Here's my trip report.
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Wow, it’s good to be home! And it’s sad to leave Honduras behind. I can honestly say that I left a part of my heart in Honduras. It was a wonderful, strenuous, rewarding time. I thank all of you who prayed for us. The people of Tegucigalpa and Campamento would also thank you, if they could. You have helped them immensely.
We arrived at the airport early (EARLY!) on Tuesday, Dec. 6. Our flight to Miami was scheduled to depart at 5:45. Alas, it did not. We sat on the plane for about an hour while they tried to remedy problems with the intercom and with the air conditioning. They eventually got the intercom working enough for safety, but never got the bleed air valve corrected on the engine. Not good for flying. So they took the plane out of service and we got off. After no help from the folks at AA, our fearless leader, Bobby Moore, found another flight that was heading to Miami in a few minutes, just four gates down. It was only about one-third full, so we were all able to get seats. We made it to Miami with just about enough time to connect with our flight to Tegucigalpa. That also was delayed, but not too long. Fortunately, there was plenty of time built into the schedule for delays. Bread for a Hungry World has been traveling to Honduras for a long time, and that experience helps.
Tuesday evening we landed at Toncontin Airport in Tegucigalpa. If some of you don’t know, it’s a very interesting landing. When my daughter went down there, my wife and I saw a program called “World’s Most Extreme Airports” on TV. Toncontin was #2. It has been lengthened and the equipment has been improved, but this pic will show you a bit about what an interesting landing it was.
On Short Final
In Tegus, we met up with our two bus drivers and got our first taste of Honduran roads and traffic. Whee! The drivers were great, and took good care of us, but the standards of what is safe are just a wee bit different there than they are here. After going up to a hilltop restaurant that evening through immensely crowded streets and over roads that wound up and down hillsides with no room to spare, I commented that with the landing and that, I wouldn’t need to go to Six Flags this year. But the view from the restaurant of the city spread out below us was fabulous.
One of the buses
We saw lots of motorcycles in the 125 - 175 class. Many Yamahas, fewer Hondas, and a lot by a company called Genesis.
Bike at the Bible school
One in Campamento
We stayed that night at a Bible School in Tegus. It was a beautiful piece of property, with dorms for all of us.
Men's dorm area
Flowering tree (These were everywhere, and I never found out what they were called)
Torch ginger. Seeing so much of this reminded me of Oahu.
The showers were interesting. I saw this one and approached it very carefully, especially after I saw it spark inside the head. All the showers we saw were like this.
There were 22 of us on the trip, including two families. The Greg and Megan Braswell brought three of their four children, aged 10, 9, and 7, and Rick and Amy Carder brought Eva, their five-year-old. The kids were great. They were very helpful and very entertaining.
Gawking Gringos
The Group
The young man in the white cap on the back row is Ronnie, who served as our interpreter at times, and helped us out with everything. He's a great young man, with a real flair for languages. But because of how the economy is in Honduras, he cannot find a job. That's way too common.
Wednesday in Campamento we went out to visit the farm that Bread is part of. It’s a 40-acre tract of land that was donated. Nathan oversees it. He is a young man with a great vision, and his goal is to produce a million pounds of food a year from the farm. This is to be used in feeding projects, some for the folks who live in the dump, some for others. Nathan is starting small with innovative organic ways of farming, but there is a lot of potential there.
Walking up to the farm
The Black Fly Larvae bin
That's Nathan's hands you see on the right, as he explains that the mature black flies climb up the sides of the bin and fall through the pipe into a bucket of soil, where he harvests them to feed to chickens and tilapia.
Clearing is still going on at the and he’s waiting on permission to cut some of the pine trees that cover the property. I've been working toward taking a portable sawmill down there to use the trees they have to cut down, but governmental approval to do any cutting has been slow. The laws are designed to protect the rainforest, specifically Honduran mahogany. The pines on the farm don't figure in that equation, but such is life.
After our farm visit, we headed to the Tegucigalpa dump (actually just across the road) to help at the Jesus Feast there. On a regular basis, all the people who live in and around the dump are invited to eat. Tables and chairs are brought in, and these folks get the best meal they may have all month. It’s a beautiful ministry, and it’s heart-breaking to see so many people in such grinding poverty. But they are happy people nonetheless. Still, it’s difficult to have to carry plates of food past people who are hungry, simply because you have to feed someone first. A few pics from the feast:
Most of the babies we saw were wrapped up as if it were 30 degrees out, instead of 80. It did rain a bit at the feast, but not for long, and it wasn't uncomfortable. The climate was wonderful, mainly in the 80s for a high, and the upper 50s or lower 60s for a low.
