Friday, 19 Jan. 2007

Late breaking news from Steve Baum: "Como esta - Today at 5pm, we were notified that our District Matching Grant for EcoStoves was approved.  We will have $4,000 that is earmarked for stoves."

What is an EcoStove, you ask?  Maybe you'll get to see one right here before the next week is over.

Saturday, 20 Jan. 2007 - 9:00 AM

Here we are at Blue Plate Cafe for our final meeting before we head off.  This is our last chance for biscuits and gravy for a while.

After breakfast we headed for Steve's house to do our final packing of checked baggage.  We are allowed 2 checked bags each, so for the 5 of us that comes to 8 crates and 2 duffle bags.  Most of that is filled with supplies for the project and the donated materials like vitamins, medicine, sports equipment, etc.  Here we are all loaded up and ready to go home and pack our carry-on bags.

Monday, 22 Jan. 2007 - 9:35 PM

We hope you didn't give up on us.  As you can tell, we've breached the language barrier enough to get connected!!!

We had an incredibly long travel day on Sunday, and your humble Blog master was too fried to try and get online on Sunday night.  Remind us to tell you about our two mechanical delays and one equipment change that totaled three hours of delays.  We finally got in the air and landed safely at the Tegucigalpa airport.  (Ask Steve what his view out the right hand window was like.  Suffice it to say that the runway didn't have a lot of extra room to work with.)

We cleared customs pretty easily, loaded our gear on the bus and headed for the beautiful Hotel Pacifico in Chuloteca.  The conditions here are somewhat primative, but our contacts are friendly and helpful, which makes the place really pleasant.

On Monday morning we had breakfast at Wendy's (yes, that's right, Wendy's!)  We had a quick meeting and set off to work on a couple of projects.  Before we left town, we looked around for materials to build EcoStoves.  We've gotten a grant from Rotary that came through so late that we haven't been able to do much research and preparation.

Janice went to work on the house that is under construction at the orphanage near San Francisco (no, not that one, the other one) at the Mision Lazora.  The team prepared the cement to pour the foundation for the house.  This was hard manual labor mixing up sand, cement mix and rocks in a very primitive form.  They stirred the mixture with shovels, loaded it into wheelbarrows, rolled each load to the forms and poured it in.  At the end of the day, these folks were tired and ready for a break.

The other group went to San Juan Cito to a project that is nearing completion.  Steve, Jerry, Craig and Dennis went to help with wiring the last few houses and to repair desks and chairs for the local school.  We got a chance to see some stoves in use today.  This was very helpful in understanding what might need to change and how we might design an upgrade.  We also experienced the smoky environment in several of the houses.  There's no doubt that we will have the opportunity to improve the quality of life for a lot of families.

After the world's bumpiest ride back to Choluteca, we settled in for some refreshments and a really good steak dinner at a local restaurant.

Tomorrow we plan to go back to the sites we worked at today.  We'll be in touch.

Tuesday, 23 Jan. 2007 - 6:30 PM

We had a great day today.  We did more work on installing electrical service at the village of San Juan Cito.

Janice came with us today.  She put the finishing coat of varnish on school chairs and tables.   Then she did "gopher" work to help with wiring the school.  She also toured the village where other wiring had been completed.  There she saw some touching sights like a mother with a two week old baby and the pig that is destined to serve us with the ultimate sacrifice on Saturday.  She also has some stories to tell about the outhouse facilities and under-nourished pets.

Steve and Janice went to the orphanage near San Marcos and later to San Francisco to distribute the vitamins and medicines that all you amazing Rotarians generously donated.  Steve handed them over to Corolina Terecero Varela.  She and her mother, the ad hoc nurse for the community will distribute the medicines as needed and make sure that everyone takes their vitamins.

Steve also talked to Carolina about the EcoStove project.  He is very optimistic that he will be able to work through the locals to identify the needs, help train people in the community to build the stoves and coordinate the purchase of supplies to build with.

Wednesday, 24 Jan. 2007 - 9:50 PM

Janice went back with the orphanage team to help with wiring in the main house.  At least there was no concrete mixing to be done that day - Hallelujah!  The team left the orphanage early enough to go with Neal to tour two sites completed on earlier projects.  Then they went over to the Pacific Ocean  where they saw a beautiful sunset and had a shrimp dinner.

