About time for an update

I always feel like I am falling behind on the blog, but in all actuality I probably have something to tell about once a month, every two weeks during good times.

As we have talked about on many occasions Alice and I have put a great deal of time and effort into a civic education project. One group of students we had present in front of a group of national policy makers in an attempt to get the ministry of education (that’s right, we have ministries here, not departments) to adopt this particular program into the national curriculum.

Well, we were nearing the end of the school year and we had to plan something both of our schools could participate in. And we did. And it went great. We ended up with 3 groups presenting: one on poverty, one on drug use, and a third on deforestation. The presentations impressed even my, since two of the groups did a final practice the day before and seemed kinda shaky, but they pulled it off in style.

Following the presentations, invited community leaders are given a chance to ask questions or offer comments. I must censor myself now, to avoid future consequences. One of our invited community leaders started talking, and I zoned in and out, concentrating more on what I was going to say next, when a comment got my attention. The person who had the floor was making some audience inappropriate comments and I was immediately confused. I suppose while the time and place of comments is important to me, some folk consider what they have to say so important they forget to censor themselves. Consider that your lesson of the day. Think twice before speaking in front of people about what you’re going to say.

After comments we had lunch with the students and gave them certificates. Alice and I were both a little sad to big goodbye to our students, but we have been invited to teach English next year and we probably will.

We went to the big Halloween celebration in Copan this year, and that was okay. It could have been far better, but I lost our camera and the next day ate something nasty on the way home and enjoyed a case of diarrhea while on an 8 hour bus ride home and the following two days.

I went to the South again and went swimming in a good old fashioned swimming hole. There isn’t really a story there, but I did it, and I like saying that.

Lately I’ve been in the beginning stages of an improved stove project. Most stoves here are three small brick walls with a cooking surface on top, which work fairly well, but eat firewood like cookie monster eats cookies. (That sesame street reference was in honor of my nephew, Nathan, who loves Elmo and Nemo. I am working on a Nemo reference.) One of my counterparts is in charge of community-based projects to benefit the water shed and the quality of life of the people living in it. So thanks to a German NGO we are building 250 improved stoves in 6 communities. The improvement is the addition of a firebox and a chimney which greatly reduces the usage of firewood and gets the smoke out of the house, which should greatly improve the health of the people cooking who currently work in a constant fog of smoke.

In other news, I hurt my knee and may end up being evacuated for knee surgery. I apparently have a ruptured ACL, which is, apparently, not good.

I will try to keep everyone updated on the stoves and my knee, but until then, just keep swimming. (I knew I could do it.)