Today we all went to the farm - a hair-raising ride to say the least. Raul got us through spectactular scenery and a variety of road surfaces from really good to hardly there to arrive at the bucolic El Hogar farm. We met with Hector and he gave us a tour - obviously very proud of all that is going on at the farm. We started with the coffee beans (near ripe), through the vegetables and spices, and on to the animals. The chickens lay about 140 eggs per day, and right now the farm doesn`t have any pigs. It did have cows, horses, geese, sheep, goats, turkeys, and a brand new litter of puppies. The guest house there is very nice and MUCH quieter than in the city, with a beautiful view of the mountains. After our tour we had a very nice lunch, consisting of rice, something like cole slaw, and a slab of breaded chicken, with Honduran cheese on the side. Then back in the van for another hair-raising ride home. We got stuck in traffic and took a couple of memorable `short cuts`` , to arrive almost an hour late for the send-off party for Rich Kunz that was given at the orphanage. There were skits, singing, and tributes to Rich and Barbra from any and all. The kids marimba band was in full swing. We have a quiet night tonight, rehearing for OUR skit tomorrow night.
On Tuesday afternoon we were suddenly diverted from moving dirt to go on a home visit. We piled into our favorite van and cruised way up into the hills on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa. The van bottomed out a number of times on poor roads, and there times when I thought the van couldn`t go further without all of us getting out of the van. We finally wound up at the end of dead-end `road`` (almost a cliff) to find the mother of two of the El Hogar children, who were with us. It was a precarious climb from the road up to her house, especially for Claudia Castro in her spike heel, with some of the handholds covered with barbed wire. There were somewhere between 8 and ten children there, and the mother may have been pregnant again. There was no food in the house, and the only drinking water available was rain water collecting in a disgusting trough that you would be afraid to wash shoes in. The house had been condemmed by the government because of the danger of a landslide (the hill was almost vertical behind the house), so she spent most nights in a nearby shelter which we then went to. The shelter was 1 room, with no toilet and no running water. There were a large number of children just sitting on thin matresses on the floor, and a number of mothers about 13 years old. Claudia Castro questioned the woman in charge pretty hard about the state of things, and ulimately decided that the two children that are already at El Hogar would not be allowed to visit this shelter. Claudia tried to bring another girl back to El Hogar from the shelter (sibling of the two kids with us), but the mother said no. So we witnessed sad good-byes and piled back in the van. We all thought long and hard about this experience that night.
dsg - aka `Dangerous Dave``
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