From the feast we headed to Campamento, where we would do most of our work. This is now a 1 1/2 hour drive. It used to take about 4 or 5 hours, but just in the past 6 months, the truckers blocked off the road until the government fixed it. They were tired of dying on that road. It worked. there are still sections under construction, but it's a much easier ride now.
Hitching a ride
Honduran Hillside
In Campamento, we worked out of the Day Care Center that Bread runs there. It used to be an orphan's home, but now cares for many of the kids of the area, most of whom are from single mother homes. This lets the moms work and helps to break the cycle of poverty. Honduras is either the second or third poorest nation in the western hemisphere (someone said in the world). It swaps out positions with Nicaragua occasionally.
Kids at Day Care eating breakfast
The kids greet everyone with shouts of "Tio! Tio!" and "Tia! Tia!" The easiest thing we did there was love those kids. And the hardest thing was saying goodbye to them when we left.
Not just the kids, but virtually the entire population of Campamento was immensely friendly and happy to see us. Riding in one of the buses made me feel a bit like I was on a parade float. We waved at everyone and got many waves, smiles, and greetings back.
The families and the newlyweds (Calvin and Danielle Bogart were married three days before we left for Honduras) stayed in town in a hotel and at Bob Wilkerson’s home. Bob is a marvelous man who just went down to Honduras 16 years ago because Jon Jones (the former head of Bread) said we needed some help there. He jumped into his pickup and drove down knowing no Spanish, and has remained there since.
The rest of us stayed at the IH Café. When I first heard people speaking of it, I thought they were saying “E-Café,” like a spot where you can get internet service and food. It’s actually the Institute Honduras de Café, or the Honduran Coffee Institute. It’s an agriculture research station, and a most beautiful place. They grow and experiment with varieties of coffee beans, and raise hogs, chickens, and tilapia. The rooms all lost their roofs, so we were staying dormitory style in the dining hall and the conference room. It was very nice, although the snoring in the men’s dorm was sometimes interesting. I, of course, contributed nothing to that symphony . . .
Here are some pics of the IH Café:
Plaque
Coffee beans
Stream
Coffee trees
We were let in every evening by Paolo, our night guard. He also made coffee for us in the mornings (great coffee!), and assisted us. Here’s Paolo:
Paolo carried a short shotgun with him everywhere he went, and was very unconcerned about where the muzzle was pointing. It was somewhat frightening. He did keep the gun loaded with one round in the chamber, as he demonstrated on our last night by firing it into the hillside. Donnie Anderson had just told him for about the 20th time to point his muzzle down, and I had gone into the dorm. We all heard a “BOOM!” I was afraid someone had been shot accidentally. But Paolo, without any malice or anger, just wanted to let us know that he kept the gun loaded, and he was the one who decided when it would go off.
On Wednesday we walked around Campamento a bit while Murray and some of the others met with some of the Micro-Lending clients to talk about their loans, the progress their businesses had made, etc. The Micro Loans have had amazing success in Campamento. People are breaking the cycle of poverty with this assistance. The loans are typically 300 to 500 dollars. But that’s enough to make a difference.
We also visited the senior center of Campamento, where Bread gives each person a glass of milk each day to supplement their diet. We sang a bit for the old folks and gave (and received) lots of hugs. The smiles on their faces were as wonderful as the smiles on the faces of all the children. After lunch we started on our building projects.
Here's their sign:
One of our main goals in Campamento was to build houses. Bread sent down two earth-block making machines, and we had about 30 home sites cleared with footers dug. Some already had the foundations in place. But we never saw the block machines. They and a bunch of other stuff, three shipping containers full, are still sitting in the customs impound. We pay $300 a day to keep them there while Honduran customs fiddles around. We found out on Wednesday or Thursday that there was a form that was lost. Of course, the containers have been there for weeks.
Regardless, we had plenty to do, and it is likely a blessing we didn’t have the machines. There was still a lot of work to do to prepare for all the 30 houses Bread wanted to build. Each family was given a bit of land for the house, with the understanding that they would clear it and dig the footer for the foundation.