Steve, Jerry, Craig and Dennis went back to Cito to do more electrical work.  We finished wiring the school house, but there are several homes that we have to go back tomorrow to do final work on.  That means one more bone jarring ride up the mountain.  We normally break for lunch and siesta about noon at the "mayor's bodega".  The mayor is very proud of the work that everyone has done at Cito, and he plans to show his appreciation by throwing a big pig roast on Saturday.  We bought the Mayor a hammer and saw that we will present.  He will hand these out to people in the community when they need to do work.  We will also hand out the rest of the gifts that we brought from Madison Rotary.

Steve continues his research on EcoStoves.  We have a Honduran contact, Carolina Tercero Vorela.  We plan to meet with her again tomorrow after we finish up at Cito.

Thursday, 25 Jan. 2007 - 9:45

Janice went back to the orphanage to take down all the concrete forms and stack the wood - another pretty tough manual labor assignment.  Then, the team left early and drove over to Nicaragua.  The team didn't have the proper stamps on their passports and were turned away at the border.

Meanwhile, on Thursday the San Juan Cito team - Steve, Jerry, Craig and Dennis went back with the rest of the group to finally(!!!) finish off the detail work of checking each house in the village to make sure nothing had been overlooked.  Of course a bunch of stuff had been overlooked, so we worked until about 2:00 finishing up.  Then we headed out on a quick trip to the San Francisco and San Marcos area.  We stopped by Carolina's to show her a stove design that Neal had given to Steve.  We are all in agreement that this design holds a lot of promise.  Steve had gotten some names at the local hardware store of people who might be able to supply us with parts for the stoves.  Carolina was excited and eagerly agreed to help us track these people down.

After we left there we drove to San Marcos to take a quick look around.  Boy, was it worth the trip!  What a beautiful and quaint little town on the top of a 3700 foot mountain.  The weather was perfect and the town was clean and well cared for.

Friday, 26 Jan. 2007 - 7:20

I have so little time to say anything and so very much to say.  This will  probably be the last entry before we head home.  We are going to the meeting of the local Choluteca Rotary Club tonight, and I have to run soon to get ready.  Tomorrow we go to Cito for our final visit.  We hear that power was turned on today for the first time.  We will leave early in the morning to test the service to each house to make sure that everything is OK.  What a monumental day in the life of this village!

Later in the day we will be treated to a fiesta hosted my "el jefe" (the boss) of the village whom we call "the Mayor".  We went to the market today to buy food and gifts to take to the celebration.

Saturday, 27 Jan. 2007 - 10:00 PM

We actually have a little time tonight to do an update.  What a special day we had today!  We made the last trip to San Juan Cito at our regular work time today.  When we arrived there was a buzz in the air.  Everyone was dressed in their finest, and we got a bunch of excited reactions as we drove through the village.  We parked at the Mayor's house where he was making preparations for a giant fiesta.  We had work to do so we didn't hang around long.  We divided up into teams of two or three, and each team covered a section of the village.  Our job was to connect service to each house and check to make sure that everything was working.  Here's a happy customer wearing some Madison Rotary memorabilia.  Each place that we checked had one or two minor  problems that we fixed pretty quickly.  After an hour or so, everything was buzzed out and the whole place had lights and electrical outlets!

Then it was time for the party to start.  There were local dignitaries and community leaders there to make us feel welcome and appreciated.  Of course, we couldn't understand a lot of what was being said, but we could tell that the villagers were touched and grateful for our efforts.

We were guests of honor for a wonderful chicken and pork cookout with all the trimmings.

We purchased a saw and hammer that we presented to the Mayor.  The village leaders held a ribbon cutting ceremony where each of us did a ceremonial cut.  We will each cherish the little section of blue ribbon that we cut off to commemorate the event.  After a little more distribution of gifts like Huntsville Stars T-shirts, baseball caps, Polo shirts and lots of candy and toys, we were off for our last bone-jarring trip down the mountain.

On the way we made a side trip to San Juan Avejo to see a huge old Catholic mission perched on the side of the mountain.  You can see it from miles around, and we just had to go by and see it up close.

We're back in Choluteca at our hotel having some social time and making plans for our trip home tomorrow.  Our flight leaves at 1:50 PM Central Time, if we're lucky.  With a three hour layover in Miami, we'll be very late getting into Nashville and back to Madison.  Don't expect much out of us on Monday!

With that, we'll close this Blog for good.  We hope you've gotten some kind of taste for what we've experienced.  We took a poll of the five member team, and it was unanimous that we plan to be back next year - bigger and better.  Get your bids in early if you want to be a part of some really important work.

Peace - Steve, Jerry, Craig, Janice and Dennis.