.

The first woman I've ever met who knows how to lay bricks. She's really good. Spends a lot of time fixing our lesser work.

The whole team was great. We got a lot of (hard) work done. Left Copantle blistered, sore and a little sunburned. Earned my campesina badge on this house.

La Casa de Don Juan

This is the actual Don Juan, of children's song fame.

His wife makes these little fireworks to sell to someone else who sells them on the side of the road.

They live in this house in Copantle, a village outside of Trinidad.

Spent a week working on their new house, which is right next door.

More to come.

Roadside

Hats and baskets for sale on the side of the road outside of Santa Barbara

Snack time

Another school-turned-clinic for the medical team. La Pagrita, a small town in the mountains.

Tiny plastic chairs and big bags of corn. In Honduras, the government is supposed to provide schools with a daily snack for every student. The snack, la merienda, is really important in poorer places. Corn, beans, rice. Usually a group of moms is in charge of cooking.

Centro de Salud, pt. 2

Most of the places the medical team goes to don't have community clinics. In this town, La Cumbre, we set up inside the school.

Always cool to see what's on the blackboard. This was some kind of spelling game. Next to the picture of the tree it says "ar ___ ." Arbol is Spanish for tree.

Centro de Salud

From the health center in San Juan Planes. One of four stops with a medical team from the States. Makeshift, day-long clinics in each community. I helped with triage and translation.

A lot of people asked about vision problems. We only had a small supply of reading glasses.

The most common problem is probably parasites. This is amoeba season. Swollen, distended bellies and sore throats.

Research

(This library is yours. Take care of it, it's the future of your children.)

From a library in San Juan Planes, a small town in Northwestern Honduras. I spent a day talking with the librarians (there are two) and hanging out with the kids. Lots of good ideas for the library in Buena Vista. Every afternoon, one grade from the local school gets to spend time in the stacks. Books can't go home, unless an adult signs them out.

No library cards. Every family signs a contract to use the library and that gets attached to a book log and put in a file. The librarians gave me one of the files to take with me. It was from a woman who died.

Also learned the Honduran version of "Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar" from a group of second graders. This is how it goes:

Lena come pan en la casa de Don Juan

Lena come pan en la casa de Don Juan

Quien yo?

Si tu!

Yo no fui

Entonces quien?

Lena ate bread in Don Juan's house

Lena ate bread in Don Juan's house

Who me?

Yes you!

Couldn't be

Then who?