Darrell Crow, who has moved down to Campamento for a three-year stay, had lined up 19 men to start pouring footers. These were great men, hard workers who were very happy to get the work and to get what Darrell paid. They got $13 a day for working for Bread and the church, and that’s considerably more than the going rate. We worked alongside them to make the foundations, mixing all of the concrete by hand, and carrying rocks to be used in the foundations. Here are couple pics of that process. I’m sorry I didn’t get more, but it was difficult to shovel concrete and take pictures at the same time. Most pics were taken while we were waiting to get sand delivered by pickup. It was all mixed, carried and poured by hand. My hands could tell you all about it . . .
These footers are 15 x 15 feet, if I remember correctly.
We also built, or began to build, a pila for a family. A pila is a washing station used for washing clothes and dishes, but mainly for clothes. The family we were working with lost their house to a wildfire last year, and Bread built a new house for them. They have not had a pila, though, and the wife washes clothes for a living. They’ve been making do with some barrels and logs. Here’s a picture of a finished pila. This one is indoors at the day care center, and looks as if it is made entirely of concrete. The large basin holds water that is scooped out by the bucketful.
Here are some pics of the process of building this one, including one of our friends with a chick he rescued after it escaped. You can see how steep the hill is to this home site. In fact, the only flat place we could find to mix the concrete was right by the front door. But the remaining concrete will help to pave the area.
Tragically, there was one casualty in our group. Actually, there were two. My old hiking boots slowly gave up the ghost during our walks around town and the construction projects. I was grateful to two of our ladies for bringing duct tape, because that was all that held them together after a while.
The guys working with us got a big kick out of this. I’d point to them and say, “Mi zapatos son muerte.” (My shoes are dead.) The boots stayed in Honduras in the trash.
In addition to our building projects, we also held a carnival for the kids of the church and the community. That was an immense success. We had a cupcake walk, and a ring toss, and a gift fishing station—things like that. My job was to make paper airplanes (aviones de papel). Each kid had a little card with every event listed, and we checked them off as they visited our stations. I must have made 200 paper airplanes. I predict that the streets of Campamento will be littered with multi-colored paper airplanes in the next few weeks. The kids absolutely loved them, and many tried to sneak back in for more. I also had kids at church on Sunday bring me crumpled sheets of paper to make airplanes out of. We will definitely be doing another carnival at the church there. I was way too busy to take pics of the carnival, but here is one of some of the kids afterwards. The face painting was extremely popular.
My wife sent down some scarves she had crocheted, and the little girls all loved them. We saw lots of those on kids the rest of the week.
On Saturday we participated in a wedding for seven couples at the church in Campamento. In Honduras, there is a fee to get a marriage license, and many people simply don’t have the money. Last year Bobby Moore offered to pay the fees for some people, and the mayor of Campamento waived the fees. I believe there were 16 couples who were married last December ranging in ages from their teens to their 70s. This time we had seven, including one of the men who was working on the foundations with us. It was a great, if simple affair, and we all loved honoring the newlyweds.
Oh, there is so much more to say. We hugged a lot of kids and gave out a lot of candy (too much candy, really). We went to visit some of the micro loan folks, and some of those who have received chickens through bread. Also on Saturday we distributed food to people, and those who had received chickens brought their eggs. That’s an amazing thing to see. Everyone who gets chickens through Bread’s program is required to bring back one egg. You should see how those folks’ eyes light up when they deliver that egg to the church.
Here's Gordo, one of our favorites at the Day Care. He's not really fat, but everyone calls him Gordo because when he was littler, he would steal the other kids' food off their plates while they weren't looking.
One of the best things about Bread’s programs in Campamento is that everything is done through the local church. We don’t want to make people dependent on the Americans, but want to bring the glory to God, and to bring them into continuing contact with the church there.
Sunday we left the day care and the church for the last time. The kids were all gathered around crying “Tio!” and “Tia!” Lots of sweet, sad, goodbyes.
Monday started our long trek home. We left the IH Café at 7:00 AM and got in at about 11:30 PM after driving through absolutely terrifying traffic, flight delays, long waits, and literally running through the Miami airport to make our connecting flight. We sat on the plane for 40 minutes or more in Miami while they tried to find someone who could move the airway up to the plane. Our pilot kept calling, but got no help. And, of course our bags didn’t make it onto our connecting flight. But that is a minor thing. We went there, helped people, received and gave a lot of love, and got home safely. What more could we ask?
Again, thanks to all of your for your prayers and support. There are more pictures in my Facebook gallery. If you’re not friends with me there and want to see the pics, send me a PM.
If you are interested in Bread for a Hungry World, their website is
www.givebread.org.
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